Ask HN: Should I use K&R to learn C? - <AUTHOR> Should I? Or would I be learning C the wrong way? This would be my second language and I am still a programming newbie. Learning C so I can reverse engineer. <comment><USER2> There was a very good critique of K&R in Learn C the Hard Way that got taken down because of (IMO) undue backlash.

The gist of it was that K&R ignores the safety problems in C and there is no discussion of the habits/constructs seasoned C programmers have developed to make sure their code is safe. Of course, many of those habits were developed after K&R, but that's why we need revisions and new sources.

In its place, Zed Shaw (the author), updated Learn C the Hard Way to concentrate on using C safely -- it is an awesome way for a newbie to learn C. Even if you don't agree (and want to use K&R), read this alongside it.

[http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/](http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/)

<comment><USER3> Interesting, last time I asked on various C boards about learning resources, Zed's book got ripped apart.

[http://www.iso-9899.info/wiki/Books](http://www.iso-9899.info/wiki/Books)

<comment><USER4> The man who moved my book into the "avoided" category admitted to me in an email that he did it just because of my K&R critique, not because of the book's quality, is not a C programmer, hasn't coded C professionally ever, and works doing PHP with almost no C experience.

<comment><USER5> It is shocking to me that someone who doesn't even use C is handing out critiques of any book focused on C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd say that K&R C is a historical relic and not the best way to learn the language anymore. I have the ANSI second edition. It's way outdated.

If you have some programming language experience already I'd suggest going with _21st Century C_ by Ben Klemens. There's a decent refresher on the language in the appendix and most of the book spends time talking about all of the things most text books skip over: tooling, debugging, the environment, useful libraries, etc. It also covers C99/C11 which is where anyone new to C should be starting these days, IMO.

You might also want to pick up _Expert C Programming_ by Peter Van Der Linden. It's also starting to show its age but is useful for a deep, historical dive into why and how C evolved the way it has. It will keep you from yelling, "why on Earth would you ever do it that way!?" when you get a little frustrated with C's quirks. There are reasons most of the time (even if they're not always good ones in retrospect).

Also there's nothing quite like ordering yourself a copy of the specification. It's not insurmountable and easy to chew through a section here and there as you go along.

Happy hacking!

 _UPDATE_ : You can wait to purchase a copy of the ISO ANSI C specification as it can be quite expensive... you'll find it on [http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=ISO%2fIEC+989...](http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=ISO%2fIEC+9899%3a2011)

<comment><USER7> I will second Expert C Programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> K&R is a great book however I feel there are better books these days. My two personal recommendations are C Programming A Modern Approach by K N King (2nd edition) and Programming in C by Kochan.

However the exercises in K&R are excellent so make sure you do them all. Actually the cost of K&R is justified just for the exercises IMHO.

Also get Understanding and Using C Pointers by Richard Reese, it is a must have.

Two other books I very much enjoyed are Head First C and 21st Century C (2nd edition). Head First has some nice "extra" bits like threads and networking in C. 21st Century C explains sensible, modern ways to do things in C and, more importantly, things you should NEVER do in C!

<comment><USER9> Seconding Understanding and Using C Pointers by Richard Reese and 21st Century C, but more for after you've gone through a more basic resource. I haven't looked at Kim King's book, but if it's anywhere near as good as his intro to Modula-2, it will be excellent to learn C from.

<comment><USER8> Yeah 21CC and U&UCP are for once you are comfortable with the language not for beginners. U&UCP will be a book to keep by for many years as well as it is pretty much the gospel for pointers IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're serious about reverse engineering, you might consider learning assembly language and C side-by-side. Learn an assembly language (with the Art of Assembly Language Programming or similar) while working through K&R (or another introduction to C), but compiling everything with gcc -S and reading the assembly output (initially, compile with -O0; optimization will obscure the output too much). This would be slow going, but you'd really solidify the connection between the low-level and the higher level, which is presumably what you are really looking for when you say you want to learn C. (A lot of things you're going to reverse engineer will have to be reverse engineered at the assembly level, not the C level.)

K&R would be fine for this purpose, I think. As a more general introduction to C, I think it's still great, but really needs to be paired with something more modern if you're planning to actually develop applications in C.

<comment><AUTHOR> What you described is exactly how I want to learn C: together with ASM but wasn't sure how to go about it. But know you have gave me a general idea on how to go about it, thanks.

<comment><USER10> If you have any questions about that approach, feel free to email me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For reverse engineering? You should use every single thing you can get your hands on that helps you learn. The K and R are the two people who wrote C. Of course you should read their if you want to learn C. Then read, and WRITE the code in, everything else you can get your hands on to learn a programming language. It may only take one book, it may take 10, but that's how you do it.

Then after that go learn Assembler, or even better, implement a compiler. You'd probably learn a ton of the things you need to know for reverse engineering code from just making one simple compiler.

</comment><comment><USER11> A much more complete book than K&R is "C: A Reference Manual", which has much better explanations.

See it here: [http://careferencemanual.com/](http://careferencemanual.com/), at its home page.

Or at Amazon here: [http://www.amazon.com/Reference-Manual-5th- Edition/dp/013089...](http://www.amazon.com/Reference-Manual-5th- Edition/dp/013089592X).

Turn to this book when you have questions. The authors are Harbison and Steele. If you become a C programmer, you will want and need this book. So you may as well get a copy now.

Another (more advanced) book is The C Puzzle Book.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Puzzle-Book-Alan- Feuer/dp/02016046...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Puzzle-Book-Alan- Feuer/dp/0201604612).

It's older and I'm not sure it's totally up-to-date with the latest version of C. But it's still very valuable. If you finish this book, you will be a C ninja, and it isn't too hard.

K&R is outdated, in my opinion, because it is too skimpy.

<comment><USER12> CAR is a great reference book and something that I will use when I am writing embedded C even today.

But it is still a reference book not a get started with C guide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Personally, I have found most C books to be colossal failures. K&R is a great text that would be good for you to read eventually (if only to see how far C has come), but to learn how to do modern programming, K&R probably is not where you should go.

Additionally, LCTHW let me down significantly (regardless of what you think of the author).

If I could make two recommendations to you, the first would be that reading a text book will never make you good at C programming; like many other languages (or perhaps programming in-general with the exclusion of highly-academic languages), creating your own personal projects and learning as you go with a mentor to guide you is probably the single best way to become proficient.

Second, eventually, you should read the current Spec (or at least, the latest draft and all its TC). Before getting to that, if you are convinced that a text book would be helpful, go look at [http://icube- icps.unistra.fr/img_auth.php/d/db/ModernC.pdf](http://icube- icps.unistra.fr/img_auth.php/d/db/ModernC.pdf)

All the best,

<comment><USER14> > with a mentor to guide you

I wholeheartedly agree. Not to say they're mutually exclusive, but nothing comes close in terms of education / time density to an experienced programmer telling you what you did wrong and why.

<comment><USER13> Actually, that's why I happily offer to help those who are interested in learning C to come and ping me with code snippets and to even assign them exercises and walk through them step by step with people. The world needs more competent C programmers, and if I can help with that at all, I'd like to :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd strongly advise people to read K&R C as maybe their second or third book and mostly for historical purposes and not because it's particularly great for learning the language. The exercises are quite fun, however.

You will be better served by reading a more recent (C99) and carefully considered book such as K.N. King's C Programming: A Modern Approach.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes, I would highly recommend reading it, with the exception of Chapter 8.

Some of the other people have said things like: "The gist of it was that K&R ignores the safety problems in C and there is no discussion of the habits/constructs seasoned C programmers have developed to make sure their code is safe. Of course, many of those habits were developed after K&R, but that's why we need revisions and new sources."

This is indeed extremely important, but I also think in an introductory book these details will be very overwhelming. Safety in C is a very complicated topic, and indeed entire books have been written about it[1].

I find these "critiques" rather misguided. After all, we all know Newton's laws are an inaccurate picture of reality, but one would hardly start teaching quantum physics straightaway. C is a hard language with a lot of bizarre edge cases, and K&R C does an excellent job of presenting the language without all these pesky details.

The second criticism seems to be that it is outdated. This is true, but you can catch up with coding conventions and best practices very quickly.

To summarize, K&R C is excellent for _introducing_ people to C. I would suggest completely ignoring safety issues et cetera at the start and just have fun solving the exercises!

\---

[1] Secure Coding in C and C++ is a really good book on this topic. [http://www.amazon.com/Secure-Coding-Robert-C- Seacord/dp/0321...](http://www.amazon.com/Secure-Coding-Robert-C- Seacord/dp/0321335724)

PS: Since you are interested in reverse engineering, after finishing K&R C I would recommend reading Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective.

</comment><comment><USER17> 35 years ago, when I was told my 2nd freshman course in programming would be in Pascal, I bought the _Pascal User's Manual and Report_, read through it in one sitting, managed to remember most of it (Pascal is a small language) and was able to program in it - at a beginner level, of course. K&R is roughly the C equivalent. If you want the language and nothing but, then it should do you nicely.

My personal favorite, because it explains better (so I think) and dives into a little more depth where K&R leaves you to extrapolate on your own, is Peter van der Linden's "Expert C Programming" (Deep C Secrets): [http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Programming-Peter-van- Linden/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Programming-Peter-van- Linden/dp/0131774298) . Also, I enjoy the author's entertaining style, and think it aids learning.

</comment><comment><USER18> A small detail that has been missed by most responses to the question is OP isn't asking how to learn how to write the best possible 2015 C code for 2015 C tasks, but asked for reverse engineering previously written code (perhaps written VERY long ago).

Depending on the age and quality of the code OP is reverse engineering, learning a very modern style of coding might somewhat oppose OPs goal.

I'd advise OP to rephrase the question to something like "I really want to learn how unixv6 works as a retro computing hobby project and I want to know what books the authors of unixv6 originally read to learn C". Or "I want to eventually be able to reverse engineer stereotypical 90s/00s microcontroller code so I want to know what textbooks an average EE used to learn C in that era"

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm, I think my question is fine how it is. I want to learn C, I am asking HN their opinion of a book I am thinking about. If you want specifics, I would revise my question to something like "I really want to learn how to reverse engineer malware so I'm starting this goal by learning C, is K&R a good resource to learn C from?"

<comment><USER18> What kind of C? 1980s K+R or 2015 or ...

Its like the difference between "Programming Perl" 1st edition manual and 2014 edition of "Modern Perl"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those of you reading this and feeling dumb for not knowing what K&R refers to (like me):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language)

</comment><comment><USER20> You are not going to learn C with _one_ book. K&R is one you should know, but it is not everything you will need.

I think it still is a nice book for beginners, but not the most pragmatic option. You may prefer to start with something more up to date. But if you really want to learn C, read it at some point.

As a side note, even if C was already a dead language, I would still recommend to read the book just as an example of good writing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Princeton's CS50 course on edx.org covers C and recommends other good books like Hacker's Delight.

This is also a good presentation for safer C programs [https://www.bsdcan.org/2010/schedule/events/172.en.html](https://www.bsdcan.org/2010/schedule/events/172.en.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> K&R (draft ANSI edition) was my first C book and still sits on my shelf. I learned C code from it and it was my goto reference for many years. There is a fair bit of nostalgia for that book.

But, at this point in my life, I believe the K&R book is a good read if you are into the history of programming languages or going to write a book about your own language and want to avoid the bloat common in computer books. It is not a great modern C book and has not been updated in years. I wish this wasn't true, but pointing new programmers to that book in anything other than a historical context is just not serving them well.

It is really too outdated and does not cover the language as it is used or safe programming in the language. I'm not sure what the replacement is these days.

</comment><comment><USER23> I strongly recommend Learn C the Hard Way [http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/](http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/)

You'll get a modern approach to C programming and it had great exercises.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wouldn't recommend K & R to a beginner. To a first approximation C is portable assembly language and Kernigan and Ritchie wrote for an audience approximating their coworkers at Bell Labs - people with experience in Assembly language.

A book I would recommend, particularly if Zed Shaw's _Learn the Hard Way_ does not appeal to you is _Head First C_.[1] The underlying pedagogy of programmed instruction is similar. The exercises are more diverse, the tone is lighter, and the overall presentation more approachable.

Good luck.

[1]: [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920015482.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920015482.do)

</comment><comment><USER25> Since you describe yourself as a programming newbie, I think you should take a look at Head First C. I'm not the hugest fan of the Learn __ the Hard Way approach anymore, and I think the Head First series does a good job of teaching you in an interesting and easy to remember way.

I can't speak to what you need for reverse engineering, so I'll let others say whether it's appropriate for that.

</comment><comment><USER26> I feel K&R is an important classic from which one can still take a lot of valuable jewels in a pretty concise way. If possible, complement it with other books like Peter van der Linden's Expert C programming (although I don't like his opposition to static linking).

If possible, check the suckless.org projects, they tend to have pretty idiomatic and clean source codes.

</comment><comment><USER27> K&R is more of a reference, I'd suggest this instead:

"C Interfaces and Implementations" by David R. Hanson [http://www.amazon.com/Interfaces-Implementations- Techniques-...](http://www.amazon.com/Interfaces-Implementations-Techniques- Creating-Reusable/dp/0201498413)

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it is hard to find a more well-written and concise introduction to a programming language than K&R.

That being said, the example code in the book is sometimes terse at the expense of readability (and security). I would try to pick up a more modern, and defensive, coding style from the web.

</comment><comment><USER29> I started with K&R as a college senior, 31 years ago. I found it tough going, but rewarding. It's a good book, but as others have said, you don't want to miss out on things that have been learned about C since it was written, including safety issues.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would recommend "A Reference Manual" by Harbison and Steele jr over K&R...

But to be honest, if you want to do reverse engineering, I would instead pick up a copy of "80386 Programmer's Manual" from Intel as you'll be living in assembly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did a quick search and found it: [http://www.logix.cz/michal/doc/i386/](http://www.logix.cz/michal/doc/i386/)

I must ask though and I don't mean this in a challenging way but isn't this teaching ASM for an old cpu? I'm largely ignorant of ASM so feel free to correct me. I just don't see the point of learning asm for that (As I believe that ASM changes from cpu to cpu).

<comment><USER30> It will give you the foundation to advance to modern day Intels. You won't last if you jump straight to x86_64

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Should you read Shakespeare? Yes.

<comment><USER32> Should you read Shakespeare to learn English though?

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure if your use of iambic pentameter for that sentence was intentional, but if so, well done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Most people - who know C or any programming language do not ask for a book to read, just pick one, read it carefully, do something based on it, make mistakes, learn from them. Time went by, write a book!

</comment><comment><USER35> You should _definitely_ have a copy of K&R on your desk.

A book I read alongside K&R was "Illustrating C" by Donald G. Alcock, even though it is out of print and quite hard to find I'd recommend hunting a copy down as it explains the concepts visually and for me, it was the only book that made things fall into place.

[http://www.amazon.com/Illustrating-C-Ansi-Iso- Version/dp/052...](http://www.amazon.com/Illustrating-C-Ansi-Iso- Version/dp/0521468213)

<comment><USER22> "You should definitely have a copy of K&R on your desk."

I ask honestly, why? Other than nostalgia and as a signal to others what does it bring the modern C programmer? I have it on my shelf, but it is part of my history.

<comment><USER35> "I ask honestly, why?"

As you say yourself, it is part of _your_ history, you've probably forgotten which concepts that K&R taught you and the OP is trying to learn C from scratch.

The OP mentions that they are learning C to help them with their reverse engineering skills, so learning about the older ways that C was programmed is also invaluable as those insecure programming techniques are still (unfortunately) widely used today and if OP wants to exploit such bugs, then all information is useful!

You mention nostalgia, and yes that is certainly one of the reasons as _in my opinion_ the preface, the preface to the second edition and the introduction in the K&R book are worth the cost alone.

Besides, the book is _so_ thin and flexible and makes a perfect ultra- portable, high-definition, long-life, skills acquisition device that works well on bus journeys, flights etc. ;)

I would say owning it is better than not.

<comment><USER22> "the OP is trying to learn C from scratch"

This weighed heaviest in my mind. K&R is a poor book to learn modern C. Its like saying a person starting out with Fortran today should learn from a book written for FORTRAN 77. It might be ok later once better habits have set in, but for someone who didn't live through that era, it just seems like a waste of time and money for learning modern C.

I am still convinced its a signal to others and an aspiration for what we want out of language authors, but it just isn't up to date for the task of being the first C book someone reads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Also try Pointers on C - Kenneth A. Reek

</comment><comment><USER37> I highly recommend this one. Very clear for newbie.

</comment><comment><USER38> There's a lot of great book recommendations in this thread already, so I will just add that learning C so that you can reverse engineer anything more than trivial programs is kind of like memorizing a parts manual so you can reverse engineer your car.

Yeah you'll be able to identify all the parts and in theory what they do, but you won't understand the why of things. There's really no substitute for experience in understanding why something is designed the way it is.</comment>


Moby Project: a container ecosystem to assemble container-based systems - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/moby/moby <comment><USER2> So far it's a repo move from docker/docker to moby/moby with a note at the top of the README.</comment>


Temperate Earth-sized planets transiting a nearby dwarf star - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature17448.html <comment><AUTHOR> Phys.org also has an article on this which provides some more detail than the Nature abstract: [http://phys.org/news/2016-05-years-earth-planets-host- life.h...](http://phys.org/news/2016-05-years-earth-planets-host-life.html)</comment>


The Transistor, Part 3: Endless Reinvention - <AUTHOR> https://technicshistory.wordpress.com/2018/03/31/the-transistor-part-3-endless-reinvention/ <comment><USER2> This series of longform articles is incredible. The first batch are on the history of the switch and probably add up to a shortish book in length. There's a nice focus on how at several steps there were many who discovered a new innovation, but there were fewer who had a clear grasp of what their innovation meant and could carry the field forward. Can't wait for this author to publish a book.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm amazed at how fast things moved in the computer industry. Per the article, FETs only just began to work in 1960, but by 1964 Seymour Cray at CDC was completing the 6600[1], a "supercomputer" with massive numbers of them.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600)

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure the 6600 was done in 10K ECL, which was a bipolar technology, not FET. In ECL, the transistors are biased such that they never saturate, which decreases switching time at the expense of power consumption. Also, the inputs are configured as a diff-amp, which helps switching speed also.

Some time after the 6600 (1980's) I was a logic designer working in 100K ECL and compatible gate arrays (144 transistors per chip). Each gate array required 5 Watts of cooling. We had one 20,000 BTU Ton water chiller for the CPU, and that was the design-limiting constraint.

<comment><USER5> I have next to none experience with ECL chips, but recall in the 80s the 11C90 ECL divider which was the only affordable choice if one needed a prescaler for his frequency counter to measure frequencies of several hundred MHz. That chip ran hot compared to other TTL ones, but a few years on, probably late 80s, I used a 8 pin DIL ECL chip for a PLL (can't remember the name) which I recall running much cooler than the 11C90. They probably improved the technology before it got surpassed by more modern ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm always amazed by the story of Shockley (repeated here). He was surely a smart guy, didn't he at any point stop to think that his own behaviour might be the root cause of his problems, and at least not in his best interests?

<comment><USER7> The more successful someone is with a behavior set X, the less likely they are to feel that they should change anything about X. Today's best example of this is Trump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The photo of Shockley's lab in Mountain View is at least two teardowns out of date now. The small plaque visible in the picture is gone in the latest construction, but in its place there is a larger plaque, and several huge, towering sculptures of electronic components. It's a pretty neat display.

</comment><comment><USER9> This series was very well researched and written. He is starting a new series on the history of the Internet. I'm really looking forward to it.[0]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17322090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17322090)

</comment><comment><USER10> holy... fantastic material</comment>


Ask HN: Best File Naming Convention? - <AUTHOR> I have recently taken upon the task of organizing my digital life (multiple laptops, Dropbox, external drives) to minimize some digital waste as well as making my digital storage a little more manageable.
 How do you name your files/directories to effectively manage them?<p>https://www2.staffingindustry.com/site/Editorial/Archived-Blog-Posts/Adam-Pode-s-Blog/Probably-the-best-file-naming-convention-ever? I found this page during some quick googling, but I would like to see what HN has to say about it. <comment><USER2> Short lowercase names and I avoid spaces and non-ascii chars. Even in 2019 there is still software that has trouble with that, especially if the files are accessed from both Windows and Linux.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- I use 8.3 NAMES for my top level stuff. I keep the top level names short.

\- The subsequent folders are CamelCased.

\- The files are either NAME.TXT (8.3 file) or NameLongerThanExpected- Part1.txt (regular file)

</comment><comment><USER4> First some 6-8 badic folders, like Travel, Documents, Finance, Work etc. Travel could have YYYYMMDD TRIP folders, Work could have YYYY MM Company A</comment>


Newspeak: a principled dynamically typed language - <AUTHOR> http://newspeaklanguage.org/

<comment><USER2> The obvious weakness here is that there are no code examples. Code monkeys want to see code. If you are going to try to pitch a new language, show of your stuff.</comment>


Charting the World Cup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2010/07/charting-the-world-cup.html

<comment><USER2> The first chart that plots the number of fouls per team is misleading, considering half the teams represented only played a total of 3 games, while the other half advanced, several playing twice as many matches.

The second chart corrects for this by averaging it to Fouls per Game and adds the second data point of Goals per Game, making it a far more informative infographic, IMO.</comment>


Getting Started with Server-Side Blazor - <AUTHOR> https://www.productivecsharp.com/2019/07/getting-started-with-server-side-blazor/ <comment><AUTHOR> Learn how to get started with Blazor server-side. Blazor is a feature of ASP.NET Core that helps you to build full-stack web applications using C# instead of Javascript. Blazor is officially supported by Microsoft and the server-side hosting model will be ready for production use when .NET Core 3 launches.</comment>


IPage web hosting is bad even for shared hosting - <AUTHOR> http://y2kemo.com/2010/04/ipage-sucks/ <comment><AUTHOR> Like this poor sap, I tried iPage and had nothing but issues. I understand shared hosting is cheap for a reason, but iPage is awful. Ended up with Hostgator.</comment>


Astronomers want public funds for intelligent life search - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51223704 <comment><USER2> I think some commenters are forgetting how science is done. Just because you are researching X does not mean your only output is X. An investment into SETI is an investment in science and technology. All the arguments on this forum about why we should not allocate funds to SETI can be used in the same manner for why we should not investment in pure mathematics or any other potentially "useless" human endeavor. SETI researchers will come up with novel ways to solve their problems and invent new technologies along the way, the same as every other branch of science and engineering. It's how we got SETI@home and now boinc is used for lots of problems like protein folding (1).

Plus, for those of us that have read Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (2), we understand that SETI research is the biggest gamble in scientific research. High risk with the highest reward. What could fundamentally change humanity more than definitively finding intelligent life out there?

Lastly, some commenters need to go read Carl Sagan's Contact. He goes over all of this nay-saying!

[1] [https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/](https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/) [2] [https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Cixin- Liu/dp/07653...](https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Cixin- Liu/dp/0765382032/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3CG8PHFJR8N2Q&keywords=three+body+problem&qid=1581770260&sprefix=three+body+%2Caps%2C156&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER3> Fundamental physics or esoteric math are funded for several reasons, one of which is that they engender humbleness in society. These fields are among the most intellectually demanding of all, and by trying to do these difficult things, what we should learn as a society is that we are not done and we don't know it all, and can't do it all.

SETI particularly has this extra humbleness benefit, because it reminds us as a society that the journey that began from earth at the center of the universe, and is currently halted at, humans are unique in this universe, is not over. If we stop doing SETI, as a society, our egos will flare. If don't stop, we will forever be in the shadows of possible alien intelligences who could be far more intellectually advanced than us.

By doing SETI, we also are reminded that our science, and our viewpoint of the world is from a very human point of view, a very limited view, that could bear expanding.

<comment><USER4> > Fundamental physics or esoteric math are ... most intellectually demanding > of all

Trying to rank the sciences by "hardness" is silly and counterproductive.

Biology gets blown off as "stamp collecting", but it turns out to be frightfully hard in its own way. Look at this "map" of biochemical pathways from Roche: [http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1](http://biochemical- pathways.com/#/map/1) It's a stupendously complicated dynamical system! This is just part of it, and measuring each arrow requires clever ideas and a heroic amount of work. Imagine how tricky psychology, which deals with the aggregate result of _billions_ of these systems in the body and brain, must be --and the poor sociologists!

<comment><USER5> Hardness is useful bur in English is a misleading synonym. Hard science is more quantitative and has more rigor in terms of hard proof and mathematical models and less room for fuzziness.

"Soft" science is fuzzier with more qualitative elements. It doesn't necessarily mean less difficult.

Another distinction is that the level of tools limits things. Say studying color before and after the ability to analyze wavelengths.

<comment><USER4> Can you explain the usefulness?

From my perspective, it's a term, coined by a 19th century philosopher, that gets dragged out by people with physics envy.

Modern biology, for example, is incredibly quantitative: molecular biologists collect massive genomics datasets, neuroscientists record from hundreds of sites in the brain, and ecologists, whom everyone thinks of as flannel-clad outdoorsmen, fit sophisticated statistical models. Psychology is getting there too, especially if you're willing to lump in related industries like advertising: Google and Facebook have _massive_ datasets on people's activities and preferences.

It's true that these fields have had less success with mathematical modeling, but you also have to look at the sheer number of interacting variables vs the ~10 terms in Maxwell's equations. It's possible that the underlying phenomena might often just be irreducibly complex, as this perspective argues: (preprint: [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/764258v3](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/764258v3) and was just published in Neuron).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to be a big fan of SETI but I've come around to thinking it's probably a complete waste of time.

This will probably get dismissed as "optimistic futurism" but I find the argument compelling that the future of any civilization is a Dyson Swarm for many reasons such as:

\- Planets are inefficient uses of mass to create living area. IIRC 1% of the mass of Mercury could make enough living area from habitats to house at least a million times as many people as we have now.

\- Gravity is a tyrant. Spinning a habitat achieves much the same thing without the negatives (as in the cost of launch).

\- This is entirely feasible on solar power alone. The importance of this is that practical fusion power is not a prerequisite.

\- This requires no new science. It's largely an engineering problem (albeit a significant one).

I deliberately use the term "Swarm" here not "Sphere", which is true to the original concept. "Sphere" suggests this is a solid shell. That was never the intent. No known or theorized material could support a solid shell around the Sun.

If you accept this premise then it's about the most un-subtle thing you could do and should be easily detectable millions of light years away in the IR spectrum. Why? Simple:

\- Stars generate heat

\- If the habitats hit by the energy from the star will heat up

\- In space you can only radiate heat away

\- If you don't remove that heat you'll ultimately fry

\- The wavelength from radiating heat is determined by the temperature of that object

The standard counter to this is:

Q: What if you recycle the heat instead?

A: You can improve the efficiency but you can never perfectly consume all that heat. To do so would be to violate thermodynamics. If that's possible, well then all bets are off.

A thousand years ago we were stabbing each others with swords. In a thousand years the above scenario is far from overly optimistic (IMHO). So in a cosmic blink of an eye we go from undetectable (from a SETI perspective) to being detectable from tens or hundreds of millions of light years away.

So that's why I think SETI is pointless.

Some say "you never know what fruit science will bear". While true, taken further this means it doesn't matter what science you invest in so why is SETI special?

<comment><USER7> What do you actually think the IR spectrum would look like given that it would still be very close to a star that could potentially already saturate the measurement?

<comment><USER6> So the telltale sign is a significant IR source with little to no visible light. Assuming the star is sufficiently encompassed by the swarm then it's still outputting energy, the swarm heats up and it needs to radiate that heat away. So a stellar level IR source that isn't visible is pretty weird.

And if you wonder if the Swarm uses all the light such that little escapes, that's the whole point. Think of it like a fog. A fog can block light with a sufficiently large number of tiny water droplets but it isn't strictly "solid".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As usual, public resources are limited, so any lobby really needs to step up their game or participate in politics actively, win elections and divert some funds from elsewhere... another way is asking a patron, you have Musk, Gates, Bezos, Zuck & Cook for a cap in hand chat... the third way is to make military believe they would have some sort of unassailable advantage, which in this case may be pitched in the form of Mr Octopus from deeeeep space telepathically sending them the secret of the ultimate weapon, a bit like The Mezga Family animated series from Hungary, fifty years ago.

</comment><comment><USER9> How does this benefit the public in the foreseeable future? Why should the public fund it? Why not stick to private funding? Look at SpaceX, there are plenty of rich people and them aside, people interested in this subject should contribute.

I know this is an unpopular view here but I just don't get why the public has to fund this using tax dollars. We all have views on what tax money should be spent on but can we not agree that the public should benefit from it with some guarantee of success.even if they succeed there is no guarantee it will benefit anyone. scifi aside, known physics does not permit anything to travel to our solar system faster than a few million years. Maybe aliens left some useful information in a format humans can somehow decode, is this very very small chance of succeess worth considering the pursuit beneficial to the public?

There are many very urgent things that need funding. Even wild ideals like universal basic income or a CO2 cleaning factory can be useful to the public in the foreseeable future. I get that this will not neccesarily take away from other projects,but heck, I would rather see it go to pay off 0.0001% of national debt than this. People can donate,billionaires exist.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's one simple metric for SETI progress that I would like to see and have always had trouble finding.

What is the radius within which SETI can exclude the existence of a civilization currently using Earth-like electromagnetic communications technology and how many star systems are believed to lie within that radius ? How will proposed SETI efforts expand that radius ?

I think this is kind of a key metric that could tell us a lot about how widespread technological civilizations might be in the galaxy.

<comment><USER11> The issue with using general "Earth-like electromagnetic communications technology" is the inverse square law.

Our own communications aren't distinguishable from the cosmic background radiation even at our closest neighbor.

The only way we would find something is if they pointed a VERY powerful noise source directly at us, or us at them. And even then, we are looking at maybe a 100 lightyear bubble (~600 main sequence stars).

<comment><USER10> > The only way we would find something is if they pointed a VERY powerful > noise source directly at us, or us at them.

Do you mean we could detect ordinary technological EM radiation if we pointed a sufficiently high-gain antenna at the transmitting planet ?

Otherwise if SETI assumes someone is sending an interstellar signal on purpose, I would question its value, because there's no strong reason to think anyone is doing that. I realize we did it once, but an argument can be made (and has been) that it was a fairly stupid thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It really sounds like a good hobby project for a very rich person.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. Tax payer money should be used carefully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I often imagine there is something like "subspace" or faster-than-light communication, and species across our galaxy are a bunch of chatterboxes chatting away.

The only problem is we don't know how to tune in to join the conversation.

I still think we should keep trying to find them, though.

<comment><USER15> > _I often imagine there is something like "subspace" or faster-than-light > communication, and species across our galaxy are a bunch of chatterboxes > chatting away._

I like to imagine, for the science fiction that I might write, a hypothetical phenomenon that allows instantaneous communication between two points (objects/particles/portals) _but only after_ they have been "synced" or "bound" with each other, which must be done during physical contact.

So, you might construct two such "hyperspace modems", bind them with each other, then incur the initial cost of physically transporting one of them to another star system however many light years away, which may take years or decades but once it's there, communication between the two points would be instantaneous.

<comment><USER16> That's interesting. You could call your story Spooky Action. The Spooky channel need not be used exclusively by so-called advanced civilisations. In fact there are species on Earth now that are known to interact in evolutionarily useful ways with quantum effects. Of course, if Spooky is just entanglement the modem would be destroyed upon a single use. However, there could be an effectively unlimited supply of them occurring naturally.

This feels more feasible than SETI's hypothesis. Space was much smaller and was probably at just the right temperature to support life at a very early stage of the Universe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I crunched for years on seti@home at the turn of the century and have always been a fan of the project.

It makes sense to increased research funding now that they have a long list of newly discovered planets to target, but what other scientific endeavors do they retire to open up any meaningful government funding?

With trillion dollar deficits in the forecast, earmarking new money does not sound like an easy task to achieve.

<comment><USER18> Ok so I'm calling bluff on the trillion dollar deficits hyperbole. This is a cudgel argument used without any deep exposition against $subjectiveBadIdea.

We live in a financial world where banks magic up funds all the time and nobody bats an eye, but governments can't do it for projects?

Further, imagine trying to calculate the added GDP for all of a nations infrastructure over the years its existed and been in use for free or near free. Yes, there are taxes levied in fuel transactions, but clearly that's not the entire value added.

Edit-Deficit hawks are really arguing against deficits in the secret search for forcing the economy to be zero-sum and punitive. Governments job is to create and reinforce property rights, amongst other things. They do that by creating a resource allocation system - thankfully capitalistic for the most part. Capitalism only exists at this scale with currency - that only the government authenticates. Etc etc. The governments debt is a reflection and indicator of the value its left in the market. Back to nap time.

<comment><USER17> Well, sans magic wand, I guess they could try to sell Alien Scout Cookies to try to fund the SETI field.

You could probably sum up much of your statement as self-sabotage, since that seems like all the rage nowadays (politically and monetarily speaking).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the one theory that SETI was largely cover for signals intelligence spying in the cold war.

Personally I suspect that while we may discover interesting details of radio- astronomy but I highly doubt we will discover anything of worth related to alien life through it.

</comment><comment><USER15> We have _already_ found alien species.

 _Right here_ on this very same planet:

Dinosaurs.

We would have never even known about their existence if we had not chanced upon their remains.

So it's not just the vast distances of space that separates species from each other, it's also incomprehensible stretches of _time._

Just from the amount of variables involved and their ranges (the number of planets, the extreme environments in which we have already observed life), it's obvious that we are not alone.

BUT we may never meet anyone.

Just like how there's billions of people on Earth but millions die alone, to use a topical metaphor given Valentine's Day. :)

<comment><USER19> Dinosaurs are just beakless ducks. If you want to blow your mind, take a look at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota)

<comment><USER15> Those are really interesting!

The point was that even if we could physically visit planets or reach them with communications, we would have to do it in the right time bracket. Any life (of interest) on them may have long since passed on, or not capable of interaction yet.

Mars may have once had life, and we may never know of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As long as no one tries to contact anyone, why not.

<comment><USER21> SETI has demonstrated that no one is beaming a signal right at us.

There might be a reason for that, other than them simple not existing.

<comment><USER20> Exactly. Welcome to the dark forest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Appreciate lives on Earth.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm all for it. Poverty and inequality will "never" be solved and a tiny fraction of our GDP going to this, will not be be felt. On the other hand, it may change our life, maybe even short term...money on research can bring results.

<comment><USER24> While i agree that shooting down any research with "think about poverty" is a bad argument, I think there are still much more important ways to spend money than this: anti-aging drugs developed by sens.org, gene drive to kill mosquitos, any technologies to build colony on mars etc . This is why it is important to have many people deciding for themselves on what to spend their money. If there are enough people who are interested in finding aliens they can redirect their part of GDP, but there should be a way for others to not be forced to spend their tax money on it.

<comment><USER25> The government has been in the business of basic research since science was a thing. Funding from taxes is a more fundamental component of the scientific process than peer review (a more recent development).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Eh, before we go looking for intelligent life up there, how about finding some down here first?

</comment><comment><USER27> Apparently what seems to be alien life was already observed on Earth a few years back. We just needed sufficiently good radar to see through their cloaking veils in the visible light spectrum. Cool hint as to what's possible with technology and the laws of physics! As documented in the NY Times:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified- flying-object-navy.amp.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo- sightings...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings- navy-pilots.amp.html)

<comment><USER28> While I'm excited by such news, let's not jump from "things we don't understand" to "god/magic/aliens".

For now, it's "cool event we don't know how to explain". Good enough. Life is full of that and if we try to force label on it, we miss the fun of figuring out what's going on seriously.

<comment><USER27> I certainly can't explain exactly what it is. However, a few facts stand out:

1\. Detected object moves erratically at high speeds, with exceptionally high acceleration. Controlled translational and angular acceleration of the object occur in the footage.

2\. Navy pilots in both encounters reported that the object was not visible at close range but only showed up on radar, in particular only on radar that was recently updated from a version released in the 1980s.

3\. Testimonies were confirmed by multiple independent pilots, cleared by the U.S. Navy, and pilots were deemed to be mentally fit as they were later deployed to active duty in the Middle East.

Those are just facts from the case. Feel free to draw your own hypotheses or conclusions. I certainly had fun doing so. :)

<comment><USER28> Such a line of thoughs lead to people attributing thunder to zeus thousands a year ago.

It's not bad to say "we don't know".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It always feels to me like so much hubris. Humans are unique on this planet, (we humans have determined it so), by virtue of our so-called intelligence. Not only does this intelligence make us unique on this planet, but the nature of that uniqueness is itself unique across the galaxy and beyond. Intelligence is the thing worthy of discovery.

So we go actively looking for other living species which exhibit that precise characteristic which we admire so much in ourselves. Using catch-phrases like "are we alone?" \- Guys, take a look around you. Just observing the millions of bacteria on your hand should suffice to answer that question in the negative.

But apparently, we knew that as a species we are not actually alone. Yet we felt lonely because nobody else here matches up to our self-serving criteria of significance; intelligence.

So within a few decades of having as a species learned how to control radio waves ourselves, Frank Drake comes up with the idea that of course any species worthy of our interest would be controlling radio waves too.

Perhaps this characterisation is too harsh. But the alternative is surely that we are just looking under the lamp-post for our keys, because that's where the light is. We want to find extraterrestrial life. Very good, fully approve. But there's no realistic way to do this outside of the solar system. So we make some preposterous assumptions and hope to get funding based solely on human vanity.

<comment><USER29> I'm confused. Seems natural for us to look for intelligent signals from space, since unintelligent life is not going to put together the machinery to send interstellar messages.

How do you think we should be searching? It's fine to say we're not looking for the right thing, but do you have an alternative?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The US hasn't even stabilised its environment, healthcare and any number of other important areas of basic human needs. Money for finding extra- terrestrial life would be better spent on earth fixing the mess.

Or use it to get us to mars. At least that fits with a "plan B" since humans existing "only on earth" is still a bad idea. Same goes for moon exploration / asteroid mining. Good ideas. Raw resources shouldn't be so rare as they currently are.

But sending a message to aliens? We've already done this. For decades. More than a century. Ever since we started transmitting Tv/radio.

They either know we're here or they will. Or we're off limits. Or we're too far away. Or we're too scary. "They live in _what kind of atmosphere_?"

<comment><USER21> If this were the bar for doing pure research, we'd never do any pure research ever.

The average quality of life in the US has never been higher.

<comment><USER30> I'm not convinced looking for aliens is basic research. Its more like applied science. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research)

Life expectancy for the US is dropping. Multiple modern issues of maladjustment are likely causes. Spending searching-for-aliens money on schools, education etc instead would be actually beneficial. Schools have active shooter drills now. That is NOT an indicator of increasing quality of life. [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/09/us-life-expectancy-has- been-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/09/us-life-expectancy-has-been- declining-heres-why.html)

Plenty of cracks in society. Pure research might actually help. We actually know far less about nutrition than we could - thats just one example.

We're much better off going to the moon, mining asteroids and living in space rather than searching for aliens. Plenty of the tech, knowledge and experience from even attempting to live in space has already had tangible benefits for those on earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't know why taxpayers should have to pay for the search for E.T.. That's a hard sell. Probably not what the founders had in mind when they gave the government the power to take money out of the pockets of the country's citizenry. I'm all for the social contract, investing in infrastructure, and making sure everyone has affordable housing and medicine, but this is a tough fucking sell. Get some rich scifi enthusiast to fund a grant. Some people just see the country's coffers as a free for all for any crazy idea. That money belongs to the public it came from and should be used to the benefit of its people with utmost seriousness it deserves. What the government can spend its money on is a zero-sum gane and any dollars we can invest into kids getting better meals or finding a biomarker for detecting ALS would be better spent than figuring out if UFOs are real.

<comment><USER32> You know what's a tragic waste for me? Most of the US military budget, its spending on the War on Drugs, its tax cuts to billionaires and corporate welfare.

Let's cut those in half and talk again about SETI, which I would be happy to fund a hundred times over if it meant less killing, fewer unjust incarcerations for victimless crimes, more economic equality, and less concentration of money and power in the hands of the elites.

<comment><USER33> I think it isn't so easy to say that what the US military does is a waste of your money. A lot of US foreign policy is about "free trade" that's beneficial to the US. If you were to cut off the US military then you'd likely have consequences for global trade. Perhaps you're right that it's a waste of your money, but I think that this is not at all a straightforward conclusion.

Eg imagine if Iran just decided to stop oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz with their military. How would you deal with this without a sizable military yourself?

Edit: or imagine that some country decides that they don't like goods related to the US going through Panama so they decide to occupy it. It's not US territory, but the loss of that will harm the US economy.

<comment><USER12> The Iranian navy is mostly famous for its usage of rubber dinghies. That's not a serious threat that needs 10 supercarriers to counter. If they decided to change that, then no problem, nobody wants the strait blocked so it will be easy to find allies to pressure the iranians into a deal. The panama canal doesn't need that either. It should be in range of US based aircraft. Current US spending can only be justified by pursuing multiyear wars, occupation of territory halfway around the world, complete domination of the seas, the ability to fight a war on two fronts (and win), the ability to obliterate earth ten times over and guarding others borders (thanks, by the way). I'd say a military the size of spain's would be sufficient given a more basic definition of security needs.

<comment><USER34> It's not clear the force size you suggest would result in a stable equilibrium. You're missing one key justification: the ability to dissuade future military competition. A defense force the size of Spain's would face substantially more threats given the value of US targets and interests, so we'd then need to increase spending. It's hard to predict what that world would look like. In the past it wasn't great. Outspending everybody else from the get-go works.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Self-hosted alternatives to Trello? - <AUTHOR> Something with minimal features. Thanks. <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/aliasaria/scrumblr](https://github.com/aliasaria/scrumblr)</comment>


Ask HN: Please help me find one specific book about programming mentioned on HN. - <AUTHOR>

Hello, some time ago, I came across a reference to a book here on HN. It was probably some article on Main page. I am trying to find it (the book or the article), but no luck so far.
The things I remember:
The book was about learning programming. Maybe programming in general or maybe LISP, I am not sure.
The comment or blog was about how he (the blogger or commenter) realized that the concept of variables was introduced in some later chapter in the book and how he was amazed by that. He was comparing to that usually books about learning programming start with variables in first chapter.
It is probably some older book.
He was mentioning that the book reads almost like a fiction.
Thanks for any ideas or help. I tried google, amazon, searchyc but cant find it. <comment><AUTHOR> Thak you both,

it was SICP, I finally found the article <http://thecleancoder.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-clojure.html>

And this is the paragraph that pop in my head today:

 _On page 216 they introduce a concept so familiar that most programming books start with it. On page 216 they prove to you that you've had some wrong ideas about programming all along. On page two hundred and sixteen, after talking about algorithms, data structures, recursion, iteration, trees, high-order procedures, scoping, local variables, data abstraction, closures, message- passing, and a plethora of other topics -- after all that, they introduce assignment!_

To clarify: I havent read SICP, I donw know LISP, but I am attracted to Clojure.

I am puttint SICP to my to.read list right now.

And also this to my to.watch list [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson- sussma...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman- lectures/)

</comment><comment><USER2> "The Little Schemer" and "The Seasoned Schemer", maybe? They're well-regarded around here and written as a lighthearted back-and-forth dialogue. I haven't gotten around to reading them yet, but quickly skimming through them on a hunch it looks like normal variables don't show up until midway through the second book (and even then are used minimally). The books use lots of small examples to teach functional programming from the ground up, and so use literal data values instead of variables to keep things concise and focused.

</comment><comment><USER3> SICP? TAOCP? (probably obvious, but I figured I put them on the table)</comment>


Holus: How to scam Kickstarter backers using 19th century technology - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sableraph/how-to-sell-a-19th-century-parlor-trick-as-a-3d-holographic-display-c12a861cb8bf

<comment><AUTHOR> This fake holographic display already reached 150.000$ of pledges on Kickstarter. Don't fall for it.</comment>


GitLab reinstates list of servers that have malware - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2016/10/15/gitlab-reinstates-list-of-servers-that-have-malware/ <comment><USER2> What a lovely mea culpa. Straight to the point.

We thought another way, but here's the counter argument, we agree, are sorry, and fixed.

Rare candor.

<comment><USER3> Yep. So rare to see this, especially in this day and age.

Also more justification for my decision to switch to GitLab for all my personal stuff!

<comment><USER4> Totally agree! Though why stop at personal stuff? I moved all of my business stuff to gitlab as well. Just the gitlab-ci stuff alone is worth the price of admission. There are a few funny little edges (gitlab.com seems a bit slow at times, and I finally have to break down and spin up my own gitlab runners so I didn't have to wait on shared runners for ci), but overall, I have no complaints at all. Heck, I am working on a pipeline for automated deployments as we speak.

Gitlab is awesome.

<comment><USER3> We do use a self-hosted version of GitLab for some of our projects at work (CE I think), and GitHub for others - which one depends on which team you're on. I only didn't mention that we use GL at work since I have no input into the matter - for the longest time we were using Gitolite hosted on a toaster oven and GL on a proper server is a big improvement, even though we use very few of its features (we have alternative CI and code review solutions).

Because I know it will be asked, the reason we're not using GL's features is mostly organizational inertia since we had to use those tools back when we were using Gitolite - having used GL's CI and code review solutions on personal projects, I don't think they're any worse than what we're using now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the proper decision here, but not merely for the reason they've given.

The best reason the list should be widely available: The exploit has already happened in this case, and disclosing it doesn't help attackers do further harm; the harm is already done. Removing the list is closing the barn door after the horses are gone.

<comment><USER6> Lets be honest about it; the real reason it was pulled down could've very well been to limit culpability in dissemination.

<comment><USER7> Unlikely. At least in Gitlab's case. Why would they have reinstated it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just applied for a position at GitLab, absolutely love this company!

PS: you can do it too, they're completely remote!

[https://about.gitlab.com/2016/03/04/remote-working- gitlab/](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/03/04/remote-working-gitlab/)

[https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/](https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for applying Andrei, and thanks for spreading the word.

<comment><USER10> Hi, How does it work when someone apply to a remote job from another country? Do you have to be on their payroll, or is it contract basis via an umbrella company or own limited company? Cheers

<comment><USER9> In most countries we would hire you as a contractor. In the US, UK, Netherlands, and India you would be an employee. For our contracts see [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/contracts/](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/contracts/)

<comment><USER11> I find it admirable that you publish these contracts publicly however I was curious as to how aware the employees are of part 14 of the European contract:

> Other than with the prior written permission of the Employer, the Employee > is prohibited during the term of the Employment Contract to carry out work – > either paid or not – of any nature whatsoever, either for himself and/or for > third-parties.

Personally I would never sign this because it prohibits any form of work for myself. Notably it would also prohibit any and all work for open source projects. Laughably this would also seem to prevent me working on my own house.

In fact, to my mind, this is a beyond unreasonable clause. And has really made me put on hold all the positive thought I had had for GitLab (which was relatively significant due to employee comments and my minimal experience with the product).

As you are the CEO I'm hoping you have a perfectly reasonable explanation for how such a clause landed in the contract.

<comment><USER9> Properly assigning IP rights is very important to us and it is hard to get right. This is standard language to ensure it is taken care of.

If you have side projects (many of us do, for example [https://github.com/jneen/rouge](https://github.com/jneen/rouge) is maintained by our team member Jeanine Adkisson) we recommend you email us the name to have an granted exception on record. If you want we can also add it to your hiring contract. We never declined such an exception.

But if there is an IP lawyer that wants to make an alternative proposal for this language we're all ears.

<comment><USER11> It would help if you limited it in scope to related areas. The scope of the current wording is beyond ridiculous.

As it stands the clause effectively prohibits anything done by someone employed by you, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the company or not.

Parts 15 and 16 are worded as IP and business protection. 14 is certainly over-reaching.

Taking the wording you have used it would appear that an employee has to request written permission from their boss to do practically anything:

* Participate in a code dojo or hackathon

* Assist a friend in moving

* Help someone change a flat tyre

* Change your own flat tyre

The absurdity of the examples follow directly from the absurdity of the restriction placed upon people accepting the contract.

Whilst an individual sensible enough to read the contract would likely raise issue with it, it is all too easy to pressure them into signing anyway with phrases such as "standard language", leaving all the rest not sensible enough trapped.

I also note it is ironic that you suggest an external lawyer gives free advice on rewording, presumably this lawyer would have to foresight to have pre- approved giving such advice with their boss as they operate under their standard contract?

Of course I understand this is very likely a complete oversight. And that GitLab is very unlikely to have any malicious intent in this. However I do find the existence of such a clause very alarming.

<comment><USER9> I agree the scope is very broad.

What do you think of the language used in 2b of [https://www.docracy.com/53/employee-proprietary- information-...](https://www.docracy.com/53/employee-proprietary-information- and-inventions-agreement) ?

"To the fullest extent under applicable law, the Company shall own all right, title and interest in and to all Inventions (including all Intellectual Property Rights therein or related thereto) that are made, conceived or reduced to practice, in whole or in part, by me during the term of my employment with the Company and which arise out of any use of Company's facilities or assets or any research or other activity conducted by, for or under the direction of the Company (whether or not (i) conducted at the Company's facilities, (ii) during working hours or (iii) using Company assets), or which are useful with or relate directly or indirectly to any "Company Interest" (meaning any product, service, other Invention or Intellectual Property Right that is sold, leased, used, proposed, under consideration or under development by the Company)."

<comment><USER11> Yes this seems much more reasonable.

I am not knowledgeable or awake enough to comment with certainty on the "or which are useful with or relate directly or indirectly to any "Company Interest"" as backtracking to what the 'or' refers to has broken my brain.

But on the whole that is the kind of clause I would expect. It is more than reasonable (I wouldn't invest in a company that didn't) to seek unilateral ownership over company related work, IP and assets.

Thank you for being so responsive, now I feel somewhat obliged to drop GitLab onto our stack of infrastructure proposals.

<comment><USER9> Cool, thanks for your feedback. We'll have our IP lawyer have a look to narrow the scope [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/issues/861](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/861) Feel free to add further context to the issue.

Don't feel obliged but of course I do encourage you to take a look at GitLab :)

<comment><USER12> Hungarian law says that the employer can only claim IP rights if there was a clear order from the employer to create the new stuff. I think this is a good approach too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 08-15 I don't get why anyone views this as a positive thing. The announcement effectively says "We took it down because we didn't think about it, but then we changed our mind." Okay---and a lively discussion on HN had nothing do with it, I presume.

GitLabb, you could have admitted publicly that you made a mistake, but you didn't. Making excuses is a promise of repetition, so I read this as "Next time something like this happens, we're again going to delete the account, unless there is too much backlash on HN again." Sorry guys, but the damage is done and you missed your one chance to repair it.

<comment><USER13> I see that you've been downvoted, and while I can sort of see why, your thoughts somewhat echo my own, which earned you an upvote.

Everybody's tripping over themselves to praise Gitlab here, and while I agree that they probably made the right decision here, in this case, the biggest issue to me is that they saw nothing wrong with the censorship of a gist (or repo, or codebase) in the first place, and that strikes me in a distinctly negative way.

This post was one of disclosure. I am a free speech advocate on any issue for which there aren't compelling legal reasons necessitating removal (e.g., child porn), and I do my level best to make an effort to do businesses that prefer allowing free speech to the restriction of speech they disagree with. As a Gitlab user, this gives me great pause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like GitLab is the new GitHub - open, human and doing the right thing. Great!

<comment><USER15> No sarcasm here: when was GitHub ever that? I don't remember GitHub ever being open source.

<comment><USER16> I suspect OP meant "open" as in "not shielding thoughts and decisions in secrecy, and willing to engage" rather than "open source".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _At GitLab we strongly believe in responsible disclosure, ... So publishing > a list of servers ... is not OK._

In my opinion, this comes very close to "censoring" content.

That's great that GitLab believes in responsible disclosure, but that doesn't mean that everyone does or that you get to force your beliefs on your users or customers.

If you do in fact plan to censor content then you need to be very clear about that up front and identify what types of content you will not permit.

I'm glad that GitLab has done a 180 and reinstated the content. In the future, I hope they will fully think through any decisions to pull down content that they don't "agree with". I do give them credit for recognizing they made a bad call and admitting to it.

<comment><USER18> > If you do in fact plan to censor content then you need to be very clear > about that up front and identify what types of content you will not permit

It seems to me their TOS covers this sort of thing. It's not some platform with free-speech rights, it's content hosting with limited liability and legal caution.

<comment><USER17> I certainly understand that it belongs to GitLab and they can absolutely run it in any way they see fit. If there are certain types of content that they do not want to host, they can absolutely refuse to do that -- and remove such content when they discover it.

All I am saying is that they should identify what types of (otherwise legal or permitted) content they will not permit to be hosted on their platform. It is implicit that illegal content will be removed but that's not what I'm referring to.

For example, if a web host doesn't want to host the KKK's web site then they can absolutely refuse to serve them. If $webhost's religious CEO doesn't want to host content related to gambling, well, that is their right. If Amazon doesn't want to host Wikileaks, they don't have to. I just wish companies would state what content they don't permit instead of using a term like "objectionable" or "unacceptable" and interpreting it however they like from day-to-day.

I'll admit that I haven't read all of their various Terms and Policies in their entirety (there's a lot of them!) but I did skim through them and didn't see anything other than the usual mentions.

<comment><USER19> The reason all countries pass new laws from time to time, including amendments to old laws, is that it is impossible to forsee all possible circumstances in advance.

This is also why there are people whose jobs it is to interpret said laws as they apply to specific circumstances (judges), and they also don't always agree with each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> GitLab's customer service and reaction speed never ceases to amaze me. For anyone interested in constructing great customer relationships, I recommend using GitLab as a case study.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the few companies out there who give me hope. Switched all my projects to GitLab a while ago, never looked back.

<comment><USER21> I live in Germany, and feel Gitlab website is quite slow :/ is it supposed to be as snappy as Github?

<comment><USER9> It is our ambition to make GitLab.com as fast as GitHub.com but currently we're slower. Please see [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/infrastructure/issues/59](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/infrastructure/issues/59) for more information on how we're working to improve this.

<comment><USER22> Wow, that's surprisingly candid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Let's be honest, the people that are reading the list on GitLab are highly unlikely to be end consumers purchasing at those stores. If anything, this list provides a potential target list for other hackers to try and compromise those stores even further. I believe this to be irresponsible and furthermore still a violation of responsible disclosure.

<comment><USER24> The people you're afraid of ("if anything, this list provides a potential target list for other hackers to try and compromise those stores even further") already have access to the data gwillem used as a source.

<comment><USER23> Any by further distributing the list to a greater audience, that makes it ok?

<comment><USER24> It's a matter of degree. Do the positives of publishing outweigh the negatives? I think so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article's logic doesn't make sense.

In _every_ vulnerability, the users are the victims. Web stores aren't a special case in the debate of "responsible disclosure" vs "immediate disclosure".

GitLab changed their stance from "responsible disclosure" vs "immediate disclosure". That's their choice, but they shouldn't mince words about it.

<comment><USER26> The users here are the users browsing the web store with the intent to purchase something, not the server operators. Both are victims if the malware author's intent is successful.

In the usual sense of a server having a vulnerability, there are just two parties involved: the server operators, and the malicious party exploiting the server. That's the case in which GitLab is saying to not publish a list of such vulnerable servers. In this case, the server operators are not _yet_ victims; responsible disclosure is supposed to help us (the good guys) keep it that way.

But in this case, we have an already exploited server. The server operators are _already_ victims. The point of publishing lists here is to attempt to prevent the malware from further skimming credit card numbers off users attempting to purchase goods from the infected storefronts. Like before, the point here is to prevent more people from falling prey to the skimmers here, but the action we must take to do so effectively is the opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there a plugin that compares sites I visit to this list automatically?

</comment><comment><USER28> Soooo, is there an extension that will prevent me from visiting sites from the list?

<comment><USER29> You could add them to your /etc/hosts file, eg using this snippet: [https://gist.github.com/pbhj/0bf3041fa6eca6a1429cdc0f2576474...](https://gist.github.com/pbhj/0bf3041fa6eca6a1429cdc0f25764749)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> GitLab is a joke. They just copy what other do, but as soon there is a bit of bad publicity they immediately change their opinions just to please the community. GitLab has really become the communities' bitch. They copy paste everything they find and try to please everyone, but I don't think this will get them very far. I am glad there's so many other tech companies who try to do their own thing by being innovative.

</comment><comment><USER31> GitLab is a (bad) copy and paste of GitHub, even the name is similar. I know maybe I will burn some karma point but I want to express my opinion cause I believe in the value of creating things, not to steal ideas. What if the list were put on GitLab first? Probably, without the GitHub example you would not remove it, even notice it.

<comment><USER32> > GitLab is a (bad) copy and paste of GitHub, even the name is similar.

Yeah, the part of the name they copied is so shameless. That's just going to end up causing user confusion -- thinking that both sites are related to Git in some way. /s</comment></comment>


SoundCloud Will Be Worth More Than Spotify - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/24/why-soundcloud-will-be-worth-more-than-spotify/ <comment><USER2> Article states that users generating content aren't interested in money. Wrong. Users have to sell through bandcamp because for some reason, SC hasn't provided a market place.

Article states how artists like Skrillex made a name for themselves but posting remixes of famous songs on SC. SC now removed remixes, citing copyright infringement, even on legal, commissioned remixes. SC flags your song if the title contains a famous artist's name or song title even if your song didn't actually sample the famous song. After 3 strikes, your account is banned, all fans and followers lost.

Smart artists are leaving SC in droves.

SC is hosting music from major labels. Users pay nothing to listen. How are they making money? The only users that pay are the artists uploading their own work. Yet those artists have no way to make money on SC. SC has sponsored tracks inserted into listeners feed. That doesn't pay the bills. Also, the promoted track is not based on the user's taste so they mostly hear songs they hate.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Between solid tech and a massive userbase, Soundcloud once had the monumental opportunity suggested in the article. But they have played their cards quite poorly which means this article is ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> I've been on Soundcloud for a looong time and unlike Spotify , it never was a radio but some paid cloud hosting for mp3 with social features. So sound cloud relied on paid customers who uploaded their music on the platform for promotion purposes. I don't think they ever had any opportunity to turn into a Spotify competitor. That's not how people use Soundcloud.

I think however Beatport is trying to be the Spotify for IDM. not sure how it is working for them.

Beatport was "the shit" back then and made a LOT of money. The problem with Beatport is that it works as long as djs are compelled to renew their catalogue.

it became big thanks to "Electro", then Minimal techno , then it made Deadmau5 big, after Deadmau5 nothing really happened in the IDM world, so Beatport success kinda went down.

Neither Dubstep nor HipHop ever were best selling genres on Beatport. And today, MP3 sells don't bring much revenue even for big names. I'd be surprised if TOP 10 beatport artists sell more than a 1000 units per best selling track today.

It used to be different.

<comment><USER5> what does IDM stand for? The genres and artists you've mentioned are what I consider fads or the mainstream trends of electronic music for the past ~15ish years.

There is plenty of interesting things going on in electronic music, depending on your tastes. Trap sort of replaced dubstep as far as accessible popular and mainstream EDM. Deep house seems to be popular these days. Drum n bass is having a weird spate of popularity and soul-searching at the same time. Future bass seems to be a defined genre now.

*none of this post is offered in arrogance, merely stating my honest opinions which are devoid of value judgements.

<comment><USER6> IDM could also stand for "intelligent dance music"

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

lame term i think, but it exists!

<comment><USER7> Not quite so lame as "electronic body music", which is one of my preferred genres.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> User generated content in the music business has been tried over and over again. MP3.com, MySpace, Garageband, and many others. The problem is that the consumer wants the hits, the names, the current hot artists. They don't want the long tail of unknown artists.

Sure there are those who like to check out the new stuff and occasionally something pops.

Soundcloud will eventually end up paying the same royalty rates as Spotify, Pandora, Rhapsody, Slacker, and all the rest thus eliminating this "SoundCloud has much better unit economics than Spotify."

What is to stop Spotify from adding an artist upload feature?

The macroeconomic factors on why all of the music delivery services are eventually going to fall in value has to do with Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon treating music as a valueless commodity.

No one can charge more than iTunes for a song or streaming service. Apple sets the market price and operates their business at low margins due to ancillary revenue from hardware. If you're a music service and have no ancillary revenue to increase overall margins, you've got a classic business problem. The comparison to Youtube is also flawed because it doesn't mention that AdSense is the ancillary revenue that has kept YouTube afloat these many years.

Furthermore, the content owners (copyright holders) will continue to raise prices and cut exclusive deals with different providers in order to maintain their cut of the pie. You see this with the content patchwork across Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and even Youtube Red. No player has all the licenses all the time.

Music is a wonderful thing, but delivery is a commodity service where the players are competing on style and features. Content is ephemeral and a marketing illusion for the most part. If you want people to come, you have to have the stars.

<comment><USER9> Totally agree that delivery is a commodity. However, as a user, I ditched all services in favor of Soundcloud because of the discovery part. For example, Diplo and Tiesto post and repost almost weekly, combined with the rest of people I follow you get a stream of the very latest music of your taste, manually curated (reposted) by the top DJ's themselves. It's not just an "upload feature", its like Facebook for music: you hit play and get a tailored endless stream of awesomeness, 0 effort on your part. No need to hunt for and buy tracks one by one. No need to suffer through some unknown Pandora voodoo that turns up the same tracks of unknown recency, over and over. Just follow the people you like, and it will play the latest music you like, simple as that.

I don't know if Soundcloud can manage to build a viable business, sometimes they make changes that piss off users and uploaders, and the current model doesn't look too lucrative. But for me as a user, the experience is night and day compared to the true commodity services (iTunes, Amazon, Google, Pandora, Spotify, etc etc), who I think will soon start to crack under margin pressure like Rdio, Mog and others.

<comment><USER10> I feel like you're overly being dramatic about "ditching all services". Do you literally only listen to music through soundcloud? If that is indeed the case, you're missing out on a lot of great music. Also as a listener of both Soundcloud and Spotify, I think Spotify's discovery has improved immensely to the point where it's much better than the filter bubble of a feed you create on soundcloud

<comment><USER11> I use soundbutt for at least 90% of music I listen to. I use spotify never. The fact is _everyone_ is missing out on a lot of great music because there is more great music than any one person can listen to.

<comment><USER12> Disable cloudtobutt on HN

<comment><USER13> I would think this is the premier venue for cloudtobutt usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This articles has some basic misunderstandings about what artists and DJs use Soundcloud for, and how money is made in the underground music world.

Consumers buy tickets to a DJ's show, DJ pays indie label, label pays artist. So three things should be clear: first, DJs aren't on Soundcloud to get signed to a major label, they are trying to drive ticket sales; second, unknown DJs don't use Soundcloud to promote themselves because ticket buyers must be local.

Finally, amateur artists don't care about developing a following like YouTube stars because their music is sold to DJs, not to listeners. Part of the appeal of a DJ is that you hear great tracks at their events that you never heard before, so they aren't going to want to buy viral Soundcloud hits that the audience has already heard.

In short, the mainstream music economy is driven by MP3 sales/streams directly to listeners. The underground music economy is mostly about event ticket sales, and Soundcloud is valuable to artists if it can drive ticket sales. That's why its current monetization strategy is mostly about telling artists which cities their fans are in. Frankly, if I were Soundcloud, my next step would be to build a ticketing platform.

<comment><USER15> I see quite a lot of friends of friends and other unknown artists promoting their work on Soundcloud, using it as somewhere to host the music. I don't use Soundcloud a lot, but I got the impression that was one of its main uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If hope that SoundCloud can survive the transition from a brilliant service with innovative features (especially the user-annotated waveforms), to a "competitor" to the likes of Spotify or Pandora.

I fear that the VC/investor zeal for monetizing the hell out of SoundCloud will ruin what has made SoundCloud so special, and that sure, it may some day be worth more than Spotify, but if so I suspect it'll devolve into something less than its present goodness, and an inevitable drop in valuation will follow, leaving VCs scratching their heads.

So it goes with every good online music service. They come, they go. Investors cash out, users get screwed, same as it ever was.

</comment><comment><USER17> No it wont. The last year or so of policy updates has pretty seriously alienated a lot of the original user base, who have since started using Bandcamp and other outlets a lot more seriously. Move involvement from major labels just means that copyright enforcement will keep getting increasingly strict, and the content creators will keep moving to Bandcamp.

</comment><comment><USER18> Unfortunately, Soundcloud doesn't seem to have the technical staff to keep up – the new app remains a disappointment after months of adding-back features and streaming remains shoddy at best, with random interruptions that require manual intervention.

I hope that in the coming months they catch up to Spotify's performance.

<comment><USER19> I had only been using Soundcloud for around a month or two when they decided to push out the new version of their app so I had relatively little attachment to the old version, but even then it was blatantly obvious to me that they had butchered functionality in pursuit of a pretty UI.

There are plenty of examples to pick from, but the one change I never understood was the comment system. Timestamped user comments set directly on the waveform of the song was the one truly unique feature they had and they stripped it out completely. Months passed before it was even possible to view or create comments from the app, and even now they're locked away behind an obscure menu and only display in a useless list, entirely removed from their original context.

They've tried to backpedal slightly by bolting on some of the missing features, but the new app was clearly not designed with them in mind in the first place. I would be honestly surprised if they manage to catch up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am not active on either platform. My guess is that both platforms have something missing.

When I am shopping for music, which is what Spotify is supposedly for, then I think it is not enough to supply the music in digital form. The physical form that is independent of any current DRM annoiance and/or online website service is missing. For the music industry though, Spotify seems to be a pretty good model, where they can sell their stuff.

Soundcloud seemingly is a place to get recommendations on artists that I might like or a place to listen to music from independent artists. While there seems to be a lot music on Soundcloud, it may be a little too much. You might get lost in the noise and the community and algorithmic recommendation filters might not be enough. For the ones actually creating original music, Soundcloud seems to be a "free beer" approach. People get to listen to your music, but all you get in return is limited publicity. That might not be an enduring model for music creators, just during their initial phase of getting known.

Thus maybe another platform will emerge.

</comment><comment><USER21> Based on SoundCloud's Android app I would say this is unlikely. The information density has dropped to JUST fitting in 2 songs per screen on my phone!

This makes it almost unusable for discovery on mobile, since I have to scroll... and scroll... and scroll... while trying to glance at track names in between flashy pictures. And the runtime in the stream disappeared quite a while ago for no reason I can think of.

Ripping off Facebook really doesn't work for a music app. Spotify at least has something pretty usable (though that too has gotten worse).

<comment><USER22> My experience has been that this is less of an issue with their UX and more of an issue with the stream itself. Once you start following a lot of artist and especially if you download tracks through the download gates, you end up with a lot of noise in your stream. I'm a DJ and I recently had my 3 year old Soundcloud account with lots of my published music and mixes removed because I had some copyright content in a mix. It was a major bummer but having a new account with a fresh stream without as much junk was a silver lining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Out of such services I prefer Bandcamp. DRM-free music with FLAC option is a major plus.

</comment><comment><USER24> My problem with Soundcloud is that they don't seem to be shipping anything. The website's discovery features don't update more than once a month, the page often cripples the latest version of Chrome by going to 100% CPU and overall it's just not a great experience. The company's mobile app is even worse -- it's often confusing to use, and feels like a design exercise rather than something useful.

I would love to see an official Soundcloud app, so I can use it on my desktop 24x7, but it doesn't seem like that's happening either. I just don't understand what they're actually up to, other than being the place the random average person will plop their latest track.

<comment><USER25> I'd love to see some kind of Web visualization for their music and data set. :\

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Blatant Show HN plug: [https://octave.is](https://octave.is) is a paid version of SoundCloud without the ads, Youtube-esque comments, and other garbage that clutters up individual artists' pages. Consider it the Vimeo to SC's Youtube.

</comment><comment><USER27> User-generated content is a fantastic business for the companies that win each category (e.g. music).</comment>


Tensorflow 2.0 Inference on Google Cloud Functions - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/how-to-serve-deep-learning-models-using-tensorflow-2-0-with-cloud-functions <comment><USER2> We are using Google's related Cloud Run product to do this and have found that, like Cloud Functions, these serverless offerings are a fantastic way to evaluate models in production.

We prefer Cloud Run because it allows us to use docker containers rather than language-specific APIs. We are already using containers for developing and training these models, so it fits nicely in to our workflow.

<comment><USER3> What's the performance like? Isn't cloud run limited in terms of CPU cores?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to the repo with code and libs [https://github.com/ryfeus/gcf- packs](https://github.com/ryfeus/gcf-packs)</comment>


Show HN: UpdateSiteNow.com helps you update your website by email/SMS - <AUTHOR>

UpdateSiteNow helps website owners update their site easily, more often and from wherever they are.
It means that website or blog owners...

    only need to be able to send an email or SMS to us
 which also means...

    they don't need to write or change HTML code or deal with a CMS
    they don't need developer or webmaster help
    the changes are not a part of the main HTML of the site so there is no danger of bringing the site down
 Many websites are not updated for months on end. This is especially true for corporate and brochure websites. Companies don't tend to do this because of external dependencies, time and costs involved in the simple task of updating their websites. It tends to get put off and they tend to do a single major update in "one shot". This way, companies and website owners miss out on keeping their visitors updated about what is really happening in their company. UpdateSiteNow changes that.
I would love your feedback
URL: http://www.updatesitenow.com/ <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://www.updatesitenow.com/></comment>


Five Things You Need To Know About Internships - <AUTHOR> http://onforb.es/OJMtpo

<comment><USER2> Worth it or not, unpaid is often unlawful, and is a very bad sign about the company you're interning with. I can't tell you there's nothing valuable to be learned from bad companies, but don't confuse opportunities to learn with good places to work.

<comment><USER3> Being HN, I assume most internship seekers here are looking for software- related positions. Does unpaid even exist in this industry?

Also, the article mentions wall street many times. Most of the advice is for the banking/management/consulting field, so I don't even know why it's here.

<comment><USER4> My previous employer would get interns from the UCB Extension international diploma program. Since the students were not US citizens, the internships were unpaid, by law. But they were mostly placed into PM-type roles and such. The company did once post an unpaid database engineer internship, but I don't believe they ever filled it.</comment></comment></comment>


C-Phrase: A natural language interface to databases under BSD - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/c-phrase/ Dear All,
there is a chance that some of you may remember me from before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275973
It's a long story, but the short of it is that circumstances forced me to follow option #2. I have open sourced the system. It's under BSD and in LISP.
To refresh your memory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWio8bHq4wQ
I have not been so involved in c-phrase lately, but that is about to change in the new year -- I will have a reduced teaching commitment. :-)
Any ways I revised the installation guide recently and was wondering if any one could verify that they are able to install the system. Any questions or feedback on the system/code/design would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Michael Minock http://www.cs.umu.se/~mjm <comment><AUTHOR> Dear All,

there is a chance that some of you may remember me from before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275973>

It's a long story, but the short of it is that circumstances forced me to follow option #2. I have open sourced the system. It's under BSD and in LISP.

I have not been so involved in c-phrase lately, but that is about to change in the new year -- I will have a reduced teaching commitment. :-)

Any ways I revised the installation guide recently and was wondering if any one could verify that they are able to install the system. Any questions or feedback on the system/code/design would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Michael Minock <http://www.cs.umu.se/~mjm>

<comment><USER2> I am able to install the system and run the demos on a Ubuntu server without any trouble by following the system guide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Quite interesting...

I have a fear of human-language-like programming languages, after working on a Progress database. Too many keywords, too easy to forget how to do specific things, etc. Of course, that's a very basic one.

This looks like it'd be a fantastic _alternate_ database accessor, precisely for custom queries like the video shows. I'd hate to be a DBA trying to optimize things though, it seems the higher abstraction away from the actual query means optimizations would occasionally require unnatural query text.

All that said, I'm definitely going to have to look over the code. Thanks for open-sourcing it!

</comment><comment><USER4> > I will have a reduced teaching commitment. :-)

I found your classes quite engaging. So the "reduced-teaching-:-)" might not be an attribute of the student community.

Still, good luck in further developing C-Phrase. I remember I was quite impressed by its capabilities (when you had me testdrive it, little less than two years ago).

From what I remember, it required a person with nonzero understanding and intelligence (call it an 'expert') to set up and tune the ontologies (ongoingly). But at the same time the natural language interface could be used by laymen, with the expert working the system behind the scenes, ongoingly extending it wherever needed (maybe driven by failed queries that look right, but don't work). How much skill do you think such an expert needs to possess? Or do you plan on cutting out this 'middle man'?

PS The video (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWio8bHq4wQ>) at 2:20 gave me a laugh because the guy seems to attempt middle-mouse-button-pasting an X11 selection on a system that's not X11. Quite some people here will know how that feels ;-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Some examples of what this can do would be nice. (No, I'm not watching a video, sorry.)

At first glance, the manual _requires_ knowledge of Cobb's notations - try to make this unnecessary, as many systems administrators won't know it. (I'm in academia, but my degree is in Mathematics instead of computer science; the notation _looks_ trivial, but it's one more obstacle.)

In short, the project looks interesting, but it was hard to evaluate at a glance.

<comment><USER3> The video's not bad, ~3 minutes, and the sound isn't necessary to follow. But I wholly agree, text/image examples are 100x better for quick analysis.</comment></comment>