Ask HN: how do comparison websites prevent scraping? - <AUTHOR>

I'm developing a web app not too dissimilar from a price/flights comparison one (nothing to do with travel though) and part of it is collecting lots of info not currently available in a single db (that's were the value really is).
But then I wonder: how to I prevent people from getting all that data off my website (via some sort of scraping, intelligent or not)? I realise it's not worth it to try and cover every single attempt but surely there are ways to make it at least very difficult - apart from presenting everything as an image or via flash!
Thanks for any input
Zuz <comment><USER2> I've gotten pretty good at data scraping websites over the years and no matter how the data is arranged on the page, I've been able to reliable retrieve the data.

You might be able to prevent it if you had ids and class names that randomly changed on a daily basis or really malformed html, but I wouldn't bother.

Another option is to limit concurrent connections to your server based on IP (Some of the financial websites do this). This would make it so it took much longer to get your data. But again, if someone really wants to get your data, they will.

I don't worry about it. Just make you website/app is better than your competition. Even if someone copies all of your data, they won't have the web presence. It will just be a cheap imitation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I certainly don't want to worry too much but, at the same time, the data is a big component of the value proposition in this case and likely what cost us more (more than the actual development of the service, for example).

So much so that we are likely to make more money by giving access to the data via API to other companies than by allowing "normal" people to search through the data and get paid a referral fee every time they click on something.

By why should we avoid the latter as an additional revenue stream? I'd rather try and make it more difficult for people to scrape it (and I don't want to ask people to accept T&C before making a search)

Thanks for the reply Paul

<comment><USER3> impose rate limits on IP, class C IP's, detect non-Javascript bots excluding search engines, block most major web hosts/cloud hosts (very doubtful a legit user is from Amazon Cloud IP).

As someone who bypassed paying fees for APIs by just scraping, I think you do have a legit concern. But don't be concerned about regular users scraping it, be concerned about potential buyers scraping it. Regular users scraping it can't do much damage.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot, all good suggestions

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once the data is served there's not much you can do. But it depends how your site consumes the data. Straight html is pretty easy to grab, ajax calls make it more painful (not necessarily difficult), HTML datastorage, a little more obscure but still available, my personal favourite is global javascript objects filled at runtime, accessed when necessary. Data can be obfuscated and links constructed on the fly.

</comment><comment><USER5> You could try adding dummy/deliberately incorrect data and then do a search for this via Google to find sites which are scraping you - business listings sites use a similar method. Doesn't stop them scraping but lets you find them to start harassing their hosts.

<comment><AUTHOR> indeed that's a common approach to spotting who copied your data in bulk but not to prevent it (or at least make it more difficult).

Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One idea is to put sensitive data into an image (for example the prices), and only serve the image to the user. While images themselves can be scraped, it is much harder than text.</comment>


Show HN: Generate dank mnemonic seed phrases in the terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sindresorhus/doge-seed-cli <comment><USER2> You might want to check whether the output is a "real" interactive terminal and output just the words without the doge image and borders if not. Redirecting stdout to a file (`./cli.js > foo`) currently produces… this: [https://vgy.me/u7f3iW.png](https://vgy.me/u7f3iW.png)

Node's `tty.isatty` should work: [https://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.0/api/tty.html#tty.isatty](https://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.0/api/tty.html#tty.isatty)

</comment><comment><USER3> From [https://github.com/lukechilds/doge- seed](https://github.com/lukechilds/doge-seed) :

> _The first four words will be a randomly generated Doge-like sentence.

The seed phrases are fully valid checksummed BIP39 seeds. They can be used with any cryptocurrency and can be imported into any BIP39 compliant wallet._

> […] _However there is a slight reduction in entropy due to the introduction > of the doge-isms. A doge seed has about 19.415 fewer bits of entropy than a > standard BIP39 seed of equivalent length._</comment>


Y in Practical Programs (Extended Abstract) - <AUTHOR> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.16.3065 <comment><USER2> I've been using externally driven recursion quite a lot in some toy programs lately, and it is extremely helpful when profiling different memoization schemes. Where once you would have had to change a sizable chunk of your explicitly recursive function, now you can simply use combinators to generate different implementations, be it for profiling purposes, or even runtime optimization :)

\-- General implementation

type T = Int -> Set [Int]

g :: T -> T

...

g' = fix g -- Very slow

g'' = memoFix integral g -- Fast, Generic

g''' = memoFix integer g -- Fast enough to use

On a side note, the paper seems too readable to me! Usually these kinds of topics are presented in such a way as to make them almost completely incomprehensible. Something must be very wrong here.

[edit: How do you quote code?]

<comment><AUTHOR> > How do you quote code?

Double indent with spaces

I always figured that the Y combinator was mostly theoretical, when I came across a little javascript memoization demo using the Y combinator a while ago I changed my mind on that.

Very interesting stuff this, especially because it seems to have some really neat side effects (pun intended), such as making some of the most naive code run in linear time.</comment></comment>


Translating math into code with examples in Java, Racket, Haskell, Python (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/discrete-math-and-code/ <comment><USER2> I dream of material that would explain some advanced (for a regular person understanding of the word) math concepts using Python. Maybe it's because I've programmed more in my life than did math, but the "language" we use to write it is absolutely crazy: one letter variables everywhere, no structure, thousands of custom notations etc. I'm not criticising it, I realise it exists this way for a reason and if I wasn't so lazy I would have learnt it in school. But with my 31-year old brain oriented for looking at a sequential flow of code, it's quite difficult to learn math now.

<comment><USER3> you will take single letter variables from my cold, dead, hands!

I'm more used to math than to code, and I find multiple-letter variables ridiculous when not unreadable.

In the ancient times, mathematicians used to write formulas using latin sentences. Even the simplest arithmetic result occupied a few lines of text. Are you proposing that we go back to that age?

<comment><USER4> " Even the simplest arithmetic result occupied a few lines of text. Are you proposing that we go back to that age? "

What if students learned "Force = mass * acceleration", and only later moved to "F = ma" once they'd gotten tired of writing it, instead of smacking students in the face with "F = ma" right out of the gate, to say nothing of all the other stuff we smack them with right away?

<comment><USER3> but even "force = mass * acceleration" uses those sneaky single-letter symbols that are not even letters! In appropriate, user friendly notation it would be "force equals mass multiplied by acceleration".

But this is not clear enough. What force? What acceleration? More precisely, what is the direction of the acceleration? The original statement of this law is less ambiguous: "Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressae, et fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur. "

Or, in plain english: "The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impress'd; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impress'd"

There! we are good to go. Now write the fundamental theorem of calculus in english, readable by everybody, without those ugly, unreadable variables and fancy symbols...

<comment><USER4> I'm not seeking abstract philosophical purity, or trying to make the mistake of including a complete transitive concept closure in every equation [1]. I'm seeking pragmatic high-quality education that doesn't blow our student's cognitive resources on stupid shit instead of the stuff I want them to learn. By the time they get to physics, they know what multiplication and equality are. It's just the "force", "mass", and "acceleration" that they don't know yet, so we don't abbreviate them until they do.

[1]: AIUI, the actual problem the original "New Math" had. The original "New Math" tried to start students with set theory, because that was the foundations of mathematics, so obviously, the best place to start an education, right? (Hint: No.) This is why parents said they didn't understand "New Math". By comparison "Common Core" math is all-but-identical to what I learned in school 30 years ago.

<comment><USER3> I do not disagree with you. When you learn the stuff, it is perfectly OK to explain equations with words and even write equations with words. But this is akin to the comments of a program. Once you get down to work, in a professional setting, all mathematics uses single-letter variables

(and I may add that all programming should do the same).

I also agree with you that starting math with set theory is utterly ridiculous and even harmful. You should start with arithmetic and with geometry (obviously, using single-letter variables when needed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Mathematics is a purely functional language.

It is not. E.g. x ∈ ℕ ∧ x > 2 ∧ x < 5 ∧ x % 2 = 0 implies x = 4. This is not something pure functional languages can express directly. In math we make common use of relations, of which functions are a special case, but not the common one and certainly not the only one. But even when we do work with functions, a functional PL does not suffice. E.g. writing f(t) = t + 1 ∧ x ∈ ℕ ∧ f(x) = 3 is equivalent to writing x = 2. Also, we commonly employ objects that are not computable.

This is just one of the many mathy myths that plague the FP community. Yes, there are some similarities between FP and mathematical notation, but FP and imperative are _much_ closer to one another than either is to mathematics.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. You can certainly express those statements in both FP and imperative languages, and you can prove the equivalences you mention in FP languages like Agda, Coq, and F*.

<comment><USER7> An example of

> _E.g. x ∈ ℕ ∧ x > 2 ∧ x < 5 ∧ x % 2 = 0 implies x = 4._

in Agda would be this, I think:

      _ : ∀ { x : ℕ } → x > 2 → x < 5 → (x % 2) ≡ 0 → x ≡ 4

<comment><USER5> The type level of dependently typed languages or other languages that allow directly expressing relations (including Java's JML) can do that. That's little to do with pure FP.

<comment><USER8> In some sense it does though. Type Theories (and their associated pure FP languages) often have the exact same algebraic structure as different classes of logic. To my understanding, JML uses Hoare Logic, which is a great tool for proving correctness of imperative languages, but is not quite as expressive. For example, Hoare Logic cant really deal with Higher-Order things. That's not to say Coq/Agda are perfect though. They do struggle with more "extensional" properties, such as function extensionality.

<comment><USER5> > but is not quite as expressive

It's as expressive.

> For example, Hoare Logic cant really deal with Higher-Order things.

1\. It can. 2. It doesn't matter so much, as there are no higher order "things" but rather higher-order ways to _describe_ things. For example, in mathematics higher-order systems can be described as either higher-order ODEs or equivalent first-order ODEs. In other words, "order" is a feature of the signifier, not the signified. For example, things that would be higher-order in Agda are first-order in TLA+ (and you don't need to go that far: formal set theories are usually first-order, yet you need higher-order typed logics to describe the same things).

> They do struggle with more "extensional" properties, such as function > extensionality.

Well, that's because they're constructive. There are type-theory-based proof assistants that more easily support classical mathematics, like Lean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice article, I was wondering why Julia wasn't featured considering its support for math syntax. I wondered whether this could have been an old article, but there is no date in the article.

I checked the RSS feed and couldn't find the article in it. I cross-checked the oldest article in the feed with the index of articles on the site, this article seems to be written before Dec 2014. This makes sense for why Julia isn't included.

<comment><USER10> Don't forget the Internet Archive!

The first version is from Nov. 14: [https://web.archive.org/web/20111114185849/http://matt.might...](https://web.archive.org/web/20111114185849/http://matt.might.net/articles/discrete- math-and-code/) The article index from Nov. 8 does not include the article: [https://web.archive.org/web/20111108003034/http://matt.might...](https://web.archive.org/web/20111108003034/http://matt.might.net/articles/)

So we can say with confidence that this should have a [2011] tag and was published sometime Nov 8 - Nov 14 in 2011.

<comment><USER11> It's frustrating when Internet articles don't include publication dates. It's not like it's paper where someone didn't think to record the date. The date certainly _exists_ in the database, filesystem, etc, the author just chooses not to show it, forcing forensics to figure out when it's from.

(I was reading another article from his site yesterday after it was linked on lobste.rs and was also trying to figure out how old it was.)

<comment><USER12> Why would the date "certainly" exist in the database or filesystem? The file might be one file created in 2001 and modified every date after containing every post in it like a mail spool file. It might be a record in a database table with no date column. If it was a single file, then the creation time could be weeks or months before the publication time, and the modification time could be the last time an edit or tweak was made, rendering both useless for this purpose. I think it's more likely not to have a useful date anywhere unless someone went out of their way to put one in.

(Which they should do, it's useful)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would think Clojure vs. Java would be used given immutability. I like both Haskell and Racket for math, especially this article on geometric algebra with Haskell:

[https://crypto.stanford.edu/~blynn/haskell/ga.html](https://crypto.stanford.edu/~blynn/haskell/ga.html)

I am personally learning Shen[1] because Lisp, optional typing (great type system), and the formal work done within it, and for it in proving, verification and other related endeavors. It seems to tick the Haskell, Lisp, Prolog and logic boxes for me. Its portability is great[2], however, it is still young and building libraries. I am thinking on trying to mimic the DL work done by Dragan Djuric[3] for Clojure in Shen. We'll see how that goes...

[1] [http://www.shenlanguage.org/](http://www.shenlanguage.org/) [2] [https://shen-language.github.io/](https://shen-language.github.io/) [3] [https://dragan.rocks/](https://dragan.rocks/)

</comment><comment><USER14> APL is an executable mathematical notation - in fact, it was designed by Iverson for describing algorithms on paper (in 1958 IIrC), and then the team working on it implemented it in software, because ... it was a well specified way to describe algorithms.

I highly recommend reading [0], which contains the simplest (IMO) description of the simplex algorithm, which is both mathematical and executable. If you find that inspiring, [1] is also worth a read.

[0] [https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/DFSP.htm](https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/DFSP.htm)

[1] [http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pd...](http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> Julia is notably missing.

Packages like this one are dope [https://github.com/korsbo/Latexify.jl](https://github.com/korsbo/Latexify.jl)

Or this

[https://github.com/qojulia/QuantumOptics.jl](https://github.com/qojulia/QuantumOptics.jl)

Or this

[https://www.juliahomotopycontinuation.org/](https://www.juliahomotopycontinuation.org/)

<comment><USER13> I like Julia for all of the libraries, the Lisp underneath, however, from the article:

"Many of the encodings are as immutable, purely functional data structures (even in imperative languages), a topic unfortunately omitted from many computer science curricula."

Julia and similar PLs don't express math like APL, J[1], Haskell[2], Scheme[3] or even Clojure can with immutable structures and function composition to name a couple. Sure you can write it in Julia, but I don't think the article is about creating math output in the Latexify.jl example, but how to code these math structures where certain languages can express them out of the box in an easier manner.

[1] [https://www.jsoftware.com/books/pdf/](https://www.jsoftware.com/books/pdf/)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Haskell-Logic-Programming-Second- Comp...](https://www.amazon.com/Haskell-Logic-Programming-Second- Computing/dp/0954300696)

[3] [https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/sicm_edition_2/book.html)

<comment><USER16> Can you explain it better? I do agree with Haskell due to laziness by default and arrow types for example, but against Scheme and Clojure the only aspect seels like it would be the more strict rebinding/shadowing rules (which doesn't limit what you can express, just that you can also express non- mathematical expressions).

Primitive types (like pretty much all languages) are immutable and structs in Julia are immutable by default (which includes pretty much every math type like complex numbers), and all math operators are non mutating (in fact mutating operators should have a ! in the name).

Function composition is just as simple in this scenario:

f(x) = x + 2

g(x) = 2x

h = g ∘ f

h(3) == 10

<comment><USER13> @ddragon your points are well taken. I will look further into Julia. I still think when I wrote "out of the box" with APL in mind as far as expressing math, or J for that matter if you learn the ASCII symbols. I've seen other examples since your post on Julia that show similar math expressiveness, but they seem to rely on libraries or the syntactic sugar provided by the libraries. I haven't tried your example, but it looks like vanilla Julia. My familiarity with Matlab makes Julia an easy choice for me too.

Here is a simple example in J:

+/ % #

The above is an average function in J. It is a fork, where you fold right over the input (+/), and divde (%) by the tally (#) or count of items, so that

(+/ % #) 4.5 3 2 12

produces 5.375 as the average of the input vector. Notice the array-based language deals with singular quantities or scalars, vectors, and multi- dimensional arrays as fundamentals of the PL.

You could also define it as:

average =: +/ % #

for those who make the readability argument, however, you learn math symbols and read math papers full of them, and not lengthy verbal descriptions of these math formulas (average is equal to the "sum all of the input elements, and divde by the count or tally of input items").

The fact that a highly-functional APL program can fit on one screen negates the argument that you need readability, so that when you pick up or someone else picks up, your 110K lines of JavaScript code they can make a change. You may have to do a refresh read in APL and J, but because it is terse, you can deal it pretty quickly. Well-commented code in the 100k to 1 million lines of code scale will never allow one person to see the whole picture.

The work by Aaron Hsu in APL is amazing. Here is a link to the slides from a talk he gave. It's a bit lengthy but I found it very interesting and appropriate to this topic:

[https://sway.office.com/b1pRwmzuGjqB30On](https://sway.office.com/b1pRwmzuGjqB30On)

The YouTube link to the talk is here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xCJ3BCIudI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xCJ3BCIudI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _> Explicit sequences tend to be wrapped in angle-brackets, so that:

s = <s1, s2, ... sn> (Please note that in LaTeX, one should use \langle and \rangle for angle brackets--not less than and greater than.)_

The article is pretty good overall, but I find this an little odd. I don't think I've ever seen sequences denoted with angle brackets. You usually see those used for denoting an inner product. I've only ever seen sequences denoted with parentheses, like (a_n) = (a_1, a_2, ..., a_n).

It's kind of humorous to me that we can sort of fingerprint the textbooks/lecturers people learned from by the idiosyncrasies of their notation.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not sure what the point of translating math into code is. Just because we represent something with code doesn't mean it is computable. It's also technically incorrect to say math is translated into code. The mathematical symbols are being swapped with codey things, but the underlying semantics are quite different. For example, we might say the symbol 'oo' is infinity, but infinity itself is something that cannot be embedded in a finite program. So, we might be coerce a parser to realize that 1/oo=0 with a background ruleset, but the identity itself was derived by our minds accessing the mathematical world of forms that is completely inaccessible to finite computational mechanisms.

It seems like this effort is going to increase a lot of overhead to do math, and obscures the role of thinking through the math conceptually. There seems to be a Principia Mathematica 2.0 idea in the programming world that we just need to reduce mathematics to code and it'll become easily accessible and usable. I'm not convinced that will be the case.

<comment><USER17> You and I read the article very differently. Based on your comment, it sounds like you interpreted the article as implicit advocation for the idea that mathematics should be represented in a programmatic (i.e. computable) way.

I didn't pick up any ideology in my reading. My interpretation of the article is that the author wanted to provide tips on how to implement mathematics, for two reasons:

1\. People _have to_ implement nontrivial mathematics from time to time, and

2\. Most mathematics doesn't concern itself with obstacles to implementation, because it doesn't have to.

<comment><USER18> That's true, and numerical analysis can be quite helpful for mathematical insight. However, I've never found the math to code part to be tricky. It's mostly an after thought compared to the conceptualization itself. So the emphasis on coding math suggests a reversal of priorities. In my experience, focusing on the coding part becomes very inefficient, especially with combinatorial problems. No matter how tricky I get with the implementation, a combinatorial explosion is still a combinatorial explosion. Coming up with a neat analytic solution ends up being super efficient in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Past discussions:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9022676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9022676)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3231525)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is great, but I'd love to see more Mathy languages added like APL, Mathematica, and Matlab/Octave.

</comment><comment><USER21> Despite the title, this article does a real disservice to Python.

For the purpose of constructing a generator, the author wrote:

> _In an object-oriented setting like Python or Java, streams can be > constructed from an interface_

Yikes. itertools was introduced in, let's see... 2003?

<comment><USER22> Python has both generator functions and generator expressions. A generator function is like this:

        def int_generator():
            i = 0
            while True:
               yield i
               i += 1

A generator expression looks like a list comprehension (a Python construct based on the set-builder notation in Math) and is used in situations where you don't really need to materialize the list - for example when you are just iterating over it in a `for` loop:

        for n, square in ((i, i * i) for i in int_generator()):
            print(f"{n}² = {square}")
            time.sleep(1)</comment></comment>


Netflix Is Winning the Streaming Race–But for How Long? - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/03/10/netflix-video-streaming-market/ <comment><USER2> Things that keep me with Netflix:

\- I can watch their shows on any device, including my chromecast (unlike Amazon Prime Video) and linux laptops.

\- I don't live in the US, so most of these alternatives just plain don't exist for me, and the local versions of them are mostly awful.

Sometimes I feel like these doomsaying articles (cfe also Uber) are coming from a hopelessly American perspective. They wonder "why is this company still so successful around the world when X, Y, and Z American competitors exist?"

Well, mostly because the rest of us don't have those options and so the one that actually takes a global perspective wins by default.

<comment><USER3> >\- I can watch their shows on any device, including my chromecast (unlike Amazon Prime Video) and linux laptops.

In addition to the availability of the app, it's a much nicer app than Hulu or Amazon provides. I saw this as someone who mainly uses streaming on a Fire tablet and Fire sticks. The main benefit of prime over netflix was that you could download videos for flights, but netflix recently added that capability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the second time in more than a decade I've been considering cancelling my Netflix account. There are two main reasons I haven't:

1\. It is basically background-billing at this point. Like Netflix is something you have in your monthly bills like your power bill. It is just a part of life.

2\. Their independent shows are a lot more crucial for keeping people like me around. I'm to the point where I almost want to put it on hold or just cancel it until the next favorite season of X comes out. In my case, Stranger Things this October.

However, like I mentioned, I've thought about cancelling and I doubt I'm the only one, so the article's quotes from Count Morningstar Research make sense to me.

<comment><USER5> If you cancelled Netflix today and waited until 10/31/2017 (the release date of Season 2), you'd save $48-$72 (depending on which tier of Netflix you subscribe to). The big benefit of the "new" group of streaming services is that (with the exception of Amazon Prime) you can switch them on and off at will to save a bit of money here and there.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but is the money you save by doing this worth the headache of remembering to do it at all?

<comment><USER5> I feel that if I cancel something and then don't remember to reactivate it, I'm probably better off without it in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A. The impending death of net neutrality in the US could (though I don't know the odds on this) throw a huge wrench into these works. Does it look likely in the next couple years that ISPs will be allowed to throttle Netflix in favor of their own services?

B. I hate that "the streaming race" is the only race in town. When will we have price-viable options to purchase, download, and own a movie? (Own: have control over, e.g. can store, back up, watch on any platform, etc.). The only options I know of are DRM-controlled like iTunes and even those cost orders of magnitude more than streaming by reasonable measures.*

*Netflix users pay about $10/month and watch on average about 45 hours/month of video (about $0.20/hour), while downloads cost about $20 per movie. If the downloaded two-hour video is watched five times on average, to pick a number out of a hat, that's still a cost of about $2/hour of watching.

<comment><USER8> Watch the same thing five times on average? What for? There's way too much other cool stuff to watch.

I admit our Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs have probably been played more than 50 times by now, so buying popular kids stuff makes sense (and these cost a lot less than $20), but for me, I generally prefer to watch something new rather than the same thing a second time.

The impending death of net neutrality is only a US thing. Netflix is more international than that. I doubt it's going to impact me much.

<comment><USER7> My point was that downloads are 10x overpriced even if you plan to watch them 5 times. If you watch it less, then they're just more overpriced.

The numbers I found (Netflix earnings report from Q3 and Q4 of 2016) seemed to indicate, if I'm reading it right, that they actually lose money internationally and are only profitable in the US. So I think they're in a very fragile position with regards to US policy changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I canceled my Netflix. I have been re-watching some older shows like The Office. I liked Stranger Things - a pretty well done show. But all in all I have not been using it.

Up until recently I was able to watch Netflix on my Ubuntu laptop via some user agent switching trick I found, but that stopped working recently, so that's another thing that drove the decision.

Also I have a an Amazon Firestick so unfortunately if stuff is available there I'd end up watching it there since launching Netflix app was another extra step.

<comment><USER10> I watch Netflix on my Ubuntu laptop using Chrome. No user agent switching or anything. You have to use full up Chrome from Google's repo, not Chromium from the Ubuntu repo. Chromium doesn't have the DRM bits that Netflix needs.

The other caveat is that Netflix hates my Hurricane Electric tunnel, so I have to sysctl off IPv6 when watching on the laptop. This is annoying but not Ubuntu's fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really want to like Netflix but unfortunately it just isn't enough. Sure the originals are good but the rest isn't very new and isn't very good. Some gems here and there but good movies are rare and the shows you want to watch are not included. This led me to get Sky(UK and Germany only I guess?). Quite expensive but at least lots of rotation and newish movies.

//edit: I wait until worthwhile seasons accumulated and binge watch for a month.

<comment><USER12> In the UK, you'd probably be better off with Now TV. It's basically Sky's IP- only platform. If you don't mind 720p and the lack of subtitles (with subs currently in closed beta), it's pretty cheap. Especially as you can buy a box with a code for 3 months Entertainment package for £15 with a free locked-down Roku box.

If you're actually IN the UK, they do a rather good DVB-T2 IPTV hybrid box called the Now TV Smart Box.

Although I'm the opposite entirely. Last thing I watched that was Sky- exclusive was West World. Netflix and Amazon Prime have been smashing it.

Black Sails is just about to finish up on Amazon Prime (exclusive) and I'm just getting up to current on Hell on Wheels, and the second season of Hand of God, having just finished binging Vikings and Patriot.

I'm looking forward to the full seasons of Jean-Claude Van Johnson, and The Tick, both having had well received pilots (as did Patriot.)

Netflix are about to release Iron Fist, which I'm chomping at the bit for. Luke Cage was a bit of a let down for me, but only in the context of DD and JJ which were superlative.

They've brought scifi ranging from the gourmet The Expanse to junkfood Killjoys, including the rather enjoyable Travellers. (Weirdly I watched the season of Hell on Wheels where they changed a character's actress to MacKenzie Porter, _after_ watching Travellers.) Stranger Things, ASoUE, Narcos, the new season of Black Mirror (having moved from Channel 4), the surprisingly excellent Shooter...

And Arc, Gantz: O, iBoy, Santa Clarita Diet, Kuro Mukuro, Aldnoah Zero, Ajin: Demi Human, Your Lie In April, Better Call Saul... There's no shortage on new varied content that I've thoroughly enjoyed.

I've still got some new-ish Sense8 and the second season of Bloodline to watch.

I can't think of a month that hasn't provided a new influx of excellent content on both platforms.

<comment><USER11> I'm from Germany but we do have those Sky Tickets as well. It's tempting but if you get both tickets (Entertainment and Movies) then it's actually as expensive as the real thing here. Plus there's always content that's exclusive to TV.

I didn't like the Netflix Marvel stuff but you're right there are good shows on there no question. I enjoyed The Expanse and Killjoys too (on Sky) but good to see that those are available too (although Killjoys not in Germany it seems..). But as soon as the second seasons of The Expanse starts it will take a while until Netflix has it whereas Sky will show it sooner (or did Netflix get better with this?).

<comment><USER12> Whoa, that's weird pricing. Although no more so than ours I guess!

But a full Sky sub here is ridiculously expensive at retail. To get Sky Atlantic and SyFy in HD (1080i) you need the "Boxset" bundle at £38 a month. The "Original" package (even at £22) is SD only for the premium channels.

Even paying monthly, that's more than NowTV Entertainment (which is most of Sky's premium entertainment pack except SyFy, in 720p), Netflix and Amazon Prime combined at full price (£22.49).

You're right, The Expanse S02 will be a binge-able dump on Netflix, at the end, rather than a weekly trickle on SciFy, despite its billing as a Netflix Original.

<comment><USER11> Okay it's actually similar for us but nobody gets Sky with normal pricing, there's always an offer that gets you Sky + Entertain + Movies + HD for 30€. Sky Ticket Entertainment is 10€ + Movies Ticket 15 € so it's aaaaalmost the the same. Maybe I'll switch to Netflix + Amazon + Sky Entertainment too and live with the fact that I'll miss out on movies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is just one pessimistic investor. Many think that Netflix will continue to grow. As a user, I think Netflix is getting a lot of things very right. Their original content is really, really excellent, and they make it really easy to keep track of where you are in a long series (unlike when I'm recording something from TV, for example).</comment>


Show HN: We Just Re-Launched BurningManRides.com for 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://burningmanrides.com/?2012

<comment><USER2> Cool, I've always wondered why there is nothing like this for general rides. Why niche on burning man, why not a general ride board?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey stkryzsiak - funny you should mention that. The company behind BurningManRides.com, Ridejoy (where I'm a co-founder) is something like a "general ride board".

We make it easy and fast to match with friendly people going your way. We're mostly on the West Coast right now but growing quickly. Check us out at: <http://ridejoy.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you concerned about the BORG making a trademark claim? They are very protective of the trademark.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it really depends on the service. We've always been upfront with the Burning Man organization about what we're doing and we don't make any kind of profit on the site. Given that it definitely provides value for their attendees, we've been in their good graces so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can imagine some pretty interesting car rides with Burning Man regulars.

</comment><comment><USER5> Your descriptions are in a very light grey against a white background; nearly invisible, consider increasing the contrast. Other than that, looks useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. It's a careful tradeoff between scannability (when browsing, you don't actually want that description text too visible) and readability (when you settle in on a ride you ARE interested)

Having said that, we're going to try making that text slightly darker and see if that makes the overall experience better.

<comment><USER6> Mouseover on an entry should make the grey foreground darker, instead of making the white background darker.

If you are going for scannability, repeating "Sign up to see if you have any mutual friends on Facebook" in bold blue on every entry is hurting you much worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Go RideJoy - amazing team!

<comment><USER8> Indeed. I've only met Kalvin and Jason, but really great, smart people (though, remember to always read the latter's blog with a very open and generous mind =) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've noticed this and RideJoy is filled with dummy accounts. What happens when someone wants to use the service and tries to get a ride from one of those dummy accounts?

<comment><USER10> Interesting, we've read a lot of untrue things about us in comment threads before, but this is a first :) we've never created dummy accounts/posts before (though we know it worked well for Reddit! <3 Alexis).

Can you reply here or email us at team at ridejoy and let us know what posts you're talking about? Much appreciated!

(We currently don't even let users post rides without a photo, so I'm racking my brain to figure out what you're thinking are dummy accounts...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://zimride.com> is great too.</comment>


Elon Musk Hits Traffic Pylon with New Cybertruck After Dinner in Malibu - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-hits-traffic-pylon-with-new-cybertruck-after-1840307783 <comment><USER2> This article was very cringe worthy. The guy is straight up hating on Musk and making a big deal out of him driving around "possibly illegally". What a joke of an article.

</comment><comment><USER3> And this is news?

</comment><comment><USER4> the visibility in that "car" is awful

<comment><USER5> did you ride in in at the tesla event?

<comment><USER4> of course not. i m a certified expert after watching this video

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c88Tvz16drg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c88Tvz16drg)</comment></comment></comment>


Netflix Strategy Prompts Backlash - <AUTHOR> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/netflix-strategy-prompts-backlash/

<comment><USER2> Isn't it a little soon for a news organization to describe it as a backlash? What percentage of netflix subscribers even know about it yet? Plus, where would the voices of praise come from?

Obviously the only people who are going to be vocal about it so early are the ones with strong negative reactions.</comment>


So this is how they treat us – 1000s of devs blocked from GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/akashtrikon/status/1154823428106403840 <comment><USER2> Recent related submissions include [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531039) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20526039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20526039).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is BAD. Restricting trade has its own issues... But this is the flow of information. Shame M$ doesn't have a spine.

<comment><USER4> What do you think would happen if Microsoft had a spine? What different behaviors would you expect to see?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sanctions are so tough people can't even work for free.

</comment><comment><USER6> R.I.P. Github Oct. 26, 2018

</comment><comment><USER7> This is being enforced because of Trump Iran trade policies. I doubt Github/MS would do this unless they had to

</comment><comment><USER8> the backside of the Microsoft acquisition. If Github was its own company as before it wouldnt have banned so fast, atleast the gov would have to put more pressure on it.

This is really bad, we need an alternative to Github. (Not gitlab)

<comment><USER9> We have plenty of github alternatives and gitlab is among my favorite. What exactly excludes gitlab from your list of alternatives?</comment></comment>


WWDC 2010 Wrap-Up - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/06/wwdc_wrapup <comment><USER2> "The demo seemed targeted specifically to existing FarmVille players, because I (having never played the game) couldn't make heads or tails out of how one is supposed to play or what sort of entertainment it was supposed to provide."

FarmVille isn't intended to provide entertainment, it's only intended to addict you (to Zynga's benefit). It's one of the more horrible things one can invent with software.

<comment><USER3> > FarmVille isn't intended to provide entertainment

Kindly, justify this statement.

<comment><USER2> There are certain design tradeoffs between entertainment and addictiveness, but I don't think a game which encourages players to get up at 4 in the morning to click on isometric squares to harvest virtual crops chose the "entertainment" side of that tradeoff.

In fact, I don't think _any_ game where the central mechanic involves clicking on isometric squares repeatedly to plant and harvest virtual crops is entertaining. You may claim they intended Farmville to be entertaining, but they're not that incompetent--they certainly made it addictive.

<comment><USER3> > In fact, I don't think _any_ game where the central mechanic involves > clicking on isometric squares repeatedly to plant and harvest virtual crops > is entertaining.

I'm still unclear on your argument. Are you saying that any activity that people engage in, that you don't find entertaining, was invented solely to be addictive?

<comment><USER2> No universal quantifiers--I'm just saying that Farmville, in particular, was designed to be addictive at the cost of being entertaining. If you have a counterpoint, kindly make it--this isn't quite the right forum for a Socratic argument.

<comment><USER3> Okay, here goes:

 _FarmVille isn't intended to provide entertainment, it's only intended to addict you (to Zynga's benefit)._

That's an absolutely ridiculous statement, and I'm shocked that it has gotten so many upvotes on Hacker News. Slashdot, sure, but not here.

Do you have any insight into Zynga's development of the game? If not you have no grounds upon which to make that hyperbolic statement.

...Unless you're arguing that anything you don't find entertaining was therefore designed _solely_ to be addictive.

 _Farmville, in particular, was designed to be addictive at the cost of being entertaining._

Are you saying that its entertainment value is _lessened_ by its addictive aspect, or that it's not entertaining at all? If the former, your original statement needs modification.

<comment><USER4> Just about everyone I know - including people who play FarmVille - agree that it's really not very fun, but the app (I hesitate to call it a "game") compels them forward with a number of addictive mechanics.

No offense, but it really sounds like you have a horse in this race - do you work for Zynga?

<comment><USER3> _Just about everyone I know - including people who play FarmVille - agree that it's really not very fun, but the app (I hesitate to call it a "game") compels them forward with a number of addictive mechanics._

Few people I know classify watching TV as "fun," but it passes the time and is entertaining.

 _No offense, but it really sounds like you have a horse in this race - do you work for Zynga?_

None taken. I absolutely have no relationship whatsoever with Zynga.

Consider the argument

 _Television isn't intended to provide entertainment, it's only intended to addict you (to the networks' benefit)._

I can't imagine it would be so uncritically received by Hacker News.

Clearly FarmVille has addictive elements, like any game. I'm shocked that Hacker News so enthusiastically accepts that "FarmVille isn't intended to provide entertainment", and is punishing me for saying so.

<comment><USER5> A similar statement about TV (or most other games for that matter) wouldn't match our experience. Most of us have been entertained or know someone who has been entertained by TV. FarmVille does not share this quality. Most of us know at least one person who has played it, but no one who actually seems to be entertained. My girlfriend used to play it a lot, but she spoke of it in terms of fulfilling a need or obligation rather than deriving enjoyment. I suspect a lot of people have similar experiences, and that is why they find your comparison to TV to be specious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Apple should have put iPhone 4 units on display in Moscone, like they did > with the original iPhone at Macworld 2007, if only to inspire developers to > create double-resolution artwork for the custom UI elements

I think the Simulator provides all the inspiration a developer needs. Seeing your work suddenly presented to you at twice the resolution and detail is very stunning and thought provoking.

</comment><comment><USER7> "It's interesting that Apple is going to sell it for $5 rather than include it in the system. I'm not sure why."

Sarbox?

</comment><comment><USER8> OMG! Gruber farted an opinion about apple!

I wonder if he thinks their new products and direction are the future of technology.

If anything, he might have been too hard on apple, in suggesting that they do something different than the exact thing that they did, because apple is flawless with marketing and product differentiation. And the iPad is _fast_.

I can't wait for more footnotes from the revolution.</comment>


SpaceX is manufacturing 120 Starlink internet satellites per month - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/10/spacex-starlink-satellte-production-now-120-per-month.html <comment><USER2> Will these satellites have to eventually be replaced with updated models when they implement the laser sat-to-sat communication?

<comment><USER3> Each satellite will be definitely replaced after some time, I think it is around 5 years max. It seems likely they will not be replacing them with the same ones but with updated designs. Whether and when it will be with laser comms is unclear, but IMHO probable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> does anyone know why they can't use the falcon heavy for these launches and launch more satellites in one go ? It says falcon 9 carries 60 satellites per launch and I'm guessing some of the limitations are due to cargo weight limits on the falcon 9 ?

<comment><USER5> A single Falcon 9 can carry 37,000lbs to low earth orbit. Falcon Heavy carries roughly twice that mass. Each starlink satellite weighs 500lbs. A single Falcon 9 can carry the weight of 70 or so satellites. However they can only fit like ~60 in the fairing which is the same one they use for Falcon Heavy. Falcon Heavy makes more sense when you need to get similar masses to farther locations (Geostationary, Moon, Mars) or denser payloads to low earth orbit.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. I assumed that they would develop a bigger fairing but I guess they did the match and figured out the optimal size based on demand for payload size/weight</comment></comment></comment>


Basecamp Built a $100B Business by Doing Less on Purpose - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/how-basecamp-built-a-100-billion-business-by-doing-less-on-purpose-5f978ce6478c <comment><USER2> Basecamp is not a $100B business. It accepted $1 in exchange for 0.000000001% of the company in order 1) show how you can hack valuations and 2) demonstrate that valuation is the wrong metric to focus on.

[https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press- release-37signals-...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press- release-37signals-valuation-tops-100-billion-after-bold-vc-investment)</comment>


Apple To Make Billions On Google's Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/11/04/apple-to-make-billions-on-googles-android/

<comment><USER2> A number of things:

1\. I'm pretty sure Google already makes money for Android, through advertising and such.

2\. If the Motorola acquisition goes through, Apple may not be able to extract much in terms of royalties, given that it almost certainly infringes on some of those patents (unknowingly, of course).

3\. Microsoft extracts money from Android, right now, but it has a huge number of patents.

4\. Listing a dozen patents is somewhat irrelevant when we're talking about these companies acquiring huge patent portfolios.

Also, abolish patents.

<comment><USER3> Expanding on point 1: The question isn't even "Does Google make money from Android." The question is: "What does Google make in a world with Android vs what does Google make in a world without Android?"

The play with Android is not unlike Chrome: they're making $0 _directly_ from Chrome, but having Chrome has pushed their interests in the browser space in a way that has helped their bottom line. (faster javascript processing leading to more use/more ads within their core products).

Without Android, mobile was hurtling toward a paid-app space with not a lot of arbitrary web usage and thus not a lot of ads, and of those ads that remained, the phone makers and/or networks could force terms or lock Google out on a whim.

In short, Google as an advertiser has no choice but to spend big to ensure that not only does Apple not win, but that the architecture of authoritative apps does not win.

(In Android's lackluster paid-app market I see the same self-sabotage-in- deference-to-the-cash-cow that we see in Microsoft projects that threaten Office/Windows.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR: I'm an expert/patent troll myself, Apple has a couple patents and here is the TL;DR version of them, ergo Apple will make billions.

Of course, this article ignores exactly how Android violates these patents. And that Google and its partners aren't exactly entering the ring without any patents themselves. And more importantly, the fact that Apple seems very uninterested in making billions off Android. If they did, they would be acting like Microsoft. Not to mention the Jobs decree was to spend all of Apple's money destroying Android, not padding its coffers. There is a fairly large disconnect here.

</comment><comment><USER5> Link-baiting headlines like this are really devaluing the entire journalistic process.

This feels like an article written by a hyperactive high-schooler with a fast- approaching deadline for his independent writing assignment. He first forms some vague but polarizing argument by stringing together a few loaded sentences to compensate for lack of real research and insight. Then it basically proceeds to just list the patents Apple will (or already has) used to litigate Android OEMs...

</comment><comment><USER6> "US 7,657, 849 Apple 2011 Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image"

The details of the patent mention a predetermined gesture.

Moving from left to right is a predetermined gesture.

Is moving a ring from one area of the screen to another a predetermined gesture? If the final location of the ring is not consistent, could it be called a gesture? Is pushing a button a gesture?

It's things like that that make patents so questionable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apple is not Microsoft</comment>


If you're writing configuration to manage your assets you're doing it wrong. - <AUTHOR> http://silentrob.me/articles/no-more-config

<comment><USER2> > comes with a production ready web server, and watches your files by default

If it's watching your files, it's not production ready.

<comment><USER3> Care to expand on that? What are the drawbacks?

It sounds to me that they've integrated a site build system into their webserver. What's wrong with that?

<comment><USER2> Are you going to get latency spikes when it decides a file has changed? What happens if the syntax for some, but not all, of the files is wrong? Deploying to a production webserver is something that wants to be as explicit and simple as possible; complex tasks like compilation/substitution of these script files belong earlier in the pipeline.</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Driver Destination - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lyft.com/posts/2014/11/24/become-a-lyft-driver-on-your-way-to-work-introducing-driver-destination <comment><USER2> I'm happy Lyft is demonstrating that it actually cares about its core/founding values of decreasing car usage.

They could have viewed this as a distraction to expanding its existing dedicated-driver model, in order to better compete against Uber. (Lyft Line is just multiple passengers; Sidecar already does "driver destination" aka real carpooling, but they're also playing a different game focusing on drivers in general, and don't have the scale Lyft does)

If they can get traction, they'll have cracked a problem that many people have tried to solve and failed at: how do you get Americans to carpool?

Context: Lyft's founders pivoted into Lyft from Zimride after five years of building white-labeled carpool sites for colleges/companies + a public long- distance carpool/rideshare board, and discovering that a) that's not a VC- scale business, and b) 90% of Americans don't "do" traditional carpooling and they're not about to start

Anyway, I use Lyft over Uber when possible for many reasons, but this is one-- they started out trying to improve society in a particular way, and still are, even as they've changed their approach. And I think they should be commended for setting an example for how to achieve an activist-y goal through a startup/company. Or since it's not achieved yet, at least trying.

(I have no affiliation with Lyft, see my profile.)

<comment><USER3> _b) 90% of Americans don 't "do" traditional carpooling and they're not about to start_

90% of Americans didn't pay non-professional strangers for a ride before Uber came along. 90% of Americans didn't share what they were having for lunch before Instagram. 90% of Americans didn't share the hilarious list of "cats who forgot how to cat" before Buzzfeed.

The point being it's pretty much impossible to predict what product will be a success based on past market behaviour. Saying something won't work is very often right, but it's a sucky reason not to try.

<comment><USER4> Your overall point is correct but I don't think it applies here.

There are deep cultural reasons for why carpooling hasn't become popular in America. From what I have observed as a foreigner, people in this country love their big personal spaces, and their cars are a part of that. It's related to why public transportation isn't popular: most people don't want to sit within such close proximity to strangers.

<comment><USER5> In my experience it's mostly due to convenience. When public transportation is available and more convenient, it's heavily used. It needs to be available everywhere and all/most of the time. Car pooling is similar, coordinating with other people, leaving home/work at the same time everyday is difficult, not convenient. If Lyft is widely used, it can solve this problem. No need to have advanced plans. In fact, in Washington DC, I can see people offering these rides for free to a second person in the car and use the HOV lanes. This is already done from fixed locations without the help of an app. Lyft would make it so much easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shared carpooling (called "slugging" here) has a been a viable commuting option for people in the DC area for decades. No money changes hands; the point is that a car with 3+ people can use the much faster HOV lanes.

[http://www.slug-lines.com/Slugging/About_slugging.asp](http://www.slug- lines.com/Slugging/About_slugging.asp)

<comment><USER7> The thing is, I've never heard that term until now. I lived in the DC area for two years and worked with quite a few commuters. It's cool that it's a concept but there hasn't been mainstream adoption to the point where it's as easy as an app in your pocket until now.

If a tree falls in the woods...

<comment><USER8> It's a fairly ubiquitous concept in DC. Hell, the website Zoe goes to work from in House of Cards is named after it.

<comment><USER6> Hm, I'd assumed that was a reference to the newspaper/typesetting term "slugline". But maybe it's both.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure the "slugline" term is common for that meaning; it's typically (don't know how widely it's still used) just slug. But it's a pretty obvious and clever derived term to combine slug and headline and come up with slugline.

Slug line (two words) is apparently a screenwriting term--which I didn't know.

<comment><USER6> I don't think slugline was derived from headline. On old linotype machines, the slug was literally a line of metal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Flinc [0], a start-up from Germany, does exactly this but in real time, too. It can hook up with the drivers navigation software so they are only asked to pick someone up, when it does not change their own route.

I highly prefer this model over the classic Uber/Lyft service, because it actually delivers on the promises of the sharing economy. Resources are shared, from which both parties and the general public benefit. Its not just taxis with lower wages.

Of course, critical mass is a bigger problem with this model, but there is the obvious entry point of white-label ride sharing platforms for companies, which flinc does, too.

I think, it is about as cool as it gets, until I get my self-driving car, which transports passengers on-demand the whole day after it drove me to work, from time to time being recharged on inductive parking spots, powered by green energy.

[0]: [https://flinc.org/](https://flinc.org/)

</comment><comment><USER11> The messaging here is off. "Driver Destination" implies it has generalized applications -> be a Lyft driver where ever you are going. In practice, they need to get traction in the one big market for this: commuters. Better marketing will call it what it is: Lyft Commute - share a ride from home to work

(claiming the product name 'Commute' also stops Uber from using it)

<comment><USER12> Works anywhere there are a lot of people on similar route, not necessarily commute.

Drop someone off at airport, pick someone up who's going near your house or anywhere along your route.

Same for big game, weekend rush to the beach communities, other events.

It's a good natural counterbalance for 'surge pricing', since whenever there is big demand there are probably people on overlapping routes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really great – though I wonder if Lyft runs the risk of people making the connection once (i.e. finding a person with similar commute times/locations who is willing to pay for rides) and deciding to arrange a paid carpool that doesn't go through Lyft.

<comment><USER14> I think when you read the safety guidelines this idea is a non-starter. Using Lyft you get guaranteed payment, 1M of insurance while driving someone else, and the app tracking your location and keeping you safe. When you circumvent the system you take on a lot of risk, especially if the person you are driving gets injured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am late to the Lyft party, but after recently leaving Uber because I did not agree with their questionable business ethics and attitude toward their customers, I must say I find the whole Lyft experience somewhat refreshing.

Funnily enough, my first Lyft driver I had a week or so ago was telling me he leaves home a couple of hours earlier, does a couple of trips close by to his work and then on the way home from work he turns the app on and most of the time he is fortunate to get a ride that is going the same direction, so it pays his way home.

Not an entirely new premise, car-pooling has always been a thing, but for my driver (his name was Brett) this is going to be an awesome feature and I imagined many other Lyft drivers. I like the feature of the app that allows you to tip drivers a little something extra when a driver has gone beyond what you are paying them for. In my first experience, Brett offered me and my pregnant wife a muesli bar, bottled water and even held an umbrella for us while we got in and out of the car.

Seriously good job Lyft, you have a superior app/service and great drivers, you just need to get the numbers up and get some more brand awareness.

</comment><comment><USER16> 20 years ago, I lived in a house that had a city implemented carpool pickup spot in the East Bay - every morning carpoolers would line up and wait for a rid into SF to get through via the carpool lane, back when the toll was only $2.

Since it was city property, I don't believe my parents got anything out of it, and we couldn't park in front of our house Mon - Fri mornings, my brother did have the enterprising idea of selling coffee in the mornings, much like a lemonade stand with a forced audience.

Seems like there was a demand for this type of service 20 years back though, interesting to see it is still an issue that companies are looking to solve today.

<comment><USER17> That still happens very widely, it's a bit more formalized today:

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

Paying is optional, usually the passengers throw the driver a dollar or two, but it's pretty widespread:

[https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?vpsrc=6&ll=37.84829...](https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?vpsrc=6&ll=37.84829,-122.266159&t=m&ie=UTF8&msa=0&spn=0.216881,0.479965&z=11&mid=zql22s-6L4ys.kPiNnZXPWtzo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This could work really well for things like getting to Tahoe on the weekends too.

<comment><USER19> In that case, most people would want to ensure round-trips, though.

<comment><USER20> That's not an issue with going to work?

This ride-sharing idea only works if both ends of the trip have sufficient traffic to promote carpooling.

<comment><USER21> Within major metro areas there are many options for getting home, from car sharing to regular taxis to busses and trains. The same does not apply to a trip to Tahoe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The TechCrunch article is much more informative.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/25/lyft-driver- destination/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/25/lyft-driver-destination/)

<comment><USER23> not a statement you get to hear very often!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So lyft for the burbs and uber for the cities, then? Burbs require non- professional drivers (i.e. daily commuters) to become drivers since ride request density isn't high enough to support professional drivers.

</comment><comment><USER25> Having grown up with California's carpool lanes (a lane reserved for vehicles with two or more riders) I've always expected the number of commuters that are able to take advantage of it has to be minimal. In my experience, having that additional passenger only happens on special occasions; it never happens on the morning commute. This is what the carpool lane has always needed to be successful; networking.

</comment><comment><USER26> Man, I was thinking about this _last night_ , how I could use my morning and evening commutes to take people home on my way home -- since I'd either stay in the city (killing time for traffic to die down), or be paid to sit in my normal evening traffic home across the bay. Only hiccup would be if I had a fare taking me to the south bay, but that seems a reasonable gamble.

<comment><USER27> Same with me this morning. Drove past someone at a bus stop and thought "They're going to sit there for another 10+ minutes, then pay $3+ to get to their destination with a stop every couple of blocks. Meanwhile, I'm going past right now using one seat out of five."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Very interesting. The most important thing to me personally is convenience, which is an itch that I believe this scratches. If I'm able to input that I'm going somewhere and this will help automatically direct me to people I can pickup and drop off on the way, it avoids the huge hassle of coordination. Additionally, it (presumably) helps with the issue of liability?

</comment><comment><USER29> Trying to charge people for carpooling, something we've traditionally done for free. The "sharing economy" isn't about sharing- it's about monetizing free things and taking a cut.

This is not in any way improving humanity. It's a step backwards.

<comment><USER30> > we've traditionally done for free

I don't have stats, but my guess is that most people don't carpool. So traditionally we haven't done it at all.

<comment><USER31> This is especially true about carpooling with a stranger. Generally, carpooling now happens with neighbors/coworkers, which isn't exactly the same use-case as this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> That seems like it's going after a very small segment of the market.

<comment><USER33> It will be, but it is appealing to a large casual set of the market, and it could reduce congestion significantly in a city if it gets enough traction.

<comment><USER34> Can't up-vote this one enough; worked at a startup for a while tackling all sorts of traffic related stuff with proprietary IP, industry veterans & more. Suffice to say that there are tons of papers out there which clearly say taking N% of the number of cars off the road reduces congestion by Y% - a very much larger impact than the number of cars taken off.

This is because traffic, in general, is really caused by a small number of cars. It seems like it's everywhere but the root cause (there was a paper even on HN that talked about it) is that people can't follow each other at an even speed. This uneven speed then results in more braking, more backup, etc. A few cars in the lead who don't accelerate properly can have a disproportionately negative impact on traffic flow and average speed.

<comment><USER35> It's the same problem with queues - the people at the front don't have as much incentive to move quickly, since they're already at the front of the queue.

Probably the only way to really solve it is autonomous cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I remember when this was called carpooling. Weird to put the branding on it. But these days nothing counts unless it's in service of some corporate brand.

</comment><comment><USER37> Sidecar has had this functionality for a long time.

<comment><USER38> While that may be true, Sidecar isn't in many locations. It looks like it is in Seattle, however I've never heard of it until now, nor do I know anybody that uses it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is more inline with what the founders worked on originally, a ride- sharing service called ZimRide

</comment><comment><USER40> In a similar vein this could be used to replace restaurant delivery drivers.

</comment><comment><USER41> Procedural carpooling. Neat.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is brilliant. Lyft is doing everything right as of late.

</comment><comment><USER43> So, will this work in Sweden? The Google Play page says nothing about geographical restrictions, but it speaks about "DMV checks" which I have no idea what it is.

Seems Americans sometimes forget that the internet is a global network.

<comment><USER38> Is Lyft in Sweden as it is? While I agree that many things on the internet are America-centric, it wouldn't surprise me that a company based in America makes an announcement about a feature that they are rolling out, in America.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> ass backwards. you want the next bn dollar idea?

while I am at work, my car sits in the parking lot of the building for 8-10hours, unused.

i don't want to be a lyft/uber driver. i want MY CAR to work for uber/lyft in its off hours. have a driver pick it up in the morning at the office, then return it when i want to get home (full gas tank and cleaned car for an extra fee).

someone takes this and get rich.

<comment><USER45> how is someone going to get to your workplace to pickup the car (assuming you are talking about a suburban office park and not a CBD/downtown)

<comment><USER46> A friend of mine interviewed for a van-deliverer job very many years ago. He would put a bicycle into the van, drive the van to the customer, ride the bike back to the depot and pick the next van and repeat. The customer would drive with the van for the day. Then the reverse in the evening.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Web site I built last night that takes screenshots of web sites - <AUTHOR> https://sitegazer.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> I built a similar tool called GeoPeeker ([http://www.geopeeker.com](http://www.geopeeker.com)) that does this as well, but does so from a number of different geographic locations. Handy for trouble-shooting DNS and CDN issues. I too submitted it to Hacker News but alas, it found no love. C'est la vie!

<comment><USER3> Well of all the people that posted links to alternates yours was the only one that worked. Great app and nice execution.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! You've no idea how much I appreciate the kind words. I've put a good deal of work into it, and have a number of new features currently under development.

<comment><USER4> Great job, but for the one thing I think it would be useful, it is not.

I built this website (www.portacomprimido.com.br or www.pillorganizer.co) in Portuguese and translated to english. It is supposed to check your browser's language and serve the proper language - portuguese for PT-BR, english for all others (doesn't matter which URL you use, both are the same website).

As I not very sure of my coding skills, I wanted to check it, so I asked a friend of mine living in the USA to check it for me. I thought your website would be a easier way to check it, but it is not. All locations show the english version, even the ones supposed to be from "Sâo Paulo, Brazil". If you can correct this, it would be a nice feature.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback Soneca. I'm currently working on a feature that will let you change your user agent and language to address this issue. This, and other new features will be hitting GeoPeeker in early November.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats on JFDI an idea - There is a ton of opportunity in this space as well as competitors. It's been something I have been struggling with as I want a cheap option that lets me take the screenshot (works with flash and lots of javascript) and lets me resize or crop and then place on s3.

What's ur next steps with it? Charge? OpenSource?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I built this as I was doing competitive analysis for my other project, www.cameralends.com. I have a few ideas for where to take this:

\- take a timelapse of your site, one screenshot per day

\- create a report of 10-20 webpage screenshots (one time for competitive analysis, scheduled & emailed for visual QA)

\- options to use different browsers

Because I'm using SauceLabs and S3, I have hosting costs, so I am definitely interested in some sort of paid premium version. What would you pay for?

<comment><USER5> API call - url=[http://whatever.com](http://whatever.com) reply - src=[http://s3bucket](http://s3bucket) of image bonus crop - auto crop image based on params (500x500)

Would pay $10/month for up to 300 images - $25/month for up to 3,000

2 biggest pains/wants for this 1) WordPress Blog that I could build a plugin (or u) so I can embed a screenshot for reviews 2) for apps I build that embed a link - pull a screenshot and auto embed so it looks pretty

Would love to be your first customer - lmk johnmurch.com

<comment><USER6> [https://browshot.com/api/documentation#screenshot_create](https://browshot.com/api/documentation#screenshot_create) ? Browshot supports upload to S3 and cropping ([https://browshot.com/api/documentation#screenshot_thumbnail](https://browshot.com/api/documentation#screenshot_thumbnail))

URL2PNG has a WordPress plugin to take screenshots sautomatically

<comment><USER5> Looks great - will try and test out as I REALLY need this service automated :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, thanks for all the kind words and ideas. Currently, I'm hitting limits with SauceLabs and don't have any more time right now to work on this (work day). I've already done some low hanging scaling work (Unicorn, scaling workers, upgrading databases), but the site is under too high of load to work normally. Sorry about that! I really didn't expect this much traffic from Hacker News, and I assure you it's delightful when no one else is using it ;-)

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://sitegazer.herokuapp.com/reports](https://sitegazer.herokuapp.com/reports)

Interesting to see what sites users have submitted!

EDIT: I can also delete from that page!

<comment><AUTHOR> Removed delete/update/edit. Agree, it was fun and surprising to see URLs roll in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before SearchMe was shut down and had its assets liquidated, I built the tool that took all of the screenshots for the search results. (SeRPs were presented as a series of screenshots rather than a list of links; see [http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/11/searchme-launches-new- searc...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/11/searchme-launches-new-search- engine-with-heavy-backing-from-sequoia/) for some examples.) The toughest thing to get right was consistent screenshots of Java and Flash content.

I can't get your app to load, but does it handle at least those two plugins? If so, how? And if not, do you plan to change that?

</comment><comment><USER9> Have you considered using [http://urlbox.io](http://urlbox.io) \- Screenshot as a Service api?

</comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't accept www. __* links. Need to specifically feed it[http://..](http://..).

</comment><comment><USER11> > We're sorry, but something went wrong.

> If you are the application owner check the logs for more information.

<comment><USER12> Refreshing the page once did away with this.

<comment><USER13> Page comes up, but then when I type in my URL, it crashes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I created [http://site2pic.com/](http://site2pic.com/) a couple years ago, it also hosts the screenshots. Not sure what to do with it.

<comment><USER15> Great. I tried it and it works just fine. I also like the fact that you provide a link to the image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Suggestion: add a field to use a custom DNS server.

Then one could get different screenshots for the same URL (i.e. to use when testing or migrating websites).

<comment><USER17> This might be where there is value in the idea.

You could also add different User Agent Strings, different Request IPs etc... to simulate different users in different parts of the world.

Otherwise it seems some open source script could do this very easily and free.

<comment><USER2> I've built a tool that does more or less exactly this - give it a try, maybe even send some feedback - [http://www.geopeeker.com](http://www.geopeeker.com)

Updates are in progress that will let you do all sorts of tweaks to the agent, even the DOM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ...And then you posted it on HN and your site crashed. There is a really good tool that I found to capture screenshots of other websites on GitHub called Review[1]. I'll compare it to this thing once this comes back up.

[1] - [https://github.com/juliangruber/review](https://github.com/juliangruber/review)

</comment><comment><USER18> I was needing a service that took a screenshot of a site but at a wide width. Every service I found online took it at like 1000px or right at the cut off of the layout and I wanted it to show more. It's crazy in Chrome I can't seem to find a decent tool that takes a shot of the entire web page.

<comment><USER19> You could write something like this yourself in about 5 lines of code using PhantomJS: [http://phantomjs.org/](http://phantomjs.org/) Check out rasterize.js in their examples section.

<comment><USER20> And for that extra API goodness you could do it through node and expose your fancy wide-screenshot-app to the world : [https://github.com/alexscheelmeyer/node- phantom](https://github.com/alexscheelmeyer/node-phantom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Crashes..

This could be a great product in advertising if you can a) simulate traffic / browser from another location

Take repeated screenshots throughout the day.

Advertisers love to know where their ads have been running and this is a really easy problem that has not been well solved yet.

</comment><comment><USER22> This reminded me of the Google Perceptual Diff

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUAZt0PFMQk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUAZt0PFMQk) [https://github.com/bslatkin/dpxdt](https://github.com/bslatkin/dpxdt)

</comment><comment><USER23> You should also check out [http://www.htmltoimage.io](http://www.htmltoimage.io) it does the same thing and more. BTW: your app looks great. Just let allow me to enter something like CNN.com without http

</comment><comment><USER24> really good way to view a site you shouldn't be looking at

</comment><comment><USER25> I wrote a super simple Ruby app to do this: [https://github.com/ctide/screenshotter](https://github.com/ctide/screenshotter)

</comment><comment><USER26> Something similar is this blog post about using Selenium + Perl (and bit of GD) to create screenshots of all your website pages via its sitemap.

 _A contact sheet for your website_ \- [http://techblog.babyl.ca/entry/contact- sheet](http://techblog.babyl.ca/entry/contact-sheet)

</comment><comment><USER19> Your app seems to be down at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER27> Here is a similar project: [https://github.com/scrapinghub/splash#renderpng](https://github.com/scrapinghub/splash#renderpng)

</comment><comment><USER28> no doubt you built it last night - some testing would have been nice before publishing - i tried to snap [http://imolly.herokuapp.com](http://imolly.herokuapp.com) and i got Amazon's error page

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that :( But why load test before I had to? It works well in a low- traffic setting, and I had no idea the HN gods would be so kind to me. But now that I have early feedback, I can make a better decision about how to proceed.</comment></comment>


Tesla Mod Turns a Model S into a Mobile 'Surveillance Station' - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-surveillance-detection-scout/ <comment><USER2> > Despite the obvious privacy concerns, Kain pitches his invention primarily > as a helpful tool for Tesla owners who rate above average on the paranoia > spectrum.

"I'm paranoid about being surveilled, which is why I own a car which sends every detail about my driving back home to a corporate mothership."

<comment><USER3> Sure. But he's more worried about people stealing his car.

You could also automate Waze updates ;)</comment></comment>


North Pacific Logbook - <AUTHOR> https://100r.co/site/north_pacific_logbook.html <comment><USER2> This is a really cool resource that contains some magical bits. For example:

> Week 8 July 26th 0400 Realized that the GRIB files I downloaded yesterday > were lower resolution weather, and did not rightly show the severity and > extent of the weather running along the coast of BC. Upon seeing the > detailed forecast this morning, we triple-reefed the main and braced for > impact. The weather was horrible. We got huge waves, lots of wind and thick, > thick fog. I was very discouraged, disheartened with what lay between us and > our goal, yet another monster on the ocean, one my body and mind were just > not up to facing. We were both sad, and angry for a while. We sat inside > wishing it'd all end now. Then a group of dolphins appeared in the fog. A > large group! Devine saw them swimming around the boat, they kept us company > for a long while. We could hear them chatting through the hull, like several > squeaky toys were being squeezed underwater. Everytime I heard a squeak it > made me smile, it made us feel better and gave us the courage to push on. > Thank you dolphins for being there with us, as always.

I also enjoyed the philosophical musings at the end.

</comment><comment><USER3> "We are relying on very fragile systems. We depend on Devine's ancient iphone 5 for navigation and for weather, and today it developed this weird bug, which scared me. My phone died early on in this trip, I'm not sure why. As I was charging it off a rechargeable battery one night, it began vibrating and would not stop! Then, I couldn't charge it anymore and the battery went flat. We've got an older phone with Navionics and Iridium mail as backup, but I worry, as I hate depending on these flimsy, buggy devices. I am angry that we didn't plan this better. We talk a lot about over-reliance on tech, yet we keep making mistakes. Though in truth, we had 3 working phones and we did not think it possible that all 3 would fail at the same time. Our safety is tied to the working of these devices and it is scary. It is dumb and I am angry."

</comment><comment><USER4> James Hamilton, distinguished engineer at AWS, has been living in a boat for several years now, and he's frequently traveling somewhere in the world. [0]

He's currently somewhere in Norway.

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

<comment><USER5> I unabashedly would love to do this

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you love the wilderness, love being out there in nature, this is as close as you can almost get in our modern world. I have an incredible respect for people who do these adventures and live to tell their stories...

and then tell them in a way that resonates with the way I would tell the story too...

<comment><USER7> If you haven't, you need to read Kon-Tiki.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kon- Tiki_Expedition:_By_Ra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kon- Tiki_Expedition:_By_Raft_Across_the_South_Seas)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon- Tiki_expedition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition)

Fascinating stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also documented in this video: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=RWgnOFycA0g](https://youtube.com/watch?v=RWgnOFycA0g)</comment>


Yahoo just broke every page that was using their Weather Badge - <AUTHOR>

Yep ... they sure did. <comment><AUTHOR> Prepend uk. to the badge URL to temporarily fix.

[http://uk.weather.yahoo.com/badge/?id=12796367&u=f&t...](http://uk.weather.yahoo.com/badge/?id=12796367&u=f&t=green&l=horizontal)

</comment><comment><USER2> um, how about a link? some explanation? anything?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. Yahoo! provided an embeddable widget for weather forecasts that was used pretty commonplace on the internet. Today, all requests to that widget just forward to the weather.yahoo.com homepage, thus breaking any websites using the widget. I had to go through clients' websites and prepend a uk. to the weather subdomain to get it to work.</comment></comment>


A short animated explanation of Stoicism (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/18/05/a-short-animated-explanation-of-stoicism <comment><USER2> Sounds like Buddhism. What do you think are the difference?

<comment><USER3> While both are similar, goal of Buddhism is to stop suffering and goal of Stoicism is happiness achieved by living according to nature.

Buddhism says "wanting anything is suffering", Stoicism says "wanting irrelevant things is suffering". Irrelevant things are all that we can't control, non-obvious examples are health and outcomes of our actions.

Buddhism says you progress when you are less... you. You have less ego, you want less, you don't hoard useless information and knowledge. Stoicism says you progress when you gain knowledge about life (but not an useless knowledge), when you get better, when you achieve your goals.

Buddhism says we are one: humans, animals, plants, rocks. Stoicism says we are one: humans.

<comment><USER2> >Buddhism says "wanting anything is suffering", Not anything just anything else than not craving that is greed, hate and ignorance (ignorance to the world, the nature of reality that's some Buddhist metaphysic)

>Buddhism says you progress when you are less... you. You have less ego, You are not less because they are basically saying in an absolute sense there is no self, identity. Methinks that's true that true that it is bad to just straight up have that as dogma, but in reality when you meditate on impermanence and the nature of suffering you also start to identify less with the five aggregates: feeling, form, perception, mental etc... (Sorry for talking like a dogmatic religious monk)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can a cryptocurrency protocol be a success independent of coin price? - <AUTHOR> I hear many people talk about why "coin X" is a great investment because the protocol behind is could be "revolutionary". For example, Ethereum.
However, could the protocol behind the coin be a great success & widely used in different areas/industries, while the actual coin price tanks and/or becomes irrelevant?
I guess the main point of the question is: Can a protocol that is behind a cryptocurrency survive, and thrive in the real world, without the coin being valuable?
For a real world example: Is there a chance that the protocol behind Ethereum can be successful and widely used, while the price of Ethereum tanks and the coin disappears?
Or are the 2 forever linked? <comment><USER2> Usually the currency is tied to the protocol to incentivize people to keep the network up and running - this is essentially what mining is. By helping the network to confirm transactions (by mining or staking) you get rewarded with the transaction fees that people pay to make a transfer on the network.

Now, there are zero transaction fee protocols like the DAG based IOTA for example (and I think NANO works this way too). In order for your transaction to be confirmed, it has to confirm two previous transactions. So essentially you get no reward other than the fact that your own transaction will be confirmed as well by the next coming transactions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just sell something on top of a blockchain protocol. Think Ripple, but 100% private blockchain. Just don't allow anyone to sell to anyone but you. Suddenly you've removed the volatility and deflation risk inherent to cryptocurrencies.

The bad part is you don't become insanely rich in 24h; but I think that time passed long ago.

</comment><comment><USER4> In theory all those things can happen, but it's hard for the press to separate success from price. So one way you can help them is to fix the price by design so that it never goes up or down. This will also drive away speculators who probably aren't helping your system anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> For public blockchains, you need cryptocurrency, and it must be at least comparable to the energy miners spent.

However, it is different for private blockchains.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not sure what you mean by the "protocol".

Ethereum, like many cryptocurrencies, is open source. So you can fork it, change it, and build your own system.

Now your system needs a network of nodes to support the blockchain. How else do you incentivize them but offer them block rewards in the form of tokens/coins? Unless you don't want to be decentralized, which is totally possible. But why would anyone want to use your product if it risks being shut down so easily?

So whatever your network is, now you've got traction and you're running into scaling problems. You want to implement new features. Are you really smarter than Vitalik Buterin? Is your team better, can you actually solve those problems?

If not, isn't Ethereum ultimately better than whatever is trying to compete against it?

Private blockchains could have a place solving niche business problems. But whatever that solution have far more advantages existing on Ethereum vs elsewhere.</comment>


Lisping at JPL (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html <comment><USER2> Author here. I'm on the road today so latency will be high but I'm happy to answer any questions people have. Also, a shameless plug: I'm still coding in and writing about Lisp. Some currently active projects:

[https://github.com/rongarret/ergolib](https://github.com/rongarret/ergolib)

[https://github.com/rongarret/BWFP](https://github.com/rongarret/BWFP)

[https://github.com/rongarret/tweetnacl/blob/master/tweetnacl...](https://github.com/rongarret/tweetnacl/blob/master/tweetnacl- bindings.lisp)

And I just finished (but have not yet published) a Lisp implementation of the Signal double-ratchet. If anyone is interested let me know and I'll publish that too.

<comment><USER3> >... hardware that is 100 million miles away is an interesting experience. Having a read-eval-print loop running on the spacecraft proved invaluable in finding and fixing the problem

So...

How exactly does it work to have a repl on the spacecraft?

Doesn't the system halt while it's waiting for user input?

<comment><USER2> No. We used a multi-threaded Lisp. One thread ran the REPL, and other threads ran the RAX code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> " One of the reasons I stayed at JPL for twelve years was that I was appalled at what the software industry had become. The management world has tried to develop software engineering processes that allow people to be plugged into them like interchangeable components. The "interface specification" for these "components" usually involves a list of tools in which an engineer has received "training." (I really detest the use of the word "training" in relation to professional activities. Training is what you do to dogs. What you should be doing with people is educating them, not training them. There is a big, big difference.)

To my mind, the hallmark of the interchangeable component model of software engineers is Java. Without going into too many details, I'll just say that having programmed in Lisp the shortcomings of Java are glaringly obvious, and programming in Java means a life of continual and unremitting pain. So I vowed I would never be a Java programmer, which pretty much shut me out of 90% of all software engineering jobs in the late 90's."

Word, this needs to be seen for what it has turned into if we're ever going to get out. I've tried every kind of paid software dev setup, it's all abusive business bullshit these days.

<comment><USER5> These days, companies like Google think that even Java is too advanced for cog developers.

<comment><USER6> What do they push instead? Python? Go? JS?

<comment><USER7> Many language decisions in Go (e.g. lack of generics, baked-in magic concurrency primitives, extensive focus on imperative looping, baked-in formatting conventions) are arguably designed to homogenize developer output. This is essentially making decisions for the developer and limiting cleverness, but many developers feel a sense of liberation (rather than limitation) as they are freed from making those decisions, and instead can settle into the comfortable task of translating natural language into code (presumably homogenized to as few constructs as possible to make it easier for Google to train the AI that will replace them).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A famous quote from this article:

 _The Remote Agent software, running on a custom port of Harlequin Common Lisp, flew aboard Deep Space 1 (DS1), the first mission of NASA 's New Millennium program. Remote Agent controlled DS1 for two days in May of 1999. During that time we were able to debug and fix a race condition that had not shown up during ground testing. (Debugging a program running on a $100M piece of hardware that is 100 million miles away is an interesting experience. Having a read-eval-print loop running on the spacecraft proved invaluable in finding and fixing the problem. The story of the Remote Agent bug is an interesting one in and of itself.)_

</comment><comment><USER8> I happened to be at the 40th LISP anniversary conference 1998, with John McCarthy. Erann's JPL talk about the Remote Agent was by far the most interesting talk there, and I still consider it one of the best conference talks ever. I'd really like to see the slides being published.

I also attended this famous "dinner with eric" at the same conference, actually sitting next to Eric and Erann was sitting on the other side: [http://blog.rongarret.info/2009/06/my-dinner-with- erik.html](http://blog.rongarret.info/2009/06/my-dinner-with-erik.html) I liked Eric a lot, and really enjoyed his troll interactions with Xah Lee, one of the most famous trolls ever. Unfortunately he didn't know exactly who to pick a fight with. Erann was clearly the wrong target. Erann hated it. But as outsiders who stayed out of those silly fights we learned a lot, what boils in a LISPer. XML especially. Or Windows. Or special variables: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.lisp/WRQkT57...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.lisp/WRQkT572RQ0/OvN9X5oNq8MJ) A very good CLL thread btw. Most of the people agreed with Eric, even if Erann's proposal was very good.

(I used his old name to be able to look things up. The name change happened much later, when Erann got married and choose a better name, Ron Garret.)

PS: Eric said 99 in his lugm blog post, but I'm pretty sure it was 98. [http://naggum.no/lugm-time.html](http://naggum.no/lugm-time.html)

PPS: I found some old RA material here: [https://web.archive.org/web/19991014000627/http://www- aig.jp...](https://web.archive.org/web/19991014000627/http://www- aig.jpl.nasa.gov/public/home/gat/) but mostly for ESL (the control language), not the actual RA simulation and HW stuff he was emulating.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's this (edit: 2012 Google Tech Talks) video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gZK0tW8EhQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gZK0tW8EhQ) "The Remote Agent Experiment: Debugging Code from 60 Million Miles Away" by Ron Garret. IDK how similar it is to the 1998 talk by him you refer to. I guess he's around here by the nick "lisper".

<comment><USER8> Yes, that's about the same content. Excellent, thanks a lot.

I often think about how to control or even reboot a CPU out there in space, running on slow hardened HW (cosmic rays shooting at you), and if you make a small mistake and the thing doesn't boot up properly the whole mission is lost. You must be really sure about the root cause of your problem, and properly analyze it (hence his simulation), otherwise no chance.

Like a reboot via SSH, just a bit trickier, because nobody will be able to help you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > I can't even say the word Lisp without cementing my reputation as a crazy > lunatic who thinks Lisp is the Answer to Everything. So I keep my mouth shut > (mostly) and watch helplessly as millions of tax dollars get wasted.

I've been there too, only in the commercial world watching corporate profit be wasted. It's really disheartening to see the computing world re-invent S-expressions badly (first as XML, then as JSON) and reinvent Lisp badly (e.g. JavaScript). Lisp really is awesome, and it really is the best language of which I'm aware, if for no other reason that if one wants to do enough programming _in_ the language, then one can implement any other language, seamlessly.

<comment><USER10> > in the commercial world watching corporate profit be wasted

And, somehow, the beancounters with the spreadsheets to squeeze the last microdollar from an operation have not hit on a way to make money from this in sixty years.

Puzzling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You have to know "design patterns" they said. You have to know Java they said.... and then I knew I was in the world of "professional" software. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER12> People have this idea of scientists in general and NASA in particular as being purely objective and data-driven and let the science speak for itself, but articles like this illustrate that they are _at least_ as political and irrational as any commercial entity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Politics is a human thing, it is an artifact of interaction of persons and peoples. And irrationalness is as human as a fart, you know it's rude and it's wrong, but sometimes it happens. The fact is, we're hard-wired to be politic, irrational and superstitious.

<comment><USER10> > sometimes

mostly always</comment></comment></comment>


Very Quietly, Home Office Backs Down on Psychoactive Substances Act - <AUTHOR> http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/05/24/very-quietly-home-office-backs-down-on-psychoactive-substanc <comment><USER2> "But those huge powers you gave yourself, they still stay there, making all sorts of actions technically illegal. It's the state which decides when it wants to enforce them."

It's not only to the state that the power accrues. Any individual copper can choose to ignore "guidance" if they don't like the look of someone.

</comment><comment><USER3> > and monoamine transporters for stimulants like MDMA and cocaine and so on, > as well as a few others.

A very useful monoamine drug is available at most aquarium stores.

I wonder if they will try to outlaw 'getting high with restaurant supplies' [1].

[1] [http://www.howdoigethigh.com](http://www.howdoigethigh.com)</comment>


Back end Development 101: Prime Numbers and Multi-threading - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/backend-development-101-prime-numbers-and-multi-threading-g42j3uex <comment><USER2> You get maximum performance improvement by distributing equal amount of work to each worker. You've used the first-order approximation that equal world means equal-sized slice of numbers. But with your approach, the amount of work to determine primality of a number is actually proportional to the sqrt of the number. That means that the higher-index workers are doing a lot more work than the lower-index workers. You can verify this by adding log statements and comparing when the lower-index workers terminate with when the higher-index workers terminate - you'll see there's a big difference.

So try instead giving each worker slices where the sum of the sqrt of numbers in the slice are equal instead of the width of the slices being equal. You'll find that your solution ends up running faster, and your workers terminate closer to the same time.</comment>