Scared of having a gap on your CV after that long trip? Fear no more - <AUTHOR> http://www.backpackconsulting.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm a Software Engineer and have taken multiple extended trips leaving "gaps" on my CV.

I became a snowboard instructor and kayak guide for a couple of years, then worked for a couple as a programmer, then spent two years driving Alaska->Argentina, before working 4 years in IT again. Now I'm taking 3+ years off to drive around Africa.

In my experience, "gaps" on my resume have not been an issue. In fact, I put that time front and center, to show my resourcefulness, ability to teach myself Spanish, think on my feet, etc. etc. I'm asked about it in interviews, and I've never seen it affect my chances negatively.

While I have not climbed the corporate ladder like my friends I graduated with 10 years ago, I have not experienced any problems finding work because of "gaps" on my CV. I genuinely think that's a common myth created to stop people taking time off.

<comment><USER3> Didn't you also support Unicef in Kongo and helped fertilize endangered Rhinos in Tanzania? You must have forgotten about that - ah yeah, and the novels you wrote during your sabbatical while travelling down the Ganges on a house boat ...

<comment><USER2> I assume you're trying to call me out for lying?

This is me - [http://theroadchoseme.com](http://theroadchoseme.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who has backpacked while coding, this is terrifying:

> Backpack Consulting connects skilled travellers who want to discover the > world with companies who are looking for specialized help. In return for > volunteering help, companies offer the opportunity to add relevant work > experience to your CV while you travel, plus free accommodation.

Travelers who can code can still make a killing working remotely. There are tons of resources today to connect you with companies that are willing to do remote, and it's not hard to pick up $40-60/hr work on Freelancer or Elance if you are an English speaking Westerner (reverse discrimination is big on those sites).

<comment><USER3> Don't think that is true anymore ... there are lots of qualified Malaysians, Indonesians, Indians and Pakistanis who will work for $10 an hour and be happy about it.

<comment><USER4> Speaking from experience, there are a lot of people looking for Westerners with a $40-60/ hour budget, which is too cheap for Westerners and too expensive for South Asians. It doesn't have to do with qualification, it has to do with reverse discrimination. Their ideal is to get Westerners at a discount, because whether right or wrong these people perceive trust, communication, and quality to be greater working with a Westerner even, if that Westerner is working out of hostels and coffee shops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You are paid only in food and accommodation. This initially stuck me as terrible, but then I noticed that the company only hooks you up with startups _local_ to where you are travelling. This is not remote work so do not expect 'back home bucks'.

The requirement for a LinkedIn page is sub-optimal. Allow a Github login plus CV, maybe?

<comment><USER2> It's also terrible when you're traveling outside the first world because food and accommodation are insanely cheap to the point they're almost free.

<comment><USER5> Probably not compared to the local salary, which you will not be paid more than I expect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sort of thing might turn you off:

> We only select the best travellers to offer start-ups some great help. To > quickly show us that you are one of the best, we kindly ask you to sign in > with LinkedIn.

<comment><USER7> Plus a linkedin profile only really shows if someone is skilled or not at presenting himself in a good light. It's not necessarily a useful skill for the startups in question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wouldn't this be illegal in most countries? Most countries wont let you work on a tourist visa, and it is more difficult to get a working visa.

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily, because it's work under the table (i.e you're not getting paid) meaning you're doing it for a friend/gift type of way

<comment><USER10> No, if you're being compensated, that's pay. Otherwise it smacks of escorts' "You're paying me for time, anything that happens between two consenting adults ..." wink wink nudge nudge

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "In return for volunteering help, companies offer the opportunity to add relevant work experience to your CV while you travel, plus free accommodation"

Couldn't you just do low-end work via Upwork, Freelancer, or the like?

What happens if the startup isn't pleased with your work mid-way through your time there? Seems this could be easily abused.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like the idea very much. I have been traveling myself for 3 years now and have been envied by a lot of like-minded travelers who are not in the comfortable position to be able to work remotely for the same client all the time (zero acquisition, secure position).

While it is really easy to find _something_ , finding something in ones area of expertise is much harder - and "waited tables in Cambodia" really does not add much value to a UI-designer's CV.

So yes, thumbs up and all the best to the project!

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think anyone would like to work while traveling to see the world. For people who do, I think the only legal way would be for backpackconsulting to employ the traveler in their home country and have them do remote work. Even then I think most countries would require a business visa if the traveler is in direct contact with the client. I would be interested to know how the company plans to deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER13> You we're on sabbatical.

I've used this to describe time I took off in my earlier 30's to do various volunteer work and travel. Never an issue. Most folks look at it and say something like, "Cool, I should have done that"

</comment><comment><USER14> Similar to [https://www.worldpackers.com](https://www.worldpackers.com) which is a Brazilian startup.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well this is not advertising spam

<comment><USER10> There's a fine line, but it's considered acceptable to show off your startup here.</comment></comment>


Dragon Helmet: Open-source collaboration that aims to create a high tech helmet - <AUTHOR> http://dragon.computer/ <comment><USER2> I am not sure I want hard components located inside a helmet. I was hit on my motorcycle, head on, and Superman-ed into the car that had crossed into my lane.

The helmet saved my life, quite probably. It was so effective that Buell wanted it back to study it. Other than smashing my hands and one ulna, I was just a bit battered and bruised but the helmet was a wreck. The bike was a complete loss. There were pics online, they probably still are.

Anyhow, unless you're going to end up with a heavy over-sized monstrosity, the electronics are going to take up space in the padding. I may be biased, but I'm kind of partial to that padding.

By the way, get certified helmets. Inspect your helmet for damage on a regular basis. Replace damaged parts. Replace any helmet that has been involved in an accident involving any force to the helmet.

Of all those, a certified helmet seems to be the more pressing issue. I see many people wearing novelty helmets that are just as likely to cause additional injury as they are to prevent injury.

Ride safe.

<comment><USER3> From the sample videos I'm not sure if it's intended to be used on a bike. It seems to be popping up almost full screen windows, which looks insanely dangerous to me if on a bike. The video on their page is someone presumably using it / a concept of it, while walking.

<comment><USER2> I didn't watch the video. Like the sibling post, I can't imagine too many people meandering around with a helmet on, unless the task requires a helmet. Even those tasks don't always get people wearing a helmet.

The picture looks like a motorcycle helmet and, if it's not, that may be even worse. People will think it is a protective helmet and wear it as such. This is a problem already, as they sell novelty helmets that don't meet DOT specs.

DOT spec'ed helmets have a sticker on the back. I absolutely will not ride without one. I also insist on wearing one while snowmobiling, unless I'm just moving it into the garage or something.

<comment><USER4> I could see the helmet for regular use, but only if followed up with billowing black robes _and_ a cloak. Nothing less will suffice for the mankind's absolute creation.

It will of course need to include climate control systems[0] for the summer, and a voice modulator[1] would be nice too.

[0]: [https://youtu.be/wxL8bVJhXCM?t=52s](https://youtu.be/wxL8bVJhXCM?t=52s)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQeP6GWU0e4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQeP6GWU0e4)

<comment><USER2> I have heated helmets and heated snowmobile suits. They are pretty much as awesome as you might imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if the website is _deliberately_ vague, or the proposers of this project just don't know what it's going to be yet. There's not really any mention of why it would be useful, what it would _do_ , and why anyone would want to build one.

      * It's unlikely to be a motorcycle helmet because sharp embedded electronics inside a helmet is a recipe for head injury
      * It might be useful on a bicycle (for couriers, etc), but having windows popping up while cycling is a pretty bad idea
      * It might be useful for walking around (but probably not because it would look stupid)

Honestly, this is frustrating to read because I still can't figure out _what it 's for_.

<comment><USER6> This line about the software running on it seems to have a hint:

> _Dragonfire is the open source virtual assistant project for Ubuntu based > Linux distributions. She will serve to the user of the helmet as a command > and control interface so that you will be even able to order physical > operations just by your voice commands and your eye movements._

but yes, they could be a lot clearer...

On the other hand, the page looks to be a work in progress. The armour links go nowhere, and the armour repository has only one directory (though it seems like the intent is to have many).

It seems like they're building an opensource, cloudless Jarvis. I must say I do like the cloudless aspect.

<comment><USER5> I saw that, but there's no explanation of what the virtual assistant will do in context of the helmet (automate emails? terminal commands? maps and navigation? cowsay?).

As for the rest of the armour links... I never understood the point of submitting something to HN that was barely more than a landing page. Just seems a bit misjudged, is all.

<comment><USER7> cowsay is definitely the killer app for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see a lot of confusion in the comments about "is it a motorcycle helmet?" If you scroll past the picture to read the _first two sentences_ I think it's pretty clear.

> From air pollution to high demand on smart wearable technologies there are > many emerging problems for people who live in crowded cities. Very soon we > will need to cover our nostrils and mouths with a filter to protect our > health against inevitable air pollution.

It's a wearable computer placed on your head, under the assumption that you'll want to wear full head-cover anyway.

<comment><USER9> What? To me nothing about those first two sentences(or any of the other sentences) indicate it's a moto helmet. The pictures sure do, but none of the text makes this clear it's for motorcycles instead of bicycles.

<comment><USER10> Right, because it's clearly not intended for either. It's a head computer in he form of a helmet. The only protection they want to offer is against pollution.

<comment><USER9> Yup. I asked on their issue tracker and the creator clarified: [https://github.com/DragonComputer/dragon.computer/issues/1](https://github.com/DragonComputer/dragon.computer/issues/1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Air pollution is not demonstrably inevitable.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_(United_States)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_\(United_States\)) as a counterexample.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that stuck me as a bizarre thing to say. Air pollution has declined in just about every developed country. Trends in power generation and electric vehicles point in the direction of even less urban air pollution in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why?

<comment><USER14> You're being downvoted but I have to agree I don't see any real-world use cases for this. It's too dangerous to use while riding a bike and I'm not going to walk around with a helmet on, talking to a virtual assistant. It may be useful in some kind of industrial environment with AR applications, but then again a helmet is not the most practical/comfortable item to wear for long periods of time.

<comment><USER15> Honestly I think they're using the helmet as a prototype for a smaller device that will eventually be built once someone solves the "wearable vision" problem.

<comment><USER14> Possibly, but I still can't imagine talking to a virtual assistant anywhere except while driving or cooking. I think a virtual assistant integrated with the head up display of a car would be much more useful than wearables assuming we can keep people from hacking them and turning them into a major safety hazard by watching youtube videos while driving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sorry I know this is probably just a speculative project at the moment, but why would anyone would anyone want to have a view blocking video while walking around? At least with smart phones you can instantly look away if you need.

</comment><comment><USER17> "I have great ideas and can produce some graphics and a decent looking web page. Now I just need to find someone to help with the actual work behind the product..."

</comment><comment><USER18> Looking at the GitHub page for it, it seems like an already dead project that is desperate to be revived, but it's just not happening. This is a bad idea in its current state. As some others have said, this project just seems very poorly constructed. There's no target audience, usefulness, or real world applications, just a _very_ open ended project.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wearable tech is incredibly interesting, but I have to be able to imagine myself actually...well, wearing it. Google glass failed primarily just on that (well, that and the people around you not wanting to be filmed).

</comment><comment><USER20> Just out of curiosity, did the makers of this ever place Runescape? There are so many Runescape references haha, such as the "dragon helmet", "dragon armour", "dragonfire" shield, etc.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hell yes, I have been thinking about the same thing. Between all the assholes smoking cigarettes in the streets, to wanting a phone strapped to my head for AR passthrough. You have my brain.

</comment><comment><USER22> Thanks to this I found out about Dragonfire, looks very cool!

</comment><comment><USER23> This could potentially be interesting in space. To be able to bring up repair instructions etc. on the display during a spacewalk might have applications.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why a full suit of armor?

<comment><USER25> This is for the zombie apocalypse, obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> looks like some kind of Aprils fools kind of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just became a patreon supporter. :)

</comment><comment><USER28> Their git repos have passwords in the config files. Neat.</comment>


Show HN: Painless, free conference calls - <AUTHOR> https://www.swiftcall.co/ <comment><USER2> I like:

0) The use of a set of different phone numbers instead of different conference rooms.

I don't like:

1) Why only a US number, when people are used to freeconferencecall.com, which has access numbers in many countries?

2) Why make someone visit a web site to set up a call? Isn't the user's calendar (e.g. on their mobile) the natural place for them to set up virtual meetings?

3) Why do I have to enter the PIN manually? RFC2806 defined pause and wait characters for URLs, back in the year 2000: [https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2806.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2806.txt)

Also:

4) The link on the bottom-right of the page leads to [https://emerge.cisco.com/](https://emerge.cisco.com/) but that server is refusing connections on port 443. I can connect with plain http.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback!

Right now this is product is just in a pilot phase, but we are absolutely looking into more international options in the future.

To your second point, what we think about a lot is an API developers could use to build this functionality into their apps or websites. So while you're in your calendar app, or in your task management app, you could easily accomplish the same thing (quickly scheduling a call and having a number provisioned). Would love your thoughts/feedback on this.

And thanks for catching that protocol mismatch!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really like services that make things simpler. Each company seems to have a different process for managing conference calls, so anything to make it easier is a win in my books.

That being said, the issue with conference calls has never been about the interface or the cost; people will learn and companies will pay. The issue has always been the network. Dropped calls, bad reception, bad internet, etc. I don't see anything in SwiftCall that addresses that.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really thoughtful point. Definitely agree that the simplicity is only half of the problem.

What we think we're seeing is a trend of more powerful networks becoming available as platforms. For developers and companies to use through things like APIs. And if that is the case, we were interested in experimenting with a simple interface to those platforms.

Swiftcall, for example, is built on top of Tropo, which is a cloud communications API that has features like multi-party conferences and add advanced features including recording and SIP.

We're definitely keeping track of feedback about the quality of the calls and network performance, though. Because if that is poor, that's a much more impactful and memorable bad user experience then the scheduling of the call in the first place. Agree with you there.

Thanks for taking the time to check the project out and for your thoughts!

<comment><USER3> Good point about more powerful networks becoming available, that never came to mind when I wrote my critique. I guess the phrase "conference call" is a little dirty to me, so I was quick to judge. Thanks for taking the time to respond!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey, we've been working on this as an experiment to see how frictionless we could make phone conferences. Please give us feedback and comments here. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> Does free mean no charge to set-up the call or does free mean a toll free number for the call? Is the number that gets issued +1 only or do you offer a choice of which country the call is hosted in? How do you cater for participants from multiple nations?

<comment><AUTHOR> As of now, the number that's issued is a +1 number. And it's issued for free. You have a really good idea, though. In the future we're thinking about offering the option to select the country where the call is hosted. Or to also allow people to join/call-in right from their browser. That would make it easier for international participants to join as well.

<comment><USER6> So is it not available for anyone outside of US? Is Canada covered?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No matter how far we come, we can't escape the 'phone call' experience.

I've been working at Sococo for a few years. We designed a communications platform for groups that takes it to the next plane - always connected, frictionless collaboration. You don't have codes and conferences and schedules. You click in and out of zones on a map. Folks are organized in teams, in pre-authenticated groups so no passcodes ever to start talking. Connection times are in milliseconds. You can tell who's communicating with whom at a glance. You can bring someone into a meeting with a click.

Alexander Graham is long dead; lets please escape the 'phone call' straightjacket!

</comment><comment><USER8> How do you make money if it is free?

<comment><USER4> We don't make money on this particular product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it available in HongKong?

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately it's only available with US conference call numbers at the moment - if we see enough interest in the product we will expand to more countries.

<comment><USER9> Many thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Simplified call</comment>


Ask HN: Android apps with C++/NDK and no Java? - <AUTHOR>

I understand why Google's website says "Using native code does not result in an automatic performance increase, but always increases application complexity. If you have not run into any limitations using the Android framework APIs, you probably do not need the NDK."
Clearly Java offers advantages like
1. For most people, Java is easier to learn/code.
2. StackOverflow and other sites have a lot more Android-Java content (and comparatively lesser Android/C++ content).
However, aside from these points, does anyone know if there are other disadvantages with writing a C++ Android app with no Java code. Does the SDK offer additional apis to Java programmers and is anything missing in the NDK for C++ programmers (assuming that I only care about 2.3.x and higher versions of Android) <comment><USER2> You can't create user interface with c. unless you want to draw your buttons with opengl. that's what games do.

ndk is ideal for games, but not for other types of apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll look into the possibility of creating Java wrappers for the user- interface-elements and interop between the Java wrappers and C++ code. It is too bad that the SDK apis aren't directly available to C++ code (without the interop overhead).</comment></comment>


UK Gov Security Assessment puts Ubuntu in First Place [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://insights.ubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/UK-Gov-Report-Summary.pdf

<comment><USER2> God was this put together by some kind of secondary school student on work placement? It 6 pages with close to zero actual content that isn't just copy/pasted from the links they cite.

Awful.

<comment><USER3> No, it was put together by a chap called Darryl Weaver. He's a smart guy, and you are damn rude.

It's fine to comment on the lack of deep detail, but the way you have conveyed it has just made you sound like an ass.

<comment><USER2> Yes and Darryl Weaver is a _Cloud Sales Engineer_ at Canonical. [0]

This is the same as Microsoft doing a report for the government saying Windows is the best desktop OS.

In regards to the quality of the document; the tables are horrendously formatted and the note numbers are highlighted as if clickable links (blue underlined) like the links at the bottom of the document but are not actually clickable. Overall the wording in the document is basic and lacks any real information.

[0] [http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Darryl/Weaver](http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Darryl/Weaver)

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is entirely the same and I would be most surprised if anyone reading didn't realise this. It is sales material, from Canonical to err, help sell its product..

Was this a massive revelation to you?

Yes, I agree it's a basic document and I don't disagree with your points... Why didn't you say that to start with, instead of being personally rude about the author?

You had to research the author on linkedin, rather than simply looking at the bottom of the PDF where he clearly identifies himself as a Sales Engineer?

<comment><USER4> > Was this a massive revelation to you?

Yes, how about titling the HN thread "Canoncial creates report for UK Government ranking Ubuntu as most secure"

Then noone would have upvoted it and you'd have had less opportunity to be condescending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where the heck is openBSD ? if its "security" you're trying to assess, why not use the distro that aims to be secure ? Ubuntu aims to be easy .

Edit: I previously said "freeBSD", meant "openBSD"

<comment><USER6> openBSD hacked by FBI in 2010 :) [http://www.tgdaily.com/security- features/53067-fbi-accused-o...](http://www.tgdaily.com/security- features/53067-fbi-accused-of-hacking-openbsd)

<comment><USER7> From what I've read, including the above link, there is some general skepticism about this claim. The code audit that followed the allegations seemed to help iron out even more bugs, making openBSD even more secure.

Further info here: [http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/131505/openbsd- chie...](http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/131505/openbsd-chief- believes-contractor-tried-write-backdoors)

And here: [http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- tech&m=129236621626462&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=openbsd- tech&m=129236621626462&w=2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the original guidance I don't see the government making any claims about Ubuntu being in "First Place" [https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/end- user-devices-s...](https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/end-user-devices- security-guidance--2)

<comment><USER9> Ubuntu and Windows 8 have the same amount of "orange" and "green", but because the latter is grouped with Windows 7 it disappears from the table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like a rather shallow analysis.

<comment><USER11> This appears to be a document from a Canonical Sales Engineer summarizing the UK government report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Curious: Red Hat is missing from the comparison. I wonder why.

<comment><USER13> Because it does not run on phone. It is survey about mobile operating systems.

<comment><USER14> Why does it have non-phone OSes on there, and state that it includes OSes for mobiles and laptops?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Android has SEAndroid to fix all those issues.

<comment><USER12> Guess why they chose 4.2...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite book on A/B testing - <AUTHOR>

I'm impressed by the promise of A/B testing in high volume web applications. I'd love to hear what material the HN crowd found the most helpful? <comment><USER2> I recommend Conversion Rates Experts (<http://www.conversion-rates- experts.com>). Mainly, the CrazyEgg case study (<http://www.conversion-rate- experts.com/crazy-egg-case-study/>) -- love how they approach collecting qualitative data.

Also, the guys at Unbounce does a great job with landing pages A/B Testing (<http://unbounce.com/blog/>).

Patrick, a fellow HNer (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11>) writes a blog on marketing for software (<http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/>) and other tips for developers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not books, but I always read these blogs:

<http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/>

<http://blog.optimizely.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are both brilliant links. The books I've found all seem a bit pedestrian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google described their process here:

[http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/36500.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: Instead of #deleteFacebook, how about changing our demographic data? - <AUTHOR> #deletefacebook was cute but mostly ineffective due to the monopoly FB has on certain aspects of communication - people simply don't want to delete their accounts. How about a way to keep using Facebook but to thwart their ad revenue?<p>What if we change our demographic data, liked bands, sports, restaurants etc to create a very high noise ratio for FB's ad targeting? I think a lot more people would be willing to do this than to delete their accounts or installing adblock. Badly targeted ads = less revenue. <comment><USER2> You assume that FB advertisers will stop spending money if targeting gets worse. I doubt that assumption is correct.

There's already enough noise in my profile that most of my demographic targeting is garbage.

The real value Facebook provides is tracking me across other sites. It'll pull items out of my cart at some online retailer and show me an ad on FB. I haven't figured out how to escape that.

<comment><USER3> Some adblockers also blocks tracking scripts from social media sites

<comment><USER2> I use multiple blockers and JS is disabled by default on all sites. I also use Facebook Container on Firefox.

Facebook is really, scarily good at tracking us.

<comment><USER3> I guess that paper is still relevant then D: : [https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/browser- uniqueness.pdf](https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/browser-uniqueness.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I feel that the goal behind #deletefacebook is not only to 'hurt' FB, but for the user to benefit from the deletion as well.

I don't see that much benefit in getting badly targeted ads for the user.

I tend to continue to think educating the user is the only long-term way.</comment>


The Crisis Career Advantage - <AUTHOR> https://saqib.substack.com/p/the-crisis-career-advantage <comment><AUTHOR> Those who didn't lose jobs/businesses for COVID-19 could face their biggest challenges against those who did. Let me help you navigate this puzzle.</comment>


Ask HN: going back to school, what books before CS? - <AUTHOR>

Hello all, I'm going back to grad school to get my MS in CS starting next fall (in the US) and I'm wondering what books you would recommend reading before then?  When I start, I'll have been out of school for 9 years, and I've been doing work with Java/Struts/Spring, Ruby/Rails, Python/Django since I graduated.  It's been awhile since I did the academic stuff, and so I haven't worked a ton with Data Structures, Algorithms, etc.  What would you recommend?  Thanks. <comment><USER2> If I had to recommend just one book overall, it'd be Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi's _Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming_ (<http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html>). It's an _extremely lucid_ overview of the different underlying models on which most programming languages are built, and how they interact when combined. It covers relational/logic programming and constraint programming, two models that IMHO don't get enough coverage. The bibliography also gives you plenty of jumping off points for whichever aspects pique your interest.

As for algorithms and data structures, I found that learning OCaml _greatly_ improved my understanding of both. Working through the exercises in chapters 2-4 of _Developing Applications in Objective Caml_ (online: <http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/>) would be a good approach. OCaml has an especially good notation for them - using it (rather than Java or C) will make them easier to reason about. You could probably work through those chapters in a weekend or two. Whether you use OCaml in the future or not, the insights and notation will stick.

<comment><AUTHOR> 900 pages- is this more of a read through? Or use it when you need it? I definitely have the time to get through it before school begins, but it'll be tough, I'm suspecting. I do like the thought of really diving into areas that aren't covered as much (I hadn't really heard of constraint programming).

I also hadn't thought about looking into/testing out other programming languages in order to learn about programming! How absurd is that! I've bookmarked the OCaml O'Reilly book and will try looking into that this Spring, thanks.

<comment><USER2> The 900 pages of CTM would be a lot to get through before school, if you were reading it cover to cover. (I've only read about 3/4 of it, though I burned right through a big chunk of it in one weekend.) But, it's quite easy to follow, and for many fundamental CS topics, you can probably find a coherent summary in there when your other textbooks are a dead end. It's not going to cover Java API details, and it's weak on some specialized topics (parsing and compilers, for example), but it fits a lot of big ideas into a coherent whole.

Other people will recommend SICP (<http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/>), or would have, had this reached the front page. That's also quite good, but a bit more narrow in focus - depth rather than breadth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just wanted to say - you've got giant balls! Going back to school after 9 years - I believe is no small decision. I wish you good luck!

I've been toying with this idea for a while, but haven't able to take this step for various 'excuses'(not enough money ~atm).

Would you mind sharing what went through your mind to finalize this?

What factors influenced you(made-your-money? unemployment? ..??)

Have you already finalized your specialization? Has anyone influenced you in choosing your subjects?

finally, What are you doing for math-prep for CS classes?

fwiw- 'how to prove it' -velleman has helped me to some extent. ([http://www.amazon.com/How-Prove-Structured-Daniel- Velleman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Prove-Structured-Daniel- Velleman/dp/0521446635))

<comment><AUTHOR> //Would you mind sharing what went through your mind to finalize this?

It was the right time. I'm married and my wife got a job at a great place and has been there over a year. I've been doing consulting, so I'm not tied down to a job.

//What factors influenced you(made-your-money? unemployment? ..??)

I really wanted to go back to school. I worked while my wife went to grad school (speech pathology). She agreed to work while I went back (she's awesome like that).

//Have you already finalized your specialization? Has anyone influenced you in choosing your subjects?

I've talked to my graduate advisor, but I don't have a specialization just yet. I'm leaning towards programming languages, as that's what I really enjoy. I'm also interested in AI and numerical computation. I'm really open to suggestions, but no one in particular has influenced me into picking something specific (yet).

//Finally, What are you doing for math-prep for CS classes?

I've reread through some Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Calculus, and Number Theory books in the past three years, without too many problems. I'd still like to look over some Real Analysis, etc but I feel a bit more urgency to get into algorithms, etc at the moment.

Thanks for the suggestion, I've added Velleman to my wish list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Introduction to the Design and Analysis of Algorithms ([http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Design-Analysis- Algorithm...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Design-Analysis- Algorithms-2nd/dp/0321358287/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1288278097&sr=8-6)) is a good refresher.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I forgot how expensive some textbooks can be! I've added this to my Amazon wish list and hopefully will get it this Christmas. Thanks for the recommendation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Graphics Gems. <http://www.graphicsgems.org>

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't played too much with graphics code, and I'm sure they'll utilize a lot more math and algorithm. Bookmarked for later, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "How to design programs"[1] might be a good fit for you. There is a detailed justification for it in [2].

[1] <http://www.htdp.org/> [2] <http://www.ccis.neu.edu/scheme/pubs/jfp2004-fffk.pdf></comment>


Ask HN: Lab or Labs? - <AUTHOR>

Does it matter which one I use for a domain name? <comment><USER2> Nope. Whichever sounds better to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems like most companies go for the plural "Labs" (or "Networks" for that matter). Any reason why?

The one I'm looking at doesn't have the plural available.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's so great about having two monitors? - <AUTHOR>

I've never used two monitors at the same time before, what's so great about it?<p>Also, what's a good way to try working with dual monitors before I go out an drop $200? <comment><USER2> When I work, I like to have several editor windows open, and the documentation (usually browser) open. On the first screen is where I have the editor window where I'm actually typing stuff in; on the second screen I have all the reference stuff that I can just glance at.

</comment><comment><USER3> To be honest, it can be tricky. I had a tough time with two monitors, initially. I would always put my irc client and instant messenger clients on the second monitor, along with whatever documentations, editors, etc that i needed. I would distract myself by always glancing over at irc. What I ended up doing to solve this was rotating my "main" monitor vertically, and use it exclusively for my main code editing window. I'd reserve the second window for documentation. I have to maximize both windows otherwise ill just get distracted by the other monitor, again.

It takes some getting used to, but I definitely get use out of the second one. Although, I'd be fine with one still. I'm a furious alt-tabber either way. ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> When you maximise a window, it takes up the entire screen. In the case of multiple monitors, it takes up the entire screen of the current monitor it is currently displayed in. Multiple monitors are therefore a hardware method of window management without having to manually resize them.

In Windows 7 you can now dock windows to the left or right. This has worked really well for me on a single 24'' at 1900x1200 resolution. In the past this was not possible out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cheap way to expand screen real estate.

I find myself diffing 3 files a lot. And these files are 80 characters fixed- width. So to have the three window diff in vim means I would need at least 3 * 80 + 2 = 242 character width, and that doesn't fit on most monitors.

(Nowadays I use a 27" iMac, which runs 2560x1440 natively, so I really dont need [or use] a second monitor, but the argument still applies)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you never have to move a window out of the way in the course of what you're doing, then for you it's indeed not so great. But I think it's pretty common to do this.

Also, I've worked on projects where Visual Studio or Eclipse took up the entirety of one screen, and the application in running form took up the entirety of another.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is indeed a problem I run into quite a bit. I develop on my 15.4" laptop with a max resolution of 1366x768.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Monitor 1: Browser Monitor 2: vim, terminals

What I need is actually a Monitor 3 for reference..

</comment><comment><USER8> I prefer having virtual desktops with customizable keyboard shortcuts to multiple monitors.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't buy a second monitor until you feel you need one.</comment>


Please help me find a lecturer in UK whom I can connect with - <AUTHOR> Hi folks,
I am Lia Anggraini, a bachelor student graduated from Islamic University of Indonesia. I currently working hard to earn certain scholarship which provided by UK. Some of the requirements says that I need a Letter of Approval from a professor or any lecturer who happens to be working on similar field of study as mine.
I already have several publications related to Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence which built upon few years back. Here is the list of them : - Hospital Patients Arrival Prediction Using Markov Chain Model Method - Prediction on Suicide-Related Adverse Event on Anti-depressant Drugs Using Frequent patter growth Algorithm - The ECLAT Algorithm Implementation in Determining Selected Contraception Method - Implementation of Modified K-Nearest Neighbor for Diagnosis of Liver Patients - Prediction of Diverse Case Ruling Using Naive Bayes Classifier - Analysis of Risk Factor Linkage Stroke with Type of Stroke Suffered using ECLAT Algorithm
Further informations or details about all the researches can be found in this link https://sites.google.com/view/anggrainilia/home/publication
So I browsed several website of universities which resides in UK and found some email links that probably can direct me to lecturers in similar fields and have some conversations. But sadly none has replied for the pas few weeks, for reasons I may never guess. And it's quite stressing to know that the scholarship application will reach it's deadline in about 2 weeks from this time of writing. I have completed every other requirements enlisted, and this Letter of Approval is the only item left to work on.
I used to use StackOverflow, Quora, and similar forums for coding related Qas, but now I'm asking a bit of help from anyone who happens to read this message, by any way you can. But if in 2 weeks later I still made no progress, at least I've done my best. <comment><USER2> Hi Lia I'm a consultant radiologist and clinical lecturer in Dundee, Scotland and have an interest in this type of thing although not published anything yet. Your work looks interesting and I would be happy to supply a letter stating that although I'm no expert in this field so not sure how much weight it would carry. You can email me at email@example.com</comment>


Ask HN: Should CTOs Code? - <AUTHOR> Lately, I remember hearing that a new CTO at "well known company" stipulated that he would spend 20% (or some significant percentage) of his time "coding"... since then, I've been unable to find the reference.<p>1) Does anyone here have the reference?
2) What do you think - "Should CTOs Code?" <comment><USER2> It depends on how you define 'code'.

Should the CTO be given a chunk of the backlog to complete for this sprint? No, that's probably not a good use of their time.

Should the CTO lend a hand when the team gets stuck and have an active role in code reviews? Certainly! That seems well within the scope of their duties.

I think part of being a technical leader for a company is getting your hands dirty when your experience/insight could save the team significant time/headache. Coding for coding's sake isn't advisable, but coding as a teaching/mentoring tool could be very valuable for the members of your team.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have worked with few startups of different degrees. I really think CTO doesn't need to code but should know what code does.

One of our CTO (where I am a developer with) is good at MySQL, PHP and other stuff, he just checks our DB schema or does pull data by himself for any data points or how our recent conversion does affect our sales etc., this really helps so we can still do and focus on our consumer changes rather than pulling data which ofcourse is important but not something relevant to development.

On one weekend one of my code created an issue with cron job and halted sales and he just aware of what might be causing it and just altered a DB value and it run off smoothly and I fixed it over Monday. So it probably helps as a team. But he doesn't do any single code commit. I am very happy with him and love to work with him.

So I really think a CTO need not code but definitely need to know what code does.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was the CTO of an early stage startup that had a team of 3 developers. As a CTO your role is to have the vision of the entire platform, to pick the best stack that will get your MVP done, to think of best solutions to scale the system after you get traction. The CTO needs to have a deep technical knowledge and I think you can not do your job well if you do not code, test new technologies, build proof of concepts. If you sit around all day and just code review you are doing it wrong, you become just a glorified manager. You need to give your team the best technological advice and help them when they are stuck. Most of the time I wrote proof of concept code and tested out some libraries before I guided the team in using them.

</comment><comment><USER5> You aren't going to get helpful answers from such a general question. Furthermore, titles are somewhat arbitrary and only have convention to define them. If you are a 2-person startup and the only employees are a CEO and a CTO, well someone better write the code. If you are the CTO of Amazon (to pick an example), I have to imagine that you are too busy with vision and strategy to even think about coding. If your company is somewhere in between there, then maybe your CTO's responsibilities are somewhere in between.

It also depends on the type of company. Does Tesla's CTO know how to code?

</comment><comment><USER6> 2) CTO's should never code. If they are spending time instead of reviewing other peoples code; trying to find new technologies to help get them where they want to go; they are not doing their job.

The only time it's all right for a CTO to code is in the beginning. After 5-7 people have joined the company they should be reviewing code and tech.

1) My references are personal experience as well other managerial types in Seattle's Startup's.

<comment><USER7> The reason for a CTO to code isn't to get the code written; it's so that they understand what the primary hassles are when their employees try to get the code written.

In any large engineering organization, there are usually several architectural decisions made long ago (often, back when the CTO still coded) that are hampering the productivity of everybody else. Usually, these decisions are so ingrained in the system that nobody questions them, and even if they did, changing them requires the cooperation of many different people or even departments and no individual contributor has that much authority. The CTO is uniquely positioned to actually fix these problems, but when the CTO (or even CEO, if the company has a technical founder) doesn't code, he's usually completely unaware of them or their impact on the organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who is to say? Whatever works out best in the long run should be done and if a CTO likes to code and does it well, he should probably do it.

FWIW, I've been founder and CTO for more than 14 years and I've done a lot of coding throughout this time. It worked out well for me and the company, but it's hard to say what would have happened otherwise. My successor as CTO won't be coding though.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes

I think we are entering an era of software literacy, where coding will be an expected part of a persons skillset - as much as reading and writing.

So let me rephrase the question - should CTOs read and write?

If it now seems silly, then think about how much more coding could be possible at a company than just that working on the main product output. And ask why at your company it is hard to use code in those areas.

<comment><USER10> That's quiet the straw man argument. Nowhere did he say anything about knowing how too code.

<comment><USER9> Not really - should CTOs who know how to read and write actually read and write for the job? Of course.

Imagine a newspaper managing editor or the head of a medieval scriptorium. We would not expect either of them to be doing the day to day lettering or articles, but the idea they should not use their literacy I. Support of the rest of the business is crazy. As is the idea that the only coding one should do is "on the product"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who came up as mostly a non-coder, I now believe that every employee of a startup should commit code. When CTOs don't code, I think of them as glorified managers, not true technologists. If the don't have an insatiable desire to create technology, then they should be in a different role.

Also: would it be wrong of me to out OP as a prominent CTO?

<comment><USER7> I really doubt that a prominent CTO would be taking time-management advice from HN.

<comment><USER12> Yes, neither wood Kardashians or Bieber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like a good idea in theory (to have an executive involved in low level grunt work), but also seems like a waste of time because they obviously won't be as effective as someone who codes daily. The point of the CTO is see the big picture and direct accordingly.

<comment><USER11> Coding is not low level grunt work, it is (potentially) the highest leverage activity a human can do.

<comment><USER12> True, but unfortunately architects and monarchs are given credit for buildings, not builders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think CTO's should and must be ABLE to code...however, they should not actively code. CTO is a strategic role and if you're in the weeds, your not focused on what's next.

</comment><comment><USER15> if the company is big enough to actually need a cto then a code review one level deeper than strategy might be fun once a month. But to think the best use of your time would be to play jr. coder (and that's all any part timer could be) is just silly.</comment>


Xobni makes Outlook better, but where's the business? - <AUTHOR> http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9935718-2.html

<comment><USER2> > _It turns out that Xobni is not really an Outlook plug-in company. Rather, > it's a company that makes a platform to abstract the difficult-to-write-for- > Outlook, as well as other less-broken e-mail services, and that allows the > creation of new products that integrate e-mail data with other apps._

and

> _if Salesforce.com wants to write a plug-in that tightly integrates its CRM > data into Outlook ..._

Compare that to what I wrote here a couple days back:

"With this synchronization across mail clients, Xobni has transformed itself from an analytics feature [of Outlook] to a full-fledged network to manage your contacts and interactions. I could see this integrating powerfully with, for example, Salesforce.com."

</comment><comment><USER3> This article throws the term "hook" around. Do they mean binary rewriting or some other kind of hooking? That's awesome if Xobni went the rewriting route.</comment>


We Built a $2M/Year Business Selling Barbecue Tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.starterstory.com/cave-tools <comment><USER2> I was interested until I got to the point where he cited Atlas Shrugged among the reading material that has influenced his personal philosophy. Just... Really?

<comment><USER3> Please don't post unsubstantive comments about the weakest thing you find in an article. Those aren't interesting.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER2> I think there's a lot of substance there. Objectivism is a morally bankrupt excuse for a philosophical system, and Atlas Shrugged is a farcical, unrealistic and flimsy narrative awash with paper-thin characters and comical villains that exist only to serve as an excuse for Rand's selfish world view. His selection suggests to me that he is either emotionally very immature and/or that his primary driver is unabashed hedonism. I find that pretty disturbing. Don't take my word for it. Walk into any philosophy department at any university and start defending Objectivism. They will tear you down and dismiss you, and for good reason: it's regressive, egotistical trash.

EDIT: My only regret is that I didn't say the above in my original comment. I neglected to consider that not all people may be familiar with the subject.

<comment><USER3> The horse of Aynrandianism was long ago beaten to death and produces exceedingly mediocre discussion. Therefore this counts as a generic ideological tangent, which breaks the site guidelines, and which we ask users not to go on ([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20ideological%20tangent&sort=byDate&type=comment)). It's off topic here.

Picking the weakest thing in an article to complain about breaks the spirit of this guideline: " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize._" It leads to bad and boring threads. You really had to swoop to cherry-pick that detail, which could hardly be less prominent.

The topic here, obviously, was the author's business. Off-topic comments that are whimsical and unpredictable are fine on HN; but going off topic in order to grouch about something, or turn to some generic issue, lowers the curiosity level and is not fine.

Also, you're crossing into personal attack, a whole other thing the HN guidelines require users not to do. We definitely don't need users tearing on other users here!

<comment><USER2> > The horse of Aynrandianism was long ago beaten to death

Apparently not. As for the mediocre discussion, fine.

> You really had to swoop to cherry-pick that detail, which could hardly be > less prominent.

Fair enough. I suppose I'm used to being rewarded for reading the entire article.

> The topic here, obviously, was the author's business. Off-topic comments > that are whimsical and unpredictable are fine on HN; but going off topic in > order to grouch about something, or turn to some generic issue, lowers the > curiosity level and is not fine.

Fair enough. Message received. However, I feel compelled to comment that it seems like a potentially worrisome policy. If all controversial topics are avoided unless they are the primary subject of the submission, it seems like it potentially exposes the community to an insidious legitimization of unsavory beliefs. I suppose that's your concern and not mine. I'll stick to the main topic of the article in the future, and minimize the kinds of objections we've discussed to the subtext of my comments, if they're included at all.

<comment><USER3> Props to you for a much more open-minded response than most people would have in that position.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Quote: Marco Arment, founder, Instapaper - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/4441756277

<comment><AUTHOR> People will pay for something they like because they want to ensure its future.

\- Marco Arment (@marcoarment)

<http://startupquote.com/post/4441756277></comment>


Elon Musk Interview by Rainn Wilson ("Metaphysical Milkshake" show) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns0IHCj2q-E

<comment><AUTHOR> Three things I want to say in this comment with the submission:

1.) The interview starts 31 seconds into the video, here: <http://youtu.be/Ns0IHCj2q-E?t=31s>.

2.) It's from over a month ago but I simply cannot find it on here as having been already posted. Hacker News Musk-fatigue or no, that seems so implausible (especially as I think it's rather good), but the basic youtube link didn't return a previous submission so along with a fruitless Google search for "Hacker News Elon Musk Rainn Wilson" that was good enough for me. Of course people are going to comment on this being a month old and I almost even put a "(March 2013)" in the title. (!)

3.) I know many of us are sick of hearing about this damn guy but I found the video very entertaining and well constructed. Good questions, good answers, just the right amount of humour. I was glued and could not stop watching until the end. He came over really well and succeeded in softening my portion of that slightly bitter jealousy that we all pretend we don't have about the chap.

<comment><USER2> I was most impressed that he took a bite out of Rainn's chicken burger at the end. He didn't even try to find a piece that Rainn didn't already eat from, he just went for it. His general attitude reminds me a bit of Richard Branson.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, I really enjoyed that bit. I hope Rainn _did_ get a Tesla for it but, well, that would be pretty ridiculous wouldn't it. More likely than the $1.3billion loan, though!</comment></comment></comment>


Skrillex Quest - <AUTHOR> http://www.skrillexquest.com/ <comment><USER2> What I find perhaps most fascinating about this is that it's almost certainly an advertisement (note the iTunes link at the end of the game, and the tagline at the bottom that the creator makes 'advergames'). If it is, in fact, an advergame, it's _awesome_ to see folks like Skrillex (and/or Skrillex's marketing folks) willing to build something so cool and of legitimate artistic value to try to build up viral buzz.

<comment><USER3> Artistic value? The fuck?

 _"Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the capitalist gang bang and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink."_

\- Bill Hicks

<comment><USER4> Does the game make you feel? Then it has artistic value.

I felt something playing this game. It has surprisingly good ambiance and seeing a bunch of pixel characters who have accepted their fate and were waiting for death, to me, gave it a level of emotional attachment I did not expect after I read the tag 'advergame'.

One thing you have to realize is that it's very hard to make games nowadays without some kind of income. If you are lucky, you only have to slum it for a few years and then you make a hit on the side. But more often, you have to do whatever it takes, unless you are willing to keep your day job.

I actually still agree with the Bill Hicks quote, but I feel there is some wiggle room when what is produced is _actually a game_ , and in the end, does not fit the constraint of standard advertising.

IMO if more advertising were like this, the world would be a better place, and Bill Hicks would have been less angry.

And here I will quote Tool's Eulogy, which was about Bill Hicks, if you didn't know:

"He had a voice so strong and loud and I Swallowed his facade cuz I'm so Eager to identify with Someone above the ground, Someone who seemed to feel the same, Someone prepared to lead the way, with Someone who would die for me."

Just because a voice is loud and you agree with it, doesn't necessarily mean that it is entirely correct. I love the shit out of Bill Hicks and I still feel the world would be a better place if he had lived long enough to foster the change he felt he needed. But I still don't feel his quote applies to this game.

<comment><USER5> Tool's "Eulogy" wasn't about Bill Hicks. They actually quite liked the guy, put his face in their albums, and quoted him frequently in a positive light.

Regardless, I agree with your points. It's not always bad to sell something if you want to get the rest of your works heard. It's all a big game, and most people have to play to some degree to be able to do what they love.

<comment><USER3> "It's all a big game, and most people have to play to some degree to be able to do what they love."

Sure.. but then don't go mixing those two things up. There is work (entertainment or otherwise), and there is art. That some people cry unfair because they want their pie and eat it isn't really my concern.

I didn't argue that the game creator is somehow evil, I just actually feel my brain hurting from dumbness intruding when I read people talk about "artistical merit" in the context of this "game" (the gameplay mechanics are a bit limited to call it that, but that's a whole other can of worms). The response to that? "Yeah, but" and downmoderation. Oh well, oh lol. What else is new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just upvoted something done with flash on hn for the first time ever. The zelda 1 esque levels were sheer genius. I would actually dig playing an entire game with that perspective/style.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity have you played the Binding of Isaac? It's a zelda-esque game using short gameplay/permadeath + lots of random elements. Although may be windows only I don't recall.

<comment><USER8> Binding is available in steam and is available for Mac as well.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I knew it was on steam, but not everything on steam is available for mac. Haven't played my copy in a while to look and see what OSes it is on (plus I own nothing made by apple)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This game reminded me of Sword and Sorcery EP[1]. It had a similar aesthetic and used music in the same way that this piece did, although it was music from Jim Guthrie who sounds completely different from Skrillex. The main character even looks like the character from that game. The gameplay is very different (SS is a two dimensional, puzzle based point-and-click sort of thing), but there is definitely a similarity.

1: <http://www.swordandsworcery.com/>

<comment><USER10> I agree. It definitely looks like Sword and Sworcery.

<comment><USER11> It's like a cross between that and 3D Dot Game Heroes.

<http://www.3ddotgameheroes.com/>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhuhdw_9Hnk>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ugh, when I was a kid, electronic music didn't suck and you only started out with two heart containers.

Get off my lawn.

<comment><USER4> Link electronic music that wasn't repetitive and wasn't released on Warp Records.

Oh, and then go back and play The Legend of Zelda all the way to the end, and then come back here and say it was good.

Also, you have a lawn? Lucky bastard.

<comment><USER13> _> Link electronic music that wasn't repetitive and wasn't released on Warp Records._

I personally don't believe that repetition in electronic music even _implies_ a sub-par track, but that's highly subjective of course, and we know where you stand.

Some of the most groundbreaking and beautiful music to me is found on the Basic Channel and Chain Reaction labels, with tracks that are extremely minimal and would probably sound repetitive to many listeners.

Plus 8 has a long history of incredible and innovative artists and tracks. It really depends on how you define electronic as well. If Chain Reaction is repetitive, Plus 8 less so, Warp less so, but even less are labels like Wax Trax! that had much more dynamic and traditional song structures from their artists (industrial). Do you consider them electronic? Subjective. Labels like Mo Wax delivered far less repetitive offerings than Warp artists, and just as compelling. Ghostly International takes takes us back to more traditional electronic offering if Mo Wax and Wax Trax! aren't 'electronic' enough for one's definition.

Really, there are just too many to name, even with the constraint of stripping out electronic music subjectively deemed 'repetitive'.

But I take your point though. Warp Records, especially at a particular time in electronic music's history, was one of those special and legendary labels that every genre seems to have one or two of. They were home to some of the most compelling and innovative artists of their generation, and rather than having just one or two, they were home to many. Might be the best electronic music label in history for strength of talent and how deep their roster went.

And I too have a lawn, but you don't need to get off it, -instead you can hang out on it and bring your vinyl. I've got a few crates of some incredibly good and rare discs and a 1200 on which to play them ;)

<comment><USER14> I agree that there is no correlation between the quality of music and repetition. There are even a number of "high brow" musicians and composers, such as Philip Glass or Terry Reily, that have had repetition as a common motif in their work, and for which they have been heralded by many.

<comment><USER13> _> I was only pointing out that there's a massively wide variety of electronic music these days..._

On that note, if you have not seen this site yet, be prepared to have the rest of your afternoon's productivity destroyed:

<http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/>

I posted to first version of the site to Hubski a while ago but I can't find it. I think the author has updated it since then, but the general look and flow is the same. Incredible wealth of historical knowledge, complete with audio examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope this site brings a little boost back to the Flash world, especially with Stage3D and all of it's possibilities.

Actionscript 3 was such an enjoyable language to code in, though I haven't been able to use it professionally in over a year due to demand; the extent of my 'interactive' work has been hacky, ill-performing CSS3 transforms, and WOW are they limited.

It's been all JavaScript, all the time, and I do love the community but then again I really (really) miss the rich immersive creativity that used to be so inspiring on the web.

<comment><USER16> Creativity is still here. We have WebGL, canvas, CSS3, audio, mic, camera, in an environment that is evolving faster than Flash ever did. ES6 will bring js a bit closer to the formalism of AS3, though I don't mind it's current syntax lightness at all. There are many cool games and experiments being released every week.

<comment><USER17> Warning: cool game of the week requires _[Chrome developer channel|Firefox nightly]_ to run. Also does not run well on _[Mac|Windows|Linux]_.

It is both funny and sad that in these days of the "open" web it is actually much, much more difficult to get good cross platform results when doing anything with graphics/sound.

<comment><USER18> Games like X-Type[0] make me think things are getting there. The making-of is interesting[1].

[0]: <http://phoboslab.org/xtype/>

[1]: <http://phoboslab.org/log/2012/06/x-type-making-of>

<comment><USER19> Yeah, well, but x-type only requires a 2D canvas and that has worked for ages now, even without hw acceleration. WebGL is still a very different beast that can work, or not, or only crappily, depending on your browser, OS, graphics card and driver. I guess the percentage of those who don't have or dislike Flash is smaller than that of those who run into WebGL problems.

<comment><USER18> Agreed, canvas works well now, but WebGL is younger than canvas, and this gives a hint at what WebGL will look like tomorrow.

What's more today the first cause of WebGL not working lies more in the graphics card periphery. OpenGL drivers on Windows are often an aftertought given DirectX prevalence, and on Linux some drivers are simply unstable with 3D acceleration, regardless of WebGL. Besides, short of software fallbacks like llvm-pipe or OSX, you can't invent features not supported by the card. Onve overriden[2] WebGL actually works[0][1] well on my embedded HD2000, but bugs in the driver make the whole thing randomly unstable, hence it is blacklisted by browsers (chrome://gpu even lists and links to bug reports, and lists Flash Stage3D as blacklisted too).

As for number counting, while the number of people running into WebGL problems exists, it has been drastically reduced since a year ago, when the number of people running into Flash problems for years, and is _not_ shrinking.

ALso, there's not just graphics on X-Type, but correctly timed HTML5 audio too.

[0]: <http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/>

[1]: <http://alteredqualia.com/three/examples/webgl_cars.html>

[2]: "Override software rendering list" in chrome://flags

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a long time game developer, the most impressive part of this game is that when you get to the end, and you don't have all the keys, you can simple _break all the locks_.

That's the kind of game design that the game industry needs to learn from.

<comment><USER20> The only reason that's necessary is because the game advances you regardless of finding the keys. This is because there is much reduced expectation of commitment from the gamer, and if they can't find the key and get stuck, there's greater chance they'll leave before the advertising message is satisfactorily conveyed.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I know, but 'failure' as a mechanic is something that's a weak hold-out from a time when games weren't as good. Thus, the requirement for three hearts is largely negated.

Plus it's not like most AAA games nowadays punish you for anything at all to begin with, so having you actually hit a situation where you have to experience the inconvenience of loading a save that takes you back 30 seconds is ultimately just a waste of everyone's time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Personally, I am a fan of electronica but have not been a fan of skrillex as an old fogie who is akin to resenting anything with the dubstep label. However after playing this game I am more inclined to check out some skrillex music. Therefore, as an advertisement, this in my mind gets an A++ in effectiveness. I would also point out that being an 80s kid the sample images in the glitches evoked memories of Duck Hunt and Mike Tyson's punch out which made an emotional connection with me that is in turn associated with some great samples of the musicians catalog. Double A++.

Last I will add that I am not a gamer as an adult but I thoroughly enjoyed this "game". My 5 year old daughter completed the game after I did an had no trouble whatsoever with the controls and the story line (I read the text for her). There is definable a market out there for non-gamers who would invest more time into games if the target was not as narrow. This market is likely larger than the Call of Duty/SOCOM market.

So to wrap up.. This is no my cup-of-tea per se, but it is one of those things that can cross boundaries and bring new customers into a market if executed as well as this is.

<comment><USER22> I'm with you. I've always liked Klaypex (of Dubstep Guns fame) better than Skrillex, but I'm willing to give Skrillex another shot after this.

Dubstep Guns: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDlif8Km4S4>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I totally get the theme but I can't help getting nervous goosebumps from the artifacts - I feel like I have to reset the display cable or blow into the cartridge! Well done.

<comment><USER24> Me too, totally feels like the glitches are actually real, my nintendo dusty cartridges nightmares came back to life

<comment><USER25> If you have a 360 you should avoid Fez. That game does some clever things with glitches and crashes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love this guy (Jada)! Once again showing that Flash, when used correctly, can create unrivaled experiences on the web. Also of note is the Perfect Strangers game: <http://nothingsgonnastopmenow.com/>

<comment><USER27> Heh, love this game. Like a time machine to the 80s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am the only one that thought the game was making fun of Skrillex? I thought all the noise cubes were supposed to represent his music..

<comment><USER29> Well seeing as how the final boss is Skrillex and you have to defeat him while he throws the corrupted cubes at you, I'd say yes they do represent his music, which is "corrupting the world".

It is tongue in cheek and that is part of the charm.

<comment><USER30> Totally. I saw it more as him having fun with his image than him being the butt of the jokes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I hit start and 90% of the time nothing happens. The other 10% of the time, Flash crashes.

I'm using Chrome stable on Ubuntu 12.04. I have no extensions besides Adblock Plus. This is the only page I've encountered that crashes Flash on my computer.

<comment><USER32> works fine for me with the same setup

<comment><USER33> Hmmm, same setup and it didn't work for me in Chrome, only in Firefox. Did you install any special flash stuff? Any tips would be appreciated.

<comment><USER32> Everything is normal..(also have AB+ and ghostery) worth mentioning that on checking it is v20 of chromium (ie from the software center), v23 is apparently the current stable chrome version.. are you using that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My ex-gf always used to say Skrillex sounded like videogame music to her.. I was like "whatever, you don't GET it", but I stand corrected. Should send her some "I'm sorry you were kinda right" chocolates.

</comment><comment><USER35> Disclaimer: Personal Tidbit

I love electronic music. But, I can not get into Skrillex or American Dubstep for that manner. I feel like im missing something...

<comment><USER12> The correct term for what you refer to as "american dubstep" is actually Brostep.

Dubstep was invented in Europe in the 90s and came out of the early techno scene. The shit these douches are making in California is completely unrelated.

<comment><USER36> I really hate to be a "genre pedant", but Dubstep is a descendant of garage, dub, drum and bass and a few other styles from the very late 90s early 00s in England. "Early techno" is Detroit in the 80s.

If you're correcting someone on nomenclature please be more accurate, and if you're trolling, please be funnier.

<comment><USER12> Dubstep proper is a near direct descendant of dub techno, pioneered in Berlin in the early 90s, following in the footsteps of Detroit techno from the 80s and the 2-step and acid house coming out of the UK and Chicago.

I live down the street from Hardwax, for fuck's sake.

<comment><USER37> As much as there is an aesthetic link between the berlin sound and early dubstep, the croydon lot weren't listening to lots of basic channel and stuff at the time.

The UK scene has its own independent subbass heritage. People in the london scene at least aren't generally that aware of what comes out of europe, especially back in the web 1.0 era we're talking about.

Check out this from 2000: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doMX6su9Ue0>

And this from 95: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjQZxMoF8Kc>

Both pure london sounds.

Burial in particular was already doing that sound without having ever having heard of basic channel, until kode9 showed it to him.

[http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/soundboy- bur...](http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/soundboy-burial.html)

Also living next to hardwax doesn't qualify you to know about tunes. My mum used to live near blackmarket and she hasn't got any dubs at all.

EDIT: Also technically the R&S lot took that sound from english people like Mad Professor in the 80s :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is really awesome, definitely a good entrant in the "video games are art" category.

I do wish it wasn't Flash though. Not that I have anything against Flash itself when used the right way, but I feel like it's really hard to "own" a Flash game.

Unlike, say, iOS apps that you can download and come back to 6 months later, Flash games are a lot more of a _flash_ in the pan (sorry…) and I think it's a shame in cases like this where the end result is so great and so much work obviously went into it.

<comment><USER39> I agree, like this bomberman-inspired HTML5 game: <http://powderkeg.artillery.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> That's the most exciting black screen I've ever seen... I'm sure it was awesome when it worked.

<comment><USER41> Same here. Broken on Chrome on Windows 8. I don't know, I have a Mac next to me I can try. Don't really feel like trying the lottery. Maybe the site's just down and nothing would work. ;/

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I touched a chest. It took me a long time to get there. I can't move and horrible noises are coming out of my speakers. I'm tearing up at the beauty of it all.

</comment><comment><USER42> Entering THE code actually did something. I'm seriously in love with this thing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Was this created using Unity3D and exported to Flash or was it written with the usual Flash methods in the first place?

<comment><USER44> It feels very much like Unity3D to me. I bet that's what they did.

<comment><USER43> Yes it does. I would be very grateful if someone could point to some more convincing proof of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Such a good example of how to market music today. Not a Skrillix or dubstep fan myself, but I can respect this.

</comment><comment><USER46> Very cool concept and enjoyable game, but it caused the Iceweasel 'plugin- container' on my laptop to use over 200% CPU, which I'm guessing is related to the circuit breaker flipping (twice). Running Crunchbang 11 on a Dell Latitude E6410...

Edit: And took me from somewhere near 100% battery to 67%. Crazy

</comment><comment><USER47> I played it through a couple times and then decompiled the flash using the free demo of Sothink. The secret word is (spoiler, use ROT13) "FABJ". Unfortunately, it's just a treasure not a substitute for getting all the parchments...

</comment><comment><USER48> The problem with making this game in flash is that during the intro when the graphics go all fucked up I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be part of it or if flashplayer itself was having a fit.

</comment><comment><USER49> I saved the world with a 28%, first time. :oD I might have done better if I'd noticed the timers.

I figured this was for an album or something. I hadn't heard his music before, but it is now on my radar.

Well done and spotted.

</comment><comment><USER50> The Neverending Story reference to Atreus seeing the Rock Eater after losing his friends to the Nothing was a huge flash back moment for me. Very well done.

</comment><comment><USER51> I got to the fairy then I couldn't control the menu. I like the idea of the game, although I was hoping it wasn't done in flash.

</comment><comment><USER24> I had to dig up this article again: <http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/142550>

On how we all told each other that blowing into the cartridge actually worked, but it didn't. I used to do it as well of course, I'm amazed by how that "technique" turned into some sort of urban legend.

</comment><comment><USER52> Shows. Nothing on a iPad.

<comment><USER53> Not only is it Flash, but it requires the keyboard as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Saved the world Ranking Apprentice %23 and I got to watch someone blow fuzz out of a painted gold NES cart. Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER55> Those interested may enjoy the equally (or more) offbeat Goblet Grotto

<http://harmonyzone.org/GobletGrotto.html> <http://gamejolt.com/games/rpg/goblet-grotto/10253/>

</comment><comment><USER56> This game would be a lot more enjoyable with music that matched the theme. Impressive performance for flash.

</comment><comment><USER57> Okay, recreate _that_ in HTML5.

<comment><USER58> Is there any reason one couldn't?

<comment><USER59> The problem now is that if you do it entirely with WebGL, you won't have as much people who can play it. WebGL support is still far from Flash support. It's however something that will change over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Oh man, this is the guy who made emogame and emogame 2. Loved those games!

</comment><comment><USER61> Saw this link on Twitter earlier, didn't click through though. Flash ran fine in Chrome, pretty fun game, love the sound effects. I'm only 23% apprentice... if anyone made it to the end.

</comment><comment><USER15> Desperate to learn who the developers were behind this!

</comment><comment><USER62> Loving the fact there are FFVII sound effects too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Skrillex's music is just like broken video game!

</comment><comment><USER63> Pretty incredible what can be done in the browser these days. Anyone find out what happens if you get 100%? I only managed 58%.

<comment><USER64> Its not done in the browser, its done in Flash. And it probably could have been done 5 years ago, easily. It is creative however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> A whois of the domain points to Warner Music.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is this promoting a particular tour, or release or something? Or it is just Skrillex brand awareness in general?

</comment><comment><USER67> Wow. This is tremendously well done! I was very pleased to get the Contra code right, too. :D

</comment><comment><USER68> I hate to nit pick but I think I found a bug...

Seriously though this is awesome! Much better than Halo 4 A+

</comment><comment><USER69> I was really hoping this had something to do with dubstep.

EDIT: SPOKE TO SOON THERE IS DUBSTEP! Sweet.

</comment><comment><USER70> love the hidden humor and classic gaming references all over...totally worth a replay

<comment><USER71> "All the food is poisoned, all the trees are dead ..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Not very interesting on an iPad, black screen w dark gray writing and not much else.

</comment><comment><USER73> All I see is a dark page, with some social network links towards the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER74> This is amazing. Nice use of song samples for sounds effects in the game.

<comment><USER75> yea, it somehow fits really well doesn't it!

the game was a bit simple, but have nice touches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I love Skrillex and the game is awesome and pretty fast, Great work !

</comment><comment><USER77> I just played this for an embarrassingly long period of time.

</comment><comment><USER78> I always thought Skrillex sounded like a video game.

</comment><comment><USER79> Love the stunt. Skrillex is the biggest thing in music right now, no one even comes close. Very nice and tiny guy too.

<comment><USER80> Biggest thing in music? I think that's overstating him quite a bit. He might be the biggest thing in electronic music, which is a much smaller pond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> my ad blocker plus blocked the site on chrome. was puzzled for a while.

</comment><comment><USER82> This is incredible!

</comment><comment><USER83> Well done.

</comment><comment><USER84> HN FTW. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER85> won't load for me, latest crunchbang, also tried on Mint 13, and it wouldn't work there either.....

</comment><comment><USER86> I think if this page demonstrates one thing, then how bad his music is, when i am correct in presuming it's his music that can be heard throughout the game.

Here we have a modern artist, heard by millions, being swamped with prices, yet his music when in the context with a game which even was especially designed with the music in mind, can't hold up to the old classics in any way.

Basically: Soundtrack of most N64/SNES Games >>> Skrillex :D

To all downvoters: i personally am annoyed by the music after 2 minutes of playing, can't deal with this

<comment><USER87> To you: The downvoters are personally annoyed that after reading two lines of what you wrote they couldn't deal with your opinion.

Out of curiosity, isn't going to a page where you already know from the start you aren't going to have anything nice to say a bit, trollish? :)</comment></comment>


Texter: Drawing with text using JavaScript and Canvas - <AUTHOR> http://tholman.com/experiments/html5/texter/ <comment><USER2> Nice, but what is the save button supposed to do, it doesn't seem to be working for me.

<comment><USER3> Render's it to a data uri of a png file, worked for me on Chrome

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool nice work, you'd also like Evan Roth's Typographic Illustration - he's got a video and source code here: <http://fffff.at/jay-z-kanye-west-source- code/>

</comment><comment><USER5> First of all, this is truly very awesome. I was interested in the book it is based, anyone knows the english title (if there is one)?

Also, when saving, it produces the longest url I have ever seen, fun!

<comment><USER6> The text is from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll.

<comment><USER5> No I mean the actual book the example was based on: <http://generative- gestaltung.de/>

Looks like there is no english version after all!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm always impressed by tech artistry like this. Eventually, we'll have so many specific, one-off, easy to use tech art tools that we won't even need specialized artists anymore.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks great! Too bad I don't have an iPad to test it out, would be probably interesting on a touch screen.

</comment><comment><USER9> fun times, an image source option for the background would be a cherry on top re the demo.

</comment><comment><USER10> Pretty cool

</comment><comment><USER11> Badass!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sorry to say, the first thing I did was this:

<http://imgur.com/z6bd7>

<comment><USER12> HN is not reddit.</comment></comment>


Cdnjs - the missing cdn - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdnjs.com? <comment><USER2> This seems to once again miss the point. The main point of a CDN is to speed up delivery of content. Having all of these different CDNs only increases the time it takes because you are adding in more DNS queries to the client and on top of that they are adding HTTPs support which even further increases load time because of the "handshake" that goes on. That being said, if this CDN is the only one you are using then great, that works out fine. But a CDN dedicated to only Javascript just seems kind of silly other than for passing aound example HTML files for how to code something.

EDIT: Also another pitfall is that you can't compress all your JS into one big JS file saving time on requests too.

<comment><USER3> The other point of a (public) CDN is to have more websites using the same kind of resources (JS/CSS files) to load them from the CDN's URLs, which in the end benefits the users by having the browsers reuse the cached version of the resources across different sites that use the public CDN.

<comment><USER4> But having fewer open HTTP connections is very likely going to result in better overall performance no matter how good this JavaScript CDN is.

<comment><USER5> Is this speculation or proved? It's just as easy to surmise that getting the assets closer to the client will overcome any slow down from an extra connection.

<comment><USER4> It's speculation to make this claim. The burden of proof should be on them. I'd need to see a benchmark showing that making a new HTTP connection (DNS resolution and all) for a single <100KB file is worthwhile rather than sending it over your already open HTTP 'keep alive" connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pro tip: leave off the protocol to support both http and https. Example:

<script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

Source: <http://html5boilerplate.com/>

<comment><USER6> Secondary protip: use a DNS prefetch for even faster 3rd party asset delivery.

<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com">

More at: <http://html5boilerplate.com/docs/#DNS-Prefetching>

<comment><USER7> If you're loading the javascript on the same page you're surely going to see no benefit at all right?

<comment><USER6> The browser can parallelize the DNS lookup, whereas running it serially and delaying the RTT for the asset will be much slower. So there is significant benefit to be had regardless. More: [http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/dns- pref...](http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/dns- prefetching#TOC-Effectiveness)

<comment><USER7> Neat trick! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I might be alone here - but I would never use a CDN that isn't back by a company with a strong vested interest in preventing security breaches of their servers.

Consider that the community CDN is compromised - if that file gets replaced with a different JS file, you've now provided an attacker an XSS hole into _every_ page using the CDN.

I have a reasonable trust in Google to secure their own servers against such a compromising attack, but have no similar reason to put faith in smaller companies/services.

</comment><comment><USER9> Note that <script src>'ing from some random website means that site can XSS you any time it wants to. (I'm not saying the owners intend for this; a third party could just as well hack their site and do the same.)

</comment><comment><USER10> you should host this on a separate domain because your clients are setting cookies on your domain and when I hit one of your hosted js files I see all of those cookies

for eg. I can see techcrunch and metric fuckton of google analytics cookies

separate this from the cloudfront clients or you have a potential security problem and a definite privacy breach

</comment><comment><USER5> Kudos on the recently added https support. And on CloudFlare now (vs Amazon)...interesting.

<comment><USER11> https was there from day 1. They're just using CloudFront so you would have to use the CloudFront url instead of the pretty one (which doesn't matter because visitors would never see it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really like the idea of this community driven cdn.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are there any statistics regarding the reliability and speed from different locations?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://stats.pingdom.com/4jg86a2wqei0/362854>

Pingdom stats

<comment><USER5> Cool. Looks like times are gradually improving.</comment></comment></comment>


When GIFs serve JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://iamajin.blogspot.com/2014/11/when-gifs-serve-javascript.html <comment><USER2> Off-topic: Hilarious how broken Blogspot seems to be. Half the time I load this URL, I get a different post on the same blog ("Static DOM XSS Scanner") but still with the intended URL. Whatever this fancy JavaScript loading thing they are doing is utter bullshit.

<comment><USER3> The same thing happened to me. It's kind of ironic that to read an article about serving javascript in GIFs, I had to turn all of my js filters off.

Blogger is seriously horrible.

<comment><USER4> > I had to turn all of my js filters off.

I could read the article by enabling JS only for 1st-party + www.blogblog.com + www.blogger.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This exploit seems to require a <script> tag.

But if you let your users insert a <script> tag into any text field, this exploit is the least of your worries. Why encode your attack into a GIF file when you can just open a <script> tag and attack away in the comfort of a WYSIWIG editor?

A more interesting attack vector is the static HTML file that the attacker used as a vehicle for his <script> tag. If your users can upload an HTML file, or any other file that the browser might display as an HTML document (IE loves to guess the content type), you are vulnerable to XSS, no matter how thoroughly you filter all the other form fields.

One of the easiest ways to mitigate this vulnerability is to force browsers to download/save all user-uploaded files instead of displaying them. Configure your file server to add a Content-Disposition: attachment; header to all user- uploaded files.

<comment><USER6> > One of the easiest ways to mitigate this vulnerability is to force browsers > to download/save all user-uploaded files instead of displaying them. > Configure your file server to add a Content-Disposition: attachment; header > to all user-uploaded files.

But I can imagine many scenarios were the whole purpose of letting the user upload images is so that you can inline display them on the web (such as a forum avatar picture). Requiring the manual downloading of the image wouldn't be an acceptable solution for most people there.

<comment><USER5> If you use a proper <img> tag to embed an image in a webpage, it will display correctly even if the server sets a Content-Disposition header to force download. The header only makes a difference when you explicitly navigate to the URL of the user-uploaded resource.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is neither particularly new, nor particularly dangerous.

One possible attack vector would be abusing a filename/MIME mismatch to trick people into executing it locally.

If you have a website that allows image uploads and keeps the original filename, you could create an image that displays normally when displayed on the web, but executes arbitrary code when downloaded and executed locally.

This was inspired by the 2011 incident that lead to the use on CAPTCHA on 4chan. A spambot known as Cornelia would flood the boards with copies of itself that contained instructions how to execute it in the image data. Of course, that only worked because people would knowingly execute a virus just to spite the mods.

</comment><comment><USER8> This post seems to be hinting that this is potential security issue, but I'm not sure how it would be. All I can imagine this buying you is the ability to serve JS from someone else's domain, but the domain JS is served from doesn't change its security privileges; that's based on the domain of the HTML file the JS is included in.

</comment><comment><USER9> Would this be blocked by the X-CONTENT-TYPE-OPTIONS header? (source: [http://ibuildings.nl/blog/2013/03/4-http-security-headers- yo...](http://ibuildings.nl/blog/2013/03/4-http-security-headers-you-should- always-be-using) )

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish there was a way to run the embedded javascript when the image is loaded. I have a legitimate use case for it (imagine you send an image URL as a JSON response and wanted to track it was loaded, or send other params back to the service)

</comment><comment><USER11> So the site has to allow script tags for this to work? If that's the case, then you could simply put the code in the script tag and not have to mess around inserting it into a gif.</comment>


One Unspoken Reason Behind the Microsoft-LinkedIn Deal: Stock Based Compensation - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/business/dealbook/linkedin-stock-based-compensation.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share <comment><USER2> This is an interesting theory, but the author never really explores how being a part of Microsoft will affect compensation, both for current employees (and holders of LinkedIn ISOs) and hires in the future. Has Microsoft had a track record of attracting engineering talent in the Bay Area?</comment>


Dropbox Acquires Zulip, A Stealthy Workplace Chat Solution Still In Private Beta - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/17/dropbox-acquires-zulip-a-stealthy-workplace-chat-solution-still-in-private-beta/

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see an open source node-webkit app, like Light Table or Popcorn Time take over this market. Time to move away from proprietary chat networks. It could hook into IRC and let people chat as God intended.

<comment><USER3> The thing is, pulling off a distributed chat network isn't easy. Having a centralized infrastructure is way easier on so many levels. This means that ultimately you need to host something on a server, and if you're ready to do that there are plenty of options; XMPP or IRC are pretty straightforward, OpenFire is actually damn easy to setup.

<comment><USER2> I just haven't really found a decent IRC app, tbh. I mean, I use them fine for my developer-ey needs, but pretty much the only reason that these proprietary apps exist is because the UX is kinda crappy on IRC. No one wants to constantly troubleshoot dumb stuff for the business person or the designer on the team, so, Hipchat. I think you could limit some functionality and sand the rough edges off of IRC, like Popcorn Time does for movie torrents, and have something pretty sweet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We used Zulip for some time. Overall it's pretty good - the clients could really need a bit more love though.

What I always found amazing was their support. No matter when I contacted them I got a response immediately and my issue was either taken care of or I got an explanation that it is intended to work this way.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've used Zulip. It's a cool idea, though it turned out to be still too beta to replace HipChat at my company.

The key feature is having multiple threads of conversation in one room. When you find yourself saying "Wait, was that in response to me or to Alice?" "Neither, I was talking to Bob", or just waiting for a conversation to finish so you're not interrupting and causing confusion, it's the kind of thing you wish for.

It was also pretty good at letting coders talk about code, with Markdown and syntax highlighting, and without mangling whitespace or turning all the (8)s into ridiculous smileys with a left parenthesis.

I'd love to be able to use Zulip when it's more fleshed out, so here's hoping Dropbox does something cool with it, and doesn't just quietly absorb the talent.

<comment><USER6> Have you tried Slack? ([https://slack.com](https://slack.com))

It also supports code snippets and side discussions. And it seems really polished. Haven't seen Zulip so I can't compare the two, though.

<comment><USER7> slack rocks!

We are using it on a project across 5 continents and everyone is loving it.

I think one thing it does well it automatically annotate links and code - thats one of many things, but it's quite nice.

The mobile app sounds is so - nice!

Looks like this company did it right and just demoed for all the best people who might buy it quick. Always follow the money!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The startup, which has been fairly stealthy to date, competes in the broader business messaging space with other cross-platform chat solutions, like Yammer, Convo, recently acquired Tomfoolery, newly launched Slack_

It seems odd that Hipchat wasn't included in the list.

<comment><USER9> I have used most of them including Hipchat and for some reason Slack seems to be the best, with full features, like hubot, sharing documents, links, private and custom chats etc. This project looks like it is going in a similar direction and could really compliment Dropbox and compete with Google Docs. Just as long as they don't make you agree that all stored data is theirs to keep (yes Google does this now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Psst... hey, you! Yeah, you, the one using Zulip. We have some news for you, > but you gotta keep it secret. Can you do that? Alright, sweet.

Is the default behaviour when receiving something like this to immediately leak it?

<comment><USER11> a secret is information that travels one person at a time

<comment><USER12> Hence the word secretion!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I read the "stealthy" in the title as "hidden from bosses and coworkers", thinking its interface was similar to Office and all windows would hide with Ctrl+Shift+F8.</comment>