TalkTalk Hacker Slapped with Four Year Sentence - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/talktalk-hacker-slapped-with-four-year-sentence/ <comment><USER2> "Kelley took part in a massive attack perpetrated by multiple hackers on telecoms firm TalkTalk, and then blackmailed former chief executive Dido Harding" \- Hold on. Only four years? _facepalm_</comment>


Ask HN: could we stop linking directly to Wikipedia? - <AUTHOR>

While Wikipedia is a fascinating trove of knowledge, I think direct links to it often lack context. IMHO, it's better to write a post describing why something is interesting to the HN community and include the link to Wikipedia in that post. This has been discussed before, though I can no longer find the link to that discussion. What does everyone think? <comment><USER2> This is so meta.

If HNers value a submission, they will upvote it. If it's crap, it will be flagged.</comment>


Google Translate might not be as good as people thought - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/shibboleth-users/browse_thread/thread/123bd2d82822a3a7?pli=1 <comment><USER3> Most SMT systems are trained using the procedings of the European Court - <USER2> it's a huge corpus of multilingual documents which all have the same meanings.

This is a large factor as to why non-european languages typically don't fare that well in Statistical Machine Translation systems. The corpuses (corpii?) aren't as large for other languages.

Subject-broadness is another problem. Early information retrieval systems were trained (and many still are) using the Wall Street Journal as the corpus. Which means they work great for searching on the topic of big business, but not so great on getting apple pie recipes, as WSJ doesn't talk much about that ;)

<comment><USER4> There are some research projects (in rather early stages) that develop SMT techniques for translation to languages without big parallel corpora (essentially by bootstrapping such corpora, assisted by active learning). This could be of particular importance to keep smaller languages from disappearing, otherwise less and less works in that language will be available (yes, I'm aware that there are many people who consider language death a good thing).

<comment><USER3> Sounds fascinating; links? research? Applicability to lost languages like Linear A?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        Please apologize for your stupidity.

I wish I had the gall to say this to people

<comment><USER6> I couldn't resist: <http://pleaseapologizeforyourstupidity.com>

<comment><USER7> There needs to be a place to _actually apologize_ , toss a textarea in there and show previous apologies below :)

<comment><USER6> What an _awesome_ idea. I'm adding that to my to-do list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So far, I'm guessing :

      lumber = log
      vomit = thow
      insult to father's stones = thrown in superclass
      wind, pole, and dragon = maybe "try,catch,finaly" or "if,then,else"
      goat-time = WTF ?

<comment><USER9> Wind in Japanese is 'kaze' (風), and the kanji character (according to rikaikun) has a second meaning: method.

<http://translate.google.com/#en|ja|wind>

Edit:

The kanji for dragon seems to have a reading: "ryuu" and that "sound" (if not written in kanji) has several meanings, one of which is also "method"

[http://jisho.org/words?jap=ryuu&dict=edict](http://jisho.org/words?jap=ryuu&dict=edict)

"goat" seems to be "yagi", and putting that in jisho.org, one of the results is related to "night shift", so maybe a nightly process? nightly build?

[http://jisho.org/words?jap=yagi&dict=edict](http://jisho.org/words?jap=yagi&dict=edict)

<comment><USER10> I can't imagine anybody using '風' for 'method' for anything relating to software. It's usually written in either katakana (メソッド), or the mathematical term for function is used instead (関数).

Really wish I could see the original message...

<comment><USER9> could it then be just a general "method", as in "the way to do a certain thing"?

<comment><USER10> Kind of, although I think that 'in the style of' is a more accurate translation. For example, you might see '日本風のステーキ' for 'Steak, in the Japanese style.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a Russian friend who used my computer to check her vkontakte (Russian facebook), she's not used to Chrome and it auto-translated the page. At first she didn't notice because she's equally capable in English, then she started to giggle at the word pancake (which is a poor translation), but she said that on the whole it did a really good job. I guess some languages are easier to do. Anecdotal I know, but its good enough for me to use Russian websites to read photo comments.

</comment><comment><USER12> Another interesting thing about Google Translate is that people sometimes successfully troll it by amusing the "submit a better translation" feature, which Google ostensibly uses without much checking.

I'd point out an example, but Google's engineers probably read this site, and the examples I have are too valuable for my personal amusement to give up :)

<comment><USER13> I love amusing the "submit a better translation" feature.

<comment><USER12> Thanks :) That was a fun grammar error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did people think it was that good? IME, it translates normal text to and from many languages into something that provides the gist if lacking in the nuances. Which, IMHO, is flippin fantastically great even in the face of the odd horrible translation.

<comment><USER15> I was recently typing in some phrases from a 19th century book in French (which I'd found on Google Books), and it was interesting to watch the translation morph as I typed and provided more context. It wasn't perfect translation in the end, but I was still pretty impressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google Translate sort of works on the premise that at least the input text isn't confusing.

<comment><USER17> If by not confusing you mean not ambiguous, then that's rarely the case in Japanese, which is a very context-sensitive language.

The original Japanese text is probably not at fault here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I worked in Germany some coworkers were trying to figure out the English word for betriebshof (bus depot) by using Altavista's Babelfish, which claimed it was "yardyard yard".

</comment><comment><USER18> We did an experiment in my societies and culture class where we tested translations between several different languages using several different services. What's really interesting to see is when you translate between a language and back again, or go through multiple channels to origin--eg, English->French->German->English. We still have a long way to go before machines can provide perfect translations, but that's part of the fun right? Pushing the boundaries and finding new inventive ways to solve the problem of allowing anyone in the world to communicate with anyone else by bringing down the language barrier. We're closer today than we've ever been, and we'll be closer tomorrow, and so on.

<comment><USER19> You may enjoy this

<http://translationparty.com/>

<comment><USER20> This is amusing: <http://translationparty.com/#7966687>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Many SMT systems are based on European Court, but Google's had people working on acquiring parallel texts for years now and has one of the largest corpora of parallel texts in existence digitally, as far as I know.

Quality is logarithmically proportional to the volume of unique text available. Thus, there's a rough formula for every doubling of the corpus for any language, quality increases by a few points (on a well known scale of translation quality).

The general assumption is that over time this statistical technique, along with the growing data acquisition of Google, will approach human quality.

But you can assume Google's tried to acquire tons of available parallel texts. Book translations, government (any multilingual gov't is great, Canada for ex), religion, etc. Sky's the limit.

</comment><comment><USER22> I know the initial post was tongue in cheek, but Google Translate seems to be worse than 1999-2000 era Babelfish at times. I often (try to) use it to double check my German before sending off an email and it inevitably fails dramatically and I have to instead check individual words on a decent site like dict.leo.org. It seems weird that a small site like that obliterates Google for word accuracy.

</comment><comment><USER23> For a great discussion / informal research on comparing online translation tools (primarily Google, Bing, Yahoo) on quality, see: <http://www.tcworld.info/index.php?id=175>

The interesting factor was when they took brand identity away as a criteria given to the graders of the translation Bing and Yahoo's quality scores rose.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was having fun with it when translating from one non English to another non English language. The fun part it that it translates Lang1->English->Lang2 and when it does not know how to translate word X from Lang1 to English it just sometimes chooses similar English word and then translates it to Lang2. Often result is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm just surprised that any engineer can be so lacking in foundational english. Are there any programming languages that have a vocabulary that is _not_ english?

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone with knowledge of japanese have a clew what was actually being asked, and what went wrong?

<comment><USER27> I have no idea. I don't know where 'goat time' could come from or why there would be a dragon reference. I've seen a lot of bad translations, but this one is so bizarre that I kind of doubt its authenticity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The funniest part is that Nate's response is almost equally bad Japanese.

<comment><USER29> Could you offer a translation? I'm curious how it relates, going the other direction.

<comment><USER30> According to Google Translate <drum roll>:

Mr. Matsumoto, Hi. This is Nate.

Google translator, the incompetence which is vulgar. (Laughs) Make sure to email me directly. You can write in Japanese. I will help you.

Sadly, no goats.

<comment><USER31> Far from "nearly equally" as bad, at least Nate's text is easily interpreted in the intended way. His grammer may be very stiff and incorrect, but for a non-native speaker who probably doesn't live in Japan, give him some slack.

That said, I did enjoy his construction 「あなたは日本語で書くことができます。私はあなたを助けるつもりです。」Trying to preserve the jerky tone: "You are able to write japanese! It is _my_ intention to rescue _YOU_."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I look forward to someone re-captioning All Your Base with this text.

</comment><comment><USER33> Maybe trolls are over-riding the suggest improved translation feature...

</comment><comment><USER34> Not perfect, plenty of delayed reaction, but at least gives a flavor and some easier than previous access to good stats on what gets blocked and why

</comment><comment><USER35> You know what would have been neat? The readers of HN working together to try to reverse engineer the original meaning. There's an attempt at that by a couple readers. But is that what get's voted to the top of this thread? No, an inane comment sits at the top with 58 points. Disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER36> 松本武 - At often, the goat-time install a error is vomit.

Agreed.

松本武 - To how many times like the wind, a pole, and the dragon?

I don't know... 5, maybe 7?

松本武 - Install 2,3 repeat, spank, vomit blows

Was that a Windows install?

松本武 - goat-time see like the wind, pole, and dragon?

Goat-time... is that like happy hour?

松本武 - This insult to father's stones?

Ow... don't bring my father's stones into this.

松本武 - JSP error handler with wind, pole, dragon with intercourse to goat-time?

I knew Oracle was taking Java downhill, but whoa... a dragon? No way.

松本武 - Or chance lack of skill with a goat-time?

Would you care to participate in a game of skill?

松本武 - Please apologize for your stupidity.

I'm sorry.

松本武 - There are a many thank you

You are welcome!</comment>


Thoughts on How to Learn JavaScript properly - <AUTHOR> http://www.chuckjohnstone.com/coding/how_to_learn_javascript_properly

<comment><USER2> I'm glad you got some value out of my post!

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah - really did. thanks for posting it and the thoughts</comment></comment>


Stop Secret Copyright Treaties - <AUTHOR> https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9357

<comment><USER2> Given the overwhelming amount of cynicism and ennui in most people's minds about any meaningful change to US policies for the Internet or NSA spying, I must applaud organizations like the EFF for continuing to fight the good fight. Even though at times it appears they may only be tilting at windmills.

<comment><USER3> > Given the overwhelming amount of cynicism and ennui in most people's minds > about any meaningful change to US policies for the Internet or NSA spying

A lot of this is entitled whining in the sense that changing stuff is _hard work_. If you get cynical just because you voted for one president who didn't do what you want, you're failing in the persistency department.

Think about the history of the civil rights movement, for instance. Not to compare the two directly, just that some struggles are very difficult, and some are things you fight for in the hope that your children see the benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone explain to me how this is a secret treaty?

My understanding is that the only way the treaty actually comes into effect for its main participant (the USA) is a vote in the Senate, which would make it a public treaty.

Or does the domain of 'secret treaty' include all treaties that were at one point secret (such as during the negotiations)? Doesn't this make the majority of significant treaties 'secret treaties'?

<comment><USER5> This treaty has been in secret negotiations for years and only the large content companies have been able to be part of the negotiations.

Information about the treaty has been shared with negotiators for the member states and large content companies, but no one who represents the 'normal' person. No legislators and no organizations like EFF, Wikipedia or Creative Commons have been allowed to advocate on behalf of ideas like fair use or limits to powers of content companies.

The text of the treaty was recently leaked by WikiLeaks and is contradictory to what politicians have promised it would represent. It represents a huge step back on the rights of users and extends copyright yet again.

See the full text at wikileaks: [https://wikileaks.org/tpp/](https://wikileaks.org/tpp/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thinking about this scenario: Imagine they succeed with these policies, and implement it. If a given amount of users start using some tool that exchanges only encrypted content, will they be able to apply these policies against these users, this tool and the encrypted content?

</comment><comment><USER7> Note that the treaties themselves are not secret (as strongly implied by the EFF), but the negotiation process is. The EFF has always been a fundamentalist organization, but shame on them for resorting to such blatant misinformation to make their case.

These secret negotiations very much resemble the frank, closed door negotiations between, say, members of Congress and the White House, where deals wouldn't be made if they had to be made in public. Politicians can't be seen giving concessions to the other side, nor do they want sound bites used against them in the next election.

It also appears that these negotiations are extremely slow, which is likely why only the executive branch is involved. It's hard to negotiate when there are 100 factious parties involved instead of just the President. I suppose that's the entire reason we have an executive branch.

<comment><USER8> Yet corporations get do get access to the negotiations. What makes them more essential to the process than the legislature that has to ratify the treaty?

In the end, it is the legislature that has to determine whether this treaty serves the interests of the public, if it serves them enough, and if enough has been done to defend the interests of the public during those negotiations. A very secretive process makes that evaluation very hard. Limiting the time to decide, may make it impossible for any honest representative to say anything other than "no". (So it'll probably be ratified.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Wolfpacktal.es - Group Messaging without your cellphone contacts - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, I lurk around HN quite a bit and have learned a lot over the past few months. I recently completed a simple app and would really like everyone's feedback on it.
http://wolfpacktal.es
Wolfpacktales is my attempt at group messaging using only social networks: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Gmail. The idea is similar to every group messaging app out there, you create groups (in this case 'wolfpacks'), and add whoever you want to participate (but in this case, you add from your social networks and not your cell phone contacts).
I haven't built any groundbreaking piece of technology here, in fact all i did was tap into some APIs and customize as needed. It's a free app that I just built for fun amongst friends. Let me know your thoughts. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Link - <http://wolfpacktal.es></comment>


True Friends - How to tell if someone is a "real" friend - <AUTHOR> http://www.lookingformylife.com/home/2010/5/12/true-friends-real-friends-how-to-tell-if-someone-is-a-good-f.html

<comment><USER2> A good friend will help you move, a true friend will help you move a body.</comment>


Amateur Radio in Play in Aftermath of Nepal Earthquake - <AUTHOR> http://www.arrl.org/news/view/amateur-radio-in-play-in-aftermath-of-nepal-earthquake <comment><USER2> K2KD here :)

Glad to see hams getting involved -- disaster communications is one of the strong suits of amateur radio. I still have a to-be-implemented plan of getting a portable HF rig w/ solar charger for my to-be-implemented "go bag".

One of the big challenges the whole hobby has faced is the struggle for relevance in the Internet era. When I got my license (early 90s), there basically wasn't an Internet for kids like me, so the concept of switching on an HF rig and talking to someone from Australia from my bedroom in NYC was awe-inspiring.

That isn't really the case these days (considered I'm likely communicating with a bunch of people from Australia on this thread alone.) Communication from an "exotic" place like Nigeria or Eastern Europe was rare and exciting. Now it's a source of skepticism.

I haven't been following the hobby much for the past few years -- other than disaster coms, any thoughts on what the highlights are these days?

<comment><USER3> W3MCD here. I was fortunate enough to operate W2SZ during my college days, which really cemented my interest in the hobby. I actually do think talking to strangers from afar via amateur radio is still awe-inspiring, considering that you're not running your comms through large underwater sea cables.

I think the highlights these days are contacting DXpeditions, working the space station, and satellite comms[1].

[1] [http://www.amsat.org/](http://www.amsat.org/)

<comment><USER2> Excellent points. I totally agree - there's still part of me that wants to dive back into both DXpeditions and contesting, both of which don't really have a parallel in Internet-land. Locking myself in the bedroom and doing the ARRL 10m contest one weekend was still one of the most fun experiences I had as a ham.

And yes - satellites / ISS are great too! Talking to a buddy - even next door - and knowing the signals are being directly repeated by a bird whizzing by overhead is still extremely cool :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how many HN readers have amateur radio licenses?

I got one last month (AF7PL). Now I'm working on getting a radio. I don't want to just go out and buy something. I want to do this old-school, and so have at least some of the major components of my shack home built (and ideally home designed).

I may partially relent, though, and buy a handheld transceiver for 2m/70cm. My electronic construction skills are pretty primitive, and my oscilloscope (unlocked Rigol DS1054Z) only goes up to 100 MHz, so VHF and UHF radios are probably out of my DIY league. That's fine, as I'm actually more interested in HF anyway.

<comment><USER5> You might enjoy getting started with a kit like the SoftRock SDR: [http://fivedash.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1...](http://fivedash.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=7)

Personally I think it makes sense to start with a pre-built radio to learn the radio technique and have something to compare with, but with an oscilloscope you can probably hack a kit into doing something useful. (I have the Softrock RX kit. Works well to receive WSPR.)

73, KD2DTW

<comment><USER6> I have one, but haven't put it together yet.

<comment><USER7> I have a Lite for 30M and the web guide is Very helpful

[http://www.wb5rvz.org/softrock_lite_ii/index?changeBands=no](http://www.wb5rvz.org/softrock_lite_ii/index?changeBands=no)

There are web guides at that site for all the radio models.

It doesn't drift much and is reasonably sensitive enough. To keep ground loop hum out I ended up putting in audio isolation transformers between the radio and the computer, life probably would have been easier with laptop, and audio xfrmers don't work so well at 192KHz so that limits performance.

I've been thinking of buying a 455 KHz Lite model to help align tube radio IF strips. Like a cheap spectrum analyzer. In my infinite spare time LOL.

Life is a lot simpler now with the web frontend store, although the prices are around twice as high as the old yahoo group days. Used to sell the Lite kit in the group for like $9 years ago although batches always sold out in about an hour, which was annoying.

There is probably an interesting startup lesson that saving people 50% purchase price doesn't help if they can't buy it at all, friction in the sales process etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm getting a 404 on that link now, it seems to be this: [http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-volunteers-in- nepal-i...](http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-volunteers-in-nepal-india- continue-to-aid-earthquake-response)

</comment><comment><USER9> link is broken. This works: [http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio- volunteers-in-nepal-i...](http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-volunteers- in-nepal-india-continue-to-aid-earthquake-response)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is internet over ham radio still a thing?

In this particular case, it could help a lot of people, enabling them to quickly and efficiently update their status with their family via email / twitter / google person finder.

<comment><USER11> Most of the amateur radio digital protocols are keyboard to keyboard and don't really have the concept of simultaneous traffic, packets, and routing. AX.25 (also known as packet radio) does however and could possibly be used to transmit traffic like that. It is most frequently used on line-of-sight (VHF, UHF) bands. There are some others like the different PACTOR protocols, but they are essentially proprietary, and PACTOR IV TNCs are not cheap.

<comment><USER12> There's WinLink ([http://www.winlink.org/](http://www.winlink.org/)) which is able to send email, photos, position reports etc over HF. It seems to be pretty healthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The page has been taken down.

Mirror of the original post: [http://i.imgur.com/dpVo40p.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/dpVo40p.jpg)

Here's the updated one: [http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-volunteers-in- nepal-i...](http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-volunteers-in-nepal-india- continue-to-aid-earthquake-response)

</comment><comment><USER11> Obviously there are more than a few of us. W5ARP, general class. It was much of the digital protocols, especially APRS/AX.25, that got me interested. Its not nearly as high-tech as modern smartphones, but I really like the infrastructure-free tech (living in the middle of nowhere, infrastructure is often in short supply.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there a protocol for making your radio more phone like, that is it rings when someone calls you or beeps when someone texts you? I guess if I were to hack together an RTTY or PSK32 thing to do this my next question would be where can I find a portable cheap low power draining SDR similar to a "smart phone".

<comment><USER7> HF ALE. Not terribly popular (not many people to talk with). Its the same as .mil ALE but on ham bands. Technologically what ALE can do is very impressive.

[http://hflink.com/](http://hflink.com/)

ALE would be HF base station type operation not hand held VHF 2M radio.

Low power and SDR do not naturally go together. The folks most interested in low power drain (the trail hiker/camper types) use discrete devices as opposed to SDR. Not saying its impossible of course. I have a KX1 that draws about 30 mA when listening, so "dozens of hours" on a set of batteries. It would be challenging to find a SDR system that uses similar or less. It is challlenging enough to find a smart phone that can idle for a dozen hours on a charge much less actually do anything LOL. Still, good luck with that, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interested in Amateur Radio and don't know where to start ?

Head over to [http://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio](http://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio) ... we are waiting for you ...

</comment><comment><USER15> N4TQU checking in. I come from a family of hams, both my father and his father (sk). I've been licensed 26 years now. Just upgraded to General last summer.

Good to see other hams here on HN.

</comment><comment><USER16> 2E0KEF checking in. Got my foundation last year, and intermediate a month ago, currently studying for full.

It's a great hobby, and I'm learning a ton about electronics - love it!

</comment><comment><USER17> I have been thinking of getting my license for the last couple of years.

While I've noticed its decline in the last decade, it still seems to hold some cool factor.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, does enabling an FM chip in your cell phone help in a disaster?

      CTRL+F fm

Doesn't seem like it's being used here...

</comment><comment><USER19> NQ6N here</comment>


Microsoft: Kinect wasn't hacked, USB port left open 'by design' - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/11/microsoft-kinect-not-hacked-left.html <comment><USER2> _"What has happened is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn't protect, by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor."_

Correct me if I'm wrong here since I don't own an Xbox360, but if the USB port on the 360 is a PC-standard port, then the Kinect pretty much _HAS_ to obey the standard USB spec to communicate, right? You can't pick a different way to enumerate or present endpoints.

Short of encrypting the actual data to/from the Kinect, saying that the device was "open by design" is kind of a semantic cop-out.

<comment><USER3> An otherwise perfectly bog-standard anything-port (USB or otherwise) can be switched into being a non-standard port using an arbitrary electronic protocol simply by the two endpoints negotiating a switch. This negotiation may take place via the "core" protocol if that's necessary, or it can send something that is a known "error" case that complaint implementations will ignore but the secret implementations will use, or various things in between. Using an USB connector doesn't physically obligate a USB protocol.

For some examples, look at the high speed modem wars, with various proprietary protocols often running ahead of the standardized protocols by using various signals to indicate that two products of the same brand should switch to a specialized protocol. I recall a BBS I used that had a modem that was 2400bps, unless you had a Hayes 14.4 modem. Which nobody else ever did.

<comment><AUTHOR> You almost never have USB link that directly connects two devices (host to function in USB parlance) except in case of PTP ("direct printing"). Any normal tree of USB links ("bus") contains some hubs in it, which have to understand your alternative protocol. And mayor reason why everybody uses USB is that there is large pool of silicon implementations of almost anything and well tested soft-IP so you don't have to spend large amounts of money on developing hardware dedicated to connecting two devices together, this essentially precludes anyone sane from coming up with some USB-like-but-not- quite-USB interface with same connectors. Actually, completely opposite thing happens now: many companies use completely standard high-speed interfaces (USB, PCIe...) on proprietary connectors (original XBox's controllers and memory cards, IBM/Lenovo's UltraPort/Bay, expansion ports of various mobile devices...) or with slightly stricter tolerances (to make it slightly cheaper, e.g. Intel's Direct Media Interface, which is essentially PCIe with less noise imunity).

<comment><USER3> I decided against mentioning the cost factor just because it didn't seem relevant. I certainly didn't mean that this was _likely_ , but it certainly is _possible_ , and if it's going to happen anywhere, on a console is where it will happen. If the Kinect did follow the original design and have onboard processing such that the stream coming out of it might actually have been considered proprietary by them, an inability to stick a USB hub between the Kinect and the XBox 360 may well have been considered by them to be a feature, not a bug.

The details of USB are mostly not germane to my point, which is that anything can pretty much do anything the designers want. (An exception for pointing out the hub issue, which doesn't affect all connectors.) Sure, there are cost/benefit tradeoffs, but that's always true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well it makes sense, in a loose sense you could consider what has been done as hacking, but it seems Microsoft had a different stance on what they deemed hacking.

That being hacking the algorithms and code that make Kinect function on the Xbox itself, since the Kinect hardware just sends all the raw data to the Xbox.

Anyone that wants to use the hardware has to do a lot of the work that Microsoft has already done in making sense of the data, but that is a lot of the challenge that people seem to enjoy. I noticed not a lot of people aren't using the microphones. I believe that would give a lot of additional functionality when used for sonic mapping.

</comment><comment><USER5> So when can we get the specs for the microphone protocol? :-)

<comment><USER6> Yes. If MSFT really wanted the device to be open, it would have published the protocol specs along with some good Windows driver implementations and API bindings for C#, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You know, I realized that while Microsoft sounds insane to us geeks, this might make sense if we consider their position and customers.

Microsoft, as best I can tell, tries to maintain a very hard line against cheaters to keep the quality of the Xbox Live service high. If we accept this, and the fact that most of their customers don't know a _whole_ lot about technical things like USB, the initial push against people toying with the Kinect (for fear that they were actually trying to _abuse_ it) and the current repetition about how it hasn't been hacked (because it hasn't been) both make sense.

</comment><comment><USER8> So the $3000 was just for plugging it in?</comment>


5-tier Queue-Driven MMORPG Game Server - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedements.com/swgemu/

<comment><USER2> So far reminds of Erlang / OTP.</comment>


Turkish government revokes ham radio licenses - <AUTHOR> http://yaesuft817.com/wp/turkey-gouvernement-revokes-19201-ham-radio-licenses/ <comment><USER2> This is going to end poorly... False flag or not, the coup has given Erdogan an excuse to flush out and exterminate all who oppose him. Anyone want to take bets how long until NATO will revoke Turkey's membership?

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, the people of Turkey were going to be screwed no matter how the coup went. If it had succeeded, they would have got a military dictatorship. Now they get a different kind of dictatorship instead. Erdogan was slowly evolving into a dictator before the coup, and now he's accelerating that process.

I wonder if the best outcome for democracy in Turkey would have been a attempted coup which resulted in Erdogan's death before it failed. I don't know of any Turkish politicians who would have been able to build a dictatorship as successfully as Erdogan.

<comment><USER4> I'd rather live under a liberal, pro-Western, secular military junta, than an illiberal democracy ruled by Islamists who are destroying liberties, hollowing out civil society, and turning the country into a Sunni version of Iran under the Ayatollahs.

Fareed Zakaria has a great book, _The Future of Freedom_ , where he discusses, among other things, the perils of illiberal democracy. The bit that really stuck in my head is his argument that the impartial judge is a more important institution than the ballot box.

Man has lived under undemocratic regimes for almost all of recorded history. It is the human condition. It is more important to defend civilization and order against barbarism and chaos, than it is to ensure that the majority rules. Liberal values and constitutional government preceded true democracy by hundreds of years in the West. Why do we expect otherwise anywhere else?

<comment><USER5> I agree with you, but I can't help but feel that this position isn't defensible. Don't they have the democratic right to move to a more religious society if the majority want it?

<comment><USER6> That is "tyranny of the majority", and is one of the well-known failure modes of democracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the point of being a dictator? I sometimes think of really cool stuff one should do and think: "Well you would have to be a dictator to do that.". Maybe I am indoctrinated in Western propaganda but off the top of my had I cannot come up with a cause that is worthwhile enough to pursue if you consider the negative consequences of a dictatorship.

Maybe AI, space stuff or immortality - essentially the same thing. First of all I think these are overrated. The fun thing about these is the thought that "holy fuck we will actually do it!!". When it is there it will be like commercial aviation.

And even if you truly want to accomplish them by all means, the best strategy I can come up with is a) get the best of the best and b) throw all your money at them. If you perform a Gleichschaltung it will definitely harm your ability to throw money. So my dictatorship would consist mostly of cost cutting, economic incentives, educational reforms, reducing administration costs - essentially what every government claims to try anyway.

<comment><USER8> 1) Power feels awesome. You'll use your power to get more power because it feels so good to see those you hate having to bow to you.

2) Educated people are dangerous as they will almost certainly doubt the legitimacy of your rule and more importantly have the ability to plot against you. Hence they must go.

I applaud your thinking, as it is empathic towards your hypothetical subjects :) However people like Erodogan do not think at such a level. Assume a primitive (but not dumb) egocentric world view in dictators. If they had empathy, they wouldn't have been able to fight to get to where they are now.

<comment><USER7> Power is certainly nice, but I don't need others to know that I am powerful. I find many situations are much more amusing if you do not share them with others but just acknowledge them for yourself. I think there is a purity and elaborateness to it if you don't live of the reactions of others, even if it is just situational humour or in the case of power "knowing that you could". I like it, because if you are not naturally very introverted, it takes some self-discipline.

Exercising and amassing power in contrast seems like a more primitive approach to me. The true upper class does not have to show off. The true stars do not have to fish for attention. The true powerful do not need to be a dictator?

<comment><USER5> You should watch the TV show Narcos [0], which is about Pablo Escobar and Columbia. He has all the money and power that he could ever need, but still tries to amass more & more. It's intoxicating viewing and provides some insight into the mind of people who feel the need to rule absolutely. [0] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2707408/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2707408/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And to think that Turkey was considered for EU membership - That's definitely off the table now. It's a testament as to how quickly Turkey has declined.

Even without EU membership, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Turkish people will try to relocate to Europe and elsewhere. This would be a massive brain and capital drain for Turkey - Especially given that this is a country which was considered safe and progressive not so long ago...

<comment><USER10> That may be bad for both Turkey and the countries they flee to. Turkey was/is a democracy. The people of Turkey created the current political environment. If they go elsewhere, they will be influencing politics beyond Turkey, maybe in similar ways.

<comment><USER11> There is a distinct separation between the people who made the country as it is now and the people who couldn't prevent them. As for your concern; the lacking prevention of the now felt almost-dictatorship is a strong evidence of the lack of politics involvement of the group which is against this kind of Turkey now.

So your concern is right, if the people who made this country this way gets to flee; it's not if the people who couldn't stop this country be this way gets to flee.

<comment><USER12> Not necessarily. For example, Erdogan is currently more popular among Turks in Germany than in Turkey, 60% vs 50%[[http://www.dw.com/en/i-stand-behind- erdogan-an-afternoon-in-...](http://www.dw.com/en/i-stand-behind-erdogan-an- afternoon-in-colognes-turkish-center/a-19413325)].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what is going on. Dx cluster shows Turkish ham activity. sh/dx ta 14076.0 TA4SO 20-Jul-2016 2142Z <EA3OH> 14019.9 TA3D 20-Jul-2016 2101Z <W7SW> 14072.0 TA7DX 20-Jul-2016 2038Z CQ...PSK31 <JA3SWL> 10143.7 TA1CM 20-Jul-2016 1951Z <EW4R> 14016.0 TA3D 20-Jul-2016 1949Z tnx QSO <RT9AT> 10143.7 TA1CM 20-Jul-2016 1949Z cq rtty <SV3EXU> 14016.0 TA3D 20-Jul-2016 1946Z Tnx for QSO <DL3CQ> 14016.0 TA3D 20-Jul-2016 1938Z <JL1BDI> 14016.0 TA3D 20-Jul-2016 1937Z TNX <IZ7XZJ> 14016.0 TA3D 20-Jul-2016 1934Z <DF1LON>

<comment><USER13> They apparently didn't take away all of the licenses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you broadcast amateur radio, is it possible to 'hide' from enforcement?

Are there mechanisms that an enforcement authority can use to find your physical location?

Is it possible to ostensibly rebroadcast a government-approved channel, but with additional stenography or mixing to embed information?

<comment><USER15> Near Vertical Incident Skywave (NVIS) HF transmissions are very difficult (likely impossible) to track from the ground. They go almost straight up. Hams call them cloud burners. However, they are limited to 200 - 400 mile radius.

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

You'd need a dipole (14 AWG wire) about 5 meters above the ground or an 80 meter loop about 10 meters up. If setup right, the antenna would be difficult to detect as well.

Edit: I'm a Ham. I build wire antennas as a hobby. It's fun.

<comment><USER16> Earth-Moon-Earth or exotic digital modes are also a possibility. EME is impossible to triangulate if you're using a suitably directional antenna. A creative interpretation of the Shannon-Hartley theorem allows for communication below the noise floor using low symbol rates and wide bandwidth. LF and below is difficult to triangulate because of the huge wavelengths, but a workable antenna would be rather conspicuous. You might also get lucky with meteor scatter or sporadic E.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Archive: [http://archive.is/Iutbr](http://archive.is/Iutbr)

</comment><comment><USER18> That doesn't really bode well for Turkey.

FWIW the US did the same during WW1 and WW2 albeit under different circumstances.

<comment><USER19> US did what during WW1 and WW2? Did the US revoke amateur radio licenses?

<comment><USER20> I guess one could quibble about the difference between "revoke" and "suspend", but yes, they did at least for WW2.

 _On December 8, 1941, the FCC issued Order Number 87, which read in part:_

"Whereas a state of War exists between the United States and the Imperial Japanese government, and the withdrawal from private use of all amateur frequencies is required for the purpose of National Defense; IT IS ORDERED, that except as may hereafter be specifically authorized by the Commission, no person shall engage in any amateur radio operation...and all frequencies heretofore allocated to amateur radio stations under Part 12 of the Rules and Regulations ARE HEREBY WITHDRAWN. All amateur licensees are hereby notified that the Commission has ordered the immediate suspension of all amateur radio operation in the continental U.S., its territories and possessions."

[http://www.vpnavy01.com/websites/ke3w/history.html#24](http://www.vpnavy01.com/websites/ke3w/history.html#24)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting. I can't seem the find the official press release for this. RTÜK web site doesn't seem to list anything, quoted TRAC organization web site is the same.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER22> There's an update at the bottom of the article saying that this information was incorrect/wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> With the hobby already on it's last legs it's sad to see even 1 person loose their license. That's even without taking in consideration the political and social ramifications of these actions.

With an extra exam and a bit of time learning CW I can get news directly from people who live in countries around the world. Now that just isn't possible in some countries.

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like the article has been updated to indicate that this is false information (see the red text at the bottom):

"We're happy to confirm that this news has been disproved we apologise for the false information given but apparently local hams from Istanbul city were interdicted from transmitting until yesterday"

</comment><comment><USER25> They didn't revoke any ham license: [http://www.dx-world.net/ham-radio-in- turkey/](http://www.dx-world.net/ham-radio-in-turkey/) At least not yet.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can we correct the headline to say "Turkish government"?

</comment><comment><USER27> There a Turkish ham radio operators replying on the blog that they know of nothing of this kind. Maybe this "news" was made up?

</comment><comment><USER22> N.B.: Update at bottom of article saying this information was wrong.

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting. I wonder if they will be allowed to remain in the ITU.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is he going to start revoking driver's licenses next? I doubt anyone could stage a successful coup if they're forced to use the bus.

<comment><USER30> Speaking of travel, he's banned all academics from traveling abroad. Also ont he topic of education, he's ordered the closing of more than 600 schools, the resignation of more than 1,500 university deans, and revoked the licenses of 21,000 teachers.

[http://nyti.ms/29SUzis](http://nyti.ms/29SUzis)

[http://nyti.ms/29VJihy](http://nyti.ms/29VJihy)

<comment><USER31> I also read somewhere about book stores being smashed, because of selling books against Erdogan. Can't find the source, because I'm on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can anyone tell me why this article got flagged on HN????

<comment><USER33> This is relevant for HN as it involves the attempted crackdown on individuals using technology to communicate. Especially when it involves a channel that doesn't go through a government gatekeeper.

<comment><USER34> That argument is tenuous, because the thread inevitably turned into just another generic political thread about Turkey.

<comment><USER33> Sadly yes but it hadn't I think when I originally posted...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think it's time for the U.S. to erect an Armenian Genocide monument in D.C. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide)

<comment><USER36> The U.S. still doesn't even recognize it officially as being genocide, so, no, it's probably not time yet.

We're pretty much deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to genocide. We generally allow governments to kill their own people, and often other people, as long as they're brown. When they're white, we draw the line at them killing other people. Sometimes.

[https://clg.portalxm.com/library/keytext.cfm?keytext_id=52](https://clg.portalxm.com/library/keytext.cfm?keytext_id=52)

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/themes/...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/themes/response.html)

[https://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/speakers-and- events/...](https://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/speakers-and-events/all- speakers-and-events/genocide-prevention-morality-and-the-national- interest/american-responses-to-genocide-and-mass-violence-in-the-past- transcript)

[http://www.internationaljusticeproject.com/american- response...](http://www.internationaljusticeproject.com/american-response-to- darfur/)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/bystande...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/bystanders- to-genocide/304571/)

[http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012...](http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/11/201211295425270859.html)

[http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/27/opinion/congo-war-ignored- vava...](http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/27/opinion/congo-war-ignored-vava-tampa/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> From almost a democracy to world's second North Korea, virtually overnight. Impressive. But I also think this will backfire badly for Erdogan.

<comment><USER38> I agree... This is just a temporary thing for sure. NATO isn't too happy with the outcome of this, so I presume that something is going to come of that.

<comment><USER39> Like what? They will give lip service to political freedom, but won't kick out their most important member. Erdogan can carry out a holocaust, and NATO would prefer it over seeing him on team Russia.

<comment><USER38> I don't think jumping to the conclusion that Erdogan could carry out a holocaust and come out unscathed by NATO is a logical assertion. At some point, another nation will intervene, because Turkey is a fairly major portion of infrastructure in the world. I'm not an expert, or even amazing with politics, so I could be completely wrong, but I accept that. (To each their own opinion, right?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Amateur radio operators are organized. They are an international auxiliary communication system. They are an information channel that is largely outside the control of governments. They are _a human network_.

I _simply can 't imagine_ what relevance that would have to the HN crowd.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why has this been flagged?

<comment><USER34> Users flag stories that they think don't belong on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am flagging down all Turkey related threads these days. I don't see how political debates about the failed coup is a subject to be discussed on HN.

<comment><USER42> There's _potentially_ an interesting discussion to be had here about the technical and political effects of ham radio during disruptions in "official" centralized communications systems, e.g. during a coup or counter-coup crackdown. But of course we're just getting a "Turkey politics 101" thread instead.

<comment><USER41> That's exactly why I've been flagging. The discussions are almost identical with some conspiracy theories, how Turkey is going backwards and how much Erdogan sucks. This is just r/WorldNews level stuff right there.</comment></comment></comment>


Optimizing .*: Details of Vectorization and Metaprogramming - <AUTHOR> http://www.juliabloggers.com/optimizing-details-of-vectorization-and-metaprogramming/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost <comment><USER2> It is worth pointing out that this blog post is old, from January. Julia 0.5 adds a phenomenal new feature, the dot syntax [1], that automatically fuses vectorized expressions. I believe that feature was added quite a while after this blog post was written.

Currently the dot syntax works for all functions, except for operators like .+, but in julia 0.6 it will work across the board. At that point, an expression like

      A.*B.*C

will automatically be translated into the de-vectorized loop version that the author identifies as the fasted way to implement something like that, without the need for any macros or other special tricks.

[1] [http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/functions/#dot- sy...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/functions/#dot-syntax-for- vectorizing-functions)

</comment><comment><USER3> Found this comparison of Julia, MATLAB, R, Python and C/C++:

[http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.5/manual/noteworthy-d...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/release-0.5/manual/noteworthy- differences/)

At the highest level, Julia operates on all of the elements of a matrix for each operation, is 1-based, assigns by reference, is case-sensitive, has the range operator (:) like python, but doesn't allow negative indices to read from the end.

Now for some get off my lawn:

In terms of learnability from easiest to hardest, I would rank them:

Python

MATLAB

Julia

R

I'm still hoping for a pure functional language that operates on matrices and doesn't introduce a lot of non-imperative operators and terminology. For example closures with immutable data gets us a fair part of the way to Clojure, without the learning curve. For the most part I've given up on ever learning Erlang, Haskell, Scala, etc even though I know Scheme. Maybe F#, I dunno. I feel that Rust is one level of abstraction beneath my pain threshold. Swift is too micromanagy when it comes to nulls. Javascript has abandoned its scripting roots to regress back towards C++ and its new syntactic sugar isn't helping things. I really want to like Go but worry it will be superseded by a truly concurrent language running on video cards with automagic error handling. I've given up on CUDA and OpenCL due to their roots in OpenGL, because their metaphors are too cumbersome compared to MATLAB. C++ and PHP are still my most loved and hated languages because they do everything wrong but excel at things like performance and laziness. In the end, these are my primary goals.

<comment><USER4> What puts MATLAB ahead of Julia, in your opinion?

<comment><USER5> I was curious about that as well. I've known folks who were genuinely discouraged and exhausted from working with matlab, and are now happy toiling in python. I've not converted them to the Julia side yet, but I will!

Julia is definitely harder to learn than python, but it's far and away worth the effort, and its only ever going to get easier. There's merit in having to push your mind a bit when learning a new skill. Struggling has certainly helped me concrete my skillset. I remember my first time reading sicp, and it was very difficult and foreign to me at the time, but after sticking it out I realized what a huge effect it has had on my work, my ability to push myself to learn new things, and how I think about programming problems to an extent.

Julia feels like a modern, less academic scheme in a lot of ways, and I see all these people so much more intelligent than me that are making it into an even stronger language and I just get this sense of pride about it all.

So yeah, matlab sucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My takeaway from this was that Julia has @nobounds option to remove bound checking.

<comment><USER4> It's quite nice, and works for user-defined collections as well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XorFlvQEiI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XorFlvQEiI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > the difference between your "high-performance code" and your prototype code > is @devec

So is there a reason @devec is not applied by default?

<comment><USER4> See davidacoder's post at the top; it does that now, essentially.</comment></comment>


Caution: Driver May Be Surfing the Web  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/technology/24digi.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> In some sense, if you stick an iPhone on a mount on the dash, then you can already be online. I'm pretty sure I saw a guy with just this setup the other day.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _"... Will drivers exercise good sense and not use their laptops while driving? ..."_

I do see some benefits. Imagine if you have voice output hooked up to GPS, some software and google maps. Location based information delivered to car based hardware will be in more demand.

<comment><USER3> Isn't that essentially what the newer navigation systems are supposed to be doing?

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... Isn't that essentially what the newer navigation systems are supposed to be doing? ..."_

Yes but using open data instead of closed services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just took a cab to the airport. The driver was scheduling other trips and giving estimates of cost by using the gmaps iphone app.

It wasn't a quick trip.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've used a laptop on the passenger seat in the past. That's why they call it wardriving.</comment>


How TDD Can Prevent Over-Engineering - <AUTHOR> https://itnext.io/how-tdd-can-prevent-over-engineering-1265a02f8863 <comment><USER2> Nice article, the problem though, is that TDD'ing might already be over- engineering in the first place.

<comment><USER3> Well, possibly, and the dark side moon might be made of green cheese.

"X _is_ … because y _might be_ " is poor rhethoric. "Is" is the indicative mood, "might be" is the conditional mood, so such an argument lets the conditional overwhelm the indicative. That's useful if you wish to mislead or confuse, less useful if you wish to clarify.

Please supply an argument that TDD sometimes/often is overengineering.

In my experience (such as it is) the tests are shaped by the best-understood parts of the business goals. I've seen some ugly overengineering in the past decades, but most of them happened when people went off and implemented parts of the system that were not yet well understood.

<comment><USER4> "Please supply an argument that TDD sometimes/often is overengineering."

Sure. TDD encourages building so things can be tested. This often results in creating code with small functions, each of which can be isolated and tested.

However, these small functions are not part of the external API, that is, they are not meant for general consumption from the rest of the system. Sounds great, right?

If you want to refactor the code, eg, to merge 5 functions into 3 different ones because you have a better idea of how the code works, or it's more maintainable, or because it gives the compiler more abilities to optimize, etc. then you've changed the internal API - which is find because it's not supposed to be stable.

But it now means you now need to change all of your test code. That is, you've over-engineered your system so it gives a strong preference for one specific design, and inhibits changes towards other designs.

A better way to handle this is by figuring out what the (semi) stable API is supposed to be, and test through that API. This moves the tests towards integration testing or system testing, and away from classical unit testing.

It's entirely possible to do TDD this way, but it's not how TDD is often taught or described.

I've seen this in the small, at our local Python user group meeting, when we worked on a challenge programming project. The TDD expert wrote about 4x the code that a "spike and stabilize" programmer did, because the TDD code resulted in several functions - each with tests - while the latter had just one - again, with appropriate tests. Each of those function defs takes up space. Each of those tests take time to write.

I've also seen this in the large, by analyzing the source code for TDD projects like FitNesse.</comment></comment></comment>


Dogecoin and Reddit forum sponsor a car on NASCAR circuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/21cd6k/doge_4_nascar_press_release_please_share_with/

<comment><USER2> They sure know how to increase their value.</comment>


VBoxHeadless - Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 3.0 On An Ubuntu Server - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtoforge.com/vboxheadless-running-virtual-machines-with-virtualbox-3.0-on-a-headless-ubuntu-9.04-server <comment><USER2> VBoxHeadless by itself isn't all that handy for appliance type applications, since it doesn't detach itself from the shell it was started in automatically.

IMO, a better way of accomplishing this is VBoxManage startvm <VM Name> \--type vrdp

VBoxManage will then start the VM and detach the process from the shell. The one downside to this method is that some errors from VBoxHeadless will end up getting suppressed, so if the VM fails to start, you may need to start it directly with VBoxHeadless to see what the issue is.

If you're using the OSE version of VBox (which lacks vrdp support), you can also use --type headless (since 3.0.0)

<comment><USER3> Here is a bash trick to easily detach any process from the shell it was started under.

In this example I do it with xterm .

      $ xterm &
      $ jobs
      [1]+  stopped   xterm &
      $ disown
      $ jobs
      $

You can close your current shell and xterm will still be running.

`disown` removes all of the shell's current jobs from the table of active jobs.

<comment><USER4> Awesome. I have never heard about `disown` before.

For the record, `screen` can do the same thing.</comment></comment></comment>


The Terrible Things I Learned by Listening to Police Scanners for 6 Months - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/read/the-mostly-terrible-things-i-learned-by-listening-to-police-scanners-for-six-months-637 <comment><USER2> If you ever want to listen to a major cities police scanner listen to Philadelphia's. The 22nd district is a good one or any south Philly ones are always intense. The 22nd district is going through some bad crime currently, its the district that Temple University is located, 2 weeks ago they had the police officer who was killed, and just last night there was a armed car robbery for a students car. It's really crazy to listen to what goes on and what situations some cops go into.</comment>


Short & Tweet: Twitter CEO Evan Williams Q&A - <AUTHOR> http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2009/02/11/Twitter-CEO-Evan-Williams-Q-and-A <comment><USER2> _"We haven't really studied the business cases that much. We're 25 people, and 75 percent are focused on the product and engineering and operations. And we literally have no business people in the company, so this isn't an area we're really focusing on."_

I think they may do well to get a business person in there to help them figure out how to make money.</comment>


Brooklyn: Hobo stoves charging cell phones - <AUTHOR> http://gothamist.com/2012/11/01/oh_just_brooklyn_survivalists_charg.php <comment><USER2> Possibly illegal, also. Unfortunately for urban uses. [1]

 _The stoves got plenty of attention from passers-by, including the police, who ordered BioLite to stop.

"It was going really well until the cops showed up, and we packed up and made our way back," Ms. Rosen said. "I can sympathize with them — we're in a disaster emergency, and here come a group of people with literally a table that's on fire."_

[1] [http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/biolite- stove...](http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/biolite-stove/) It seems a little heavy for actually using to backpack. But looks like a great disaster/recovery kit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty fancy for a hobo (original title) stove: [http://www.biolitestove.com/campstove/camp- overview/features...](http://www.biolitestove.com/campstove/camp- overview/features/)

<comment><USER4> That certainly trumps my hobo stove I use for camping (Ikea cutlery drainer + biscuit tin). If they could drop the price by about half I could see it becoming more popular.

<comment><USER5> FYI, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_toxicity>

<comment><USER6> Looked at the Wikipedia article and didn't see the connection other than possibly via primer paints.

<comment><USER7> Presumably, one of those Ikea items is made of stainless steel, which is an alloy of steel containing ~10-11% chromium.

There are a lot of coatings, metals, and metal alloys that are not safe to burn, including Galvanized Steel (Zinc), Stainless Steel (Chromium), and Magnesium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an awesome product! I wonder how much the "Home Stove" version costs? I looked on the "Shop" page, but only saw the "Camp Stove" listed at $129. I wonder if the Home Stove can power a netbook?

</comment><comment><USER9> "Perfect for those coffee shops that don't have enough power outlets" .. a SNL skit on this would be funny</comment>


Sirix 0.9.1 released (time travel queries and versioning made easy) - <AUTHOR> https://sirix.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

I want to release version 1.0.0 soon, but would love some input, as I added a complete native JSON storage about three weeks ago (several layers) :-)

I've just published an article called Asynchronous, Temporal REST with Vert.x, Keykloak and Kotlin Coroutines: [https://hackernoon.com/asynchronous-temporal- rest-with-vert-...](https://hackernoon.com/asynchronous-temporal-rest-with- vert-x-keycloak-and-kotlin- coroutines-217b25756314?source=friends_link&sk=5eabb36b2984cf61a2dff3f9fe45addc)

And another one about some use cases and internals: [https://hackernoon.com/sirix-io-why-copy-on-write- semantics-...](https://hackernoon.com/sirix-io-why-copy-on-write-semantics- and-node-level-versioning-are-key-to-efficient- snapshots-754ba834d3bb?source=friends_link&sk=f2a13ece73f08f494aebea3ef0ceb594)

I've also added a bunch of documentation on the website :-)

Have a great weekend :)

Kind regards Johannes</comment>