Background removal with deep learning - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/background-removal-with-deep-learning-c4f2104b3157 <comment><USER2> > Hair, delicate clothes, tree branches and other fine objects will never be > segmented perfectly, even because the ground truth segmentation does not > contain these subtleties. The task of separating such delicate segmentation > is called matting, and defines a different challenge.

I did an internship where one of my tasks was to automatically remove the background in X-ray images, I spent basically half a year studying image processing, segmentation, reading papers, skimming image processing books etc... and _never_ came across the word "matting", which was exactly what I was doing.

Somebody should've told me that earlier, would've probably saved me a month.

<comment><USER3> comes from vfx/the film industry. matte paintings being backgrounds and the shot being filmed in front being 'matted'

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps I'm saying the obvious here, but why not train with a bunch of images which have been recorded in front of an actual green screen? That way, you can insert any random background and generate as many new training images as you like.

<comment><USER5> The network is being trained for photographs, not CGI. I suspect the different cues will end up producing wildly different trained networks. But the green screen idea is still an interesting and worthy proposal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are commercial services doing this by hand with cheap labor. They're called "clipping path services".[1][2][3] They don't have long to live.

[1] [https://www.clippingpathindia.com/](https://www.clippingpathindia.com/) [2] [https://www.offshoreclippingpath.com/](https://www.offshoreclippingpath.com/) [3] [http://clippingpathking.com](http://clippingpathking.com)

<comment><USER7> Unless they decide to replace their people with deep learning. They do have training images, it's just a matter of adding software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Hair, delicate clothes, tree branches and other fine objects will never be > segmented perfectly, even because the ground truth segmentation does not > contain these subtleties. The task of separating such delicate segmentation > is called matting, and defines a different challenge.

The state of the art in natural image matting already is confronting fine details as well as image segmentation and clustering. Copying papers from 10-12 years ago would give much better results than he shows here.

</comment><comment><USER9> To get more training data, you could have filmed using a green screen.

Insert whatever background you like (as long as the result looks natural). That way you can automatically get a good pixel map of the subject. And using a video camera at 30fps, you could get thousands of training images in just a few minutes.

Of course, you might run into an issue of overfitting (it might learn what you as an individual looks like and not generalize to other people). However as long as you green-screen a somewhat large number of people this shouldn't be an issue.

Edit: darn. Looks like I wasn't the only person to think of this idea!

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this is some excellent work, and anything that can help extract items of interest from the background is going to be useful for a lot of different scenarios. That said, I can't help by imagine the mayhem of this combined with the deepfake stuff where one might put a target person's face on a porn actor, and then that scene is transported to a place where that person might actually be found by replacing the background. Scary indeed.

</comment><comment><USER11> The ape example might be a bad example, as it shows the loss of the hairs on his head... fun stuff though.

<comment><USER12> It says later in the article that solving for those sorts of details is out of scope for the project - and is a different problem altogether (matting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We implemented background removal in an iOS app recently. We went down a similar route, but ended up choosing a user directed grabcut (heavily modified).

It would be interesting to take the output of this and use the alpha mask as the starting point for the grabcut mask.

</comment><comment><USER14> I integrated a GrabCut on our e-com website. We tried to build fancy background and sh*t to have no folding on the background.

The end result is that we preferred to used the blank white wall that was lying behind.

</comment><comment><USER15> Creator of this app here.

Thank you for the comments :)

This is currently merely a side project alpha, we are trying to secure funding to take it further.

Glad people having fun though :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Need training material? Any VFX-heavy motion picture will produce a ton of it, if you can get access.</comment>


How can we build a real-time interactive map using D3 - <AUTHOR>

Hey!
I am working to plot points from a huge data set in map. Something like : http://bikes.oobrien.com/chicago/ The JSon file that I am aggregating from looks like: [ { "event":'share', "lat":41.92866814708094, "long":-87.70242605646864}, { "event":'rapheal', "lat":34.03, "long":23.01}, { "event":'share', "lat":41.92866814708094, "long":-87.70242605646864}, .. ]<p>Can anyone show steps to do using D3.JS ?
Can you recommend any practical tutorials or github project of someone who built something similar ? <comment><USER2> Not 100%, but this may help: [http://datamaps.github.io/](http://datamaps.github.io/)</comment>


Starting from scratch – what language to choose? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking at opening a new dev office and I've been given latitude to choose the entire stack end-to-end for our web-based service.<p>If you were given the choice to start from a clean sheet of paper, what language would you choose to develop the product? <comment><USER2> Unless you have zero web-friendly languages in your toolbelt, it is very likely that "the web-friendly language/stack you're best with" is the far-away winner from a business perspective.

</comment><comment><USER3> From ground zero? Python.</comment>


Terry Prachett: Why Gandalf Never Married (1985) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ansible.co.uk/misc/tpspeech.html <comment><USER2> The obvious, technical reason for all this was skirted by Prachett, but never addressed directly: a "witch" is, by the oldest definition, a woman who is "in communion with" or "consorting with" (sleeping with) a devil or demon, and that is wherefrom she takes any power she may possess. A wizard has no such requirement--his magic is actually of an internal nature.

To put it another way: all magic--all power, really--actually comes from men, and more specifically, from their "wands" (ahem.) A woman doing magic is just serving as an avatar or proxy for her boyfriend's "will." Further, because she is committing a carnal sin by not being _married_ to this creature (by definition: you need a priest, and no priest will marry you to a devil), she starts off on the "evil" side of the line, even if she wants nothing to do with it.

Then there's the whole matter that she's "draining his willpower for her own purposes"--mythology tends to discretize single creatures into multiple over time, so "witch" and "succubus" were likely the same idea. Even if she was sleeping with a perfectly good Wiz, she'd still be a vile temptress.

That all seems more in line with medieval European folklore to me.

(Of course, the question of what happens when someone _marries_ a wizard is left unanswered; it's usually assumed that wizards are too ingrained in their world of rites and formulae to go a-courting, but what if a girl were to just love them anyway--like I'm sure the wives of many mathematicians today do? Would she gain "legal" access to his magical energies, or is there some sort of biblical clause against that? In fact, would the wizard be allowed to marry at all? Would a priest condemn Merlin in his time, even in his role as the king's advisor?)

<comment><USER3> It seems to me that the character of the wizard borrows a bit from the clergy. If you sit through a Catholic or Episcopalian mass, with its incense, music, communion, and ritual incantations, it certainly has the feeling of a magical rite. Also, believers do think that these rites have the ability to effect the world in extraordinary ways outside the normal rules of cause and effect (heal the sick, cast out demons, etc.); so the rites could be said to be magical.

The fact that priests do not marry also adds to the case.

<comment><USER4> Little known fact: some Catholic priests are permitted to marry.

Theology, like programming, has edge cases. Here's an example: you're an Anglican. Anglicans have apostolic succession -- i.e. if you're a priest, you were admitted by a bishop, who was in turn once a priest admitted by a bishop, who was in turn ... by St. Peter who was chosen to lead the Church by Christ Himself. Despite the fact that Anglicans are not Catholics, and do things differently (such as permitting priests to marry), under Catholic theology their claim to holy orders is good if a little misguided.

But what if one who is married converts to Catholicism? They're still a priest until they forsake it. Their marriage was licit when they entered into it. We're famously touchy about dissolving marriages -- either it was illicit when it was entered into (perhaps due to reasons that were not discovered yet) and thus requiring an annulment, or its good and binding until death.

Which means married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism (slightly more complicated -- you need the bishop to sign off on it) are now married Catholic priests.

<comment><USER5> Actually, Anglicans don't have apostolic succession; all Anglican ordinations were declared null and void in the late 1800's by the Pope at the time. (They did examine the case very carefully--note that there are plenty of non-uniate Christians who have succession.)

<comment><USER4> Oof, I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Gandalf was one of the Istari, a race or order of Men sent by the Valar to serve as opponents to Sauron.

It is strongly hinted that Gandalf took on the form of a Man, but was actually one of the lesser Valar, called Maiar.

The Silmarillion explains much of the background of all this.

In a time before Viagra, the significance of Gandalf appearing as an old, wise man would necessarily preclude sexual activity.

<comment><USER6> Oh, Gandalf definately wasn't human - even the LotR itself was surprisingly clear on this point, considering how much magic was presented obscurely in the book.

On the otherhand, I would have thought that LotR was the perfect refutation of Pratchett's thesis - I mean Galadriel was one of the bad-asses on the White Council, with ambition to boot! She was one of the holders of the three elven rings, marking her a peer of Gandalf's, and it was she that was tempted by the One Ring's power.

And then, in that other grand fantasy series, The Belgariad, there was of course Polgara, another strong female magic-using character, even though she ended up playing second fiddle to her father any time some direct application of power was required.

Overall, I can't help feeling that the speech was in response to Pratchett's own innate tendancy against female magic-users, as a close examination of most of the major series shows that many, if not most, had strong female magic- using characters, both good and evil. At least Pratchett was able to see that he had a bias, and apparently fought against it to create Granny Weatherwax - full marks to the man :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting to see how Pratchett thought about this over two decades ago, given that I have read most of his Discworld books. There is a sharp contrast between witches and wizards in his work. While in many ways his witches do the "dirty work" and the wizards sit in the university, the way it's presented is such that the witches are about helping people and getting things done, whereas the wizards are a bunch of doddering old windbags in slippers who don't really do anything at all...and when they do, they usually screw something up pretty badly.

Granny Weatherwax (a witch) is easily one of Pratchett's best characters. (She shows up in Equal Rites, and then again in Wyrd Sisters, which is a sort of retelling of Macbeth...and in several books since.)

</comment><comment><USER8> _"Let's talk about wizards and witches. There is a tendency to talk of them in one breath, as though they were simply different sexual labels for the same job."_

This is one of the many reasons that Harry Potter is so subversive. Witches and Wizards are just words for the same thing in different genders, and it's ingrained in every kid's head.

<comment><USER9> If you want _real_ subversive fantasy, I recommend Andrzej Sapkowski's _The Last Wish_ and the other of books from the saga. It has everything: The main character is a male witch (or witcher), the female wizards have formed a secret society to take over the world and nonhumans (elves,dwarfs) are subjected to human racism and bigotry.

<comment><USER10> If you are just looking for fantasy that equalizes male and female practitioners of magic Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series levels the playing field. In fact, it is seriously tilted towards women for the first part of the series.

<comment><USER11> in the first part yes. unfortunatley in the second part all the men are just naturally more powerful and everytime a women is exposed to the male side of the onepower they freak out because oh it's so violent and hard to control, while the men have no problem dealing with the womens side.

not to mention that about half of the problems in the series are caused by women scheming and interferring because they're all thus so convinced that men are incompetent.

I remember being dumbfounded when I read an intervew with Jordan and the interviewer asked how he wrote such strong women. ... yeah if you assume strong women are all horrible humans sure I can see thinking he writes strong women.

<comment><USER12> You think they're horrible bc you see the world from rand/mat/perrin's eyes. If you were aes sedai & a bunch of ignorant kids with that much power popped up you'd do anything to control them. Brandon Sanderson said that as he gets older he finds himself thinking more like Moiraine. I feel the same way.

link: [http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog/599/WoT-Read-Through- EY...](http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog/599/WoT-Read-Through-EYE-OF-THE- WORLD) ( _running off to shadar logoth without telling anyone!_ )

<comment><USER11> Well I mostly agree with Brandon, and frankly even as I was writing my post I felt that Nynaeve and Moraine were the best of the bunch, Nynaeve particularly.

But the arguement of "but they ARE reckless ignorant kids" only works for the first couple books. 8 books in women are still running around saying Rand/Mat/Perrin is a wool headed moron who will only make things worse if left to his own devices, despite each having shown their competence time and time and time again, while the women's meddling caused things to go pear shaped just as often.

<comment><USER12> Rand still does insanely stupid things. At the end of ACoS he runs off alone to kill Sammael & nearly dies half a dozen times before Moridin(!) intervenes. That retinue of Aes Sedai was probably the best thing to happen to him. He nearly died numerous times without them in APoD. He would have died at the end of winter's heart if he tried that alone with Nynaeve like he originally planned. He'd never have left Far Madding.

The other two also do stupid stuff (well, Mat more than Perrin), but it's easy enough to argue they shouldn't be running around loose either, not this close to the end. They have no real protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> University of the Island of Gont? FAIL. He is thinking of the school at Roke, not Gont. In Gont they herd goats, which is what Ged did as a kid. Boy, you sure can tell the old Pratchett beats the young Pratchett for domain knowledge.

Female wizard ( _not_ witch): Herald-Mage Savil. That book was 1989, though.

</comment><comment><USER14> A well done feminist critique of fantasy, literature, and "real life," and he pulled it off with a sense of humor.

Read "The Colour of Magic" if you get the chance, it's hilariously funny in spots, especially if you're a little bit of a fantasy geek.

<comment><USER15> Equal Rites, which came after that book, deals with this topic more directly. A seventh son has a seventh son...no wait, a daughter. She has raw magical power, and with some help gets to the wizard university. I'm not going to say any more; I don't want to spoil anything.

<comment><USER16> It is also worth noting that Equal Rites was published 1-2 years after this speech. Was Prachett trying to gauge the reaction to his satire by explicitly stating it?

<comment><USER17> I doubt he was thinking in those terms. More likely this was a concept that he'd already started to think of, and so the things he wrote about concerned things of that nature.

It's like how programmers designing registration systems become obsessed with talking about registration forms and CAPTCHAs. It's just where their minds dwell as they work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how his same talk would be given today. In a post-Harry Potter, World of Warcraft world, the idea of a female wizard no longer raises eyebrows in the same way.

Still, interesting and entertaining.

<comment><USER19> Way before Harry Potter, there was Polgara the Sorceress and her mother Poledra. While both of them could be said to have played second fiddle to the preeminent Belgarath, there was no doubt that their power was of the same nature as that of his. There was also Sephrenia and her goddess Aphrael, but then I guess David Eddings wasn't as popular as J.K. Rowling is.

<comment><USER17> One of J. K. Rowling's truly great accomplishments (that is, one of the things that if anything isn't praised _enough_ ) is that she takes a very liberal worldview and she portrays it in such a straightforward manner that very few people think to argue with the things she's talking about.

She describes a world where there's no difference between men and women. There are heroes and villains on both sides. Furthermore, women aren't made out to be fundamentally superior or inferior in terms of emotion versus ration. She makes the difference _apparent_ \- you get dumb guy moments and giggly girl moments - but at the same time, every character has dumb blind emotional moments, and moments where a clear head prevails.

She does similar things with racism and libertarianism. (That's not to say Rowling is ultralibertarian, but she expresses certain views - like the fallibility of government and the acknowledgement that people aren't created entirely equal - that promote the agenda, while _simultaneously_ being mature enough to acknowledge that government isn't inherently bad and that people are defined by more than just their talent.) The funny thing is that the one thing she's accused of - promoting witchcraft - is the least radical of the various things she tries to do. Combine that with a very adult understanding of death couched into a book series that, for the first few books, was considered fluff kid fantasy, and you realize that Rowling is very underrated as a kid's author. People ignore her merits for her popularity, which is a shame.

Eddings, from all I've heard, is a talented writer, but he's not good at reaching out to a wide audience. He's a niche writer. Rowling, meanwhile, has a talent for making people fall in love with her writing that I've rarely seen in any writer, and she combines that with surprisingly mature plot development.

<comment><USER20> > She describes a world where there's no difference between men and women.

Reminding us that if you want an escape from reality, fiction is your ticket.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, Harry Potter's definitely an escape. There's a psychotic mass murderer who leads a fanatic cult into a school and has them killing droves of people, an 18-year-old attempts to kill a group of students just to take a treasure from them and ends up burning alive, a man spends a lifetime obsessed with a woman only to lead to her death and get killed by a snake.

For what it's worth, I've got quite a few female friends who _don't_ get treated necessarily like stereotypical females because they quite clearly _aren't_. Maybe I'm just in a lucky part of the world, but I haven't seen females get discriminated against much unless they invited it on themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For more Wizardry / Hacker tales you could read Wizard's Bane (available online here: <http://www.baen.com/library/rcook.htm> ) a tale of a programmer transported to a world where magic exists.

<comment><USER22> I prefer Diane Duane's Young Wizards series. Wizardry is hacking. Oh, and teleportation spells can take you to other planets. It's excellently written, and as addictive as Harry Potter. More information:

<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YoungWizards></comment></comment>


This is Nokia's Android phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/10/5197746/nokia-android-phone-normandy <comment><USER2> I wonder what the implications of Nokia, now part of Microsoft, distributing GPL'ed software Microsoft says violates patents Microsoft uses to extort companies with, are.</comment>


Httpie: A really nice alternative to curl, already in Ubuntu repo and brew - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jakubroztocil/httpie

<comment><AUTHOR> Functionally the same as curl, but the syntax is much more natural. I only use curl if httpie cannot be easily installed now.</comment>


MVPP: Minimum Viable Product Purchase and the lesson of the first trash talk T's - <AUTHOR> http://www.sneakerheadvc.com/2010/03/17/mvpp/ <comment><USER2> Summary: Don't overserve your market. If you only offer "enough" you can segment more effectively.</comment>


Ask HN: Reliable alternative to Tech Crunch? - <AUTHOR> After reading yet another race drivel from Tech Crunch, I decided to vote with my eyeballs and switch to another news source. Where can I find an apolitical source of tech and business news? Most English websites promote gender/race/identity war and call it 'raising awareness'.
I'd really appreciate your suggestions. <comment><USER2> In the US, businesses are some of the most powerful (if not the most powerful) political actors. An apolitical site is also one with poor journalism.

As far as gender/race/identity, it is again not a luxury for many of us to ignore those issues, and businesses have a huge role to play there, as well.

You aren't (and can't be) a person unaffected by political issues, so I'm not sure why you'd want to ignore them.

<comment><USER3> There are a lot of people outside the US, for whom US political issues are a minor (and definitely ignorable) concern at best and not something that should frequently come up while reading tech news.

<comment><USER2> They shouldn't come up on American sites about (mostly) American companies with American writers? These things affect the journalists and the other 330M people who live here. It's not like we're a small, uninfluential country.

<comment><USER3> Food, the weather, transportation, the latest TV show and sports games also affect the journalists and 330M people who live in the US. Those things belong in general news outlets, not tech news outlets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People have created their own news sites that read a bunch of sources (reddit, hn, tech crunch) and then only the stories they're most likely interested in are promoted.

</comment><comment><USER5> I count these as the more respected tech new sources:

Recode Verge Wall Street Journal (paywall)

and surprisingly enough BuzzFeed's long form content is actually quite strong. They had some excellent investigative journalism on Zenefits this last year.

Techmeme is the best aggregator I've found.

<comment><USER2> Recode[1], Verge[2][3], and WSJ[4] present facts about gender/racial discrimination, which fail OP's requirements. I personally don't believe any valuable, reliable journalism outfit is going to ignore these issues (perhaps by definition).

1\. [http://www.recode.net/2016/4/12/11586072/pay-gap-women- men-s...](http://www.recode.net/2016/4/12/11586072/pay-gap-women-men-silicon- valley)

2\. [http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/29/11327036/north-carolina- bi...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/29/11327036/north-carolina-bill-lgbt- discrimination-letter-google-apple-tumblr)

3\. [http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/10/9885826/airbnb-guests- dis...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/10/9885826/airbnb-guests- discrimination-race-study)

4\. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-year-after-ferguson-black- live...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-year-after-ferguson-black-lives-matter- still-wields-influence-1439143426)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Best news site on the web: [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Tech Crunch is a news source? When did that happen?

</comment><comment><USER8> I happen to agree with this. I think the tech industry is the wrong place to make the discrimination argument for a number of reasons.

First of all, expecting profit-maximizing entities to deviate from a purely meritocratic hiring process is a fool's errand - why should they act against their own best interests? A number of people argue in favor of race/gender- blind hiring solutions, but I have not seen any compelling evidence (i.e. scientifically-backed studies) to indicate that tech industry minorities have been passed over in favor of White/Asian males of equal or inferior merit in any statistically significant way (I'm sure outliers exist, as with anything of this nature). I'm also not sure how a system like this can be implemented in the first place in any sane way. I've conducted my share of software engineering interviews and I would never consider hiring someone I haven't interacted with face-to-face.

I have however seen much of the opposite behavior, where tech companies I've worked for (Google, Facebook) have given preferential treatment to candidates of inferior quality purely on the basis of race/gender. This is where you create actual problems, because rational people understand that a profit- maximizing organization is the wrong context in which to attempt to re-balance the scales. As an Asian male (who furthermore doesn't fit the introvert stereotype), it personally makes me feel like I'm being inadvertently discriminated against and expected to perform that much better up to and within the interview process to earn my offer.

So where should we be having this discussion? Around urban culture and the educational system. In their militant quest for culture reform, hyper- progressives have rocketed well past the point in the stack where we can actually (and fairly) address this problem. You need to level the playing field to the furthest extent possible, prior to individuals competing on the open market for employment. Anyone who's unable to empathize with the situation of minorities (that Black and Hispanic people are predisposed to tremendously disadvantageous circumstances or that women are raised in a culture that's overtly hostile and detrimental towards their personal ambitions) is a fool, willfully blind to reality, and possibly bigoted.

And lots of things have been tried without success. Zuckerberg attempted to do his part in donating to the Newark public school system and failed spectacularly (arguably on account of corruption and misappropriation courtesy of Booker/Christie). They're not the first to try either. So, why did they fail? Because the stronger factor is the context surrounding a child's education. I once volunteered to tutor gifted urban children and the problem was almost immediately apparent. Outside of school, these children face destitution, are often fatherless, have exposure to gang culture, and have few to no peers or role models interested in promoting educational aspirations. So you end up realizing we have to go even further down the stack and correct the fundamentals. How we do that is something worth entire novels of exposition.

Bottom-line: stop expecting tech companies to be the platform for resolving this discrepancy.</comment>


Kickstrap: Enhancements for Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://ajkochanowicz.github.com/Kickstrap/index.html

<comment><USER2> It looks like the themes, thus far, are all from bootswatch:

<http://bootswatch.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. With the author's blessing, the themes are indeed from Bootswatch (except for "Sandra")

2\. @flixic I hear you about the small size issue.

3\. Several asked how this enhances Bootstrap. At the very least, Kickstrap allows devs to start a Bootstrap project without editing the core BS files. So you can continuously upgrade Bootstrap without writing over your project. With this, there are themes, optimized web files (.htaccess, .html, crossdomain.xml), icon fonts, some js plugins, and class-granulated css animations.

4\. While I think Thomas did a great job with Bootswatch, I would love to get better themes in here and I'm open to submissions.

@yourwebsitesUX on Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some of the themes look really good. Sandra, the one you're using for this site, is not one of them...

<comment><USER5> Not a very constructive discussion, but I do quite enjoy how the project site looks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Icon fonts is a cool idea, but they are not "> images".

They don't save additional requests (if you use spritesheets), are not smaller (2 color gif vs. full vector font), and most importantly, and why no decent designer would ever use them in small sizes, is that they absolutely lack any sharpness! Look at the QR code icon on their demo. It's a mess.

<comment><USER7> On the other hand, image icons can't change color on the fly or be dynamically upscaled, both of which are requirements when you are building a framework that is meant to be themed by users.

<comment><USER8> You can use png masks to create an icon, and then change the background color of the element below it. You can also use image scaling to make the icon any size you need.

<http://www.cssbakery.com/2009/06/background-image.html>

SenchaTouch does this for all their button icons.

The downside is that you can't use spritesheets, because each image needs to be inserted with an image tag, not a background image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Rather than themes with a few color changes, what would be neater would be themes which actually modified the default style of bootstrap. As a developer using bootstrap and without any design skills, that would be far more helpful.

At least for me, none of the addons seem to add anything compelling to the default bootstrap for me to use it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like that they added 'chosen'. Wish there was some kind of official Bootstrap 'add-on' or recipes repository.

</comment><comment><USER11> The themes themselves are very good idea. However the ones that are provided aren't the most attractive ones.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love the idea but how exactly is this an enhancement? The curated packages included don't make it unique, exactly.</comment>


The Polymath Playbook - <AUTHOR> https://salman.io/posts/polymath-playbook/ <comment><USER2> _A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects._

— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

<comment><USER3> > Specialization is for insects.

Was going strong right up until this.

Figured he was going for _jack of all trades, master of one_. Attacking specialization outright is just silly.

<comment><USER4> In context, the quote is actually from a list of principles/observations the character has written in a notebook. I do not read it as an argument that mastering a skill/field is bad, but simply an observation that never bothering to learn new skills would be rather boring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So under this definition I too am a polymath but so are most of my colleagues. Some of the smartest engineers Ive ever met have wildly different hobbies outside of engineering or software. Boating. Baking. Triathlons. Music. But the most successful people do one thing, 100% in an all consuming way before flipping into another. Theyre the best bakers. Have sailed the furhest distances, written the best songs, and posted the best times.

Another way to think about it is "you can have anything you want, but not _everything_ you want". Choose accordingly.

<comment><USER6> This is the way to do it. Done well, a 5-year deep dive can make you a world- class expert in most things. Do that, and then move onto the next thing, bringing that skillset along.

It goes faster every time too. It turns out there are lots of overlaps. Linear algebra and differential equations are (roughly) the same in electronic engineering, quantum mechanics, or mechanical engineering, and where they're not is where you often bring in unique insights.

The people who struggle are the ones who go shallow. A half-dozen HN articles a day.

<comment><USER7> _The people who struggle are the ones who go shallow. A half-dozen HN articles a day._

It's not really a half dozen HN articles a day. It's the _shallow_ absorption of HN articles that's only 5 or 10 minutes top per article.

And then you only remembered 10% top of the article you absorbed.

Whereas you select and absorb two HN article for a week, at twenty minutes each article per day, you'll retain more and makes connections you otherwise wouldn't see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I would add to this is a caveat and a model. The caveat is that individual specialization doesn't scale, and so long as you are just talent solving problems for someone, your employer will be the ceiling and bottleneck on the good you can do in the world.

The model is that as a polymath, your job is to scale. You don't know as much as specialists, but you have the unique ability to appreciate the value of what they do and this provides a natural advantage in leading them and scaling their talents.

Value is the act of bringing something from one place to another. As a polymath, you have multiple repositories that are relatively deep, which you can trade ideas between. However, what I advise polymaths is that if there is one skill you should cultivate, it's smuggling, because a lot of people who are good at one thing choose gatekeeping to ensure its status, and the biggest challenge you will have is getting value past gatekeepers and the people with a stake in their decisions. To succeed as a polymath, you should learn to live as a smuggler, fugitive, insurgent, and pariah. If nothing else, it keeps the needs of others central to your thinking.

Sure, you could just live comfortably as a pet and a curiosity, stuck in someone elses cubicle, solving problems for peanut tokens and scattered applause, but if that's not satisfying, the tools to change it are already in your hands.

</comment><comment><USER9> Attention: Nerd Snipe.

The Ikigai graph should be painted on a torus because we need to see two additional intersections. Let's try to name them:

\- What you LOVE and What you can be PAID FOR: Delightful Bullshit Job

\- What you are GOOD AT and What the world NEEDS: Useful Self-Sacrifice

Or do you have a better idea?

And: how should we color them to have nice, meaningful shades of colors?

Edit: Thanks for BlackFingolfin to point out that a sphere's not good enough.

<comment><USER10> this made me laugh so hard... brilliant observation :-D

Here's a pseudo-symmetrical Venn diagram for four sets, as an alternative representation :-) [1]

1: [https://www.combinatorics.org/files/Surveys/ds5/VennSymmVari...](https://www.combinatorics.org/files/Surveys/ds5/VennSymmVariants.html#nonprime)

<comment><USER9> Another variant with ovals: [https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1261851180881174529](https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1261851180881174529)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > When I first began to study polymaths, I was excited to see a template for a > life I didn't know I was living. But when I started to embrace the polymath > identity, my inner critics appeared. I wondered whether I'm even qualified > to write about polymaths, let alone call myself one.

Then why not just go on cultivating diverse interests -- which is really what this blog post is about, and which seems like a fine idea -- and sidestep all of this "polymath" business? Why make it harder by picking the grandest label you can find and then worrying about whether you qualify?

<comment><USER12> Yep. Indeed you're better off _not_ picking the grand label even if it perfectly suits you, because people are more likely to chuckle at your pomposity if you start describing yourself as one (see also self-described 'intellectuals', 'geniuses' and 'ninjas') than be impressed.

It doesn't help that for much of the post the author seems to conflate the concept of the Aristotle-type polymath making breakthroughs in multiple unrelated fields with standard career paths [engineer, manager, teacher, founder, advisor] and transferable career skills. All of which are entirely worth pursuing without the dubious label.

<comment><USER13> Between this and that [0], it popped into my head that we should just go further and invent _polymodal_. Would specifically refer to the other comment's "only one thing" deep dive.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23808478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23808478)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been a generalist my whole life, and have struggled significantly to translate this into a meaningful career. I have thrived in interdisciplinary roles, but have always found myself carving them out once I have forced my way through the door in a more specialized role.

Is it simply a disconnect between the hiring process and these sorts of skillsets that is causing this issue, or something else?

I worked at a 3D printing startup and found myself liasing between hardware, software, and materials teams (and sales... and marketing... and...) and was the happiest I have been professionally at that time. I don't know where to look for roles similar to this. Do they even exist?

Any advice?

<comment><USER15> Have you tried looking for Project/Program manager roles, maybe even DoD ? They usually are a good fit for people with your skills

<comment><USER14> To some degree, yes. However, I've found there is often a chicken/egg problem of needing experience in the role to be hired for it.

That said, it's been a few years since I looked at these,so maybe it's time to reevaluate and maybe pursue a certification of some sort.

<comment><USER15> A friend of mine had the same problem. Got hired into a smaller startup that was willing to take a chance on him and is now a program director

<comment><USER14> I'll adjust my search parameters. Thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The answer lies in modern society's preference for specialization.

Yet modern society also has a preference for a broad liberal arts education. Like bundling/unbundling and reductionism/synthesis, there seems to be an ongoing ebb and flow between multi-disciplinary and specialized skills driven by the value add.

</comment><comment><USER17> Whole article resonates so thank you for putting that up. The word POLYMATH is a little clunky for non-native speakers. If you were to ask people in the streets the word GENERALIST is probably easier to understand. I experienced that with a lot of words that tend to describe a certain type/trend/box. I'm not advocating against the word just trying to raise awareness why there's people out there that would rather simply break it down to "Generalist" and Polymath will most likely be a niche word on a global scale.

<comment><USER18> A polymath has multiple areas of specialization or expertise, a generalist has (even more) multiple areas of competence. These aren't mutually exclusive. Note the special case of the generalist with ONE area of expertise is the "t-shaped" individual, which is probably a more appropriate baseline goal than anything else. Although I am not sure how _domain_ knowledge intersects with technical skills as a matter of strategy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting read, would say a lot of good product managers have polymath traits... Software design, understand how to sell , commercial, legal, marketing...

<comment><USER20> I've always considered myself a jack of all trades and made the switch to product management after being a designer for the last decade.

The switch felt almost fully natural, and I noticed that I have a very obvious significant leg up from most of my peers, I'm easily 3-4x more productive while working at the same pace as everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Software development is an interesting field in that it is a lot less specialized than others. It's pretty easy to bounce around doing completely different work at each job. So far the field has resisted any sort of assembly line model and I hope it remains that way. Some essay I read likened it to classic gunsmiths: the tolerance is so tight, that a single craftsmen was responsible for every part of the gun. The same is true for programming: you can't just take a bunch of different libraries and "assemble" them together. And if you try, the quality of the final product will undoubtedly be poor. I'm looking at you, simple websites that take the entire memory space of 200 Commodore 64 computers put together!

<comment><USER22> > So far the field has resisted any sort of assembly line model

Are you sure? I mostly agree with this statement, however things like scrum/devops and frameworks seems to be pushing in that direction in my opinion

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think biologically we evolve to be polymaths. Only after humans formed complex societies we have opportunities that sustainably reward specialization. And there is probably very little genetic reinforcement of modern specialization. Don't have my own experience but from what I see, family life of a polymath seems much more rewarding and with a lot of genetic reinforcement. The Revenant might be a good example of 2 stages of evolving human societies where one totally rewards Polymaths and in other you probably want to start being a specialist.

</comment><comment><USER24> My ideal:

\- "jack of all trades, master of none"

\+ "jack of many trades, master of a few"

<comment><USER25> Yes, _master of none_ cannot get a job.

And even if the polymath does get a job, their new colleagues will not understand them, or actively persecute them for having a broad approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > The lack of freedom might be a worthy sacrifice in exchange for job > security. But therein lies the problem: few companies can actually guarantee > long-term stability. Many workers already face ambiguity with their job > security due to the impending effects of automation. Now, with the tornado > of change brought about by the COVID pandemic, the brittleness of even large > corporations' stability has become apparent. So how do we survive these > waves of change? Adaptability.

This starts out with a good analysis, but an approach that tried to change the system rather than the individual-by-individual approach it proposes would be so much more defective. We don't just have to adapt to an increasingly brutal labor market and society. We can change it!

</comment><comment><USER27> There's a site called [https://puttylike.com/](https://puttylike.com/) that calls it a "multipotentialite" and in the gal's Ted talk she makes us out to be victims. That, I don't like- but I do like the premise of most of what she's saying otherwise. Being a generalist only means you get to explore whatever's fancy today, and because you've defined yourself as eternally undefined, nobody generally cares.

<comment> em-bee victims of what?

<comment><USER27> Victims of "the system" that prefers specialization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession that doesn't appeal to me. Once I reach 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product like - and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful. -Yvon Chouinard

<comment><USER29> > I've always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself > passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent > proficiency level.

This is a very difficult thing to grasp as a beginner. As a beginner, you have no idea where you are on the scale. You might be an "80-percenter" in React at your company and discover that you know very little when you start applying for senior front-end positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thanks for sharing your sentiments. I tend to associate polymaths with the Renaissance era. People like Da Vinci and Galilei are true polymaths. In modern days Elon Musk is one. However I do think the word polymath is more well-regarded/skilled than a generalist.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's best to follow a "T" approach, have a broad skillset but with enough depth in one particular trade that can last economic downturns and for which demand is inelastic.

<comment><USER29> From my experience, "T" approach is a lie. You get people who are just generalists ("-" people).

"T" approach is FAANG's way of forcing people to dedicate 12h a day to their engineering career both before they apply to get in, and after they get in to advance.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You've likely heard the saying: "A jack of all trades is a master of none." It warns against the futility of pursuing too many disciplines. Be a specialist, or you'll be nothing.

It may surprise you to learn there's actually an extended version: "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." With a subtle addition, its meaning becomes inverted to tout the benefits of being a polymath (a.k.a. generalist).

Why is the former so common, and the latter so unknown?

The answer lies in modern society's preference for specialization. This essay explores how specialization limits workers' freedom, how the polymath approach can offer a reprieve, and my own learnings exploring a multitude of pursuits.

<comment><USER32> I think it's a mistake to call a polymath a generalist. The concept of a polymath is predicated on top notch knowledge and skill at multiple disciplines.

Generalist implies breadth but not depth.

<comment><USER33> That too was my only gripe with the article - solid and engaging writing, but I was wincing every time polymath was mentioned. I feel like you could substitute most uses of the word with just 'generalist' and the article would have held together just as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is the population of Saudi Arabia so abnormal? - <AUTHOR> Population pyramids are interesting, I was looking at Russia, and how the huge losses from world war 2 echoed down through the generations. Then compared that to China and Japan and the United States. When I looked at Saudi Arabia to see a middle eastern country I saw a huge bulge in the number of men only. This doesn't make any sense. Why would that be? http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/saudi-arabia-population-pyramid <comment><USER2> This might float your boat

[https://qz.com/335183/heres-why-men-on-earth-outnumber- women...](https://qz.com/335183/heres-why-men-on-earth-outnumber-women- by-60-million/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of the countries in Middle East (E.g. Saudi, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait) rely heavily on workers imported from outside these countries.

The "manual labor" class in particular brings in a lot of men on employment visas. There are also regulations that restrict a person on a visa from bringing their spouse with them unless they have a certain income level. So a lot of the men on visas are there alone, further skewing the population.

Note that there's no path to citizenship in these countries. If you come in on a visa you'll always be a guest on a visa. So you always face these restrictions on bringing your spouse into the country.

If you look at the demographics of UAE, the vast majority of the population is people who are not citizens of UAE. UAE is more honest than Saudi when it comes to this stuff, hence why I'm pointing to the UAE stats, not Saudi's - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Ara...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Arab_Emirates)

The age structure is also interesting. Since 85% of the populations is non- citizens, the vast majority leave the country at retirement age. So even if you get to the point where your income and circumstances allow you to bring your spouse into the country, you'll end up leaving and the population skews to younger male workers.

</comment><comment><USER4> maybe it was this described influx of foreign male workers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Saudi_Arabia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Saudi_Arabia)

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense, Bahrain is even more unusual, presumably for the same reason. With women in the area more likely to be out of the public eye, it must appear to be a surreal culture of almost only men. [http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/bahrain-population- pyrami...](http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/bahrain-population-pyramid)

<comment><USER3> If you've lived in a place with a more balanced gender ratio, walking around in a gulf country can be very jarring.

At least in UAE, female Arab nationals are out of the public eye, but non Arab females go to malls, walk around, drive cars, and are out and about. But yes, it's still odd to see the gender imbalance if you aren't used to it.</comment></comment></comment>


Atomic I/O operations - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/552095/

<comment> a-priori _Atomic I /O operation support can be taken a step further, though, by adding asynchronous I/O (AIO) support. The nice thing about the Linux AIO interface (which is not generally acknowledged to have many nice aspects) is that it allows an application to enqueue multiple I/O operations with a single system call._

I'm not familiar with the AIO interface, but it sounds fairly handy. Could someone comment on what he means by it not having 'many nice aspects'?

<comment><USER2> The Linux AIO interface is excellent for high-performance disk I/O but using it requires a much bigger code investment than is immediately implied by the AIO API by itself. The complexity of using it is that for it to work properly, you need to bypass most blocking and buffering operations in the kernel related to file system I/O. Specifically:

\- You should always use O_DIRECT or it defeats the purpose. Consequently, the caching and buffering you normally get for "free" using more conventional approaches is not available. For good performance you have to write your own disk buffer cache implementation which is not trivial if you have never done it before. This buffer code will exceed the size of the AIO code if you are doing it well. On the upside, for many purposes you can design a buffer cache that greatly outperforms the standard kernel implementation.

\- You need to minimize the number of file system metadata operations that can block and/or bypass the file system altogether. I recommend the former. In practical systems, you end up doing very coarse file system operations, like allocating a huge chunks of disk, and then building your own lightweight disk management system on top of that. Again, this is a lot of extra work for the sake of using AIO effectively.

\- You need to figure out the best way to schedule all of the disk I/O operations you are now responsible for. Background writing, prefetching, etc that are used to optimize disk performance are now part of your implementation.

Linux AIO is simple and pretty nice in the abstract. Using it well requires some complex domain expertise around scheduling, file organization, and cache replacement algorithms and techniques. There are no libraries that provide quality implementations of the supporting infrastructure that I am aware of so you have to roll your own. You can't do just a little bit of AIO and see much benefit in most cases.

There are big benefits though which is why advanced database engines are implemented this way. If you build out an entire userspace disk I/O subsystem on top Linux AIO you can easily double your disk I/O performance or more relative to using the conventional POSIX, mmap(), etc interfaces. Furthermore, it often can be designed to degrade performance more gracefully during periods of high I/O pressure.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What open source project is your pride and joy? - <AUTHOR> Maybe you've authored or contributed to 10 projects - which one is special? <comment><USER2> [http://libre.fm](http://libre.fm) \-- yeah, the UI could use some work (current work in progress: [http://i.imgur.com/2P9ZDx6.png](http://i.imgur.com/2P9ZDx6.png)) but it has a bunch of users (~130k, and we have approximately 85 million song listens have passed through the site) -- all the code is here -- [https://gitorious.org/foocorp/gnu- fm/source/b4d50d2ca4dd456d...](https://gitorious.org/foocorp/gnu- fm/source/b4d50d2ca4dd456dff86561a3a668357580d95dc):

<comment><USER3> That's crazy, well done

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://github.com/YOURLS/YOURLS](https://github.com/YOURLS/YOURLS) \- a self hosted URL shortener in PHP

<comment><USER5> I want to finally find time to put it on my domain:

[http://c.gg](http://c.gg)

Q: can I made certain links password-protected?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> ok, i'll go first: i love [https://github.com/seamusabshere/upsert](https://github.com/seamusabshere/upsert) because it seems like a new idea and [https://github.com/seamusabshere/fuzzy_match](https://github.com/seamusabshere/fuzzy_match) because it feels like i've combined string similarity and array enumeration to make something truly useful.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm currently developing one to scratch my own itch. I had a problem of sharing data between embedded devices. My search for a solution led me to find out that there was no simple API to simply interchange data between devices. Less so in an Open Source variant. So I wrote a tiny Django based API that allows embedded devices share data through HTTP calls.

What is this good for?

Say you have a RaspberryPi-based weather station with internet access. With one API call your an share your data (raw or processed) with any other device. Since its open source, you can run your own little closed network. Imagine having hundreds of mini weather stations sharing data over the web like this.

It works for any device that has access to the internet. Even if its through a host connection (If you have an Arduino connected to a laptop through serial. It can make the HTTP calls through a client script/library I'm including, too.)

Here is the github repo: [https://github.com/bliti/bbedy](https://github.com/bliti/bbedy)

The program runs locally, but has not been setup for deployment. I have not written the documentation for it. Should be up and running by December 2013.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cells!: [https://github.com/kennytilton/cells/wiki](https://github.com/kennytilton/cells/wiki) rah-rah: [http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/2008/02/cells- manifesto.ht...](http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/2008/02/cells- manifesto.html)

The latest buzzword is Functional Reactive Programming. Well, latest three buzzwords.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'll bite. I wrote a a parsing library for python on top of PLY, that provides many high-level features such as EBNF syntax and automatic AST creation, and the trees a query-able with CSS-like syntax.

It's on github and I get immense joy for every little star it gets ([https://github.com/erezsh/plyplus](https://github.com/erezsh/plyplus))

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm writing an open curriculum for learning Python, aimed at people who have never programmed before. The student-facing page is at [http://introtopython.org](http://introtopython.org), and the project page is at [https://github.com/ehmatthes/intro_programming](https://github.com/ehmatthes/intro_programming).

I started revising the curriculum for a class I teach each fall, and then realized I could just as easily turn it into an open resource. Now even though the class is over, I can't stop working on it. If anyone is interested, I'd love to have some professional eyes on some of the code samples, and I'd love some help writing exercises and challenges.

It's still a young project, but I'm happy to hear feedback.

</comment><comment><USER10> "locally grown" GPL'd scripts (general utils); most bash, some perl; bash function library

Want to share these simple, general utilities, handy tools, or convenience wrappers - most bash, some perl. Categories: script-infrastructure libraries, text filtering, log creation/parsing, simple network-related, regex, time, mail, cygwin, latex, jobs, processes, pathname, file or file-archive related, m4, make, system, and backup:

Been writing shell scripts since late 80s, still humble, and learning; appreciate constructive code review.

[http://TRodman.com/scripts](http://TRodman.com/scripts) (~400k tarball w/installer)

\--

Tom

Linux/devops scripting admin for HIRE; resume/skill assessment: [http://TRodman.com](http://TRodman.com)

<comment><USER6> Hi Tom,

It would be nice if you put the programs up on github, bitbucket or alternative. If you need help doing so, let me know. My email is in my profile.

<comment><USER10> scripts also here:

[http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/uqjau](http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/uqjau)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://github.com/brotchie/Parcoa](https://github.com/brotchie/Parcoa)

Parser combinators for Objective-C.

I wrote this ~10-11 months ago because there were no internal-DSL based parser combinators available for Objective-C. I'm not sure if the landscape has changed since then!

Performance-wise the resulting parsers are SLOOOOW. I have created a branch that uses ranges instead of immutable strings, but have yet to merge it with master.

I originally designed it as a replacement parser for NUI ([https://github.com/tombenner/nui](https://github.com/tombenner/nui)) but the performance wasn't up to scratch compared with NUI's tailored regular expression based parser.

</comment><comment><USER12> My most (only) popular (relatively, for me) repo - a perceptual hasher for php [https://github.com/kennethrapp/phasher](https://github.com/kennethrapp/phasher)

The project I personally have the most fun with is [https://github.com/kennethrapp/embedbug](https://github.com/kennethrapp/embedbug), a page scraper and profiler that I built to run a threaded feed generator which is still very much a work in progress ([http://precis.gopagoda.com/](http://precis.gopagoda.com/)) - the only reason that isn't open sourced yet is it's still terrible.

Crazy fun to play with but terrible.

</comment><comment><USER13> It used to be mostly the xmms-volnorm: [https://github.com/baruch/xmms- volnorm](https://github.com/baruch/xmms-volnorm)

Nowadays I'm working on several disk related projects: [https://github.com/baruch/diskscan](https://github.com/baruch/diskscan)

[https://github.com/baruch/disksurvey](https://github.com/baruch/disksurvey)

[https://github.com/baruch/libscsicmd](https://github.com/baruch/libscsicmd)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://bip.io](https://bip.io) (Billion Instructions per I/O) - its a framework for creating ephemeral endpoints ontop of graph based message pipelines. You can orchestrate and share these graphs (kind of like micro- workflows) to automate tasks, serve content, run an app... that sort of thing. I love it, even if no-one 'gets it' and has zero traction, working in this problem space is very satisfying and always a challenge :) albeit it sometimes overwhelmingly complex

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://github.com/LPology/Simple-Ajax- Uploader](https://github.com/LPology/Simple-Ajax-Uploader) \- A Javascript plugin for cross-browser ajax file uploading.

A lot of my users are still running IE7/IE8, so I've spent a great deal of time researching and tinkering over the past two years to try to achieve a uniform experience in older browsers, even with modern features like progress bars and multiple uploads.

</comment><comment><USER15> A console-based mail-client with Lua scripting. It isn't the most popular project I've ever created, but it is damn useful to me and surprisingly powerful:

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

My runner-up project would be the host automation tool, written in Perl, Slaughter:

[http://steve.org.uk/Software/slaughter/](http://steve.org.uk/Software/slaughter/)

(That will eventually move to slaughter.io.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is "All of them" an acceptable answer?

In particular, [http://sheetjs.github.io/js-xls/](http://sheetjs.github.io/js- xls/) and [http://sheetjs.github.io/js-xlsx/](http://sheetjs.github.io/js- xlsx/) (which really should have been one; due to licensing concerns, they started as two projects and I hope to merge them at one point)

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://github.com/chrisvana/repobuild](https://github.com/chrisvana/repobuild)

I use it to build all of my other projects.

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://quill.org](http://quill.org)

Interactive English grammar lessons. [https://github.com/empirical- org/quill/issues?state=open](https://github.com/empirical- org/quill/issues?state=open)

We're currently developing Quill, and we are looking to partner with other FOSS developers. You can reach me at Peter at Quill dot Org

</comment><comment><USER19> libHN and my HackerNews client for iOS.

\- libHN: [https://github.com/bennyguitar/libHN](https://github.com/bennyguitar/libHN)

\- News/YC: [https://github.com/bennyguitar/News-YC--- iPhone](https://github.com/bennyguitar/News-YC---iPhone)

I love contributing to this community, but the website on mobile is not great at all. I love using Alien Blue for Reddit, so I decided to make a beautiful app to read and contribute to the community for iPhone. I started with just the reader - to view links and comments. However, just recently I made libHN as a wrapper of HackerNews API calls and then the app now uses that to be a portal to HackerNews. The app is an absolute joy to use now, if I may so myself!

Right now, it's gotten about 3,000+ downloads from the App Store. I don't track anything, so no idea on daily users. I just launched the pro version with the ability to login/vote/reply/submit for $0.99 two days ago. However, you can build from source and get it from free ;)

</comment><comment><USER20> xtopdf.

I wouldn't exactly call it my pride and joy :-), but I've been working on it for a while now, and it has been found useful by some people / organizations, including packtpub.com, softwarefreedom.org, esri.nl . xtopdf is a Python toolkit for PDF creation. It uses Reportlab under the hood. (Thanks to the Reportlab team for great work.) xtopdf provides a somewhat higher-level and simpler interface. Has some support for, as input formats: text, DBF, CSV, TSV, XLS, MSAccess, ODBC, (via standard ODBC, pyodbc or pypyodbc), SQLAlchemy, MongoDB, DOCX. It can be used both to create composite PDF reports (for business or other organizations), from any combination of the supported input formats, and to create PDF ebooks from text or XML content. It is both a library and a set of end-user tools, including some command-line, web (Flask, Bottle) and GUI (wxPython) ones.

xtopdf links:

A presentation about xtopdf on [http://slid.es](http://slid.es) ;

[http://slid.es/vasudevram/xtopdf](http://slid.es/vasudevram/xtopdf)

xtopdf on my Bitbucket account:

[https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram/xtopdf](https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram/xtopdf)

xtopdf on SourceForge (older version):

[http://sourceforge.net/projects/xtopdf](http://sourceforge.net/projects/xtopdf)

Article about using xtopdf, written for Packt:

[http://packtpub.com/article/Using_xtopdf](http://packtpub.com/article/Using_xtopdf)

Posts about xtopdf on my blog:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/xtopdf](http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/xtopdf)

I'm always interested in suggestions for new features.

<comment><USER20> Forgot to mention: xtopdf is cross-platform ( _), works on Linux, Windows (and Mac OS X, at least if mac.softpedia.com is right). Haven 't tested it on Macs, but have on Windows and Linux, for many versions of Python 2.x, from 2.2 through 2.7.

(_) Except for a few platform-specific features such as ODBC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This project helped me learn python, and ultimately ended up getting a job with python, I think that this project and the people who motivated me to build this, made me the python developer I am today :).

[https://github.com/LuRsT/Pendium](https://github.com/LuRsT/Pendium)

</comment><comment><USER22> [http://bmaeser.github.io/iptables- boilerplate/](http://bmaeser.github.io/iptables-boilerplate/)

iptables-boilerplate is a set of predefined firewall rules that are typically used on "webhosts".

</comment><comment><USER23> My own tool that I built to scratch my own itch. PGXplorer (pgxplorer.com). I threw in features that I couldn't find in PGAdmin3 (grouping, easy filter, windowing, pivoting). I use both these tool in tandem.

</comment><comment><USER24> That would be my project Git Pretty Stats [https://github.com/modess/git- pretty-stats](https://github.com/modess/git-pretty-stats), self hosted git statistics.

</comment><comment><USER25> [https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave](https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave) <3

Best solution for web file uploads in ruby

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.bitcoinway.com/](http://www.bitcoinway.com/)

</comment><comment><USER26> pycparser ([https://github.com/eliben/pycparser](https://github.com/eliben/pycparser)) - a complete front-end for C99 in pure Python. Used in production by tools like cffi.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> don't be shy</comment>


Download: Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vark.com/?p=352 <comment><USER2> I'd love to get an Android app for Vark, or be able to access it through SMS. It works fast enough that you could use it in many of the same use cases shown in those kgb commercials.</comment>


The Nerdiest States In America - <AUTHOR> http://blog.estately.com/2014/04/the-nerdiest-states-in-america/

<comment><AUTHOR> Discussion of flawed statistical methods in 3... 2... 1...</comment>


No Dumb Interviews – Rank companies by their interview process - <AUTHOR> https://nodumbinterviews.com/ <comment><USER2> Interviews can vary widely within an organization. How do you account for that?

</comment><comment><USER3> There is not any search? or add a company?</comment>


First mega.co.nz indexer and search engine - <AUTHOR> http://mega-search.me <comment><USER2> Putting the owner's megalomania to the side for a minute, I really admire how the guys behind this are putting it all together.

First of all, (AFAIK) this is a high-volume/high-capacity site which was built in a record short time. Not only that, but they promised it would be coming Jan 2013, and they made it on time, such a rare outcome for an IT project.

One also has to appreciate how they made sure everyone has heard of them, without spending a penny on promotion (well, if you exclude the launch extravaganza).

Finally, they seem to be very transparent in how the encryption gets applied and can handle crypto-critics quite well. I think, little by little, they're earning the average user's trust.

<comment><USER3> The part that gets me is that, had they (RIAA, MPAA, FBI, whoever) acted legally, they probably could have had something on him, I mean they didn't need to find a lot, only a little something somewhere. But no; they wanted to do it fast and with shock, probably to scare others and make sure megaupload went down, something that fits with the way they fight against piracy for the past decade or so.

It just went so horribly wrong, first the NZ judge actually respect the law instead of bowing down like it seems they expected, then the guy they fight against has the balls to match his ego and refuse to go down to bullying, and then the hydra of piracy strikes again and proves why taking megaupload down didn't really matter.

Kind of ironic how their fight against "illegal activities" fails because they refuse to use legal means.

<comment><USER4> As much as I think he is an awful person profiting off of copyright infringement, I have to admire him for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I searched for a very popular TV series and the first link was "$name_S01E01.avi", size ~500mb. Clicking on it, I gor redirect to mega.co.nz to download "movie.exe", 715KB.

[https://mega.co.nz/#!wkkjXISD!UPFZQG9uxKk4dt34u1dmpncoy8wUJk...](https://mega.co.nz/#!wkkjXISD!UPFZQG9uxKk4dt34u1dmpncoy8wUJkW8OKfOVuG89zY)

<comment><USER6> Interesting, my result's s1 e1.avi was also linking to a movie.exe

The other episodes were linking to 500+mb avi files though

There is a up-vote/down-vote system so these probably wouldn't be too problematic

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the part I don't get:

IP addresses, file ownership and payment info are stored unencrypted (<http://bit.ly/VswkJi>). If someone or something is advertising they have a trove of copyrighted material, the standard procedure for law enforcement is to subpoena the cloud provider for the IP of the user, then the ISP for the subscriber's physical name/address. When they confiscate their computer they'll find the data on there. What is to stop this from happening with Mega? Do they not have to respond to these subpoenas in New Zealand? What if CP is involved - will they respond then, even if not compelled by the law?

I don't understand how end-to-end encryption protects illegal file sharers if the file ownership information is stored unencrypted. I understand Mega's value prop is encryption, NOT illegal sharing, but my question remains.

<comment><USER8> For a server in New Zealand I assume it would be covered by our three strikes law (<http://3strikes.net.nz>). Rights holders can send infringement notices via the users ISP for a $25 fee. After three notices (from the same copyright holder) they can then take you to our copyright tribunal for damages.

From what I've heard some notices are being sent out, but RIAA have been complaining that the $25 fee is too high.

<comment><USER9> Did you mean too low?

<comment><USER10> No, RIAA has to pay the $25 fee to send an infringement notification. Therefore, they want the fee to be lower.

<comment><USER11> What they really mean is they want to have automated systems do it for them without worrying.

<comment><USER12> If each infringement "costs" them $150,000 then $25 is a small price to pay...

<comment><USER13> This is NOT America .. [http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital- living/5887377/Fir...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital- living/5887377/First-copyright-infringement-notices-issued)

[http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital- living/8242164/Dow...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital- living/8242164/Downloader-fined-616-in-first-Skynet-case)

$ 25.00 can be considered a rather high fee for those sort of returns [I think].

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just noticed something: Mega's cloud loading image seems to be a slightly altered rip of this image from Stripe's website, just animated.

Mega [<http://i.imgur.com/PH90lZ3.png>] Stripe [<https://stripe.com/img/frontpage/api-cloud.png>]

<comment><USER15> I find these gears icons funny because it is implied that all 3 gears touch each other _mutually_. But obviously, such a setup would prevent the whole machinery to work at all.

<comment><USER16> This is true for the Stripe one. The Mega one works (otherwise they couldn't have animated it ;))

<comment><USER17> Except the top and bottom left gears are rotating in contradicting directions. In fact none of the gears are even connected and are just rotating on their own accord. What's the point??

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So now it's really the same mega service as before with the excuse that they don't save the keys that they can access... complete with affiliates like this to provide all the high-bandwidth customers.

This is going to be fun to watch.

</comment><comment><USER19> And it's full of spam, spyware, trojans and fake stuff already.

Just like megaupload used to be.

<comment><USER20> MU (and now Mega) are just hosting services. If you don't have a good aggregation site, it's worthless. I had a long list of great aggregation sites for MU, and I never had a single issue with viruses when using them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's actually quite a few mega.co.nz related search sites out there - e.g. my 4 hour weekend project made out of boredom: <http://wheresthefiles.at/>

</comment><comment><USER22> The site features an "Infringement" button at the top of the page. Can I report the entire contents of the first page as infringing, since every item I see is obviously infringing? Can I then repeat that for each subsequent page?

<comment><USER23> Clicking this just brings you here: <https://mega.co.nz/#copyright>

So it's not likely any content from mega-search.me will ever be removed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If the author of this site is reading this, fix your scripts:

Notice: Undefined index: lg in /home/sites/mega/config.php on line 49

</comment><comment><USER25> Can someone clear this up for me?

How can I download someone's private uploads? Is the key to "unlock" the file embedded in the URL gibberish?

<comment><USER26> Correct, that's the file key and you can choose between appending it to the URL or transfer it to a friend through a secure channel.

<comment><USER25> Thank you for answering so quickly. So where is this scraper getting the URL's from? A forum or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> None of these are scapped i suppose. It's all user submitted stuff

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this application getting the locations of the files, Google search parameters?

<comment><USER27> I highly doubt Mega would have a public directory. So I'd assume, yes. Just like the other ones like <http://www.filestube.com/> does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why don't you try <http://megaspotted.com/>. There you can share uploads on mega.co.nz and download files other people shared. Way better then similar 'Frensh' websites..

</comment><comment><USER29> This being a publicly available index pointing to data stored, I can only assume that encrypted or not the owner of 'mega' is still liable for any copyrighted material hosted.

<comment><USER30> Presumably they never look at such indicies so they'd only be liable after someone notified them of infringement.

<comment><USER31> Willful blindness isn't a particularly strong defense. Aimster tried it and failed.

<comment><USER32> I'm not sure I follow - how are they legally being willfully blind? They can't offer private encrypted hosting AND know what they're hosting at the same time. Those two things are mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER30> We're talking about blindness of the search engines. Arguably they know the search engines exist and thus have some kind of duty to notice the rampant copyright infringement taking place and stop it.

<comment><USER33> >Arguably they know the search engines exist and thus have some kind of duty to notice the rampant copyright infringement taking place and stop it.

Are you serious? You expect them to scour the internet for third party websites and then scrape them for links? How are they even supposed to know whether a particular instance is infringing or licensed? What happens when the third party site prohibits scraping?

It isn't their job to be the copyright police. You cannot fix the problem of copyright enforcement being too expensive by foisting the cost onto a third party -- that doesn't fix that it's too expensive, it's just a textbook case of copyright owners engaging in the economic pollution known as externalizing costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Firefox 19.0 (a beta release) is too old to download a file? Can someone explain this to me? I wish they'd tell me exactly which API they're using..

<comment><USER35> They explain a little more in their blog: <https://mega.co.nz/#blog_1>

<comment><USER34> Ah ok, they have to do the file handling in javascript for the decryption? I hadn't thought about that. Thank you for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How does this work? The website shows a file as "downloading" but I don't see a file on my pc.

<comment><USER37> Mine downloads and goes to 100%, but just sits there, nothing happening. Weirdness.

<comment><USER38> It works only in Google Chrome. It downloads the file first and then asks you where do you want to save it.

<comment><USER37> Nope, nothing happens. Should've said I used Chrome :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It seems all but the newest links added have been taken down for 'copyright infringement.'

</comment><comment><USER40> Waiting for car.zip for download

</comment><comment><USER41> Hi,

Http://www.mega-link.co.nz

Offshore based indexer.

Share yours links for free, no ad, no tracing</comment>


New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/new-top-level-domains-a-money-grab-and-a-mistake-paul-vixie/ <comment><USER2> This is not surprising but I fail to see the downside. The internet is complex already. The new top level domains won't add much to that.

      I think that there was no end-user demand whatsoever for more so-called DNS extensions, [or] global generic top-level domains (gTLDs)," he said.

I run a lot of websites and it was a pain to find good domain names in the last 15 years. With all the new TLDs that problem is completely gone.

There will be a time when the multitude of TLDs won't bother anyone. Limiting TLDs doesn't add security. Educating people about the dangers of the internet does.

<comment><USER3> You could also just get people to give up the TLDs they're not using.

I find it somewhat depressing that emailing folks about domain names they're not using results in either a) being ignored or b) being asked to pay $40,000.

I'm of the view if you're sitting on names that you're keeping around exclusively because you think they could net you a windfall in the future then you're a bit of an internet twat.

<comment><USER4> The high price was an excellent sign that they were overly scarce (for an otherwise limitless resource), and that more were needed.

I think the new gTLDs are great. Most of them aren't exorbitantly expensive, and generally speaking they free you up to have an address on the big wild internet that makes way more sense than the contrived naming conventions we resorted to using in the past (eg: get[???].com, [???]app.com, both of which I can think of prime, famous examples in real world use). Is [???].app really better? Yeah, probably.

<comment><USER5> Except those will get eaten up rapidly as well. Is [???].horse better than get[???].com?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe the way it happened involved corruption. But I personally like the new TLD's, not all of them but some like .team, .work, .chat.

A few other sports specific domains are also nice, like .soccer, .tennis, .football ...

Almost all of the meaningful .com's .org's and .net's are gone. It's time we had new TLD's that make more sense.

<comment><USER7> agree.

I think that a "globally unique brand" will go the same way as a "globally unique username", for exactly the same reasons.

Goodbye "apple" hello "apple computers"... oh wait, that already happened...

<comment><USER8> And then right back again: [http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/apple-drops- computer-from...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/apple-drops-computer- from-name/)

<comment><USER7> Which reinforces the point. There are two companies (at least) called Apple. They are both allowed to have the same name because they are in different industries.

If we only allow companies to have ".com" then which of these two companies, both called Apple, would have "apple.com"?

Having multiple TLDs allows for disambiguation. It's a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't consider this a surprise at all. I see these new ads for things like ".digital" and ".media" and the only thing I can think of is using them for vanity, such as xyzcompany.media and then using that internally.

It's a shame that ICANN is polluting the internet like this.

<comment><USER10> To know that abc.media is a media company while abc.auto is a car company would be good for the user. It makes them less likely to click the wrong link. Really, more TLDs should just provide a finer grain of information to the previous '.com is a company and .org is an organisation'. There's no 'pollution' if you're only refining an idea. It's not like .com is going away.

Plus, what's actually wrong with vanity as far as what domain points a website? What is the benefit in having fewer TLDs?

<comment><USER11> host/domain name is way to overabused, people should be using info resouce to find the site they are looking for. This way chrome stepped in the right direction moving people away from domains. There can be other software/internet constructs to navigate to right result, domain names are just vanity plates. It helps it if it easier to type the domain up but only for maybe top 10 sites that you use. Those sites are already there and are well known. for the rest autocomplete, bookmarks and history are used.

what i have been noticing my redirect to search on unknown domain names has been failing more and more, cause is that there are too many domains other so if I type "domain names dog", browser can't send me to google anymore to find if there are domain names .dog, I just get host not found error. Granted this is not how most users use firefox host tab. However it is clear case where corporate greed breaks organically grown infrastructure, in our office we use 184.108.40.206 and thats how I know about it.

<comment><USER12> _what i have been noticing my redirect to search on unknown domain names has been failing more and more, cause is that there are too many domains other so if I type "domain names dog", browser can't send me to google anymore to find if there are domain names .dog, I just get host not found error._

Domains can't have spaces, so if you type as such, you'll still get a search in any browser (that has search-in-URL-bar enabled, of course).

What kind of realistic search query without spaces and ending in ".dog" do you see yourself doing?

<comment><USER13> The DOG file type is primarily associated with 'Dogz' by Ubisoft Entertainment. Holds the graphics and functions of the pet.

[http://filext.com/file-extension/DOG](http://filext.com/file-extension/DOG)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I understand that the current situation is a bit of a money grab, but what is the rational for TLDs not being arbitrary in the first place? Isn't it all just letters anyways?

<comment><USER15> I am old enough to remember when .com .net and .org really did mean what they said. Now only .edu and .mil do.

<comment><USER16> But that's changing. We have closed TLDs like .NYC, whereas you have to have an address in that geographical area to own one of those.

And we have .bank launching, you have to actually be a financial institution in order to have a .bank domain.

We will be able to trust those new TLDs, this is all changing back (to the way it should be).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe Microsoft, Google, Apple and Mozilla could get together, and configure their OSes and browsers to do DNS lookups by default using a system different than ICANN's via security updates.

That would make ICANN mostly irrelevant in less than a year.

Also, it improves security, since you are already trusting your browser vendor and would no longer need to trust ICANN, registrars and the CA system as well.

<comment><USER12> Microsoft, Google and Apple were among the first to apply for the new TLDs (though the latter just asked for .apple), so why would they now oppose this scheme?

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure that such a thing means they support the change, it's just the rational thing to do given the change happening.

As for why they would setup an alternate DNS system, they would get power over the DNS system and the money from domain registrations.

In exchange, users would get more security and website owners lower prices and more friendly policies (now the reputation of those companies is on the line, and they care more about it than ICANN since they are selling other things).

There's some anonymity risk though which might lead to strong opposition to the project if not addressed and while bundling and using Tor would work, it's not clear if Tor could take a few billion extra users doing tunneled DNS queries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The new TLDs allow more expressiveness and creativity. IMO, there should be even more of them. The limitations should be similar to the limitations placed on searchable results: cost, law, preventing harm, etc.

It is interesting to think about why we are limiting the creativity here. Are we looking out for a human being's typical memory? A router's memory? Network capacity? All seem ample to support loads of new TLDs.

</comment><comment><USER19> To whom was this not always and immediately obvious?

<comment><USER20> Many, as it was allowed to continue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> ICANN, the FIFA of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER20> I agree _wholeheartedly_. It's too late now, though. :(

</comment><comment><USER22> Names on the blockchain for the win. The process is obviously broken and corrupted - we need protocols at the root.</comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't Ruby written in Ruby? - <AUTHOR>

I started learning Ruby two days ago. I checked out the source code and it seemed to be all in C. I couldn't find why it hasn't been converted to Ruby (performance reasons?), so asking here. <comment><USER2> There are many Ruby implementations, a very popular one is Rubinius which is implemented in Ruby [http://rubini.us/](http://rubini.us/)

The MRI or Matz's Ruby Interpreter (also called CRuby) is the reference implementation (Though RubySpec started by the Rubinius project has become the standard). Other implementations are very popular, such as JRuby that allows for running Ruby in the JVM.

</comment><comment><USER3> A large portion of Ruby, primarily standard libraries, is written in Ruby. The entire language isn't in Ruby for performance reasons.</comment>


Hubive – An Interest-Based Social Networking Site - <AUTHOR> https://www.hubive.com <comment><USER2> Under "Bars" there is a typo:

 _> Recommeneded Threads_

Should be "Recommended"

In the footer:

 _> Poundly hosted by Krypt and accelerated by Cloudflare._

I assume you mean "proudly" not "poundly". In the bottom right of this footer you have an <img src> with no src, leaving a blank image.

I can explore "V-Users", what does that mean? What are "V-users"? (I assume Verified Users, but that's just confusing for most end users...)

Your "Intro" page is down: [https://www.hubive.com/intro](https://www.hubive.com/intro) ; so I can't actually learn about hubive.

Suggestion for improvement:

Buckets should have their own image backdrop per-category. Currently they're all a US-patriot hot air balloon.

E:

I also had to take a double take between your logo and the Picasa logo. That could be bad for brand recognition.

E2:

 _> Password limited to 6-15 characters_

Why?

E3:

 _> We will inform you the Beta prograss via Email._

After signing up, typo and poor grammar.

 _> Please check your mailbox for further information._

Nothing has been sent in 10-15~ minutes.

 _> If you have any questions, please CUSTOMER SERVICE._

Missing the word "contact"

 _> Congratulations. You have signed up for Hubive Closed Beta._

Would sound more natural with "the" before "Hubive".

 _> New Password and Confirm Password do not match_

It's not a new password, it's my first password?

 _> Password us too short. At least {sum} characters_

May want to fix that error message.

E4:

After signing in, I can no longer access the stream/buckets/recommendation pages like I can when signed out? Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank You for your feedback. The website is currently under closed beta. Hence, the account needs to manually activated by managers. You will receive an confirmation email once the account has been activated.

<comment><USER2> Localization issue when feed is empty:

暂时没有可显示的内容哟~

More localization issues under "bar":

[https://www.hubive.com/bars/1](https://www.hubive.com/bars/1)

所有微吧 and 我的

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I realized that. Currently working on the patch.

<comment><USER2> I noticed a post I made in a Bar went missing. Was I not supposed to have permission to post on the Bar after joining? Or was it due to unrelated content ("Breaking things.")?

Also it's a good thing I'm mostly running into "trivial" things like typos and localization errors rather than "I just took down the entire website because I accidentally..." :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Module does not exist Public

<comment><USER4> Where did this error message appears?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool!</comment>


Body parts "fall asleep" in English. What about in other languages? - <AUTHOR> https://ask.metafilter.com/293609/Body-parts-fall-asleep-in-English-What-about-in-other-languages <comment><USER2> The German phrases ( _Ameisenlaufen_ , _pelzige Haut_ ) seem odd. As a native German I've never heard of them and there's a grammatical error in the second one (it's cited as "pelziges Haut", the grammatical gender of the adjective and noun don't match up: _Haut_ is feminine but _pelziges_ indicates neuter). He doesn't seem to be a native speaker so I'd take that claim with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER3> Ameisenlaufen is used in Austria quite a bit. Never heard pelzige Haut.

<comment><USER4> "einschlafen" or the dialect forms are common too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The pins and needles part is closest to what it't called in Serbo-Croatian, guess it's the modernized version of what is found in nature. In SH(BS/HR/SR) you'd say "trne mi ruka" which would translate to "my hand is thorning" as in using thorn as a verb.

<comment><USER6> In Slovenian we say that our hand is ant-y, "mravljinčasta roka" or that we have ants "mravljince mam".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this true? I have never heard of any limb _falling asleep_. They may _sleep_ , but the _falling into_ sounds strange to my ears.

My native Danish is possibly fooling my perception. My leg can sleep ('sove'), but no way it could _falde i søvn_ (the exact same construct as _fall asleep_ ).

The sleep part refers to the sensation of numbness. The tingling wake-up part seems to be associated with ants in large parts of the world. But not here. That would simply be _tingling_ or _prickling_ or some such thing.

<comment><USER8> I am confused by your doubt. If English is not your native tongue, what instinct leads you to believe the statement is peculiar? Is it because English can mislead a non-native speaker?

The answer is yes: having lived in 9 of the 50 US States in every cardinal (and sub) direction - as well as a stint in London - I've never encountered any confusion about this phrase. Limbs fall asleep. Or, a limb is asleep. But, if you're sitting on your leg, and you know this to cut circulation, it would be unsurprising for you to say "it's falling asleep" with the "degree" being the amount of paresthesia you expect to encounter when moving the limb.

<comment><USER7> As I said, I am quite possibly being led astray by my native language. Danish/Norwegian is so very, very close to English in so many areas of vocab, grammar, and idiom, it's sometimes hard to keep the instinctives of one from bleeding into the other.

I did search my memory before commenting, and came up blank: I _have_ never heard about limbs _falling_ asleep. Hence my initial question, which you hereby seem to have answered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't know "fall sleep" worked in English too. The phrase used in Persian [0] would translate to the same thing.

[0] خواب رفتن, transliteration: "khab raftan"

</comment><comment><USER10> As a native Portuguese speaker from Brazil (Sao Paulo), the use of "formigamento" sounds too formal to me.

I have always used "dormiu", which translates to "fell asleep" (past tense). However, using it in the present (either simple or continuous) would sound odd to my ears.

That being said, Brazil has over 200 million speakers distributed across 3.2 million square miles, and the city of São Paulo accounts for only 5% of our total population (roughly).

</comment><comment><USER11> In Sinhalese ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_language)), there is a specific word for numbness and local anesthesia: "හිරිවැටීම". Literally translated as "falling into numbness".

</comment><comment><USER12> I am typing in Roman but for Urdu we have a word for it suun but also use sleep like in english

</comment><comment><USER13> The formal medical term is related to the "running ants" expression: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formication)

</comment><comment><USER14> In Chinese they go "ma2" (麻)which means "numb" or "tingly". Interestingly the character is also used for their spicy hot pot (麻辣火鍋) which uses a spice called Sichuan peppercorn (花椒) which makes your mouth go numb like novocaine.

</comment><comment><USER15> In Greek it's "μούδιασε" (moó-thee-a-se) which is a completely standalone word, having the meaning of falling asleep, but not literally meaning that.

</comment><comment><USER16> In Russian they don't fall asleep by themselves, it is you who make them so. 'Я отлежал руку' \- I made my arm fall asleep by lying on it.

<comment><USER17> "рука затекла"

<comment><USER16> Right, it seems to be more commonly used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In Urdu they sleep as well. "Mera paoun so gaya hai". "My foot is sleeping" i.e. my foot has that intense tingling feeling.

</comment><comment><USER19> In Japanese, they go numb (痺れる). The kanji 痺 means numb, palsy, or paralyzed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Polish has ants or stiff hand or pins and needles sort of (ciarki).

</comment><comment><USER21> that's interesting I talked to a New Zealander once and he didn't know what I mean until he finally said: "oh you mean pins and needles"

</comment><comment><USER22> exactly the same expression in Hindi as well.</comment>


Analysis suggests Milgram participants realised experiments not really dangerous - <AUTHOR> https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram-participants-provide-little-support-for-the-contemporary-theory-of-engaged-followership/ <comment><AUTHOR> Full title is "New analysis suggests most Milgram participants realised the "obedience experiments" were not really dangerous"</comment>


Explaining the Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://daveyshafik.com/archives/648-explaining-the-cloud.html

<comment><AUTHOR> For hands on (and a sales pitch) great first reply from Rob La Gesse (Director of Customer Development for The Rackspace Cloud)</comment>