Ask HN: How to stop working until daybreak? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I, like a lot of other freelance hackers, invariably end up working myself until the sun comes up. Even after a I manage to reset my schedule to a point where I'm going to bed at a reasonable hour, my finish time will get later and later, until I'm working until morning again.
Has anybody managed to beat this pattern? Do you have any tips on how to start working normal hours again - and stick to them? One of the problems I've encountered is I find it fairly easy to go to bed later than the night before, but nigh impossible to hit the sack earlier.
I'd be really grateful for any response - I'm pretty sure my schedule is not helping my health, and I'd like to do something about it. <comment><USER2> Well, there's some scientific basis for it... [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm_sleep_disorder](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm_sleep_disorder)

I know I'm kinda in the same boat... my natural "bed-time" is 5a or 6a, but I'm forced to compromise and go to bed by 3a or 4a in order to get up functioning at 7a.

If there's no reason to stick to a "normal" schedule, do what feels natural for you; that's the healthiest thing to do, in general; listen to your body.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm also struggling with this problem as my day job has pretty flexible hours and I'm always hacking late into the night after gf goes to bed. Just slept past an important meeting this morning.

Would love to hear some ideas.

On the other hand, I see that we're in the company of great men: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2592725/Memorising-B...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2592725/Memorising- Bible-drinking-50-cups-coffee-day-From-Darwin-Dickens-historys-biggest- thinkers-spent-days.html)

<comment><USER2> For important events, I'd recommend putting your alarm across the room, so you have to actually get up out of bed to turn it off.

If you wake up hours later, stretched out on your bedroom floor, come back here, and we'll try something else. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Decide what time you want to wake up. And then get up at that time no matter what. After a few days your bed time will work itself out.

Steve Pavlina was the first place I heard of this method. [http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an- ea...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea sounds reasonable, although I think I'd struggle with the whole "actually getting up when the alarm goes off" problem.

I found a linked article on his page which addresses this problem, with a solution I'm going to have to try:

> This is going to sound really stupid, but it works. Practice getting up as > soon as your alarm goes off. That's right — practice. But don't do it in the > morning. Do it during the day when you're wide awake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can try going nocturnal. I did this for about 6 months. Go to sleep at 10am and wake up about 6pm. I did this because I had night school then coding till morning. I can't say whether it was good or bad, but it worked out with my situation.</comment>


Google to beam wifi to Indonesia's rural areas with balloons - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/indonesia-internet-google-alphabet-project-loon/ <comment><USER2> With all the nonsense yesterday about the military's lost ballon and what a boondoggle the whole program was, I was thinking they should be repurposed to provide internet.

<comment><USER3> Do you have the context of that thing?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2015/10/28/f-16s...](http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2015/10/28/f-16s-tracking- blimp-loose/74746356/)

Long story short: an aerostat broke loose of its mooring in Aberdeen Proving Ground and floated into Pennsylvania. It caused a bit of damage (trailing mooring cable fouled power lines and knocked out electricity to tens of thousands of customers), but went down in a field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder: How much Helium does each balloon takes and how long does each last once it's filled up?

<comment><USER6> They're supposed to last ~100 days and are pretty large. The time was one of the big points they had to address to get the economics right. The balloons had to last much longer than a normal balloon would.

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1EOC6WWfgA8/UbvU_yFNsKI/A...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1EOC6WWfgA8/UbvU_yFNsKI/AAAAAAAAAFA/qTKWiy0SsFc/w1223-h815-no/00E.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought Project Loon switched from wifi to LTE last year.

<comment><USER6> This has probably been in the works for more than a year so they might not have had LTE coverage on the table. Also wifi is arguably more useful than LTE signals to people on the ground since more devices will be able to receive and use it beyond just cell phones and a small number of LTE equipped laptops.

It could have also been a requirement to get the telecoms to work with the project and get it approved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> is there a map of planned coverage? i find it incredibly difficult to find reliable coverage map for any Indonesian internet provider</comment>


Why Did Facebook Pick OCaml to Build Hack and Flow - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/a/27075306 <comment><USER2> The only "real and practical" reason I can think of is that the team were familiar with OCaml language and they were able to convince the management/others/etc about using the language.</comment>


Show HN: Eat Your Greens - <AUTHOR> http://eatyourgreensapp.com

<comment><USER2> That's a very clever idea, especially since many of the calorie counting apps tend to be very bossy and intrusive. It might be a very good and fun way to get people to think about what they have eaten.

It's a shame it's iOS only, because I'd be interested in giving it a whirl.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you generate PDFs? - <AUTHOR> Given a complicated view mixed of HTML & various JavaScript widgets that range from SVG to canvas. How do companies make beautiful PDF reports?
Started with wkhtmltopdf, then started investigating the SASS industry like DocRaptor and the parent PrinceXML.
Started messing with headless Chrome to just take screenshots of the widgets and combine those images into a PDF, but its quite hacky.
What do people do in situations like this? <comment><USER2> Where we can, we use LaTeX templates. In other places we use Python to generate Word (python-docx) or PowerPoint presentations (python-pptx).

A few years ago I had success generating WYSIWYG PDFs using HTML5 and the printable classes in CSS Bootstrap ([https://getbootstrap.com);](https://getbootstrap.com\);) in that particular case I used CherryPy ([https://cherrypy.org](https://cherrypy.org)) under IIS and sent the rendered HTML to pdfkit ([https://pypi.org/project/pdfkit/](https://pypi.org/project/pdfkit/)) to generate PDFs. That was preferred over relying on the user to print to the page to PDF from their web browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are libraries like ruby's prawn[1].

[1] [https://github.com/prawnpdf/prawn](https://github.com/prawnpdf/prawn)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi, I'm a developer at DocRaptor. What about DocRaptor didn't work for you?</comment>


Secrets of the Phallus: Why Is the  Shaped Like That? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=secrets-of-the-phallus

<comment><USER2> I didn't really read the article, but one thing stood out.

It's the use of the word "designed", as opposed to using the word "evolved". Has anyone else noticed this trend in recent popular scientific writings? Has it always been like this or am I imagining things?</comment>


Functioning 'mechanical gears' seen in nature (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/functioning-mechanical-gears-seen-in-nature-for-the-first-time <comment><USER2> This video involving insects and children made me reflect on my childhood passion and the day it ended.

Like most children, I loved insects. In 2nd grade I wrote a poem about insects that so impressed my teacher that I was promoted from the "slow" 2nd grade class to the "advanced" 2nd grade class. It's my first memory of experiencing pride.

But I didn't actually _love_ insects, I _loved_ studying them. To the young mind these are just animated toys which you could freely disassemble and experiment.

When I was around 9, I recall taking my collection of insects and using my saliva as to perform a pre-selection test to determine which insects in the collection could potentially be amphibious. The next step was to take the ones that performed well and increase the severity of the experiment in hopes of discovering an amphibious insect.

My father was in our yard at the time and, for some reason, I paused to ask, "is it OK if I kill these bugs". To which he replied "you can kill them, but don't let them suffer". I don't recall if I proceeded with my full water immersion experiment. But I do recall the use of the word "suffer" had implications that would soon end all my research. _Kill_ is used metaphorically in mechanical systems, you "kill" an engine, but it comes back to life later. But there is no creative interpretation of the word suffer.

Years later I had the similar experience my first year in EE grad school. I wanted to research/improve cochlear implants as aiding the disabled is a noble pursuit of study. But then I went to meet a friend of mine, a PhD candidate, in the lab, he was literally eating a sandwich, talking to me, while operating on auditory system of a chinchilla. Maybe it was a cadaver, it was a really healthy-looking one if it was and I didn't ask. I just wanted to leave so he could focus on his patient and so that I could reconsider what else I could study.

To be clear, my comment is not a criticism of biological research and I am grateful for the resulting knowledge and benefits. It is Sunday morning and I just felt compelled to write.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Issus_ was included in a recent episode of "Nature" on PBS:

[http://www.pbs.org/video/natures-miniature- miracles-c7il7p/](http://www.pbs.org/video/natures-miniature-miracles-c7il7p/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is almost as impressive as the Pistol Shrimp who uses a sonic weapon to incapacitate it's prey: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC6I8iPiHT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC6I8iPiHT8)

Or for that matter the much more commonly known electric eel.

</comment><comment> inspector-g While not quite a gear structure in the strictest sense, don't forget about the amazing flagellar motor[1] in bacteria!

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellum#Motor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellum#Motor)

<comment><USER5> I was amazed when I first learned of this, finally finding something like an axle and wheel in a living organism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Study: Interacting Gears Synchronize Propulsive Leg Movements in a Jumping Insect

Citation: Malcolm Burrows, Gregory Sutton. Science. 13 Sep 2013: Vol. 341, Issue 6151, pp. 1254-1256.

Link: [https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1240284](https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1240284)

DOI: 10.1126/science.1240284

Abstract: Gears are found rarely in animals and have never been reported to intermesh and rotate functionally like mechanical gears. We now demonstrate functional gears in the ballistic jumping movements of the flightless planthopper insect Issus. The nymphs, but not adults, have a row of cuticular gear (cog) teeth around the curved medial surfaces of their two hindleg trochantera. The gear teeth on one trochanter engaged with and sequentially moved past those on the other trochanter during the preparatory cocking and the propulsive phases of jumping. Close registration between the gears ensured that both hindlegs moved at the same angular velocities to propel the body without yaw rotation. At the final molt to adulthood, this synchronization mechanism is jettisoned.

</comment><comment><USER7> That reminds me to the Oklo natural fission reactor

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

</comment><comment><USER8> This is very interesting. It is important to remember that "man-made" and "natural" are on the same continuum. We are a part of nature, and vice-versa. This discovery is stunning, but not surprising, given the other incredible inventions by mother nature in the history of evolution.

<comment><USER9> On the one hand, you're right: Humans are a part of nature.

On the other hand, the definition of "natural" is "untouched by humans".

<comment><USER10> I heard someone use 'Nature' as untouched-by-humans. With the use of a capital. They didn't give any rationale.

Maybe once Nature has been corrupted by humans it ceases to be such.

Woe is human -- with our ontological flagellation. (We grant the existence of Nature only to turn it back on ourselves.)

<comment><USER11> Man, it's just a useful label for something that occurs independently of human presence. No need to break out the vogon poetry for that.

<comment><USER10> Just looked up the Vogons. From Wikipedia:

> Vogon poetry is described as "the third worst poetry in the Universe"

That's quite a good insult, really. Well, if what I had done was poetry. So a good insult in a different situation.

<comment><USER12> Vogons are perfectly capable of corrupting Nature without the help of humans. And even restoring Nature by wiping out humans to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

At least he didn't say it was bad as Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings's poetry about decaying swans.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/poetry.shtml](http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/poetry.shtml)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxPeIiU2kx4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxPeIiU2kx4)

Or the Electronic Bard's horrible poems:

[http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lem/HorriblePoems.html](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lem/HorriblePoems.html)

Despair not, never give up, and just keep practicing: there's always room for improvement:

[http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lem/WonderfulPoems.html](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lem/WonderfulPoems.html)

<comment><USER10> > Despair not, never give up, and just keep practicing: there's always room > for improvement

There's nought to improve. It wasn't poetry. & if you-all are suggesting my prose is poetic, then that's a compliment, not a zing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another not man made thing. I have to say I'm surprised I thought it would be to inefficient to grow something like this for an organism..

ps: that said, it seems hidden enough to keep a little bit of credit to our ancestors brains I guess :)

</comment><comment><USER14> This was featured in the August 2015 Awake magazine [1] on the back cover. A copy of the article is here [2].

[1] The Awake magazine is widely distributed for free by Jehovah's Witnesses as a religious evangelising work that is now banned in a few countries including Russia.

[2] [https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201508/issus-l...](https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201508/issus- leafhopper/)

<comment><USER15> Ok, and this was published two years earlier in 2013. What's the point?

<comment><USER14> The point is, the mentioned magazine (and its sister) holds the world record for 1st and 2nd most distributed magazine in the world as well as most widely translated magazine. 41 million copies of this article was distributed in hundreds of languages, so many people have already seen this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is not a new finding. The title needs a (2013) in it.

<comment><USER17> Thanks. Added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This precedes Justin Bieber's video for "Where Are Ü Now" by a couple of years.

<comment><USER18> Please no more downvotes by people who clearly haven't watched this film all the way through, or who somehow avoided ever seeing Justin Bieber's.

<comment><USER19> > Please no more downvotes when you cannot even understand how irrelevant this > comment is.

FTFY

<comment><USER18> I was not warned that the entire second half of the film, about an art project, would be considered off-topic.

<comment><USER19> You also didn't explain why it was _on-topic_. If you respond to a science article with a reference to a music artist which as far as I can see is _entirely_ unrelated, without explaining what's going on, you shouldn't be surprised about downvotes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Dallas for Your Startup? This Infographic Will Help - <AUTHOR> http://launchdfw.com/news/why-dallas-for-your-startup-this-infographic-will-help/ <comment><USER2> UTD, UTA, UNT, SMU, TCU, TWU - lots of higher ed here - entry level labor for growing companies. That graphic says a lot, but it doesn't say anything about the speed at which this community is coming together. I just moved back from Boulder, and I can tell you that Dallas has every bit of the activity and passion.

</comment><comment><USER3> Stabile Economy. Natural resources & lessons learned from previous housing busts insulated Dallas (relatively) from the '08-'09 global meltdown.

</comment><comment><USER4> You know what's cooler than a $100k salary? A $100k salary with half the taxes and cost of living.

Welcome to Texas!

<comment><USER5> But then you're in Texas.

I jest of course. Coming from Illinois, I get poked at about the corruption we have. On the other hand, the legislative climate is a bit different (we don't try to take reproductive rights away from women, and we've got same-sex marriages).

Caveat emptor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> International connections via fabulous airports, centrally located in USA, cheap labor, can-do spirit, business friendly politics, not freezing weather, and it's where JR called home :) reasonable media/advertising companies.

</comment><comment><USER7> Add to the list: mild winters. Just returned from Seattle to the warm Texas sunshine...

<comment><USER8> But, if memory serves, the humidity in summer is hell.

<comment><USER7> Humidity is not so much of an issue in Dallas. It does get hot in summer, but it's a dry heat. You might be thinking of Houston.

<comment><USER8> Maybe. I'm comparing it to Phoenix; pretty much everyplace else feels too humid now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Houston is a cool bro too. Better food, more people, more bars, cheaper housing.

EDIT: Rice and UH are both fantastic schools for research and business, respectively. And we've got the largest medical center in the world.

<comment><USER10>
        >Better food, more people, more bars, cheaper housing.

As somebody from Dallas I almost started trying to argue with you but what nobody from Dallas or Houston like to admit, they are pretty much the same city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The 5 billion dollar bar is shorter than the 3.9 billion dollar bar...</comment>


Double KO Capcom's Street Fighter V Installs Hidden Rootkit on PCs - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter_v/ <comment><USER2> How could be a programmer, who has enough patience to read documents and has knowledge to implement the Windows kernel driver which does,

1\. offer IOCTL serivce 2\. disable SMEP 3\. execute user-space code from kernel.

, NOT notice the very program he is writing has serious security vulnerability?

How could he not notice and saying "Wait, Am I writing rootkit?"

</comment><comment><USER3> The official Twitter said to expect a "PC rollback solution soon".[1]

1\. [https://twitter.com/StreetFighter/status/779415276399931392?...](https://twitter.com/StreetFighter/status/779415276399931392?lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like this capcom.sys should be added to AV signature lists...

<comment> slipstream- I agree. Malware has been known to install vulnerable signed drivers to get unsigned kernelmode code execution.</comment></comment>


Coinbase Commerce: merchants can accept multiple digital currencies - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@coinbasecommerce/coinbase-commerce-the-easiest-way-for-merchants-to-accept-digital-currency-54ba64966f8d <comment><USER2> The KYC/AML regulations require essentially 1:1 human effort for every new person who attempts to buy any practical amount of cryptocurrency (within the US and EU, and probably elsewhere).

So the #1 problem is that people who want to buy some cryptocurrency cannot. They wait days or weeks to get verified. And the exchanges and money changers want to provide the virtual currency to the hungry customers, but they cannot afford to hire enough people to process all the verification applications.

Given this extreme bottleneck, I don't see the significance of news about how much easier it is for people to spend virtual currency.

Ironically, Coinbase is one of the most complained about in terms of slow verifications.

<comment><USER3> I'm in this boat now - I've been a Coinbase customer for years, and then randomly they blocked my ability to withdraw my money (MY money, BTW) from the account. Nothing had changed about my account setup.

Now they want me to go through the Photo ID process, but I don't have a US drivers license, only a permanent resident (green) card for ID. Which should be fine, after all it works as ID for literally everything else I could need ID for in the US - including flying. Support have been fairly responsive, but they keep sending me back to through their photo verification process, and I keep telling them "but this is not a driver's license, please look at the pictures!".

It's really annoying - this is a federally-issued photo ID I'm required to carry with me, and yet Coinbase seems to be struggling to accept it. In the meantime my money is stuck and I don't know how to get it back.

<comment><USER4> The error of the ways of Coinbase seems to be allowing various transactions and money transfer activity, sometimes for lengths of time, on unverified accounts. Then, suddenly boom, there's a problem, and customer support is already backlogged.

Kind of like they opened the door to unlimited new subscribers and sobbed that they were overloaded. With some of the HN crowd playing the violin music of poor, fast-growing start-up (the "growing pains" cop out).

Naughty (greedy) Coinbase.

<comment><USER3> Yeah what's particularly frustrating is that I'm not a new user, I've had an account for years. If I had a problem signing up, and couldn't start using their service, that would be one thing, but that I already have money in there and they're preventing me from getting it back is what's really frustrating me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does this mean for a crypto project like Request Network ([https://request.network/#/](https://request.network/#/)) which is trying to become the "Paypal for cryptocurrencies"?

I am genuinely curious as I own some REQ, believe in the team, but also like what Coinbase has done to bring crypto to the masses (minus the outrageous fees of course).

<comment><USER6> My personal opinion about Request and similar projects.

I have been using bitcoin for a while, I have payed for real goods and online services with it and I've following the crypto ecosystem for a few years. I really can't see the reason for more than just a handful of competing cryptocurrencies becoming mediums of exchange.

Request's goal is noble, but I think that they'd be better off working on implementing payment gateways for existing cryptos. The first mover advantage seems to be huge in this space, and I really can't see how Request, or any other crypto can scale fast enough to dethrone bitcoin or the rest of the big competitors.

<comment><USER5> I also think there are way too many projects in this space and most of them are very obvious money grabs. Ultimately only a few projects will survive and gain mainstream adoption.

I am really on the face regarding bitcoin though: it is the grandfather of all those crypto projects and massively moves the market, but I don't quite understand how it could ever replace a currency given its very limited supply and astronomical unit economic price: it was not supposed to be a store of value like gold when it started.

Ultimately, I think a few projects with much higher coins in circulation and faster transaction times will end up becoming more valuable due to greater usability.

It's a shame it feels like REQ is a bit late to the game, but they do have ambitious plans, one of them is to enable cross-currency transactions (including fiat). No-one has yet gained the first mover advantage in this space so the jury is still out.

<comment><USER7> REQ is not late to the game. It's still extremely early. I think multiple dex that translates currency to any other currency will emerge. Dexs can compete on fees, features, risk, etc. Additionally supply will be distributed as automated arbitrage becomes an easy way to make money.

I also don't believe in the convergence of coins with enough dexs. There are a lot of design features that people will want that are incompatible across coins, but still useful. Some coins will fail sure, but people still trade bitconnect(200k volume yesterday).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's also the GloBee[0] payment processor. It accepts Monero, so you're able to maintain your privacy whilst consuming like a capitalist zombie.

[0] [https://globee.com/](https://globee.com/)

<comment><USER9> That's not going to last long, it's basically an open invite for money laundering.

<comment><USER8> I can't think of anything that is universally good other than God. & from what I've heard about the Old Testament that's not even true!

So we a situation where people can't even _construct something from their imagination_ that is virtuous in all concerns. & people want financial technology to meet that bar? Seems unlikely to me.

Could there be some money laundering? Probably. Will there be attempts by the owners of the payment processor to stop such a thing? Probably. Will there be perfection? Probably not.

From what I understand, most money laundering occurs in the traditional financial system. Does it follow we should tear it down?

& besides, I thought crypto(assets) were a fad. A bubble. A figment of the imagination. A plaything for greater fools. If that's true, it's hardly worth worrying about.

<comment><USER10> The traditional financial system carries out trillions of transactions which are not money laundering, yet is required to jump through enormous amounts of red tape to prove its customers are not money launderers, and companies still get into trouble with regulators if they're not satisfied with their AML policies.

A new payment processor advertising the ability to accept completely anonymous transactions as a key benefit over the traditional ecosystem is going to attract a much higher ratio of money laundering to legitimate merchant accounts, and even without that, marketing Lack-of-AML-as-a-Service is sort of thing that gets regulators interested in shutting you down...

<comment><USER8> > The traditional financial system carries out trillions of transactions which > are not money laundering, yet is required to jump through enormous amounts > of red tape to prove its customers are not money launderers, and companies > still get into trouble with regulators if they're not satisfied with their > AML policies.

I'd agree the traditional system would probably have less money laundering. It also has less freedom, & could have significantly less innovation in the future.

> marketing Lack-of-AML-as-a-Service is sort of thing that gets regulators > interested in shutting you down

I think they're run from South Africa, so I'm not sure if regulators could shut them down. Crypto is global & crypto is on the internet. Wherever cryptocurrencies go, human minds will follow. People will create them with their computers (mining) & transact with those who accept them.

Coming down hard on crypto assets could create a parallel economy. Untaxed & _no regulation_. Then what do regulators do? Nothing, because they just lost their jobs & any control over anything.

<comment><USER10> Criminal economic ecosystems have existed since long before cryptocurrency, as has AML law even in mere regional financial hubs like South Africa.

The real question is to what extent is it beneficial for _non-criminal_ businesses to invest in the capability to handle niche currencies like Monero used by hardly anybody and attractive primarily to money launders. Because if it's predominantly criminal businesses using them, it's not really making regulators' jobs more difficult.

<comment><USER8> > Criminal economic ecosystems have existed since long before cryptocurrency, > as has AML law even in mere regional financial hubs like South Africa.

Even if South Africa shut them down, I'm sure others will find a way to run such payment processors. Where there's money, there's motive.

> The real question is to what extent is it beneficial for non-criminal > businesses to invest in the capability to handle niche currencies like > Monero used by hardly anybody and attractive primarily to money launders.

People who launder large sums of money would likely do it through the traditional financial system. How does one launder, say, a billion dollars through a Monero today? I don't think they could. That type of money is being laundered through the banking system[0].

> The real question is to what extent is it beneficial for non-criminal > businesses to invest in the capability to handle niche currencies like > Monero

If it's easy to implement & their niche likes to use them, then I would say it's probable.

Crypto can win bit by bit. Country by country. There are some jurisdictions that seem to be embracing the tech (like Japan & Switzerland).

That's some people using it. If it continues to grow & you know it's going to grow faster than any other asset it makes sense to do some speculation. Then with that speculation, you start to learn about crypto. It starts to spread as people become aware of returns, & it continues to grow, & so on.

It's resilient. I like resilient assets. I think a little bit of crypto can be a good investment. If anything it's fun. That's one of the reasons I think young people like it.

Do it for fun, spend it when people accept it. People even give discounts for buying in crypto.

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-to- pay-1-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-to- pay-1-9-billion-u-s-fine-in-money-laundering-case-idUSBRE8BA05M20121211)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you ever added your US bank account to Coinbase by giving it your online banking credentials(!)[1], you might want to know that your financial/banking information was crawled (income, costs, average balance), and is available for resale[2] to 3rd parties.

1\. This is very, very, _very_ bad for security, but is only possible because US interbank transfers are way behind the rest of the world (including 3rd world countries). Everywhere else, all you need to transfer money is the name of the bank, account holder and account number.

2\. see "Products" on [https://plaid.com](https://plaid.com). Plaid provides Coinbase's bank integration.

<comment><USER12> Plaid co-founder here. We don't resell data. In the case of Coinbase, they're setting up ACH transfers (see Auth on our products page), to avoid the 3-5 day delay in connecting a bank account for ACH.

<comment><USER11> > We don't resell data.

There must be some confusion on my part, because I consider this product ([https://plaid.com/products/income/](https://plaid.com/products/income/)) as selling the income data, I'm guessing it's unrelated to Coinbase.

In any case, are you able to unequivocally state that you do _not_ collect this data for coinbase users, even if it's not for reselling? I know you might have good intentions, but there's no telling where that data will end up once it's collected (past the point of your 'exit' event).

<comment><USER12> Our Income product is distinct from Auth, and not used by Coinbase. The only way for a consumer's Income data to be collected, analyzed, and sent is when the consumer directly permissions an application to receive it.

Let's say you're applying for a loan via a lender that's a Plaid customer and you want to verify your income. In that case, you'd have to link your bank account with that lender (via Plaid), giving that lender permission to collect data about your Income. There's no way for that lender to get your income (or any other) data from Plaid without you explicitly connecting your account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder what they're policy is on adult. I do some work on an adult site and ccbill has got to be the worst credit card provider out there. Adult payments need to be disrupted.

<comment><USER14> Agree, lots of value can be provided to services in the grey-area. Specifically Coinbase doesn't allow this.

Under "Prohibited Businesses" you can see "Adult Content and Services" being listed. Source: [https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement?locale=en](https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement?locale=en)

<comment><USER15> Really funny how we've come full circle to the same centralized cabals acting as the gatekeepers decentralized currency was meant to destroy.

It just goes to show, as long as the world runs on fiat currency, and you need to convert from cryptocurrency -> fiat to live your life, the conversion point (e.g. Coinbase) will always be a point of failure and regulatory capture.

<comment><USER16> Nothing really stops you from processing crypto-coins unlike credit cards where Visa and MasterCard have the last say. With crypto you no longer need approval from the platform owner. If you don't like Coinbase you can create your own coinbase-like platform. You have to remember that with fiat you don't have much control over your money either unless it's cash so I believe crypto- coins are a big step forward.

Buying fiat with crypto is another issue but as long as crypto coins are accepted widely there will always be ways to buy goods, services and even fiat.

<comment><USER17> Are there any checkout systems pre-built solely for holding crypto afterwards, and not for converting to fiat? Guessing Coinbase has to have it like that because they interact with wider networks.

If you wanted to sell a saucy story, how'd it work? Essentially a hot wallet with a webhook?

<comment><USER18> You'd just need an extended public key that gives unique addresses to buyers and a price API to provide rate conversions. Your private key can be offline or on a hard wallet. Also see btcpayserver for an open source bitpay clone that does what you are thinking and more

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've never used bitcoin but to my understanding it can take quite some time for a payment to be processed.

What happens if you buy something and pay, then when the merchant receives the bitcoins the value of them has dropped say 10%? Does the merchant take the loss in this system?

<comment><USER20> Bitcoin alone is responsible for this reputation of slow transaction times among cryptocurrencies. Litecoin and Ethereum have the same blockchain architecture but are mined faster, so they are faster, but this linear improvement may not be sufficient for scaling. Minerless "DAG" coins like Nano may prove to be more practical in the long run because they scale exponentially.

re: Value change during a transaction: volatility is a fundamental problem with any currency. Adoption and volume will decrease volatility, which this announcement is moving towards :) Ripple's value-add to the banking industry, for instance, similarly relies on adoption in order to create an international pool of liquidity in order to facilitate efficient cross-border currency exchange. The more volume, the less volatility there is, which means less cost to banks using XRP as a payment "bridge". The same is desirable for merchants and consumers.

<comment><USER21> your logic is funny, is like having a busy site with a postgress db, and saying postgress is at fault, look at my mysql wordpress site with 1.3 visitors per day, how fast it is.

Ethereum will colapse on itself sooner of later, no one managed to sync a node recently.

<comment><USER20> Where exactly is my logic funny? Mined blockchains scale linearly. Increasing block size, etc. can increase speed temporarily but can still only scale linearly. Busy site or not, the ledger needs an architectural change to handle exponential growth. Your busy Postgress db would also need to change in architecture from a single resource to something more distributed in order to scale exponentially. A less busy website of the same architecture also wouldn't handle exponential growth. What am I missing?

Edit: To clarify, yes, some mined blockchains feel faster now simply because they are less busy. They are still doomed to Bitcoin's fate _at scale_ unless distributed systems techniques like sharding (or Nano's block lattice) are used. I'm not saying that the less busy blockchains are any better.

<comment><USER22> > To clarify, yes, some mined blockchains feel faster now simply because they > are less busy.

Yes, and for now it's not proven in practice that Nano will also stay responsive when it hits the same scale/busyness.

<comment><USER20> Fair enough. _In theory_ Nano's design can handle something like O(2^n) transactions per second where n is the number of nodes, while mined blockchains can handle O(n) transactions per second where n is roughly the block rate multiplied by block size. _In practice_ who knows. The former has a fighting chance, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Looks exactly like Sprite's offering right down to the scary 15 minute window you are expected to complete your Bitcoin transaction in, doesn't it?

<comment><USER24> I just bought a computer from newegg with bitcoin and I think they used bitgo. They also had the 15 minute window thing. But the transaction didn't have to be confirmed in that time. It just needed to be out there somewhere which only took about a minute. And that was back when BTC was around 15K and it would takes hours for a actual transaction to be confirmed. But it would lock in the transaction quickly and then it would take a while for newegg to send me a email saying the payment was confirmed.

I just checked and the time between my order and initiating the sending of BTC to bitgo in Electrum to newegg saying the payment was accepted was just a little under five hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> No mention of the time delay between accepting funds and withdrawing the funds. How would a merchant refund the customer in fiat or crypto?

<comment><USER26> They are also working on Lightning Network integration.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXe- wQyrWw&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXe- wQyrWw&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER27> Does lightening address coinbases incredibly long and arbitrary delays in deposits to an actual bank account?

<comment><USER28> No, lightning (not lightening, btw) addresses the relatively long delays in confirming transactions. Merchants who are unwilling to accept unconfirmed transactions must wait tens of minutes (depending on risk they want to accept). With lightning it's as fast as you can transmit packets through the internet (order of milliseconds).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have a coinbase account, but it looks like like a Coinbase Commerce account. Commerce wont accept my regular Coinbase login. I guess I have to create a new account?

</comment><comment><USER30> So this just shows you an address to send crypto to and calculates the equivalent amount needed with a 15 minute window??

No conversion to fiat at a guaranteed rate?

Can't you game this with such rapid price fluctuations? Time buying a high priced item during a crash maybe?

</comment><comment><USER31> [https://www.coinpayments.net](https://www.coinpayments.net) has been doing something similar for a few years now.

</comment><comment><USER32> I used to be bullish on crypto. Now I see something like this and wonder "why the fuck do I want to use crypto to buy something when cash is instantaneous and my credit card provides consumer protection?". Add on to this the necessity of dealing with capital gains on my taxes at the end of the year just for buying something? No thanks.

I also fully expect to get downvoted to oblivion for this opinion based on what I have seen in the past.

</comment><comment><USER33> This has a good scope for humblebundle

</comment><comment><USER34> awesome! look forward to trying it

</comment><comment><USER35> Not only is Coinbase an extremely slimy, untrustworthy company seemingly entirely driven by bad AI, the amount of different currencies they accept is also very limited.

<comment><USER36> What?

GDAX is one of the best companies out there in the field.

Note to others: a portion of the internet seems to relentlessly attack Coinbase because they listed Bitcoin Cash (BCH) months ago

<comment><USER37> Bitcoin Cash was listed in an incredibly dishonest way. They "surprised" announced it at 8pm on a Tuesday night. Along with the "launch" they had disabled selling bch from the fork (you could only buy). The launch coincided with Roger Ver and numerous CNBC "stories" trashing Bitcoin. It was so shady Coinbase agreed to launch an insider trading investigation.

Worse, coinbase is dragging their feet improving their Bitcoin technology stack. At this point it appears intentional.

<comment><USER36> That is not an accurate chain of events.

I understand why they did not pre-announce. They would have been attacked by rabid BTC fans, plus a bunch of astroturfers and bots.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trump Twitter Archive - <AUTHOR> http://trumptwitterarchive.com/#/ <comment><USER2> Trump + Paypal = trademark infringement

It's a cool idea but I'd be carful with the monetization aspect of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a good thing but just loads a blank page for me on iOS 10.3</comment>


Latency/throughput tradeoffs, illustrated with coffee - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/inefficient-efficiency-5b3ab5294791 <comment><USER2> I liked this article and how it was framed for businesses but it seems generally useful to many different types of activities:

\- Pull requests should usually optimize for latency, not throughput (i.e. smaller PRs/changes are usually better)

\- Release frequently instead of infrequently (implying that frequent releases will be smaller but in frequent releases will be very large)

\- Non-strictness (latency-optimized) is more composable than strictness (throughput-optimized)

... this orbits another mental model I was exposed to a few years ago I call "weak-signal thinking".

</comment><comment><USER3> What I find to be one of most annoying trade-offs of latency and throughput (and etiquette) are single lane bridges.

If there are three cars on either side, the fastest way to get all six cars crossed is to allow all of the cars on one side to go, and then all of the cars on the other side to go. There's some increased latency on the side that goes second, but 4 of the 6 cars end up crossing sooner (1 is the same either way, and 1 is slower) than they would with what actually happens.

One car goes on one side. Then one car goes on the other side. They continue to alternate. It's so slow that what was once six cars quickly becomes twenty. But if you "sneak" in behind the car in front of you, you see unhappy faces and the occasional middle finger!

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure where you are from, but when I encountered one of these bridge in Kawaii, Hawaii a few years back it had specific instructions to follow the car in-front of you. I always admired whomever had the foresight to design such instructions and never realized it was not like that elsewhere.

From a quick google, looks like this is the the norm throughout Hawaii:

[https://www.hawaii-aloha.com/blog/2014/01/08/one-lane- bridge...](https://www.hawaii-aloha.com/blog/2014/01/08/one-lane-bridge- ahead/)

[https://vacations.hawaiilife.com/blog/misc/one-lane- bridge-e...](https://vacations.hawaiilife.com/blog/misc/one-lane-bridge- etiquette)

<comment><USER3> As if I didn't need one more reason to move to Hawaii?

That's subtle genius. I like this version of the etiquette: 5-7 cars at a time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Making coffee is a good analogy for any kind of hardware electronics development! Some things need to be planned out ahead of time like the overall mechanical design, but other things probably should be iterated quickly, maybe by using pre-made development kits and breadboards instead of fully designed circuit boards for initial firmware.

As the article said at the end, it all basically boils down to "it depends..." :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Or do what superscalar CPUs do and have 8 coffee machines running all the time.

<comment><USER7> CPUs are the latency-optimized machines of today.

If a CPU sees a line of 10 people, it will brew 10-cups of coffee, speculating that most want coffee. If only 9-cups were needed, it will throw away the extra coffee.

\</comment></comment><comment>-----

In practice, this truly happens. CPUs perform branch-prediction over a for- loop.

        for(int i=0; i<32; i++){
            doA();
        }
        doB()

The value "i" hasn't been calculated yet, but the CPU performs branch prediction. Modern CPUs can accurately loops of size ~32 or less. Modern CPUs will literally fill their pipelines with 32x "doA()" statements, and even the doB() statement BEFORE the i<32 check was even tested.

Now the branch-predictor might be wrong! Lets say that doA() is:

        if(random() == 1% chance){
            i++; // Increments the loop counter
        }

The CPU will likely fail to predict this, and then will be forced to throw away the work. Nonetheless, its overall beneficial for the CPU to speculatively try to do all the loops anyway (the alternative is leaving the CPU-pipeline empty, which has roughly the same costs as a failed speculation anyway).

CPU-wins if it is correct, and it ties if it is wrong. So might as well speculate.

<comment><USER8> In your example, it sounds like you mean throughput-optimized. According to the original post, brewing hot water for 10 cups would introduce additional latency.

<comment><USER7> > In your example, it sounds like you mean throughput-optimized. According to > the original post, brewing hot water for 10 cups would introduce additional > latency.

Nope. CPUs are latency-optimized.

The "1st cup of coffee" always takes the same amount of time in CPU-land. The 2nd-cup of coffee was speculatively made, but never "slowed down the first cup of coffee".

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>----

A throughput optimized machine, like GPUs (and strangely enough: hard drives), are willing to slow down the 1st-cup of coffee for better __overall __throughput.

Hard drives are interesting: if you have the following "reads":

#1: Read location 1

#2: Read location 100

#3: Read location 50

The hard drive will re-arrange the reads into: Read 1, Read 50, Read 100, because the hard-drive head will reach location50 before location100. Remember, hard drives are physically moving their arms to each physical location.

This means that Read100 is "slowed down", its latency got significantly worse. But the three reads all together all completed at the same time.

<comment><USER8> > The "1st cup of coffee" always takes the same amount of time in CPU-land. > The 2nd-cup of coffee was speculatively made, but never "slowed down the > first cup of coffee".

Just to be clear, then: the analogy from the original post doesn't apply.

<comment><USER7> > Just to be clear, then: the analogy from the original post doesn't apply.

The analogy from the original post applies to the cases the original post discusses.

The original "coffee latency" blogpost innately applies to a 1980s style computer: a simple in-order machine. Its truly correct for that model of simple computing.

I've added in complications: pipelining, superscalar, and speculative execution, which were inventions deployed in the early 90s and 00s to CPUs. So things work differently on modern machines, because modern machines have many, many more features than the "original" computer designs.

The original "cups of coffee" are a good way to start thinking about latency vs bandwidth problem. I really like the analogy. But it would take a LOT more writing before I really cover everything going on in modern CPUs.

<comment><USER8> Your original post was missing explanation because you referenced the original analogy without addressing how the original analogy no longer applied to the scenario you were discussing.

For what it's worth, in all my replies I have not been confused about the behavior of a CPU, but only about how you are trying to use the analogy to fit your exposition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very often I see false tradeoffs attempting better latency. When the system is on top of things, sure, go for latency. Once there is any backlog, favoring throughput gets you better latency too.

</comment><comment><USER10> Joel on Software gave a better illustration of this a while back in talking about the dangers of multitasking; he said imagine that you have no task- switching penalties but have to perform two tasks A and B which are in theory 100 units of time each. If you perform them serially, you get the result for A at time 100 and the result for B at time 200; if you perform them in parallel switching between them, you get the benefit that at time 51 you can show both of the recipients that you are 25% complete, but you deliver A at time 199 and B at time 200. B gets the same result; A gets a strictly better result, by not multitasking. If you imagine that your reputation is proportional to the average of the inverses of your times-to-completion, your reputation is 50% better in the first case due to the 100% improvement on half of your deadlines; if you had done the same nonsense with three parallel tasks your reputation would be 83% better or so.

With that said it seems, I don't know, like something is missing? Throughput in these project-engineering contexts is little more than the plural of latency; improving latency usually works to improve throughput. So it would be nice to figure out what the actually-perpendicular vector is, given that these two so often go hand-in-hand.

I'd then want to think about situations where you could up-front invest in building a clean piece of software that is dynamic and highly-adaptable later (big wait, then lots of features can be delivered faster) vs. a clunker that was slapped together ad-hoc in order to immediately meet business needs, and it shows (immediate results but every new feature takes longer and longer).

Between the two of those I have a personality which favors the first; in one of my early programming jobs I had a lot of trouble being thrown into the tail end of a system built for years according to the second principle, and so every little change took weeks to debug because everything was spaghetti—I got a bit burned. On the flip-side, the second is in some sense Objectively Correct—lower latencies are really powerful—and I started to adopt some serious principles from that.

So with new internal tools for example, I have some baseline principles which speak to the second vision. A new tool starts without CI/CD, it starts without a database or data persistence, it has a repository but it does not have a release process or code reviews; it starts without extraneous design or styles or templates; usually it starts without tests although in theory I like test- driven development. When I say minimum viable product, I mean that word minimum and I am somewhat loose on that word viable. If there is supposed to be communication with a hypothetical API, that API does not exist and instead there is a file containing some functions which return static JSON blobs that it might have hypothetically tossed back in response. It is a frontend-first design that has no backend.

And I keep negotiating what this product is with my stakeholders, until that frontend has been massaged into something that they can use. Low latency in learning what my tool-consumer wants is key, so I can't be making it expensive to change my data model or the like. I want the complaints that "This tool is extremely useful, I wish it looked pretty and saved my info from session to session and had the latest data from our HR system" and whatever else it needs to do to actually be properly viable.

I think that what I am doing is some variant of Domain-Driven Design? Basically I am trying to suss out major product requirements from nontechnical folks by having them interact with the product requirements as early as possible, to see what those requirements imply and correct them again and again. I want to have a technical model of how they look at the world which is correct, first—and then when I am building the backend I can actually have a properly principled approach to what I am building because I know what the terms mean in this system.

<comment><USER11> > if you perform them in parallel switching between them, you get the benefit > that at time 51 you can show both of the recipients that you are 25% > complete, but you deliver A at time 199 and B at time 200.

That's not parallelism, that's concurrency. You are basically doing round- robin. If they were done in parallel, then both tasks would get completed at time 100. Throughput usually improves the otherwise maximum latency when there is _at least some_ parallelism, otherwise I agree improving throughput would not make a lot of sense in many cases.

> I think that what I am doing is some variant of Domain-Driven Design?

Sounds like iterative and incremental software development. I dare say Agile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the first graph second "heat" should start with the first "drip." It will still be a bit slower in total, but not by much.

It's a cute analogy, but it's not 100% accurate.

<comment><USER13> Yup that is what I would do. Slightly higher latency for the first coffee but the higher throughput is worth it.

Pipelining for the win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From a one-piece-flow lean perspective that plays into agile development:

If you brew on cup at a time, your customer can tell you how to improve it before you deliver the second cup.

<comment><USER5> This is a great way to start, then once you got it down start cranking that coffee out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice post. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER16> tl;dr choosing between several options seems to depend on the reasons for the choices</comment>


Show HN: Saxophone eMotion – Add Simple Motion to Tap Controlled Sax - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/saxophone-emotion/id1092217480?ls=1&mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> This is an experiment in React Native to see how far its performance could be stretched versus pure native code. Don't expect super fine grained motion control. It just hooks the accelerometer and gyroscope into an 8 octave sax pad. There are 4 different types of sax. Feedback is welcome.</comment>


Did they even hang bears? - <AUTHOR> https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n16/tom-shippey/did-they-even-hang-bears <comment><USER2> If you dig viking history this is a worthwhile read. I almost skipped it. Glad I didn't.

</comment><comment><USER3> In 1916, they hung an elephant in Erwin, Tennessee.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin,_Tennessee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin,_Tennessee)

<comment><USER4> "Erwin has a dark chapter in its history. A group of its white citizens committed an extra-legal "banishment," a violent incident that took place in 1918 and involved the murder of a black man and the violent, forcible eviction of all other black citizens from the town by a white mob."

Why does the fact that a traveling circus visiting Erwin once executed an Elephant, get more page space than this throw away sentence at the bottom of the introduction?

<comment><USER5> Because the elephant thing is unique and the racism thing is common?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://archive.is/cnBqC](https://archive.is/cnBqC)

</comment><comment><USER7> "Please enable Javascript to read the full article"

No. Go learn how HTML works.

<comment><USER8> I was with you until about 2009, but I'd be surprised if much of the modern web worked without Javascript anymore.

<comment><USER9> That's fine, but I'm not running JS unless there's a reason for the app to use JS.

This is a document, not an application, and developers who can't do progressive enhancement on simple HTML documents are the ones stuck in 2009.

<comment><USER8> They're almost all applications now. We lost the fight. There's zero incentive for a develop to spend more than zero time making a website degrade gracefully today.

I use Gemini ([https://gemini.circumlunar.space/](https://gemini.circumlunar.space/)) today when I want to enjoy an unscripted Internet. You should check it out - it's fun! But the web is no longer static HTML, however much I often wish it was.

<comment><USER9> > They're almost all applications now. We lost the fight.

Please reconsider! I've been using uBlock Origin to disable JavaScript by default, opting into enabling it when I want to (just like camera and microphone permissions). The vast majority of websites work fine, and many work _better_ because they don't have pop-ups for cookie consent, unsolicited chat bubbles, or "wait don't leave yet" crap.

> There's zero incentive for a develop to spend more than zero time making a > website degrade gracefully today.

I couldn't dksagree more. Not everyone is an able-bodied software developer with a 2020 Macbook Pro and Google Chrome. We should continue making websites for _everyone_.

> But the web is no longer static HTML, however much I often wish it was.

You're right, but JavaScript is still completely optional for the vast majority of websites (and I'd argue that we should keep it that way). Just because a few websites need camera permissions doesn't mean that we should give every website access to our camera -- why should we have a different stance on JavaScript that usually degrades our experience instead of improves it?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The rise of the deepfake and the threat to democracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2019/jun/22/the-rise-of-the-deepfake-and-the-threat-to-democracy <comment><USER2> Deplatforming is a much bigger threat.</comment>


Philosophy of Architecture (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/architecture/ <comment><USER3> Couldn't help but search the text for references to Christopher Alexander (and they're there). Recommend The Timeless Way of Building - not just for the patterns stuff that so inspired the tech community but for metaphors, many of which translate into other domains. I channel one such - 'wholehearted' - <USER2> my mission statement [1] and branding

[1] [https://www.agendashift.com/about/wholehearted](https://www.agendashift.com/about/wholehearted)

<comment><USER4> Christopher Alexander is one architect with one view. I used to think he was the end all but he's not. There are or ought to be as many approaches to architecture as there are architectural projects – because architecture is a practice that first and foremost fits a solution to a context, _if there ought to be a solution whatsoever_. Fundamentally architecture is about _synthesizing integrative visions_ : everything else follows from this.

Patterns are not necessarily wrong, but presume a universality in architectural problems from the outset that can narrow your perception of what ought to be done too quickly.

Alexander's "avoid symmetry-breaking" as a design principle is germane across almost all styles of architecture though. Whether or not an architect likes to obey, ignore, or disrupt symmetries is the big tell as to what school of thought they subscribe to.

<comment><USER3> Oh completely! But credit where credit is due...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are interested in this subject, I would recommend 'The Architecture of Happiness' by Alain De Botton, and 'Status Anxiety' (even though the a later is not focused on architecture, it is complimentary).

The books were also made into documentaries that are available on Alain De Bottom's YouTube channel.

<comment><USER5> _auto-correct strikes again..._

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Architecture matters. When I walk into a brutalist space, I feel minuscule and irrelevant. When I walk into spaces that I (subjectively) regard as a beautiful, I feel changed, for the better.

<comment><USER7> >When I walk into a brutalist space, I feel minuscule and irrelevant.

That's a good feeling! Brutalist structures are like alien megaliths. You see one and go "Holy shit, the world is full of big mysterious things!"

I contrast it with the mall or the fishbowl office building. Those are spaces designed to soothe your every personal need, but the subtle purpose is really to extract value from you. They are superficially pleasant but devoid of meaning. Brutalism on the other hand is a call to adventure, and refuses to coddle anybody.

But maybe you're thinking more of like a Japanese garden, something truly beautiful and contemplative. That's the opposite of Brutalism in a good way, and both have their place. I just hate it when people reject brutalism for being "spiritless" yet welcome the most sanitized, commercialized alternatives.

<comment><USER8> When lordleft talked about spaces that were beautiful, I interpreted that as meaning something like a cathedral, not a mall.

Something like an alien megalith is fine... to visit. I don't want to live in one, though. I don't want to work in one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel that philosophy of systems and theory of constraints would be a better philosophy to use with computer systems.</comment>


Startup Job Site Gets Backing From Y Combinator, Relaunches As Startuply - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/20/startup-job-site-gets-backing-from-y-combinator-relauches-as-startuply/

<comment><USER2> I'll wait until the market is ripe for my startup for startups for startups idea.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, by doing this funding, ycombinator (being a startup) has already implemented your idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great Idea. I ran a page on an old site of mine: "Hot Startup Jobs" and regularly posted the job vacancies from recently funded startups in Israel. It was a very popular page, but doing everything manually: tracking what's being funded, copying and pasting the jobs, the companies not cooperating/adding and the users not giving anything back -- it was too draining.

Tips: have an RSS feed on search results. For companies, show date of last funding round, preferably with a link to its funding announcement and its jobs page.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks great. One thing: on the main site, when I search for "boston" and then "cambridge", I get completely different results, which is a little odd.

<comment><USER6> It's a bit tough to find, but there's actually a nice map with all the startups on it. I wouldn't mind a 'browse by location' feature though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get these names...they already claim to have failed once because of their name. I don't think this one is much better.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why doesn't it fit horizontally in 1024x768? Is that the new 640x480? :P

</comment><comment><USER9> Congrats to the Startuply team on launch and TC!</comment>


Top Missing PostgreSQL Features - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kimiensoftware.com/2011/04/top-10-missing-postgresql-features-208

<comment><USER2> previous discussion at: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445164>

</comment><comment><USER3> i can't believe replication didn't make it into your list, that should be at the top of the list. pgcluster and slony don't count because they're not built into the postgresql core source code.

<comment><USER4> Maybe because that's part of postgresql since 9.0 (async, sync replication coming with 9.1)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Packages and package state....

<comment><USER6> Do you mean <http://pgxn.org/about/> or something else?</comment></comment>


LavaPS: Top, Implemented as a Lava Lamp (1995) - <AUTHOR> https://www.isi.edu/~johnh/SOFTWARE/LAVAPS/ <comment><USER2> There was also a project called peep: the network auralizer ([http://peep.sourceforge.net/intro.html](http://peep.sourceforge.net/intro.html)) which would transscribe server load, service events and network events into a natural soundscape like for example the ambiance of a forest with a small creek. Sometimes when load was high, it would rain. On crunchtime the rain turned into a thunderstorm. The reasoning behind it was that the network crew could listen to the nice and calm ambient soundscape all day and would be able to detect when something was off.

Really would like to someone take up that idea once again and implement it as a monitoring plugin.

<comment><USER3> I've been playing around with this idea for a couple of years and have built some prototypes. This was mostly triggered by my experiences in running thousands of production servers. Just curious: in what kind of setting would you use it and would you pay for it?

<comment><USER2> Would love to use this for monitoring a small private VPS and a couple of SBCs spread in the house. Not sure whether I'd pay for a service tho. Would not like to have someone else get all the raw monitoring information. Self hosted would be better IMHO.

<comment><USER3> Makes sense, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love process visualizations as it makes a _boring_ static sysadm thing alive.

It's a good moment to remind about my favorite one which is psDooM: [http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html](http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I deeply love these old fashioned personal web pages from way back then. When I stumble accross one, I always feel really grateful that the content is still hosted after all the years.

The almost always crazy looking by today standards stylesheets makes the content very personal.

<comment><USER6> Really? This page might be older, but it's a pretty "modern" page, no tables for layout, no Gimp-Fu created header, just some text styled with CSS.

Not late 90s Dreamweaver/Geocities, more early 2000s CSS Zen Garden (the copyright notice extends to 2003, so I guess this was written then). If not for the subject matter and its date, this could be a contemporary blog post.

<comment><USER7> I agree, but in my eyes the design seems like an homage to what was common in mid-nineties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really recommend the paper referenced and the whole idea of calm technology. I was inspired enough by LavaPS and the paper that I implemented a similar model for a Program Visualization course project back in 2000 or so, and brought the idea back when working on monitoring for my first web ops job in 2008!

The link is dead of course, but it was easy to find another copy ([https://people.csail.mit.edu/rudolph/Teaching/weiser.pdf](https://people.csail.mit.edu/rudolph/Teaching/weiser.pdf)), and in searching I learned that there was even an O'Reilly book published in 2015!

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's a video of this running on a Ubuntu 14.04 VM: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juQPZER0T7M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juQPZER0T7M)

</comment><comment><USER10> Are there any videos of this program in action?

EDIT: User dpedu put up a video of it in their comment here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21853137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21853137)

</comment><comment><USER11> I relish when something gets a thoughtful graphical representation.. would be nice to have it in a more advanced 3d shape...maybe something like that could be done in unreal engine/blender, driving isosurfaces blobs. Too bad software inventions are so emepherals.. won't have it working in 30 years , or less though.

<comment><USER12> I wonder how the 3D rendering would affect top's own resource utilization -- for example, if it might cause the visualization to always be present as a large blob inside its own visualization.

<comment><USER13> Kind of related, when I run htop on one of my little web servers its own process is often using the most CPU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just installed the rpm on a modern Fedora (Red Hat) virtual machine and it worked ok. Pretty amazing given the age. But it was too small and I didn't see how to increase the size.

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks really cool, but on Arch it does not compile because libgnomeui is not a thing that seems to exist anymore. Hasn't anyone made some modern port of this?

<comment><USER16> libgnomeui-dev was available in wheezy sources. But I had an issue with #include<asm/page.h> in src/linux/proc/ps.h. Replace it by #include<sys/user.h> for successful compilation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've done that, but now got this error:

      const_str.hh: In static member function
                    'static void const_str::safe_free(const char*)':
      const_str.hh:33:61: error: 'free' was not declared in this scope
        static void safe_free(const char *s) { if (s) free((void*)s); }
                                                                   ^

I'd love to get this working - currently running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, soon to be updated to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Suggestions?</comment></comment></comment>


Jade Rabbit moon rover may be beyond repair, state media hints - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1414534/jade-rabbit-moon-rover-may-be-beyond-repair-state-media-hints <comment><USER2> Moon dust probably destroyed the bearings. That stuff is brutal on seals.

[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/11/the-m...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/11/the- mystery-of-moon-dust.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This link seems to work - [http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1414534/jade- rabbit-m...](http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1414534/jade-rabbit-moon- rover-may-be-beyond-repair-state-media-hints)

</comment><comment><USER4> Another bump in the road. I hope it doesn't dampen the scientists' interest in further exploration. The next rover will undoubtedly work even better! That's the goal after all - to continue to explore and get better at it.

</comment><comment><USER5> If this is the case, its a real travesty for human achievements in space. The Chinese space program - while certainly not as accomplished as the Russian and American programs - is _accomplishing_ achievements at a rapid rate.

But, on the other hand, maybe it is a good thing - given that China's interest in the moon is industrial, and not necessarily scientific. Unless the plan is to clean up China by moving its industry to space, I can't see it as a good thing that the universes' resources could shortly be being plundered by the worst polluter - and violator of human rights - on the planet.

<comment><USER6> Industrial interest in the moon is a good thing for the development of space travel and discovering new things. Also, you might find America's human rights abuses to be worse than China's when you count all the imprisoned American people who shouldn't be there and the forced conscription around the time of America's moon missions. America's pollution is certainly worse than China's when summed over the last century.

Low-polluting, low abussing countries like Tuvalu are typically not well equipped to go to the moon.

<comment><USER7> "forced conscription" is a tautology. And frankly, "around the time of America's moon mission" was also "around the time of Mao's 'Great Leap Forward'"... where tens of millions of people died due to pure political incompetance. The death count was an order of magnitude worse than the horrific farce that was the Vietnam War. Hell, even when it comes to just the Vietnam war in its own context, US conscription was one of the smaller immoral things about it.

But ultimately, counting past misdeeds doesn't help us plan for the future. We're here now, and we're looking forward. If country X was the worst polluter in 1950 and isn't now, what good comes of castigating X now? We wouldn't castigate modern China because of Mao's Great Leap, why do the same to the US from back then? There's plenty of modern concerns to deal with anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I saw the article for a brief moment, then it redirected to a blank page. Don't really care anymore.

edit: Really, no comment on why a story about _friggin space_ would be dis- interesting to a consumer due to NYTimes-like article handling that can fail on edge cases?

Consider the Apollo missions if a CJ[0] portal failed in delivering promised content, what the user clicks a link for. Maybe I care too bloody much about every nation's space program than to give time to a probable advertising redirect.

In the end the search engine content shell game really annoys users, don't expect positive results from it.

[0] [http://www.cj.com/](http://www.cj.com/)

<comment><USER9> >I saw the article for a brief moment, then it redirected to a blank page. Don't really care anymore.

I had the same problem. I run Firefox/NoScript. Perhaps there's a redirect to some ad site that's blocked?

I was able to read the story in Firefox by using

        Tools -> Web Developer -> Page Source

and then paging down thru the vast amount of HTML until I found the story. Here's the beginning. I'm not posting the whole thing, wouldn't want to disrespect the copyright of some Chinese website (the irony of respecting Chinese copyright doesn't escape me):

        Scientists may not be able to repair China's lunar rover, Jade Rabbit, that has broken down on the surface of the moon, a report on state media suggested.

        The report from Xinhua, written as if it sent by the rover itself, said the problems could prove insoluble.

        "Masters are working round the clock. In spite of that, I know I might not be able to make it through this lunar night," the "report" from Jade Rabbit said.

        "If this journey is to be suspended ahead of schedule, I am not fearful. No matter whether I can be fixed or not, I believe I have left masters much valuable information and experience."

        The authorities reported on Saturday the rover had experienced a "mechanical control abnormality'' and scientists were trying to fix it.

<comment><USER7> Blank page for me in FF/noscript, but in vanilla chrome is just plain broken. I get a background colour, an advert, and a couple of broken scrollbars.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best project management software for a small team? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Smartsheet.

[http://www.smartsheet.com](http://www.smartsheet.com)

IF you want to do dates, milestones, and run a date and resource to task- driven setup.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trello + reportsfortrello.com :)

Both are free. Trello has clients for phones, tablets, and the web.

full disclosure: I created reportsfortrello.com

</comment><comment><USER4> what do you want to do? what do you want to track? what do you use right now and how does that fail you?</comment>


Ask HN:Self Education:I am totally confused - <AUTHOR>

I am interested in being truly good at both computer science and programming,but i cannot seem to come up with a solid model of education.In Mathematics,i know that i should read Spivak,Rudin,William Feller and all the other masters.In physics,it is the Feynman Lectures starting with Mechanics,Electromagnetism and onto Quantum Mechanics.The logical coherence breaks with CS and programming.Here is what i have learned: A.Begin with python and then feel free to read anything else B.The Joel Spolsky Approach:C.O.D.E,K&R,SICP and then anything else C:Matt's "What every CS major should know D:Learn the current fad:HTML5,Ruby,NodeJS etc Is it possible to get the kind of coherence present in Math and physics? <comment><USER2> Should look close to this:

+++Computer Science I: Programming Methodology (<http://academicearth.org/courses/programming-methodology>)

+++Computer Science II: Programming Abstractions (<http://academicearth.org/courses/programming-abstractions>)

+++Computer Science III: Programming Paradigms (<http://academicearth.org/courses/programming-paradigms>)

Of course you can throw in there:

+++Introduction to Algorithms (<http://academicearth.org/courses/introduction- to-algorithms>)

+++Data Structures (<http://academicearth.org/courses/data-structures>)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the problem with finding a one true path is that computer science, as a concentration, has many different avenues.

You could focus on developing for the web and work with tools that make dealing with the challenges of the internet easier.

You could focus on developing for a computer system, writing in low-level languages that help you take advantage of a system's hardware.

You could even focus on developing for an integrated circuit that doesn't even qualify as a full "computer" to most people.

Each of these avenues will lead you to different languages, tools, and paradigms.

So, the (rhetorical) question is, what are you trying to accomplish?

</comment><comment><USER4> I would say look at either MIT's open coursware or Stanford's online CS classes. They don't cover all of the good stuff, but obviously they are a very good foundation. From there you will pick up what are considered seminal text's in the field.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am in a similar position to the OP, although I am learning c++ as a first language. It seems like most of the open-courseware type programs are either scheme (old mit)/java (stanford)/python (new mit). Seeing as what im interested in (computational finance/bio) is mostly C/C++ that's why I'm going with C++. If anyone thinks im crazy and should switch to another language or anything else that I should be looking at I'd love to know.</comment>


Don't Mute, Get a Better Headset – Matt Mullenweg - <AUTHOR> https://ma.tt/2020/03/dont-mute-get-a-better-headset/ <comment><USER2> Audio (and Video) quality is now the new firm handshake, a certain look in the eye, and an easy smile ;}</comment>