Learning Advanced JavaScript (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/ <comment><USER2> Once again I am going to shamelessly plug my favorite course author Anthony Alicea and his JS/NodeJS/Angular1 course[1],[2],[3]. I really really liked Tony's course as it gave quite a deep look into topics, which are usually only attainable from books, while at the same time keeping it very interesting and also contain lots of best practice material and being extremely dense but easy to digest. Do let me know if you guys know any other courses of the same style. For quite a while I have been trying to find similar courses/tutorials of similar caliber when it comes to knowledge gained and being easy to digest. If you haven't watched any of Tony's courses, do give them a shot. Rigorous -- but not boring or too long.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv_5Zv5c-Ts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv_5Zv5c-Ts)

[2][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejBkOjEG6F0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejBkOjEG6F0)

[3][https://www.udemy.com/understand- nodejs/?couponCode=LEARNNOD...](https://www.udemy.com/understand- nodejs/?couponCode=LEARNNOD..).

Disclaimer: Because it may sound like it, I'd like to clarify I have absolutely no affiliation with Tony or his courses. I just really really liked them.

<comment><USER3> JS course is fantastic, but the Angular one isn't that great.

Alicea has React course called 'React and Flux for Angular Developers'in Pluralsight if anyone is looking more of his courses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I started out, this and "Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja" didn't help me understand. For me, after months of trying to understand JavaScript, Dmitry Soshnikov's post, JavaScript. The Core, made understanding closure, prototype, and scope chain crystal clear in about 30 minutes. [0] Also, every time someone shares a basics on JavaScript link on Hacker News I also share my interview guide which despite its popularity has yet to land me a job writing JavaScript. Nonetheless, I love writing JavaScript and understanding it and some of the APIs like Angular, Lodash, Nightmare, and async makes me feel empowered. It doesn't cover any topics in ES6 yet.[1]

[0] [http://dmitrysoshnikov.com/ecmascript/javascript-the- core/](http://dmitrysoshnikov.com/ecmascript/javascript-the-core/)

[1] [https://github.com/adam-s/js-interview- review](https://github.com/adam-s/js-interview-review)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is fairly old. It goes with John Resig's book "Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja Released" which was released at the beginning of 2013 [1]. I remember seeing this site up well before that. He started the book in 2008.

If you can work your way through this tutorial you'll gain a decent grasp of ES5 prototypes and functions.

[1]: [http://ejohn.org/blog/secrets-of-the-javascript-ninja- releas...](http://ejohn.org/blog/secrets-of-the-javascript-ninja-released/)

<comment><USER6> The second edition of that book was released this year.

[https://www.amazon.ca/Secrets-JavaScript-Ninja-John- Resig/dp...](https://www.amazon.ca/Secrets-JavaScript-Ninja-John- Resig/dp/1617292850/ref=dp_ob_title_bk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since we are talking about learning Javascript, there is a very interesting approach in this edX course: Teach biology and Javascript!

"Nature, in Code: Biology in JavaScript" \-- Learn JavaScript programming by implementing key biology concepts in code, including natural selection, genetics and epidemics.

      Instead of just learning programming principles outside of
      any context, you will learn JavaScript programming by
      implementing key biological concepts in code so they can
      run in your browser.

[https://www.edx.org/course/nature-code-biology-javascript- ep...](https://www.edx.org/course/nature-code-biology-javascript-epflx- nic1-0x)

</comment><comment><USER8> Haven't gone past the first slide yet, but FWIW with ES6 you could do something like:

      [nikki ~]$ node
      > const bind = (fn, obj, ...args1) => (...args2) => fn.call(obj, ...args1, ...args2)
      undefined
      > bind(console.log, console, 'a', 'b')('c', 'd')
      a b c d
      undefined
      > // calls `fn` with `obj` as `this` and the remaining arguments prepended with given ones

I believe all of the old-style argument stuff with `arguments` is possible with `...`, not sure though, maybe some edge cases.

</comment><comment><USER9> This seems like very beginner level JavaScript. Defining Functions, Functions as Objects, Context? All JS fundamental concepts.

<comment><USER10> I think now it's all considered basic since JS ecosystem has grown a lot and people take it for granted, but probably back then these were all advanced materials you couldn't find easily.

<comment><USER11> No, they were still basic in 2008. (ES3 was published in 1999.) JavaScript hasn't changed very much as a language; just the tools around, mostly.

<comment><USER10> In 2008 javascript programmers were called "script kiddies" and the language was only starting to get wider adoption. Unless you were already an experienced web programmer back then this was advanced material for most web programmers who only used to use javascript for displaying alerts and cute dynamic features.

Speaking from my own experience, I didn't know about all these prototypes and important concepts for a long time and and did fine. I built tons of web apps without knowing these "advanced" features. It was only when I decided to learn the language seriously that I got acquainted with a lot of these features like the prototype concept, object constructors, etc.

If you can build pretty advanced production websites without knowing these features I would say these features are advanced. That said, it's a different story now because javascript is an important language. But my point is in 2008 it wasn't.

Also this guy created jQuery, if he says it's advanced, it probably was.

<comment><USER11> > In 2008 javascript programmers were called "script kiddies"

Yeah, by pretentious people who thought…

> most web programmers who only used to use javascript for displaying alerts > and cute dynamic features.

… that. I wouldn't call someone who only knows how to display an alert a "JavaScript programmer" or base what are considered advanced concepts off of them.

> Also this guy created jQuery, if he says it's advanced, it probably was.

jQuery is a pretty normal library that gained a lot of popularity. It's not particularly advanced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still consider myself to be a noob but I use a lot of these everyday. For example currying instead of binding. Am I just being humble?

<comment><USER13> You're obviously humble. If you know good functional programming practices from elsewhere, you might still be a noob when it comes to the JS ecosystem though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Where's the "Advanced" part? This is just JavaScript fundamentals.

<comment><USER15> You underestimate the JS populace

<comment><USER16> Do you mean overestimate?

<comment><USER7> Or underestimate the spread of Javascript over the population, which necessarily includes more and more people less familiar with programming :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's amazing to see what was "advanced" JavaScript in 2008 haha.

</comment><comment><USER18> > #2: Goal: To be able to understand this function: > > // The .bind method > from Prototype.js > Function.prototype.bind = function(){ > var fn = this, > args = > Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments), object = args.shift(); > > return function(){ > return fn.apply(object, > > args.concat(Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments))); > }; > }

I do not want to understand this absurdness. I want a comment that tells me what it does so I can rewrite it in a sane way.

<comment><USER19> Do you really think it's good practice to use comments to describe how the language itself works? It's not like you can't find comprehensive, quality documentation for every single thing that happens in that function on MDN or equivalent.

Is that function that insane? I can understand it at a glance, and performance is high (it matters here). AS a JS programmer, just knowing that it is an implementation of bind() should be enough of a hint that it uses its first argument as context, the rest as a curry and the arguments of the newly generated function as additional arguments.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, the syntax of the variable initialization could be separated into 3 lines for better clarity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> VM213:1 Uncaught ReferenceError: assert is not defined(…)

</comment><comment><USER22> JS Design Patterns is also good [https://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/b...](https://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/)</comment>


Getting to Obama's Goal of 1 Million Electric Vehicles - <AUTHOR> http://ecopolitology.org/2011/01/27/getting-to-obamas-goal-of-1-million-electric-vehicles/

<comment><USER2> I've said this many times before, but the problem with putting more electric vehicles on the road is not the technology, it's the infrastructure. We simply don't have enough places to plug them in. Right now the technology is at a point where you can go 100-200 miles on a charge that takes 8+ hours. The range needs to get much better, and the charge time much shorter before you attract anyone but early adopters.

We need charging stations in shopping malls, grocery stores, office buildings, and schools. And there would need to be an incentive for apartment owners and HOA's to install them in shared parking garages for residents who don't have the luxury of installing one in a private garage. We also need a battery swap program for people who don't have time to wait while their car charges up for several hours.</comment>


Does chocolate make you clever? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20356613

<comment><USER2> "Data mining" strikes again. Find a meaningless correlation, one having nothing to do with anything, then publish it, along with a bogus explanation that pretends the random, chance correlation represents a cause-effect relationship.

The article pays lip service to the very high probability that the correlation means precisely nothing, but this has no effect on the impression the article creates by its very existence.

In the Forbes account of this same study ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/10/10/chocolate...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/10/10/chocolate- and-nobel-prizes-linked-in-study/)), the first line of the article -- "You don't have to be a genius to like chocolate, but geniuses are more likely to eat lots of chocolate" -- is not at all supported by the study itself, which measures the chocolate-eating behavior of _nations_ , not _individuals_.

This is another example of irresponsible, sensationalist science journalism. The irony is that the study's presumably scientifically trained author (Franz Messerli of Columbia University), seems dead serious.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair the study [1], while tongue-in-cheek, is supported by research of the impact of flavonoids in chocolate on cognitive function [2].

[1] <http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMon1211064\>

[2] <http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/1/120.long>

<comment><USER2> > To be fair the study [1], while tongue-in-cheek

The article has this flavor (oh, God, no pun intended) but I think the originating author may be serious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The research was probably funded by Big Chocolate.</comment>


Borderline BBS: A Commodore 64 dial-up BBS (2014) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCicz04EwwQ <comment><USER2> When I discovered BBS'es at 15 ( 1988 ) my life changed considerably. It was, as mentioned below, like a secret Goonies tunnel to the upside down......

I ended up running my own BBS on my C64 and had to get a job to pay for the extra phone line and the array of 1581 3.5 drives I had to buy to support it. I was up all hours of the night talking to people who logged in. Trying out new BBS software, getting into ASCII art, warez, demos, etc. was a lot of fun.

It got so bad my mom had to sit me down and tell me that I had to go outside and ride my bike, play football, etc.

Nearly 30 years later I am still working with software everyday and enjoying ever minute of it. I do have to remind myself to go outside.......

<comment><USER3> >1581

I assume this is a model number? You couldn't possibly mean 1,581 3.5" drives ... right?

<comment><USER4> Yep. The 1541 was Commodore's original single-sided 5.25" floppy drive (you had to physically remove and flip the disk to read the other side). The 1571 was a double-sided 5.25" drive, and the 1581 was a double-sided double-density 3.5" drive.

(Yes I know all those numbers from memory)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We wound up with a whole second set of Commodore equipment in the late '80s when my dad's business partner gave up on trying to organize his side of the business like my dad. It was a free upgrade from C64 to 128, one disk drive to two and we got a modem out of the deal. I suppose it was discovering random strangers on a phone line could be friendly and interesting that makes me sad about what the Internet has not become so far.

<comment><USER6> I feel that the Internet used to be that way, back in the 90's. Many early ISP's grew out of the BBS scene.

<comment><USER7> I think USA was pretty unique with free local calls and hence why the scene took off big there. In the UK* we used to have to wait till 6pm for the price to drop from 5p a minute to 1p so internet usage and BBS prior was pretty constrained - the fear of 0345 usage on the bill was a constant fear that shareware mail order lasted into late 1990s. Broadband was also way behind, I think it was 2002 before we got 512kbit. (* there were pockets like Hull that was an exception I believe).

<comment><USER8> I don't recall _free_ calls exactly. In my area we had band plans - there was an A, B and C band that had different rates. The A band would have a connection fee (1 cent? 5 cents? can't remember) and no per minute charge. The other bands charged various rates per minute.

Most people spent most of their BBS time in the A band obviously. That had the effect of having most of your users being very, very local to your BBS.

<comment><USER9> It was different in every state. When my parents moved "to the country" they made sure they were in the Minneapolis calling area, but it didn't occur to them that the local town where I went to high school wouldn't be in that area. As a result I could call some people who lived 70 miles away from our house at no additional charge, but neighbors just 5 miles down the road who I went to school with were not a free call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is SILLY to be on top. but if YOU want to connect to BBS's that are STILL online. they're NOT on phone lines. They're on Telnet. No joke. and they're WONDERFUL for reliving your old ways:

[https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/](https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/)

<comment><USER11> There are still dialup BBSes. I called into one in Wisconsin just a couple of weeks ago from my TRS-80 Model 100 via acoustic coupler.

Yes, the phone I dialed in with was rotary.

<comment><USER12> Have you documented this with video? I'd love to see it.

<comment><USER11> It never occurred to me that it's something so rare that it needs to be documented. It's just something people do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This documentary on BBSs is well worth the time:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnSz- Hb9LQY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnSz-Hb9LQY)

<comment><USER10> now THIS comment and link made MORE sense as a topic that's on TOP of hacker news than a cute video of a guy calling an old BBS.

That documentary is AMAZING in shedding light into ALL the BBS world we all knew

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It was my neighbour and his C64 that got me into BBSs back in the 80s, and even when I finally got a modem for my Atari ST I was somewhat jealous of the unique characteristics of the C64 BBS community. The PETSCII graphics + colour aspects of those BBSs were really nice. I don't see any of that in this video, but there was some really fantastic artwork in the C64 BBS community.

</comment><comment><USER15> Particles BBS is another good Commodore board. I connect using my VIC-20 and a USR-TCP232-T2.

[http://www.particles.org/particlesbbs/](http://www.particles.org/particlesbbs/)

</comment><comment><USER16> When I was 8 or 9 my dad bought both a Vic-20 and a Commodore 64. The fun I had writing in basic. It used to consume my weekends. I would actually get up early (5am) to start my projects.

When I was older I ran a BBS (not on a C64) with 2400 baud modems, then 14.4 baud modems when MacMall was having a sale on them for only $89 each. I learned so much about programming as I extended my BBS's functionality. I think I still have my notes from my work still.

Had I realized it back then I probably had invented Reddit :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> The major BBS software I remember was DMBBS and it's derivatives, and C-Net, both of which were very advanced, DMBBS supported PETSCII and was very colorful and allowed animated posts, and C-NET was modular and supported loadable modules(games) multiple dialin lines, and later federation.

There were a collection of simpler boards used by pirate sites in the 80s, but community wise, I felt C-Net 128 was the most advanced BBS.

I spent about a year myself writing a modular BBS in assembly code to try and beat it, including a ram disk, multitasking with windowing system for sysops, federation and fast search indexing, but quit to move to Amiga in 1989.

BBS software was really the the Web 0.1 of its day and a very dynamic and fascinating field to watch develop.

I still have a fondness and warm feeling when I see an acoustic coupler or Vic Modem and the old Bell phones where you dialed manually and then disconnected the handset and quickly plugged it into the modem. Love watching Wargames because of this.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish I knew how to program then like I do now. So much time wasted playing games instead of making things and being creative.

Don't get me wrong, _some_ games time was an absolute must, but maybe not 100% computer time as games time.

</comment><comment><USER19> I recently watched this incredible documentary about BBSs: [http://www.bbsdocumentary.com](http://www.bbsdocumentary.com). It's free to watch on YouTube or download on torrents.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you like this, check out neohabitat.org a relaunch of the first virtual world. You can play via emulator, or if your C64 is online, you can play with an original C64.</comment>


Show HN: A web tool to download your Spotify playlists - <AUTHOR> http://mp3toget.com <comment><USER2> So i checked the link, clicked about and got into an old fashioned load a new tab and new window with advertisement stuff. The new windows was hard to close and even got a misleading site warning from google.

This is not the way to earn trust with spotify inlog credentials through your site. Or even trust your site not trying to get malware on a computer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry for those weird messages. We've been testing new advertising provider with higher CPM and now we see why. Thanks for pointing that out, we'll do something about it.</comment></comment>


Republican-Proposed "Carbon Dividend" Is a Sign of Progress - <AUTHOR> http://www.wri.org/blog/2017/02/republican-proposed-carbon-dividend-great-sign-progress <comment><USER2> This could be the biggest part of Trump's legacy, if he made sure it was enacted. It'd single-handedly make him a better and more significant leader than anyone recent president.

Likelihood: 0.00%

</comment><comment><USER3> This is from February. While it's a great idea to tax externalities and let the market determine the optimal solution, the GOP has already once again scuttled the idea.

<comment><USER4> I thought carbon credits were an old idea that was already implemented.

<comment><USER5> Carbon credits operate on a voluntary basis and are not a tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the end, businesses will pass on the cost of the tax in the form of inflated prices, hurting the poor most. For their trouble, the poor get the promise of a government check later. What could go wrong?

<comment><USER7> If you don't want people without money getting hurt, you may want to consider finding an alternative to capitalism.

<comment><USER8> Because, historically capitalism has been the single most efficient machine to lift people out of poverty ?

<comment><USER7> It doesn't seem to be the best way to get the American poor out of poverty. If it were, there would be far more economic mobility in the US.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately the word 'poverty' here just doesn't mean the same thing at all. Most American's tagged as 'poor' or 'living in poverty' are pretty darn rich compared to global measurements of 'poverty'. Same word, different metrics.

Another confounding practice is that official US poverty statistics _don 't_ include many forms of government assistance. So a statement like '14% of American's live in poverty' is _before_ this assistance. With this representation of data, you could give those 14% $10,000/month in government benefits and they would still be 'living in poverty'.

Here is a nice calculator you can play 'what if' measurement games with to see how it affects the poverty rate: [http://uspovertydata.com/povcal/index.php](http://uspovertydata.com/povcal/index.php)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BitTorrent file system - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/johang/btfs <comment><USER2> Reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are actually a couple of implementations of this. I think that I most recently saw it in Pulsar[0]. I'm kind of glad these have never gotten too popular because to maintain a healthy swarm using the BitTorrent protocol, peers should not be prioritizing chunks sequentially.

[0]: [https://github.com/steeve/pulsar](https://github.com/steeve/pulsar)

<comment><USER4> Pulsar is a bit different. It doesn't present as a filesystem. IIRC it presents an HTTP stream to XBMC.

Re: swarm health, Pulsar's predecessor project's README says this:

"Doesn't sequential download on bittorrent is bad?

Generally, yes. However, XBMCtorrent respects the same requirements "defined" by uTorrent 3. Also, XBMCtorrent tries to make it up to the swarm by seeding while you watch the movie."

<comment><USER3> You are correct. I had made an assumption after seeing a TorrentFS type previously[0].

[0]: [https://github.com/steeve/pulsar/blob/fb0ed2d4691c683af781cf...](https://github.com/steeve/pulsar/blob/fb0ed2d4691c683af781cf3ed55202a2c42ca3bc/bittorrent/torrentfs.go#L21)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IPFS ([https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)) is essentially the same thing with a use case bolted on top of it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems really impractical. Better go use a distributed filesystem. Here's a little-known one that's used with supercomputers:

[http://sector.sourceforge.net/](http://sector.sourceforge.net/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if this prioritizes chunks in order? Or does one have to wait for an entire mp4 to be downloaded before knowing it will play all the way through?

<comment><USER8> Right, if streams aren't downloaded in order, that'd be very inefficient, and if it has to wait for the whole file to be downloaded, that'd defeat the purpose of streaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It sounds interesting. Is there any daemon running a torrent client? Or is it possible to select a custom one?

<comment><USER10> Btfs is a "glue" between libfuse and libtorrent.

libfuse is used for the Kernel Fuse interface and libtorrent is used as a bittorrent client.

Read more about Fuse on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is at least one other project with the same name ("btfs"): [https://github.com/arvidn/btfs](https://github.com/arvidn/btfs)

Seems a bit more feature-complete than this one.

</comment><comment><USER12> is this compatible with BitTorrent Sync? because that what BT Sync does exactly...

<comment><USER4> BT Sync is for syncing folders between different computers, with access control. It's not the same at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would this be easy to port over to osx?

<comment><USER14> Probably, given the existence of osxfuse ([https://osxfuse.github.io/](https://osxfuse.github.io/))

<comment><USER13> Yeah, trying it now - but I'd be surprised if it builds

update: nope. [http://pastebin.com/Zf8fVh1D](http://pastebin.com/Zf8fVh1D)

<comment><USER15> There's also:

[https://github.com/mafintosh/torrent- mount](https://github.com/mafintosh/torrent-mount)

which claims to have been used with OSXFuse...

<comment><USER16> I've use that on OS X, worked quite well. Ultimately I don't see much use for it though, maybe if you want to get information about the headers of files before you download them completely or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this basically all the benefits of health checks in ZFS through distributed computing?

<comment><USER18> Not exactly; the checksums in BitTorrent are fairly strong, but you could get that benefit with just a FUSE layer that knew how to associate checksum metadata with files.

I also am not entirely sure what benefit this brings other than "amusing proof of concept", currently, so take my above note with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does it seed the torrent?

</comment><comment><USER20> Most use cases or apps don't deal well with read latencies in the thousands of seconds...

From quickly reading the source code; it doesn't do any particularly clever optimizations. I'd file this in the "IP over pigeons" category.

<comment><USER21> I agree that the standard torrent use case of torrents containing small numbers of huge files rather fails with this protocol. However, I think it could be interesting for systems with large numbers of small files.

For instance, think about a LaTeX install. The user could, in a matter of seconds, download a torrent file to a multiple gigabyte repository of all of the fonts an modules that are available. They then run latex on whatever document that they're trying to render. The filesystem would download the libraries as needed, so everything the user needs would be available, but she wouldn't have to wait while downloading a bunch of libraries that she didn't need. Nor would she need to decide before hand which libraries to install or ignore, as everything would be on the filesystem. The user experience of waiting for the executables and base libraries to download whne run for the first time wouldn't be great, but arguable better than waiting for the entire distro to install in the standard case.

<comment><USER22> Having access to a large repository of files without actually downloading the files to your computer already exists at large corporations, but you want a more traditional serving hierarchy in order to get acceptable read/write latencies.

Bittorrent is more useful when 1) local peer transfer speeds exceed the transfer speed from a master copy, and 2) everybody wants an identical copy of the data.

For example, if you want to deploy a new version of Facebook.com to a far away data center, Bittorrent is great (you only have to upload maybe 2-3x the size of the binary to the datacenter, and the thousands of nodes inside the datacenter can share the pieces amongst themselves).

<comment><USER23> See: [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/glance/+spec/glance- bittorr...](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/glance/+spec/glance-bittorrent- delivery)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this read-only filesystem? It seems like it, right?

<comment><USER25> Yes, the readme says that it is read-only.</comment></comment>


High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys?currentPage=all&p=1

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8065417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8065417)</comment>


Facebook Adds New Feature for Suicide Prevention - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/25/facebook-suicide-prevention_n_6754106.html

<comment><USER2> What worries me is if Facebook has or hasn't studied how someone might react to what they may see as being informed upon? They might actually wind up pushing someone over the edge. Looking at that interface I can see that this feature could be abused: A bully use this as a way to threaten someone.

And on larger level there's something worrying about Facebook holding that data over your lifetime. What if on a future date Facebook shares that information at some future point with potential employers or law enforcement officials? Or what if Facebook is hacked and this data is put into the public.

<comment><USER3> I hear you on the data concern, but FTA:

"...partnering with Now Matters Now, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Save.org and Forefront: Innovations in Suicide Prevention, a nonprofit operating out of the University of Washington's School of Social Work"

So I'd guess that the messaging and interaction has been thought through pretty clearly to be effective at best and harmless at worst. That's a solid lineup of consulting partners for a feature like this.

<comment><USER2> But are they the best partners? For example the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline may really get phone interaction better than anyone else, but that's different than social media in terms of interaction from a users point of view.

This is really a different medium, and one that may generate false positives just for starters. So it may not be harmless because you could alienate a false positive, or abuse it to bully someone.

And I'm basing this as an interaction designer on just the few screens that I see there (so if I'm seeing that, what else is being missed?).</comment></comment></comment>


Learning on the Edge - <AUTHOR> https://fedger.io/blog/#!/article/18345869981806

<comment><USER2> Really helpful description for things to watch masteriung a shift to graphs. It really is a challenge. The 'triviality gap' was a heads up, especially for veteran IT staff.

</comment><comment><USER3> nice writeup, I especially like that you talk in detail about the things you learned from your "failure". Failure by itself isn't always good, but this shows how one can learn and get oneself up again after falling (technology wise).

<comment><USER4> I agree. It is extremely hard to select the correct technology. So, sometimes it is even more valuable to learn, what has not work (even if it looked nice from the description), than what has worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Linked page is empty aside from the header and "comments powered by" link.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://fedger.io/blog/#!/article/18345869981806](https://fedger.io/blog/#!/article/18345869981806) works for me?

<comment><USER6> yep, systems are up, had fighting some ddos patterns during recent half hour.

<comment><USER7> [https://fedger.io/blog/#!/article/18345869981806](https://fedger.io/blog/#!/article/18345869981806) is still empty for me through USA proxy. Using DK proxy it's OK. CDN issues? Tried deleting the CDN completely? Update: seems to work now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk on the Apple Car - <AUTHOR> https://global.handelsblatt.com/edition/271/ressort/companies-markets/article/all-charged-up-in-berlin <comment><AUTHOR> Without pay wall: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB0QFjAAahUKEwiz0eDuhrbIAhVNKYgKHdBKDh8&url=https%3A%2F%2Fglobal.handelsblatt.com%2Fedition%2F271%2Fressort%2Fcompanies- markets%2Farticle%2Fall-charged-up-in- berlin&usg=AFQjCNH_XQRTRYYAOcYabCoIdc7h-uINyg&bvm=bv.104819420,d.eXY)

</comment><comment><USER2> You can smell the fear.</comment>


Maps Navigation : Google vs a Startup   - <AUTHOR> http://silicontryst.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/what-google-did-makes-me-sad/

<comment><USER3> This reminded me of google advertising about 'Chrome by google' on big billboards in London. My first thought was 'they are not giving credit to everyone else who did the work on chrome'. Maybe it should have been 'Chrome - an open source project by google'.

There is no advertising clause, but claiming that it is by google is still a big lie considering big parts were not written or designed by them. Including the main part - webkit/khtml, the html renderer.

Especially with open source projects, getting credit for your work may be the only thing you get. Giving credit is a gentle(wo)mans thing to do.

In academia this would be plagiarism... but in business, it seems to be business as usual. Business can get in trouble for giving credit, but academia gets in trouble for not giving credit.

<comment><USER4> Do you feel the same way about "Mac OS X by Apple", considering how much of that operating system (FreeBSD, Darwin, GNU, KHTML, llvm etc) started life in the open source community?

I'm as big an open source booster as anyone, but I can't say it upsets me in the slightest to see Google taking credit for Chrome in adverts. If anything, it makes me feel like the open source model has won - it's so widespread now it isn't even noteworthy.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I do feel the same way about Apple. Apple claims credit a lot more than Google. Google is definitely way more free software friendly than Apple in my experience - like a whole different magnitude of more friendly :)

I see your point, but without giving proper credit, the developers of open source projects will not get credit outside of the project. They won't get the credit from the press or from The People.

Even in other open source projects it would be nice to give credit more evenly. As an example, many interviews or articles mention 'Guido the creator of python'. Whereas the reality is that thousands of people have contributed to python to make it what it is today.

It's hard to give credit even when you try your hardest to. Also, where do we draw the line? Do we start with crediting Persian, Egyptian, and Greek mathematicians and artists? Do we need to give a whole raft of references each time a trumpet is blown? Do we list individual contributors? Or just major contributors, or founders? Or perhaps not mentioning anyone at all - <USER2> many hackers do. An 'open source community project' is a nice compromise as it gives credit to everyone.

Perhaps 'Made by the people of the world, for the people of the world' would have been a better advertisement.

\-- merry xmas

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I don't normally like to kick people while they're down, I am going to make an exception in this case.

I am sick of people thinking their tiny little feature tweak is a _startup_.

I am also sick of people thinking that computerizing things that people have been doing for tens/hundreds/thousands of years is innovation. It isn't.

If you have an idea for a startup, but your startup could be killed by huge company XYZ if they add one feature, you don't have a startup. If you try to pursue it anyway and finally XYZ Co adds it to their product and crushes you, this should be no surprise. Building a startup in face of such a scenario is an enormous risk, one that'd I'd bet almost never pays off. You should've known better than to waste your time and money.

I have no pity for you.

I am being harsh only in the hopes that more people will learn to respect this hard truth and actually invest their time and brainpower into something more productive and likely to yield returns.

<comment><USER6> While I don't disagree with you, and felt the blog post came across kind of whiny (cultural difference, perhaps), you aren't really responding to his point. He's not sad that he has to compete with Google. He's sad that Google's taking credit for thinking of implementing landmark-based navigation, and is claiming that he or his team met with Google reps a while and that at the time they praised his idea as innovative.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough, and I didn't talk about the "idea stealing" too much.

But again I have to say that it's pretty obvious thing to do. Even if the GMaps guys were heads-down and no one at Google had thought of it (which I doubt), clearly tens of thousands of people have thought "why can't map directions say turn at gas station X instead of turn at street X".

As someone who lives in an area with lots of missing street signs, I know I thought about that years ago, and I imagine tens of thousands of others have as well.

<comment><USER7> I've joked about maps and GPSes giving "country directions" for years now. "Turn left where the old store used to be and drive on until you get to where the tornado hit" kind of stuff. It's landmark-based navigation, albeit a jokey one.

In other words, not really a new idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, I don't know what this startup is calling his innovation because I didn't tested its system, but what I understand for landmark based is something like:

+Go straight until you see a school at your right.

+Then turn right(left on India).

+Continue until you see a big fountain.

Is that innovation? I don't know in USA but in Spain and a big part of the world that is the normal way of telling someone how to go to a place, is not so strange that another human being has the same idea than you about doing with a computer what you do without it.

That is the main problem about software patents, people want to have a monopoly over ideas a lot of people spontaneously have.

<comment><USER9> _Is that innovation?_

The notion of landmark-based direction is not innovative. Using publicly available data sources to cover India in algorithmically discoverable landmarks so that you can give them from two arbitrary points in the nation, _that_ is innovative. (And hard.)

I couldn't even begin to describe a cost-effective way for an Internet startup to discover that my apartment is the second one on the right after you take the left at the statue of Buddah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really eye opening.

1\. To learn that some really smart young guys have outsmarted Google so many years ago.

2\. How Google articulates stories to make innovation their own.

Had these guys not talked about their disaapointment, how would the world have come to know about the real truth.

<comment><USER11> Of course it's entirely possible that Google did independently arrive at the same innovation. I have no idea how long Google has been working on this, but it was likely quite some time (which is probably why the solicited help from that company in the first place...)

I'd really be curious to know what the truth is here. Landmark nagivation is an unbelievably big project, and Google is doing it at pretty large scale. It may have very well taken a couple of years to build the thing (not so much the programming, but rather building the data-set itself).

<comment><USER12> They license the dataset. It is usually the algorithm which determines what is a landmark and what is not (it is my guess).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A detailed comparison of the services by the Routeguru founders themselves

[http://www.pluggd.in/routeguru-founders-on-google- landmark-b...](http://www.pluggd.in/routeguru-founders-on-google-landmark- based-driving-direction-service-297)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why did RouteGuru never submit to Hacker News? Did they submit to Reddit, or Digg? How was I supposed to have heard of them?

However, I can feel the pain in a way: a lot of possible projects I can think of are in danger of being made redundant by some Google project or other. Sometimes I worry about my own future - will there even be things to do in the future, without the backing of a huge corporation with ginormous data centers behind it? Should I do everything I can to become part of a giant corporation now, to be on the save side?

But as Yoda says, fear leads to suffering, so probably it is best not to worry about it too much.

Also, I suppose there will always be customers who don't want to use Google out of principle. But Google will probably have the lions share.

And, Google seems to be strange in a way: they do a lot of things, but only a few things properly. Many cool projects they have just end up being incomplete and poorly tended to.

<comment><USER6> >Why did RouteGuru never submit to Hacker News? Did they submit to Reddit, or Digg? How was I supposed to have heard of them?

Presumably, their target audience is in India, so expecting them to post to sites mostly frequented by Europeans and Americans doesn't make too much sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> > mostly frequented by Europeans and Americans doesn't make too much sense.

[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/news.ycombinator.com?p=tgraph&...](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/news.ycombinator.com?p=tgraph&r=home_home)

Alexa - About 9 % Traffic from India. 2nd to United States.

<comment><USER6> Collectively, users of those three sites are mostly European and American. And if only 9% of HN users are American, then yes, it does make sense that they didn't target this site.

<comment><USER6> Correction: "And if only 9% of HN users are _Indian_..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this idea has been worked on by a lot of people too.

Way back in Hackday India 2007 a group of guys worked on an app called Socialrouting which was hosted at socialrouting.com (it's currently down). It allowed users to mark and view routes with respect to landmarks and also allow people to update traffic in a particular area via an SMS to the SocialRouting twitter account, which was then transferred to the map on the site. I was impressed by the way Pradeep (one of the dev) gave a talk at a Barcamp about their mashup.

And now, I guess that was the idea that morphed into Mapunity <http://www.mapunity.in> which they are currently working on. It provides live traffic data for a few cities in India. These guys provide services to govt organisations.

P.S: I used their Traffic API in Hackday India 2009 :D thats how I know about them :)

</comment><comment><USER15> "chase a dream of changing the way directions are consumed in India and globally" - Isn't it a hollow claim ?. Directions were always given in india by landmarks and it's not your firm which has invented it. So trying to take credit for it doesn't sound too good.

In what way did google steal your idea?. It's an idea even kids in devoloping countries know of. and google need not even see your site to realise that the lanamark system is the one that works in this part of the world.

Sory, to sound diffrent. But I don't see this point standing.

<comment><USER16> No! it's not a hollow claim.

1\. We're talking about the technology invention not the concept and RouteGuru pioneered this technology. Also there's a process in which the landmark intelligence is generated which is legible for a patent as well and RouteGuru has filed one.

2\. Why Globally? In many countries, landmark intelligence can fundamentally change the way solutions extend directions today i.e. "Street name based directions", which is a very traditional style.

3\. I'll encourage you to read the post again. All we felt sad about was that Google did talk to us, learnt whole lot about Landmark intelligent directions from us and eventually it comes up with a lofty story on how did they figure out the problem, terming it as their own invention and without patronizing RouteGuru at all.

We wouldn't have raised our voice if at all RouteGuru could get a single mention anywhere.

<comment><USER17> _All we felt sad about was that Google did talk to us, learnt whole lot about Landmark intelligent directions from us and eventually it comes up with a lofty story on how did they figure out the problem, terming it as their own invention and without patronizing RouteGuru at all_

Can you prove that? How do you know that they didn't truly come up with the idea on their own?

There are thousands of possible ways this thing played out. Maybe the discussions you had were _after_ some people at Google started having that idea. Maybe the people you met had never had that idea, but another employee in the next cubicle was already working on it for months.

You don't know how it all worked out. Parallel inventions are common place, especially in this case, since it seems that the idea was fairly obvious and in widespread use in India.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: what's the best WebGl 3D engine for creating games? - <AUTHOR>

What is the best WebGl 3D engine for creating online games? Three.js? Playcancas?<p>I want a high level engine where I can focus on creating a cool game. Easy imports from Blender is a huge plus. <comment><USER2> Looked at Turbulenz[0]? They're high-level enough that not only do you get graphics, sound and input APIs but also the ability to publish to their portal (not required, but maybe useful?), trophies, analytics etc. The use Collada for importing models, but it looks like Blender can export that[1].

[0] [http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers](http://biz.turbulenz.com/developers)

[1] [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Data_System...](http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Data_System/Files/Import/COLLADA)

</comment><comment><USER3> PlayCanvas is a great choice[0]. We're designed to do exactly what you want to do. Concentrate on the game not building the engine.

We support drag and drop importing from Blender and the Designer is great for building levels.

[0] I'm a founder</comment>


Hired.com Destroys Recruiting Invoices With New Pay-As-You-Go Pricing - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/04/hired-billing/

<comment><USER2> Lower the barrier for entry and allow companies to grow fast without going broke. Love it.</comment>


Book publishing is dying? No kidding - <AUTHOR> http://sebastien-arbogast.com/2012/08/09/book-publishing-is-dying-no-kidding/ Big startup opportunity: figure out a way to automatically integrate community corrections into EPUB ebooks... <comment><USER2> It's amazing how someone can draw conclusions about an entire industry from the amount of errors in a single book, and it's corresponding errata page.

IF book publishing is dying, then that is simply due to a decline in the demand of books, something which I suspect is _not_ subsequently due to typos, but more likely, something a little closer to do with our ever changing interests.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the case of tech books, I think it has more to do with ever changing technologies. And if that's the case, then we need a new breed of tech books that can evolve with technologies, be updated in parallel with the technology it covers. And the tech publishing industry doesn't seem to be ready to evolve in that direction. It's Manning we're talking about. And look at the time it took to O'Reilly to release a half-decent iPad app for Safari Books Online. And even now they are limiting the number of offline books to 3! I mean, don't they know that we tend to use books as references more than we read them linearly.

And this is not the first book I encounter this kind of issues with. It's just the first one where it's so annoying that I can't help posting about it. And behind these books, there's a process, there's a way of doing things, talking about pages and online erratas, that's so outdated that yes, if they don't evolve, they're gonna die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Completely unreadable on my mobile device due to multiple popups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the popups. I was trying a new Sociable plugin and I hadn't noticed it messed up the mobile view. Thanks for noticing, it's fixed now.</comment></comment>


Apple is reportedly using drones to beat Google Maps - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/1/13805078/apple-maps-drones-google-maps-features <comment><USER2> Apple map is a disaster. Since I can't delete it, I create a folder named "never use" and toss it there. I doubt the effort of using drones will help them to catch up with Google map, which also making huge progress lately. It's still an effort that Apple needs to commit though.

<comment><USER3> Is it the directions or the UI that bothers you? I don't have an iDevice so I don't have much experience with Apple's map application, but I know my friend prefers it because the intersection/lane guidance stuff is more clearly presented, and the directions always seem pretty reasonable.

OTOH, Google Maps always seems to give me the weirdest directions. It usually puts me pretty close to my destination, but it often has weird ideas about side roads and shortcuts. Maybe that's just because I moved to an area with terrible drivers, and Google derives trains their software with vacuumed-up user data.</comment></comment>


Americans Are Having Fewer Babies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-why.html <comment><USER2> People might consciously site economic or other reasons for this, but I think the real reason is that education about birth control has sufficiently permeated the country that people are simply making the choice. I suspect that an overwhelmingly large number of past pregnancies were unplanned, while now more of them are planned. We're just seeing the natural number that would occur when people actually make the choice as opposed to leaving it up to chance as was done in most of history.

The concept of asking people why they are making the choice presupposes that they have the option of making the choice to begin with.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I could list dozens of reasons that I think having children is a bad idea but ultimately, I know that if I actually wanted them, none of those reasons would matter. We are all quite adept at rationalising our wants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Our finances are not in great condition. We have little solid support from extended family. I was recently diagnosed with a very serious illness where death is a non-zero possibility.

But you know what? We have three kids and they are our treasures. Life is hard, sacrifice is required, and more days than not I find myself struggling to find the motivation to get out of bed. That is, until my children come and say good morning...then there is joy (not necessarily happiness, but definitely joy).

Our children may not have all of the "necessities" in life, but they will have love and, more importantly, the responsibility to love others: their ailing parents, their struggling siblings, society at large.

<comment><USER5> Its good to hear your children gives you joy. Although, I would like to ask, what's the difference between happiness and joy to you?

<comment><USER6> This book, "All Joy and No Fun", covers, as you might imagine, the difference between fun and joy (not exactly what you asked, but close).

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/books/review/all-joy- and-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/books/review/all-joy-and-no-fun- by-jennifer-senior.html)

Well worth the read for parent and non parent alike.

Basically, as I recall the book, kids are a huge amount of work for 20 years that may or may not result in another human being who you like. But if you do get that result, it's a profound payback; without equal among human relationships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can barely afford to provide for my own long-term survival, let alone a poor little defenseless child.

Maybe if cronyism wasn't driving the price of everything higher in the USA, then I could afford to properly care for a child. But gone are the days where raising a child meant "another mouth to feed". These days, food is just 1/20th of the overall bill

<comment><USER8> Ehh, the economic positive to children is sometimes hard to work in. But I can't look at family businesses with six children "employed" as a straightforward calculation. That was once the norm, and is no longer commonplace in the US. I imagine you'd have to take this into account to do a proper comparison with decently contrasting cultures.

<comment><USER7> I get where you are coming from. Children were an easy source of labor back in the day.

But now, children are purely a cost center, and not a predictable/inexpensive one either. They get sick, they need schooling. Food + a crib are the least of a parent's worries.

<comment><USER6> To be blunt, this is a tragedy of the commons scenario. The costs are primarily on the parents, and then society gets the benefits (in the short term, of the spending by the parents, in the long term by the productivity and spending of the grown child). This is why smart policy makes it easier to have children--because overall some level of population growth causes economic growth which makes everyone's lives better.

However, I don't know of any country in the world that has cracked the nut of encouraging people to have children. It seems that personal freedom (of not having kids) is only counterbalanced by either lack of birth control (developing countries) or societal pressure (I'm thinking of various religious groups in the USA which tend to have many children per parenting couple).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Americans in general are having less babies. Last year more non-white babies were born than white babies, and due to the opiod crisis the white life expectancy went down while it's rising for other groups. America is in the early stages of a really interesting demographic shift. It will be interesting to look back on how the politics of this era shape out.

<comment><USER10> According to the Census Bureau in 2015 the US white population contracted (more white people dying than being born + immigrating) for the first time in US history outside of war (that decline continued for 2016 as well). The average non-hispanic white person is now 43 years old. The decline was slight, 0.02%, basically the opioid overdoses are the difference between expansion and contraction for white people.

Demographically, there are 198m non-hispanic whites, 59m hispanics, 47m blacks, 22m asians. The average hispanic age is 29, and the median overall age in the US is 38. The youngest state at the median is Utah at 31; the oldest is Maine at 45 (!).

<comment><USER11> Would be interesting to see birth rate/death rate by race/religion. I think over next 50+ years there will be significant shifts in demographics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Having children has always been a choice, e.g. historical birthrates are closely coupled to harvest success. So people are choosing to have fewer children now, and most of that has to do with opportunity costs.

Caplan's "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids" ([https://www.amazon.com/Selfish- Reasons-Have-More-Kids/dp/046...](https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Reasons-Have- More-Kids/dp/0465028616)) has some data showing that parents are putting more and more time into children. (And his argument is that it is mostly unnecessary, i.e. it doesn't correspond to improved outcomes for children, given a relatively normal stable family.) I wonder how much of this is just changed social expectations (e.g. call Police / Child Services if you see a kid walking home along from school), how much is social signaling, how much is reduced family support.

</comment><comment><USER13> If I read the list correctly, 6 of the 8 top reasons pertain to money / finances.

3 of the 5 people here with me attributed this to essentially selfishness / unwillingness to sacrifice for others (future generations)

2 of the 5 said that the respondents have strong social consciences and are being responsible for not bringing children into the world that they weren't sure they could support.

It doesn't really matter to me either way [happy father of two teenage daughters who push boundaries but kick ass in academics and sports]. It's just good to realize / understand / remember that rational, intelligent people can form different conclusions from the same information.

</comment><comment><USER14> My partner and I would like 3, maybe 4. In my culture, you don't have kids until you're married and have secured a house/home (a 2-3 bdrm apt or condo would do). We're spending our fertile years trying to move up the ladder and save as much as we can so that we can secure a home. By the time we get the house, we won't the fertility to have 3-4 we'll be lucky if we can get 2.

</comment><comment><USER15> Unsurprisingly, when the financial incentive is don't do X people prefer not to do X.

The truth is, we need to socialize the cost of child care and having children. Or we need immigration.

The latter has always been the cheaper (for society) option but given all the resentment that has built up in the US, we are probably better off going with the former.

</comment><comment><USER16> imo having a kid now is like buying a horse (or maybe 2 horses). By the time a baby born today would have graduated college, there's a good chance we'll have achieved artificial general intelligence. Pretty much impossible to say what exactly would happen at that point, but, in the past kids were a pretty immediate roi, they could work on the farm, more recently arguably the roi is possibly negative but, for instance, one of my uncles takes care of my aging grandparents; but if we are anywhere near to agi a kid wouldn't even be useful for that. I mean I like kids but we're talking easily 250k+ dollars for a single one. In practice for me it would be a lot more than that since the cost of my lifestyle would go up dramatically. (source: am 25 year old american male)

<comment><USER17> I love this comment. It was _precisely_ my attitude eighteen years ago.

I was supremely confident that Moore's Law and work by AGI researchers would usher in the Singularity well within my lifetime, and that my offspring would either be incorporeal AIs or corporeal AIs in robotic shells. I would be uploaded into a giant virtual connectome powered by a Dyson sphere and live a thousand subjective lifetimes in a real year. My life insurance policy named Alcor as the sole beneficiary and I wore a bracelet with pre-vitrification instructions on it.

Now I have two human biological children, and Moore's Law has given us duckface selfies on Instagram celebrities and consumerist bliss via StitchFix. All the AGI researchers of that time have given up and gone into human bias control and polyamorous relationships in intentional communes with other futurists or disappeared into sketchy Chinese universities. Kurzweil will die ignominiously.

The exaflops of global processing power that the AGI researchers of 2001 _wish they had_ is here, and is being harnessed to the valiant purpose of ensuring you can watch double anal videos in high definition in your Uber ride en route to the gastropub recommended by Yelp.

Mark my words today. Give it a decade or two. Humans don't want to ascend. They want to consume. Every technological advancement we make will go into facilitating this.

And being a parent is actually pretty cool.

<comment><USER16> I think the path to ai is a little bit clearer today than it was back then.

Also, Kurzweill is currently a head of engineering at google, not that I'm a rabid fanboy.

I agree technological developments can play out unexpectedly, in some ways I am more "amish" than my peers (e.g. no cellphone (I use google voice on my laptop), I have a whitelist of websites I allow to display images, I use adblock to block out portions of certain websites e.g. suggestions on youtube/stack overflow).

But on the other hand, the year of the linux desktop is finally here, and with new os's like nix or guix, you can have a much more fine tuned and deep control over your operating system. Technology also gives us tools to take back control from some of it's more dystopian society level side effects.

Even if my expectations about AI completely dissapointed me, I still think it would be a good idea to wait 15 years to have kids anyway just for reliable genetic engineering.

Also for the record I think it will be a dyson swarm, and I am unsure if our machine overlords will bother "uploading" us, I would suspect they'll keep us around as a museum piece lol. Maybe earth will become like a modern day native american reservation where some equivalent to gambling is allowed and we all get handouts from the machines while what's left of our culture that's not amish amuses itself with our various "soma" (brave new world) equivalents.

Perhaps my imagined future world really isn't that different from yours XD.</comment></comment></comment>


Toshiba strikes deal with Bain consortium on memory unit sale - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Toshiba-strikes-deal-with-Bain-consortium-on-memory-unit-sale <comment><AUTHOR> > U.S. investors include Apple, Dell, Kingston Technology and Seagate > Technology</comment>


Coinbase launches redesign - <AUTHOR> https://coinbase.com/#

<comment><USER2> Here is the blog post announcing it with some more details: [http://blog.coinbase.com/post/57004129505/we-launched-a- new-...](http://blog.coinbase.com/post/57004129505/we-launched-a-new-design)

</comment><comment><USER3> Just FYI in Chrome, my 'transactions' page is about twenty miles long.</comment>


Another Android Market Share Boost - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/10/gartner-android-share-jumps-to-25-5-percent-now-second-most-popular-os-worldwide/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

<comment><USER2> Apart from being a happy Android user with a Galaxy S based phone, I don't follow the mobile OS market very closely. I'm aware of the competition between Apple iOS and Android. I know RIM is being Blackberry phones. But when reading this article I realized I had no idea what "Symbian" was.

Apparently Symbian is the OS on Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones.

<comment><USER3> You wouldn't because it's not a brand. Nokia prefer to promote to consumers their 'series' of devices.

Symbian is the OS on the Nokia N, E, C (and iirc X) series of phones, though the traditional N series of devices from Nokia is typically considered the flagship product line and rumor has it that Nokia's Meego OS will take over there.

Nokia's legacy Series 40 OS accounts for the other product lines and the majority of their 400+ million phone shipments.

Sony Ericcson have a _very_ limited line of Symbian devices, mostly on their legacy OS (EMP) but also Windows mobile and laterly Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the US there is probably a sharp difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> The US numbers came out a while ago:

[http://www.gsmarena.com/report_details_os_market_share_in_q3...](http://www.gsmarena.com/report_details_os_market_share_in_q3_android_pulls_off_10x_growth- news-2047.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fact that Jobs wont be happy and act like a crybaby over this makes me smile.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, Apple is so losing money with iPhone…</comment></comment>


Unity To Get New Shutdown Dialogs,.. - <AUTHOR> http://www.webupd8.org/2013/03/unity-to-get-new-shutdown-dialogs.html

<comment><USER2> They don't look bad but do why remove the labels? Truth be told, they aren't really that instinctive to know which one is which. They all look like clocks with a minor icon removed/added (with the exception of the lock icon).</comment>


PyBites Code Challenge #01 review – making it more Pythonic - <AUTHOR> http://pybit.es/challenge01_codereview.html <comment><AUTHOR> put some more process in place: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13352447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13352447)</comment>


Ask HN: Best strategy for mix-and-match at hackathons - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Sorry for the accent, my native language is Portuguese.
My name is Paulo and I'm helping the preparations for (possibly) the biggest hackathon in Brazil, sponsored by FIESP (the Sao Paulo State Industry Syndicate, more than 30% of the Brazilian GDP flows through associated entities).
We are expecting 800 attendees (roughly 160 teams of five members). I've participated of smaller events organized by AngelHack, where  incomplete teams and lone attendants were allowed 1 minute to pitch.
I was wondering if there are better strategies for the mix-and-match step, definitely we don't want to waste 2 hours on this. It is the first time I'm working in the organization and I would appreciate any tips on how to make it a great event. <comment><USER2> Preparation goes a long way to create a great event. Start planning at least 3 months in advance. Do pre-hackathon meetups, where people already start brainstorming projects. On a wiki, have lists of data sources, resources to get started, links to the best tools, and example projects. In e-mails to registered participants get people excited and thinking ahead and perhaps contributing or voting up ideas on a project site.

All this will make your mix-and-matches easier, because the more people have a good idea of what their aims are at the hackathon, the easier it will be for others to join in and collaborate. Especially if you have hundreds of teams.

As to the actual format of the mix-and-match, I've seen it all as participant or as organiser, and there is no best way to do it. In smaller groups, post- it-note or chalkboard brainstorming works well to get people to agree on one idea. For larger events like yours you should have people there to challenge participants to use an API or dataset or device, solve a particular problem, work in a particular way. You could even have people hang up posters of what they plan to work on and let the crowd sift its way through. Or you could leave it completely open, just distribute people into groups and let them have at it, like at some dinner parties.

Closing thought: set your expectations well. Your sponsor must have a vision for the hackathon, otherwise they wouldn't sponsor it. Support them in making this vision clear to yourself and others involved in organisation, and finally make sure the participants are well aware of what they are there to do. Then put in an earnest effort into making the event great: be there, make sure people are having fun, build an atmosphere of empowerment and community, using whatever has worked best for you in the past (e.g. food, music, ambiance, geek toys, VIP visitors, ...).

And let us know how it goes! :)</comment>


Building a Quadrotor Drone aerial robot at HBCSE. - <AUTHOR> http://ramrao.abajirao.com/quadcopter/

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see the video, they tried it and it works well <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht7k9wwF03w></comment>


In defense of Wikileaks - <AUTHOR> http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/25/is_wikileaks_a_good_thing_or_not

<comment><USER2> There is also a good summary of the leak in this Spiegel article -> [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-72402...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-724026,00.html) (in English).

It's quite revealing just how brutal the war in Iraq has been, with all parties willing to commit atrocities (al-Qaeda, Iraq police and U.S. army). It's definitely a much stronger image than media have been serving to us about the war.

Also, for those who feel some sympathy towards al-Qaeda, the reports about their decapitations practices are also quite enlightening. ("A document dated Nov. 3, 2007, for example, relates that an Iraqi woman approached US troops to tell them that Islamists had cut off her baby's head. The officers sent out a few soldiers to look into the matter. The report ends: "Confirms baby is decapitated."").

<comment><USER3> That's such a good article from Sipegel. I submitted it as a separate article on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1835767>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >It is also increasingly clear that the U.S. taxpayer is funding a vast array of clandestine activities of which they are only dimly aware

Increasingly clear? This book was published in the _early thirties_ [1]. This has been _totally_ clear for decades for anyone who cared to look. The quest is; what (if anything) can be done to _make_ people care what the government is inflicting on other peoples in their name and with their money?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket>

<comment><USER5> I was going to question that idea too. That book you just brought to my attention is amazing. A man in that time, speaking out like that? Wow.

<comment><USER6> Remember, there was a huge strain of aggressive pacifism in the US in the 1930s, which is how the US stayed out of World War 2 until 1941. Come to think of it, there was a pretty huge strain of aggressive pacifism in England as well, which is how Hitler got as far as he did.

The 1930s was pretty much peak hour for pacifism. We'd just had World War 1 to remind us that war was a terrible thing, and hadn't yet had World War 2 to remind us that war wasn't the worst possible thing.

One could argue that the more popular pacifism gets the more likely war becomes, but it would be overly trite and based on an insufficient sample. It's a good line though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not so sure about the Aggressive Pacifism. From the Wikipedia article about the book --> The book is also interesting historically as Butler points out in 1935 that the US is engaging in military war games in the Pacific that are bound to provoke the Japanese. "The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles."

<comment><USER6> Well, I didn't say that _everyone_ in the 1930s was a pacifist. Obviously plenty of people weren't.

Wikipedia on 1930s pacifism: _The British Labour Party had a strong pacifist wing in the early 1930s and between 1931 and 1935 was led by George Lansbury, a Christian pacifist who later chaired the No More War Movement and was president of the PPU. The 1933 annual conference resolved unanimously to "pledge itself to take no part in war". "Labour's official position, however, although based on the aspiration towards a world socialist commonwealth and the outlawing of war, did not imply a renunciation of force under all circumstances, but rather support for the ill-defined concept of 'collective security' under the League of Nations._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I agree with this article for the most part. In my opinion, for important things you need people on pushing the extremes so you can get to the healthy middle. My friend often quotes to me "If you get what you asked for, you didn't ask for enough", and I think people who make the extreme claims (there should be no secrets, all software should be open source) are helping us people that actually want a middle ground.

</comment><comment><USER8> A good article. Too often I feel the debate about wikileaks has become polarised.

On the one hand you have those saying everything should be open and available. And then on the other hand you have those who say that nothing should be leaked because it puts people at risk.

There is no doubt that, in the world, there are some very unpleasant people who want to harm/kill other people, and for that reason surely some things should be kept secret? But then surely those trying to protect us should be held accountable? There is a fine line, and people draw that line at different points.

Wikileaks provides a valuable service, but I do find it ironic that, for an organisation that tries to cut through and destroy government PR/propoganda, Julian Assange is very good at using similar PR to further his goals.

John Young of Cryptome has been very happily leaking documents without the whole "not staying in the same place for than 2 nights" mentality that Assange has.

<comment><USER6> I'd trust Julian Assange a lot more if I thought that his goal were _actually_ some sort of obsessive-compulsive desire for openness of information, rather than fighting against US interests.

<comment><USER9> You don't need to trust Assange, he's only providing facts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am thankful the world has wikileaks

</comment><comment><USER11> _But unless you're willing to believe that the people in charge are always right and that their lies are therefore justified (and if you think that, you haven't been paying attention), you ought to be in favor of any mechanism that brought more facts to light._

First, I'm a huge fan of leaking information. We have a thousand times too much secrecy as we can stand already. People who leak things -- especially things that the government finds inconvenient for political reasons -- should be praised.

Having said that, this author is arguing at the extremes. I am not in favor of using any mechanism to bring facts to light. Murder? Bribery? Torture? Nope, I expect leakers to come forward honestly, not under duress. Do I support the selective leaking of information by foreign intelligence services? Nope, because the purposeful leaking of information to sway public opinion is called propaganda, and it's the most effective when it's true information. Things exist in a context.

Because of the context question, it's actually _better_ that wikileaks dumped thousands of records. If, say, there had only been a couple hundred, folks could easily charge that the docs were hand-picked.

Second, and this is more important, as much as I love leaking and openness, I am not a child. Some amount of secrecy is necessary for a government to function. Salary negotiations, diplomatic memos, military threat assessments, signals intelligence -- lots of things need to be keep secret. Even if you have a complete bunch of idiots in charge of running things, that doesn't mean that _any_ method used to dump _any_ kind of secret information is good. And that's exactly the point the author is making in the quote above.

I hate to say this, and I know you guys are going to downvote me for it, but I can't help but think that this all gets back to political affiliation: if you don't like the politics, then leak the information. It's the good guys against the military-industrial complex. If you like the politics, then it's a crime to leak the information. It's the zealous idiots against the sane organization of humanity into governmental structures.

I don't buy any of it. Not everything has to be open, and we must have an extreme amount of more public information available in order to function intelligently as voters. Both of these views can coexist. That doesn't mean that what Wikileaks did is right: in fact if they get somebody killed? I'd view them more as another combatant rather than a player for good in all of this. I have to draw the line with leaks -- whether I like the politics or not -- with getting people killed. After all, one of the main reasons we have an executive branch is to put people in charge of making sensitive decisions based on secret information that get people killed. Looking over their shoulder every minute is not part of our role in a democracy. Checking up on them and getting as many facts as we can? Sure. But not micro-managing.

If the executive branch didn't have secret information and make sensitive decisions that large portions of the population didn't believe in? There would be no point in having it. The president is nothing special -- he's just another schmuck -- but he does have a defined job and he needs the tools to do that job. Secrecy is part of the tools he needs, no matter how much we wish it weren't so.

<comment><USER12> I found that particular quote to be incredibly disingenuous:

> _"But unless you're willing to believe that the people in charge are always > right and that their lies are therefore justified (and if you think that, > you haven't been paying attention), you ought to be in favor of any > mechanism that brought more facts to light."_

This reeks of "if you're not with us, you're against us" bullshit. So, because I am not in favor of complete carte blanche leakage of everything using whatever immoral means necessary, I'm suddenly a sheep that believes the government is always right?

No thanks author guy, I live in a world with shades of grey as opposed to some juvenile form of black and white.

<comment><USER13> Ironically, this kind of misplaced self-assurance was what led us ( _qua_ 'the west') to trash our own standards on issues like torture and human rights in the first place.

Though Assange has a propagandist air which I find troubling, these leaks basically strike me as a good thing. The accumulated insults to conscience and intellect over the course of the Iraq war have long eclipsed any legitimate strategic interests that were at stake. I think a period of review and self- examination is in order.

<comment><USER12> I'm still on the fence about WikiLeaks. Assange gives me a bad vibe - and the handling of the "Collateral Murder" video was hamfisted and strictly unprofessional. As you said, the propagandist air bothers me greatly.

There's leaking the truth, and then there's the deliberate omission of one truth for another in order to advance an agenda (in this case, the complete omission of the after-action report that states without a doubt that the insurgents in the video _were_ armed, and a RPG _was_ present in the group).

The mass leak of Iraq War documents recently is much more balanced (if only by law of large numbers), and has done _some_ to assuage my concerns about WikiLeaks' responsibility as an organization. Nonetheless, I cannot help but shake the feeling that WikiLeaks is acting in its own interest as opposed to ours, and with an egotist like Assange in charge, I'm not sure how responsible we can trust them to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <quote>I believe that human beings are more likely to misbehave if they think they can shield what they are doing from public view.</quote>

I do not agree. I think that people are more likely to misbehave when they want to misbehave, regardless of a shielding mechanism.

<comment><USER14> For a politician "shielding from public view" is the same as "shielding from consequences". Do you agree?

If you still disagree with the quote, then you're saying that people will misbehave regard of consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I did a very similar blog post back in August and took the other side, here - <http://www.melonakos.com/2010/08/02/wikileaks/></comment>


Comic Sans designer: "Comic Sans was not designed as a typeface" - <AUTHOR> http://www.connare.com/comic.htm

<comment><USER2> "The inspiration came at the shock of seeing Times New Roman used in an inappropriate way."

I love the irony that Comic Sans was born because the designer was shocked at seeing another font used inappropriately.

</comment><comment><USER3> I found it kind of weird that he showed anger at the end at OS/X copying his font, when he had just admitted that much of his inspiration came from comic books. Is this not the pot calling the kettle black?

That aside, it was an interesting story.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft, of course, copied Helvetica (as Arial) to distribute with their OS.

<comment><USER5> Maybe I'm focusing on minor details, but Arial has never seemed like a dead ringer for Helvetica to me. Or at least no more than, say, Franklin Gothic and Helvetica are the same font. There are some clear differences in letterforms that give the fonts a somewhat different feel, at least to me.

Having said that, regardless of the differences in execution, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that some Product Manager at Microsoft said "Make me something that looks like Helvetica", and the result was Arial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like Microsoft's sum of its parts is less than its individual constituents...

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone else noticed how many great articles start out with "when I worked at Microsoft?"

<comment><USER8> Yes, it's interesting. [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22when+i+worked+at+microsoft...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22when+i+worked+at+microsoft%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It was designed as a floor wax.

<comment><USER10> It should have been called "Comic Sans is based on The Dark Knight Returns".</comment></comment>


What does Calvin stands for? - <AUTHOR> Paper: http://cs.yale.edu/homes/thomson/publications/calvin-sigmod12.pdf
I can't find any information about the origin of the name. Is it an acronym?
I know that this question sounds rather unconstructive but it is a curiosity after reading the aforementioned paper that remains unsolved for me. <comment><USER2> To actually be serious instead of flip, I think "Calvin" is just the name of the software, without being an acronym or initialism. However, the authors may be alluding to John Calvin and perhaps some Calvinist idea such as predestination, just as the Cassandra the database is named after the greek historical or mythological figure Cassandra "someone whose accurate prophecies are not believed by those around them".

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good theory!

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> CALVIN: Calvin acronym lacking verifiable industry nomenclature</comment>


Black Google - <AUTHOR> http://black-google.blogspot.com/ Is there any statistics on amount of enery saved so far by Black Google? <comment><USER2> [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-black-new- green.ht...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-black-new-green.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> But the results page is still white!</comment>


Abusing Amazon's Look Inside feature to leak unreleased content - <AUTHOR> https://justmaku.org/2018-06-19-amazon-leaking-ebooks <comment><USER2> > _Disclaimer: Amazon doesn 't have a bug bounty program and didn't offer > anything other than thanks and gratefulness for bringing the vulnerability > to their attention. Blizzard Entertainment (as the copyright holder for the > book I was testing with) has also been notified of this vulnerability and > has offered a small gift but never fulfilled that promise._

I'm not surprised Amazon would pay with nothing more than a nice email. What's more surprising is that Blizzard would give the author the shaft like that. They're usually pretty good about this sort of thing.

<comment><USER3> Then next time someone finds an Amazon bug, they should release it 0-day on their blog for the lulz^H^H^H^H credit.

Or sell it to someone who can make use of it.

It's incredibly entitled for a company to not run a bug bounty program then complain when people drop 0-days on their github blogs.

<comment><USER4> If you find that someone forgot their car door open, do you deserve money for not telling thieves where you can find a car with an open door?

Bug bounties are a good incentive for hardening your security, but is exploiting flaws the moral thing to do by default? Does there need to be a monetary incentive for people to do the right thing?

I run a service that has a few users and makes about $200/mo. Someone once emailed me that they found a bug and whether I run a bug bounty program. I told them I couldn't really afford one and they never replied. Are they now morally justified to publicize the flaw?

<comment><USER5> Your analogy has cause and effect reversed. The correct analogy is that if I know there is a reward for telling people their car doors are open, I will go around town specifically looking for open car doors. With no reward, I'm just going to go about my life not even looking at car doors.

Your service may be too small for this, but a company like Amazon typically saves money overall by running a bug bounty program because uncaught bugs can be extremely expensive.

<comment><USER4> The GP said "the next time someone finds a bug", ie the assumption is that a bug has been found. They didn't talk about whether bugs would be found or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, the "stitch together a bunch of substrings of a large string" task also comes up in DNA sequencing: the physical process basically randomly samples a bunch of snippets that are each a few hundred bases long, and you need to use software to detect overlaps combine them into one long sequence. It's a pretty heavily-researched computational problem, I believe. The author's simple algorithm seems to have worked, but I guess the DNA case is harder because you don't really have the "page number", you have a lot more snippets to combine, and snippets may have errors, with more errors occurring toward the ends.

Some information on the topic: [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Sequencing_(NG...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Sequencing_\(NGS\)/De_novo_assembly)

</comment><comment><USER7> The use of that feature to extract significant amounts of content was noticed over a decade ago by Fravia and his followers:

[http://search.lores.eu/books.htm](http://search.lores.eu/books.htm) (near bottom of page)

Of course, back then it was the norm to publish this information in a place for those seeking information or otherwise "keep it tight", and not instead let them tighten the nooses around our necks by instantly snitching to the company for the hope of a paltry monetary reward...

<comment><USER5> I think you should consider that some people need money more than a goofy clandestine comradery with other "information seekers" on the internet and also that bug bounties frequently exceed "paltry."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is sort of tangential, but: it doesn't make any sense that there's OCR going on in that process. Surely Amazon could just ask for the digital version of the book as a requirement for SearchInside participation?

<comment><USER9> Not sure how the specifics of this works on amazon but when I read it initially I assumed the results were returned as images which seems to make a little bit more sense, although possibly not that much.

Although reading it again it does seem to be quite unclear...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What was the fix? The article doesn't say.</comment>


Ask HN: Where's the best place to get an SSL Certificate? - <AUTHOR>

123 Reg seems pretty cheap, but are they any good? I want an SSL certificate for by blog.
What's the difference between the cheap ones and the expensive ones?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Doesn't help you right now; but this looks promising... [https://letsencrypt.org/](https://letsencrypt.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You can get Comodo Positive SSL certificate at free of cost for your blog. [https://www.ssl2buy.com/wiki/free-ssl-certificate-for-one- ye...](https://www.ssl2buy.com/wiki/free-ssl-certificate-for-one-year-at- ssl2buy/)

There are main three types of SSL certificates: domain validation, business validation, and extended validation. If you are a small or medium business and would like to secure your website, then you can get domain validation certificate at very cheap rate. Compare to domain and business validation, you will find extended validation little pricey as it is ideal for e-commerce, financial, banking, social media, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://cheapsslsecurity.com/](https://cheapsslsecurity.com/) is the only place to get SSL Certificate at cheapest price starting at only $4.99/year.

If your blog URL is as "www.yourdomain.com/blog" then you only need domain validated SSL, but if your blog is as "blog.yourdomain.com" then you need to get a wildcard SSL Certificate.

There is no difference between Cheap and Expensive SSL, both gives same security & encryption.

Price of SSL certificate vary based on its type and encryption feature. EV SSL costs high as its gives highest encryption & strong validation.

<comment><USER5> > but if your blog is as "blog.yourdomain.com" then you need to get a wildcard > SSL Certificate.

I don't think so. You can select any subdomain you want when you buy a certificate. Obviously if you get a cergificate for blog.yourdomain.com then it does not work on www.yourdomain.com.

If you only need these two subdomains, buying two separate certificates is cheaper than a wildcard one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The difference may be its Warranty Level and browser trust. A Domain validated certificate is available at cheap price, but EV SSL certificate is available at higher than DV. But, EV offers green address bar, padlock and trust site seal so it expensive than a DV SSL.

But, if you want secure your blog only than Domain validated certificate like positive ssl, essential ssl or comodo ssl are the best option that is available cheap price at [https://comodosslstore.com](https://comodosslstore.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> Namecheap : Fast and Cheap

StartSSL : Free but takes a lot of time(monthly domain verification and all )

GlobalSign : if you want this SSL for a opensource project you can get it for free

SSLtrust : Comodo Positive SSL for $4.95

As for the difference between cheapssl certifications and $200 is their guarantee and browser trust. Extended Validated certificate has more browser trust than a positive ssl certificate.

</comment><comment><USER8> You can get a free certificate from WoSign [0]. It might not be very secure (they were using SHA-1 last time I checked), but I think it should be OK for a personal blog.

[0] [https://buy.wosign.com/free/](https://buy.wosign.com/free/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Here you can get Comodo Positive SSL for $4 a year: [https://www.cheapsslshop.com/](https://www.cheapsslshop.com/)

I think that Domain Validation certs (the cheaper ones) may be enough for the personal blog.

</comment><comment><USER10> Are you a student?

If so you can get a free SSL cert through Namecheap with Github's student developer pack: [https://education.github.com/pack/offers](https://education.github.com/pack/offers)

</comment><comment><USER11> Just a matter of time before Mozilla backed free LetsEncrypt goes LIVE. Meanwhile you can get comodo positive for less then $10 at variety of sites (do google search).

</comment><comment><USER12> startssl ([https://www.startssl.com/](https://www.startssl.com/)) also offer free SSL certificate.

I usually start with EssentialSSL or PositiveSSL from comodo. If you need to secure multiple subdomain choose wildcard certificate. Domain validated have the same security with Extended validation certificate.</comment>


A New Publishing Model in Computer Science  - <AUTHOR> http://yann.lecun.com/ex/pamphlets/publishing-models.html

<comment><USER2> This is something I have mulling for a long time, and a fight I think is worth starting. Lets go open access!

I am currently researching fully distributed file stores via Distributed Hash Tables. I have been looking for viable services to convert to a fully distributed system. This is now on the top of my list. Lets make this better! allow all the colleges to partially serve and have backups of all the content.

</comment><comment><USER3> His description of the public reviewing system---and the idea of a review as a versioned public document that might itself contain new ideas---made me think of the state of affairs in the infancy of modern science, where the forerunner of the modern journal article was literally a letter to another scientist, which they would respond to with their own comments and ideas.

</comment><comment><USER4> I personally like Yann LeCun and like this idea. However, the root problem in CS research community is not a bad reviewing/publishing system. From my point of view, it is the evaluation system of the so called "professor" and researcher. The performance of the research is evaluated by the publications (the number or the citation). So here is the consequence: only a part of good "professor"/researcher really care about his research, all others care about the publication instead of research. My personal experience, you can see everywhere the "professor" push his graduate students to publish the paper. They are engaging in making the relationships to make his paper easily be published and make a lot of citations without any meaning. The publication is just a medium to describe the research analysis, results, etc, the true contribution is the research itself. Another point I want to say to learn and teach the knowledge is a very important responsibility of a professor. However, many professors only want to get publications from his students. So my conclusion, if the evaluation does not change, people still will abuse the new good review/publish system to get more publications, instead of doing valuable research.

Another very funny thing is that until now, CS research community always publish paper with improved results, good performance. It is definitely not true and the experience from failure should be also a good material to share.

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a very good idea (and no need for the either the model, or even the common platform, to be limited to CS; specialization by discipline or area of interest would be provided by the REs.)

</comment><comment><USER6> There was a discussion along the same lines for GNU Encyclopedia. Shortly after, wikipedia got started. see <https://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/free- encyclopedia></comment>