The Pirate Bay is counting down - <AUTHOR> http://188.8.131.52/

<comment><USER2> ... and it immediately opened a popup with some sleazy ad. Same old, repackaged. So exciting.

<comment><USER3> I didn't see any ads.

<comment><USER4> I see an ad if I click on the page.

<comment><USER5> Get with the times: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en)

<comment><USER6> I can heartily recommend µBlock as well, it's low on resource usage (much lower than abp) and blocks nearly everything. I do tend to combine it with ghostery/disconnect to be extra sure (not that ghostery is developed by an ads firm, though they say their opt-out options is legit).

<comment><USER7> Don't use abp. You should read this trough Google Translate maybe: [http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover- einblicke-...](http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover-einblicke-in- ein-mafioeses-werbenetzwerk/)

<comment><USER8> Is there any evidence that they're doing anything sleazy? This seems like a crackpot conspiracy theory, not actual news.

<comment><USER7> No it's really like that. Advertisers habe the possibility to get white listed. But they have to pay for it.

<comment><USER3> And this feature can be disabled in the extension:

Tools->AddOns->AdblocPlus Options->Filter Preferences->Allow some non- intrusive advertising

You can untick it, and right next to it are two links. One is to a link describing the non-intrusive ads and the other is to the actual white-list:

[https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable- ads](https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads) [https://easylist- downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.tx...](https://easylist- downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.txt)

I didn't realize this was on for me. But to tell you the truth, I have _never_ seen any of these advertisements. So either they were so unnoticeable/rare or they really were completely non-intrusive.

I personally have no problem with this. As long as they keep the ads non- intrusive as it appears they have up until now, I will continue to allow it as it has made my web browsing completely annoyance-free from ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Where is the proof that this random IP has anything to do with The Pirate Bay?

<comment><USER9> The IP is what "thepiratebay.se" resolves to. I assume the submitter used the IP address in order to get around DNS-level censorship.

<comment><USER10> According to torrentfreak it hasn't propagated for everyone yet. It looks like so the media are linking directly to the ip address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Automatically downloaded a file called MPlayerX.dmg when clicking the link.

Beware ?

<comment><USER12> That's an adware, don't install it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is actually "JyO7wNzc8xht47QKWohfDVj6Sc2qH+X5tBCT+uetocIJcjQnp/2f1ViEBR+tyOCz"?

In the html source the file it is named aes.png

Is it an aes key for something? Does anybody know?

<comment><USER14> It's the key to add in BitTorrent Sync. In this software, click settings, "enter a key" and then you will have some torrents that people share, but to my experience it was sh*t and not organized in folders etc. Maybe now it's better.

<comment><USER15> No, that has been refuted to death (on reddit, mostly) - the BitTorrent Sync folder was created much later by random people making the same faulty assumption.

<comment><USER13> Ok so if it was not intended to be that - what is it?

It's 64 chars and likely AES as this is the name of the picture?

[http://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2q23mm/the_key...](http://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/2q23mm/the_key_is_an_aes_key/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what's been taking so long. The architecture was supposedly raid- proof as I understood.

<comment><USER17> Alternatives exist anyway, including this one - [https://oldpiratebay.org/](https://oldpiratebay.org/)

<comment><USER12> There are much better alternatives actually, all the torrent sites that already existed before the Pirate Bay went down and don't try to surf on the "Pirate Bay" brand to serve old, static content.

<comment><USER18> Any that you recommend?

<comment><USER19> I normally use the torrentz.com meta search engine and go with the torrent with the most seeds. It then shows me all the sites that have that torrent, and I pick one whose name I recognize. Works like a charm.

<comment><USER20> Same, but you will miss some torrents. Both torrentz.eu and kat.ph are complying with DMCA requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They should try putting the BTC address in a format which you can copy and paste.

<comment><USER22> I wish the myth that people donate to BTC addresses would hurry up and die. There are few examples of projects that receive significant donations, as far as I know. I'd love to be proven wrong about that, but when I looked at a bunch of donation addresses 6-12 months ago, no website or project got more than spare change from it.

There have been some high-profile donations made using BTC, but that's not the same thing. Rich people will give large donations regardless of the format. It wasn't because of BTC, but rather because they wanted to donate.

Some of the donation addresses received huge amounts of BTC. These obviously weren't from donations. Probably from the account holder shuffling their own money around.

I wouldn't be surprised if BTC donations were far less frequent than, say, "likes" on YouTube videos. For the average video with half a million views, ~20,000 likes isn't uncommon. And people only do that because it's free. So if, for any given "thing that half a million people look at," only about 200 of them actually donate, you can see how pitiful the returns are compared to ads. But putting up ads to profit from copyright infringement is blatantly illegal, whereas BTC donations aren't. Yet nobody will take BTC donations seriously for the same reason no one considers panhandling a sustainable living.

It probably sounds like I'm bashing Bitcoin, but I'm only trying to point out a surprising phenomenon. BTC donations seemed to have a lot of potential, yet fizzled. The reasons why are important to study.

<comment><USER23> Very few people have actual BTC to donate -- this is the big one. Some of those may be holding BTC as an "investment" and may be unwilling to part with it. Depending on how they hold their BTC, there may be significant friction involved in spending it, ie. in almost all cases I expect it's more difficult than entering PayPal or credit card details.

And as you note, it's not like people are super eager to donate using other methods. (And while some might say that a site like TPB, which attracts "freeloaders", is even less likely to get donations, I'm not convinced -- folks might consider TPB both a service worth paying for as well as a cause worth supporting.)

Of course, the upsides remain. It costs you nothing to post a BTC address on a site, especially if you're already handling BTC. There is no interaction with payment providers and all that jazz. There are no immediate fees. Payments are "anonymous" for both sides, with the usual and serious caveats involved in BTC transactions[0].

[0] E.g. some dude being able to audit your total donation amount from the public ledger. :) Did you write up anything from that research? It's an interesting idea.

<comment><USER24> It's very frictionless to spend it, effectively it acts digitally analogous to cash.

> in almost all cases I expect it's more difficult than entering PayPal or > credit card details.

Best way to find out is to try! Generate and post an address here in the next 15-20 and I'd be happy to prove this wrong. (at least from the senders end)

<comment><USER25> There's lots of friction on spending if it's in an offline wallet.

<comment><USER24> yes, so don't?

we're talking micro tipping level amounts here, 100 Euros or less stored on any modern smartphone or laptop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My only hope is that they have recoded their not so powerfull search engine and maybe a new design? meeh

</comment><comment><USER27> What is this supposed to mean?

<comment><USER28> That the pirate bay will resurrect in on february 1st to keep the kopimi spirit alive.

see: [http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-crew-responds-to-the- raid...](http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-crew-responds-to-the-raid-copies- and-the-future-141215/)

[http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-starts-counting-down- to-f...](http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-starts-counting-down-to- february-1-150101/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it counting DOWN or is it counting UP. The seconds appear to be going up

<comment><USER30> No they don't, they're going down.

<comment><USER31> Nice illustration of DNS propagation in progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Got a MacKeeper adware popup when clicking the logo :/

<comment><USER33> Forwarded to the App Store, to some Disney app when I opened the link on my phone</comment></comment>


Visual Studio SP2 (Official) is out - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=38188 For you Silverlight developers, the integration between Blend and VS 2012 is now fixed.<p>"It includes support in Blend for SketchFlow, WPF 4.5, and Silverlight 5." <comment><USER2> More details: <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2797912></comment>


Easily add micropayments to any Wordpress site - <AUTHOR> https://wordpress.org/plugins/micropayment-io/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me for Flattr, which didn't take off either.

Patreon seems to be the most successful player in this type of market, although they're not really micropayments .. and only a subset of people gain a significant following.</comment>


It's OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty - <AUTHOR> http://www.drmaciver.com/2015/04/its-ok-for-your-open-source-library-to-be-a-bit-shitty/

<comment><USER2> nope, nope, nope</comment>


Yellow Drummer Robot - <AUTHOR> http://letsmakerobots.com/node/112

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I liked this piece rather than the plethora of animal articles flying about lately. One thing I was always curious about was what microcontroller people used, since all the ones I've ever thought to use were quite expensive (not a hardware guy). He does mention it though. Cool beans.

</comment><comment><USER3> that is one of the coolest things i've ever seen. i want to put that little guy in my band</comment>


Ask HN: Why did no competitors beat Facebook to win social networking? - <AUTHOR> Surely the opportunity became obvious, why did a host of me-toos not spring up and win?<p>It seems to me that in 2017 if you came up with some awesome new idea then a thousand clones would be trying to wrestle the opportunity off you. <comment><USER2> Battle is not over. FB lost in China. Mark will move into policy politics later and when he makes the break FB will decline more.

Also predict that changing market for surveillance and censorship respecting developing economies will result in newcomers getting foothold.

Expect FB share price to peak in 2028 decline thereafter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ehm. They did. Social networks were springing up everywhere. Facebook wasn't the first social network to become populair. Orkut, Friendster, Myspace all became popular earlier. In my country we had a local FB clone that became the most visited website locally, then lost it to FB. Also there is VK.com, a Russian Facebook clone. Attacking a strong going network effect is very, very difficult. This is a winner-takes-all market and once a clear leader emerges, good luck beating it.

<comment><USER4> "In my country we had a local FB clone that became the most visited website locally, then lost it to FB."

Hyves in the Netherlands?

<comment><USER3> Yes, that one.</comment></comment></comment>


GNU Wget in decline? - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=wget&cmpt=q

<comment><USER2> [http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-13&q=wget%2...](http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-13&q=wget%2Ccurl&cmpt=q)

You can do everything you can do with wget - and more - with curl (though it seems to be tending downward on that graph... not very sure what may be the reason for that).

Nice text on HTTP scripting: <http://curl.haxx.se/docs/httpscripting.html>

And a total aside: <http://ifconfig.me/> is extremely awesome. I probably end up using 'curl ifconfig.me' about once a day at least.

<comment><USER3> Wget can do something which curl can't: recursive downloading, and in particular full site mirroring. It's not useful every day, but when I need it I'm glad it's there.

<comment><USER2> Ah, you're right.

Here's a nice page detailing the differences between the two tools -- apparently written by the creator of curl itself:

<http://daniel.haxx.se/docs/curl-vs-wget.html> (and a more comprehensive chart with additional tools: <http://curl.haxx.se/docs/comparison-table.html> )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The lack of libwget does frustate me sometimes; I have to use wget strictly via command-line. curl also has some nice features lacking in wget: selecting HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1, support for multiple SSL libraries, etc. But wget surely has many features that curl doesn't have.

In short, I use both.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, the curve indicating a decline of GNU Wget looks by eye to have the same shape as the curve indicating a decline of Apache. The HTML curve looks pretty similar. Javascript, too.

I think there's only one conclusion:

The web itself is in decline.

Incredible, I know, but this is science.

<comment><USER4> But curl curve is inclining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the first things I do on a linux system is install curl. Wget only outfeatures curl in very obscure ways, and I find it more annoying to use on a day-to-day basis.

<comment><USER7> Heh, one of the first things I _used_ to do on OSX as to install wget (having come from Linux myself), but over time I ended up just learning what I needed from curl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's basically done. It's all the way on the right of the hype cycle. Is tcpdump in decline? Is dig in decline?</comment>


Telegram CEO: Apple's iCloud Is "Now Officially a Surveillance Tool" - <AUTHOR> https://cointelegraph.com/news/telegram-ceo-apples-icloud-is-now-officially-a-surveillance-tool <comment> m-p-3 It simply joins the other cloud services that doesn't provide E2EE.

If you don't own the encryption key (and can be certain nobody else does), then your data is not private.</comment>


IHaskell – A Haskell kernel for Jupyter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gibiansky/IHaskell <comment><USER2> In case it was confusing for anyone else – Jupyter is the notebook software, and IPython is the kernel. The name change was to show Jupyter is capable of running more than just Python, and that it's no longer a monolithic project.

<comment><USER3> So it's a Haskell kernel for Jupyter, not iPython, or do "kernels" have other "kernels" below them?

<comment><USER4> It's a Haskell kernel for Jupyter. The nomenclature is a bit outdated, with the title (and a few other places) referring to IPython when they mean Jupyter; this is because a few years back there was no such thing as Jupyter, and the entire thing was called IPython, so it was accurate to say that IHaskell was a kernel for IPython.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder why it doesn't support Windows, especially with Haskell toolchain already available on Windows?

<comment> a-saleh Usually it is about resources.

Half of the commits are from single person, and if he doesn't have or strongly care about Windows, the support just wouldn't be there to maintain it.

That doesn't mean you are forbidden to try it ;)

I have to admit, last I wanted to have IHaskell on windows, I just ran it in docker :-)

<comment><USER4> Spot on. Author of IHaskell here; written the majority of the IHaskell codebase, and, as you guessed, I haven't used Windows in over a decade.

That said, I am happy to help folks get it working natively under Windows. There is a somewhat challenging technical issue, which is that IHaskell uses the Haskell `unix` package, because it needs supports for creating and using pipes in order to intercept stdin, stderr, and stdout. I'm sure that this is somehow also doable on Windows, but it just takes someone who wants to dive in and get it working; I'd be happy to advise such a person and merge any changes they need to make.

<comment><USER6> I want to get involved with an open source project, I am familiar with Haskell and enthusiastic about making it more accessible. I've just completed an educational project where I've used iPython with my students and I would have used Haskell if the tooling were a bit smoother.

So far the entry barrier was too high for me but I want to reach out and ask if anyone is willing to hold my hand a little so that I might get over the initial hurdles. Could you suggest some entry points for me? A bug tracker, an IRC channel, a github issues page? Should I just hack on it on my own until I have a specific unit of work to contribute, or is there someone who could use my help with the coding and provide guidance as to the organizational side of things?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are the security implications for hosting IHaskell on a server and giving public access to notebooks? For myself, Emacs + Intero + stack makes a near perfect development environment, but IHaskell looks great for writing online books and educational material.

<comment><USER8> Once notebooks have been created, they are just json files that get rendered to html so there's no haskell or python code running. If you're allowing other people to upload notebooks though, you'll want to sandbox them inside an iframe to prevent xss attacks - at work we do this, but allow some channels of communication using the postmessage API.

<comment><USER9> What happens when I execute a notebook that you wrote, that had Haskell magics in it? Surely the server will run that code? And it might have exploitable bugs?</comment></comment></comment>


App Engine: CPU hours very expensive with simple RSA benchmark - <AUTHOR> http://programmersbraindump.blogspot.com/2012/04/quick-google-app-engine-rsa-benchmark.html

<comment><USER2>
      His CPU: i7, 2.8 GHz
      App Engine frontend CPU: 600MHz

He does a test and finds that his CPU is 5x faster. 2800 MHz / 600 MHz = 4.67, so his findings match the documented instance speeds and yet he is surprised.

His pricing math is all wrong. Instances live 15 minutes after the last request and you are charged for that. He claims that the amount of work he can do on his i7 CPU for one hour would cost $8 on App Engine. Taking into account his researched 5x faster speed, one hour would result in 5 hours on App Engine, 5 hours + 15 minutes after the requests would mean 5.25 hours * $0.08 = $0.42, which is far less than his $8 statement.

</comment><comment><USER3> One GAE instance is 5x slower than your CPU, period. It starts up an instance for a minimum of 20 minutes, so you will be charged for 20 minutes whether you generate 1 RSA key or 120.

Still, I'd also love for the price to come down.

<comment><USER2> Instances don't have a minimum runtime, they have an added runtime of 15 minutes.

Or to get even more technical, you are billed for an added 15 minute runtime but the instance can still be shut down. However if an instance is needed within these 15 minutes and the last one was shut down, then a new instance is created and billing-wise it will act as if the old one was running all the time.

An example to illustrate:

      T+00m request comes in, instance #1 is created
      T+05m request comes in
      T+07m instance #1 gets killed due to google spilling coffee on the server
      T+10m request comes in, instance #2 is created
      T+25m instance #2 has been idle for 15min, gets killed
      -
      Total charge: 25 minutes

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love GAE, but these prices need to come down! CPU-intensive apps suffer the most!</comment>


Ask HN: I'm priveledged, what should I do for a year? - <AUTHOR>

My goal has always been to have loads of free time so I can do something really awesome, like becoming an artist or help solve environmental problems.
I've told myself that as a first step, I should use my free time to create some great mobile apps, in order to free up even more free time. Then I can start pursuing my ultimate goal.
I have now created five apps and regardless of how well they will do in the future, I've come to realise that this "extra step" seems a little too much like an excuse. I should get started. I have money for one year.
I guess my approach is "if you can think it it can be done", so I'm not afraid of seemingly impossible projects.
I'm looking for the right idea. What would you do if you could do anything you wanted for a year? What should I do?
What I've done so far - technical creative director and developer for 15 years - won 100+ awards including Webby AD&D etc - written and recorded music and had a radio hit - drew and built a house - designed and built furniture - professional photographer - created and launched five mobile apps - have one kid and one on the way (I'm 33 and Swedish)
What interests me the most - making sure animals don't get extinct - preserving rain forrest - reduce meat eating - fighting racism and populist political ideas - digital art projects, for instance "I want you to want me", Jonathan Harris - spatial interactive art
Requirements on the project - I need it to be an idea that gets a lot of attention, so I don't have to work on marketing once the project is done. This is so tiresome. You can make great music, but no one will listen to it if you don't work on marketing, even more than you work on making music. That's the reason I don't do music (which I love the most I think) full time. - I need to be able to make it more or less by myself in one year or less. - I've had employees before, and it's not something I enjoy, or am good at, that's why I haven't tried start ups. <comment><USER2> _What would you do if you could do anything you wanted for a year?_

Something I have been trying to arrange for several years and failing: I would write a simulation in order to adequately explain a mental model I have for how to get healthier in the face of chronic illness. Getting healthier is something I have actually done. It takes most of my time and has left no time for learning to write code. I have a design doc and one developer friend who takes me seriously and I still have a lot of personal barriers to making this a reality. I know one woman who is following some of my advice and getting healthier. I know this works and it is mostly too hard to explain with just words. I need to write a simulation in order be able to effectively convey the mental model. If a picture is worth a thousand words, I need something far more information dense than that. It takes too long to convey any other way.

I don't know if there is anything you could do to help me make this happen. I first need to get off the street. Then I can focus more on work like this. But that is what I would do and something I think would make a big difference in the world.

I have been trying to come up with thoughts on what _you_ could do, which is really what you want to know, and coming up blank, in part because I don't know you well enough to know where your niche appropriately is.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Mz, a thought — perhaps your theories can be presented in a video or lecture, live or filmed. This would possibly be good, fast, cheap alternative in order to get your movement started.

I wish you the best of luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please take a look at [https://www.geneticrescue.science](https://www.geneticrescue.science). We're looking for collaborators to help advance the science of genetic rescue and de-extinction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there. Thanks, this looks intriguing. How could I help?

<comment><USER3> You could organize a project to run under the Genetic Rescue Foundation's umbrella. We're currently sequencing the genome of the extinct moa. [http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2015/06/sequencing-the- genom...](http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2015/06/sequencing-the-genome-of- the-extinct-moa/) .

We're also proposing to sequence the genomes of all 125 remaining kakapo. [https://www.geneticrescue.science/projects/genome- sequencing...](https://www.geneticrescue.science/projects/genome- sequencing/kakapo) . If you have a conservation project in mind we can help you to publicize and crowdfund it if necessary.

So you can help out by organizing your own conservation project or by getting involved with our existing projects. Email info at geneticrescue.science to continue the conversation. Thank you for your interest!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here, something happened with the bullet lists line breaks, and the text can't be updated. Sorry about that.</comment>


Improve Your Ruby Workflow by Integrating vim/tmux/pry - <AUTHOR> http://velvetpulse.com/2012/11/19/improve-your-ruby-workflow-by-integrating-vim-tmux-pry/ <comment><USER2> This improved my productivity by at least 2x. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER3> using this config now, liking it.</comment>


Small startup shows us the wrong way to incentivize programmers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/30/small-startup-shows-us-the-wrong-way-to-incentivize-programmers/ <comment><USER2> I think this company is first of all immediately cutting-out all GOOD developers that might consider working for them. Immediately. With current hunt for dev talent this is simply ridiculous.</comment>


More UFOs Than Ever Before - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/08/26/more-ufos-than-ever-before/ <comment><USER2> > Lazar believed these were the components of a nuclear reactor powered by an > element then unknown on earth: element 115, which, once dismissed as > fantastical, was synthesized into existence in a Moscow lab in 2003

The element isn't fantastical, and anyone with a basic understanding of chemistry would expect it to exist (albeit, not for very long); Lazar's attributed properties to it were (and are). As a side note, since 2010, the entire bottom row of the Periodic Table has now been filled out with synthetic elements (and names since 2016).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscovium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscovium)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is an epistemological truth here that is overlooked: for any non- reproducible phenomenon, physical or psychological, we can make no judgments on what happened.

The default answer is always going to be "no" for some people and "yes" for others. These are the folks who just have to have a firm answer. The actual answer is "nobody knows"

I also want to believe, so I tend to be extremely skeptical of any UFO stories. But looking throughout history, I have to admit that I am in no position to make a decision one way or another. A bunch of really respected guys made some observations of a thing with instrumental evidence that we don't understand? Cool. There's something we don't understand. Spinning up some tale of the atom bomb or aliens? That's just to sell books to the rubes. We don't know. That's okay.

 _If_ there are other intelligent lifeforms around, and _if_ they have any developmental parallels in their society to ours, they probably think of us as nothing more than a particularly advanced form of fungus. And _if_ they were to come here to observe, they'd either use a blind or come and go in such a way to create the kind evidential noise we currently see in the public record. So while I wish something is going to come along and settle this, it ain't going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think there's probably something to the UFO phenomenon. However I'm convinced Bob Lazar is a fraud. It's a tricky case because certain parts of his story are verifiable, like that he worked at Los Alamos and that his friends did see a moving light in the sky. The best explanation I've seen is here:

[http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other- strange...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange- places/looking-at-the-bob-lazar-story-from-the-perspective-of-2018/)

[http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other- strange...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange- places/bluefire-main/bluefire/particle-beams-and-saucer-dreams/)

The explanation is he worked on particle accelerators as a mechanic (not a physicist), and they were shooting particle beams into the sky. However since this is all likely classified he would be forced to stick to his UFO story.

<comment><USER5> Why would someone want to shoot a particle accelerator into the sky? (The article mentions plasma balls, but as a non physicist I wonder still "Why?")

The US military probably does not want plasma balls because they look pretty.

<comment><USER4> Radar spoofing, it's mentioned in the second link. But the author admits it's only a guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The argument that the government wouldn't be able to cover something like that up is kind of weak imo. They had just spent years keeping the Manhattan project under wraps and they were starting to ramp up all sorts of spying and secrets surrounding the Cold War. And for info that does get out(like numerous eye witnesses), we've seen real life examples of how effective the strategy of treating believers like they're nuts is when it comes to other government programs like PRISM. People talked about NSA spying for years but got dismissed until we got some big document dumps.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are so, so many atmospheric phenomenon that can produce 'ufos'. Every time someone sees a jetliner compressed by humidity and heat into a row of dots (the windows) around a cigar shape, they're convinced its the first time anyone has ever seen such a thing.

The burden of proof for a 'real' ufo is heavy, and nobody makes any real effort. Its reasonable to dismiss the entire topic as overheated descriptions of normal phenomena.

<comment><USER8> crown flashes and ball lightning have to be some of the strangest

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CPk0mKVnnCs](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CPk0mKVnnCs)

<comment><USER9> Whoa. It's a completely different class of dynamic phenomenon, unlike anything I've ever seen. Thank you for posting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unmentioned in the article (or I missed it because I just woke up) is the fact that lockheed's skunkworks started pumping out weird shit around the end of WWII. Seems like that would have some effect.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow. An interesting nod to the incredibly fascinating third season of David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks', whose brilliant eighth episode and the accompanying Secret History of Twin Peaks and Final Dossier novels were astounding examples of historical fiction. I was quite impressed as to just how deep that rabbit- hole went.

<comment><USER12> Every time I read a Paris Review article linked from here, I'm glad I did. They've published a lot of great stuff that you can easily read in a short sitting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Robert Jamison, a retired USAF nuclear missile targeting officer, told of several occasions having to go out and 're-start' [nuclear] missiles that had been deactivated, after UFOs were sighted nearby. Similar sightings at nuclear sites in the former Soviet Union and in Britain were related. ... The incidents were never officially explained."

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force-personnel-ufos- dea...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force-personnel-ufos-deactivated- nukes/)

</comment><comment><USER14> We're in an era where there's an arms race in the lightweight and unmanned aircraft space between the most powerful nations on Earth.

Of course there are going to be more UFO sightings domestically. Where else are we going to develop and test these things?

It's well known that the government is happy to feed conspiracy theorists disinformation in order to protect classified information[1], like the existence of secret weapons.

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

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a more dark and cynical outlook on UFOs and their continued presence in our culture. I watch Joe Rogan and I saw most of his interaction with Lazar as well as his even weirder interaction with Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge. In both cases I got the impression that they were dupes. Tom had these crazy stories about high-level military officers bouncing him around between each other. They all seemed to be giving him a wink-and-nudge that he was on to something and he should keep digging. They actively encouraged him to publicly share whatever he learned.

I have a suspicion that there is an old-boys-club of high-level military guys pushing UFO conspiracies for some purpose. At the very least, muddying the waters can help mask any civilian reports of potential classified aircraft. At the worst it can act as a lightening rod to redirect public thirst for unearthing military secrets. When guys like Bob Lazar and Tom DeLonge show up they must be happy to get free dissemination of their programs.

I'd even go so far to believe that Bob could have been one of a few that were set up by the military using an elaborate stage-show with the hope of creating false leaks. The idea of the military staging the kind of things Bob reports after psychologically filtering for types of people who believably exaggerate is not beyond possibility in my mind. You may not have to work very hard at tricking someone if you find the kind of person who really wants to be tricked.

<comment><USER14> > _I have a suspicion that there is an old-boys-club of high-level military > guys pushing UFO conspiracies for some purpose. At the very least, muddying > the waters can help mask any civilian reports of potential classified > aircraft. At the worst it can act as a lightening rod to redirect public > thirst for unearthing military secrets._

This is the thesis of the documentary "Mirage Men".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is very well-written, from my point of view it's a showcase of how the mind works to prevent cognitive dissonance.

The author compares meeting the neighbors with meeting _God_.

> My relationship to UFOs is like my relationship to God.

I call this "cognitive leverage". There's a sort of if-then structure: IF aliens exist THEN something-something-God. The THEN-clause is too psychologically immense so the brain invalidates the IF-clause and organizes thought and perception in alignment with the result.

> I want to believe, but find it hard.

> I wish I could see one for myself, as I wish I could see the Virgin Mary > floating above the yellow roses in my backyard.

Would you want to meet somebody that made that big a deal about it? It would be wildly uncomfortable for anyone but a megalomaniac, eh?

The reason the "G-men" don't openly talk about the UFOs, and the reason the spacemen don't land on the White House lawn, is right there: it would cause too much trouble because humans are nuts.

One classic way that this sort of denial of reality presents itself is in trivially invalid reasoning, for example when Cohen postulates that we can hide the existence of ultra-tech aircraft but not UFOs.

And here is a textbook rationalization:

> Belief in UFOs is really no stranger than any other sort of belief, no > stranger than a belief in prophets or ancient codes.

That fails to account for e.g. his own neighbor who "had been in the military when he saw the UFO." and who presumably believes in UFOs only because he has seen one. He wasn't raised in a UFO cult, eh?

</comment><comment><USER17> > Some suggest it was the first atomic bomb [that] sent a shock wave across > the universe. It registered in distant solar systems as deep-sea earthquakes > register with us. It was a clarion call. It said: DANGER! It meant the > previously harmless human race had gotten ahold of matches that could > immolate all of creation.

...or all of planet Earth, whichever comes first. Hint: it's not the former.

<comment><USER13> Assuming that UFO's are being controlled by an alien species and that they are in fact more frequent since the event of nuclear explosions on earth, then I think the safest assumption we can make is that the nuclear event sent a strong enough signal to notify them of our existence.

If that's the case, I don't think we should speculate too quickly on how they would interpret the signal.

However it does seem like there has actually been action taken by an alleged UFO. Look at the following link: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force- personnel-ufos-dea...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-air-force-personnel- ufos-deactivated-nukes/)

There's a youtube video with testimony given by a commander that I can't find at the moment, but it's pretty insane.

<comment><USER18> Well the problem with that is that they would need to be passing by only a few light years from earth to detect it, if it's even detectable on astronomical scales.

It's not that they came here centuries after the nuclear tests, because even if they have FTL that is the shortest time frame that makes sense unless a nuclear explosion causes some signals that some how move faster than light which both violates physics as we know it and would be really unlikely to go unnoticed based on just how much data we have from nuclear blasts and nuclear reactors.

<comment><USER13> yeah but you're also assuming that they're subject to the same dimensions of time and space as we are

<comment><USER18> The signals still needs to get there so unless they have listening posts or are in the neighborhood the timing doesn't match.

And in general the gamma burst form a nuclear explosion is so minuscule on galactic scales that it's unlikely they can even pick it up over the background noise.

A spectral analysis of the atmosphere of the earth and the detection of fission borne radioactive isotopes is a much more likely method which means they would need to be actively observing the earth to detect it and still the same light speed capped timeline is in effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The end of the article is really crazy when you look at it -- Stimson growing up w/ great-grandma who was told stories by GW as a child, advising Truman about the atomic bomb. That "one life" thing really shocks you into perspective...

In less than 200 years, we went from rioting farmers at the mercy of nature to the most powerful war-faring nation on the planet with the ability to turn a war in which other superpowers struggled. We went from the bloodiest battle numbering over a thousand dead to obliterating entire cities and hundreds of thousands of people with just two bombs.

I would've thought that as we raise the standard of life in our society, we'll inevitably create technology that will be used to become more efficient at killing, but it's actually turning out to be the opposite -- as we get better at waging war, we're developing the technology that will raise our standard of life.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, in 200 years _most of the developed world_ went from bickering nobles and rioting peasants to a bunch of powers capable of waging megadeath war. Industrialization is like that. Honestly, the transition of the Soviet Union was even more impressive, going from an agrarian backwood to a hydrogen- bomb-wielding superpower in less than fifty years, albeit cutting some corners in the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe it's hysteria, but I've seen 2 clear examples of UFOs/UAPs with my own eyes and I can assure anyone reading this that multiple types of craft either not of this world or ultra top secret are a part of our reality.

<comment><USER22> But what about this author who's never seen one who says they don't exist? Surely you'll reconsider what you saw!?!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _> I wish I could see one for myself, as I wish I could see the Virgin Mary floating above the yellow roses in my backyard. When I said this to my neighbor, who runs a blog called I Saw One Too, he shook his head sadly and said, "No you don't. You really don't."_

The one time I thought I was seeing something unexplainable out on the highway at night (thankfully revealed, after ten minutes or so, to be the oddest atmospheric occlusion of the moon I've ever seen), the one thought on my mind was "man, I really don't want to be one of those people who's seen a UFO."

<comment><USER12> > man, I really don't want to be one of those people who's seen a UFO

You just reminded me of the Saturday Night Live sketch _Close Encounter_. It's one of the funniest things they've done.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfPdYYsEfAE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfPdYYsEfAE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've always assumed people were seeing vehicles like this one [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar)

<comment><USER25> Oh, that thing. It was a lemon. A cool looking lemon, but a lemon.[1]

There are three videos:

#1: Classified SECRET. It hasn't flown yet, but it's going to be really great. See this cool mockup!

#2: Classified OFFICIAL USE ONLY. It flies! Well, hovers about 1m off the ground in ground effect. Wobbles too much. But with our elaborate testing program, a NASA wind tunnel, and maybe with more powerful engines and active stabilization, it can work!

#3: UNCLASSIFIED. Well, here we are flying this thing around the back lot at NASA Ames as a hovercraft. Not too useful, but cool looking.

It's a nice video history of a failed project.

Meantime, the Army was also funding the UH-1, the "Huey" helicopter, which started flying around the same time and was far more useful. So the Army killed off the disc project and ordered a few thousand Hueys. The USAF, meanwhile, had figured out that swept back wings worked in high-speed flight, and didn't need to fool with discs.

[1] [https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/army_saucer/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/army_saucer/)

<comment><USER26> Holy cow, the Hiller Flying Platform rocks!

<comment><USER25> If you're in Silicon Valley, there's one at the Hiller Aviation Museum. They have a good collection of strange VTOL craft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> First thing I thought of is this: [https://xkcd.com/1235/](https://xkcd.com/1235/)

I haven't ever heard of a corresponding increase in UFO videos. It's awfully convenient none of these suspected aliens buzz crowds full of people with 4k60Hz/40MP phone cameras.

<comment><USER28> Came here to post that exact link.

Cameras have never been better and in such widely available quantities, in just about every cell phone, and UFO pictures have never been worse.

Also Occam's Razor. Far more likely to be an Earth-bound phenomena.

Roswell: has technology to fly light years, but crashes in (possibly bad) Earth weather. Erm, ok.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/assessment-s...](https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/assessment- situation-statement-position-ufos.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> Where are the Instagram photos?

<comment><USER30> Any time a meteor or whatever goes anywhere near Russia, there's dashcam footage of it. If there are UFOs, they're avoiding Russia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I was hoping in the beginning that this would present some interesting new explanation for UFO ... hysteria, but it didn't really get there.

The argument from governmental incompetence isn't terribly compelling to me. The occasional leaks of vast cover-ups -- like the extent of the NSA's surveillance apparatus -- suggest that the government is in fact quite good at keeping sensitive information hidden from the public.

The UFO phenomena appears to me to track more closely with the rise of the extraterrestrial in popular sci-fi. It starts with the War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938, made even more compelling perhaps by the events of World War I and the technological advancements that would have seemed to be happening at break-neck speed at the time, and seen through the lens of a global tension as events began leading up to World War II. It was based on a story written in the late 1800s which was just another of many popular British invasion works of fiction at the time, just with an element of science fiction, owing to Wells' training as a science teacher.

From there we have the rapid progression of Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Space Ghost, Lost in Space, Star Trek, Unsolved Mysteries, The X Files, and a whole pile of other shows, movies, comic books, and magazines. Frequency of UFO reports [1] seems largely US-centric and tracks pretty well with metrics like number of hours of TV watched [2]. It also correlates well with the most common locations for the sightings: in rural areas, who have in recent years shifted their interest in conspiracy theories from the great UFO coverup and towards QAnon and the deep state and all that.

So while the nuclear age may have inspired some of the fiction, it looks to me like it's the entertainment age that created UFO mass hysteria. For the people involved, any phenomena they experienced -- strange lighting, whether real or imagined, or sleep paralysis, or the delirious effects of a sleep aid, or, maybe, proximity to experimental aircraft -- would all be best explained by the fiction they were most familiar with: extraterrestrials.

As cultural interest has shifted towards domestic issues, and we have begun to explore space ourselves, and ubiquitous surveillance has spread to every person's pocket but has yet failed to produce any clear, incontrovertible evidence for alien spacecraft, reports of UFO sightings have likewise been trending downwards.

[1]: [http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxevent.html](http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxevent.html)

[2]: [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when- did-tv-watching-peak/561464/)

edit: as I was writing this, ~reggieband posted a comment to this thread that pretty sweetly exemplified my main points: he was watching a Joe Rogan podcast, and thinks that Bob Lazar is being duped into being a part of a government conspiracy to conceal classified aircraft.

</comment><comment><USER32> more sightings, less pictures

</comment><comment><USER33> If UFOs are real, it's unlikely they started to appear only recently and most likely had Earth as their playground (vacation destination/ZOO), and maybe even originating life. Who knows, maybe this is some alien university project on how to make life on a distant planet from the scratch? We can observe that cells/DNA are programmed to adapt to local changes; we have no idea how they make sudden jumps for a more efficient design; maybe somebody was doing alien PhD in a better bipedal design in carbon-based life forms and just planted results here to see how they proliferate...

If you look at religions, they all resemble optimization algorithms to build civilizations with different attributes; one could seed different "rules" to different parts of the world and observe which rules become the dominant ones and which kind of civilizations they bring. Moreover, having a conflict between different civilizations that couldn't be reconciled by any other way than a total annihilation, it could provide a needed impetus for progress as the permanent conflict it brings forces people to develop quickly and throw out inefficient ways to survive. From this point of view, globalization might be worse for our progress as species; USA vs China competition might be a needed conflict to progress in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER34> > We can observe that cells/DNA are programmed to adapt to local changes; we > have no idea how they make sudden jumps for a more efficient design;

This totally misrepresents evolution. DNA isn't programmed to adapt to local changes, but rather it's _not_ programmed to perfectly reproduce without errors. Some errors are useful and get passed on, most errors are either useless or harmful and don't. And lots of small changes equals a large change — we don't have to be able to leap a mountain in a single bound to reach the top, either literally or metaphorically, just make a lot of small steps.

<comment><USER33> The problem with this thinking is that it completely disregards the time complexity/probability of that happening. So having certain "bits flipped" in DNA in a certain sequence in multiple representatives of the same species in the same location for the change to propagate has too low probability, especially when the number of instances of biological species was usually quite low due to constant struggle for survival; the complexity of growing e.g. a new leg because you somehow need it is again unthinkable with our current computing power (we can't even model that properly with reinforcement learning on fastest supercomputers). So as a conclusion, theory of evolution is fitting for small adaptive changes but is either too optimistic or outright wrong for large jumps inside species; we are obviously missing something very important there. Listening to Dawkins I can agree with his local adaptations arguments but then he suddenly makes a jump and says "and this happens all over millions of years" and that somehow makes that happen, which is a position of faith and not science. Better would be if biologists finally admitted we have no clue about mechanism that allows these jumps; references to random sampling are laughable and fitting freshmen at a university and I am saddened this is accepted - we are likely going to miss some great discoveries because somebody will be insisting on this ridiculous hypothesis instead of figuring out the proper algorithm behind it.

<comment><USER34> > the complexity of growing e.g. a new leg because you somehow need it is > again unthinkable with our current computing power (we can't even model that > properly with reinforcement learning on fastest supercomputers).

On the contrary, the _complexity_ is so trivial it's something I did in 30 minutes, on a laptop, in 2008, as a "prove it to myself" response to a young- Earth Baptist Creationist.

What we can't do is _simulate full-lifecycle organ-scale multi-cell protein folding in real time_ , but that's a very different thing.

<comment><USER33> What do you mean? You trivially simulated the process of figuring out that an animal needs to grow a new leg/organ in response to some environmental situation or to gain "an upper leg" against its adversaries? Are you serious?

<comment><USER34> Genetic algorithms are a very easy to implement form of AI. The hard part is to create a fitness function which does what you actually want — In the wild, reality and competitors are your fitness function, and none needs to be created; conversely, in a simulation the fitness function is necessarily artificial, and can be made to reach any goal you want, from "compose a song" to "write the rules for an AI for this video game so I don't have to" to "discover a new superconductor" to "design a clock" to "learn to walk"… etc., and all of those are real examples.

Separately, as an algorithm, evolution also has easily characterisable failure modes (local minima), and we do observe those failure modes in organic examples.

But, to emphasise, the fact artificial evolution requires us to write our own fitness functions is merely an implementation detail; these algorithms _work_ because _evolution works_. They produce novel solutions without the authors of the programs creating the solutions.

<comment><USER33> Genetic/memetic algorithms are just a rough approximation of a certain selection mechanism we see in the nature, like what Deep Learning is to brain. Making a conclusion that some trivial algorithm with even complicated custom cross-over function can be translated to real-world is as much fantasy as thinking one could upload consciousness to TensorFlow. I never understood how anyone calling themselves a scientist could make such a leap, but obviously it's popular and people made a "scientific" career doing just that...

<comment><USER34> > Genetic/memetic algorithms are just a rough approximation of a certain > selection mechanism we see in the nature

This is irrelevant to my argument. If the simplified version is capable of doing what you have said is unexplained, it is unreasonable to assume that the more complicated version will fail to be capable of the same.

> I never understood how anyone calling themselves a scientist could make such > a leap, but obviously it's popular and people made a "scientific" career > doing just that...

Occam's Razor. Start with the simplest possible model, make a prediction, look carefully at reality to see if you were wrong (an act which is easier the simpler the model), and only update the model when reality disagrees with it.

Me coding a genetic algorithm can easily reproduce the entirety of any specific human's genome if I pick the correct fitness function. Pretty pointless to do so beyond proof of concept, but proof of concept is enough to make the point in this case.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Infrastructures.org: Best Practices in Automated Systems Administration - <AUTHOR> http://infrastructures.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the places that DevOps came from.</comment>


NASA brings back its iconic "worm" logo to mark return of human spaceflight - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/nasa-brings-its-iconic-worm-logo-back-to-mark-return-of-human-spaceflight/ <comment><USER2> Am I allowed to really love them both? I feel like each has its place in branding the agency and being something that people look at and tie to exciting new exploration.</comment>


Find sites sharing the same IP address - <AUTHOR> http://sharingmyip.com/

<comment><USER2> Be aware that this site doesn't do what it claims: "See which web sites are sharing the same IP Address." The truth would be: "See which web sites that have previously been searched for on our site that shares the same IP"

Basically it will only show sub-domains within the domain you search for, unless previous searches for other domains happen to match the IP.

I tested this just to confirm: I searched for one of my domains (apr. 20 domains on the same IP) and only sub-domains showed up. I searched for another of my domains and the sub-domains+my previous search showed up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really. We seeded it with millions of sites/ IP addresses. But if yours are very small/new they wouldn't be there. But we do add each searched site in the db.

<comment><USER2> Small yes, new not so much (the oldest domain is from 1998).

But I think you are bypassing the point here somewhat. The point isn't that it only relies on previous searches, or on previous searches at all. The point is that it is not, and will probably never be a complete database, at least not the way things work as of now.

Just for fun I tried a couple of other tools that boast the same feature (<http://spyonweb.com> and <http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on- web-server/>) and they both found most of all of these sites without any problem.

The major difference here is your site has a nice clean interface with a very easily parseable source, something these two other sites definitely don't have.

Now, if you could manage the same results as these other sites maintaining the clean interface you have now, it would definitely be my future choice. But as long as there are other sites out there that provide more reliable results...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It was unable to detect any other website on my server, YouGetSignal I use a lot, and works well.

<http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/>

<comment><USER4> Its gmaps based visual traceroute is brilliant as well. I love that site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bing does this too with the ip: operator.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bing/MSN Search had this for ages in the form of query "ip:IP_OF_THE_SERVER" which would return a list of indexed websites having domains with this IP address.

I suspect this site uses Bing under the hood - finds the IP of entered website domain, queries bing and returns the results.

This is widely used by security folks when doing pen testing - even if you don't find any flaws on the targeted website, there's a great chance other websites won't be as secure if it's on shared hosting and such tools help to find those other websites.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use <http://spyonweb.com/>, which shows sites on the same IP address, using the same DNS servers, adsense publisher, or Google analytics account.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It has some cool options too. For example:

<http://sharingmyip.com/?site=ycombinator.com>

It finds related sub-domains being used, like wiki.ycombinator.com

Or for Cisco: <http://sharingmyip.com/?site=cisco.com>

It shows that some of their external domains are pointed to internal addresses (in the 10.0 range).

</comment><comment><USER8> Note that if a site is using a CDN like Akamai, the results may show some strange bedfellows and will be entirely dependent on the location of the host doing the lookup. Don't make the assumption that they're in any way related to each other or even that the authoritative origins are in the same hosting facility. Nice tool, though, does what it says and could be a useful check whenever you're considering implementing some draconian firewall rules.

</comment><comment><USER9> In modern distributed architectures, you might see a lot of completely unrelated sites on the same IP.

I used to work at one of the major CDNs, and we spent a lot of effort segregating some of our customers into separate IP space, so they wouldn't cause the rest of our customers to get firewalled by the likes of China.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Or that the owner of symbolics. com (first domain ever) <http://sharingmyip.com/?site=symbolics.com>

Also owns iblog. com, tablets. com, etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another one:

<http://sharingmyip.com/?site=facebook.com>

They have dev . facebook.com pointing to 10.30.0.50 (internal IP address).

</comment><comment><USER10> Not that anyone probably cares, but it doesn't work for domains that only have an IPv6/AAAA record. An interesting option there might be to see sites that share an IPv6 prefix of a certain length?

</comment><comment><USER11> I suppose then that somebody running off of GAE (my company) should see a huge number of sites.

Yup www.kymalabs.com brought back a couple pages.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm Quite confused by this.

I can see some spammy looking sites on the same ip as a small site I set up for a friend.

Should I be worried?

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't do much about 4 domains pointed to one IP and handled by apache vhosts config. But the good thing it does is that it co-relates previous searches to build its DB.

That's quite better than fail actually, it understands that the user is trying to test me :), in turn it benefits.

But definitely no results for first timers. Multiple sources (gps, wifi) could be used to build out a cell-id -> location DB in similar way.

</comment><comment><USER14> It seems this does not work for my sites.

</comment><comment><USER15> isn't it basically the same as <http://www.myipneighbors.com/> ?

</comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't really work. I have 5 domains pointing to one ip and this failed on all of them.</comment>


Vitamins Are a Waste of Money–And They're Not Helping You, Anyway - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/vitamin-bs/386126/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> Here's the pith:

> "At the base of it, we do need those 13 vitamins. If you don't have enough > of them, you'll die in often quite gruesome ways. Scurvy is a horrible > disease. It prevents your body from making collagen, which is the connective > tissue that holds your body together, so you sort of fall apart from > within—your teeth fall out, your connections all loosen, and you hemorrhage > and die. So I think it's important not to lose sight of the fact that we do > need vitamins. And there are a lot of people in the world who don't have > access to them—the latest estimate I read was 2 billion people [who are > vitamin-deficient]. If you give someone vitamin A and they're suffering from > nutritional blindness, which is a stage of vitamin A deficiency, they will > regain their sight, often within days. And that's crazy. It's like a miracle > drug. But it doesn't translate into the idea that we seem to want to have, > which is that if you can cure nutritional blindness with vitamin A, then if > you take 17 times that amount in a pill, you'll be able to see in the dark. > The idea that more is better, and more gives you superpowers, is not true."

Saying "vitamins are a waste of money" is arguing against the extreme case where somebody believes they'll gain super-powers from vitamin loading, but it doesn't seem to be directed at people who take vitamins to avoid deficiencies.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know why this keeps coming up. It's proven that a significant number of people are deficient in vitamin D, and also Magnesium I believe.

I'm also of the opinion that no one is getting enough potassium (but vitamins won't help with that).

<comment><USER4> Yes! Deficiencies could occur from multiple sources as well.

I found out from my doctor I was deficient in vitamin D and calcium probably due to diet I'm allergic to milk. So I started taking vitamin D and calcium supplements.

Later I found out from my personal genome study, that my body doesn't process vitamin B correctly, so I need much larger doses than the average person.

I think once people begin to get personalized genome information, a lot of misinformation surrounding diet,vitamins, and nutrients will be cleaned up.

<comment><USER5> where does one obtain a genome study for themselves?

<comment><USER4> Honestly I don't know of any official channels to get a study. I was friends with a Principal Investigator(PI) at a Biology Lab, and he let me run a personal sample. He also ran his own, and then we talked with some other PI's about what the results meant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Profiling Your AWS Lambda Functions - <AUTHOR> https://read.iopipe.com/a-tale-of-two-fibonacci-lambda-functions-6d4504d0b0ae <comment><USER2> So, what is it that iopipe really brings to the table here?

I'm not seeing anything about what iopipe is providing, just that it was somehow magically used to discover the problem with a recursive function.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I definitely should go into more detail as to what IOpipe is doing under the hood. But to answer your question, IOpipe is an agent that wraps your lambda handler and gathers metrics about it. In this article, I use the ProfilerPlugin, which additionally wraps the function with Python's cProfile profiler. The profile I download from the IOpipe dashboard comes directly from cProfile. Will revise the article to go into more detail, thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


Making your ruby fly - <AUTHOR> http://alisnic.net/blog/making-your-ruby-fly/ Inspired by http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/11/06/is-your-application-running-with-ruby-slow/ <comment><USER2> 2x improvement in my 'rake spec' runtime... not bad!

If you're using rbenv, you can pass CFLAGS to it on the command line, like so: `CFLAGS='-O2' rbenv install ...`

<comment><USER3> Better than 2x for me adding '-O3':

      time bundle exec parallel_rspec spec/
      ...
      778 examples, 0 failures, 28 pendings

Before - OS X (2.4GHz Core Duo 2):

      Took 319.461302 seconds
      real	5m26.322s
      user	6m16.837s
      sys	0m7.062s

After - OS X (2.4GHz Core Duo 2):

      Took 123.58472 seconds
      real	2m7.208s
      user	2m19.427s
      sys	0m5.414s

Before - Ubuntu (1.8GHz AMD Phenom quad core)

      Took 247.467126561 seconds
      real	4m8.867s
      user	9m41.552s
      sys	0m6.188s

After - Ubuntu (1.8GHz AMD Phenom quad core)

      Took 90.244449901 seconds
      real	1m32.865s
      user	3m41.434s
      sys	0m6.136s

<comment><USER4> Is that just with the CFLAGS, or did you include the Falcon patches?

<comment><USER3> CFLAGS (-O3) only!

Nearly factor of 3 improvement.

I think I'll repost this link next week when more people are in work mode. It could save a lot of time and CPU cycles for a lot of people. It's a shame the default isn't better (not sure if it is RVM issue or the Ruby package itself or if I can configure a user/system default build config).

<comment><USER4> Wow, that's impressive. My results weren't nearly as good - maybe 5-8% or so, but I'm at ~5.4s load time on an app that takes almost 30 sec on vanilla MRI, so that's not too bad.

It is indeed a shame the defaults aren't better. I wonder if there's a reason that it's not default. If not, maybe a pull request is warranted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a better understanding of CFLAGs in general: <http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-optimization.xml>

</comment><comment><USER6> That is 6x improvement in speed. Why cant some of these become default?

<comment><AUTHOR> Please note that this difference is only in this scenario (rake routes), it largely varies in other ones.

Also, a big part of falcon patch is the ruby 2.0 garbage collector, which obviously will be available in ruby 2.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone knows the CFlags for EC2 instances?

</comment><comment><USER8> for rvm

`rvm install ruby-1.9.3-p286 --patch falcon -n falcon`</comment>


Change `master` branch into `primary` - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/django/django/pull/2718 <comment><USER3> The title should mention that this is done in the Django database.

I've never thought at the history of the words `master` and `slave` when reading DB docs. I think primary/replica is as good as a choice.

</comment><comment><USER4> If this PR were made by a party which is NOT a confirmed troll, it might be a valid concern. Don't feed the trolls. And besides, you can name your local branch whatever you like.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also one that got accepted: [https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692](https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692)

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one who sees this as an extremely stupid move? I begin to think all this "pollitical correct" crap got into the heads of most english speaking people.

I hope all this crap will not become the norm.

<comment><USER7> This is "satire" by a group that thinks feminism is bad.

For future reference, the term "political correctness" is used exclusively in a derogatory way. The main idea is that some people are somehow controlling political discourse by objecting to certain terms and thereby requiring politicians (or whoever) to speak in a certain way even if they don't actually agree with the reasons to use the term.

This is, however, mostly wrong.

What is actually occurring is that some people (politicians and others) use language which degrades or marginalizes certain groups (think ethnic slurs, the word "faggot" etc). These groups then speak up and say "hey, that sucks, we're people too". People who are actually racist/homophobic/whatever then object because they're "not allowed" to say what they think. This isn't true; they are still (obviously) allowed to say what they think, people are just going to be pointing out that they are assholes. Which is as it should be.

Summary: nobody actually advocates for anything called political correctness. Some people are being assholes, others are telling them not to be assholes.

Why did I put "satire" in quotes? The thing which is being satirized is a tendency in the 1960s (50 years ago!) of feminist groups to remove the letters "man" from certain words as a symbolic gesture against an oppressive and patriarchal society. This is pretty much dead in modern feminism, even as symbolism. That is; it is a non-issue; nobody seriously wants to alter existing words, most people never actually wanted to alter existing words. The only people for whom it is still an issue are anti-feminists (read: misogynists) who want to create a straw-man of feminist ideas in order to further marginalize the concerns of women. Which is to say, this is pretty terrible satire.

So, what does feminism actually want? Equality for all people, even men.

Why is it called "feminism" then? Modern feminism grew out of the suffrage (voting-rights) movements of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when women were not allowed to vote because they were seen as being too uneducated, too emotional, inferior, etc. That's 51% of the human population that wasn't allowed to participate in politics.

A famous suffragist, Rebecca West, famously said: "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." Most people today would take this for granted, but still be suspicious of feminism. This suspicion is often fed by the strawman arguments of anti-feminists.

Why should men be feminists? Maybe you have a mother or a sister or a wife or a daughter; are they people? Should they have an equal chance in society? Should they be able to choose their own path in society or should they be confined by tradition or the whims of their male relatives? Maybe _you_ don't feel like you can fulfill the social roles for men; that is also a feminist issue. Basically: if you want a society where people are allowed to be who they want to be, you should be a feminist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Surely this... will make female developers understand their male counterparts take their concerns seriously.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think they missed an opportunity. They should have changed "master" to "mistress"...

<comment><USER9> It's like the world doesn't have enough problems for people to bring some obsolete meaning to words completely out of context. I think "mistress" is a very sound way to teach a lesson. Just recently somebody reminded me some obsolete meaning of "gal" and that it could be offensive to some. I think there are too many people trying to justify their existence with pseudo rights and freedoms. At the end of the day, all these small "victories" are used to take our attention away from the indisputable crimes that NSA and the likes are doing to us! Let's focus on solving real rights and freedoms problems!

<comment><USER10> Let's focus on reducing the acceptable words in the English language! Take false moral high ground! Then tell everyone they are oppressive moral reprobates! If everyone feels bad about being male or white (or both!) then surely no one will notice that the true oppressor is centralized power structures! IngSoc Double Plus Good! Choco-Rations are Up Today AND I'm FEELING FINE.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. Simpler English will help with dumbification of the populace. People can't spell already anyway. Idiocracy in the making!

Anyway, it's really pathetic that people get offended by words. Spoken language is one of the most effective tools of manipulation. If you feel bad, just because you heard the "N" word or "master" or whatever, you know what, you're weak and well-suited for one of the most ancient tools for exploitation. Men who go in jail or kill somebody, just because somebody used the right word to trigger their irrational and destructive behavior - <USER2> are weak, not manly.

Anyway, ignore the words, focus on the meaning, but, I guess, it's too hard for some! And those don't even get when you're truly offending them with phrases their simple minds cannot process - sarcasm is not for everyone!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rooms for engineers in the Bay Area? - <AUTHOR>

I just moved to the Bay Area, recently started a company, and would love to live with great roommates from Hacker News.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants smart, ambitious, and curious roommates, so maybe we can get a list of available hacker housing here, from hacker hostels to homes with an empty room anywhere from SF to Palo Alto.  Here are the hacker hostels I know of: Stonehenge - https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/137518 Chez JJ - https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/267638 HackerHome - https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/583680  Any others, or more long-term arrangements?  Also, can anyone give feedback on the quality of the places above? <comment><USER2> I stayed at Stonehenge for about 3 months last summer, great place. First hacker house I'd ever lived at (and I'll admit I wasn't sure about the idea at first), but it turned out to be a lot of fun.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out www.Chezjj.com</comment>


Missing Interpol President Meng Hongwei 'under Investigation' in China - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.co.ck/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2167213/french-police-launch-hunt-missing-chinese-head-interpol-meng <comment><USER2> A non amp link would of been nice [https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2167213/fr...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2167213/french- police-launch-hunt-missing-chinese-head-interpol-meng)</comment>


Clean Programming Language: the insanely great, the weird and the short-sighted - <AUTHOR> http://fpmatters.blogspot.com/2009/04/clean-programming-language-insanely.html <comment><USER2> He's forgetting one important thing. Compared to other functional languages Clean has virtually no community. That said, the things they (the language developers) can build are pretty impressive. Their iTasks workflow system (unfortunately there is only a very old web page online, but I've seen a recent demo at a conference) is very cool.

<comment><USER3> This has always struck me as kind of strange.

Many, if not all, languages are defined in large part by their communities. Java is for the unwashed masses, Ruby is undisciplined, monkey-patching lunatics, Haskell is friendly, brilliant, and (for the most part) ignored. It almost seems like languages are just touchstones around which to build a community (by writing libraries, frameworks, etc.). The differences between the actual languages seem much less important that the idioms within the languages.

(For the record: I know Python, MATLAB, Lisp, and Java.)

<comment><USER4> "languages are defined in large part by their communities"

For the longest time, Clean wasn't open sourced. _These days_ , the chances of a non open source language gathering a strong community around it is hard (except maybe for Microsoft languages), and even when a community forms, it is likely to remain small. I for one, would never put my time in to a community around a closed source language.

<comment><USER5> I don't think that Microsoft is an exception to that, actually. C# didn't really start gaining popularity until AFTER ECMA ratified it as an open standard (same for the .NET platform and the CLR).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's aging Mac Pro is falling behind Windows rivals - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3052871/computer-hardware/apples-aging-mac-pro-is-falling-far-behind-windows-rivals.html <comment><USER2> Apple is waiting for the successor to the aging X99 Intel chipset. Intel has released the 100 series chipset but there are only max 20 PCIe lanes compared to the 40 max PCIe lanes possible with X99. this means the only possible configurations with the 100 series chipsets is x16,x4 or x8,x8,x4. With PCIe being the central bus with the Mac Pro it doesn't make sense for Apple to have released a new Mac Pro yet. The chipset technology in the current Mac Pro is still top of the line. Sure, you can get new processors with more cores and DDR4, but the number of PCIe lanes and memory speed/latency is optimal for the Mac Pro as as of now there is no better option for them to build a successor.

<comment><USER3> Intel's newest Xeon processors no longer work with the consumer chipsets such as X99, a Xeon class chipset must be used. If Intel was going to release a new chipset for Xeon, they would have released it with the E5 v4 last week.

It's quite possible Apple was waiting for E5 v4 and is still waiting for AMD Polaris or nVidia Pascal, though.

<comment><USER4> Some people actually prefer the workstation class mb and there ones designed for use in place of x99

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is worth mentioning that many developers were left out in the cold even when the cylindrical Mac Pro was originally announced. I care about CPU speeds and storage, not so much about the GPU, so the form factor and dual-GPU architecture of the new Mac Pro was a set of bad tradeoffs. I never wanted to pay for an extra GPU, and the cost of attached Thunderbolt drive arrays is astronomical.

I hope Apple will release a "developer machine": something with tons of CPU power, easily expandable internal storage, and a mid-range single GPU. And for heaven's sake, don't try to make it small, thin, or round. I'd buy it in an instant.

<comment><USER6> What does a modern developer do now? Bear with this or an MBP? Cross compile?

<comment><USER7> I am primarily a Mac/iOS developer, but occasionally have to do CPU or GPU intensive stuff. I use a macbook for most of my work but have a windows desktop machine for when I need it. (Ironically, the beefy windows machine was cheaper). For example: lightmap baking.

Switching between the two is annoying.

<comment><USER8> > _Ironically, the beefy windows machine was cheaper_

That's logical, since Apple focuses on all other aspects of a machine than raw specs first (construction, size, weight, battery life, trackpad, screen, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The same is true for notebooks too. Compare the top models of the Dell XPS 15 [0] with the 15" Macbook Pro (Retina) ranges [1]:

6th generation Quad-core i7 vs 5th generation Quad-core i7

32GB DDR4 vs 16GB DDR3

GTX 960M vs R9 M370X

3840x2160 4K display vs 2880x1800 'Retina' display

Thunderbolt 3 vs Thunderbolt 2

Both 1TB SSD

1.78kg vs 2.04kg

$3049 vs $3199

It's kind of sad that a few years ago Apple was the one leading notebook technology, but now they are just playing catch up and don't even seem to be trying.

[0] [http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd?oc=c...](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd?oc=cax15w10s1631&model_id=xps-15-9550-laptop)

[1] [http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook- pro?product=MJLT2L...](http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook- pro?product=MJLT2LL/A&step=config#)

<comment><USER10> I think it's worth mentioning that Windows really still isn't ready for "retina" prime time. Setting a > 100% scaling results in all kinds of GUI horror all over the place, especially in 3rd party apps. Things are better now than they were 2 years ago, true, but still not a good situation.

On the other hand, there is pretty much no problem anywhere on the Mac. Apple just handled it. Pretty much all 3rd party apps were updated within a few months and most just "worked" without modification. A remarkable feat, at least to me.

The Mac is still the only way to go if you want a 100% retina desktop experience without glitches.

That said, I have no clue if linux is better in this regard.

So I guess my point is that the 4K on a Windows laptop is largely wasted. The GPU is not up to driving it for games and the GUI is not up to driving it for daily use. A shame, truly.

Disclaimer: I have a 2013 MacPro (with 2 4K Dell monitors) and love it. I use it for Photoshop and software dev.

<comment><USER11> I have 150% scaling on Windows 10 and I haven't noticed anything strange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bla bla bla ... it should be understood by now that Apple don't care about these niche markets and will do whatever they want.

The only people using Apple workstations are because they either really want to use a MAC or because the software they use is not available on PC. In both cases they won't buy a cheaper and faster PC.

I'm a disgruntled Apple NON-customer : they never created the desktop I wanted (basically an affordable version of the old MAC pro line) or a phone I could afford without having to sell a kidney on the black market. So I use Windows and Android with the satisfaction of knowing that I use both of the bests keyloggers disguised as an OS on the market.

</comment><comment><USER13> Apple has been steadily been abandoning the "creative pro" market for a long time. The two most recent indicators were dropping Final Cut Pro 7 for Final Cut Pro X, which was not ready for professional editing at release. The new Mac Pro confirmed the move away from the pro market, since it only supported one CPU. For compressing feature films, dual CPUs are a must.

<comment><USER14> > which was not ready for professional editing at release

Some would argue that that sounds more like a project management failure than a change in market strategy—that they shipped a beta product as done, that someone screwed up somewhere, etc.

I don't think so, though; I think Apple just made a correct call in shipping the "core" of the product early (in the same way most enterprise products get 'Early Access' releases) to allow actual professionals to start evaluating the _architecture_ of the software and tailoring their pipelines to fit it. Professional-use software doesn't get used on day 1 of release; it gets played with by an internal pipeline infrastructure team for six months while the working craftspeople continue to use the stable pipeline.

Handing out something that would be "patched into usefulness" at right about the same time it would actually be put into use makes sense, in strictly consequentialist terms, for both Apple and the professional studios—although Apple latching onto that release to do a bunch of marketing of their product as if it was usable for indies already, could be seen as a bit scummy.

> since it only supported one CPU. For compressing feature films, dual CPUs > are a must.

This might not be the case right now (I don't know much about video encoding), but encoded video has keyframes, and effectively you can "chunk out" a set of raw frames to become a keyframe plus its successor interstitial frames, and then parallelize on those chunks, right?

In which case, I'd expect Apple figured that even if CPU-based compression is currently _en vogue_ for this use-case, it'd be obviated by GPU-based highly- parallel compression soon enough, making the dual GPUs a much more significant benefit and the single CPU a much less significant drawback.

Tell me if I'm getting that wrong; I honestly have no idea.

<comment><USER15> When FCP X shipped there were _howls out of outrage_ from the video community.

FCP 7 had made a name for itself as a solid professional solution. Then they changed it. Completely. And they didn't ship it as a beta for review. They shipped it as a finished product.

The professional reaction was best summarised as "WTF is this shit?"

It's kind of settled down now, but a lot of pro users have either moved elsewhere or continued with FCP 7. Meanwhile support software like Motion hasn't had a proper update since forever.

New users have come on board, but they're mostly students, semipros, small- time boutiques, and YouTube dabblers. FCP X is certainly usable for pro work, but it has some incredibly obvious and annoying shortcomings that make it really hard to integrate into a commercial workflow.

It's hard not to get the impression that Apple is trying to become a blingy toy factory, and not a cool computer company that makes cool tools for cool professionals.

This is unfortunate, because by losing the cool Apple is also becoming less bling. It's starting to look like a middle-aged guy trying to dance with teenagers at a party - and nothing about that is good in any way.

So - MacPro? Maybe not. It looks an update would push the cost over five figures. Considering that many pros are using standard software (i.e. Adobe CS) it's much easier and cheaper to get better and faster PC hardware.

This is why killing FCP loyalty was a bad idea. If FCP had kept its user base, a MacPro would have sold itself. Nuking a strong software user base also killed demand for the hardware.

MacPro sales are rumoured to be unspectacular - and this was easily preventable.

<comment><USER16> > New users have come on board, but they're mostly students, semipros, small- > time boutiques, and YouTube dabblers.

True, but the new users might not be as great in number because the FCP X outrage had another effect. You noted the pros leaving it, but that also included a fair number of schools. FCP X is most definitely not FCP 7 so all the teaching material gets thrown. Also, FCP X is not really a pro app. If the school is going to buy all new books and build new class material why not go with software made by a pro company. They are already teaching other Adobe products so its not much of a jump to add Premiere. Its popular and integrates well.

So, I'm not sure the up and coming student is really going to use FCP X.

Once you switch to Premiere, your dependance on OS X starts to leave and the hardware on the Windows side is a whole lot better. I had a lifelong die-hard Mac user ask me about building a PC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What I'd like to see is a new 15" MacBook Pro - with USB C

<comment><USER18> But not only 1 USB C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Mac Pro has not been updated in 841 days (av 449) The Retina Macbook Pro has not been updated in 325 days (average 214).

Although chipset cycles could be part of the delay, I wonder if virtual reality hardware and software support could also be part of the plan too.

further reading: [http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/](http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/) [http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-vr- project/](http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-vr-project/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Considering all the fuss Apple made about the new design of the Mac Pro it is strange they have not kept it top of the line. I guess they care more about the 5K iMac and MacBook being super thin and pretty.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's really strange. A lot of effort was put into that Mac Pro and it's components. Maybe sales were not as high as Apple expected?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Apple is really starting to suck in the enterprise, windows desktop OS is coming along but still has flaws, android is the future of computing. this is coming from and industry certified apple tech who has been certified on every major make of PC as well. Most dip shots don't need a real computer for surfing the interwebs. google chrome does fine for most stuff out there. Virtualization and web platforms like vision and AWS give low powered devices infinite hardware and software capabilities. Where does a desktop even fit in this world any more, besides the IT office or possibly the accounting offices. I had an apple rep to tell me to drop Open Directory in favor of Active Directory. I am not sure they even care about enterprise customers any more and just want to sell stupid IOS devices they can brick whenever they want you to buy a new one and release an update to kill it. Who would ever want to try and manage mac OS with Active Directory, that is really dumb. I might as well get Windows OS or google chrome OS and manage it with native tools for the OS.

<comment><USER22> I almost see what you see. In our large enterprise Android is not really even a player. Macs do kind of suck especially for some of our multifactor security requirements(CAC/PIV cards). Windows rules the desktop and iOS is the preferred mobile platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> They will probably be updated at the coming WWDC in june alongside the macbook and macbook pro.

</comment><comment><USER24> There's an argument to be made for Apple selling a go-to workstation for making VR content. They might not care about consumer VR (for now), but in terms of their history, it feels a bit weird for them not to support the nascent VR content field.

<comment><USER7> What history? Apple was never very big in the 3D content creation biz. Their 3D support has always lagged a few years behind windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Basically saying that Apple's release cycle is slower for desktop and laptops than the PC counterparts.

Nothing really new here. Because there are several PC makers. Even if all of them releases new hardware in the same rate as Apple (say 2 year generation), having 3 of them can easily interscale release dates and make it look like PCs are releasing new stuff much faster.

<comment><USER14> I think, also, that Apple is serving an entirely different _market_ with the Mac Pro than the PC makers are (mostly) serving on the high end.

PC makers can get a continuous incremental revenue stream from gamers and independent professionals. But most Mac Pros are likely sold to companies (even if just tiny one-man companies) that refresh them on a set schedule rather than whenever a shiny new thing comes out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've got one of these and love it and I know a few other developers who do too. The main negatives I've seen are from people who want to stick PC GPU cards in for gaming. As a developer desktop computer it's a joy to use, virtually silent and can power multiple 4K displays. It's a shame Apple hasn't done an update though.

</comment><comment><USER27> What about the Thunderbolt display? It is much older and still being offered. At the same launch price.

</comment><comment><USER28> But the Mac Pro is round. That's the important thing. Other lame computers are square. The cool Apple computer is round. That's what's important.

Half the people who buy that thing probably never use more than the browser and some music/video play apps.

</comment><comment><USER29> Apple earned only 6-7billion last quarter selling Macs, in a quarter with 50-60 billion in overall sales. [1]

I think there's a real possibility Apple will stop selling computers. They already don't care about the "high-end creative" market. OTOH I don't know what people would use to develop for iOS/Watch, but...you heard it here first.

[1] [http://www.statista.com/statistics/263428/apples-revenue- fro...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/263428/apples-revenue-from- macintosh-computers-since-first-quarter-2006/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I find it hard to believe. iOS is not ready for prime time and Apple refuses to create a Surface like device and merging iOS with OSX.

<comment><USER29> > not ready for prime time

I'm not sure what counts as "prime time" if 75 million phones sold in one quarter doesn't?

[http://www.wired.com/2016/01/apple-sold-a-record-number- of-i...](http://www.wired.com/2016/01/apple-sold-a-record-number-of-iphones- but-just-barely/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Prime time, as in being your main OS.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Endangered baby dolphin dies after swimmers pass it around for selfies (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/02/18/endangered-baby-dolphin-dies-after-swimmers-pass-it-around-for-selfies/ <comment><USER2> (2016)</comment>


Celebrity Bond - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_bond <comment><USER2> Dostoevsky's _The Gambler_ was written to get him out of something like that. I couldn't find a good web page with the story, but [https://books.google.com/books?id=heVDCgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;a...](https://books.google.com/books?id=heVDCgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;pg=PA211&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lpg=PA211&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;dq=dostoevsky+debt+gambler+police+station&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;ots=wv904AjhSo&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;sig=-7A7w3gLrjt69Nyx6GdHEcBD0cw&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;ved=2ahUKEwip_evhiJ3dAhUE- lQKHRJ2CuQQ6AEwDXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;q=dostoevsky%20debt%20gambler%20police%20station&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;f=false) has the basics.

The story is better than that, though. He was working on one of his great novels as a serial (Crime and Punishment, I think), so he had to keep writing that during the day. But he had to produce another novel at the same time in order not to lose his future royalties to this publishing contract, which he had signed to pay off his own gambling debts. He was in despair, but a clever friend found the star pupil at the local shorthand academy and Dostoevsky dictated _The Gambler_ to her in the evenings while she got it down in shorthand (a new technology at the time) and later transcribed it. They only had a few weeks, and finished it at the last minute, but the publisher had cunningly closed his office that day. He was no match for Anna, however, who took the manuscript to the nearest police station and got a receipt, rescuing Dostoevsky's career. Then he married her.

<comment><USER3> If this is true, then the linked Wikipedia article needs to be changed where it says "pioneered in 1997 by rock and roll investment banker David Pullman through his $55 million David Bowie bond deal."

<comment><USER2> I'm sure it wasn't technically a bond—it just fits in the same bucket in my head. I'll change "one of these" to "something like that" above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _In addition to getting money upfront, artists additionally retain ownership of their work and do not have to pay tax on what the IRS considers a loan, since yet-to-be received royalties are re-characterized by the bond agreement as loan interest and principal payments._

Similar tax advantages present themselves to those who borrow money using stocks as collateral.

 _Borrowing against a stock portfolio is nothing new. Margin loans have been around for a long time. But securities-based loans offered by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and other large wealth managers aren 't margin loans. The proceeds aren't supposed to be used to buy more investments. Marketing materials commonly suggest using a securities-based loan to buy a vacation home, or cover retirement expenses, without needing to sell your investments._

[https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/11/19/wall-streets- hotte...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/11/19/wall-streets-hottest-loan- product-borrowing-agains.aspx)</comment>


Andreessen Horowitz invests $15 million in Rap Genius - <AUTHOR> http://rapgenius.com/Marc-andreessen-why-andreessen-horowitz-is-investing-in-rap-genius-lyrics

<comment><USER2> Rap Genius is particularly awesome because it kind of started as a legal hack (you can't just publish lyrics directly, due to copyright, but crowdsourced line by line like this is ok), but then turned into something far more useful than the existing (legal, regulated, expensive) alternatives.

I mean, they have Nas and others coming on the site as Verified Artists explaining their own songs.

$15mm is a lot of money, but it was probably a situation of Rap Genius having enough growth to command a high valuation, and a16z needing a certain percentage to make their investment acceptable to themselves.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great (and funny) way to announce funding.

RapGenius' was one of most popular presentations during the YC prototype day exactly because they successfully pull off fabulous antics like this.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Check this out in particular: <http://rapgenius.com/1107426>

Basically Rap Genius developed a feature that Andreessen himself wanted to build directly into the browser in 1993! Whole thing makes a lot more sense with that context

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't know Rap Genius was a YC graduate, but I should have -- what they're doing is basically what every lyrics site of questionable legality should have been doing years ago, and they're doing it very well.

SongMeanings specifically comes to mind as a site which seems to have stagnated considerably after initially having a strong basis of user contribution.

(By the way, there's already a lot of poetry and prose on Rap Genius -- for example, <http://rapgenius.com/search?q=shakespeare>)

</comment><comment><USER6> ilan, one of the founders of rap genius here..

we're ready to blow up the bank accounts of brilliant engineers (rails, ios) and designers who want to help us create the internet talmud™

if you're interested, send links to stuff you've built or any work you're proud of! email@example.com

<3

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats Lemon. Ben and Marc are both ridiculous Gs in their own right, and I'm glad you guys hooked it up.</comment>