Show HN: Calculator of personal risk due to Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.covidodds.com/ <comment><USER2> Why are you sending the data (including medical conditions) to Facebook?

[https://www.facebook.com/v6.0/plugins/like.php?action=like&a...](https://www.facebook.com/v6.0/plugins/like.php?action=like&app_id=&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter.php%3Fversion%3D46%23cb%3Df17d6a34f1f5aae%26domain%3Dwww.covidodds.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.covidodds.com%252Ff2adc5c9345f4d6%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=4&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.covidodds.com%2F50-years- old-female-with- cardiovascular_disease&layout=button&locale=en_GB&sdk=joey&share=true&size=large)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed to only include the base URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What information are you logging? IP addresses and responses?

What is your data retention policy? Privacy policy? Who will you be sharing the information you collect with?

What if you tell someone they have low odds of death, and then they take more risks as a result of what you told them? If they were to end up dying of COVID-19 because they are induced to take more risks, do you think you will have exposed yourself to any legal liability?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't log or store anything, except for what is logged by Google Analytics.

> If they were to end up dying of COVID-19 because they are induced to take > more risks, do you think you will have exposed yourself to any legal > liability?

If that were the case, publishing any actuarial tables should lead to legal liability (and it definitely doesn't, at least where I am from).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Questions. How are you calculating risk? What do the risk scores mean? How accurate are they? What responsibility do you bear if your tool is wrong and someone gets hurt?

I am not saying all this to be a wet blanket, but because these are real ethical and legal issues that must be considered when making claims about healthcare related products. Otherwise I think this is a cool idea and nifty piece of app building.

My personal advice: consider reframing this as something other than a "personal risk calculator". Either that or add a lot of explanations and disclaimers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am reluctant to accept the American/Western mentality in these things, but I have added some disclaimers. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I suggest having a repository where people can contribute to the algorithm (with a requirement being to back up any proposed modification with a scientific source).

Also interesting that you put the non-covid risk as well, really brings things into perspective. In my age bracket I have a 0.18% of dying in the next 12 months, but only 0.017% from covid.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a neat idea, though not sure if I will have the time.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I made this tool after seeing much confusion, even on HN, about the risks for an individual posed by COVID-19. On the results page, click the question marks for detailed sources and methodology. I will appreciate constructive feedback.

<comment><USER6> do you have an overview on how you did the weighing of various parameters?

<comment><AUTHOR> See the modals that display after clicking the question marks for details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting, but any reason why the age limit is 89? And when I adjust for co-morbidities (presumably adding them) my chance of hospitalisation and/or death actually decreases?

<comment><USER8> >And when I adjust for co-morbidities (presumably adding them)

It asks if you have any pre-existing health conditions. If you state no for this, presumably it means no co-morbidities, so your risk of death is lower than the average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Question to the author (mathdev?): does this calculator take into account: 1) the effect of viral load/dose on outcome/severity 2) current data on rates of asymptomatic carriers?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) No. I don't imagine there are any reliable statistics available on that, and how could you estimate your dose?

2) Yes, this was taken into account by the study, data from which the algorithm uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hah this outputs the same results no matter which precondition boxes you tick.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it only takes into account whether one has preconditions or not, at the moment. The plan was to produce more detailed calculations, but it is difficult.

<comment><USER10> Well this is highly misleading then and pretty irresponsible. People could have multiple severe issues and yet this states that there is little risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> No. First, having multiple conditions doesn't qualitatively change the result.

Second, the figure shown by default is not adjusted for comorbidities and the adjustment is clearly marked as experimental.

You are all just crazy with the panic and that's it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WSJ: "Several Earthquakes are Bigger Threat to San Francisco Bay Area" - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304422704579571972490977390?mod=WSJ_hp_EditorsPicks&mg=reno64-wsj "Multiple Major Temblors, Not a Single Huge One, Pose a Bigger Risk, Study Says" <comment><USER2> As a non-native English speaker, the title bothers me : "Bigger" introduce a notion of comparison, so where is the "than" in the sentence ? Is it valid in terms of syntax?

The subtitle is no less puzzling : "Multiple Major Temblors, Not a Single Huge One, Pose a Bigger Risk, Study Says". This sentence seems wrong on so many levels (punctuation, syntax, subordinates' order, etc.).</comment>


Show HN: Secrets of Mastering Excel - <AUTHOR> Inspired by a comment thread yesterday [1] I made this mini site:
https://excel.secretgeek.net/
Reason:
I often want to share Joel Spolsky's famous "You Suck at Excel" video tutorial with "important" business people inside the large enterprise where I work.
But it would be easily misconstrued as trolling if I sent a business customer a URL that literally tells them, right in the heading, that they "suck" at excel.
So, as advised by user @TuringTest (in the thread mentioned above) I created a mini site, on its own sub-domain, that is palatable to a business mindset, and brutally overlaid a heading that says "Secrets of Mastering Excel" right over the top of the "You Suck at Excel" heading.
Now I've got something I can recommend to business people without causing disharmony. And I can leave a link to it in my email signature at work, to nudge my colleagues to improve their Excel game.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20418313 <comment><USER2> Great idea!

Note: some of the information you linked is out of date, e.g. the linked summary says 'You have to sort the LookupLabels by name for match to work'. But MATCH() takes a third optional argument (match type) which, if set to 0, means you don't need to pre-sort your Lookup labels, and you have no risk of having an approximate match returned.

I wrote a short blog post with the Excel advice I most commonly give to colleagues, or when I've reviewed people's Excel sheets as part of a training session: [https://www.encona.com/posts/excel-best- practices](https://www.encona.com/posts/excel-best-practices)

<comment><AUTHOR> I like your best practices, and I like the format that you've used ("Don't do this; Do this instead; Why").</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Stategies for teaching when the primary goal is to hold interest? - <AUTHOR> I am casually teaching some friends and family members how to program, but I wanted to leave this question more broad.<p>I feel as if most traditional courses give little thought to making courses interesting, luckily, those courses have grades and potential wasted tuition money looming over you so they hold your attention for ransom. Me teaching something casually does not have this benefit, so I have to rely more on making what I teach interesting, how do I do this? <comment><USER2> Which language? With Javascript or PHP you can show them how to make a small projects and host them in the web.</comment>


Why does Apple not have a mobile web site? - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/bCdJwGF

<comment><USER2> Isn't/Wasn't part of their marketing for Safari on iOS that it can browse the "normal" internet and doesn't need special mobile sites to be usable?

If I'm remembering correctly and it is/was, then it would be a bit hypocritical of them to make a mobile website.

I don't think iCloud has a mobile version either.</comment>


Patching an application from a device driver - <AUTHOR> http://codeconfessional.tumblr.com/post/121673506725/patching-an-application-from-a-device-driver

<comment><USER2> This is done often in GPU drivers mostly via patching shaders, related [http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl- driv...](http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver- quality.html)

<comment><USER3> This was really eye-opening. Thanks for posting this

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there any way to submit to your bug? I'd have some stories to share :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. Forgot to enable submissions. Try a refresh.</comment></comment>


Redesigning MySQL – AWS Tech Talk on the Aurora Database [video] - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.opendns.com/2015/04/07/redesigning-mysql-aws-tech-talk-on-the-aurora-database/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have hands-on experience with Aurora? Although I signed up for the preview I do not have access yet, I'm eager to try it.

Our experience with RDS hasn't been that smooth: lots of sudden performance issues, table locks and whatnot. DB reboot or even full restore is a once a month thing.

<comment><USER3> I would also like to know about actual Aurora experiences as well. But I haven't heard of anybody using it.

However, I'm also interested in your negative experiences with AWS RDS. What kind of engine are you running on? Did you investigate the outages or contact AWS support regarding these issues?

<comment><USER2> For example, just today we needed to run a migration to rename a non-indexed column in a table in our production db. The table got locked while running the migration, all app servers down :). Rebooting the RDS instance was the only thing that got us back up.

A while back we also migrated a column, the encoding was set to ISO-8859-10 (nordic countries? seriously?), even though our encoding is UTF-8 everywhere! Had to take a DB snapshot, launch a new instance and re-run the migration (there were performance issues with the instance as well, that's why we re- created it).

These are just a few of the stories I've experienced. I didn't contact support after seeing that similar issues were completely ignored in the AWS forums.

Full setup:

\- 2x m3.large app servers

\- 1x m3.large RDS instance running MySQL 5.6.22, InnoDB, no read replica, no Multi AZ. Other issues were seen in an m3.medium with Multi AZ. We preferred a non-crashing m3.large Single AZ than a hanging m3.medium with Multi AZ. Seems that there are problems regardless of the instance's size.

\- Rails 4.0.11 backend, ActiveRecord migration

\- The table had about 1000 entries, but heavily used (users table). To give you some context ours is a B2B service, most of the users (90%) use our site from 9 to 5, never leave the page. So accessing the users database is fairly common.

<comment><USER4> The above issues are MySQL specific and have nothing to do with RDS. ALTER TABLE commands lock tables. There are various strategies to work around this. [http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/alter- table.html](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/alter-table.html)

<comment><USER5> Renaming a column in 5.6 as described works with concurrent read and write access: [https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-create- index-...](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-create-index- overview.html)

The only thing about implicit full-table locking in the alter-table docs you linked says:

 _The exception referred to earlier is that ALTER TABLE blocks reads (not just writes) at the point where it is ready to install a new version of the table .frm file, discard the old file, and clear outdated table structures from the table and table definition caches. At this point, it must acquire an exclusive lock. To do so, it waits for current readers to finish, and blocks new reads (and writes)._

There are no strategies to work around this using just the database. Even if you were to manually create a new table with the new format, migrate all the data manually, and then manually rename, the final rename operation would require a short-duration lock to perform its work. You could, of course, modify your application code to work with two tables during a manual migration.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The S3 outage or: How you can learn to stop worrying and love the multi-cloud - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hasura.io/the-amazon-s3-outage-and-why-you-shouldnt-be-too-pally-with-your-provider-83fbc2353c93#.i77559hlj <comment><USER2> Multi-cloud is a pipe dream. It's only slightly worse than hybrid cloud, which is also terrible.

Sure, you could use multiple clouds for a couple of small things, but it's all about the data.

To properly do multi-cloud (or hybrid cloud), you need to have the right data in the right place at the right time, or you need to have all your data in both places at all times.

The latter will cost you a fortune to maintain. Netflix does it across regions because their cost of operations, including keeping multiple copies of all the data, is lower than the cost of downtime, but that isn't likely to apply to most people.

The former can only work if you are _really_ disciplined about keeping the right data in the right place, or if you have a data abstraction layer that is smart enough to put the right data in the right place at the right time (I'm not aware of the existence of such a product or that anyone is even working on such a thing).

The other problem with multi-cloud is that your software has to be built to the lowest common denominator. In other words, you can only use features that all your providers provide, again unless you go back to having software smart enough to do the right thing in the right place at the right time.

It's a nice thought but I think we're years away from viable multi-cloud.

<comment><USER3> Agree with most of the points you made. I remember the amount of effort my team in an ad-tech co. spent distributing load across multiple providers/regions to bring down latency and add redundancy. The larger point is that the ecosystem needs to enable this by product-ifying this (a data abstraction layer that is smart enough to put the right data in the right place at the right time).

<comment><USER2> I agree, there needs to be a product for this to work.

So far that product doesn't exist and isn't even a twinkle in someone's eye as far as I know. Everyone is focusing on "running the same infrastructure everywhere" but I haven't seen anyone focus on putting the right data in the right place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, this is the author of the post. I would love to hear your opinions or war stories about building infra or provider agnostic applications.</comment>


Ask HN: Salary for Non-Technical Employee #1? - <AUTHOR>

We have a small (5-6 person) NYC startup.  Thus far, all hires have been developers, but we're getting ready to make our first non-technical hire, a social media manager.
I get the impression that there is a glut of non-technical "business" people trying to get hired by startups.  Therefore, I assume we can pay this person substantially less than we'd pay an entry-level developer.  We'll still give him/her the same amount of options that we give all technical folks we've hired.
Is that correct?  How much should an entry-level social media manager make in NYC? <comment><USER2> _Therefore, I assume we can pay this person substantially less than we'd pay an entry-level developer._

You'll end up having to pay any decent employee in any position something near a market-rate salary.

Not sure about the "glut" of people, but also not sure that is relevant. You are looking for a quality person who can work independently, adapt to the environment of the company, maintain some long-term loyalty to the company, and do the work of 2 people. There are rarely a "glut" of those types of people, and they rarely work for a substantially reduced pay.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe the glut you might be referring to would be the high proportion of people that fancy themselves internet savants because they use twitter and facebook. Finding someone who knows how to leverage modern platforms and get quantifiable results will probably be harder then you imagine.

As for pay, I'm sure anyone who has proven themselves capable will demand a salary that is representative of their value.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not from NYC, and have no idea what these kinds of rates are. However, given the goals that you would like this person to achieve, what will that be worth to you? I know it's hard to quantify for people not in sales roles, but how much do you think this role will contribute to your bottom line? What you pay them will depend on whether this is 50k or 500k.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are hundreds of people in NYC who will do this for free so you should pay a maximum of $40,000.</comment>


Every eBay account in the world has been hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/22/every-ebay-account-holder-worldwide-has-been-hacked-company-says.html

<comment><USER2> I don't have an ebay account but if I did I would put a credit alert on my name at the credit bureaus. Its free and does not impact you in anyway unless you are in the process of buying a car or house or some other big ticket item requiring new credit. A single request puts the alert on all the major credit bureaus.

[https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html](https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html)

<comment><USER3> Could you outline your rationale there - are you suggesting that cc numbers have leaked along with other details?

<comment><USER2> Its not just about hacking your current CC but identity theft and opening new credit in your name and charging thousands of dollars before they are shutdown. The aftermath for the victim is years of effort getting it all straightened out -- including the nightmare of credit agencies not believing the client that they got hacked. Not to mention indifferent police departments that hide behind jurisdiction issues when the crime spans multiple counties, if not states.

With the leaked ebay info all they probably need is a SSN to open store credits and I am sure the crooks have other databases to cross with this info to get a complete set necessary to open an account. And don't forget about phishing calls, now that they know so many details about the users the crooks can call them and credibly pretend to be various institutions that the ebay users have a relationship with and thus coax more info out of them. The elderly are particularly prone to this type of scam.

I have a friend who's identity was stolen and it was a nightmare. The crooks opened numerous store accounts in his name, typically for furniture and electronic stores. They had the goods shipped to some address and then sold it, ironically enough, on ebay. All told they got away with over $80,000 in theft. In cleaning up this mess my friend discovered from the FBI investigator assigned to his case that he was lucky -- all the theft was in another state and so there was no disputing that it was him and the crooks exceed some magic number of dollars and thus it was an FBI issue not a local police issue. It still took him over a year of work to get it all resolved.

I recently got some obvious phishing calls which is why I put a fraud alert on my accounts, it cost me nothing and has no impact on my ability to use my credit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I remember the early days of eBay when the founder said people in the world are basically trustworthy. I wonder what his opinion is now?

</comment><comment><USER4> Fortunately ebay has over 100 million active users so the odds of the hackers actually using my account is negligible :/</comment>


It's time to convert our science to Bayesian data analysis (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiana.edu/~kruschke/AnOpenLetter.htm

<comment><USER2> The author has a book titled "Doing Bayesian Data Analysis" that strikes a nice balance between over-simplification and face-melting mathematics.

While a Bayesian analysis is a fair bit more work than cobbling together a lackluster regression model, Bayesian results do seem to be more resistant to terrible interpretation.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is also:

Harrison, P. J., and Stevens, C. F., 'A Bayesian Approach to Short-term Forecasting', Operational Research Quarterly, 22, No. 4. December 1971.

Harrison, P. J., and Stevens, C. F., 'Bayesian Forecasting', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B (Methodological), 38, No.3, 1976.</comment>


Here's how we could hide Earth from aliens if we had to - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/19/heres-how-we-could-hide-earth-from-aliens-if-we-had-to/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but they seem to assume we would know in which direction the alien civilization lies. Otherwise, we'd have to contantly shoot the laser from whichever point on earth happens to point directly away from the sun.</comment>


Dataset: Databases for lazy people - <AUTHOR> https://dataset.readthedocs.org/ <comment><USER2> This is excellent, I've always wanted a simple db library that makes defining a schema upfront _optional_. After all a schema is a constraint that can be set in stone later on, just like adding indices for optimisation purposes.

Few questions:

\- what's the performance like? is there any overhead to alchemy, eg comparing schema every time you do an insert?

\- no way to specify primary keys as an alternative to the auto-generated id column?

\- no table.remove()?

\- what about inserting more complicated data structures, eg a dict with a nested dict or a list? would be great if those were serialized auto-magically into a blob type (or used to create another table with a foreign key?)

\- would be nice to be able to freeze a schema with table.freeze() for example: from then on new columns don't get created automatically, or get stored in an extra blob column (this is a very common scenario for python devs where non-indexable columns just get stuck in a blob)

\- let me optionally define a schema and specify defaults with table.schema(name='', price=0.0')

\- would love to see table.ensureIndex('column', 'unique') similar to mongo for quickly creating indices

\- db = Dataset() should do dataset.create('sqlite:///:memory:') for me - would be nice to have that as the default connector, so that Dataset() acts as LINQ for Python by default

\- dataset.freeze is nice but I'd rather have dataset.export() & dataset.import() letting me easily copy rows from one db to another (after inspection for example)

Thanks for creating this!

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks like a really useful library. A few questions:

1\. What size limits/practical constraints are there on freezefiles (and accompanying JSON files)?

2\. Are there any code samples for consuming freezefiles, or should I just assume it's simple JSON/YML parsing?

3\. Has there been any thought in using this to expose database contents via static REST API?

Final thought: this seems like a great step towards solving the age-old version controlling data problem.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious of the relative advantages/disadvantages over something like sqlalchemy..

<comment><USER5> From an end-user point of view, SQLAlchemy relies on you first defining your models in the ORM (object relational mapping) and then SQLAlchemy will take control of issuing the SQL to create, update and drop tables depending on your interactions with your Python ORM models.

From what I can read, it seems that this cool looking tool allows you to use SQL as a kind of object free data store, maybe not unlike a NoSQL DB python wrapper (freeing you from first defining your models, and then ensuring that the SQLAlchemy functions have updated your DB).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm trying to figure out where something like this fits into the python data ecosystem.

For datasets that fit in memory, Pandas seems like the best bet. Good I/O functions (JSON, CSV), easy slicing (numpy array-like syntax), and some sql- like operations (groupby, join).

For large datasets, you'd need a proper db.

So is Dataset then useful for datasets that cannot fit in memory but aren't _too_ large?

<comment><USER7> Simple.

Recently, I've been tasked with mapping all of our clients addresses to lat/long. I could've read the CSV and appended the results to each line. Or used a JSON file. That I would have to read/write every time.

Instead, I wrote some pseudo-helper to dump all the CSV data into a SQLite DB. Then I ran my script. Every time I found a lat/long, I could mark the client as "done" and add the lat/long for that client and every client that shared this address. When I had to cut my script because I saw one result from Google Maps was wrong, I could just edit it straight in SQL, mark it as "invalid" and relaunch my script: it started right back at the first undone row. Then I just had to select all the "invalid" results and search them manually or refine them so Google Maps would give me a proper result.

Dataset is useful for small data that is constantly being worked on.

(This answer is from a Ruby POV and the dataset I was working on had about 4K rows, which explains why a) some Python magic wasn't available to me, maybe it would have been perfect in Python world and b) I didn't want to play with streams on my files)

Of course I still need some automation to correctly use my "DataMiner" (as I called it) to the fullest. I'll use Dataset's API as a basis to rewite it correctly.

<comment><USER6> I know very little about what's available in Ruby, but I would have used the Pandas library to accomplish this task in python. Their in-memory data structure, a DataFrame, is more than capable of handling those operations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know that the solution to "programmers are lazy" and databases are hard is for them to learn a niche concept instead of taking the time to actually learn about data storage or, find someone who knows it well and work with them.

<comment><USER9> Where I see this being useful isn't as a solution to programmers being "lazy" about learning DBs, but to programmers being "lazy" about dealing with RDBMS schema while rapidly iterating on a new project. Something like this lets you _discover_ the schema as you iterate on the program, which would seem to be a win for agility.

<comment><USER10> What I don't get is why do I need a "stable" data store to iterator over? On a project I once didn't get a database until 2 weeks before the actual project was due. Fortunately I was using Spring. So I just mocked the DAL until such time as I actually got a real one. This whole time I changed the contract on the DAL, changed how I used it, etc. Then when the DBA finally got around to having time to make my db I presented him with a decent, thought-out ERD.

Sure the mocks had to do some work, but a simple cache allowed me to perform all of the CRUD operations in memory. I can see doing something similar with Mongo/Couch, but having done the DAL with a pure mock set injected via Spring, I don't really see the point. The same goes for HQL or another lightweight in memory DB + Hibernate/JPA. I assume the model of interaction would work with Python or similar languages too.

<comment><USER9> Because sometimes you want a product to be available to real users while it is still rapidly developing, especially in an environment using Lean principles.

It's kinda of the opposite of the delivery-date-and-it's-done style of project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been working on an ETL domain specific language using Scala for a while now (DataExpress for the curious: [http://dataexpress.research.chop.edu](http://dataexpress.research.chop.edu)) trying to address similar problems to this.

Namely, when doing ETL you don't _want_ to have to map all your tables and relationships into models that an ORM likes to have. IMO, there is such a dearth of tools in this space of "quick and dirty" database work. People are either using highly custom scripts on one end or things like Kettle or commercial analogs for "big serious work" on the other. There's almost no in- between.

Having something at a slightly higher level of abstraction than the database driver itself is really, really nice and makes for cleaner, more readable code. Makes me wonder about my continued work on DataExpress!

</comment><comment><USER12> "for lazy people" should probably be "for lazy individuals not groups" as I've often seen the schema and its DB become a natural demarc point between groups, so changing the demarc on the fly amounts to forcing everyone else's API to change.

Typical example, "Say what, who decided the name column is now two columns first name and last name ?"

And sometimes there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, if the natural demarc point in a project isn't the database and its schema.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice. For PHP there is Idiorm, which is a really lightweight ORM wrapper that makes dealing with SQL databases a breeze:

[https://idiorm.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](https://idiorm.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

<comment><USER14> what is the most robust PHP ORM out there for large projects?

<comment><USER15> Doctrine / Eloquent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That could be nice, unless `find` is limited to equality relations with a constant. And all examples are equality relations with constants...

<comment><USER17> Looking at the source[1] `find` supports `==` and `in_()`. Beyond that, it supports custom sql queries[2].

For more power, drop down to SQLAlchemy.

[1]: [https://github.com/pudo/dataset/blob/dc144a27b01ff404a528275...](https://github.com/pudo/dataset/blob/dc144a27b01ff404a5282758f010f00bad87cbe9/dataset/persistence/table.py#L200) [2]: [https://dataset.readthedocs.org/en/latest/quickstart.html#ru...](https://dataset.readthedocs.org/en/latest/quickstart.html#running- custom-sql-queries)

<comment><USER16> > Beyond that, it supports custom sql queries[2].

That's more than a bit unsatisfactory if I'm using a query builder or ORM to avoid writing custom SQL queries.

> For more power, drop down to SQLAlchemy.

It's closer to stepping sideways, even the expression language is at a similar level of abstraction.

<comment><USER18> It pretty much _is_ SQLAlchemy. Look at the code, there's very little there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like it doesn't work on python 3.3 for some reason ;( It would be better to put some information to the website about required software\modules versions etc...

in <module> import dataset File "C:\Python33\lib\site- packages\dataset\\__init__.py", line 7, in <module> from dataset.persistence.database import Database File "C:\Python33\lib\site- packages\dataset\persistence\database.py", line 3, in <module> from urlparse import parse_qs ImportError: No module named 'urlparse'

</comment><comment><USER20> This looks wonderful. I have a side project that uses BeautifulSoup to get sports scores and then computes standings based on those results and prints the results out to a text file. Honestly, for me, being a simple and personal program SQL Alchemy was just overkill I felt like, but this project looks like it'll do exactly what I need.

I'll have to look into it more in-depth later, but I love the idea behind it.

</comment><comment><USER21> interesting. am i right to say that it turns nosql-like queries/inserts into a relational structure? what about joins and the complicated stuff that bogs down writing queries as the complexity grows, how does this library support the __advanced__ stuff?

<comment><USER22> well, the idea is to make the simple stuff really simple and keep the complicated stuff around. so if you want to write a JOIN, use SQL or SQLAlchemy's core constructs - both are accessible, neither have been reinvented :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I actually think it's time for object databases (e.g. ZopeDB) to make a comeback.

Sometimes it's useful to persist a mass of crap, without thinking through the format _at all_. Webscraping is a good example offered by the project author.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is great. I was just looking for a humane way to play with databases in IPython Notebook the other day. I was able to pull a sample of data from a DB into a Pandas dataframe with just a couple lines of code. Perfect.

</comment><comment><USER25> This looks cool. My main question: why not just use Redis? Its a no-sql solution that's proven to be fast and reliable. I assume dataset isn't meant for larger datasets than Redis can already handle. The biggest advantage is the `datafreeze` command which could've been written for Redis instead.

</comment><comment><USER26> Anything like this for ruby?

<comment><USER27> This looks pretty close to a clone of the Sequel gem.

[http://sequel.jeremyevans.net/](http://sequel.jeremyevans.net/) [https://github.com/jeremyevans/sequel](https://github.com/jeremyevans/sequel)

<comment><USER28> Sequel has much more advanced features than this Python library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A nice idea, but please change the logo.

<comment><USER30> Naked Mole Rats are the coolest creatures in the entire world. They hardly seem to age and they very seldomly get cancer. Also there is a really funny video about them: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHi9FvUPSdQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHi9FvUPSdQ)

<comment><USER31> thanks ymmd</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there anything worth purchasing on Black Friday/Cyber Monday? - <AUTHOR> I just haven't seen anything that catches my eye (and many sites make it surprisingly difficult to browse their Black Friday deals).  I refuse to go out and shop (it's too cold, & I don't really want to mess with the crowds), but I would buy something online if it was a good price & I had a use for it.<p>Any suggestions or discoveries? <comment><USER2> [https://supporters.eff.org/donate/button](https://supporters.eff.org/donate/button)

</comment><comment><USER3> The nature of your question in itself indicates that there is nothing you should buy. Buy things if you need them, otherwise leave your wallet in your pocket.

<comment><USER4> I took it to mean "I have some extra money, and I want something to fiddle with, is there anything that the hackernews readers know of that might be on sale?"

But maybe that's just my question...

<comment><USER5> I took that point too, and there's also another point... there's software that's on my list for a while (JetBrains and Hazel come to mind, in particular), but since the exchange rate for me is bad, a sale might tip me over the edge.

<comment><USER6> JetBrains does nice discounts around conferences. PyCharm was 30% off for PyCon for example. I think anyone can use the code whether you attend or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you are into a software architecture, @simonbrown is offering both of his software architecture books for FREE on Leanpub [https://twitter.com/simonbrown/status/800340593507438593](https://twitter.com/simonbrown/status/800340593507438593) [https://leanpub.com/b/software-architecture](https://leanpub.com/b/software- architecture)

<comment><USER8> Thanks. Having started this game in 1997, in some respects fortunately with punched card FORTRAN and hands on use of an IBM 1130, since that sent me straight to the library because I knew there _had_ to be better ways, and being cash strapped right now I'm not in the market for architecture books. But for free? I'll try them for sure, and who knows, may pay him some real money in the future, nothing ventured, nothing gained. At least for me, one good free book has more than a few time resulted in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Udemy has a few interesting courses reduced to $0 courtesy of OzBargain [https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/276987](https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/276987)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you're a gamer, there's tons of stuff on sale. On Steam you can get Doom for $20, and it is well worth it. I'm also binging on The Division which is $25 with an optional $20 season pass for some extra stuff. If you want something more low key Stardew Valley might be the ticket.

<comment><USER11> Yeah it's pretty dangerous to browse Steam now... I already purchased 4 games today (even two AAA titles), and I still have 5-6 untouched games from the last christmas sale.

<comment><USER12> > I _only_ have 5-6 untouched games

FTFY :)

<comment><USER10> If you're interested in the actual stats for your Steam library, check out the SteamDB calculator[1].

[1]: [https://steamdb.info/calculator/](https://steamdb.info/calculator/)

<comment><USER11> Interesting! 40 of my 102 games haven't been played yet. Jesus christ, I'm gonna have to call in sick next week to catch up here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've put two of my JavaScript courses on sale for 50% off:

ES6 For Everyone

[https://ES6.io](https://ES6.io)

React For Beginners

[https://ReactForBeginners.com](https://ReactForBeginners.com)

<comment><USER14> thanks Wes, purchasing now!

<comment><USER13> Awesome! Seeing a few sales come through from this.

Enjoy it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I purchased a 1TB EVO 850 from newegg/amazon (both have the same price). But I had a specific need for large fast storage.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the heads up! Been meaning to buy one for gf's 2012 MBP, and now seems like the best time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apress [1] are doing ebooks for £9.99 and print books for £12.50.

Picked up a copy of Practical Common Lisp for £12.50. Even second hand these are going on Amazon for £25, and lord knows I've been through that book online enough times to know it's about time I got myself a hard copy!

[1] [http://www.apress.com/gp/shop/cybermonday?&token=cyber16&wt_...](http://www.apress.com/gp/shop/cybermonday?&token=cyber16&wt_mc=Internal.Banner.3.EPR868.APRShopLP_EN_CYBER16_Banner)

<comment><USER8> Thanks! I've already bought PCL, but noticed a couple of newer RDBMS books by C J Date, and add these observations:

I suppose this changes if you create an account and log into it, but the prices are initially quoted in Euros (close the US$ right now), and shifted to dollars after I entered my address in the registration process.

They say free shipping to individuals world wide, and the physical book I bought is going to be printed on demand by Springer Customer Service Center LLC, with the usual delays. And of course the ebook I bought was immediately available; all very slick so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> PacktPub[0] and PragProg[1] both have discounts on eBooks (50% and 40%).

[0] [https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/thanksgiving-2016](https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/thanksgiving-2016)

[1] [https://pragprog.com/](https://pragprog.com/)

<comment><USER19> Humble has a nice UNIX book bundle:

[https://www.humblebundle.com/books/unix-book- bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/unix-book-bundle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Top discounts by product category: [http://blackfriday.semantics3.com/dashboards/RJ7EP446XUIOLEU...](http://blackfriday.semantics3.com/dashboards/RJ7EP446XUIOLEU7) Might aid the discount hunting process, if not the decision making process.

<comment><USER21> It's worth noting that there are lots of stores not indexed by Semantics3, and Amazon is one of the big ones they miss out.

<comment><USER20> Amazon is part of the list of sites being tracked. Any reason you felt otherwise?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The urge to buy is real. Just be frugal and enjoy your day :)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'll just leave it there. Real discount for domaine names, shared hosting and ssl. [https://www.namecheap.com/domain-hosting-ssl-deals/black- fri...](https://www.namecheap.com/domain-hosting-ssl-deals/black-friday.aspx)

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the link, but current deals all gone (other than Comodo Instant SSL, lots of those left)

New ones at 6am EST

<comment><USER25> There are other hosting deals out there as well. Check out Cloudways that is offering 25% off for 3 months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Machine Learning Mastery has a 40% discount on all their products using the code "blackfriday": [http://machinelearningmastery.com/](http://machinelearningmastery.com/)

</comment><comment><USER27> HTC Vive is $100 off this weekend on Amazon.

<comment><USER28> Does the Vive support Macs or Linux yet?

<comment><USER29> Valve has indicated that support for it is coming soon. Their recent developer conference they demoed it running on Linux. I'm not sure how well it's going to work on Mac with the lack of decent graphics cards unless maybe using a Hackintosh.

<comment><USER30> Then I'll consider it "soon".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> am waiting for the safari books online subscription deal. Last yr they had a 50% price drop.

<comment><USER32> On Twitter: "sorry, no big sale this year. Contact us via [http://bit.ly/1aK0wMg](http://bit.ly/1aK0wMg) and we are happy to talk about available discounts."

\- [https://twitter.com/safari/status/798558536905224192](https://twitter.com/safari/status/798558536905224192)

<comment><USER31> sadboy :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> OVH Black Friday deals:

[https://www.ovh.com/us/black-friday/](https://www.ovh.com/us/black-friday/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Slickdeals.net is your friend. Some TV deals and SSD deals. Amazon discounted all its hardware stuff around 15% it seems. Picked up the fire 4k box for $65.

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://paw.cloud/](https://paw.cloud/) is half price all weekend. [http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2016/11/24/Black- Friday-...](http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2016/11/24/Black- Friday-2016-Deals-For-Game-Developers.aspx) has deals for game creators.

</comment><comment><USER36> O'Reilly is running a 50% discount on all ebooks: [http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/cyber- monday.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/cyber-monday.do)

(full disclosure: I'm writing 'Java 9 Modularity' with them, available in early access)

<comment><USER37> Is it just me, or are some of their prices double the price at Amazon ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Put some gas in your tank and head out camping for a weekend.

Or take some unpaid leave and spend the time with you family.

<comment><USER10> He did say it was too cold outside, so maybe camping wouldn't work. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've done my own personal "cost/benefit" for these things.

We might call it "dollars saved / aggravation induced".

Short answer: Ratio is consistently way too low.

Message to retailers: Make my life easier, if you want my business. (Fair price for a good product and support.)

</comment><comment><USER40> If your in the UK [http://www.hotukdeals.com/black- friday](http://www.hotukdeals.com/black-friday) lists all the current deals.

</comment><comment><USER41> For anyone based in Germany/Europe, mydealz.de lists offers, you can sort by "hot" to see the most popular ones. (not affiliated)

</comment><comment><USER42> Any good deals for setting up a home GPU cluster? Like GTX 1080s, motherboards with multiple PCI Express slots, etc.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'd love to see aCloud or identify deals on Amazon Web Services training. lets hope that it happens.

<comment><USER44> Same here, keeping my eye out for exactly this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Newton Mail subscription is 50℅ off at the moment, which I find is a great deal for their service.

</comment><comment><USER46> Not really. It's just a marketing scam.

</comment><comment><USER47> digitalocean had some good deals for cyber monday last year if I am not mistaken. I haven't checked this year.</comment>


Ask HN: Are Edge computing and Machine learning related? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm currently a software engineering student, but I've read about edge computing a bit, and I'm currently learning about ML. Are this two trends related? Is edge computing the next "big thing" in the industry? How can ML help edge computing?
If I'm missing something or you have any interesting resource to know more about edge computing, please feel free to explain anything and add a link if you want. I'm really interested in learning about this topics.
Thanks HN, <comment><USER2> Edge computing is just cloud computing but it happens at the "edge" of the network.

Well one application of edge computing would be to use ML/AI to do some task. For example imagine you have your phone and you take a photo with a cancer app. Your phone doesn't have enough compute power to run a very good ML model on it so instead the app would upload the image to the cloud to do the analysis. To take the app run fast you wound want the computation to happen on the edge of the network so you have the smallest latency possible giving a better user experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @kmather73 for your example. One of the possible uses I red about was using ML to decide when to do the computation in the cloud and when to do it in the device. Do you know a bit about this? Thanks again for your explanation! The concept seems clearer now</comment></comment>


What's the easiest way to make a living? - <AUTHOR>

What's the easiest way to make a living today?
By "easiest", I mean in terms of time and attention.  The idea is to have lots of time to work on projects that you enjoy.  That time has to be good "maker time", not time when you're mentally exhausted from working at a job that consumes you.  Think Einstein working at the patent office.
By "make a living", I mean enough money to pay the rent on a modest apartment, eat cheap food, and occasionally buy nice toys.  US$24,000/year is probably the minimum.
Inheritance, sugar daddy, and living off your parents are amusing cheap-shot answers, but that's not what I'm asking about.  I'm thinking that since technology has made us all so productive, it ought to be possible to work very few hours to make a passable living, and thus enjoy much more leisure time.  Most people don't do that, though.  People in the U.S. seem to be working harder than ever, but not getting much enjoyable leisure time.  What might we find if we looked seriously at how to earn a living in a way that leaves the most time available for person projects that probably don't make money?  Such projects could be anything from taking care of your kids to painting pictures to proving theorems.
Example: An entrepreneur friend of mine works four days a week as a cab driver, and spends his remaining time working on two small businesses.  The money from cab driving is terrible ($60/day, with a lot of variance), but it gives him time and freedom, and he enjoys cab-driving.  But let's not limit this to "Ways to finance your start-up."  Just, ways to pay your rent, long-term, while you work on whatever you like, regardless of financial return. <comment><AUTHOR> Unarmed security guard.

Some friends of mine long ago have done this. I don't know what the money is like these days (does anyone here know?), but I expect it's bad. The advantage is: you actually get to work on your laptop or notebook or whatever you like most of the time. Mostly what a security guard does is let truckers sign in when they make deliveries. Between deliveries, all you need to do is be there.

Has anyone here tried this?

<comment><USER2> I did it for a bit in college. Graveyard shift, lone person in an office building. Basically my job was to lower the fire insurance premium by having someone in the building all night. 2-3 times a night I'd walk through the building and make sure it was all still there, the rest of the time I read, did homework, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems strange that there have (so far) been so few ideas that leverage the high productivity that ought to be possible with technology and the highly interconnected economy. (So far, day-trading is the only one like that.)

How could one be _very productive_ for only a few hours a week--enough to genuinely earn US$24,000 a year?

Is it Timothy Ferris or nothing? Has anyone gotten his "Four-Hour Work Week" to work?

</comment><comment><USER3> The obvious answer to this might be to create a startup around your passion. You still have the problem of finding a way to fund the initial phase before you start making money. But that seems like a smaller problem than the original one. Maybe recursively reduce the problem in this way until it has been solved.

</comment><comment><USER4> Teach, if you like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny that you mention this. The inspiration for submitting this question was my frustration with teaching while in grad school. Each of my four semesters so far, I've taught or assistant-taught a class. Each time, it consumed my mind, to the point where I found it difficult to think about anything else. My subconscious creativity was all spent on things like: how do I get the students to see X, how do I convince the prof not to obscure X, what would be a good homework assignment, how can I set up the homework so I can grade it super-efficiently.

I thought I'd get a lot more out of grad school if I financed it by working at a job that requires no thought or creativity. Ideally, my subconscious creative churning could continue while working at the job, and stay focused on my research. (Doing good teaching in grad school goes completely unrewarded.)

And then I thought, well, why bother with grad school at all, if what I want to do is learn interesting stuff and do research? If I had a subsistence-level job that didn't suck out my brains, I could pretty much spend every waking moment either letting the subconscious creative process run, or actually building stuff, researching stuff, and writing papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Figure out what state has the best unemployment rates. Get a fluffy programming job at a large company in that state for about 6 months so that you can max out your benefits. Then get laid off and start collecting. Rhode Island looks like it's the best option with a maximum payout of $641/week, or $33k per year.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like playing the stock market is the easist way I've found so far. If you bet on a stock by buying 500 shares, the stock goes up ten cents (USD, $0.10), you've made $50 (I'm not counting transaction fees, just the base numbers). If you buy 5000 shares you've made $500. Make $500 three times a month and you're at $18,000 a year. Each $500 gamble may take one or two hours depending on how quickly the NASDAQ is moving.

For the specified amount of $24,000 per year, that's four $500 bets per month.

Mike

<comment><USER7> Interesting - although I've heard tell that sometimes stock can actually go down, instead of up.

<comment><USER6> Very true, but consider that a stock can only move three directions: up, down, or sideways. This takes money. If you have the money to buy 5,000 shares of a $5.00 stock ($25,000), how long does it take that stock to move $0.10?

<comment><USER8> _"how long does it take that stock to move $0.10?"_

I guess that really depends which direction you're talking about.

If you're not careful, having it move down 10 cents is fairly easy to accomplish and then all you're doing is working to lose money.

I would not go the investing route if I was the OP.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's Motion to Dismiss patent infringement charges granted - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101210205849673

<comment><USER2> A little legal theory to give some context:

Lawsuits are formalized disputes by which those who have a fight with each other are given an opportunity to determine whether an alleged wrong was committed by one party against another and, if so, how it should be redressed.

The fight begins with formal notice about what your claims are, and these are subject to specific rules known in federal court as "federal rules of civil procedure" (counterparts exist in each state court as well).

Contrary to what most people think who have never been through a formal litigation, one does not just file a simple piece of paper and then show up before Judge Judy to testify as a witness and get an instant result. Rather, in federal court, a case is begun by the filing of a complaint that gives notice of the claims and then a formal process follows by which each party sued is given a right to respond in a formal way, ultimately culminating in the filing of an "answer" in which that party denies whatever allegations are disputed and also asserts special defenses (known as "affirmative defenses") that essentially say, "even if all that you say is true, I still win" (e.g., if the statute of limitations has run on what otherwise would be a valid claim). In any case, once an answer is filed, the material allegations in the complaint, coupled with the answer's denials of such allegations, then constitute the "triable issues" in the case. The parties are free to conduct (normally) extensive discovery concerning those issues, and that process can run a year or more in a typical case and cost the parties a lot of expense for things such as documents productions, interrogatory responses, deposition testimony, and the like. In time (usually a minimum of 12 to 18 months from the date of first filing), the case comes up for trial, at which time the trier of fact (judge or jury) hears the factual evidence, determines what is to be counted as creditable, and then applies the law to it to come to a formal judgment. That judgment often is "x committed some wrong and caused $xxx damages to y, and y is hereby awarded damages in the sum of $xxx" or it could reflect some other remedy.

In any case, my point is that this is a long, complicated, and expensive process. Therefore, the law imposes certain thresholds at inception that a party must meet in order to be allowed to proceed with its case beyond the filing stage. These traditionally are pretty easy thresholds to meet because the policy behind the law is to permit all valid claims to come to trial and not to subject them to early judge-ordered dismissals on technical grounds (the ease of normally meeting these threshold requirements is what causes institutional defendants to complain about how easy it is for them to be sued and harassed even if the claims are dubious). But, though minimal, threshold minimal pleading requirements do exist and, if a court determines that a complaint does not meet them, it has the power to order that the complaint be dismissed in whole or in part (that is, as to some but not all the claims).

The federal rules of civil procedure allow a pleader to assert any set of facts that constitutes a proper claim for relief. If the facts set forth in a complaint, on their face, do set forth such a claim, then the court has no power to dismiss any such claim (even if those facts are ultimately be proved to be untrue). Thus the procedural rules give a party that is sued the power to bring what is known as a motion to dismiss in order to attack a complaint on the technical grounds that is doesn't, on its face, set forth a proper claim for relief and the court must then assess the complaint (on its face only) to determine whether it does or does not in fact set forth "proper claims."

In determining what is a "proper claim," the law defines each claim as having essential elements and each of these must be properly pleaded in order to set forth a good claim. Traditionally, the level of detail required to satisfy the pleading requirements for each element of a claim is not too much. Therefore, if each element is properly pleaded, the court will simply deny the motion and this enables the complaining party to have a broad opportunity to engage in discovery and ultimately seek to move the case to trial, all at great expense to the parties sued.

These pleading rules went many years being so liberally construed in favor of letting cases survive preliminary challenges and move toward trial that a backlash eventually occurred, and this happened at the U.S. Supreme Court in the form of a couple of leading cases that wound up giving trial judges much greater ability to dismiss a case unless it set forth a lot more detail about what allegedly occurred than had theretofore been required if that claim were to be permitted to survive a motion to dismiss.

Now, with that long windup, here is what happened here: the Paul Allen entity sued Google for patent infringement and Google moved to dismiss the complaint on the grounds that it did not set forth proper claims for relief when tested by the standards of the recent Supreme Court cases tightening up the pleading requirements; the complainant said that it had set forth all the facts needed to define proper claims and asked the court to deny Google's motion so that the case might proceed through discovery and trial and argued, incidentally, that the tighter standards required by the Supreme Court for federal cases generally should not be applied to patent cases; the court agreed in all respects with Google and dismissed the claims in their entirety on grounds that they were too vaguely pleaded to set forth proper claims.

Since the rules in federal court are tilted to assure that all meritorious claims ultimately have their day in court, such a dismissal is done "with leave to amend," meaning that the plaintiff is given one or more opportunities to fix any deficiencies before a court can dismiss such claims "with prejudice" (meaning once and for all).

This was round one in the fight, and Google won it decisively. The rules are stacked against any defendant in such cases but Google does seem to do a brilliant job of exploiting the tools the law does afford defendants and, for the moment anyway, does have this patent troll on the run.

<comment><USER3> I can always count on learning more (and sometimes a lot!) about US law when I read any of your posts. Thank you for taking the time to explain complicated legal matters in layman's terms that I can understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one who does not understand what this actually means? Could somebody please provide a summary for the simple-minded / legally uneducated?

<comment><USER5> Google was sued without any details of where and how they actually infringe on the patents (which is often the case for blanket patent infringement claims -- sue everyone and see who settles). There is no double jeopardy or anything of the like, so they can just get more detailed and refile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Take that, patent trolls!

Sad to see Paul Allen associating his legacy with trolls and extortion strategies for profit.

<comment><USER7> Is it bad if the guy legitimately invented things, patented them, and they are infringed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google can obviously afford to handle this kind of case, but what resources are available for individuals or small businesses who can't afford going to court with a patent troll?

<comment><USER7> Few, but you won't be sued unless you are making serious money in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Might be useful to note (as per the article's title) that these are Paul Allen's patent infringement charges, not Oracle's.

</comment><comment><USER10> I missed it... :(

Forbidden You don't have permission to access /article.php on this server. Apache/2 Server at www.groklaw.net Port 80

</comment><comment><USER11> Does this mean Google won the suit?

<comment><USER7> No, Allen can file an amended complaint that satisfies the court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"A wise old owl sat in a Valley,

The more he saw, the less he believed,

The less he believed, the more he saw,

We never ask: what is the last straw?"_

\-- @taylorbuley in TC comments regarding something else, 2010</comment>


NSA guide to Writing Efficient Fortran (1972) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/tech_journals/writing_efficient_fortran.pdf

<comment><USER2> The NSA cared a lot about FORTRAN. Did I just learn something about the nature of code breaking, given FORTRAN's affinities?

"Originally developed by IBM at their campus in south San Jose, California in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, Fortran came to dominate this area of programming early on and has been in continual use for over half a century in computationally intensive areas such as numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, computational physics and computational chemistry."

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran></comment>


No Coding Skills. Many Competitors. Here's How I Make $10k/Month - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/no-code-many-competitors-heres-how-i-still-make-10k-mo-42a0fba013 <comment><USER2> I skimmed the page & the language style sets off buzzers & just think "yuck". It smells of get-rich-quick, dream-selling crap.</comment>


The Z Garbage Collector: An Introduction [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/zgc/attachments/slides/2211/export/events/attachments/zgc/slides/2211/ZGC_FOSDEM_2018.pdf <comment><USER2> Doesn't 42 bits of address space seem terribly shortsighted? I know most current x64 hardware can only address 48 bits of physical RAM, but at $dayjob we already own servers with 2TB of RAM.

Baking a 4TB limit into _new_ GC code seems... unwise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Curious how this compares performance-wise with Azul's approach.

<comment><USER4> Azul's should be faster as they use x86_64 PCID.

<comment><USER5> If they only had reasonable pricing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting enough it's the second public JVM project that I know off funded by Oracle that is not supporting solaris or sparc (anymore).

(Graal work for SPARC seemed to have stopped as well)

</comment><comment><USER7> So interestingly, they are storing extra metadata in the object pointers, which means no more compressed oops (ie 32 bit pointers). Curious what the effect of that on heap sizes is considering most JVMs run with <32gb heaps

<comment><USER8> I think if your heap is less than 32GB then this GC isn't for you in the first place - it's designed for really big heaps.

<comment><USER9> Is that true? Azul's similar GC was designed for large heaps, but it worked well with smaller heaps as well AFAIK.

<comment><USER8> The design documents say it's 'optimised for very large heaps'. 32GB isn't 'very large' these days.

<comment><USER10> It says: "Goals: Multi-terabyte heaps"

<comment><USER8> I don't understand do you think that contradicts me?

<comment><USER11> I think ysleepy was agreeing with you and adding a data point to the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems to be the same as what Red Hat is working on with Shenandoah. I don't understand how the goals differ and from a 1000 ft, incomplete view, the basic design seem similar too.

Is there anyone who can clarify?

<comment><USER13> From what I understand the goals are similar but the approaches are different.

\- Shenandoah uses Brooks-style forward pointers whereas ZGC uses colored pointers and off-heap forwarding tables.

\- Shenandoah could in theory run on Windows, AFAIK this is a non-goal for ZGC.

\- Shenandoah tries to return unused heap to the OS wheres currently the recommendation for ZGC seems to be -Xms == -Xmx. In addition ZGC tripple maps the heap which can lead to interesting challenges in resource usage accounting.

\- None of them are generational although Shenandoah allows for custom policies.

\- Both of them seem to disable biased locking by default. I would guess the latency for deoptimizing is simply too large.

\- Shenandoah supports pinning objects in JNI criticals without disabling the GC.

\- Somewhat unsurprisingly ZGC introduces several HotSpot latency optimizations that will also benefit Shenandoah (thread-local handshakes, concurrent reference processing, ...).

<comment><USER6> In November Shenandoah turned biased locking back on [1]. Otherwise super post.

[1] [http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/shenandoah- dev/2017-N...](http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/shenandoah- dev/2017-November/thread.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a link to the video presentation, that anyone can share?

<comment><USER15> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tShc0dyFtgw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tShc0dyFtgw)</comment></comment>


The Soviet Union Is Gone, but It's Still Collapsing - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/22/the-unlearned-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/#browder <comment><USER2> I kept looking for a pony in this pile, but I didn't find one. No new facts, ending with a call to, well... non-action or at least no mentioned action, just a hollow call. I can't find the citation, but I've read a much better article this week that pointed out that 75% of Russian GNP is now government authored; that just doesn't fit the kleptocracy narrative of an economy being handed to a private mafia. (Up from less than 40% a decade or more ago.) Which directly contradicts the standard narrative echoed by this fluff article, of private ownership run wild, sucking all the economic activity away from the state toward individual owners. This data point suggests a very different story: that a concerted effort by a group - not a single individual - is being made to reconstruct a Soviet Union 2.0 that works somewhat better than Communism 1.0 and isn't visibly tied to Marxist ideals - communism with lowered expectations, as it were.</comment>


The Wrong Inequality - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/opinion/brooks-the-wrong-inequality.html?_r=2&ref=opinion <comment><USER2> The solution is not to get ditch diggers to go to college, but to respect ditch diggers. Our society, and Brooks, has respect for a person that increases exponentially with the distance between that person and productive physical work.

The world cannot function solely on the fruits of debates and negotiations between middlemen. Ditch diggers have to exist. What we have to determine is if we will continually have the debate between whether they will be guaranteed to be paid enough to live, or whether the market determines that we should reduce their living conditions and liberties in order to bring their cost to a rate that keeps certain products and businesses viable.

<comment><USER3> Well put.

I would also argue that we need measures of human progress other than productivity per person. For one example, with each generation pay ditch diggers more to do less work, and by that standard we are woefully regressing.

Someone posted this the other day, which I'd never read before but I thought was quite an eloquent argument for the same. Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness: <http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html>

<comment><USER4> You're getting it all mixed up. The extra cost of hiring a single ditch digger to do the job is the forgone cost of letting a dude with a giant earth-mover handle the job.

You're implying that we're becoming less productive, that's totally untrue. The same argument has been made about the motor vehicle, cotton gin, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't really a new issue. Inequity between classes, races, genders, religions (and lack of), sexuality and upbringing has existed for at least as long as economic and cultural analysis has. There is a more fundamental question which society has avoided answering: how do you pay people by merit when some people's work is devoid of merit. Many comedian have responded with "soylent green" style answers which is appalling but more of an answer than most people can provide (the usual response is, "I don't know").

If you have a society of winners where winners take all, what happens to the losers? What do the hundred million or so people who aren't rockstars of their domain do?

<comment><USER6> More concerning, what happens to the hundreds of millions of people who don't have a domain to even be (or not be) a rockstar in? When unskilled labor available outstrips demand for unskilled labor, we start to see college diplomas as a requirement for filling a position as a Starbucks Barista.

My initial reaction to the article was dismissive, but the more I think about it, the bigger the problem seems like it will be by the time it is brought into the public eye. Is a 'bottom 50%er' version of Occupy WallStreet something we could end up seeing within our lifetimes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even the focus on "the 1%" is misleading, because the group is far from homogenous.

There's a mountain of difference between, say, a doctor earning $400,000 and a trader earning north of $10 million. The outsized gains in the past 30 years have been made by the folks in the latter category. Your typical doctor or lawyer has always done well for himself; this is no great surprise. But he's never been yachts-and-mansions wealthy, and he's no closer to that mark today than he was decades ago. Rockstar doctors and lawyers, occasionally. But doctors and lawyers on average, no.

The real focus should be on the financial sector, where one needn't be a rockstar to earn more in a single year than most white collar professionals earn in ten. The finance industry has expanded rapidly in recent decades, occupying a larger and larger slice of the US economy, and baking more and more volatility into the pie. That many of its players are mega-rich is merely a symptom. The real issue is that finance is so powerful and so omnipresent.

There is a place for a healthy financial sector in a modern economy. But an economy can't thrive on "services" alone -- a fact the US is learning the hard way, after decades of being told the contrary by banks and consultancies.

<comment><USER8> it's not just financial sector. there are execs, directors, VPs and such in powerful organizations getting paid millions in many industries including:

Network and Other Communications Equipment Internet Services and Retailing Pharmaceuticals Medical Products and Equipment Railroads Financial Data Services Mining, Crude-Oil production Securities Oil and Gas Equipment, Services Scientific, Photographic, and Control Equipment Household and Personal Products Utilities: Gas and Electric Aerospace and Defense Food Services Industrial Machinery Food Consumer Products Electronics, Electrical Equipment Commercial Banks Telecommunications Chemicals Construction and Farm Machinery Insurance: Life, Health (stock) Information Technology Services Computers, Office Equipment Metals

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dean Baker has a good response to this article with actual data. [http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david- bro...](http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks- complains-that-he-cant-get-access-to-inequality-data)

</comment><comment><USER10> "If your ultimate goal is to reduce inequality, then you should be furious at the doctors, bankers and C.E.O.'s. If your goal is to expand opportunity, then you have a much bigger and different agenda."

hmm..What if I want to reduce inequality && expand opportunity? What if you can't fix red without tackling blue and vice versa? Should this combined perspective be called purple inequality?

</comment><comment><USER11> I disagree. It's impossible to have a nation of 100% college graduates. And it doesn't make any sense, either. Just like it doesn't make sense how much the 'top' 1% are making.

<comment><USER12> No-one is suggesting that everyone should graduate college. What Brooks is saying is that those who don't have a university degree have dramatically worse lives than they used to. There is a growing working-poor underclass, and Brooks correctly states that their plight is a more important problem than that of the 1%.

<comment><USER13> I think they are two sides to the same coin. You can't tackle red inequality without looking at blue inequality. As someone else put it, purple inequality. What happens when a CEO screws up? Blue inequality they get some sort of parachute and bonus regardless of the company tanking, and red inequality people are laid off, fired, don't get raises, or sometimes receive pay cuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article is a great example of misdirection, summed up neatly in this quote:

 _That's because the liberal arts majors like to express their disdain for the shallow business and finance majors who make all the money._

Nonsense. The 1% aren't there because they are exceptionally savvy and went to business school, they're mostly there because they were born into wealthy social networks. The implication of the article is that the other 99% chose their lot, and that if only we all went to college and studied a lucrative craft, we'd all be wealthy. All the while he lauds college grads and their wealthier lifestyle, Brooks incredibly ignores the possibility that maybe wealthy people are more likely to go to college in the first place. Maybe his 'Red Inequality' is just more 'Blue Inequality' after all.

'Red Inequality?' More like red herring.

<comment><USER15> Wow. You just expressed disdain for the 1% because their worth is due to the shallow reason that they were born into wealthy social networks. Are you a liberal arts major?

<comment><USER14> Of course not---I'm a member of the 1%. Engineering and law. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now if only we could have started working on the education problem 10 years ago (and encouraged STEM instead of casting star students as nerds)...

Hindsight being 20/20 and all

</comment><comment><USER17> > These two forms of inequality exist in modern America. They are related but > different. Over the past few months, attention has shifted almost > exclusively to Blue Inequality.

It's like we re-discover the conflict between the "small" bourgeoisie and the proletariat every 15-20 years since the July Revolution (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution>) .

</comment><comment><USER18> Thank you NYT for this insight.

It is easy to put blame purely at The Banker Bonus. Fixing education and providing equal opportunity plus social mobility is a continous struggle. A lot of complex open issues.

</comment><comment><USER19> Problem is, non-graduates already feel an incredible competition from Asian workers, and this brings the market value of their work way down. Graduates not as much - at least for now.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd appreciate named prefixes for these news/links, eg. "David Brooks: The Wrong Inequality".</comment>


Ask HN: Can a technicial co-founder leave without guilt? - <AUTHOR> Obviously bearing any large conflict between co-founders, can a technical co-founder leave without having a large amount of guilt over their heads?
My wife and I recently discovered we are going to be having another child. Our first child was born when we were both employed for larger companies. However since then I have left a company I was working for to start my own, along with my partners. As well through the course of raising our first, my wife shifted into working part time. Being honest with ourselves and the time commitments required for raising another child, ultimately my wife is looking to stay home and raise our kids until they are of school age.
What this ultimately means is we are going to have to fall onto my income solely along with health insurance. (We live in the US for context.) Our startup has been in operation for a few years; entirely self-funded which has its pros and cons. I have in the past had to skip a paycheck to make sure our employees get paid when there is a lull in sales. It's not frequent but for a sole-income household it makes a huge impact.
I don't want to go to our board with demanding more money for what ultimately isn't the businesses problem. I have several options on the table as far as working for a larger corporation with a bit more stability and pay.
My largest concern is the guilt I feel regarding this decision. My family is always my top priority but I've also come to know my partners very well and can't help but feel my absence and need for replacement will have a huge impact on the future of the business.
Advice? <comment><USER2> You don't really have too much of a choice, so what's the point in feeling guilty? It doesn't help anybody.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Use for Spare Domain Names - <AUTHOR>

So I've accumulated quite the portfolio of worthless domain names. They're all top level domains so I suppose they aren't worthless - but I can't sell them for anything.
I'm trying to determine the best use for these names. Right now I have many of them pointing to my active website(s).
If I got a few generic keyword related articles together, built a few pages and give myself back links from some of these domains, would that be a bad thing? Would adsense get rid of me?
PS I know there was a similar ask HN thread posted about what you're doing with your unused domain names, but I'm having a hard time using google or searchyc to locate it. <comment><AUTHOR> I really posted this with the hopes of having some discussion about the validity of slapping together a few generic websites to squat on these domains that I own and build some back links to some other sites.

Does any one have any feedback to that degree, good or bad?

</comment><comment><USER2> You could list them here and see if anyone else could use them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen the trade domains threads here on HN. The domains I have are all niche related so I really don't think there'd be any interest.

<comment><USER3> Try us. I have a collection of names as well..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a few as well. I posted them on Twitter as a "free giveaway" but with a catch - Justify the domain name with a good app and take it :)

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.idlingdomains.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. I actually already had that site open in the next tab over from this thread. Good stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> May as well list them here. Could find a taker.</comment>


Why Can't Europe Do Tech? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-16/inside-europe-s-struggle-to-build-a-truly-global-tech-giant <comment><USER2> I loled hard at "Americans do better beer now"</comment>


Ask HN: I want to learn how to prototype hardware. Where do I start? - <AUTHOR> I'm an iOS developer. I'm decent and have launched a couple of apps. With bluetooth LE and multipeer connectivity, I am very interested in learning about building a hardware device that pairs with my iPhone. Where can I go to learn more about prototyping? <comment><USER2> _This wasn 't too bad of a read:_

[http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Third- Editi...](http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Third- Edition/dp/0123860016)

 _But, if you 're not talking discrete components and just want something to act as more of a controller, these boards are pretty friendly:_

[http://beagleboard.org/](http://beagleboard.org/) (slightly more advanced embedded controller)

[http://arduino.cc/](http://arduino.cc/) (pretty basic and awesome community)

[http://www.raspberrypi.org/](http://www.raspberrypi.org/) (never played with one, but another popular option)

 _Read:_

[http://www.josetteorama.com/hardware-hacking-for-ios- program...](http://www.josetteorama.com/hardware-hacking-for-ios-programmers/)

[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/featuredarticles/Ext...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/featuredarticles/ExternalAccessoryPT/Introduction/Introduction.html)

You might want to come out to a _SFHN event_ ([https://www.facebook.com/groups/gosfhn/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/gosfhn/))

and _Hackendo_ ([http://hackendo.techendo.co/](http://hackendo.techendo.co/))

</comment><comment><USER3> If you stick with digital hardware and interfaces, the materials everyone else has suggested are pretty useful. The TI MSP430 is a nice, cheap microcontroller and they offer something called a "Launchpad" which used to sell for $4.30. It is one of the workhorses of engineering design, and there are legions of websites about it.

Check out sparkfun.com for parts. They have lots of stuff and most of what they sell is accessible to the programmer type. They will have micros and BLE components and whatever else you may be interested in, and a bunch of nonprofessionals are using them and talking to each other about how to use them.

You can probably find an EE friend who would work with you if you're good. In that case you might be able to combine strengths and build something awesome. I know you want to prototype right now but if you get to a "good idea" you'll want someone who knows how to build hardware.

<comment><USER4> The MSP430 Launchpads are great (we give them away at school events). Also, if you're interested in the MSP430 architecture, we've got one online for you to play with:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My community college offers electronics courses. I've taken only one to date but I feel like it really helped me learn basic EE skills better than a book or online tutorial did. It also helps that they have a proper space setup to tinker and a budget to hand out basic components. My suggestion would be to see if your local CC does the same.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just got into Bluetooth LE as an Android developer. My school background is in embedded devices, so I wanted to see what's out there that I can program on the device side, and then connect to the phone.

There are two comparable offerings for Bluetooth LE chips (are there others? let me know): the Texas Instruments CC2541, and the Nordic Semi nRF51822. They can be purchased as development kits for $100, but the chips only cost $2-3 in larger quantities, so you could take something based on them to production without the cost being prohibitive.

I like the TI SensorTag (CC2541 based, $25). It comes with several sensors a coin cell battery, and iOS sample code, which is neat. [http://www.ti.com/tool/cc2541dk-sensor](http://www.ti.com/tool/cc2541dk- sensor)

On the other hand, if you wanted to program the bluetooth device itself, the CC2541 isn't ideal. It's based on the 8-bit Intel 8051 micro controller, and TI's radio libraries only work with the very expensive and crappy IAR tool set. I bought their development kit for $100 before realizing that it's worthless without the $3000 IAR IDE :|

The Nordic Semi nRF51822 development kit is much better. Their chip is based on the ARM Cortex M0, so you get a tiny 32-bit processor. It comes with a programmable USB dongle that can be used right away, as well as a J-Link Lite CortexM-9, which can download code and do full GDB debugging on the device. You may need to be comfortable looking at schematics to figure out the other two included demo boards, however. [http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/Bluetooth-R-low- energ...](http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/Bluetooth-R-low- energy/nRF51822-Development-Kit)

If anyone knows of any other Bluetooth LE chip offerings, please let me know (I've read that Broadcom has 'announced' several chips, but I didn't see anything concrete that's shipping at the moment). The Bluegiga modules are too integrated for me, and too expensive to sprinkle them around the house for random sensing/controlling projects, but they may be easier to get started with as well.

<comment><USER7> Remember, too, that another recent iOS 7 device can also run as a BTLE "client" and pair: that's how testing iBeacons works.

You can pick up an iPod Touch and write an app for it that uses the Touch's sensors to do what your custom hardware could do, to get further than you might if you had to start from hardware alone. Additionally, integrating new sensors into the Touch could be done more simply via the headphone jack using an Arduino: [http://www.creativedistraction.com/demos/sensor-data-to- ipho...](http://www.creativedistraction.com/demos/sensor-data-to-iphone- through-the-headphone-jack-using-arduino/) or using Project HiJack: [http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/projects/hijack/](http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/projects/hijack/)

Once you've got a version using an iPod Touch and a custom sensor working, you'd have a complete test case and prototype to develop original hardware against.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't aware of iBeacon, thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> OReilly has a book "Building iPhone and iPad Electronic Projects Real-World Arduino, Sensor, and Bluetooth Low Energy Apps in techBASIC" [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920029281.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920029281.do)

you can learn about techBASIC at [http://www.byteworks.us/Byte_Works/techBASIC.html](http://www.byteworks.us/Byte_Works/techBASIC.html)

they claim on their website that techBASIC apps can be sold through Apple.

</comment><comment><USER9> Other people have given you this advice already: Play around with an arduino for a while until you get comfortable with the hardware/software interface. If you're looking to incorporate sensors, get a few breakout boards from sparkfun (doesn't really matter what sensors) - one that you read as a voltage level from the ADC (analog to digital converter), and one that uses I2C, SPI, or another serial interface.

On the Bluetooth LE side, you CAN get a shield that sits on top of your Arduino, but it'll be bulky and power hungry. There's a company called Bluegiga that makes a BLE stack called the BLE112. Basically, it's an arduino and a BLE module in a package the size of a postage stamp. Not something you'd want to go into production with (doesn't get much below $15, regardless of quantity), but you can run it off of a coin cell battery for years, and it's got all the serial and analog interfaces you'd expect. You can get a breakout board for around $50 assembled - google 'ble112 breakout inmojo'.

Good luck! Build cool stuff.

</comment><comment><USER10> Arduino is easy to start with and can go pretty far. If you are specifically interested in Bluetooth LE, there are a couple of BLE prototyping board that are Arduino-compatible: \- [http://bleduino.cc](http://bleduino.cc) \- [http://www.rfduino.com](http://www.rfduino.com) \- [http://redbearlab.com/blemini/](http://redbearlab.com/blemini/)

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://learn.adafruit.com/](http://learn.adafruit.com/)

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

There you go!

</comment><comment><USER12> I am shocked that no one has recommended Contextual Electronics yet.

Dave Jones runs the best EE video blog on YouTube (EEVBlog), which also has an excellent forum associated with it. He co-hosts an EE podcast called the Amp Hour with Chris Gammell. Chris Gammell has been putting together a video course on learning how to make hardware for about 6 months now, and session 1A starts tomorrow (the 20th). I highly recommend you sign up (I did!). Check out some of his YouTube videos to see if you think you'd like it (search for Contextual Electronics).

</comment><comment><USER13> I love the Teensy: [http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensy31.html](http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensy31.html) \- same environment, but quite a bit more power than an Arduino.

</comment><comment><USER14> Mentioned one other place here, but I'm running class called Contextual Electronics. You can choose your level of involvement. It covers PCB design and electronics design principles, leading up to building this: contextualelectronics.com/the-benchbudee/

So I suppose it depends about your definition of prototyping. If you want to do breadboarding stuff, a lot of the other suggestions on here are good: start with Fritzing -> Get an Arduino -> check out the tutorials from Adafruit/Sparkfun -> Dig in more with EEVblog and AfroTechMods

But then after that, if you want to design/build your own hardware, I recommend my program (duh) or checking out other PCB type stuff from Jeremy Blum using EAGLE ([http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2419BD818ADB11E1](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2419BD818ADB11E1)) or Fedevel academy ([http://www.fedevel.com/](http://www.fedevel.com/))

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER15> If your city has one, I've found Hackerspaces are a great way to find a community to learn from for this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've found [http://fritzing.org/home/](http://fritzing.org/home/) really useful.

</comment><comment><USER17> edX Embedded Systems course starts this week [Jan 22].

[https://www.edx.org/course/utaustinx/utaustinx- ut-6-01x-embe...](https://www.edx.org/course/utaustinx/utaustinx- ut-6-01x-embedded-systems-1172)

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog](http://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog) \- this Aussie has some pretty cool tutorial videos/community. He talks on a pretty high level so it can be hard to follow but I prefer that.

[http://www.youtube.com/user/jeriellsworth](http://www.youtube.com/user/jeriellsworth) \- she hasn't made much recently due to here kickstarter VR project. Good explanations though.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a similar background to yours. I program Java professionally and have iOS and web apps as side projects.

I think the first three website you may want to go to for getting familiar with the quick prototyping platforms like Arduino and Beaglebone are:

(1) [http://learn.adafruit.com](http://learn.adafruit.com) (2) [https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials](https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials) (3) [http://bildr.org/](http://bildr.org/)

The advantage of (1) and (2) is you can quickly order parts right from their site without having to search them at different places yourself. If your goal is to eventually have a PCB house make the board, you may want to check out ladyada's comprehensive review on PCB manufacturer at [http://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.html](http://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.html). Also Sparkfun has a series of very insightful tutorials on SMD soldering. For (3) I personally highly recommend it for its component oriented tutorials even though it doesn't seem to add new articles anymore.

I think the quickest way to get yourself the skills is to set a goal. Create a wish list of functions that the device must have. Then read or watch only the relevant tutorials. If you have a specific goal, then the above mentioned websites should work very well for you.

To share my experience, I was able to design my own schematic and board on KiCAD, program the firmware, and have the PCB factory make a fully functional prototype that works with iPhone, with these resources in 24 weekends.

</comment><comment><USER16> [http://fritzing.org/home/](http://fritzing.org/home/) I've found extremely useful.

</comment><comment><USER20> Really good course to get into hardware prototyping: [https://www.edx.org/course/utaustinx/utaustinx- ut-6-01x-embe...](https://www.edx.org/course/utaustinx/utaustinx- ut-6-01x-embedded-systems-1172)

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://circuithub.com/explore](https://circuithub.com/explore) (disclaimer - i co-founded CircuitHub)

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

</comment><comment><USER22> Pairing with an iPhone may be an issue for anything which is not an audio device. Apple requires all non-audio devices to have certain 'authentication' hardware which is only available to MFi-licensed developers. My information may be out of date, but please do check this out before you invest too much effort in this, as it may be very difficult. I went through MFi, but ended up developing for Android.

<comment><USER23> As you guessed, this information is out of date. Bluetooth LE hardware doesn't require MFi certification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Get an Arduino and a Bluetooth shield. <$100, let's you prototype away. Not the tiniest platform around, but still fits in a roomy pocket.

</comment><comment><USER25> You might be interested in "Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering" and related "Laboratory" course that start today on Coursera:

[https://www.coursera.org/course/eefun](https://www.coursera.org/course/eefun)

[https://www.coursera.org/course/eefunlab](https://www.coursera.org/course/eefunlab)

<comment><USER26> It looks a little late to start the lab on this round. You have to order equipment, which takes a while to arrive. And you have to use Matlab, and they give you a license which only lasts until the course ends. They say Octave won't work.

<comment><USER25> Laboratory starts 27th and the kit arrived in 1 week, so there is a good chance. The videos were posted just today, I haven't started either. The kit costs more if you are from EU. If you start this week you should be alright. I don't plan to do anything until Friday anyway. Also laboratory is not required for first course so you can just jump in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would recommend the Aduino forums [http://forum.arduino.cc/](http://forum.arduino.cc/)

If what something even smaller you can try out the TinyCircuits that I work for: [http://tiny-circuits.com/](http://tiny-circuits.com/)

Those use the same hardware as an Arduino uno. calvinthedestroyer

</comment><comment><USER28> Take a look at [http://mbed.org/](http://mbed.org/)

The supported chips are pretty powerful and a Bluetooth dongle is available.

The development boards start at about $12 but can go up to $100. The bare chips from NXP themselves are $6.

The LandTiger board even has a 320x240 pixel LCD touch screen display and is < $100.

Amazing really.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd say look into TI's sensor tag. [http://www.ti.com/tool/cc2541dk- sensor](http://www.ti.com/tool/cc2541dk-sensor)

I went to Codemash this year and a gentleman had some interesting BluetoothLE demos on Android.

</comment><comment><USER30> [http://123d.circuits.io/](http://123d.circuits.io/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Do a YouTube search on afrotechmods. The person who makes those videos is simply amazing. I have learned a tremendous amount.

I'd also recommend getting an Arduino and building projects with it.</comment>


Eden Alexander, Crowd Funding, and Discrimination Against Sex Workers - <AUTHOR> http://therumpus.net/2014/05/eden-alexander-crowd-funding-and-discrimination-against-sex-workers/

<comment><AUTHOR> This sounds like it's related to Operation Choke Point. Basically, the DOJ is looking into whether banks are ignoring high fraud industries, like payday lenders. So the banks have been also preemptively purging all accounts that are porn related, since they have a high fraud rate.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7670838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7670838) [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/16/o...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/16/operation- choke-point-the-battle-over-financial-data-between-the-government-and-banks/)

</comment><comment><USER2> A dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7761346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7761346). Not sure which is the better article, so we'll go with the earlier one (which also happens to have more upvotes).</comment>


Orbital Sciences Antares Launch at 5PM EDT Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/missions/antares.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Coverage from Ars: [http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/nasas-wallops- flight-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/nasas-wallops-flight- facility-hosts-test-of-new-commercial-rocket/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Good video on NASA TV: <http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-media-channel></comment>


Microsoft homepage: 524 Errors, 480 warning(s) - <AUTHOR>

Inspired by this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9711429 today, just for fun.
https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=microsoft.com 524 errors, 480 warnings
https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=apple.com 1 Error, 8 warning(s)
https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=google.com 28 Errors, 5 warning(s)
EDIT: Fixed space <comment><USER2> I guess most web developers could advertise their web services "Exceeds Microsoft Standards!"</comment>