ARM cuts ties with Huawei, threatening future chip designs - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/22/18635326/huawei-arm-chip-designs-business-suspension <comment><AUTHOR> A British company owned by a Japanese company afraid of US repercussions.

Whatever one might think of the Huawei story - for people living outside the US, one starts to wonder if tech's over-reliance on Silicon Valley engineering has gone too far.

<comment><USER2> ARM uses US tech to build their chips. If US stops supplying this tech to ARM that would hurt ARM. So I think they are doing the right thing here.

Besides, Huawei gets no sympathy from me. Too many years of stealing IP. Someone had to say no.

<comment><USER3> > _Too many years of stealing IP._

So, wait: do we _like_ intellectual property and patents stiffing innovation, or do we not? Only when it benefits us? I can never keep this straight.

<comment><USER4> The US did not recognise foreign copyright (meaning American publishers could freely 'steal' British and others' books) until they had an interest in protecting their own IP.

There is a lot of hypocrisy in order to feed the current anti-Chinese campaign but the fact is that everyone behaves the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the long run this kind of approach will simply spur development of Chinese alternative technologies and expertise. Until now such investment hasn't been worth doing at serious levels.

</comment><comment><USER6> Rather than strengthening the position of US companies, I think this might weaken them in the long run. Who wants to depend on US products if they are liable to be taken away at a moment's notice?

<comment><USER7> Pretty much every Western country will, because they depend on the US. If the empire goes, the provinces follow.

It's another thing for Russia, but they are already well aware. India? Probably still in a role where US-dependence does more good than harm. For Africa, it doesn't matter as much, and South America likely remembers that it's unwise to stray too far from the northern neighbor's wishes.

<comment><USER8> Your optimism regarding the future of the US empire is belied by long term trends, not only the phenomenal rise of the Chinese economy: The EU has since it's inception had its eyes set on greater independence from the US. Case in point, Macron and Merkel are calling for a European army now, but not because of Trump, it's been the plan all along.

Trumps current heavy-handedness in international relationships is instead a direct response to this disintegration of the empire, and it's just hastening the demise. The worrisome part is how the US (and all its hurrahh-boys) are signalling that they will not accept this turn of events peacefully.

<comment><USER7> I'm not optimistic about the long term future of that model, I just don't see any emancipation of the EU. Of course, Trump is not at all what Merkel, Macron, Juncker etc want, but he's also not at all part of the 20th century US empire.

What China or Russia do is this: key industries must be domestic. The EU countries never did this, they've accepted the US as the provider for information discovery (search), information transmission (news) and communication, granting them enormous powers. Merkel's own BND (certainly not without her knowledge, it's closely lead by the Bundeskanzleramt) cooperated with the NSA to provide access to virtually all German internet traffic so the NSA could spy on German citizens wholesale.

Good luck with that EU army. If the state of Germany's Bundeswehr is any indicator, we'll be lucky if the EU army has a functioning bicycle in 2040.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if the outcome of all of this will be massive Chinese investment into RISC-V and linux

<comment><USER10> That would be quite ironic indeed. But the Chinese seem to be more invested in MIPS, and even some homegrown x86-64 - so that's probably what we're going to see instead. One thing we should note is that Huawei doesn't really have a culture of openness, so this whole kerfuffle is a lot worse of a problem for them than it could be otherwise!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In 5 to 10 years ARM will not be selling anything to Chinese companies, which will have all moved to domestic and/or open designs.

That's the only possible end result.

<comment><USER11> So Chinese companies wont be selling anything to the rest of the world.

We already know that they are capable of building their own designs or software. The thing is NOBODY will ever use it outside of China.

The whole point of this situation is to force China to open more their market so we can at least pretend we have a fair trading environment.

<comment><USER4> Of course they'll be selling plenty to the rest of the world.

It will be beneficial since it will give third countries a choice and help reduce their reliance on the US/monopolistic incumbents.

Trump's game really is to hurt China so that they don't become "number one on his watch" (his words). It's a good old power struggle behind the rhetoric of "fair trading environment".

<comment><USER12> @theredbox is saying that China can ship its tech to the world, but the world can't currently ship its tech to it (great firewall). That seems unfair.

<comment><USER4> Of course the world can currently sell its tech to China. And it does.

<comment><USER12> Google, FB, Amazon, Microsoft is severely limited in China as examples.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Elon Musk of Assisted Suicide, Whose Machine Lets You Kill Yourself Anywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-assisted-suicide-machine-727874 <comment><USER2> > intended to convince its user that he or she is journeying to the great > beyond, he said.

wtf? nothing with suicide, but ...

</comment><comment><USER3> They finally invented Futurama's suicide booths!

<comment><USER4> Slow and Gruesome here I come!

<comment><USER5> You want to place a collect call?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Scalability advice for web apps - <AUTHOR>

I am currently hosting my web app on Media Temple's Dedicated Virtual servers.  It has been working great, but since we are pretty early, we aren't getting crazy amount of traffic either.  Our web app is basically a social network, and there's a matchmaking algorithm which could potentially become a bottleneck (think Match.com or eHarmony's matching system).
Given that, and as we are growing about 25% every month.  I am just curious on what kind of scaling issue we should be worried about?  Are there any best practices in both back-end / database design to accommodate future scaling issues?
I read database performance is usually the bottleneck for most web apps -- and since our matching algorithm does hit the DB pretty hard, what kind of things I could do to improve DB performance and scale it accordingly (besides the obvious, e.g. caching and index).
Thanks for any advice! <comment><USER2> I think you just might have a legit candidate for a MapReduce-like algorithm here since your work seems to be a great candidate for parallel work. Check the Hadoop article that was posted here not too long ago.

It will let you scale the work over many nodes in a fairly linear fashion.

You might not even have to go that route if you properly shard your data among your computers. If you store user profiles based on locality or the like, the work is guaranteed to be local. Also, you can try segmenting your users based on general factors that group them (a course version of your matching algorithm) to preserve locality.

</comment><comment><USER3> a) Find out how to partition your data.

b) Can you pre-process some of the queries and make the data available to the algorithm in a BDb or some such?

c) Can you make your heavier components into independent services?

d) You know what they say about premature optimization... :)

HTH.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, I guess this website can answer to your question: www.highscalability.com

Hope this helps.</comment>


Food Lab: Make Ice Cream Without an Ice Cream Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/07/how-to-make-ice-cream-without-an-ice-cream-maker-the-food-lab.html <comment><USER2> Lovely hack. I'll be trying this out. Reminds me of a mention I saw somewhere about ice cream made with liquid nitrogen. Supposedly much smoother than any other kind.

<comment><USER3> We are going to have liquid nitrogen ice cream at our office next week or so.</comment></comment>


The great firewall of China: Xi Jinping's internet shutdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-firewall-of-china-xi-jinpings-internet-shutdown <comment><USER4> Reading this article triggered some feelings I've been having for a while. Honestly the internet, and everything political feels like a shitshow that's exceptionally depressing.

Recently there were racial riots in Sri Lanka. The government raced to block social media, messaging, and VPN's. Hell, even mobile connections were disrupted when people were desperately trying to contact their relatives while their houses burned. The government's reasoning was that they wanted to quash rumours. No talk of what they did in the lead up to the riots when communities kept pointing out fascist groups steadily gaining more steam and operating with a middle finger held up to the law. The government also ordered a media blackout during the time.

China praised these actions. China is also heavily invested in Sri Lanka as part of its belt project.

I have no doubts that eventually we'll see similar censorship arrive in SL. Criticism of the predatory nature of China will be blocked ruthlessly with the power that the Chinese gov seems to exert over social networks. China will probably happily extend its technology to countries under its belt project too. I can't see how this wouldn't benefit them.

In the midst of this, the US is also busy fighting China's ownership of Sri Lankan resources. The result is a split of political factions that have chosen China or US. The US media is now pushing stories that Sri Lanka's previous regime took campaign contributions as under the table payments from China.

The thing is, while I appreciate investigative journalism, everything around feels like propaganda. This article feels like propaganda.

At some point it feels miserable that whatever I read is trying to manipulate me rather than inform me. And if I can't be manipulated, then I'll be controlled instead. So when I think of the Internet, I don't really think of some powerful tool in my hand anymore. At a deeper level, it's just another propaganda machine that people will use against me, or take away from me if I don't play by their rules.

</comment><comment><USER5> Did the US ever respond to China's use of the "Great Cannon" on github?

Having a nation state actor so publicly attack/censor a small company shouldn't be tolerated.

<comment><USER6> Aside from sanctions/trade wars and legal litigation, the other alternative would be a legitimate war, which would likely ensue into a world war and then maybe a nuclear war.

<comment><USER7> > Aside from sanctions/trade wars and legal litigation, the other alternative > would be a legitimate war

This isn't true at all. There are many, many levers of diplomatic power, and the U.S. has far more of them than anyone (or they did before they started withdrawing from a world leadership position). There are many, many things that China wants and needs, economically, politically, in trade, in finance, in agriculture, in tech, etc. etc. The U.S. can make them pay a price in many ways without starting a trade war.

That's the essential art of diplomacy: Act without escalating to a bigger problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They want freedom from interference so they are free to interfere.

</comment><comment><USER9> Based on comments to previous HN links on this topic, I expect we will be seeing some whataboutism that tries to divert criticism of China.

So let ask anyone who makes such a comment, what is your political philosophy, are you for liberal democracy or Xi's brand of authoritarianism, or are you just a cynic who thinks all reform efforts are hopeless, or what?

<comment><USER10> Return question for you: do you believe as you imply that government exists in only two forms? Either a liberal democracy or authoritarianism?

<comment><USER11> There's surely a spectrum from authoritarianism to liberal democracy, but there's also a case to be made for free vs not free countries: if you can get into a public Twitter spat with the President of your country, and not worry someone will come break your legs (or worse) the next day, I call that a free country. Everything else is not.

<comment><USER12> The thing with US free speech though is that it is mostly only allowed in specific, ineffectual circumstances - like Twitter or "free speech zones".

Try doing something that is actually effective - like staging a protest - <USER3> you'll be charged with "unlawful demonstrating". How is that freedom?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/us/politics/womens- march-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/us/politics/womens-march- arrests-dc.html)

There are plenty of countries around the world that have real free speech. China is of course much worse than the US, but I don't think the US is the gold standard here.

<comment><USER13> >Try doing something that is actually effective - like staging a protest - <USER3> you'll be charged with "unlawful demonstrating". How is that freedom?

The 600 or so people who were arrested did so on purpose as part of the protest. They went there with the goal of being arrested and they staged a sit-in of a Senate office building in order to accomplish that goal. There were tens of thousands of other protesters marching through the streets who weren't arrested, asked to leave, or even bothered.

>There are plenty of countries around the world that have real free speech.

I don't know of a country in the world were taking over the atrium of a government building and refusing to leave when the police order you to wouldn't get you arrested. What countries are you thinking of?

<comment><USER14> Op bloviates/ they probably hate / those United States</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Latitude retired - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3001634?p=maps_lat_faq <comment><USER2> I don't personally care about Latitude, but it does seem recently that Google have been on a crusade to ruin Google Maps on mobile devices. The two most noteworthy instances: (1) screwing up the offline-maps feature ([http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/Ck_Pd6UgZ...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/Ck_Pd6UgZCU) \-- but they've slightly walked this back: see [https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3246076](https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3246076)) and (2) adding advertisements to the Android version of Maps: [http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/attract-new- customers-...](http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/attract-new-customers- with-local-ads-on.html) (I don't mind this at all on the web version of Maps, where I'm usually on a display with plenty of pixels, but on a mobile device that's a whole lot of space being taken up by advertisements instead of actually useful information).

<comment><USER3> Google Maps on iOS has been destroyed. It is incredible how good solid apps commit suicide. For example, I entered "34th and 6th ave ny,ny" for my end destination. Soon as I submit, it renames it to "34th Street Partnership". Few weeks ago it would rename to some chiropractor's office a full avenue away.

Before I upgraded my iOS, I'd come to rely on Maps as a regular part of my life and couldn't live without it. But now it's just a painful experience.

This is the algorithm gone extraordinarily wrong. I _really_ wonder if the guys who make decisions to change the UI or functionality of highly rated apps ever take time to _really_ use their own creation. Because if they did, I don't see how they'd continue with their botched modifications to what was once a great app.

<comment><USER4> The app is fine. Google just really has trouble with 6th ave for some reason. Try it on maps.google.com, it has the same problem ("Avenue of the Americas" almost always works, but who wants to type that? (or call it that?)).

<comment><USER3> It worked fine in the previous version. The concept of auto changing street intersections or street address with names of random venues sucks and is inaccurate at so many levels. That it would make it to the product symbolizes an overall failure with the present Maps team.

<comment><USER5> That kind of rewriting would be stupid, but of course isn't what's actually happening. In reality there's no match for the geocoding search [34th and 6th ave ny,ny], so it is interpreted as a local search for [34th and] in the vicinity of [6th ave ny, ny].

Why isn't there a match for the geocoding search? It's not because somebody "destroyed Google Maps on iOS", but most likely just due to a switch to a newer geocoding index. These would be updated frequently with new data from all kinds of sources, just like web search won't use a static index but one that changes over time.

Why wouldn't this kind of change be noticed when changing to a new set of data? Because it'd be essentially impossible to find all possible changes to geocoding results from a data change, and even less feasible to verify which of the results are correct. So there's always going to be some kind of sampling going on when validating new data or code changes. And with a sensibly sized sample, you're not very likely to be checking a particular intersection in a very large country.

These kinds of regressions would have popped in and out during the whole lifetime of Google Maps. Just because you noticed such a change for the first time doesn't mean that they are currently failing when they weren't before.

<comment><USER3> The issue has more to do with google trying to match each address with a business. They are failing because 34th and 6th is one of the most popular tourist corners in NYC which you'd think would be tested during QA. Moreover most Maps users will attest that when they enter an address they do not want it auto translated to the venue name...again something that should have never made it beyond an idea stage or been reverted soon after release.

<comment><USER5> No, I'm quite sure that the issue is that geocoding search fails and Maps has to fall back to a local search.

It is probably bad UX to not make it clear that this is what's happening. But it would be much worse to fall back to a local business search, drop a pin on the result, and have the user think that it was an actual geocoder result.

Intersection searches are rare, and there's a limit to how large a set of queries you can have in a "the results of these searches can never change" golden set. Again, these kinds of things have always happened with map data, it's not some kind of new phenomenon. I'd bet there's no less QA going on than during the times when you thought the quality was good.

<comment><USER3> _Intersection searches are rare_

No! Intersection searches are the norm, at least in New York City. And the intersection I listed is one block from the Empire State Building.

They may not be doing less QA. Just a crappier job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google's push towards Google+ reminds me of Microsoft's arrogance in forcing their vision of Windows 8. An established company trying to get another piece of the pie that is not their core competency. It's too bad Google is trying to get into the social game. I wish they would stick to the "serious" endeavors that started out with, more Wolfram Alpha, less Facebook. They don't have to own the entire internet, just do things that they can do better than anyone else...

<comment><USER7> The "serious" endeavors, like glasses and self-driving cars are not their core business. Not even search or email are. Their core business is advertising, and social media is what advertisers want today.

Google is largely associated with innovation and they make everything to keep this image, but at the bottom their business is actually pretty boring: finding ways to show you an ad.

<comment><USER6> I would say that indexing and making usable information in different contexts is their core competency (Search, Email, Maps, Desktop, Android, etc.) Advertising is a "tack on" to bring in the money, it's not where they are developing new value to the end user. Ad relevancy is really just a natural extension of their Search algorithm. If you're a business person you might say Ads is all Google is, but they still need to develop compelling products (core competency) to bring in views.

<comment><USER7> > Advertising is a "tack on" to bring in the money

Advertising is your core _business_ when almost 100% of your revenue comes from that. I wouldn't call what turned it from a dorm room project into a behemoth a "tack on", that's dismissing Eric Schmidt's contribution. What you do to achieve this goal doesn't matter as much. Amazon core business is e-commerce but they rent servers and sell portable devices.

> Ad relevancy is really just a natural extension of their Search algorithm.

You can argue that advertising is a natural extension of everything they put their hands on, from search to social networks to maps to glasses with HUDs. Everything they develop lately has advertising potential, and are shutting down everything that doesn't.

<comment><USER4> > that's dismissing Eric Schmidt's contribution

AdWords predates Eric Schmidt joining the Google board, let alone becoming CEO.

The rest of your argument is just silly reductionist wankery. Whatever the "core" of their business really is, they do have people working on those things. If you're going to make an incentives argument, make it; arguing where to put the "core" label provides as little insight as repeating "you're the product" ad nauseam.

The GP is exactly right. Yes, you do have incentives to maximize for advertising revenue. But if you want to maximize revenue over any length of time beyond the next quarter, you neglect things like having a product that's actually useful, usability, intrusiveness of ads, trust in your ability to keep information private from advertisers and the NSA, etc etc at your extreme peril. You can have all the advertisers in the world and it does you no good if everyone stops showing up to look at their ads.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't attributing AdWords to Eric though, but the company growth. If I'm not mistaken, he was responsible for the company growth 2001 onwards, and focused on the cash cow.

Also, I was just pointing out the dichotomy between the core competency and core business (what you do well vs. your source of revenue).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Location history, however is here: [https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0](https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0)

I'm glad they kept that, I find it quite handy for several things, including as a cross check on how much time I spend at $client.

<comment><USER9> I used location history a lot, and I am now looking into other gps logging apps because they removed API access to history. The export you can do is only KML and doesn't have information like accuracy for each coordinate, leading to a bunch of non-sense locations you can't easily filter out. I wish they simply had an easy way to subscribe to your own location data, because otherwise many applications are impossible (such as using your real-time location, or for personal analytics).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sigh. Latitude put Loopt out of business. Now we don't have Loopt and we don't have Latitude.

Sharing location on G+ is not the same use case at all.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand why Google kills and replaces things seemingly with no thought of migration paths. Anyone know more about what goes on internally that causes companies to just throw up their hands in defeat on a product, forcing users to just start over? Is it really that hard to shim the Latitude APIs over the new service?

<comment><USER12> From what I can tell their migration path is "Move to Google+". I can't tell if that is viable, but it does make sense from Google's perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Latitudes manager seems happy with the decision: [https://plus.google.com/+jlapenna/posts/deBP7kj7rMi](https://plus.google.com/+jlapenna/posts/deBP7kj7rMi)

Also he offers plenty of behind the scenes reasoning in replies to the thread, such as this:

"We felt that we'd be able to get quicker feature parity and better newer features by cutting over now than waiting."

<comment><USER14> So they are going for feature parity? Woo! I really miss the freshness value (x minutes ago) and the accuracy radius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was handy, I'll miss it. Luckily my SO is an iPhone user so I still have her on Find My Friends...

As the Google wind-down goes on, I've lost all trust in them to keep any of their services running. I won't invest any more time into a new Google service anymore. The only question right now is Google Apps email. I like their Gmail iOS app, but I might switch to another ActiveSync provider (for iOS push support).

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how long maps.google.com keeps classic mode. I loathe the new maps, it's sluggish and trying to be too much.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I frequently find myself clicking back over to classic because I simply can't figure out how to do what I want in the new mode. When they take away my ability to do that, I'll groan and curse and increment my "reasons not to get excited about the Next Big Thing from Google" counter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The incredibly frustrating thing about this is that they have continued offering location services as part of Google+, but they've retired a service that works on iOS for one that does not. This strikes me as an incredibly user-hostile action.

</comment><comment><USER19> What's the best alternative for Android users?

<comment><USER20> Try Life360. While family-oriented only in name and marketing at the moment, we are cross-platform on iOS and Android and also have a Latitude importer.

[http://www.life360.com/latitude](http://www.life360.com/latitude)

We're also working on some new features that will make the app less "family oriented" and more universal for everyone.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.life360.com/latitude/test](https://www.life360.com/latitude/test)

There is a problem Error calling GET [https://www.googleapis.com/latitude/v1/currentLocation?granu...](https://www.googleapis.com/latitude/v1/currentLocation?granularity=best): (404) Not Found

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There was a real use case for latitude, but I don't feel like they pulled it off right. I live in MA, and my brother lives in WI. We decided to meet each other in NY once while he was with friends. We used latitude as a way to communicate our location as we tried to find each other. It worked a lot better than saying "meet me at the shake shack" since neither of us knew the area.

The problem with it though was it was slow, thus typically outdated. So 90% of the time the information was simply not useful.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hi there, I wanted to let you know the Android / Web application we made with a friend, it is called lclz.in ([http://lclz.in](http://lclz.in)). We created it because the end of Google Latitude and the lack for such app.

Lets explain it with a real use case, I want to meet my friend at an open air music festival with a lot of attendees. The classic way of doing it is calling him, but with the heavy music we will barely understand each other, plus it will be difficult to describe where we are to meet.

That's where the application will help : you select the contact you want to meet, it sends a SMS (or use the share dialog) requesting its location. The text contains a link to a site allowing any decent smartphone (even iOS/Blackberry/Windows Phone) to geolocalize him. Once done, you will get a notification on your phone displaying him on a map !

That's the beginning of the app, we've got a full backlog of ideas for the upcoming releases. Meanwhile, feel free to install, use, and tell what you would have loved to see in it.</comment>


Facebook Discloses How Much Money It Makes From Facebook Credits - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_discloses_how_much_money_it_makes_from_fa.php <comment><USER2> > Facebook discloses....

too bad the linked post doesn't</comment>


What happened when news rooms abandoned photojournalism - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/story/the-broke-system-breaking-you-60502ddc2949 <comment><AUTHOR> The article at Poynter, [https://www.poynter.org/news/these-tools-will-help- you-find-...](https://www.poynter.org/news/these-tools-will-help-you-find- right-images-your-stories)</comment>


Mystery Aircraft Parts and Atomic Clocks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.m0tei.co.uk/post/2013/04/20/Mystery-Aircraft-Parts-and-Atomic-Clocks <comment><USER3> I oftentimes find myself wondering what might be the equivalent of this sort of electronics hackery in the world of software.

It's not uncommon for me to see engineer friends of mine working on these sorts of projects and to find myself envying the _apparent_ complexity of such projects - nothing (kernel hacks, ATMEGA projects, large C++ ( _shudder_ ) systems, crypto/security work, ...) feels as though it requires the same level of knowledge/expertise as working on even relatively simple engineer's projects like this.

Might this just be a standard insider's view of one's own field?

To put it in context, Alec (M0TEI) is a student of engineering at Cambridge and a friend.

<comment><USER4> I think the software variant of reverse engineering still surpasses it. It's the infinite complexity.

The "combination" of the two then yields reverse engineering chips. See SRLabs presentation on low cost chip microprobing for some of the challenges:

[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2247...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2247_29C3-Dexter_Nohl- Low_Cost_Chip_Microprobing.pdf)

<comment><USER5> In terms of complexity, certainly. When you look at the assembly code from the inside, with something like IDA it branches out infinitely. In terms of fun. I'm not so sure.

Say, finding and replacing some part in an aviation radio is a lot more fun, than spending time annotating insides of some executable.

<comment><USER3> I think that depends rather on who you are and your interests, to be fair - <USER2> much as I'm a fan of the former, the latter sounds like rather more fun.

<comment><USER5> True. But a lot also depends on the context. When you are dealing with some binary, unless it is antique, most likely you are doing something nefarious. Like obliterating somebodies license check. And while there is certainly a feeling of some elation, when you are finally succeeding, it can't compare with the joy you feel, when some electronic component is coming alive after you've finally fixed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has an NSN, so it's military. Also, it doesn't look like it was ever used (and/or recently-manufactured. although if they use the pseudo-standard serial numbr scheme, then it was manufactured in 97).

The indicator light styles are kinds I have seen around in years on military a/c. That doesn't really mean much, though. Slightly interesting, nonetheless.

<comment><USER7> So what would this actually be used for on a (military) plane?

<comment><USER8> If I understood it correctly, it is part of the military HAVE QUICK frequency hopping system [1].

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somewhat-related: a teardown of a rubidium standard probably similar to the one mentioned in the article: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymV9LwhD0W0>

</comment><comment><USER10> It's not actually an atomic clock, it is an atomic frequency standard. The difference between the two is that an atomic clock outputs 'time' whereas an atomic frequency standard merely outputs a very regular square wave.

You can easily build an atomic clock once you have such a frequency standard. The confusion probably stems from the electronics term 'clock' for square wave used to clock other digital circuitry but the general public would definitely misinterpret the term atomic clock to mean something different.

That said, very nice find and very nice hack!

<comment><USER11> Fair enough. I think its close enough though to warrant the use of "atomic clock" in the blog post - you need to simplify things just a limit bit if you want to audience to be bigger than 14 people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gosh, I could never do this. some interesting stuff.. I'm gonna refer to this sometime in future. thanks mate!

</comment><comment><USER13> Great Job Alec!

</comment><comment><USER14> so, what's it good for?</comment>


UberData: Designing with Real Data in Photoshop - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/uberplugins/uberdata-designing-with-real-data-in-photoshop-627ae79b5c2d <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how popular my opinion would be here but I think if you design your __web-facing __product in photoshop you already lost.

Every single time in the last 10 years I worked with a designer that designed in photoshop it turned the hurt on the team members and anchoring unrealistic expectations in the client mind.

A couple of years ago I watched a screencast of the Basecamp designer, he said he does it all in the technologies that the final product will work with. He _designs by writing code_ and implementing the CSS and HTML.

I loved that approach and every time I have seen it implemented the product ended up being implemented faster and smoother than with photoshop.

<comment><USER3> I get what you're saying, and I kinda half agree. I think it's less about the choice of tool, and more about designers who know what's possible in HTML/CSS/JS. I think that HTML mockups are valuable (especially for reusing components and experimenting with interactivity and responsiveness), but Photoshop and Illustrator provide speed of experimentation that HTML/CSS is miles away from. Blocking out layouts and text in illustrator is mechanically trivial, and requires little planning - with HTML I need to actually plan out how my flexboxes and HTML structures are going to work out, and that just slows down experimentation and iteration.

Personally, I start in Illustrator, then move into HTML as the designs solidify. My Illustrator mockups are nearly identical to my HTML because I understand the limitations I'm working with (or psuedo limitations, since you can do most anything with SVG - but it might be a pain in the ass).

<comment><USER4> Macaw bridged this gap nicely in my opinion: [http://macaw.co/](http://macaw.co/)

The downside of using it instead of PS or Illustrator is that you don't have the actual drawing tools at hand.

<comment><USER3> Well, there's one additional (and huge) downside: Macaw was officially end of life as of January 2016 (acquired by invision), and won't be updated anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be better if this plugin was also available for Illustrator.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on it

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the equivalent for GIMP?

</comment><comment><USER7> For Slack try Craft by InVision

<comment><USER8> I'm confused what Slack has to do with Craft?

<comment><USER9> probably meant Sketch

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just.. _why_ would you call it Uber?!

<comment><AUTHOR> I started calling my extensions Uber* before Uber came in my country.

<comment><USER11> Oh, I incorrectly assumed this was a project which was coming from Uber's engineering team. If i wouldn't have read this thread, I would have kept thinking that.

Not saying you should change its name or put a warning on the page, but I wanted to bring my confusion to the surface so you're aware.</comment></comment></comment>


Traffic jam mystery solved by mathematicians - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news117283969.html

<comment><USER2> Uh ... I don't know why this is made into such a big deal. There was a agent- based simulation done at Stanford back in the mid 90s that demonstrated this. About the only thing I can think of is if that these guys developed mathematical proofs. That would be something. The article wasn't too clear on it. It is not that much different from fluid dynamics simulations.

However, " Drivers and policy-makers have not previously known why jams like this occur, though many have put it down to the sheer volume of traffic." is a load of crap -- unless said drivers and policy-makers have been living under a rock for the past decade.

The Stanford simulation was done to also show how cars that drives themselves can reduce traffic jams. The computer will always maintain a certain distance. Furthermore I recently read about the origins of 'Futurama' -- the citation escapes me. After WWII, GM had created a nice, big exhibit telling folks to go out there and build the US interstate highway system. So they could sell you more cars. The designer who conceived of the highway system had also conceived of 'smart cars' as well, having the foresight to see our current traffic problems.

Besides, the article has many comments referencing different simulations done in the past, since the 1970s. If these guys figured out a mathematical proof, that's something. If not, then the article does have much going for it.

It sometimes disturbs me that the our cultural insistence on Progress denies us of our evolutionary history.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hrm, I was hoping it was a longer article with some new insight, but it's an introductory piece. If this is all news to you, check out "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic James", and "The Computational Beauty of Nature"

</comment><comment><USER4> Oddly enough I heard Howard Stern say the exact same thing years ago. That's odd for two reasons. 1) he's a moron (blind squirrel/acorn theory I guess) and 2) I've only listened to him maybe three times ever.

</comment><comment><USER5> damn shame they couldn't figure out how to sort the morning Jams in Exeter out.</comment>


Reno Wants to Be Silicon Valley's Back Office - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/reno-wants-to-be-silicon-valley-s-back-office <comment><USER2> Current Reno resident who has also lived in Silicon Valley and San Fransisco reporting in. Born and raised in Reno. Also have spent a significant amount of time in Austin.

Out of all 4 of those places, Reno is by far the most fun. Between the skiing, hiking and awesome bars the quality of life in Reno is unparalleled. We have a ton of amazing local bands. A burning man party is one of the craziest parties you will ever attend. The weather can be harsh compared to California, but I personally love it. It's hard for me to imagine living anywhere else.

Austin is fun, but is a swamp and overcrowded. San Francisco is also fun, but is incredibly overcrowded and expensive. SV is kind of boring, and too family- oriented for a young person.

The only problem in Reno is the job market. I know a lot of talented IT pros who have trouble finding a good job. Reno's economy is dominated by Casinos and Finance. Almost all of the talented programmer I know from Reno have wound up in SV or San Francisco. UNR isn't producing enough people trained in IT fields. The tech job market is anemic. Nepotism and the "Good Old Boys Club" run deep in the Reno economy. Nevada is much more corrupt than most states.

Reno will never be the next Silicon Valley or even the next Austin. We simply don't have an educational system to support it. The Bay-Area and Los Angeles are a huge brain drain on the Reno area. I think Bloomberg hit the nail on the head with deeming it "Silicon Valley's Back Office". Reno's place is a great place to do manufacturing and run data centers because of it's location and lower cost of doing business.

I will probably be moving to another city soon because I simply can't find a good job or enough work freelancing in my field (Front-End Web Development). Reno is my favorite place to live, but it's hard to take a ~50% pay cut to live here.

<comment><USER3> Wow. Austin "overcrowded". It has less that 2500people/sq mi. I've heard it all now.

<comment><USER4> If it had higher density, it would probably be less congested since people wouldn't need to drive to get to the corner store.

<comment><USER5> Needing a car to survive is the reason I left Austin

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's tech companies planning to add a little hope for Vegas and Reno alike with datacenters being opened up in the area due to the super low costs while still maintaining some general proximity to southern California.

Unfortunately, all these announcements of companies opening up datacenters in random, low-cost areas of the US such as North Carolina seem to imply that these will bring the same sort of tech jobs as Silicon Valley in some way when this is pretty unlikely to actually add permanent jobs that are much more than commodity McDonalds-level employment. Modern datacenters are basically fancy warehouses and are engineered for maximum autonomous operation (I think we have robots that can rack & stack 1U and 2U boxes now actually depending upon server vendor). These places are typically being constructed by people barely making more than minimum wage and can barely spell Cisco, and they're not going to be the ones actually running anything either except occasionally fixing up shoddy work that probably doesn't even meet the really relaxed electrical and commercial building codes.

But once these DCs are up and the cables installed, they're managed pretty much remotely as a rule and the jobs of racking and stacking are fast disappearing. Sometimes your network guy has to drive out to the DC, sometimes people engineer around entire racks failing due to a PDU going down, anything to avoid putting a higher-paid engineer on the ground there. There's almost no Fortune 500 I know of that has a datacenter that isn't trying to decommission most of theirs, so while each DC being raised up is theoretically more jobs in disadvantaged areas, this comes at the cost oftentimes of losing 2-3 more datacenters with 2-3 times more jobs in slightly higher costs of living areas like Missouri, southern Virginia, Michigan, and Indiana.

<comment><USER7> One thing a large datacenter project does give your town is the potential ability to tax a big chunk of relatively immobile capital.

<comment><USER6> This is in direct contradiction to the numerous articles showing these kinds of economically disadvantaged areas giving so many tax credits that the companies will pay basically nothing in taxes to put a DC there. I'd say that these municipalities are so desperate for jobs of any sort they're willing to take almost nothing in taxes just to have a big DC show up by some big name tech company once and give blue collars jobs for even a year or so. You're not going to see big cities be able to do that kind of a desperate move for jobs, but for a lot of rural areas they might be able to swing the money.

Thing is that Nevada doesn't have a state income tax, so the hope is that the working age population in the area won't be discouraged enough to completely leave. Random towns in Texas are similar due to no income tax at state level. North Carolina, however, does have a mixed income of state taxes, moderate sales tax, and fairly low real estate taxes.

Meanwhile, start-ups and small businesses in general will get almost none of the same kind of treatment, so companies that are struggling to grow due to lack of capital are forced into areas closer to their investors, whom being wealthy, tend to gravitate toward higher cost areas of living.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reno is an awesome town. Most of the people I've talked to who have been to Reno have only ever seen the "trashy" casinos and run-down areas along S Virginia St., but if you dig deeper you'll find there's much more depth. They have an up and coming art scene, some great restaurants and bars, and perhaps most importantly a population of passionate and extremely friendly people who absolutely love their town and want it to succeed. Go Reno!

<comment><USER9> When visiting Reno when I was living in San Francisco. I see huge potential for that city. But it would need to invest in incentivizing startups to grow out of Reno vs the bay area which is a 3hr drive.

If UNR has a CS department then it needs to reach-out to it's current student body and make considerations for creating a market for tech in Reno.

<comment><USER10> UNR has a tiny CS department. There is a small startup community in Reno but it's not very developed and there's not a ton of support for it. If you've been in a hackerspace in SF and then visit the one in Reno you'd be hard pressed to say they were the same thing. It's also hard to find any startups that are doing anything interesting here.

<comment><USER9> I appreciate the insight!

The innovation sector is not limited to software/internet businesses. There is also digital entertainment, advanced machining/robotics, and bio pharmaceuticals.

With the announcement of Tesla's gigafactory in the greater Reno area I would make this the best opportunity to create an intersection of innovation that Reno can be starting point for.

Maybe Reno should host a tech conference. Or even the next formula-e race circuit. Just ideas. I see so much potential for Reno. :-D

<comment><USER10> Very late response to your comment here (sorry) so I doubt you'll see it but I wanted to respond anyway.

There are VERY interesting things going on in Reno, especially at UNR. MEMS research, solar cell research, biology, biotech, computer vision etc. There's also Sierra Nevada Corp in Sparks which was founded by two former UNR graduate students and is a very successful aerospace company. They are working on their own re-usable space craft in the dream chaser project: [http://www.sncspace.com/ss_space_exploration.php](http://www.sncspace.com/ss_space_exploration.php) Robocoin (bitcoin atm) is here but it's been rather disappointing.

One of the big flaws with this area is that casino gaming and mining have been the biggest draws on the talent pools for engineering. Gaming isn't the big money maker for the state that it once was and innovation wasn't a huge part of the business in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I graduated from UNR in Computer Science and had the good fortune of finding a great job in Reno. Rent is incredibly cheap, the average commute time to get anywhere is 15 minutes (I80 and US395 intersect the city), there's no income tax, there's every type of recreation you could want within a 45 minute drive... I could go on. Downtown can still appear pretty trashy, like the article states. I suppose that's the nature of having big casinos there, but I hope it is able to clean itself up.

I could sing Reno's praises all day, and I count myself very lucky that I was able to find a good job here. I have incredibly high hopes for the future of this city, a lot of great things are happening!

<comment><USER12> I was there 4 years ago and I liked how you could bike everywhere. That was surprising to me.

The weather was also great for the days I was there.

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of job do you have? Programming I assume?

<comment><USER10> Reno averages just over 250 sunny days a year. Being in the eastern shadow of the Sierras and at ~4500 ft (4505 ft at the university) does lead to heavy snow which makes the roads unusable for bikes. Public transportation is not sufficient for most people. The drought has made this not much of an issue the last few years though. This is high mountain desert so you can have very hot days and very cold nights. There is a good mixture of weather and we get most of the four seasons. There are many great outdoor activities nearby with the Pacific Rim Trail and Lake Tahoe as two good examples. It's a nice place to have a family but it also has a large number of problems that are not being addressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In 2001 I built a data center in Reno thinking it was inevitably going to see an economic boom. Well, to be more specific, I purchased a half-completed data center abandoned by Adelphia after they went bust and completed it. Long story short, I lost my shirt and sold it two years later. I've lived in Reno on-and- off ever since, including a three year stint in the Bay Area startup scene. I'm still waiting for that economic boom. I've also lived in the Sacramento area and seen similar economic issues to Reno, only on a larger scale. If Sacramento can't make the proximity to the Bay Area work -- there's little hope for Reno. Hope I'm wrong about that.

<comment><USER14> What's the problem, talent?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, Reno already is home to Apple's tax dodg^W^Winvestment subdivision, Braeburn Capital. So, more companies coming in to having to pay decent wages only makes sense.

<comment><USER10> It's not just apple. Microsoft Licensing is in Reno for a reason. They have an actual building and employees unlike Apple but they have the same intent. Halliburton is another name everyone would recognize that has a shell here. There are tens of thousands of business registrations in Nevada to take advantage of the business friendly tax laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting to see how many places in the world are trying to bring about their own Startup Row esque thing. Interesting to see where it will flourish.

<comment><USER9> Startup tech operates in a traded economy. It can flourish anywhere, it just needs a couple key items for it to sustain the culture.</comment></comment>


Google Plans To Buy Its Way Into Real Estate - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/google-plans-to-buy-its-way-into-real-estate-33652

<comment><USER2> very interesting... so how do I get bought?

</comment><comment><USER3> From the 'Brief Timeline Of Google's Real Estate Efforts': "January 16, 2009" - wrong year, buddy!</comment>


How to make your game run at 60fps - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tglaiel/how-to-make-your-game-run-at-60fps-24c61210fe75 <comment><USER2> Good read. There is no easy recipe to 60fps. Here are some other things to think about:

\- Number of physics/logic steps per second. A good 3D Pinball game could do 1500 physics iterations per second on a PC, but may not be able to do that on a low end phone.

\- Display size and fill rate issues. iPads with the same processor used to do worse than their iPhones. There must be a scale/virtual scale factor considered when rendering.

\- Texture/Compression/Bandwidth changes. Not every device will be able to use the exact textures or compression method.

\- Touch/Input latency issues. It is important to not aim for the unrealistic mega player who works with frame data. It should be a little forgiving.

\- Better to drop frames or do adaptive screen scaling as required in a highly interactive game.

\- Better to have a benchmark framework within the game to set sane defaults on initialization.</comment>


Feedback is broken - <AUTHOR> Feedback is broken.
It comes through in a variety of channels - your mom, your first user, the users who never come back.
You can't control where feedback comes from. The only thing you can control is what you do with feedback.
Here's what most people do:
They collect feedback, read it, and say thank you. If they keep hearing the same feedback, they put it into a spreadsheet. Maybe they synthesize the feedback in a 'power hour' and write up a few user stories. The team rallies behind these stories, and they make changes to improve the product.
But a user story lacks the authenticity of the actual feedback. A user story is a manifestation of feedback.
It's not scalable to talk to users face-to-face. In 30 minutes, users drop product-shaping quotes or highlight inconsistencies sparingly. Product people rarely have the ability to consistently talk to users. Developers definitely don't.
So what do you do? You collect feedback and funnel it into spreadsheets.
There is one alternative. Get users to record videos, and force them to be short. A short video does two things:
1. Short videos force users to make their feedback concise.
2. Short videos are easy to share, watch, and digest.
dscout is building a product that gives you short user feedback videos––videos that are similar to a user talking face-to-face, and that are short enough that you can watch, analyze, and send the feedback among your team.
The product is called Sprint, designed to be fast enough for a team that doesn't have time to collect, organize, process, and disperse feedback. In fact, Sprint does virtually all of that for you. <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the link: [http://dscout.com/research/sprint](http://dscout.com/research/sprint)</comment>


Open Letter to Seed Investors - <AUTHOR> http://jordancooper.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/open-letter-to-seed-investors/

<comment><USER2> You've had the chance to sit on "both sides of the table" in a vibrant startup ecosystem. Also, the average BA/VC in NYC (or the valley or Boston) is way more tech/startup savvy the avg BA/VC elsewhere... Getting feedback on your day to day operations or mid-term decisions is even more harder the further you get from major tech hubs. In France, the avg entrepreneur know WAY more about the industry than the avg investor ... i guess. Great post, thx !

</comment><comment><USER3> Its nice to call out to investors that they should try to stay in touch with their companies, but this can be a good bit to ask for when an investor has 10's to 100's of companies and has various responsibilities for each. I'd push the entrepreneurs that if you need some advice or input on something ask for it, versus hoping the investor responds with great insight just based on an update.

<comment><AUTHOR> definitely agree, explicitly soliciting feedback and input is better than just hoping for response to updates. but even if an investor has 10's or 100's of investments, reading and replying to updates is the minimum commitment they should make to their companies. if they are to busy to read and reply to their portfolio entrepreneurs, they shouldn't be making new investments...</comment></comment>


Episode 392: Stephen Wolfram on Mathematica: Software Engineering Radio - <AUTHOR> https://www.se-radio.net/2019/12/episode-392-stephen-wolfram-on-mathematica/ <comment><USER2> Haven't listened to it yet, but the synopsis mentions Wolfram and Jupyter notebooks.

I know they can have problems, but I do find this style of literate programming to be very nice.

I wrote a lengthy and complex Wolfram notebook a few months ago complete with text sections, images, code, graphs, and charts. It was super easy to pick up six months later. Jupyter notebooks with Python are a little easier to get started with as there are a lot less features, but Wolfram is more complete. I've enjoyed both and wish all my textbooks were done in this format.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to form an LLC - <AUTHOR>

I send you this file in order to have your advice.
I am looking to form an LLC for software consulting purposes.  I do not expect/intend for it to grow into a VC-backed entity so I am not considering S-corp.  I am the sole proprietor of this LLC-to-be.
I live in Massachusetts, and I expect most of my work will be in MA too.  But I hear that it can be advantageous to form the LLC in another state; Nevada and Delaware come up most frequently.
I would love some tips, stats, suggestions, URLs, horror stories, relevant code snippets, or anything else that might help me on this quest.  Thank you News Hackers! <comment><USER2> You want to form the LLC in the state where you live and do all your work. There is no advantage to forming an LLC in a different state. Other business entities (S, C corp) are a different story.

<comment><USER3> I'm not a lawyer, but I definitely agree you should form an LLC in your home state.

For CA, I thought forming an LLC in another state would save me $800/year. But after some research, it doesn't matter where you form your LLC. If your business is operating in California you still have to pay the $800 yearly fee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given your parameters, the thing to keep in mind is where you are incorporated in case you need to defend yourself in a lawsuit. It is almost always better to defend on you home turf as opposed to taking trips and hiring lawyers in Delaware.

IANAL, but I have been involved in lawsuits. Home turf advantage can be a good thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very good point, and one I had failed to consider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone in your situation based in CA would be better served to form a Sub-S as the tax treatment is more favorable. You should talk to a tax accountant (not just an attorney) about the tax implications of LLC vs. Sub-S in MA, there may be similar issues.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm looking to start a LLC very soon as well, but my business partner lives in Virginia and I live in California...What state should we choose at that point?

(don't mean to thread jack)</comment>