Netflix no longer issuing new API keys - <AUTHOR> http://developer.netflix.com/blog/read/Changes_to_the_Public_API_Program <comment><USER2> It's a shame. But having watched a few companies shut down APIs (including my own work at Google) I've learned the hard way that unless an API is central to a company's business success, it's eventually going to become a business problem.

<comment><USER3> Don't build a business on anything that doesn't cost you money.

<comment><USER4> Or better, don't build a business that depends on an irreplaceable product/company.

<comment><USER5> I believe this is the appropriate concern. If your business would critically fail with no alternatives should a supplier back out you have a major problem, this same lesson applies to most any business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't surprise me, but it does make me sad because I think it's a short-sighted move that will hurt Netflix in the long run.

Full disclosure: my side-project (which I have woefully neglected of late: <http://moviepresto.com>) uses the Netflix API to determine if a movie is available on Netflix Instant or as a disc rental and then links accordingly. The title, description, basic info, and background image come from themoviedb.org. Personally, I'd prefer for my "what do I want to watch tonight?" decision start with the set of everything that's been released and then follow to "where is that available?", instead of starting with "what is available to watch on platform X?". My cynical side tells me that Netflix doesn't just want to be the center of the online streaming universe; they want to BE the universe.

Even more sadly, I think Netflix won't even realize what they are missing out on: potential user interface improvements that they could incorporate into their own products, ideas for integration they never would've thought of, potential great hires, etc.

<comment><USER7> <http://www.canistream.it/> appears to do exactly that 'what do I want to watch and where is it' flow. I just installed the app and I love it.

<comment><USER6> Agreed! I wasn't aware of canistream.it until reading this thread and I'm very impressed with it.

I think if I was aware of that site when I started moviepresto, I wouldn't have built it. But, then again, I wouldn't have learned the things I learned in the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In what world can they describe a complete discontinuation of their developer platform as a change in policy?

<comment><USER9> "They are also designed to allow us to continue to offer the public API program in a way that aligns with our goals."

This might be my new favorite example of corporate doublespeak.

<comment><USER10> They should have said our public api is turning private.

This might be a twitter client like third party problem, where externally the content is displayed better and drives too many away from it directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems like a strategy these days. Start out by giving out API's to get as many other companies to use it and therefore promote your service, then when you're big enough and don't think they are needed anymore, cut them off.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure this is the case for Netflix, I think the answer is much simpler : very few people use it and no meaningful project came out of it in the last few years.

Also Netflix will eventually sell or shut down its dvd business. What will remain is a relatively small library of titles available on streaming...

<comment><USER13> If the Android app NetQ uses it, then I'd say that is meaningful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Crap...

Just today I was talking with someone about integrating Netflix data in to their app, and I almost registered for an API key, but waited until I got home. Then I stopped off, got home late, did some work, and now this. :/

I guess if this is how they run it, then they might revoke access to then- current API-key holders in the future with little warning anyway...

</comment><comment><USER15> If anyone has ever bothered looking at any Netflix talks / slideshares [1] about APIs, they would have surely seen the various graphs detailing how their API usage started and grew.

TL:DR 3rd party usage of the APIs used to be big, but then became pretty much a statistical irrelevance compared to usage by Netflix's own software / tv apps / etc.

So it would seem the business case to keep developing a 3rd party friendly API is not really there anymore.

[1] [http://www.slideshare.net/danieljacobson/techniques-for- scal...](http://www.slideshare.net/danieljacobson/techniques-for-scaling-the- netflix-api-qcon-sf)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think of APIs as open-source business development, and unless companies get a lot of value out of their apis, they shut them down for the same reason they shut down BD departments: They aren't providing any value.

</comment><comment><USER17> My best guess: this is to lock out any additional competitors in the set-top game so they can resurrect a Netflix branded set-top. Netflix streaming alongside netflix-vended rentals? I can see it happening.

<comment><USER18> Is there really any value in a Netflix branded set-top? Every video game console plays Netflix, the new generation of consoles is coming out soon, and a bunch of TVs have Netflix baked in.

<comment><USER19> I think there was a story recently about how Netflix encodes each video multiple times for the various boxes and television sets. If they had their own box they could be more in control of at least one of those encoding formats.

<comment><USER20> <http://gigaom.com/2012/12/18/netflix-encoding/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Netflix forums have been dead for years now... So it is not a surprise. But still I am sad to see the oData catalog shutting down which mean that my 4 stars iOS/Android/Kindle app will have to be removed from their respective stores.

It is always a trade off when you are relying on API: on one side you can focus solely on the project core values knowing that the underlying data will be provided, on the other side if you build everything including what an API provides you are ending building up a different business.

</comment><comment><USER22> What is the coolest thing to come out of Netflix's API?

<comment><USER23> I'm _guessing_ (and I'll admit I don't know this for sure, feel free to correct me if you do!) that <http://instantwatcher.com/> uses it, which is a wonderful data-heavy interface for finding stuff to watch on Netflix Instant. It's much faster and more informative than Netflix's kind of shitty browsing experience.

<comment><USER24> That'd be my guess too. One of my never executed pet projects was a service that aggregated all of the streaming providers libraries and let me quickly filter between genre, provider and "magic" looking for something I'd wanna watch. Most of the other services don't seem to have netflix level APIs, so it would have taken some trickery to get something approaching a comprehensive catalog for them...

<comment><USER25> I built <http://streamjoy.tv> as an abstraction layer above netflix, itunes and amazon and I will attest it took quite some trickery to get something approaching a comprehensive catalog. Even things that should have been simple like using the main python library for Amazon's product api was not simple because I had to rewrite sections of the library that dealt with api throttling limits.

There are gaps in the APIs and though they can be dealt with, it was not always easy or straightforward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I use the OData interface to power streamingcriterions.com, which is totally niche but still get a couple hundred hits a day. I built it to scratch my own itch, but I guess it'll stop working pretty shortly. Bummer.

<comment><USER27> Had a similar project based on OData called qwikstant.com, by no means a hit, but still trafficked. It's depressing to have to shutter it.. As I was developing I did notice that the OData DB was always slightly behind and the api forums were a ghost town - guess I should have seen it coming, but I had an itch. Got burned when google shut off services before as well, pretty sure I'm finished with free corporate APIs at this point, experimentation and one- offs aside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like something they were forced to do in a contract with a studio

</comment><comment><USER29> Never build a business that depends on an api.

<comment><USER30> There are a lot of different types of APIs (partner, SaaS, internal/mobile, infrastructure, etc), many of which you can use as a part of building a business.

Never build a business freeloading off another business. The social and consumer API providers are realizing that their APIs don't drive value to their core business objectives (selling subscriptions or ads). APIs are a means to an end. The end has to benefit both sides. Don't blame the means for faulty ends.

<comment><USER31> There's two very different kinds of APIs.

One is a service, the "aS" in PaaS, SaaS, and many others, where what you are getting is programmatic access to the thing people want to sell you anyways. A service might be very valuable, but it's probably replaceable. If someone is geolocating IPs for you, hosting images for you, handling blog comments for you, this is all stuff someone else could do for you if your first-choice API turns into yet another /dev/null.

The other kind of API is access to specific content and/or networks. This is a whole different ball of wax, and I would be wary of doing anything significant with an API that is only valuable because of the value of the data that is coming over it. You have to ask yourself very carefully why they are giving you access. Most likely it is because they think you will drive growth to them. Once that motivation is gone because they have reached scale, they will stop treating you as valuable, and start to see all the value you generate as value that is not being sent their way: they will start rent-seeking.

Basically, ask yourself: if some API that you use were to close up shop, would your company no longer have an existential purpose? If you want to give people directions to a brick-and-mortar store, and Google Maps closed itself off tomorrow, would your company cease to exist? Hopefully the answer is no, you would just have to spend some resources and switch to someone else or build it yourself.</comment></comment></comment>


Yuval Noah Harari on what the year 2050 has in store for humankind - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/yuval-noah-harari-extract-21-lessons-for-the-21st-century <comment><AUTHOR> "Forget programming - the best skill to teach children is reinvention."

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a platitude. A person can't reinvent themselves without many years of schooling. People have been beating the education drum as a path to salvation for as long as I can remember. Perhaps he's talking about reinventing the economy, which is done by businesses with lots of capital and massive failure rates. In either case he's not positing anything new or even all that useful. Just lamenting the new normal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree, he is making some interesting points under point 3. I think the though here is more about how to prepare for coming future and not really about what may actually happen. Its more real than predicting flying cars and human leaving for 200+ years.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: We built a thing in Google Scripts that audits your calendar every week - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vihyV1lnO-aNrt20nZexCufaX4Gtl6D0yE03E5PwGfk/copy <comment><USER2> Really like the premise of this! But, as an individual contributor with hiring / leadership / planning responsibilities, I found that a lot of my highest priority work actually happens in the time between my calendar events.

The structure of this tool makes me think there should be a 1:1 mapping of hours worked to calendar events. Maybe it's a better fit for someone with the "manager's schedule" [1], or maybe you all do a better job of blocking out time for individual work on your calendars?

I see a lot of value in a tool like this though! The calendar rebalancing I frequently find myself doing is grouping like meetings (stacking interviews back to back) and maximizing the duration of meeting-free blocks of time (putting as many meetings on Monday as possible to free up later days in the week). If this could happen without me thinking about it I'd love it!

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Modo_!

This is definitely oriented a bit more around "manager's schedule" (we love that PG post too and are building Reclaim with the manager in mind) and the idea that in addition to the "in-between" time you mention (i.e., "Working", "Focus Time", etc.) managers tend to need high-quality meetings and events that serve their priorities.

Per your point, you could definitely map "working" or "blocked out" time to priorities. Doesn't have to be a meeting, but by having your free time actually represent a concrete objective, we've found it makes it less interruptible by your peers.

Paul Monteiro has a great post about this concept of mapping events -- regardless of whether they're meetings or not -- here ([https://medium.com/@monteiro/the-chokehold-of- calendars-f70b...](https://medium.com/@monteiro/the-chokehold-of- calendars-f70bb9221b36)) and we did our own take on it here ([https://blog.reclaimai.com/posts/2019-07-16-is-a-busy- calend...](https://blog.reclaimai.com/posts/2019-07-16-is-a-busy-calendar- bad/)).

Thanks much for commenting and providing feedback!

Henry

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi folks,

As a super early version of our product (reclaimai.com), we put together a Google Script that will dump out your upcoming week of calendar events into a spreadsheet and gives you tools for mapping how much time you're spending on your top priorities each week. It's been a great weekly planning ritual for us over the years. We'd love feedback on the approach and -- of course -- if you're interested in Reclaim, give us a shout.

Thx! Henry and Patrick</comment>


The Top 20 Reasons Why Startups Fail [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbinsights.com/research-reports/The-20-Reasons-Startups-Fail.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Happen to be watching a video by Bill Gross who studied 200 startups and he said the top reason they fail is timing, either the idea is too early or too late.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZS- NCSJ9Zo&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZS- NCSJ9Zo&feature=youtu.be&list=UUx9hUCJQpWfFzUC0ENJi1Mg)

An awful lot has been figured out since the nineties when I did my last startup. But the 'experts' still disagree on some pretty big things.</comment>


Youtube adds Omnisio-like annotations to video - <AUTHOR> http://uk.youtube.com/t/annotations_about

<comment><USER2> meh I didn't like annotations on Omnisio. The slide syncing was gold though.</comment>


New Promo Codes for my updated app (a visual timer) - <AUTHOR>

Codes: HF4LJRWMNRFE LYYT3YRPXWLY WK3NFE4KJRPF FTPT9NM3TFH7 HW7JLFRYRNE7
App is here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tico-timer/id792953890?ls=1&mt=8
Let me know if you claim a code and what you think of the app :) <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone?</comment>


Pioneer's Legato Link Conversion DAC Technology - <AUTHOR> http://oyvind.servehttp.com/cd-spillere1.htm <comment><AUTHOR> This long, Web 1.0 style page also has information about this type of technique.

[http://www.soundfountain.com/amb/cd25years.html](http://www.soundfountain.com/amb/cd25years.html)</comment>


Controlling Mazda RX-8 from your iPhone/iPod touch - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekmyride.org/wiki/index.php/Jon%27s_RX-8

<comment><USER2> Cool, but I was so waiting for him to start driving in circles like in "Tomorrow Never Dies"...

</comment><comment><USER3> "I have an RFID tag surgically implanted in my left arm so I can unlock and start the car simply by putting my arm near the window." Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER4> We use alix and Soekris boards for all kind of nuts and bolts networking and automation around here. The alix is from switzerland and hard to get hold of but if you're in the usa and want to get into this, the soekris is easy to get and use. They are full X86 computers that can run standard distros off compact flash and only require about 5 watts.

Get them right from the source in California at www.soekris.com. Soren and crew are great guys as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great writeup though the title mislead me, I totally expected a RX-8 Driving around..

But very cool!

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool hack. I wonder if he can adjust the timing and fuel mixtures on the fly or if he is just doing the data acquisition to the db?

<comment><USER7> Pretty sure he can't - the ECU in the RX8 is encrypted in a way that hasn't been broken yet :(</comment></comment>


Is mathematics the language of the universe? - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/02/08/a_talk_with_mario_livio/?page=full <comment><USER2> > Is mathematics the language of the universe?

No, but it's a language we've had great success with when we try to describe the universe.</comment>


The scale of the universe, and everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.ovni-alerte.com/blog/flash/scale-of-universe.swf

<comment><USER2> I never get tired of playing with this. (Though I can't help but want to port it to HTML5.) ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Seriously, it amazed me everything. You see everything life, from he mesh that holds the very matter to the limits of the universe; and you can control the hole this, with a Flash slider.

Reminds me of the "Known Universe video from AMNH" So eye opening: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is _so_ beautiful, _so_ sublime, truly one of the jewels of the Web. And yet...

I wonder if anyone else had the same reaction I did, quite a few I would guess. Hmm.

The thing is, it is _so_ enchanting, produces _such_ a sense of wonderment, lulled by the music and so on, that as I approached the end of the sliding scale, with each step the animations taking a few moments to load... I started to think: what is lying in store for me at the very largest scale, what am I going to see? What message is waiting for me? What object gets designated the very largest 'thing' of all?..

...And then it hit me. Oh dear, this is April the 1st, isn't it. In that case, it can really only be one (category of) thing. It's going to be something like "yr mom's ass", or something, isn't it. An object, on whose vast cheeks the known universe is no more than a pimple. Yes.

And if I'd gone in the other direction, well surely I'd find something like "yr dick" waiting in store for me.

Gosh, I'd rather it isn't that, I really don't want it to be that. It was such a beautiful thing. But I see now that it has to be. As they say, it is in- evitable.

So that's what this is then. Just the winning move in some great 'Yo Momma' game between hackers that got _way_ out of hand. I guess that's how marvelous things like this get built sometimes. Like Facebook. Spectacular works of man, haunted - poisoned, perhaps - by the sin of their creation.

Actually, now that I'm getting used to it, I like that in a way. I do like jokes like that. I like to tell jokes like that. Jokes where the humor is produced from a shocking scale mis-match, of truly cosmological proportions. In a way this is truly the Archetype for that kind of joke. And it's all the more exquisite when the only way it is able to spring the surprise, to so perfectly sneak past my joke anticipation detectors, is by the pure chutzpah of simply selecting scales so enormous that they don't register on my dials, and all the while I'm quietly sailing into a punchline. Actually what tipped me off just before I got to the end was the slightly too-good-to-be-true music, gently mocking me (plus my slow browser giving me time to reflect).

And so, as I moved the slider the final stage of its journey to the right hand side, knowing this inevitability, imagine my surprise to find that there was no punchline after all. And lo it was just a pure and beautiful thing, unsullied by cynicism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Trust me, this is pure! I was getting something in my bookmarks when I saw that link. I wanted to share this marvelous piece of animation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is one of my favorite "web things" ever. It is an awesome illustration of how fundamentally insignificant we are.

<comment><USER5> That's not my take-away when I get to see things like this -- rather, I always find it pretty amazing that something as small as a human brain is capable of holding (rough, admittedly) working models of and reason about something as vast in scale :).

It's a nice dynamic - all that scale and complexity out there, and its mirror image reflection in our tiny heads.

<comment><USER6> I agree with both of you. It's not impossible to be both in awe of our insignificance, and the capabilities of something so puny in the scheme of things.

<comment><USER4> Thank you - that's actually more or less what I mean, though I phrased it poorly. I'm not so much depressed at our insignificance as quite in awe to be able to KIND OF understand something so awesome (and so awesomely small). Or at least have a meta-understanding of parts of it. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This gets posted about once a month here. It's very cool, but still...

<comment><USER8> Also, I'm not impressed by the quality of the vector graphics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ugh, it plays music?

The real question is: how big would my monitor need to be to show the whole Universe when I am zoomed into that spacetime fabric?

If we filled the Universe with neutrinos, how many would fit?

</comment><comment><USER10> Where did they get 900 Ym for the estimated size of the entire universe?

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow that was cool.

xkcd had done this one - <http://xkcd.com/482/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Warning: This link leads directly to a flash file.

</comment><comment><USER13> and i'm stunned...</comment>


Show HN: Print your Facebook (re-launch) - <AUTHOR> http://www.yearlyleaf.com Hey guys,
I'm resurrecting a pet project from last year.
YearlyLeaf is a quality, hand-bound book of 1 year of your Facebook page.
Last year, it launched and the demand was high, but we started losing money quickly. Our flat fee of $49 seemed adequate, but it turns out the people who wanted this used Facebook A LOT.
So we regrouped, found a cheaper printer and better pricing structure and we're giving it another go.
Let me know what you think in the comments. <comment><USER2> Love it. One bit of feedback: 'Order Your Copy' should give me a bit of text before asking me to connect with Facebook - maybe just the basics, price, etc... There just isn't quite enough information for me to take that leap despite it being the immediate call to action on the page. Otherwise: great!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you love it!

Yea, I didn't design the first version. Working on a redesign, but I just wanted to get it out there to test the new pricing model and demand.

But you connect to Facebook, then it shows you the price and you can pick a year, then it generates a preview and gives you the updated pricing depending on how many pages you have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ahh... this should have so been instagram. In fact, should be a book of the club month that sends a small book featuring the best photos from instagram each month. A small leather bound book would have been perfect.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are already a lot of companies doing Instagram books. But your "book of the month" idea would be interesting, especially with a more premium binding like this product provides.

Also, this isn't just photos; it's statuses, comments, check-in's, etc too.</comment></comment>


The Dead Beneath London's Streets - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dead-beneath-londons-streets-180970385/?no-ist <comment><USER3> > the Romans planted the walled settlement of Londinium on the marshy north > bank of the Thames

Err, I'm reasonably sure that the reason why the Roman settlement was on the North bank was that the North bank was rocky, and the _South_ bank was the marshy one.

The Romans were too pragmatic to try build Swamp Castle ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A) )

</comment><comment><USER4> I was lucky enough to do a programming contract for the museum of London back in the mid eighties when its only site was in the Barbican. We worked weekends in a back room on a pdp11 key:value index.

The museum is a treasure house of the history of London and the archival legatee of many of the guilds and societies.

I usually shy away from gushing recommendations but I think the MOL is one of my favourites, the docklands site was the venue of a conference social one year I went to.. well worth a visit.

<comment><USER5> Definitely - the Museum of London is sadly under-known in my opinion. I suspect it's mainly to do with being located off the usual tourist track - <USER2> even when one gets there it doesn't exactly measure up to the Kensington museums to look at...

<comment><USER6> It's moving in the next few years to a new site at the west side of Smithfield market. The existing building to be remade into a world leading concert hall for LSO

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amsterdam found out the plague pits were re-absorbed by the city too during the construction of the subway. Trying to imagine what it must be like when a tunnel boring machine hits a mass grave of plague victims, kept me awake at night for weeks.

Amsterdam had many plague epidemics and each time the plague hit 10% or so of the inhabitants died. At least one of the London plagues was traced back to goods shipped from Amsterdam.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Cataacombs in Paris are cool, I cannot recommend them as an unconventional tourist attraction enough. Just don't try to steal any bones or you will join them... a simple house rule.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I get people to try my (free) service? - <AUTHOR>

http://cansend.com/
I've tried posting a Show HN - got 5 points, 1 new user, some feedback on my site's lack of info.
I've submitted it to the mailchimp integrations directory - got listed but no new users.
I've tried pitching it to startup people I know, website owners - I've tried pitching it at startup meetups, events - people think it's a cool idea but no one to actually try it yet.
I've also tried posting to programming groups, forum software groups...
Would be grateful for any good ideas <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the responses. A common theme in the responses seems to be 1) design of the site/homepage, images, videos; 2) landing page copy / unclear proposition.

I'm not sure how critical 1) is and am hesitant to invest more resources into it having not gotten any traction so far.

I'm struggling with 2) and not quite sure how to better pitch the service and its benefits... needs a lot more thought on my part perhaps. I'm currently thinking if I can create some sort of flowchart graphics that shows at a glance what it does...

</comment><comment><USER2> As a first impression from viewing the site, I didn't understand what it was offering. It mentions social sharing, but it wasn't until I read over the copy a few times that I actually understood that your service will takes new content from a website and post links to that content on social media sites and newsletters. I agree with what other people are saying, try to make it clearer what you're offering.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's some armchair advice: focus on e-mail and _hunt_ for website owners that send out newsletters. Make sure to tell them exactly why what you're offering is better than what they already have.

Some organizational advice: have less stuff on the landing page. Keep the what and the why, but have the how elsewhere. And there's a lot of wasted real estate with that grey box; try to use it to pitch.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a lot of text on your home page. A clear synopsis would help convert users that show up. Do you know if people visit but don't sign up or are they not visiting at all?

I agree with `pizza` though, target specific website owners and see if they'd be willing/interested in using your service. You really have to know what the value proposition is though, which is a good practice anyways.

<comment><USER5> I second the above. The current text "Intelligent fully automated email newsletters and social media sharing for your website" is pretty useless. Tell a business owner how it will save them time or money and how its better than what you suspect they use.

You might want to do a search for "landing page copy" in an effort to increase your sign-ups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like your initiative on the product. You need to improve the design of your homepage. I am not affiliated with Simplicant (<http://www.simplicant.com/> ), but I think they have a good homepage design that could serve as a starting point for your redesign.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd try explaining what you do in a clear and concise sentence which should headline your landing page. A good indicator is whether or not a young child can understand it. Basically if users are confused, they won't stay and obviously won't sign up (even if it's free). Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> It actually seems like a VERY useful tool for forum-type sites. Who else would use it? Maybe focus on some specific markets, and reach out directly to owners of those sites.

The site does look unfinished without any images.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it was built for a forum site I ran. But any kind of site that generates more than 1 page a day would benefit from automated newsletters. Any site that generates more than around 10 pages or so a day would benefit from automated social sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You need a better website with a better explanation of what it is that you do. Get a cheap template from one of the big providers, and ditch bootstrap.

Then (drum roll), email people about it.

</comment><comment><USER10> One of things I think you need to answer is why I would use/switch to this service if I'm already using some WP Plugins that handle this social media sharing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Try to show it to as many people as you can. Post some youtube videos on how- to. Use every web 2.0 network you can to try to get more people to your door step.

</comment><comment><USER12> changing news letter providers is a high hurdle for people. The fact that it is "free" doesn't matter, since its such a pain to setup and run campaigns.

I would buy google ads on newsletter related keywords so you know you are getting people looking for a solution to try.

Also your copy is bad and your proposition is unclear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes this currently only integrates with Mailchimp. Although it should be simple enough to make it such that it generates an email that is sent to your 'broadcast address' which should work across newsletter providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clickable: <http://cansend.com/></comment>


The U.S. Is Worried About Bitcoin–and It's Finally Doing Something About It - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/02/18/the-us-is-very-worried-about-bitcoinand-its-finally-doing-something-about-it/ <comment><USER2> This article doesn't say much of substance. It isn't about the new FINCEN requirements Mnuchin hinted at a week ago. It's basically about how much energy mining uses.</comment>


Official CoreOS Images on Google Compute Engine (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://coreos.com/blog/official-gce-images/

<comment><USER2> I still have some questions about CoreOS. (Actual questions, not doubts).

When you say that CoreOS auto-updating would patch things like OpenSSL vulnerabilities without any intervention (as the founder said on The Changelog), that just doesn't add up to me.

Say, I have CoreOS, and an nginx docker image running (based on an Ubuntu 14.04 image).

If I have an OpenSSL vulnerability and CoreOS says they auto-patched my server, great. They patched the host. But that doesn't mean the openssl library in my nginx image is patched, right? So most of the manual patching (rebuilding the docker image, etc) and responding to these kinds of things is still an issue, isn't it? I might be missing something here that involves the union FS, etc.

Would appreciate a clarification on that.

<comment><USER3> Correct -- the base OS would auto-update, but with how it works today, you would still need to upgrade your own containers.

I don't believe this problem of updating dependencies in containers will last forever -- its pretty reasonable that you could mark some dependency as "auto- updatable" in your own container -- then when there is an OpenSSL issue, the base container OS is upgraded, and your app restarted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a big CoreOS fan and use it almost exclusively now (outside of OS X). I love to see it show up on HN.

However: May 23, >>2014<<

This is universes old news.

</comment><comment><USER5> This post is from last year. I've been using these images on GCE for testing and they work well. Works particularly nicely for getting a Deis PaaS up and running quickly.</comment>


1-on-1 meetings with your Team - <AUTHOR> http://ryancarson.com/post/48197397002/1-on-1s-with-your-team

<comment><USER2> Agenda, structure and status report is not the way I usually see 1:1 being talked about. Contrast with Horowitz's [1]: "The key to a good one-on-one meeting is the understanding that it is the employee's meeting rather than the manager's meeting. This is the free-form meeting for all the pressing issues, brilliant ideas and chronic frustrations that do not fit neatly into status reports, email and other less personal and intimate mechanisms."

Not saying there's not a time and place for Ryan's style.

1 - <http://bhorowitz.com/2012/08/30/one-on-one/>

1' - [http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/09/22/the_update_...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/09/22/the_update_the_vent_and_the_disaster.html)

<comment><USER3> Well Ryan's meetings are every 2 weeks, that's probably too often for the no- agenda check-in you're talking about. Calling them both 1on1's is the real confusion here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice post. Two more items that I like to mix into 1:1 agendas, not necessarily every meeting though:

1\. What do you need from me (as your manager) to accomplish the top objectives?

2\. What do you need from me for your personal dev and growth?

3\. What do you need from the teams to accomplish the top objectives?

<comment><USER5> I strongly second this, and thinking making sure they have an outlet for concerns/ideas about career growth and other interpersonal, HR, culture or other "soft" things from time to time is important too. It's amazing how easy it is to go a year without bringing any of this up, only to have someone give notice when it could have been avoided through a few important if perhaps slightly uncomfortable conversations.

I'd also make some room for praise, given in private and in detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Letting activities flow instead of managing people is what Kanban (and, arguably, Trello) is all about, right?</comment>


A very weird line of code in Linux Kernel - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include/math-emu/double.h#L29

<comment><USER2> Not really. It's a Dilbert reference, and an old one to boot.

[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/)</comment>


Delete Facebook, but what about Instagram? - <AUTHOR> I'm honestly unclear whether all the calls to #deleteFacebook are leaving out Instagram, etc. on purpose, and that these folks really mean delete any of the Facebook-affiliated companies.  Or are they kind of reluctant to delete Instagram because they like that service so much more than Facebook.<p>Thoughts on any technical/privacy reasons to delete Facebook, but not Instagram? <comment><USER2> Most people don't know that WhatsApp and Instagram are a part of Facebook. Think it's as simple as that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess, but plenty of the people I'm thinking of such as Marco Arment, John Gruber, and other tech folks certainly do.

These are just the kinds of folks prepdisposed to like Instagram over Facebook.</comment></comment>


Fructose and pancreatic cancer - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/08/fructose_and_pancreatic_cancer.php

<comment><USER2> HFCS may not cause cancer, and this study is only the beginning of an investigation into whether it might. On the other hand it _is_ shown to make you obese, significantly faster and more dangerously than ordinary sugar:

<http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/>

So I've already cut it out of my diet. If doing so cuts my cancer risk that's a nice bonus. But we already know that HFCS is bad for you and shouldn't be in food.

<comment><USER3> Do you mean you stopped eating fruit? Or just stopped eating processed food that contain fructose?

<comment><USER4> I believe HCFS = High Fructose Corn Syrup. It's something I avoid as well. It is in most sodas. This is part of why I drink diet coke, even though the artificial sweeteners in it have apparently been linked to brain cancer (or so I've heard). I figure I have to live that long for it to be a problem but HCFS makes me feel like crap in the here and now. (I have heard that, at least during some parts of the year, you can get "kosher" sodas made with real cane sugar and that some niche brands of sodas are available in some limited markets with real cane sugar. But I haven't tripped across any myself.)

<comment><USER5> You might also be able to find Mexican Coke, which is sweetened with cane sugar. I've seen it at regular grocery stores in upstate NY and CT so I imagine it's fairly common.

There's a grocery store in Los Angeles with a large collection of glass-bottle sodas and they do sell online at <http://www.sodapopstop.com/>, but there are other sites as well. Elsewhere in California, I've seen Beverages and More have a small collection also.

<comment><USER2> I'm a devotee of mexicoke; in San Francisco's Mission district where I live it is in every store, but even elsewhere in SF it can be hard to find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an exceptionally well-written piece. It's a great window into why you need to be on guard when getting your science news from breathless press releases.

<comment><USER7> Exactly my thoughts, except for "be on guard". If someone is trying to get science from news they are pretty screwed. In this case reading the news probably made most people more ignorant on the science at hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an interesting video on Youtube about the subject:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

</comment><comment><USER9> "The bottom line is the modern diet contains a lot of refined sugar including fructose and it's a hidden danger implicated in a lot of modern diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and fatty liver," said Heaney...

And then the author of this piece goes on to say

"And that, is how you go from cell culture work to sweeping policy recommendations"

I guess it was cell culture work that implicated fructose in obesity, diabetes, and fatty liver? Nice sleight of hand.

<comment><USER10> No, the blogger is correct and you appear to have misunderstood him. He is stating that the study itself does not merit making policy changes. As you note, other studies do, but this is not one of those. The author of the study may be making good policy recommendations, but using his study as the basis for those recommendations would be unwise. Despite my agreement with his recommendations, I disagree with the basis that he chose for his recommendations, as does this blogger. Though I do not know if the blogger supports the policy of reducing fructose—who knows, maybe he doesn't—it doesn't materially impact my agreement with the narrow concern that he wrote this blog post about.

<comment><USER9> I understood the blogger just fine, but I read Heaney's statement differently. I don't find it clear that he's saying that fructose use should be reduced _strictly because of his paper and for no other reason_ , as the article implies (if it did I would agree with the blogger), especially when he said other bad things about fructose.

This is what we really know - in some undetermined context, in conversation, Heaney said

"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets,"

To me it doesn't seem perfectly clear that Heaney intended that the first sentence, by itself, implies the second sentence, though the article sort of makes it look like he did. It's certainly not clear enough to rip him a new asshole, as the blogosphere has done, at least not based solely on the information in this article.

If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him. —Cardinal Richelieu

<comment><USER10> "I think this paper has a lot of public health implications."

Extrapolating from tissue culture to public health is something that can be rigorously done. This paper doesn't address public health; as such, I don't see how it follows in a scientific fashion that this paper has public health implications. I don't have a problem with the work, or with the author, or with his beliefs about his paper. I simply disagree that his statement, quoted above, is justified by his paper.

<comment><USER9> I haven't read the paper, but the blog post says it cited prospective human studies showing an association between pancreatic cancer and fructose consumption, so it looks like he digressed into something beyond cell cultures to make the case against fructose.

He could very well have been overselling his paper (the article certainly is), but it's just possible that the journalist made it look that way to get a sexier story. If the blogger had kept a more objective, factual tone, instead of attacking Heaney, I wouldn't have a problem.

<comment><USER10> Let me preface by saying that I don't want to overstate what I think is really a rather modest difference of interpretation that you and I have.

I have read the paper, and much of their basic biology seems sound. They show convincingly that pancreatic ductal cancer cell proliferation does not differ between glucose and fructose at a variety of concentrations (figure 1).

They then compare pancreatic tumor to hepatic tumor to normal-ish tissues and show a series of metabolic differences when grown in glucose-containing vs fructose-containing media (figure 2). These changes include transketolase activity, ribose synthesis, and release of C13-labeled lactate into the media. Here, I have a bit of an issue. Nobody is claiming that our high-fructose diet causes us to have a glucose-free plasma, so it's totally non-physiologic to compare just glucose vs just fructose (which some of the panels appear to be doing in this figure, while others are comparing glucose vs fructose+glucose, which is a stronger comparison IMHO).

There are other figures; they are fine. I like their data. Where they lose me is with the claims that they make from their data. They show in figure 1 that there is no proliferative difference in Panc-1 cells between a glucose vs a fructose "diet" at all concentrations, but then based on data in figure 4 they claim that the TK-inhibitor oxythiamine reduces "fructose-induced Panc-1 cell proliferation." Well, which is it: does fructose induce Panc-1 cell proliferation, or does it not? Your answer will depend upon whether you like figure 1 better or figure 4. While these claims appear to be contradictory to me, it's also possible that I didn't read the paper carefully enough so please correct me if I missed something.

At any rate, just because this paper _cited_ other work showing human studies (which it did), that certainly does not mean that this paper itself has policy implications. The human studies that it cited might have policy implications.

Especially given figure 1, which shows no difference in proliferation between cancer cells given fructose and those given glucose, I would have a hard time justifying policy claims with this paper.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adopting the Arm Memory Tagging Extension in Android - <AUTHOR> https://security.googleblog.com/2019/08/adopting-arm-memory-tagging-extension.html <comment><USER2> It looks like there are four tag bits so you have a 15/16 chance of catching an out-of-bound access. This is not too bad but not perfect. Hackers are great at taking advantage of exploits that only work sporadically.</comment>


Illegitimate Name - <AUTHOR> http://www.caterina.net/archive/001011.html

<comment><USER2> That sucks:

<http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/09/you-suck.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a Norwegian with a Norwegian letter in my name ("ø"). It is simply impossible to enter my name correctly.

Let's say that my last name is "Strømmen" (it's not). Then I can expect my name to be displayed as:

Strmmen, Strømmen, Strømmen, Str?n, Str mmen. Strxmmen (where did they get the "x" from?)

Please include non ASCII characters in your unit tests, and use UTF-8 on everything.

And another reminder is that not all countries have the same address syntax as you. (+ phone numbers)

</comment><comment><USER4> In an increasingly international world, making any assumptions about names is just asking for trouble. In some cases even the first name / last name structure doesn't hold up. It's probably best to just assume that the name can be represented by a free-text field.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was reading the comments and saw someone mention fuzzy bunny (fuzzi bunni?) then realized the comments were from 2006.

As for a better solution. Allow anything but flag the names you would normally ban to a moderator to have them checked over.

<comment><USER6> That would work with profanity in most cases, but would it work with Fake? How would the moderator confirm that this really is a person named Fake, and not someone who doesn't want to give their real name?

<comment><USER5> A faxed copy of your ID and an onsite blood test obviously. :)

Seriously though, if someone wants to give a fake name they will, be it Caterina Fake or Caterina Doe so I don't think(short of the joking solution above) you will ever get around that in a way that is generally acceptable. In most cases though you are just looking to filter out the explit and "Fake Name" and "Not MyName" people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have the same problem "John Graham-Cumming" often gets flagged as offensive.

<comment><USER8> How did you make it through high school? :-)

<comment><USER2> Wildly off-topic and hardly serious, but consider the problems the actress Leslie Hope must get. Imagine her stopped when driving on holiday in Britain. "How do you give your name?" asks the Bobby, and mindful of the English preference for surname first, she replies:

"Hope, Leslie"

<comment><USER9> I don't get it...

<comment><USER10> "How do you give your name?"

"Hopelessly."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Classic.</comment>


What's that word about design elements, how wood should be wood? - <AUTHOR> I remember HN used to talk about it a lot, sku-something or skeo-something, but it's a rule in design that wooden objects should be wooden or something like that. I used to see this word thrown around in every UX thread but I can't remember what the damn word is. I've tried googling but I'm not having much luck.
I remember this word bring used a lot right before Material came into public view.
If any body knows what I'm talking about, please help me find this word. <comment><AUTHOR> It's Skeuomorphism, I found it!

Nevermind!

<comment><USER2> A trend that couldn't die fast enough IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the same about drive by content-less comments like this one.

"u suck lmao"

That's what you sound like

<comment><USER2> cool</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trash: safer alternative to rm (cross-platform) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sindresorhus/trash <comment><USER2> The word "trash" is far too much typing, so we should shorten it to "tr" "as" or "sh"

ummm, wait!

well, it seems "ra" might work.

<comment><USER3> Added a tip about that: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/trash/blob/master/readme.md#...](https://github.com/sindresorhus/trash/blob/master/readme.md#tip)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?rm](http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man- cgi?rm)

It can be interesting to match the behavior of `rm` exactly like UNIX rm and alias `trash` as the place of `rm`. It's still hard to convince people to use a another command than `rm`. Specially if you can do almost the same thing by using `mv` and predefined directory.

<comment><USER3> > you can do almost the same thing by using `mv` and predefined directory.

Not really. The mv command isn't cross-platform and moving to trash is not just about moving the file to a "trash" directory. On all OSes you'll run into file conflicts. The user won't easily be able to restore the file. It won't work on an external drive. The trash directory location varies between Windows versions. For Linux there's a whole spec you need to follow. On OS X you'll loose the Put back feature.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone seriously working on a space drive? - <AUTHOR>

There are plenty of serious companies looking at "rockets", and alternative launch and propulsion methods to get us somewhere more or less in the "local" space of our solar system, but are there any serious attempts at creating and testing anything that might lead us to travel to the stars?<p>I've seen a load of crackpot stuff but very few genuine efforts. Is there even anyone looking at challenging the science in a significant way that might lead to something? <comment><USER2> Any attempt at interstellar travel in the near-future is likely to be pointless only because humanity will likely invent a faster way of travelling between stars before the first mission is completed.

Why send a craft toward the nearest star if it'll take the thing a hundred years when in a decade we might be able to halve that time? Only once we've gotten to grips with local space travel, and really pushed the limits of speed will we be able to appraise an attempt at interstellar travel.

And hey we might figure out faster-than-light one day, we've surprised ourselves before, no reason we can't do it again.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's my question. Is anyone working on anything like a interstellar drive now. Of course it's likely we might discover something in the future, but as everyone knows, we are living in the future now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/03/advanced-propulsion- physics...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/03/advanced-propulsion-physics- harnessing.html)</comment>


A smarter iPod nano - <AUTHOR>

I've been thinking a lot about this and after John Gruber and Jim Dalrymple have essentially "confirmed" that an iPhone and iPad mini event will actually be two events, I got to thinking about the next iPods, specifically the Nano.
I gotta think they're working on a much smarter device. A device that will communicate a lot more with iPhones and iPads. Bluetooth 4.0 would be key, and probably a bigger battery, too.
What do you guys think? <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a much more detailed article here: <http://thetechblock.com/the- smarter-ipod-nano></comment>


Node.js leadership is a toxic mess - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bgourlie/nodejs-leadership-is-a-toxic-mess-34e2b8faa003 <comment><USER2> It's a shame that this was flagged instantaneously just because it was perceived as being in opposition to diversity programs. The quote that really stood out to me wasn't about the diversity programs at all, but instead about vilifying the node community on reddit.

> _reminder to reddit manbabies that they are kinda pathetic, irrelevant, > boring, creepy nerds who'll never amount to anything. The only thing they > seem to know how to do is complain, masturbate about upvotes and karma, and > be creepy stalkers when women are involved. Like holy shit, do these weirdos > even realize what they're doing? Y'all are literally the sketchy, sweaty > nerds that make us wanna vomit. But keep doing what you're doing, because > I'd rather that y'all vomit-inducing rapey gross dweebs actually keep being > open about who you are_

That seems like an incredibly unprofessional thing for an employee to say, even if that's how they feel. It sounds more like childish name-calling than any real effort towards promoting diversity. I'm supportive of efforts to increase diversity within the tech community, but this sort of rhetoric just comes off as divisive rather than productive.

<comment><USER3> The post itself isn't currently flagged/dead. Yours currently is.

<comment><USER4> That was a very strange thing to see, in realtime. foob's comment was marked [dead] but not flagged, as one often sees with shadowbans. Then suddenly not.

<comment><USER5> Given the contents of the quote I wouldn't be surprised if his comment was auto-killed until a moderator reviewed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a similar thing: There's this Javascript community called WeAllJS, which according to their website: "We're committed to being supportive, attentive, and inclusive." I know about this because one of their admins (per their Twitter profile) posted an obviously offensive Tweet about men, and has "professional mantagonizer" in their Twitter bio, alongside "Admin for @wealljs". They also work at NPM.

Most interestingly, their Code of Conduct has: 'Any attempt to present "reverse-ism" versions of the above as violations. Examples of reverse-isms are "reverse racism", "reverse sexism", "heterophobia", and "cisphobia". I _think_ this means that heterophobia and cisphobia are not only explicitly not against the rules, but it's in fact a violation to claim that they are against the rules. Fascinating stuff.

Okay, I didn't read the post in full first. The person I'm referring to is the one who made the "reddit manbabies" comment quoted.

Also, the wealljs code of conduct has the exact same "regardless of age..." line from the NPM code of conduct, in a slightly different order (but every element is identical). I wonder how much overlap there is between the leadership of each.

<comment><USER7> I keep seeing this trend among supporters of diversity, which is a description of inclusivity goals which then follows with a set of exclusivity rules. The irony seems to always be lost.

The trending method of improving diversity and inclusivity is through exclusivity. This will not work. People and groups who don't talk to each other grow further apart and trust each other less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is interested, please look into Isaac Schlueter's twitter account at twitter.com/izs ( he is the current CEO of NPM )

In the past few weeks his Twitter feed has gotten progressively more incendiary. He now has blocked over 200k people on Twitter and basically declared a personal vendetta against the 30k subscribers to reddit's Node.js subreddit.

This is a person who has over 10 million dollars in VC funding . I don't believe they are acting in the best interest of their investors, or the Node.js community as a whole.

<comment><USER9> I don't really see where he's being incendiary. Political sure, but just seems like an account for personal views . I couldn't find any reference to him blocking 200k people, or declaring a personal vendetta on a whole subreddit.

<comment><USER8> Here is one of the statements he made about 30k members of /r/node not being part of the Node community: [https://twitter.com/izs/status/911732466758516736](https://twitter.com/izs/status/911732466758516736). Be warned, it devolves into a long thread and rant.

He's actually blocking 170,839 users at the moment. He often brags about it.

see:

[https://blocktogether.org/show-blocks/c8XK_YKEO- bTsJBLIcSnJZ...](https://blocktogether.org/show-blocks/c8XK_YKEO- bTsJBLIcSnJZdNKL7CTPRQfLVrHip6)

[https://imgur.com/a/TKykh](https://imgur.com/a/TKykh)

<comment><USER10> How does one block that many people? Does twitter offer bulk blocking capabilities?

<comment><USER11> At the height of the GamerGate debacle someone created an auto blocker that automatically blocked ppl on a list, it also blocked anyone who followed those ppl. So if, like me, you didn't necessarily agree with the views of ppl on that list but followed them to get a sense of who they are and what perspective is, you got blocked right along with them. ( [http://fogknife.com/2015-07-27-why-i-support-the-use-of- twit...](http://fogknife.com/2015-07-27-why-i-support-the-use-of-twitter- autoblockers.html) )

<comment><USER12> Blocking opinions you don't like is a stupid idea in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can Americans working in SV explain me how or why the white dudes let that kind of crap happen? Do they walk their heads down when the little fascists talk about "diversity"? They say Europe is liberal, but that kind of shot wouldn't get far in any country over here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Important to remember that npm is not Node JS, though sadly they are very tightly intertwined.

<comment><USER14> Why should we make this distinction? People looking at whether they want to participate in the community seem unlikely to.

<comment><USER3> I agree that it's atrocious no matter which party is responsible, but the steps in addressing this are very different between a private company and an open source project with significant governance. The author doesn't seem to make much distinction in relation to this.

<comment><USER14> Its usually impossible from the perspective of any individual to fix anything like this. The correct thing to do is to identify something as toxic so that other like minded individuals can avoid engaging. The resulting fix is that the toxic thing progressively shrinks to irrelevance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like diversity, but "Fck white dudes lol" likely isn't helping anyone.

Promoting diversity using affirmative language only should be possible. And white guys's feelings are important, too.

</comment><comment><USER16> Every leadership group will devolve into something like this if it's members aren't moderated and if there is no clear hierarchy.

</comment><comment><USER17> I feel like there's something important going on here, but it's damned difficult to understand what exactly it is.

</comment><comment><USER12> Of course it's toxic. Remember the kik disaster in which NPM valued it's users like crap.</comment>


How Google Glass Will Change Porn - <AUTHOR> http://www.technewsdaily.com/17654-google-glass-change-porn.html

<comment><USER2> I really want to like the concept of Glass, but I can't shake the idea that it is pointing in the wrong direction. First Utopia and now Utopian Porn. There are so many things that are revolutionary that we can talk about that Glass will allow.

Imagine: There is an emergency operation. Patient is laying at the table and the surgeon could really use a specialist's help pronto. What better views can we imagine than the actual eyes of the surgeon? (Saving Lives)

There is so much more, but as teaching aid, crime witness aid for police, and so many other non-big-brother things could be done with it that pushes our world into a much better place.

<comment><USER3> I find your examples "crime witness aid for police" and then "other non-big- brother things" a bit chilling.

<comment><USER4> "crime witness aid for police" would probably be beneficial by itself, _if_ it is possible to limit the privacy and surveillance concerns. So essentially the situation, where a witness starts to film a crime and then gives this video to the police. Or the police could be required to document everything they do (by taking a full video of each shift).

On the other hand, the surveillance potential is of course scary. And once Google glass is out, I really do not know how to limit the impact.

<comment><USER5> > Or the police could be required to document everything they do (by taking a > full video of each shift).

These tools already exist, and do great - except when they don't. Strangely, they tend to "not work" exactly when the officer is suspected/accused of overstepping the bounds of their authority or the law.

The classic example is the 18 minute silence on the Nixon tapes [1].

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Common misconception: Google Glass does _not_ augment your entire field of view, as this article implies. It only occupies the top right corner of it, and looking there for more than a few seconds at a time hurts your eyes. So no, Glass isn't going to change porn like this at all.

<comment><USER7> Maybe not viewing, but the article also talks quite a bit about filming, in which Glass has a concrete advantage.

<comment><USER8> advantage over what? a GoPro?

in terms of Glass as a tiny camera, that technology already exists and has for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Suddenly this reminds me of "Strange Days", the movie (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yaXPx6xWEQ>).

</comment><comment><USER10> Whether the Oculus Rift or Google Glass will change porn more is anybody's guess, but I think we can all agree that this is terrible news for the sex robot industry. [1]

If you own shares in any sex robot manufacturers, you'd be wise to short/sell them immediately.

[1] [http://www.ibtimes.com/sex-robots-meet-roxxxy-robot-comes- sk...](http://www.ibtimes.com/sex-robots-meet-roxxxy-robot-comes-skank-mode- nsfw-video-439870)

<comment><USER11> > If you own shares in any sex robot manufacturers, you'd be wise to > short/sell them immediately.

Qualified investment advice on an internet forum, great, wait right here while I put my pension on the line to follow your directions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I get they're hinting at using Google Glass for filming porn, but lets face it, no pair of glasses will ever produce high definition video as good as an actual camera. Maybe for amateur porn, but I'm sure amateur porn is probably being shot on mobile phones at the moment anyway. I'd take a Canon 7D for filming video over any pair of glasses any day of the week. Would a pair of glasses like Google Glass even have the capability to shoot long duration high definition video? Battery life, bandwidth and storage would be massive issues to overcome, you've seen what HD recording does to a mobile phone battery.

Google Glass will change how we access content on the go. The ability to look at a sign in another language and have it translated into your native language, now that's the kind of change I could get behind.

The one thing I worry about advances like Google Glass changing is child pornography. I believe devices like Google Glass will make it easier for creeps to secretly film children in shopping centres and parks, the beach or wherever. As someone who is planning on having children soon, that thought scares me.

<comment><USER13> "no pair of glasses will ever produce high definition video as good as an actual camera"

If there is one thing the last 20 years should have taught us, it's that people who say 'x will never be as good as y' are, in the medium to long term, almost always fabulously wrong.

<comment><USER14> Not true. I can think of many cases where they're wrong, but I can also think of many where they're right. With cameras and suchlike you're running limitations of physics, as far as image acquisition is concerned; the other issue is that there's a huge body of knowledge on how to move a camera properly, whereas a head-mounted camera is kind of painful to watch because you don't have the kinetic cues to go with it, and every little twitch or movement of the head becomes a distraction for the viewer who has to filter out the irrelevant movements in their visual cortex. Look at all those videos on youtube where people don't know how to hold a camcorder and it is just waving all over the place even when they're aiming it at a static object in front of them.

The musical instrument world is abuzz with new analog synthesizers right now, because over the last couple of years several major manufacturers have just gone back to manufacturing it because SMT and FPGA/FPAAs have made it affordable to do so again. They're still making DSP synths because DSP still offers many advaantages (not as noisy, fewer limits on polyphony, vastly cheaper at scale), but analog synths are huge again because they simply sound more interesting to most musicians than their digital equivalents. I'm about to sell one of my DSP boxes for this very reason, in fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the Oculus Rift is going to change porn more than Google Glass.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sadly, this is probably the best use-case-scenario yet for Google glass.

On a sidenote, the porn industry originally chose HD-DVD, not Blu-ray.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's good for porno is good for business.</comment>


Get Ready for Most Cryptocurrencies to Hit Zero, Goldman Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-07/get-ready-for-most-cryptocurrencies-to-hit-zero-goldman-says <comment><USER2> Propaganda like this is often useful as a short term contrarian trading signal. This isn't new news but is inauspiciously timed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just want to let everyone know that dogpile.com is still a thing and you can still "fetch" to your hearts content. They're poised to make a comeback any day now.

<comment><USER4> Now partnered with Dogecoin. Here we go, Web3.0. Invest now! To the moon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Right now Coinmarketcap lists 1500+ cryptocurrencies. This article says many of them will fail in the future, as many have in the past. This is not revelatory.

I would have been interested in Strongin's opinion on which coins will survive, and why; or a timeline of when "most" will have failed.

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems likely for Bitcoin and its derivatives (LiteCoin and any other platforms that don't plan to move away from Proof of Work or have no real utility).

However, I don't see any long term risk with ETH or Monero. Hopefully this teaches clueless investors how much hype and not accounting for exposure can hurt...

</comment><comment><USER7> It was a great ride while it lasted. And financial historians and those who lived through internet bubble 1.0 and 2.0 knew how to play it. Pays to have some grey hair

</comment><comment><USER8> No doubt they are right considering:

1) There are what? over a thousand different coins at the moment (i.e. "most" will probably go to zero).

2) I didn't see a timescale mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER9> I agree that this is one of the winner take it all markets, but i think the title makes it seem more dire than it is. Wonder other than BTC, ETH which are the players that will survive

<comment><USER6> ETH will surely survive in some capacity since nearly all "tokenized" assets are built on top of ETH.

However, I don't think the picture is nearly as rosy for bitcoin. Hopefully this market event (yes, not a correction) will cull some of the less informed to actually learn something, more so that crypto is incredibly risky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All currencies hit zero eventually</comment>


Linux from Scratch - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

<comment><USER2> IMHO the best way to learn about Linux.</comment>


Karatsuba Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karatsuba_algorithm <comment><USER2> I used this in a C++ big integer library I wrote in the '90s. One issue I came across is how to best handle it when the operands are different sizes. I asked on sci.math, but never found an answer. 10 years later, a similar question arose on gmp-discuss [1], also sans answer. The second message in that thread quotes my old sci.math post [2], which includes some experimental results that suggest that there are patterns here, but the patterns escaped me.

[1] [https://gmplib.org/list-archives/gmp- discuss/2003-January/00...](https://gmplib.org/list-archives/gmp- discuss/2003-January/000254.html)

[2] [https://gmplib.org/list-archives/gmp- discuss/2003-January/00...](https://gmplib.org/list-archives/gmp- discuss/2003-January/000278.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This was improved to O(n·logn·loglogn)[0], and very recently has been improved still further to O(n·logn)[1] - discussed here[2].

O(n·logn) has for some time been conjectured to be the lower bound.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6nhage%E2%80%93Strasse...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6nhage%E2%80%93Strassen_algorithm)

[1] [https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-02070778/document](https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-02070778/document)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474280)

<comment><USER4> The O(NlogN) algorithms all have very large constant factors - IIRC the crossover point from karatsuba or tooms to FFT based solutions (the NlogN algorithms) is in the thousands of digits.

<comment><USER5> The recent _O_ ( _n_ log _n_ ) algorithm is only useful for numbers of size larger than 2^(2^(9^12)). Which is to say, this will _never_ be of practical use in our universe. (Of course, conceivably someone else could invent a different algorithm of the same asymptotic complexity with a more reasonable constant factor.)

But it's still nice to have a proof that this lower bound is attainable in theory. Makes it easier to write down the theoretical lower bound for a wide variety of other algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its discovery is quite legendary.

It was the first multiplication algorithm faster than long multiplication known to humans. Before 1960, few people thought it was possible to do it faster than O(n^2). Even one of the best mathematician in the 20th century, Kolmogorov, believed the long multiplication is probably asymptotically optimal in 1955, and asked people to try proving this conjecture in a 1960 conference. And within a week, his student Karatsuba found this algorithm. It's also one of the earliest divide-and-conquer algorithms discovered in computer science. Since then, faster and faster algorithms have been discovered.

Although in practice, the ALU itself is almost never the bottleneck of computation on a modern computer. The setup cost of these algorithms is often greater, making them only useful for bignum (Karatsuba is only faster for number longer than a few hundreds of decimal digits?) It also explains why faster algorithms haven't been discovered in the last 2000 years.

\---

The historical review paper by Karatsuba

* The Complexity of Computations

[http://www.ccas.ru/personal/karatsuba/divcen.pdf](http://www.ccas.ru/personal/karatsuba/divcen.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a real world application of Karatsuba: carryless multiplication of finite field elements for cryptography (universal hashing):

[https://github.com/RustCrypto/universal- hashes/blob/master/p...](https://github.com/RustCrypto/universal- hashes/blob/master/polyval/src/field/soft.rs#L71)

(note: that function is a bit more than Karatsuba, it also has a modular reduction at the end. I should probably refactor it to make that more clear)

</comment><comment> ur-whale One interesting aspect of the Karatsuba algorithm is how it was discovered, and Kolmogorov's implication in the story.

IIRC Kolmogorov got upset by the discovery as it was made during a seminar dedicated to proving that one couldn't do better than O(N^2)

More info : [https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/21564/why- did-k...](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/21564/why-did- kolmogorov-publish-karatsubas-algorithm)

<comment><USER8> The linked wikipedia article seems to contradict your assumption that Kolmogorov got upset: _Kolmogorov was very excited about the discovery; he communicated it at the next meeting of the seminar, which was then terminated._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I took a Computer Architecture class for undergrad, and one of the pieces of coursework was to implement a Karatsuba's Algorithm in raw UAL Arm Assembly, using some weird non-standard (almost Chen-Ho, but not quite) decimal encoding of numbers devised by the instructor to "make things interesting". The idea was for it to support arbitrarily large numbers encoded using this format, as opposed to the considerably more trivial requirement that it just support stdint style integers.

It was considerably harder than it sounded (very few people in the class actually managed to get something working, since it was 'optional' but could still raise your grade), and I had daily nightmares about stack frame corruption throughout the project.

</comment><comment><USER10> Cunningham's Law at work. Throw a conference saying something isn't possible and someone will attend just to disprove it.

<comment><USER11> If someone would only be so kind to lend me a million dollars, I'd love to hold the "P=NP will never be solved" conference ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Python uses Karatsuba multiplication for its long integers. This works very well for not too big long integers but when they get huge using the GMPy module is much quicker.

If you want to see a practical demo of that when calculating pi see: [https://www.craig-wood.com/nick/articles/pi-chudnovsky/](https://www.craig- wood.com/nick/articles/pi-chudnovsky/)

</comment><comment><USER13> The Strassen algorithm for multiplying matrices is also fascinating

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

</comment><comment><USER14> The Fourier transform and its generalisations are so underappreciated. I've been trying to understand where the speed savings come from and suspect it has to do with coprime harmonics.

I hope someone smarter and more knowledgeable will correct my understanding, but as far as I can tell, the logN savings in harmonic analysis comes from the exponential decay of harmonics in any real ringing system (a passive resonant chamber), because you can avoid "counting"[^1] the energy of subsequent harmonics as precisely as the fundamental frequency.

An excitation frequency of 400Hz will produce resonant harmonics at 800Hz, 1200Hz, etc. at _exponentially_ lower energies than the fundamental. So essentially, you can skip measuring the totatives of the frequency bin you care about.

For example, to find the cause of excitation at 9Hz, you only need to count the energy at 1Hz, 3Hz, 6Hz and 9Hz. You can ignore the totatives of 9 except for 1, which are {1,2,4,5,7,8}.

So if you detect 10J at 2Hz and 10J at 4Hz, you can be sure that there was an excitation at 4Hz as well as 2Hz. Euler's totient function is multiplicative so you win if you do this simultaneously for coprime frequencies.

This is not my area, so math or signal guys please tell me where I'm wrong.

[^1]: "counting" happens by cross-correlating the input with a reference signal, which in Fourier analysis is a cosine wave at the frequency bin.

</comment><comment><USER15> Use Fast Fourier Transforms for O(nlogn) multiplication!

<comment><USER16> Actually look at GMP or MPIR for the real dirt. There's a lot of detail hidden in that big-O notation, and IIRC Karatsuba is faster for certain ranges of integers.

<comment><USER17> Here's GMP's current tuning (for Skylake CPUs, from [https://gmplib.org/devel/thres/](https://gmplib.org/devel/thres/))

Basecase: up to 520 digits (27 limbs x 19.26 digits per 64-bit limb = 520)

Karatsuba: 520 - 1425 digits

Toom3: 1425 - 4045 digits

Toom4: 4045 - 6068 digits

Toom6: 6068 - 8053 digits

Toom8: 8053 - 120835 digits

FFT: 120835+ digits

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If someone is interested in things like, they should also look up "Vedic Mathematics" (Vedic = Something from the Vedas), its Maths formulas for faster multiplication / addition / square roots etc.</comment>


OAuth Bible - <AUTHOR> http://oauthbible.com

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems there have been major updates.

Note: I've posted it almost 3 months ago [1] and it received quite a bit of interest, thus this update. [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5481954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5481954)</comment>