Archaeologists find early democratic societies in the Americas - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/it-wasnt-just-greece-archaeologists-find-early-democratic-societies-americas <comment><USER2> The contention about democracy in the title of the article is undermined by the disagreements between archaeologists that are cited in the article itself.

I know that the authors of the articles don't always get to pick the titles, but come on.

</comment><comment><USER3> On a similar topic, for those unfamiliar with the Iroquois Confederacy, the wikipedia article itself is an interesting read: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois)

In essence, they were a sort of "united states" before the United States we know today. Although the wikipedia article provides sparse evidence for this, it's theorized that the 6 Nations influenced the founders in shaping the early [western] American government.

So many fascinating aspects of American history and pre-Columbian have been overlooked, sadly, because we have tended to view the natives as either savages or "noble savages".

<comment><USER4> It's unlikely that the Iroquois Confederacy was much of a model for American government. The most notable reference to them in records we have from the founding fathers amounts to "well, if even savages like the Iroquois can have a democratic government, why can't we?" Consider instead the wealth of quotations to Enlightenment philosophers, the English Civil War, Greco-Roman antecedents, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interestingly, Tlaxcala, in reward for allying with the Spanish conquistadores, because an autonomous colony independent of the rest of Mexico (but subject to the King of Spain like the other Spanish colonies). The brutal repression and enslavement of the natives also didn't apply to Tlaxcala. They seemed to do pretty well for themselves during the colonial period.

Tlaxcala didn't become a part of the rest of Mexico until it was absorbed when Mexico became independent from Spain.

The Wikipedia article is a pretty interesting read.

In reading the accounts of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who accompanied Cortez to Mexico, I think it's pretty clear that the Tlaxcalans were definitely the deciding factor in the Spanish victory. Despite their technological superiority, the Spanish had small numbers, and they would have been soundly beaten by the Aztecs (called Mexica by Bernal Diaz) if it hadn't been for the Tlaxcalan army assisting them. That book is a fascinating read.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is an interesting read, and I particularly thought it was illuminating with respect to the Indus Valley Civilisation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Every time one of these archaeology articles comes up, I'm reminded about what thin reeds most of these theories are based upon. It's the blind men and the elephant, except the pieces available for inspection are even smaller, and the conclusions more sweeping.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't help that a large part of that history was kept as oral tradition, and those who remembered it were starved, shot, died by disease and outright murdered over the last few centuries.

<comment><USER9> What's your point?

The fact that these people suffered has literally no bearing on the fact that the theory is built on shaky grounds (according to the parent poster, that is).

<comment><USER8> My point is you can say there's not a lot of evidence but you can't ignore why this is the case. Destroying people was destroying evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 I have a feeling this topic will degenerate quickly...</comment>


This Dell XPS 13 Bug Fix Adds 2 Hours of Battery Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/dell-xps-13-battery-life-fix <comment><USER2> The current XPS 13 has been a mess of critical BIOS updates, especially as a Linux user. Really pretty disappointing- my next laptop is probably not going to be a Dell.</comment>


Tech Dental Startup Looking for New CTO - <AUTHOR> http://www.orthly.com
Orthly is changing how orthodontic care is delivered and cutting costs by 60%. We build software, develop a reputable consumer brand, and manufacture invisible aligners – ultimately connecting patients to quality dentists nearby to access affordable invisible aligner treatment.
We have backing from industry experts and notable entrepreneurs and investors. Our founders attended Duke and Wharton, and worked at Facebook and Yelp.
Featured on BuzzFeed, Philly Voice, and The Daily Pennsylvanian. Seed grown in the Wharton School ecosystem.
Currently, we are a small team based in Philly (will eventually relocate to NYC/SF) and are looking for a new CTO. Package is equity-leaning.
If interested, shoot me an email at email@example.com. Include your Resume/LinkedIn/GitHub and a blurb on what interested you about this opportunity. <comment><USER2> If it helps, I'd like to throw in my opinion and say Patrick is an outstanding founder, who would be great to work with :)

<comment><USER3> ++</comment></comment>


Have any Y Combinator startups outsourced coding to China to get up and running faster? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The merits of out-sourcing are debatable in general, but where startups are concerned out-sourcing coding is just plain crazy. Startups, more than any other sort of company, need to be fast, need to do things well, and need to have very efficient internal communication; the likelyhood of any of these happening decreases the further away the founders are from the people who are doing the coding.

If all the coding is being done by founders, things have a decent chance of working; if all the coding is being done by people hired by the founders, the odds are pretty slight; but if all of the coding is being done by people hired by a company hired by the founders -- i.e., by people two steps away -- there's almost no chance whatsoever that the coders will have either (a) sufficient motivation, or (b) understand the founders' vision. (Of course, the same thing works in the opposite direction -- if the founders are two steps away from the people writing the code, there's almost no chance that the founders are going to understand what's going on.)

And that's not even getting into the difficulties of working with people who have a different culture, a different language, and are working in a different timezone.

Out-sourcing development might save you money; but it's distinctly _not_ going to get a startup up and running faster.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do NOT outsource unless you know the outsourcee _in person_ , know he is an excellent developer but can't come to the USA because of visa reasons or whatever

(Due disclosure :-> I am Indian and work out of Bangalore these days ( I worked in the USA for a couple of years) and have been on both sides of the outsourcing contact. It can work for certain big enterprise projects, but probably never for a startup. )

My 2 cents

</comment><comment><USER4> We've (Virtualmin) outsourced two tasks so far:

Translations. We met a great guy in China via Elance for the Mandarin work. We've also worked with people in France.

Artwork. The new Webmin logo was done by a guy in Romania, I think. Met him on SitePoint via a logo contest.

I considered outsourcing some of the JavaScript work, since it's not our core competency (we build system administration tools in Perl/C/Java), but given that UI is so important I opted to learn JavaScript myself. Our first hire will probably be someone very strong on UI and web technology, though I'm getting pretty comfortable with it lately.

My previous company frequently outsourced, but never to China. I regularly hired my current co-founder (an Australian), and I worked with folks in Germany, Romania, Pakistan, Ukraine, Tunisia, and the US. Some experiences were positive, others were very negative. I wouldn't suggest outsourcing without some solid in-house expertise to judge the resulting code. I had a lot of trouble with really bad security practices in many outsourced projects. If I weren't a developer myself, I would have merely have had to trust that since it looked like it was working it actually was--when in the case of a couple of projects all of the "login" work was being done client-side. I even had a Firefox toolbar project come back with SQL being generated on the untrusted, unauthenticated, client-side in JavaScript (inserts, deletes, the whole shebang).

In short, if you aren't a developer, or don't have one on board, outsourcing is potentially rife with pain. That said, Digg and MySpace were developed by outsourced labor, and Mark Fletcher is a big fan of Elance. I dunno that any Chinese developers were involved, though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Presumably, a YCombinator start-up is one where writing good code is the core competency, and a major competitive advantage.

You don't outsource your core competency.

<comment><USER6> Unless you're the semiconductor industry.

<comment><USER7> what do you mean?

making semiconductors is a ton of math, theory, and layout work. are you talking about actually using masks to do the doping?

<comment><USER8> he probably means outsourcing your design/foundry work to taiwan, then manufacturing the chips in china. management you keep over here. typical of a company like Marvell (not the comic company you nerds! :D)

also because semiconductor "startups" have higher capital costs than your typical software company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not that I know of. Outsourcing is for banks, not startups.

<comment><USER8> I just got back from a business development trip to China. China programmers are cheap. Their monthly salary is $1,000 for the top of their graduating class programmer. Their work ethic is impeccable. Unfortunately, their english is not. This is where Indian outsourcing shines, their english language skills and eventual ability to meet spec is 10-15 years ahead of the Chinese as a society.

Although there are some other incentives to outsourcing in China. I was told that in some major cities like Xian, the Chinese government is offering free office space and subsidizes the salary of each of your employees if an american startup or company decides to hire employees there. Xian has particularly good tech schools (they would be like the UW of China), but they have 50% white collar unemployment.

engineering school ranks: [http://www.asu.edu/chinainitiatives/documents/unv_rank_eng.p...](http://www.asu.edu/chinainitiatives/documents/unv_rank_eng.pdf)

(sorry can't find the link for the government program right now... that tip was given to me by a senior partner at a private equity firm... I'll try to find it guys. although, I would much rather recruit top grads from #1 universities than save a few thousand dollars a month by setting up operations in some average place with subsidies)

So I am definitely looking into China or India for my startup. But, I would not recommend going to China unless you or one of your co-founders speaks chinese. The major problems as other people have noted, are quality control and communication. Otherwise, your outsourcing has just about as much success as saying that you plan to move to Hawaii and live off the ocean by asking dolphins to fish and pick up sunken treasure for you.

I think a great startup idea would be to help American companies utilize idling chinese programmers by providing middle management, oversight, and translators (and job training + good pay for your Chinese employees).

I've met a couple guys our age in China (25-26) who have already sold their company for $20-30 million (US dollars) and walked away with $6-10 million. All they did was copy a popular idea in the US like Pandora or Last.FM, hire some cheapass programmers for $1k a month a pop, clone the idea completely, sell it to a larger company. These guys probably sat next to you in class at Berkeley or UCLA. I also know of a few US startups that already finished a Series A ($7 mil) and have a majority of employees outsourced to China. Solo founder.

more info if you guys want it

<comment><USER10> Moving to China is on my list of backup plans if I utterly fail in America. I met with one American working as a manager at a mid-sized software firm in Beijing and he said that he learned spoken Mandarin with one year of dedicated study at a language school and $10,000 paid his tuition and living expenses. Written Chinese, of course, will take longer. Do you think this is realistic?

<comment><USER8> I've done four years Japanese. 1-2 years Chinese + 3-4 months immersive Chinese at Beijing University. My chinese is way better than my japanese, so immersive study definitely works. Chinese is very hard because it works on tones. In English and Japanese, you can put the emphasis on the wrong syllables or speak in a monotone and still make sense. In chinese, not using proper inflections makes you say something else.

1 year will get you through every day life, but trying to communicate on a business level or even listen to the news on TV will be very difficult. It's possible to be fluent enough to do business in 2 years but you'll need to get a Chinese girlfriend. After 3-4 years you'll start to lose the "accent."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The most recent place I did some work outsourced work to India, and got code like this:

        val = create_cat_res(create_res_val,ty,nm,pa,ow,tg,de,ic,f1,f2,f3,f4,f5,cty,oc,ors,rc,rr,c,r,u,d)

<comment><USER11> Oddly, I can't edit my own post... BUG?! In any case, note the final "c,r,u,d"... it wasn't intended but it made me laugh when I found it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We're in China and hiring locally. Most of the people I see on the market know ASP or .NET or Java. Experienced LAMP developers are harder to get.

We hire smart people with the understanding that they won't necessarily have been trained to do what we need. We give them challenging work and train them in the skills we want over time. Then get them to teach and train each other. This makes it difficult to grow rapidly (work outstripping staff) and requires tech-savvy management. If you can't communicate with your staff it is harder.

China is also a lot of fun. If anyone is considering coming here and wondering about the language, I'd recommend ChinesePod.com.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a terrible idea. I was in a startup that opened a China office, for about what it cost to hire 2 quality engineers in the U.S. However, the China office produced _nothing_. Moreover, it sucked up a lot of management time, so managers weren't actually around to, well, manage.

<comment><USER14> you will spend more time managing them than if you do it yourself

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be great if you can learn and do it on your own, with the close knit team you put together. But if that is out of question and your choices are either to do nothing and stay with your boring job or outsource, I would say you outsource at least to see if it flies. You would at least have first hand experience of outsourcing by the the end of it.

You may want to get a "virtual assistant" first to see how it goes. If you get burnt by that, you can cut your losses early. But chances are you will find a creative use for them that might give you a competitive edge.

Have you read "The 4-Hour Workweek"?

<comment><USER16> You're talking about outsourcing non-programmers. The guy who was asking was asking about outsourcing programmers.

I am wary of outsourcing. I've done some work on RentACoder ... most of the people there want cheap work done for crap. I've picked up some projects where I ended up fixing mistakes from other people's code. They were candidates for a DailyWTF submission. Some of these people were from overseas, and some were from right here in the US.

However, outsourcing non-intellectual-property stuff like the virtual assistant or a bookkeeper -- _that_ sounds like a great idea. You don't really want to be messing with non-code-related details while coding.

<comment><USER15> I was suggesting outsourcing non-critical functions first, to get a feel of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What about outsourcing graphic design?

I can code everything my startup needs, but we don't have a good graphic designer. I suspect that we could go a long way with a few mockups from a great designer.

Of course, good designers tend to be expensive, and I suspect hiring a really good one would blow through a good chunk of my savings :[

<comment><USER18> Do not forget that, especially in the startup's case, graphic is a continous process; the design is constantly improved, new usability problems are found every day etc.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would like to know if any of the ycombinator startups have outsourced code to China? I have an idea and would like to apply for the next round of funding but have limited coding experience. Is outsourcing some coding to China or similar an option or are there major issues with this approach?

<comment><USER10> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024>

It could work if your idea is good enough and simple enough, but it's rather unlikely. You need to create very, very specific documentation to get good results from outsourced Asian/Eastern European programmers. You also have almost no chance of getting funding from Y Combinator if you are not a hacker and have no hackers on your team.

The site consensus answer to your dilemna is to learn how to hack. Ruby or Python are the languages of choice here. Ruby has this nice learning IDE available, if you feel like playng around right now. <http://hacketyhack.net/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think it's doable if you're a smart coder and can find an equally really smart coder in China, India, etc. that's on the same page. Easier said than done of course. But if you can communicate well with the individual, make use of various tools, and can develop a long-term one-on-one relationship you should be able to save some time and money. Win-win for both of you.

There's some significant upfront investment though, just like hiring any key employee, and you can't hire someone the day after you realize you need the extra hands. Really doesn't work like that. Think long-term. Think partnership.

It's whole new challenge apart from your typical day job. Interesting one though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comments, I am busy with Agile Web Development with Rails. I was just wondering if it had been done as I have experience writing use cases and functional specs. Thought it could be a way of expediting things if there are only two coders but I understand the issues presented here.

</comment><comment><USER20> What kind of startup can succeed by that strategy?

If you prefer, what must be true about coding for that strategy to work? How do you know that programming for your startup qualifies? (If you don't know anything about programming ....)

</comment><comment><USER21> I wish I could outsource this thread...

</comment><comment><USER22> Outsourcing has its merit, but the risk is high too.

</comment><comment><USER23> try the Philppines. Most BPOs are going there and they speak American English (since it used to be a former American colony).</comment>


'No Vacancy' Signs Are Vanishing from America's Highways - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-11/-no-vacancy-signs-are-vanishing-from-america-s-highways <comment><USER2> I did the Chicago to San Francisco (and back) run fairly regularly in the 1990s, and we didn't depend on vacancy signs.

Our solution was basically brand loyalty -- the Motel 6 people published a book with addresses and phone numbers of all their motels in the US. The scheme is, you get on the road, and some time around 7pm, you stop for dinner, and make a reservation (from the payphone) at the Motel 6 that's about 100 miles ahead, and off you go.

The only time it didn't work well was one time when there was a large event in Cheyenne, Wyoming (I think it was the world square-dancing championship, but my memory is uncertain), and we couldn't get a room for love or money. We pushed on to Laramie, which was a little dangerous given how long we'd been at it, but it worked out OK.

<comment><USER3> I travelled that route (and back) with my parents a couple of times around the same time, as tourists.

I think I was 13 the first time, and 15 the second time. Although we had a mobile phone, we didn't phone ahead, we simply turned up somewhere. Perhaps once we had to drive further than we wanted (until midnight or so), and a couple of times I think the cost was a little higher than we wanted, but considering this was a family of 5 it worked out nicely.

My parents found some interesting places, too. I've not met anyone else that's been to see the Mitchell Corn Palace. (I've only met a few Americans who've seen as much of their own country as I have, which is a pity.)

<comment><USER4> I've seen it. They have signs for it like 500 miles before in either direction, no, like Wall Drug?

<comment><USER3> Probably.

Bear in mind I don't live in the USA, so I don't meet all that many Americans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Last summer I bought a motorcycle in Duluth, MN and rode it down to Austin, TX (ok, well, to Oklahoma City from where it hitched a ride in a U-Haul, hey it's a road trip and it was a used bike off Craigslist). I was mostly unplugged apart from the maps app (which is not how I plan on doing it next time, next time I plan on having physical maps, maps that can't die on you, move to an irrelevant portion of the trip, or otherwise randomly turn from a navigation device to a screen saver).

"No Vacancy" signs were absolutely welcomed sights. They also just made it all the more visceral. Could I have pulled over, opened an app, and reserved a room online in less time and perhaps at a lower price, absolutely. Then, I could have followed the "map's" directions directly to this place and called it a day. Instead, I had to keep my eyes peeled, take in the city, maybe figure out where the main drag was.

We need to stop pushing efficiency and start making space for discovery. My trip down the middle of our country, that deep red cut of Trump support, I got to see it all. I was a Hillary voter, but, can honestly say I understand a bit of the reasons those states went the way they did. Riding an old motorcycle through the heart of our country, and then using an app to make my hotel reservation, or staying at some cookie cutter hotel instead of the local places I chose, that'd just have been a non-sequitur. I might as well not even have made the trip.

I would have missed the camp grounds, the fellow motorcyclists helping me with engine trouble, the welder that fixed my chassis, finding out that Nebraska is basically one big corn field, the super-hero of a motel clerk that let me sleep at the indoor pool when i showed up at 1am soaked and freezing and there were actually zero rooms left in the small town, the motorcycle club (shout- out to the Amber, OK Outsiders!) that put me up for a very drunk night after electrical issues, and the many other folks I met. But I didn't. It was awesome.

<comment><USER6> > finding out that Nebraska is basically one big corn field

Duluth, MN > Autin, TX is a straight shot down I-35 the entire way. There is definitely a lot of corn growing in Nebraska but you must have been very lost or deliberately going way out of route. Sounds like a fun trip though.

<comment><USER5> Family In S. Dakota. And taking back / farm roads all the way, because they are much more friendly to enduro-style motorcycles. Wasn't out of way. Was't lost. Just taking the long way home. It's kinda like you missed the entire point of my comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a shame because how far you will get in a day of driving is not exactly set in stone. If you're alert and in the zone, you may wish to go farther than the hotel you booked. If you've hit bad weather, traffic, etc. then the hotel you booked couple be a couple hundred miles past when you'd prefer to stop driving for the night. It's really nice to be able to stop when you feel like it.

<comment><USER8> Making a booking at ~4-6pm for that night works just fine. I have even made a few bookings at like 11pm. A phone call while getting food / gas is more convent than driving somewhere. Now, you might pay more that way, but outside of city's hotel rooms are really cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My parents used to do this all if the time. Sometime in the late 90s, many hotels started using drop in guests as people to be hustled.

These days, you're better off finding a way to get "status" from a chain so you can cancel without penalty and book a bunch of rooms. Our last road trip, I booked 4 rooms over 300 miles and cancelled in the afternoon before stopping in.

<comment><USER10> > many hotels started using drop in guests as people to be hustled

It all depends on the approach. Instead of saying "do you have any rooms available?" you could just say "I only have $AMOUNT and quite frankly I'd rather stay here than at my old Uncle's place down the road" (or a variation of which indicates 'price does not matter'. [1]

Disclosure: I am somewhat of a paid professional negotiator so techniques like this may not work if not done properly or in every context.

[1] In another business you'd be surprised at how many people simply say 'can you do any better' (which means 'you have the sale') rather even 'wow that's to high... a competitor will do it for $AMOUNT can you match that?' Edit: Emphasis on a convincing use of 'wow!'.

<comment><USER11> Hotel FD/Auditor here, we get to deal with all sorts of backflips for lower rates late at night. We used to have rates as low as employee pricing but these were being abused and had all sorts walking in over making proper reservations. I don't negotiate, or match. Quite frankly I don't give two shits what rooms at Motel 6 are supposedly going for. If it's past AAA you're not getting it.

>Our last road trip, I booked 4 rooms over 300 miles and cancelled in the afternoon before stopping in. Oh, you're /that/ guy.

<comment><USER12> Yup, the guy adhering to hotel policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've never been able to find a room last minute by stopping in a hotel and asking to stay the night. They always say they're full.

<comment><USER14> I'd be curious to know the difference between your experience and mine. U. S. here, and its rare that a motel turns me away. Now, there are several distinguishing characteristics of my travel. First, mostly by motorcycle, and second is that because I'm on the bike I'm probably in some out-of-the-way place and not downtown SF. My mode of travel is important, I think, because sometimes I think they feel sorry for me (especially when my wife's with me). Who wants to turn away a biker when it's 10C and pissing rain? (Never mind that I'm perfectly content to put my tent up if I don't find a room.)

Anyway, I'll bet I'm turned away from ad hoc hotel stops 10% of the time at most.

<comment><USER15> >(Never mind that I'm perfectly content to put my tent up if I don't find a room.)

Just curious: where exactly do you pitch a tent in a situation like that? It doesn't seem like it's that easy to find some open ground where some cop won't harass you for trespassing or something.

<comment><USER14> There are several phone apps that will tell you where the campgrounds are. Personally, I've never tried to camp where I'm not allowed (I don't count sleeping on a picnic table at a rest stop). One can often (usually?) find a campground either actually in town, or a few miles down the road. To my knowledge, I've never been turned away with a tent; there's always a 10x10' spot of grass to rent me.

Alternatively, if you're in a U. S. National Forest and can find a spot off the road, you can camp anywhere you want. It's how we do the majority of our camping in our VW Westfalia, where in Washington there are a plethora of spots 90 minutes from our house (no, I'm not telling <g>).

But that's for my mode of travel, which is usually off the beaten path. If you're looking for a place to stay in SF during WWDC, my advice will do you no good. OTOH, I rode to a conference in San Diego, had some room trouble and found a campground smack in the middle of SD a few miles from the hotel. So, I dunno, there might even be a campground in SOMA I don't know about. :-) (EDIT: curiosity got me: there's one out by Candlestick Recreation Area, if you don't mind paying $89/night!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is powerful metaphor for me. Before cell phones you were truly disconnected from life if you took a road trip.

Primitive technology like this and talking to people was the only way to really find out about your surroundings.

You were pretty isolated.

</comment><comment><USER17> "If people come in asking for a room, and you think they look like trouble—rowdy college students, say—if you have 'Vacancy' out there, you're kind of obligated to give them a room,"

to put it another way, the "no vacancy" sign makes it more difficult to discriminate

</comment><comment><USER18> > _"The chains [...] want you to walk in not knowing whether a room is > available. So if they're full, they can send you to another one of their > properties in the vicinity and keep the business in-house. It's a strategic > decision." In addition, Rogers said, omitting vacancy indicators allows for > overbooking ("If it's late and you're fully booked, but someone with a > reservation hasn't shown up, you can sell the same room twice") and gives > managers wiggle room when sizing up questionable customers. [...] "Without > the sign, you can just say, 'Sorry, we're full,' even if you're not."_

It's weird to me how blasé Rogers and the article writer are about this abusive, anti-customer behavior.

</comment><comment><USER19> wow author really reaching here.. How's the no vacancy sign any different than the Open/Close sign at the front of every business front?

"First, some quick historical context. It's not clear who came up with the ingeniously simple pairing of "Vacancy" and "No Vacancy," which allows the motel operator to simply toggle the "No" on or off, but it was probably sometime in the 1930s or before. "

<comment><USER20> Well, I agree that it exaggerates the importance of the (No) Vacancy sign, but it is different in precisely the sense the author is talking about - you have an on/off switch for NO, and another for VACANCY. While presumably no one wants or needs to turn on OPEN and CLOSED simultaneously.

<comment><USER19> Open+CLOSED doesn't me anything.

NO+VACATION = there are no more rooms available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Soon, most likely, even overbooking will vanish. There might be apps that actually see if an inn or motel is actually vacant. Most likely.

</comment><comment><USER22> I just sleep in my car in walmart parking lots. Saves money, and there's almost always a walmart within a reasonable distance.

</comment><comment><USER23> The average US hotel is 70% full for tonight, the only night that matters. Not sure why people put these signs up other than maybe bringing people in with more neon.

<comment><USER24> So are you trying to say that tonight 7 out of 10 hotels are completely full and 3 out of 10 are completely empty, or any of an infinite range of other things?

<comment><USER25> It's not infinite. There are a discrete number of rooms available in the world, and the number of permutations is therefore finite.</comment></comment></comment>


Looking for a Mentor - <AUTHOR> my 24 hours are available to me all week <comment><USER2> what kind of mentorship are you seeking? what is that you wanted to be better with that made you post here?</comment>


Top 5 trends and technologies in software development - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mostof.it/top-5-trends-in-software-development/ <comment><USER2> These are certainly all things that get a lot of chatter on the forums lately, so as a summary of the current most-hyped ideas in software development this article seems pretty well on the money.

IMHO discussions like this will be more interesting if we try to avoid loaded words like "modern" (which makes it sound like something new is inherently better) and concentrate on honestly assessing both the advantages and the limitations/dangers of emerging technologies and techniques. That way, those of us who might find these ideas useful in future can learn from those who have been using them already and make more informed decisions. It's not as if each of the ideas in this article hasn't been horribly overhyped in some advocacy, even if the idea might have genuine merit in the right circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      Learn and use a modern scripting language
      Learn thogoughly and embrace the philosophy of a modern version control system
      Be familiar with NoSQL solutions like MongoDB, CouchDB.
      Learn a functional language — or more than one.
      Study agile methods and concepts.

<comment><USER4> Here is a non-trend that should be: be more than just familiar with SQL solutions like MySQL, PostgreSQL. This to me is the most common missing skill among software developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said. Unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think it's necessary to learn all the new things, but you should at least know which ones could help you with what projects... And then learn them when that becomes useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's right, this is a list of things that had proven useful for me during my projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't agree with one the points and I think at least one important is omitted. You don't need to know any scripting language and while Ruby, Python etc is popular in the LAMP camp .Net (and possibly Java) and probably a dussin other compiled languages are holding their own. There's nothing intrinsically elegant or better with scripting languages.

One major trend that's omitted is the coming important of concurrent/multicore programming. It has become clear for many that computers aren't getting that much faster but they're getting more and more core's. To be be able to utilize that power you need to start code from the ground up to take advantage of multithreading.

On the .Net side Microsoft seems very aware of this and has rolled out a number of new techologies and tool support, things like Parallel.net, PLINQ, Reactive Framework and most recently Async. F# is by nature of being a functional language very suited for parallel processing.

No doubt other frameworks and languages will soon follow.

<comment><USER4> Try a scripting language; you might change your mind. There is a reason why they are so popular. It doesn't take too long to see why once you try. Things that used to take forever to get working just seem to work on the first or second try. Am I getting smarter? Maybe, but more likely the language really is intrinsically better (I tried Python).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The follow-up article from his friend that he links to is perhaps more useful advice:

<http://www.muhuk.com/2010/02/top-5-untrends-according-to-me/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Check the article, I'm linking Muhuk's post :)

<comment><USER7> Hey Ochronus, I think that's what I said ;p

<comment><AUTHOR> Argh, seems I'm write-only today :D sorry

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've done everythign in his list over the last 5 years. Today, I'm coding retro...Smalltalk ;) pharo feels nice.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wait, "Modern" SC has different thinking behind it? That of making commits often, sharing what you make that's useful, working on small, useful chunks of work?

</comment><comment><USER10> Why are al-most all the mul-ti-ple syllable words split with hypens?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I got it all messed up with a plugin :) Fixed, thanks for the bugreport ;)

<comment><USER11> Still appears messed up to me.

<comment><USER10> Looks fine here. Something cached, perhaps?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which types of consulting do companies spend the most on? - <AUTHOR> Among venture funded tech businesses, where do they spend the most on consultants? Engineering? Design? Marketing? Something else? <comment><USER2> There are three B2B value props: revenue growth, cost reduction and mitigating risk. Everything else is a proxy for those things. If you can materially impact one of those things, ideally in a situation where 1. You have a track record for it and 2. You can demonstrate the value is measureable, you'll generally get paid a piece of it. The question is generic, so I thought I'd post a generic answer. People would spend the most on solving a particular problem that occurs once in the evolution of the company, and therefore doesn't make sense / isn't strategic to bring in-house. They do that anytime they have that kind of issue, across those functions. In terms of earnings, though, it really comes back to those three value props and two traits (track record and measurement).

</comment><comment><USER3> I have no direct observations on this topic myself but I remember receiving a newsletter a while ago that may be of interest [0]. The author says that about half of general market is for clients that "Whether or not they choose to explicitly acknowledge it, they look for an element of therapy or life coaching in their relationships with consultants they hire." but tech companies are a smaller proportion of the market and generally want a consultant to guide them philosophically.

An important distinction perhaps is the difference between consulting and being a contractor. If you're looking to go down the consulting path I recommend reading the other posts in that newsletter.

[0] [https://artofgig.substack.com/p/elements-of-consulting- style](https://artofgig.substack.com/p/elements-of-consulting-style)</comment>


Microsoft Claims it Killed the Start Button Because You Didn't Want it - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Claims+it+Killed+the+Start+Button+Because+You+Didnt+Want+it/article25060c.htm

<comment><USER2> I think that they're right on this one. Since Windows 7, I may have traversed the start menu a couple of times a month. I use pinned apps on the taskbar or Start menu front page for frequently accessed stuff, or use search.

Keep in mind that for most users, they are not running many applications anymore.

<comment><USER3> The issues are most likely to appear with users who go straight from Windows XP to 8. They are not familiar with the ability to search among applications and files, nor with the concept of pinning shortcuts to the taskbar.

Considering the marketshare XP still has, and that these users are likely the ones most resistant to change, this may turn out to be one of the largest problems Microsoft will face with Windows 8.

I am not saying that legacy-concepts should delay innovation, but it can't be denied that Windows has many users who aren't interested in learning new ways to work with their computer.

<comment><USER4> XP had the Quick Launch bar, which I find a lot handier than pinned applications (they take up less room). I guess it depends on the user, but I operate wearing a lot of different hats (and, unfortunately, a lot of similarly-named applications), and the XP start menu is a lot handier for me than either Win7's version or the Win8 preview I tried.

I know: that's "anecdote", not "data", but if anybody had bothered to ask me, they'd have a firm data point telling them that the lowest common denominator (no need to be pedantic, the phrase has acquired a different meaning outside of mathematics) should never be the only way. I can barely tolerate Win7 on a day when I'm feeling of a particularly generous spirit; I'll be giving Win8 a pass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm inclined to trust Microsoft with this one. They clearly have the data to back this choice up - why would they disable it if it was getting used?

I personally use it a lot as a glorified run prompt (type program name in, press enter) but whatever, I can adapt.

<comment><USER6> As far as I can tell, that works exactly the same in Windows 8. Hit the win key, type the first few letters of a program name, hit enter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. Abraham Lincoln

</comment><comment><USER8> No, no, no Microsoft, the start button was fine. We just didn't want 7 ways to turn off the computer...

</comment><comment><USER9> They actually claimed nothing of the sort. That statement is a pretty liberal interpretation of what Microsoft said.

Microsoft is simply saying that the Start Button in its current form was not compelling enough to provide any long term value to the user that they couldn't get by simply pinning things to the task bar. They evolved the Start Menu. They didn't kill it.

<comment><USER10> it became common, when companies design something the techies don't like instead of just sticking to what they are used to, to call it "they think they know what I want better than I do", forgetting that's the whole point of design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Many years ago, I rejected the start button and the OS surrounding it, and switched to Linux.

<comment><USER12> I upvoted you, but you probably switched to KDE, GNOME, or some other WM/DE with a "Start Menu button" equivalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have always enjoyed how Microsoft likes to adopt good features from other OSes and rename them. No no, you're not "adding apps to the dock", you're "pinning apps to the taskbar". This is definitely completely new and not in any way a case of Microsoft showing up at the party 10 years late.

<comment><USER14> Excuse me, but Windows had a Taskbar before Apple had a Dock. Windows also had Quick Launch shortcuts before Apple had a Dock as well.

So, Apple is the one who showed up late to that party.

Furthermore, the Taskbar works nothing like the Dock and it looks nothing like the Dock.

<comment><USER15> Now, now. You can't claim that they aren't similar, because the concept here is unifying both launchers and task lists, which was what distinguished docks from task bars before.

They have different features, yes. Their animations are very different, that's actually where most of the differences lie, yes. But now, as far as task/window management goes, they are pretty much the same thing.

I wouldn't hesitate to call Gnome Shell's activity bar thingy a dock, for one, even though it wouldn't matter; the dock doesn't have the same prominence that environment as in Windows or Mac OS X.

Still, I don't see the problem with them retaining their traditional name for their UI element, given that the new taskbar was still an evolution from the previous one.

Now, with respect to the interaction, MS is mostly following the trend here, as most are converging towards search for launching, and with the reduced task management of smart phones, I would expect that developers would now be encouraged to make their apps save and restore their states without the user's intervention, and thus applications where you actually have to do the clean up, save, close, start, open, repeat cycle would also become rarer, so that those session-restore features that some DEs have would actually start to be used, further downplaying the actual launching of applications.

<comment><USER14> Claiming that Microsoft blatantly copied "pinned items" is a gross over- simplification though.

So is claiming that "they are pretty much the same thing". They're not.

And I am correct in saying that Windows had a Taskbar before Apple had a Dock because Apple didn't own NeXTSTEP when the Dock was released.

<comment><USER16> > _And I am correct in saying that Windows had a Taskbar before Apple had a > Dock because Apple didn't own NeXTSTEP when the Dock was released._

Given Apple's history, that's a stretch. Modern Apple is essentially NeXT. They 'acquired' NeXT, but internally and politically, it was practically the other way around.

Apple owns NeXT, including previous inventions.

<comment><USER14> That's absurd. Let's go back in time to 1995...NeXT and Apple are _two separate companies_. NeXT had a Dock. Windows had a Taskbar. Apple had neither.

Stop trying to change history to suit your fanboy-dom.

(Also, as gouranga mentioned below...RISC OS had them both before NeXT or Win95 anyway.)

<comment><USER15> I only see one person throwing a fit over a product comparison here.

<comment><USER14> So, disagreeing and showing facts is throwing a fit?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chrome improvements for a faster and more efficient web - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2015/09/chrome-improvements-for-faster-and-more.html <comment><USER2> Cool. Waiting for more specific details following the previous announcements about progress made in OS X for decreased CPU usage.

If Safari wasn't that annoying for me to use then I'd switch to it on OS X. It's just smoother than butter compared with Chrome...</comment>


Physics Envy May Be Hazardous To Your Health - And Economy - <AUTHOR> http://partialobjects.com/2011/03/199/

<comment><USER2> I picked $4999 first game, $4999 second game. As a searcher for all things paradoxical, I fail to understand, what is the paradox?</comment>


Are the ARM Macs an Attack on Amazon and Google? - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/are-the-arm-macs-actually-an-attack-on-amazon-and-google-73a7f3981114 <comment><USER2> Intel Macs are expensive, ARM Macs should cost less like the Chromebooks and Fire Tablets.

The ARM Macs are designed to interface with iOS devices more, with the IoT that is going to be a selling point when Apple has iOS based devices that need controlling and programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> How much is the actual CPU as part of the whole package. I doubt they'd be mkaing those laptops significantly cheaper. This is Apple after all.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ideal blog platform for startups? - <AUTHOR>

What's the ideal blog platform for a startup?  Typically you want the most possible exposure, but also to own all your content and have it associated with your company domain, while being easy to use and administer.  I have a few thoughts on what it might look like, did I miss anything?  Are there any platforms that meet all these criteria currently?
1.  Custom domain capable, so our content will be associated with [blog].mystartup.com instead of [blogplatformname].com in search engines.
2.  Automated social media integration, blog posts automatically propagated to Twitter, FB, G+, etc.
2a. Corollary: integrated Disqus comments
3.  Content network (Medium.com, Tumblr, Wordpress, Svbtle.com)
4.  FOSS platform you can either self-host or host via the organization's P/SAAS service (Wordpress, Ghost).  Ideal would be self-hosting yet still capable of #3.
5.  Own all your content, whether self-hosted or SAAS hosted.
6.  Editor that's both techie and non-techie friendly.  Aka, Markdown support for techies, WYSIWYG editor for non-techies.  Prefer all posts' source stored as Markdown for easy data portability.
7.  Bylines for posts - want to publish not just under the company name, but show author names as well
8.  SEO-friendly, especially url's
9.  Easily theme-able
10.  ...? <comment><USER2> Go with Wordpress/Ghost(self hosted) if you want to own your content.

Another thing, many startups use Tumblr because they like it not to be hosted on the same server, so that if your website goes down, your blog will be still up. Tumblr has social features, auto posting to social networks, and all the features listed above except the fact that you're hosting your content on Tumblr servers. Which I don't think should be a problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there such a thing as an "ideal blog platform for a startup"? I don't think so. Is there even such a thing as an "ideal blog platform"? No, because "ideal" is subjective. Are you a CEO type who wants to avoid the muckiness of having to write code or do any customization? Then Wordpress might not be ideal for you - or at least you should expect to pay a few hundred dollars to someone to install + customize it for you. After that, maybe it's ideal. Are you a developer who just wants the blog to get the #### out of your way so you can blog? Then a hosted medium or ghost blog or even blogger would be perfect. Or would it be better to have a blog in which you do absolutely nothing but write? Hell, host it on github then.

There is no such thing as "ideal" but there is "ideal for you", of course. I recently settled (again) for Wordpress for my personal blog. It was a combination of "I already know it" and "I can pay $50 for a nice template that isn't overused and accomplishes what I want without any fuss". It is ideal _today_ for me for those reasons. That may change though...

</comment><comment><USER4> Try not to get sidetracked or hung up on this. In the end the success or failure of your startup is probably not going to be due to your blog platform choice. The product and getting users' feedback should be the focus.

What is your goal for this blog and why have you placed so many restrictions on it already, like requiring bylines? Don't forget you can iterate...

</comment><comment><USER5> Depending on tech capability, Statamic is a good option [http://statamic.com/](http://statamic.com/)

The team at Asana have used it to scale as we ll [http://eng.asana.com/2014/02/scaling-asana- com/](http://eng.asana.com/2014/02/scaling-asana-com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks great, thanks, will eval it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to use blogger, mapped to my domain name. Last year I switched to Jekyll which I like a lot except that I have comments turned off, which is bad and needs to be fixed.

Blogger mapped to your own domain would be a good place to start. It is easy to export content out of blogger if you change your mind.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just go with WordPress then, you've been hinting at it yourself. Given the amount if plugins and themes out there you should be able to find one for each your needs.</comment>


Distant Galaxies Confirm Dark Energy's Existence and Universe's Flatness - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=geometric-test-universe

<comment><USER2> I found this article quite readable and the trick from the researchers smart.

They assume that galaxies are oriented randomly (from our viewpoint). In actual observations this does not appear to be the case. They then compensate for it to make all orientations as you would expect (random); The force that caused this distortion can then be calculated and it indicates the existence of dark energy.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an amazing read I can't believe how quickly science is advancing. A concept I can't grasp is what space should be advancing into. We're saying dark energy is forcing space to expand quicker than any gravitational force could pull it back. But does this mean we're only gaining 3-d space, or are we also seeing time moving at faster speeds?

I'm actually not entirely sure dark energy has any effect on spacetime itself, this is merely speculation which hopefully somebody could answer in better detail.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty significant. The accelerating expansion of the universe is still a surprising result. This completely independent method of measuring that acceleration has come up with the same figures, which bolsters the claim substantially (though the original evidence was very strong, this makes it far, far stronger).</comment>


Service Canary – Detect and alert on changes within your infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://servicecanary.com/ <comment><USER2> We've been using etckeeper (/etc is a git repo so you can track changes) plus an after-commit hook to post to a chatbot.

We alert on uncommitted changes after one hour via nagios and track authors with GIT_COMMITTER_* env variables.

This is deployed to about 6000 machines. Works well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mmm, PyPi doesn't seem to want to surface this package at all when searching for it through its web interface. I can't find anything actually named canaryd when searching.

However, running a pip install does find it:

      Collecting canaryd
      Downloading canaryd-0.dev0.tar.gz

Unfortunately it fails to build on my system:

      Building wheels for collected packages: canaryd
      Running setup.py bdist_wheel for canaryd ... error

It seems the package is entirely empty and only declares a single dependency, ipdb.

A hypothetical repository which could (will?) contain the code seems to live here: [https://github.com/Oxygem/canaryd](https://github.com/Oxygem/canaryd). It was set up 3 months ago but nothing since then.

According to GitHub they detect the license as MIT.

<comment><AUTHOR> The package on pypi is just a placeholder currently (although it should install OK, I'll check that). We're working on the full client right now which should be ready in the coming weeks :)

<comment><USER4> Why on earth would you post a website with a 'coming soon' email form _and also_ broken instructions which interested people are presumably going to try immediately?

Also, why upload a useless placeholder archive to PyPi in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This appear to be a hybrid IDS w/ some SIEM capability.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this like monit?

<comment><USER7> Sounds like it. Wouldn't mind a more full featured monit. Didn't have good luck personally with Nagios

<comment><USER8> Check out Sensu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there anything like this that supports windows?

<comment><USER10> OSSEC has an agent that works on Windows and with configuration can do this stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tripwire in the cloud?

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh, because on-call needs _more_ alerts... :3</comment>


Looking back on news recommendation sites - <AUTHOR> http://newsblogblog.com/post/61694512/argh-news-recommendation-services-are-too-new

<comment><USER2> I'm working on a site that does exactly this! It learns pretty well what you want to read (based on voting up/down on everything). It's mostly based on correlating your preferences with those of other people.

My site is <http://newsbrane.com> and you can try it if you like. I'd appreciate feedback; click 'send feedback' at the top of the page (or post here - I'll read it).

Lincoln

<comment><USER3> It feels a bit awkward to use: three stories at a time, and they're all displayed so big! No idea how you're finding these readable stories.

The problem with this is that I feel no need to continue using it. No incentive. Part of that's because I know you'll keep giving me a stream of items, no matter what my limit for reading stories is.

I think it would be neat if this could determine what things attracted me to stories, and ONLY showed me ones that I'd be interesting in. A site willing not to give me content is one that I'd possibly become a diehard fan of.

<comment><USER4> The other founder here.

Newsbrane is still in its infant stage, and your criticisms are entirely valid :). The first 10 minutes aren't very satisfying.

The site actually does exactly what you want it to do: it learns your tastes and shows you only the things you're interested in.

What you experienced was the "Explore" mode, which is designed to _figure out_ your tastes, not give you the best stuff. Explore is the 3-at-a-time mode you start out in. Once you've done some voting, you can use the "Recommended" mode, which does what you want.

The site works great for people with 50 votes or more. We are still working on the new user experience, and we are ravenous for feedback like yours, so thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it a little odd that no decent news recommenders have emerged (I expect they will eventually). Possible reasons:

\- The recommendation problem is very hard (or the solution-space is very large)

\- Good recommendations require lots of user data, leading to a chicken-and- egg problem

\- Not enough people care enough about it

The answer is probably a bit of all three. But it is suprising that such an obvious opportunity hasn't been done right yet.

Good luck to all the people working on it!

</comment><comment><USER6> oh, and they missed <http://outside.in/> \- but I'm biased. :-)

I think relevance is a hard problem to solve when it comes to news. You need to trust the community that filters your news for you and if it is an open community then that leads to all sorts of FAIL. Lots of exciting things happening in the area though.

<comment><USER7> FriendFeed/Twitter allows you to specifically choose each individual that belongs to that group that gets you your news. I just don't feel like these two companies focus on this aspect of it enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I work for <http://meehive.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> could I have an invite? peter [at] omgponi.es

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nobody knows <http://jaanix.com>

<comment><USER3> Because it's ugly, there are few submissions, and most of the submissions are parroted from Reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> cool topic, surprised google reader doesn't do more of this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER10> What about Techmeme?</comment>


UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January - <AUTHOR> https://www.openbanking.org.uk/about-us/news/uks-open-banking-launch-13-january-2018/ <comment><USER2> WTF? What is open about a system that only very few organisations can use? Imagine in the paper world, now you not only can ask the bank how much money you have, you can also authorize other companies to look at your account statements for you ... but noone got the idea that maybe you, the account holder, should be able to get a copy of the account statements?

It seems we are still at the "reading and writing is for monks" stage of digital technology? God forbid the laypeople themselves use pen and paper!

<comment><USER3> Are you sure you can't? Besides the paper statements, I can download my transaction data in a variety of formats including CSV from every bank I've use in the Netherlands.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that for a lot of banks there is no easy way to _automate_ that process. I think 90 percent of use cases would be addressed simply by providing a way of giving automated read only access to statements.

<comment><USER5> Instead giving access to EVERYTHING seems a little overdrive then....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Open Banking is a term that describes a secure set of technologies and > standards that allow customers to give _companies_ other than their bank or > building society permission to securely access their accounts.

Does it have to be another company or will I be able to write my own software that has access to my bank account?

<comment><USER7> You have to be a company. You also have to be regulated as an AISP or PISP (Account Information/Payment Initiation Service Provider).

So there are some hurdles.

<comment><USER8> That is disappointing. I wonder if anyone is doing the legal analysis on what it would take to be a 'passthrough provider', who would simply wrap it up in an easier API with a simple TOS.

<comment><USER9> Teller.io is doing this. You might want to look into what licenses they needed to get.

<comment><USER10> No it isn't, at least, not yet - it asks for all the user login information including passwords and security numbers required for a normal login.

Edit: And unfortunately, it doesn't seem even to have any intention of using it: [https://twitter.com/stevegraham/status/951163378424217600](https://twitter.com/stevegraham/status/951163378424217600)

<comment><USER7> Teller is interesting; I have some reservations (mostly around the attitude they portray, which is a bit unprofessional) but they have a good vision.

The downside is they are encouraging you to share passwords, as you say, which isn't driving the right customer behaviour.

More critically; in about 18 months the PSD2 Secure Customer Authentication guidance comes into force and this sort of approach (sharing credentials, which everyone basically refers to as "screen scraping" in its various forms) will be dis-favourer, to the extent that banks might have to go to great lengths to try and stop it. Teller might have to go forward fighting continual reverse engineering battles.

<comment><USER10> It's already against the typical bank's terms of service for a user to provide them.

Not to mention a silly thing to do. But the average user seems just blindly trusts these things - tools like 'You Need a Budget' ask for the same.

<comment><USER11> Founder here. This is incorrect. It is no longer against the terms of service of any European bank as of today thanks to PSD2.

<comment><USER12> It can no longer be against the terms of service of financial service providers to prohibit sharing the credentials used to access your accounts on their systems?

<comment><USER11> Yes, every UK bank had to write to their customers updating their terms allowing such activity end of last year.

<comment><USER12> I have accounts with several banks and other financial services, and I have received various updates to terms in connection with PSD2 over the past few months. However, I don't recall any of them saying it was now OK to share things like passwords or PINs.

Are we talking at cross-purposes here? Encouraging non-experts to share security credentials that give unrestricted access to their accounts with third parties is so obviously dangerous that I find it hard to believe that (a) the financial providers are now required by law to do it, and (b) not a single one of the updates I received from mine drew attention to this in any way that I noticed and recall now.

Surely the entire point of the new access paths under PSD2 is that the financial providers _don 't_ have to endorse the dangerous practice, and can instead provide an alternative way to achieve similar results but with much better control and regulation to protect all involved?

<comment><USER13> What the existing screen scraper companies have done, is to make sure the psd2 directive will allow screen scraping as a fallback method if they are not satisfied with the bank API:s.

That's because the directive is actually a competitive disadvantage for them since they've invested a lot in the screen scraping.

The interpretation is not trivial though. The authentication details in particular are not very clear right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this is the UK's implementation of EU PSD2 directive (e.g. [1]) so may not survive brexit. Looking forward to what'll come out of it though!

[1] [https://www.tsys.com/news-innovation/whats-new/Articles- and-...](https://www.tsys.com/news-innovation/whats-new/Articles-and- Blogs/nGenuity-Journal/how-europes-psd2-regulation-could-spark-a-banking- revolution.html)

<comment><USER7> It should survive; the EU Banking Authority is based in London (it will move post Brexit) and the UK treasury were major influencers on this legislation.

Worth saying also; Open Banking actually came out of the UK competition marketing authority - its just become tied up with PSD2 (as its one way to achieve compliance with that legislation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, the UK is really embracing technology. You can do so much electronically though the Gov.uk website already, and you can even access your NHS medical record via a phone app. Being able to consume banking data via an API will no doubt open up a suite of more useful apps, that can help with managing budgets and planning for the future etc.

<comment><USER16> There's no such thing as an NHS medical record, every hospital/care centre keeps its own records. What app are you referring to?

<comment><USER15> This: [https://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/online-services/Pages/gp- servi...](https://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/online-services/Pages/gp-services- choice-1.aspx)

And yes there isn't a single database, but if you transfer to a different GP they will transfer your records from your old GP, and this app then let's you view them too.

<comment><USER17> The records amalgamation was one of those £10s-of-billions software project that failed to produce any output [other than great profits and some nice bonuses, I'd warrant] wasn't it?

<comment><USER15> That is in the past, it was a single project from 5 years ago, and I think the companies involved were investigated by the FSA. Nowadays NHS is pushing software initiatives more and more, see here: [https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/info- revolution...](https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/info- revolution/open-source/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why would anyone ever want to let a 3rd party company manage their bank account? I barely trust my bank yo do that...

I'm afraid that some companies will try to force it upon customers as well. Starting with: "If you allow us to manage your purchase it will get even faster (oh and we get access to all of your financial info), and you also get a useless gadget!"

<comment><USER19> People said the said the same about ATMs. They were wrong.

<comment><USER18> How is ATMs remotely similar?

<comment><USER20> You give a 3rd party ATMs permission to withdraw money every time you use them. If they wanted to, they could store the data on the stripe of the card and your pin, and steal all of your money.

<comment><USER18> That's not worse than doing any purchase at all.

If anything ATMs are the safest and best option available, well, aside from malicious hardware modifications done to them.

Having access to my bank account with all the history is another thing entirely.

<comment><USER20> I guess our threat models are different. I'm not worried about transaction history as much as being able to drain the account.

<comment><USER18> Even so, ATMs are much safer than trusting the store clerk _and_ whatever device they use to read your card.

I know some magnetic stripe readers actually imitates a keyboard and just "write" the card info. So if you gave focus to notepad.exe instead all the card info would be dumped in cleartext. "Oh, seems it didn't register, could you swipe your card again?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Open Banking is a term that describes a secure set of technologies and standards that allow customers to give companies other than their bank or building society permission to securely access their accounts."

I can't tell if this is super-useful for the end consumer, or just another way for e.g. Google to mine your data in return for some superficial benefits.

<comment><USER5> The descriptions are so vague, the high ranking beneficiaries of the system are stating so little so long over and over (sounds like using the same bullshit generator with the same parameters) that there must be very very little and uncertain benefits for the users. If they, the insiders of the system, are unable to explain it in plain and simple facts then it must have very little about clients. What I hear? More parties could access (including manipulation!?) your account. More potential source of errors and problems - and possibly malicious actions. If something goes wrong it will be more complex to figure out where the problem was. Tracking who can do what is an added complexity to managing bank matters. All above means lower security. There is a potential that if more work on the same money they will charge more - assuming not doing it for charity but for fee. There must be hell of a heck benefits, increased efficiency to balance that, eventually leaving more at the clients on the disadvantage of he money industry.... doesn't seem a realistic scenario from a money industry initiative. I see better ways to improve banking, especially UK banking - compared to Scandinavia it is in the stone age -, but not through opening up banking secrets to a lot of parties. To me it goes in the other direction. Let me be wrong eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> From what I understand the molasses IT departments in these banks will be delivering very little that actually works on Jan 13th but we will see...

<comment><USER23> Yeah. My impression of HSBC U.K.'s share trading platform was distinctly 1990 era.

<comment><USER24> In general I loathe HSBC globally. However, FWIW their HSBC UK higher end XML based credit card gateway was the bees knees in about 2009. Best I've seen in my career. Awesome individual fraud rule reporting, total control. We probably had the ass-kicking total package though as I was developing a pan-European solution for a major handset manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've read through their website a few times. Whilst it's easy to find the specs and a list of banks participating - you can even find some example code on GitHub - it's incredibly hard to find out what you actually have to do to be able to access the APIs. I appreciate that banking data is sensitive, but I think the on boarding process could be made a lot clearer.

<comment><USER26> First you need to be accredited by the FCA, either as a third party provider or as a banking institute.

Not 100% sure what comes next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> UK government is certainly on a good path of improving technological side of it. Along with more and more OpenData initiatives and migrating to FOSS (e.g. LibreOffice) it leads the efforts of many countries.

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone know if the plan is to provide an API to the consumer for management of personal finances?

<comment><USER7> Not right now; at first you'll have to rely on PFM tools built by companies rather than directly.

There is a chance GDPR will give you as an individual more flexibility but it wont be mandated.

<comment><USER8> That is disappointing. I wonder if anyone is doing the legal analysis on what it would take to be a 'passthrough provider', who would simply wrap it up in an easier API with a simple TOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://www.paymentsforum.uk/sites/default/files/documents/B...](https://www.paymentsforum.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Background%20Document%20No.%202%20-%20The%20Open%20Banking%20Standard%20-%20Full%20Report.pdf)

[https://github.com/OpenBankingUK](https://github.com/OpenBankingUK)

[https://openbanking.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DZ/overview](https://openbanking.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DZ/overview)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm really excited by this (and PSD-2), as a banking API is the last piece of the puzzle to create fully automated businesses.

<comment><USER31> If you use a modern SaaS account app like Xero you can already access banking records no? What does this give us that you don't already have to fully automate your business?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sorry, but I can't see the benefit of it. Can anyone show a useful scenario... for the bank account owner?

<comment><USER33> It would let you see the balance of all your accounts in one place, share data with your accountant or IFA, or apply for a mortgage without those tedious forms as well as photocopies of bank statements, offer proof of income easily, use apps that offer a marketplace for mortgages, savings or other financial services, use apps like xero, mint or Emma with any bank account easily, etc.

It's an API for your bank, and like stripe being an API for payments, I think it'll shake up the market a bit. It should make a lot of things easier than before, and force large banks to allow customers to control their data more via authorised apps. It'll take a while to have any impact though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if insurance companies or lenders with start forcing you to give up access to your main bank account in return for lower premium or rates...

<comment><USER12> If they did, statutory regulation to prevent it would surely follow rapidly, and all they'd do is antagonize people and by extension the government and financial regulators. Doesn't seem like a worthwhile risk for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is there any API in the UK that lets you get the balance of your current account?

<comment><USER36> You should check out teller.io - they let you have "an API to your bank account"

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I haven't seen a Marquee/Ticker on a website for quite a few years.

The "Background to Open Banking" page made the fans start running on my (fairly good) laptop.

If this is a sign of the technology behind it, it's not a good sign.</comment>


First recording of computer-generated music – created by Alan Turing – restored - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/26/first-recording-computer-generated-music-created-alan-turing-restored-enigma-code <comment><USER2> More here: [http://blogs.bl.uk/sound-and-vision/2016/09/restoring-the- fi...](http://blogs.bl.uk/sound-and-vision/2016/09/restoring-the-first- recording-of-computer-music.html)

"The Manchester computer had a special instruction that caused the loudspeaker—Turing called it the 'hooter'—to emit a short pulse of sound, lasting a tiny fraction of a second. Turing said this sounded like 'something between a tap, a click, and a thump'. Executing the instruction over and over again resulted in this 'click' being produced repeatedly, on every fourth tick of the computer's internal clock: tick tick tick click, tick tick tick click. Repeating the instruction enough times like this caused the human ear to hear not discrete clicks but a steady note, in fact the note C6, two octaves above middle C. ...

Turing was not very interested in programming the computer to play conventional pieces of music: he used the different notes to indicate what was going on in the computer—one note for 'job finished', others for 'digits overflowing in memory', 'error when transferring data from the magnetic drum', and so on. Running one of Turing's programs must have been a noisy business, with different musical notes and rhythms of clicks enabling the user to 'listen in' (as he put it) to what the computer was doing. He left it to someone else, though, to program the first complete piece of music."

<comment><USER3> I had something similar-ish with a desktop PC: when I plugged headphones into my amp and that into motherboard sound output, I could hear all sorts of faint squelchy noises that seemed to correlate both with what is going on on the screen as well the CPU. Some things always sounded the exact same (like running a certain command etc.)... it was both very fascinating and annoying. If a program sometimes ran fine and sometimes crashed, I could tell by ear right when either happened, etc.

<comment><USER4> Back in the days when CPU speed was measured in single digit MHZ (e.g. Amiga 68000 at 7mhz, ZX Spectrum at 6Mhz?), I had a hard time hearing anything other than CPU noise on standard FM radios. You could indeed hear algorithms running very clearly, it's something I considered to be useful during a time when I was learning about CPUs and computer programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a direct link to the recording of the mentioned restoration: [http://blogs.bl.uk/files/first-recorded-computer-music--- cop...](http://blogs.bl.uk/files/first-recorded-computer-music---copeland- long-restoration.mp3)

<comment><USER6> I have the beginning of some lyrics for this fine composition. Ahem:

God save the Regis ...

... ter

Set on top of the stack.

I.R.Q. time!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The original British Library blog post has more details about the background to this recording: [http://blogs.bl.uk/sound-and-vision/2016/09/restoring-the- fi...](http://blogs.bl.uk/sound-and-vision/2016/09/restoring-the-first- recording-of-computer-music.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> How does this relate to this clean recording form 51? [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7458479.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7458479.stm)

<comment><USER9> From the other article linked elsewhere in this thread:

"Today, all that remains of the recording session is a 12-inch single-sided acetate disc, cut by the BBC's technician while the computer played. The computer itself was scrapped long ago, so the archived recording is our only window on that historic soundscape. What a disappointment it was, therefore, to discover that the pitches were not accurate: the recording gave at best only a rough impression of how the computer sounded."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "There's a new band in town, but you can't get the sound from the pages of a magazine", goes a Billy Joel song.

Or, in this case, from this useless story with no link to any audio.

Yeah, link "New Zealand" to your New Zealand topic roster: way relevant there, Guardian. Let's see, _" Angry French hitchhiker charged with stealing sleeping bag in New Zealand"_. Nope, no Alan Turing computer audio there! How about, _" The coffin club: elderly New Zealanders building their own caskets"_. Guess again!

<comment><USER10> There is an embedded soundcloud widget.

<comment><USER11> It never came up for me; I assume something blocked it as an ad.

<comment><USER12> Ghostery hid it from me, but it had a button for "play one time" that worked perfectly.

It sounds a little like a scratchy cello.

<comment><USER6> The ironic thing is that it actually sounds better than the cello patches of some synthesizers from several decades later.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Redis 101 - <AUTHOR> http://no.gd/redis-presentation.pdf

<comment><USER3> Uh-oh :-) Just leaving a comment here as I created these slides and shared the URL on Twitter for a few interested parties to check out.. I had planned to finish and clean them up based on the results of a talk I gave today before promoting them online. So caveat emptor, and all that, but enjoy!

(And yes, I was reminded during my talk that memcached does expiration too! :-))

<comment><USER4> It's an excellent slide deck for getting started as is! Reminded me of a few things I wanted to try out a while back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Impressive presentation. I like the slide layout quite a bit (after I zoomed out a couple times and got used to it).

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to start using Redis as my main datastore, but I think I'm scared because I don't realize how "persistant" it actually is -it looks and behaves like an advanced cache, but does it work out as well in practice as your main datastore as your good old mysql does?

There's another nice feature of SQL databases is that you can quickly get a view of all the data by browsing through the tables and they are kind of self explanatory. With Redis and other NoSQL datastores, that seems harder - <USER2> maybe it's just me.

<comment><USER7> To have more "persistance", at the sacrifice of speed, you can use the "Append Only File"[1] feature. You can also decrease the time it takes to make a snapshot.

To view all data you can use the KEYS _pattern_ command [2]. Like it says in the link, the command is pretty fast ("entry level laptop can scan a 1 million keys database in 40 milliseconds"!) but not recommend for use in production.

The difference is that you don't have tables and have to name the keys properly, this is where the _pattern_ argument of KEYS comes in. Just name the keys based on this template: <type>:<id>:<field> and you're set. (eg: Username from the user with id 1001 in the user "table": user:1001:username)

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/redis/wiki/AppendOnlyFileHowto>

[2] <http://code.google.com/p/redis/wiki/KeysCommand>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A great introduction to Redis!

</comment><comment><USER3> P.S. The Scribd version looks horrible. Lots of arrows and similar are missing so some slides won't make any sense.</comment>


Ask HN: How many of you guys like erlang - <AUTHOR>

How many of u like erlang compared to other programing languages, and what are your thoughts about it. <comment><USER2> I initially learnt Erlang to write websocket backends for browser-based games. Then found Elixir and moved on to it. I still work with the same stuff that OTP offers, along with a lot of sugary features that Elixir and it's community provides.

The Erlang syntax might be weird at first. But you'll get used to it.

Pattern matching for function arguments is a life-saver. Erlang also runs checks on your module when it gets compiled. It tells you if vars are being used or not, etc. Very handy IMHO.

The best side-effect of the concurrency model, is that your production environment, apart from config vars, will be almost same as your development environment. Unlike most languages today, you won't need a separate server program (Unicorn, Thin, Passenger, etc). You don't have to put your app behind nginx or apache. Use Cowboy (or alternatives), which is a server library for Erlang. I'll take care of stuff for you.

I write some Elixir libraries in my spare time [http://github.com/HashNuke](http://github.com/HashNuke)

</comment><comment><USER3> For the language I love its concurrency model; creating thousands of "processes" at your PC/laptop is no problem. Message passing over shared memory also makes your distributed program easy to reason about. When talking about Erlang, you can't avoid OTP. It makes creating fault tolerant system at ease. Putting these two pieces together you have a very scalable fault tolerant distributed system.

I don't like the syntax of erlang though. And the missing of macro makes me switch to Elixir.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not so fond of it. The syntax is ok (after a while), but the way records work is annoying. You have to use a lot of syntax to reach into records containing other records, especially if you want to change a field in a record in a record. They are also compile-time only and "disappears" after compilation (they become tagged lists).

No builtin syntax for dicts.

Hot code-swapping is its killer feature though. A system mostly written in Erlang can run multiple versions of itself and gradually upgrade data to the new version or downgrade to the old one. E.g your webserver can go from 1.0 to 1.1 without having to suffer even a second of downtime. No other language that I know of has that feature.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love Erlang, though I mostly use Elixir. It's changed how I think about programming in a very refreshing way. The Erlang community is also incredibly practical. I enjoy programming languages that are born out of research, such as Rust and others, but I really enjoy Erlang because it was born out of solving a problem. We're very fortunate that the problem Erlang creators were trying to solve back in the 80s and 90s is a pretty common problem today.

It's easy to get hung up at the aesthetics of Erlang. But the parts that really change you as a programmer are the ideals that Erlang embodies. I urge you to continue on, or learn Erlang by way of Elixir.

</comment><comment><USER6> I loved erlang. I still do. To me it is the most well designed language/library set for distributed programming. I love their approach about error handling.

But I find golang much more accessible. Erlang does not scale down, for simpler tasks, erlang feels like an overkill.

Also while I love erlang syntax, and the functional style, my colleagues find golang lot more palatable than erlang.

</comment><comment><USER7> I enjoyed learning and using it. The syntax is annoying though.

These days I've been happy with Python + gevent for the kinds of things I was using Erlang for (writing load test scripts w/ lots of concurrent connections). I never had much need for what OTP offers.

<comment><USER8> I love Python and gevent and use them frequently, but unfortunately you can't deny that it's simply not as performant as using Erlang/Elixir or Golang. gevent is well-written but it's constrained by CPython's overhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love the way Erlang simplifies distributed and concurrent programming.

The syntax is a bit weird though and the library support is lacking a bit but a very fine language indeed.</comment>


Brazil Freezes Facebook Funds - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/brazil-freezes-facebook-fundsin-latest-clash-over-whatsapp-messages-1469716803 <comment><USER2> Given that my understanding is WhatsApp/Facebook are quite literally _unable to comply because the content doesn 't exist_ (yay, E2E encryption!), this is also an absurd, disproportionate response.

But, unlike the usual response of blocking WhatsApp for hundreds of millions of entirely innocent people, this at least keeps this silly little war between the lawyers, where it belongs. If nothing else, a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER3> this war will move to the users if Facebook decides to pull out of the country altogether. This is a very interesting case to follow: If Brazil 'wins', this might be the first case where a government says "I don't like E2E encryption on your app, get off my country", and a company complies. On the other hand, imagine if Facebook proper, pulls out of Brazil and that causes their government to fall. :-)

<comment><USER4> > On the other hand, imagine if Facebook proper, pulls out of Brazil and that > causes their government to fall. :-)

Facebook already deposed one government here in Brazil. ;)

That's why current gov probably will go full power against it anytime soon, if it isn't already started. I don't like Michel Temer (coupist president), but I dislike FB a lot more, so the better would be for them to destroy themselves and leave Brazil to Brazilians :)

<comment><USER5> > Facebook already deposed one government here in Brazil. ;)

That is a gross overstatement. Brazilian here.

<comment><USER6> It also wasn't a coup. The former is/was impeached for shenanigans involving the state petro co./graft and misstating economic numbers and many other irregularities.

<comment><USER7> Firstly, out with Temer!

It was most definitely a coup. The people prosecuting her couldn't care less about the alleged violations, that's just a nifty way they managed to get into power.

The people in charge now manage to be even dirtier.

<comment><USER4> I guess you guys proves that FB/whatsapp/Google/YouTube brainwashed most of Brazillians. After the coup, peace is reigning in Brazil (thanks to the media that stopped with the terror and the American tech companies, mainly FB, stopped their terror echo Chamber).

<comment><USER8> Just social media and not Globo TV etc.?

<comment><USER4> That TV Globo and other media families wanted Dilma and PT ousted of power was nothing new. Social media support, beginning with the "jornada de junho de 2013" was what really triggered the parlamentary coup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Substantially identical article: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil- facebook-whatsapp-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-facebook- whatsapp-idUSKCN10801Q)

<comment><USER10> Notably: non-paywalled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Suddenly everyone's newsfeed has started featuring stories about the polluted Rio Olympics.

<comment><USER12> As someone not on Facebook, I'm finding it very challenging to tell whether that's sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Will google loon or the facebook drone thing get over these problems?

<comment><USER4> Google loon and Facebook Drone are essentially the problem. Or they start to conform with local policies or they will find a bad ending anytime.

<comment><USER14> BTW, in English one says "Either ... or ...", not "Or ... or ..."

<comment><USER4> Really? I could care less. (Is it right?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there is a point that most coverage and discussions miss. Maybe judges understand that Whatsapp can not fulfill their requests, but they choose to block the service to put pressure on the company to better address a very important question, which is how society should treat the question of privacy and, specifically, how can law enforcement and companies cooperate on cases and investigation that rely on this kind of data.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you look by another angle, Facebook is holding 10, 100, maybe 1000 million Brazilian dollars in taxes at some bank in Ireland :)

</comment><comment><USER15> The interim government of Brazil wants to control media far beyond what they already do. This is just the next step, since their main ally (Globo Media Network) is directly threatened by the advance of Facebook and Google in the country.

<comment><USER5> That is just paranoia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Didn't the supreme court or higher ups keep reversing ruling banning the service?

</comment><comment><USER17> $11m frozen? Move on.

<comment><USER18> Until the bully comes back for more . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What exactly happens when a service like WhatsApp gets shut down like that? Is there a giant firewall or something?

<comment><USER20> Most likely the ISPs drop/block the BGP routes, or just null route traffic for those blocks.

<comment><USER21> Here in India they just return NXDOMAIN for the name. So it is pretty easy to bypass using 220.127.116.11. Also, the guy who installed the router at my home changed the default DNS to 188.8.131.52. I think ISPs do this on purpose. They don't wanna block sites their customers wanna access. And the government is dumb enough to not understand the difference between a DNS block vs a real block.

<comment><USER8> Dumb is often good enough for big companies and governments. (See: DRM.)

If you are the sort of person who is able to change your DNS, you are also capable enough to use foreign VPNs etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Next step: stop their tax dodges and unfair competition :)

</comment><comment><USER22> Given that Eduardo Saverin is from Brazil, and if there was any truth to the "The Social Network"/The Accidental Billionaires narrative at all, it's oddly appropriate that Facebook is getting its money withheld by Brazilians once again.

<comment><USER23> Because he lives there? $11mm is .06% of Facebook's 2015 revenue. I doubt they care at all nor is there anything they can do about this.

<comment><USER4> He doesn't live here, he lives in Asia. He's barely brazilian, actually.</comment></comment></comment>


The Ontology2 Edition of DBpedia 2016-04 - <AUTHOR> http://ontology2.com/the-book/dbpedia-2016-04.html <comment><USER2> I use DBPedia frequently, and it is good to see an augmented and curated commercial version. I was a little surprised to see it cost $0.99/hour - expensive but OK for occasional use. However, I noticed that they offer a $499/year subscription also. (Plus EC2 costs for both plans).

I have been frustrated by the DBPedia SPARQL endpoint occasionally not being available, so running the augmented version on an EC2 would be great, cost ignored. I have also set up my own endpoint using Virtuoso and the free DBPedia dumps, which takes some work setting up.

<comment><USER3> Has anyone run this sort of thing on BigQuery? On the surface it seems like a cheaper option and couldn't be that hard to map SPARQL on top?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice to include DBPedia PageRanker

[http://people.aifb.kit.edu/ath/#DBpedia_PageRank](http://people.aifb.kit.edu/ath/#DBpedia_PageRank)</comment>


EFF Sues for Court Orders Requiring Tech Cos to Decrypt Users' Communications - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-sues-secret-court-orders-requiring-tech-companies-decrypt-users-communications <comment><USER2> There's my monthly reminder to donate to EFF! (Do it too, you even get stickers and a nice membership card that makes you feels like you are important!)

<comment><USER3> [https://eff.org/donate](https://eff.org/donate)

A monthly recurring donation of $19.84 seems appropriate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish they would just get rid of the FISC. It only serves to create an illusion that the executive is being checked by the legislative branch. Basically, it's a loophole in the Constitution. I understand that our government doesn't give a shit about the Constitution so let's just stop pretending.

<comment><USER5> There's a fine line between critiquing and trolling.

> I wish they would just get rid of the FISC. It only serves to create an > illusion that the executive is being checked by the legislative branch. > Basically, it's a loophole in the Constitution.

This bit here is a good start of a conversation. I could ask you about more detail, references, what people could do to diminish The Bad Thing, a call-to- action could ensue... but...

> I understand that our government doesn't give a shit about the Constitution > so let's just stop pretending.

... this part invalidates every good point you might have had by saying that no, what has been said is a blasé comment made on an internet forum.

Keep your critiques emotion-free for best effect.

<comment><USER6> _this part invalidates every good point you might have had_

Why should it invalidate the rest? If this were a different topic that would have been called out as a tone argument. Focus on the content, not the form.

Also, can you provide reliable sources that the executive branch observes the Constitution with the same reverence as other Americans? Because it sure seems like they are contorting it into every possible shape they can.

<comment><USER5> Because of the polarization of American politics, the focus has moved away from progressing the country forward and more about scraping back any and all losses from one's political opponents.

It's very much like sports, and using self-serving interpretations of laws is not unlike a professional athlete taking a questionable-but-not-officially- outlawed performance-enhancing drug[1]. They're playing the game with the assumption that if they don't someone else will get ahead.

The only fair thing to do is to outlaw the (political equivalent of) their PED so they're allowed and able to play by the rules.

[1] [http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/if_y...](http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/if_youre_not_cheating_youre_not_trying/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The writing is on the wall. If your threat model includes government agencies, it is only prudent to _assume_ that all commercial providers of encrypted communications are or will soon be compromised, and conduct operations as such.

EFF may actually do more good by funding FOSS alternatives to commercial solutions than by funding lawyers.

<comment><USER6> The FOSS alternatives are of no use if their use and development can be outlawed.</comment></comment>