Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking' - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/mobile-phones-more-dangerous-than-smoking-or-asbestos-802602.html?r=RSS <comment><USER2> The best medical evidence is _always_ published "exclusively in the Independent on Sunday".

<comment><USER3> DH1

<comment><USER4> Perhaps, but the Independent has a long history of posting spurious health and environment articles (e.g., "Mobile phone threat to honeybees", which was a massive press misunderstanding because CCD was such a headline-grabber at the time). Guilt by association is a real and valid reason to dismiss a news article about a complex scientific subject. Even the article itself mentions the general line:

> Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana's study > as "a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual". It > believes he "does not present a balanced analysis" of the published science, > and "reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other > independent expert scientific reviews".

People talk about the dangers of radiation, but electromagnetic radiation isn't the same kind of radiation we generally worry about. Anything that uses electricity and wires creates this kind of radiant energy, including pacemakers and implantable defibrillators.

That doesn't mean there is no potential for health risks, but thus far the science suggests no significant increase in risk. What's more, the mechanism for such health risks is likewise unclear as the wavelengths for cellphone radiation are quite long. It's also unclear why cellphones would cause problems but people living near radio transmitters wouldn't (and we'd have probably seen these effects by now, radio isn't exactly new).

Unfortunately, it takes a lot of work and a lot of time to build up long term clinical studies. In the meantime, all we can do is wait.

<comment><USER3> Dismissing a news article based on association is, for me, not a very good method. Following the link that it provides is a useful method. In this case to the actual paper in question:

<http://www.brain-surgery.us/mobph.pdf>

If the Register ran an article on a startup company, would that invalidate what is really presented?

"Mobile Operator Association" sends up red flags for conflict of interest in this argument. Not that I dismiss, but would hope for a more independent assessment.

"the science suggests" is, to me, an appeal to the authority of a select number of papers and implies that the paper in question is not "science". I do not see a conflict on interest or false scientific reasoning in the paper in question. If anything, this paper could be considered "newer science with more data" with its 2008 publish date and recently cited studies.

The author directly contests the assumption that the long wavelengths used by cellphones result in less risk to the users. He also mentions a report of an office in the top floor being closed due to the "seventh working in as many years" being diagnosed with brain cancer that he attributes to a cell phone tower directly above the office.

<comment><USER4> The current body of medical literature is at best ambivalent about the risk of long-term exposure. That's not an appeal to authority, that's just checking on the state of the literature.

Science is always open to revision, and so I don't think it's impossible that this is true (indeed, I use a handsfree religiously to minimize my potential risk). But there isn't any hard evidence, and one study does should not a panic take, especially given the profound and subjectively positive social implications of mobile computing and mobile communication.

The article has nothing new for me, except sensationalist rhetoric and carefully worded (and carelessly paraphrased) "Mobile Operator Association points to these studies", when really that's the gross body of the current medical literature. It's not cherry-picked literature, the bulk of the literature suggests it is not true. That's not a conflict of interest, that's just pointing to the independently funded science.

As for the story about the top floor of the tower, why would only their heads be getting cancer if they're being universally exposed? The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data.

Whenever we have a somewhat difficult to reproduce condition with less-than- certain explanation in terms of the physical method, I demand more solid evidence before taking drastic action. I also think that news outlets like the register should take more responsibility and demand more evidence before pulling out the dramatic horn kicks and warming up a headline like this one.

People have been expressing fear over EMF for a long time now, and in general these fears have been dismissed and unsupported by scientific examination. Until I see some hard evidence, I consider a cellphone is about as harmful as a microwave. That is to say, there are small potential risks (particularly with damaged units), but I'm more likely to be struck by a car while commuting to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When you put a device that transmits energy right next to your head, you're taking a risk that the transmitted energy interacts with the matter in your head/brain. The longer and more often you put the device up to your head, the more opportunities there are for the interaction.

Everything else is just a mathematical probability.

<comment><USER6> When you put a device that contains chemical potential energy over your legs, you're taking a risk that the energy is released and interacts with your legs/groin. The longer and more often you put the device over your legs, the more opportunities there are for the interaction.

Everything else is just a mathematical probability. Let's stop wearing pants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh god. I bought an iphone and my landline went off for two weeks. I started getting a 'numb' head and my head 'tingled' from its use. I have tried to limit it and have also started to put back in Ethernet rather than the 3 wifi routers I currently have. This might sound stupid, but what scan would you need from the hospital to detect if you have a tumour?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have an Iphone too, and it seems to be the least shielded device I've ever had (as much as I can't live without it). It is the only device I have that interferes with all my electronics within a few feet whenever it interacts with a cell tower. (I hear a buzz on all my computer speakers).

<comment><USER8> >(I hear a buzz on all my computer speakers)

Was your previous phone GSM-based? That buzz is not specific to iPhones. All GSM phones have it (to a certain degree). Search for 'gsm buzz'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> good link bait, clueless article.

"Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos"

I am surprised by the ease of spreading panic. Really bad taste of them.

There is not even a link to a a url of the research. the quality of YC submitted stories are in downhill.

If everybody has a mobile phone, then it's impossible to limit the cause for their health failure to a mobile phone, so no study can proove anything...

for every study that "proofs" the negative effects of a mobile phone there is another that does the opposite.

Until there is one that proofs the problem either use a hands free or limit the use...

<comment><USER3> I would not say that this is a clueless article.

The doctors website and the article in question: <http://www.brain- surgery.us/mobilephone.html>

The doctor appears competent to me, but I haven't actually performed any brain surgery so cannot rate his work, but at least he claims "success".

<http://www.brain-surgery.net.au/c_a.html>

Another similar article: [http://www.brain- surgery.net.au/media/MobilephoneCT27-3-08.p...](http://www.brain- surgery.net.au/media/MobilephoneCT27-3-08.pdf)

<comment><USER2> The notion that brain surgeons are automatically qualified to conduct and evaluate complex biomedical research in oncology and neurology strikes me as approximately as valid as the idea that skilled software developers are automatically qualified to evaluate cryptosystems, compression algorithms, or semiconductor process technology.

<comment><USER10> But I _am_ qualified! I designed a cryptosystem just last week, and nobody's broken it yet!

Moreover, the PDF that I published on my personal website sounds very erudite, and doesn't contain any obvious spelling errors. I have over fifteen years' experience in the lab [1], have authored nearly a dozen scientific publications in prestigious journals such as _Physical Review Letters_ and _Cancer Research_ [2], and have seven years' experience as a semiconductor process technologist. [3] So I don't see how you can dismiss my work out of hand, particularly since you, as a security professional, have an obvious conflict of interest. [4]

[1] At least two years of which involved making photocopies, washing glassware, and ordering pizza.

[2] This is actually true, for reasonable values of "nearly" and "prestigious". You must also remember that being Nth author counts as "authoring".

[3] Also true. And so relevant, too!

[4] Notice that "the desire to toot your own horn" never seems to count as a "conflict of interest".

<comment><USER2> While noting that nobody else is going to toot your horn _for_ you, I'll say that cryptography was just the first thing to come into my head, for obvious reasons. I can't tell from the tone of your comment, but if you've worked in semiconductors, cancer research, and cryptography, let me be the first to proclaim that you have a bad-ass resume.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I totally lied about the cryptography. :) I have a copy of Schneier on my shelf that I occasionally put under my pillow at night... does that count?

All that I know about cryptography is that anyone who claims to have written their own unbreakable system, but hasn't had that system vetted by other cryptographers, is nearly 100% likely to be completely full of it.

The semiconductors and cancer research are true. It sounds so much more impressive than it actually is, though, which is kind of my point. Yeah, I've worked in several fields, and I like to think I learned _something_ from all of that time, but if I wrote a crypto paper I would still be talking out of my ass. Hell, if I wrote my own cancer research paper I'd be talking out of my ass -- my role in the cancer lab was mainly "physics guy who knows how to change the light bulbs on the multiphoton microscope".

<comment><USER2> So then, I made a half-assed analogy:

      programmer : semiconductor engineer :: surgeon : researcher

Was I talking out of my ass? Because of the three CS fields I mentioned, I _barely_ work in one of them. =)

<comment><USER10> Well, I want to avoid insulting, e.g., my former co-author, a neurosurgeon who also does oncological research... but I don't think your analogy is bad at all.

It's generally true that the skills, the approach, and the techniques of surgeons and researchers are completely different. Surgery is a specialty. For example, I've had the head of surgical oncology at a very prestigious hospital tell me that he doesn't know much about chemotherapy -- there are other experts for that. And none of those clinical guys are necessarily experts in the _causes_ of cancer, nor in its rate of incidence.

The stereotype, of course, is that every surgeon thinks that being a surgeon makes you an expert in everything. Sometimes that mold fits: Tremendous self- confidence is almost a requirement for being a great surgeon, and the side effect can be... an excess of confidence. And sometimes the mold is unfair. The field I briefly worked in -- antiangiogenesis -- was founded by the late Judah Folkman, a famous surgeon who did his even-more-famous research as his second job. Folkman had to spend a lot of years gathering data before other researchers were convinced that he wasn't just another surgeon with delusions of grandeur. But, as it happens, he wasn't.

In the end, you've got to show the data, and it has got to survive real criticism. That's the metric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess it's time to start wearing my tinfoil hat: <http://tesladownunder.com/TeslaPoolTinHat.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER12> Ionising radiation, and non-ionising radiation - I assume the general public still does not know the difference?

</comment><comment><USER13> Might seem like offtopic, but it's not: Have you seen the movie "Thank you for smoking"?

</comment><comment><USER14> Gee, guys. Just go hands-free!</comment>


Show HN: Hacker Paradise – A Traveling Community for Developers and Designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackerparadise.org

<comment><USER2> Looks good - you should post this to reddit's /r/digitalnomad

</comment><comment><USER3> Commenting to remind myself to add it to thinkingremote.com</comment>


Ask HN: Why has the downvoting timelimit been reduced? - <AUTHOR> I feel like it makes people have to reply in a negative manner rather than just being able to lower the comment <comment><USER2> Barring different categories for downvotes, I strongly believe that a downvote should be reserved for cases where you think the comment does not contribute to the discussion. Disagreement should not be enough. If the issue is amenable to discussion, I'd much rather see someone type out a reply containing actual counterpoints than people simply downvoting (or worse: flagging) the parent. And if you find a well-written comment you disagree with, you might even upvote it and disagree in text form. I realize though that disagreement sometimes needs an outlet that can't be provided if a large number of replies already exist, but in that case you might just upvote the best existing reply that you feel captures your feelings.

I would advocate that downvotes be reserved for instances where the post was a net negative to the discussion, and flags should be reserved for egregious violations of conduct that call the originating user accounts itself into question.

Based on that, I think a score of -2 (is that the current limit?) and a few hours time limit is sufficient for the purpose of filtering the discussion. It should be ample time to weed out the low quality comments that _should_ be sinking to the bottom. Once that basic weeding is done, upvoting is a much better signal to concentrate on.

<comment><USER3> I wish I could upvote this 100 times. Especially:

"if you find a well-written comment you disagree with, you might even upvote it and disagree in text form."

"disagreement sometimes needs an outlet ... you might just upvote the best existing reply that you feel captures your feelings.

But AFAIK the HN guidelines (or pg?) say that disagreement is an acceptable reason for downvoting. It's really poor UX to have a single input that indicates wildly different things.

dang - is there any chance this rule will change? Or any particular reason why we don't want to change it?

<comment><USER4> Guidelines are clear on what downwotes are: a tool for pushing down and marking irrelevant comments, not a "disagree" button. But the fact is it's hard for someone unskilled in discussion to distinguish disagreeable comment from an irrelevant one. Also, usually it's hard for most people to accept the falsety of their own thought against a counterargument. These skills, that are objective open mindedness and the incentive to accept criticism and counterarguments require a sort of literacy that's different from tech literacy, which's what I guess the HN crowd does indeed have in abundance. Discussion skills and discussion culture are not things that come with birth or tech knowledge though, they are a separate group of skills that you achieve on its own. Being able to take those actions that you quote require a certain maturity of such skills. HN being publicly accessible and popular to a certain extent, it's impossible to expect everyone to have them. And even a handful of this sort of commenters are enough to spoil the harmony of a discussion group. Further, if there are points earnable on internet, people will want to earn them. This sort of incentive pushes commenters to adopt a more populist style that can gain upvotes with punchy lines and populist comments instead of complete and coherent arguments or well-founded criticisms. Ultimately this is an illness of voting in itself, not specific to HN. See Brexit, Trump, etc. for up-to-date examples.

edits: grammar.

<comment><USER5> Are the guidelines clear on downvotes?

I think there's a misconception that they are, especially pertaining to up and down voting. I just reread the guidelines[1] and see little mention of up and down voting. The only mentioning is don't complain about or bait for down votes.

In the past pg has said it's okay to use votes for agreement/disagreement[2].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

Edits: formatting

<comment><USER6> Sorry, this is off-topic, but PG on graffiti is simply brilliant:

"In this respect trolling is a lot like graffiti. Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the world."

<comment><USER4> You didn't have to call me incompetent. Nor was I trolling. I'm really offended by this.

<comment><USER6> I'm very sorry, gkya, I did not in the least mean to offend you - actually, I wasn't even referring to you! I simply read PG's essay that was linked above and came across this quote that I found really good and wanted to share. It had nothing whatsoever to do with your previous comments (which is why I clearly labeled it as off-topic).

In fact, if you scroll to my comments further up in the discussion, you will see that we have a very similar opinion as far as downvoting is concerned.

Again, my apologies if I have inadvertently caused offense, I certainly did not mean to.

<comment><USER4> I appreciate your apology, thank you, and I'm sorry for my confusion, just that in the context I interpreted your comment as if you were referring to me. I've read your comment on the topic too, clearly put. Again, thanks for your kind apology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From my experience, the votes are rarely a sign of a constructive comment.

For example, my top comment is the one in which I basically said that learning natural languages is hard. Pretty original remark, huh? In my second most popular comment, I posted a link to a funny image that didn't have much to do with the conversation. And my most downvoted comment is a detailed explanation of why I'm not impressed with Twitter's plans to use advanced machine learning.

I am not arguing that we should abolish votes, since I don't see an alternative. But tweaking the existing system to see if it becomes better is a sensible idea.

Also, I would like to make a point that comments at the bottom of the thread aren't always off-topic and boring.

<comment><USER8> But mostly are. Lets assume 90th percentile rule - 90% of comments below half of the page are worse than comments on upper half of page.

While some comments might be quite good below, if you have limited time and want to be more successful at cutting "crap" you will hover only around top comments. Not a perfect thing, but this is what makes this place different from Reddit - you can be almost sure top comments will be valuable, cleverly funny, starting some interesting thought and not funny image, joke or offensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have always felt that regardless of high minded intention, saying "don't downvote based on disagreement" is the equivalent of leaving out a bowl marked "please take only one candy" on Halloween.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't recall why we shortened the limit. We can probably put it back the way it was. Email firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to remind me.

</comment><comment><USER11> I also feel that moot a.k.a. Christopher Poole made a point for anonymity online. [0] In his talk he states that by eliminating voting mechanisms he ensures that every opinion has the same weight in a discussion, as simply chronology matters. The problem here is that power is shifted from the community to the moderators. But advantages are a)unpopular opinions aren't voted down into "inexistence" and b)the discussion starts out more unbiased as every opinion appears chronologically.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1UEAGCo30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1UEAGCo30)

<comment><USER12> How is that a valid approach? Without voting you end up with low quality commenters gaming the system for visibility.

<comment><USER13> _with_ voting you also end up with low quality commenters gaming the system, because voting itself is an attempt to gamify culture. One only has to look at Reddit to see how "high visibility" and "high quality" don't often correlate. Sometimes they do, but not always.

Also, with voting, you have meta-debates about voting, people complaining about voting, voting rings and brigading, etc. Voting also presents the problem of earlier posts persisting at the top regardless of their quality.

Of course it's possible to gamify imageboard threads as well since they sort by the last comment, but a purely chronologically sorted thread wouldn't have any such issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think voting should be removed and hiding shown mor prominently.

The news-page should by sorted by a KPI that is a mix of clicks/shares/comments/hides.

Voting just distorts everything to "I vote down everyone who disagrees with me"

Also, forced anon. ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> It looks like it's set to 8 hours or so, which for those of use who regularly sleep 8 hours, plus avoid HN while getting ready for it or don't immediately go to it on waking up, means we don't get a chance to downvote a lot of postings that otherwise might make sense for us to be able to do so.

At the very least it was a jarring change.

<comment><USER16> That's a good point. It also means there are windows when it's easier to make unhelpful comments without being downvoted as much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> While we're on the topic, please eliminate downvoting, or at least the greying of text. It's antisocial and pointless.

Edit: Point proven. Two upvotes and seven downvotes in 12 minutes. Nothing short of a reply from `dang` will save it now! Bad commenter, toe the line if you seek discussion, lest you be banished to the graveyard of greydom. I'm baffled that nobody else sees how this is a problem.

<comment><USER18> > _or at least the greying of text. It 's antisocial and pointless._

I think I agree. The culture has changed a bit here, which is fine (or at least unavoidable). But now there's much more down-voting of things with which the voter merely disagrees (case-in-point, your comment: down-voted with no replies at the time of my writing). It reenforces the hive-mind.

<comment><USER19> Changed? When was it otherwise? There have been comments about downvotes- without-comments for years [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down- voted%20%20no%20replies&s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=down- voted%20%20no%20replies&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment) .

Here's an AskHN from 7 years ago titled "Ask HN: Downvote for disagreement in some cases?" The top answer is "This comes up all the time here. Most people use downvotes for disagreement. Gotta live with it." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2020612) . Others express other opinions.

Back in 2008 pg said "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

How do you know that the hivement changed in the last 8 years in this regard?

<comment><USER18> > _There have been comments about downvotes-without-comments for years_

I don't recall saying that there were no downvotes-for-disagreement in earlier times. I said it feels like it has increased.

I think it's quite obvious how this affects the hive-mind; "un-popular" opinions become hard to read (greyed-out), which diminishes argument.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best hosting option for an API based startup using .NET? - <AUTHOR>

In terms of cost, reliability and startup discounts.<p>Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> What research have you already done?</comment>


Randy Pausch Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/computing/2011/fall/randy-pausch-day.shtml

<comment><USER2> Much respect to Pausch. One of my persistent fears is that, within sight of my own demise, I'll be too paralyzed - with anxiety, with fear, with whatever - to make good use of the time I have left.

I have a profound amount of respect for a man who has defied that so completely.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks again, Randy, for being one of the very few people who cared enough to kick my ass for not trying hard enough at UVA.

He was inspiring, hilarious, and utterly brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still remember the evening when 'The Last lecture' was telecasted at my Uni. Very inspiring and it makes me think.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The Last Lecture" is a very inspiring book.

</comment><comment><USER6> And his son.

Those of us who've watched "The Last Lecture" know who Randy dedicated it to.

A bit of a status update on Dylan (from last year), now 9: <http://www.cmu.edu/news/blog/2010/Spring/dylan-pausch.shtml>

NB: CMU's link has a dated byline, where a news item of the same event didn't. I went with CMU's account.

</comment><comment><USER7> One prof I wish I had.

</comment><comment><USER8> Truly a fantastic individual. I felt privileged to see him one last time when he spoke at my CMU commencement.

</comment><comment><USER9> Randy's video was the youtube video that changed my life. Thank you cmu thank you Pausch family.

</comment><comment><USER10> Respect</comment>


Amazon S3 Simple Backup Script - s3backup - <AUTHOR> http://artisansystem.com/blog/entry/37

<comment><USER2> I've been using s3sync.rb combined with a cron job and shell script. Working great for me.

Good to see a PHP-based alternative I suppose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I don't know Ruby/have never played around with it, but I saw s3sync and it looks interesting. I'll have to check it out.</comment></comment>


Do we have an alternative to Urban Dictionary - <AUTHOR> http://paradict.com <comment><AUTHOR> You like the logic of "Urban Dictionary" but don't love the environment because of it is too childish ? Paradict aims to create a cultural area in a dictionary format that come together people around the world.</comment>


The economics of trust. why you should trust Google. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rounds.com/economics-of-trust/

<comment><USER2> The content of this post doesn't live up to the title ("The Economics of Trust: Dr. Elliot Jaffe"). TL;DR: "Large companies are the safest place to store your data. They have an economic incentive to maintain your privacy."

Unconvincing.

<comment><USER3> The logic has flaws indeed. Despite the suggested economic incentive the big companies may have, its also obvious that the big companies are a juicier target, since it is clear that the data collects at those points. This is well understood, and explains why Google was attacked with the now famous Aurora attacks.. The simple truth is that people who care should turn to encryption</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Growing faster and starting to have scaling issues. Where to go from here? - throwaway-sp Hey everyone!
Note: using throwaway account for privacy reasons.
We're a two-person team running a bootstrapped startup - a community marketplace for a popular consumer good. We are currently experiencing faster growth and expect it to continue to increase a lot more (we've found a good way to grow). We now have over 80k members and nearing $1 million dollars worth of goods exchanged. The issue now is keeping up with the growth.
The site is written in PHP and the code isn't exactly pretty – but we know how to grow and have a ton of potential for expanding to other products. We've had to hold back on some marketing because we don't want to risk breaking things.
So far we've been outsourcing the development because we: a) Couldn't afford a full time developer in the past and
b) Didn't know any developers that would fit as a co-founder where we're from
We've now just moved to San Francisco to start networking and find a CTO/technical co-founder but it's going to take a little time to find the right person.
We're also looking at just hiring a contractor short term. We wanted to give at least a week or two of being here in case we can find someone networking first but recent growth has sped things up. This can definitely still be done but two things make it slightly harder: a) Although we're making a good profit now we can't really stay competitive with salary compared to other funded startups. b) We both have limited knowledge with programing but need to make sure we hire someone that has the right skill set and can fix the issues we're having.
Are we covering everything we could be doing? Does anyone have advice on where to go from here or been in a similar position?
Any advice is much appreciated! Or on the off chance you think you could help us out, please drop us a line!
email@example.com <comment><AUTHOR> First, congratulations! Having too many customers is a great problem to have.

Now, you need to unpick the legacy code that makes up your current MVP and turn it into a solid, scalable system. Recognise that this is not going to happen overnight. You should also be wary of trying to fix it with a single "big bang" solution (and be wary of any prospective CTO that might suggest that).

The good news is that all technology companies go through this when they reach a certain scale, so techniques for re-engineering legacy systems are well- known, as are techniques for managing that re-engineering. You can Google these things, talk to experienced engineers, etc. - lots of people have war- stories.

Here's my advice:

1\. Make re-engineering a process. Never stop. Welcome change. No code is sacred.

2\. Split off a small piece of functionality from your app, such as formatting email or printing invoices or whatever. Write a small web-service to do just that functionality, nothing more.

3\. Set up automated testing for your new web-service.

4\. Set up monitoring of your new web-service.

5\. Run your new web-service in parallel with your legacy system. Be able to switch back to legacy if your monitoring shows any issues.

6\. Evaluate how well you executed steps 1-5. Feed changes back into your process. \- Goto 1

You can use this model with outsourced development, and switch devs after each iteration if you feel that is necessary. After a few iterations, you should be able to use several devs to build web-services in parallel.

Good luck.

Edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER2> Do not take external money. The longer you can bootstrap the better. I know you've heard this a bajillion times, and I know the allure of a few mil in the bank. It's not worth it. Hold off as long as you possibly can. We've used Google's AppEngine to scale. It's not the easiest env to work with, but at 30+ staff and millions in revenue we have yet to hire a sysadmin (ie. overhead!). When load increases we just get charged for more resources. Sounds like you have to parallelize: start MVP rebuild, and do mitigation on current platform. Four years in we are on the fifth major rev of our core processing system; point being that things change and you need to prepare for ongoing evolution.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's depends on your scale problem. But I guess you mean perfromance (and not maintability or other) problem. There are a lot technics on different levels to save you for some time depending on your bottlenecks. Without concrete details of your stack nobody can give you "the answer". But in (my) practice, small improvements on right places can speed up your site up to 80%. Depending on your client presentation, you can hide some latency by minimizing and merging css and js-stuff and put them to cdn and cache forever. Decide to master-slave your database, cache query results and so on. These relatively small changes give you some time to develop more deeply changes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Assuming you are on AWS you could look into using some of their tools like Opsworks to help deal with the growing pains.

Its a temporary solution since you would just be using more servers to alleviate the root cause rather than optimizing the code. Opsworks will let you deploy additional servers easily and a contractor can do all the technical setup for you. You can queue servers based on load or time of day and it can run all of your php/database servers for you.

Hope it helps and you can use something like New Relic to help notify you of downtime or performance gaps in your application.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hiring a contractor is a good idea, but make sure they are hired with the potential to become a technical cofounder.

My suggestion would be to hire someone who can rewrite the PHP code into something more maintainable like Javascript, Ruby, or Python. And make sure they have a plan for scalable infrastructure (either via a PaaS like Heroku/App Engine or if they have the chops, a real DevOps infrastructure).

<comment><USER2> What possible advantage would "real" devops infrastructure provide? Unless you're doing something so far out if the ordinary (or infrastructure is your advantage) there is zero value in building your own early on. You're suggesting they find a CTO/architect/php developer, all in one... That's not reality.

<comment><USER3> In a big comanies all three roles need a very different skill set, because of politics, splitting saying and doing and so on. In a start up environments skills needed for all three roles are very similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Throw money at the problem, ie scale up your servers. Move to a VPS/Cloud if you're on your own hardware. The Database is often the hardest part to scale, use services such as Amazon RDS or Heroku Postgres.

Add monitoring to wake you up if the site is down (pingdom is great).

<comment><USER7> Umm.. the reverse advice would be more helpful. Move to your own hardware if you're on VPS/cloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> might look into this language. Facebook used it to scale. it works with PHP. [http://hacklang.org/](http://hacklang.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> might look into this language. Facebook used it to scale. [http://hacklang.org/](http://hacklang.org/)</comment>


Show HN: Generate a mindmap from an org-mode file, with annotations - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vzaccaria/pandoc-mm <comment><USER2> That's supremely cool.

Nice work!</comment>


The Sun follows the rhythm of the planets - <AUTHOR> https://www.hzdr.de/db/Cms?pNid=99&pOid=58444 <comment><USER2> More about the Tayler Instability:

[https://www.hzdr.de/db/Cms?pOid=55138&pNid=226&pLang=en](https://www.hzdr.de/db/Cms?pOid=55138&pNid=226&pLang=en)

The Tayler instability is known to limit the scalability of liquid metal batteries. Whenever an electric current flows through a liquid conductor, the Tayler instability may appear. If the electric current exceeds a value in the order of kiloampère (depending on the material), it will drive a fluid flow.

The plasma of the sun behaves like a magnetized highly conducting fluid. (Magneto-Hydrodynamics)

</comment><comment><USER3> So you can use magnetic field information about a star to learn more about the planets (tidal forces) orbiting it?

<comment><USER4> Yup! That and gravitational forces specifically are how we discovered Neptune- and, IIRC the exact same phenomenon has some scientists theorizing the existence of another planet or some other large gravitational mass way out in the Kuiper belt

[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0004-6256/151/2/2...](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0004-6256/151/2/22/meta)

<comment><USER5> Apologies for being pedantic but the link contains no mention of magnetic field information and Neptune's discovery would not have taken this into account either.

Im fairly sure this has been done so far by analysing orbits in different ways, but Ive never heard of perturbations in solar system wide electro- magnetism (within solar wind) taken into account, or if that could be possible and effective to model in detail.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps I phrased my post poorly there and caused some confusion: I was trying to relay some supplemental information that just as tidal forces and their study are revealing new things about Sol, so were studies of tidal forces and gravitational mechanics instrumental in the discovery of other stellar masses in our solar system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And now I wonder what of earth's quirks (?) are driven or influenced by our position relative to the other planets, as well as our moon.

Furthermore, is a planet's ability to sustain life also a function of other planets in that solar system? Perhaps, at that level, the earth's system (if you will) is more unique than we realize?

<comment><USER7> > Perhaps, at that level, the earth's system (if you will) is more unique than > we realize?

That would surprise me, given how robust Earth life already has to be. I mean, it wasn't fun, but Earth "sustained life" through several massive volcanic events, giant meteors, and climatic changes, to say nothing of magnetic pole reversals, et al. It seems that once life gets going, it can tolerate a lot of crap.

<comment><USER6> Or. Life is a by-product or at least a beneficiary of all that crap (i.e., what doesn't kill you makes you strong). That is, just because a planet can sustain life doesn't mean that planet's history would generate life.

There may be a gazillion earth-like planets, but that doesn't mean life is possible on that attribute alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was thinking to myself as I began reading "I bet Jupiter has something to do with this, I just know it"

 _present new findings, indicating that the tidal forces of Venus, Earth and Jupiter influence the solar magnetic field_

Gravitational and tidal forces are such fascinating things to read about as we find new ways of measuring the phenomena

</comment><comment><USER8> I am most impressed that they are able to model the sun's surface activity well enough to see a match; and that effects from the interior are tiny enough that tides can overcome them.</comment>


Show HN: Track changes in product price, get notifications by email - <AUTHOR> https://cheapass.in/

<comment><USER2> Also see Camelcamelcamel ([http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/](http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/)) - they do a great job of price tracking on Amazon. They have historical data for a surprising number of products too.

<comment><USER3> Camelcamelcamel isn't bad for Amazon but I prefer [http://TrackIf.com](http://TrackIf.com) too. They do Amazon and about 1,100 other sites.

<comment><USER4> how nice of you to sign up and share that information...

<comment><USER5> Don't worry. I called him out on that too. He just got excited about discovering a new community (HN showed up on Google Analytics.)

/me inserts obligatory Dilbert marketing reference

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We do this at my company, [https://trackif.com](https://trackif.com). More than products (for instance we'll track rubygems, npmjs & github). I just haven't gotten off my butt to write a blog post about it since I figured "price tracking" wasn't a topic that'd interest the HN community.

<comment><USER6> There is no topic that isn't of interest to the HN community as long as it expands our knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well.. I have been using ValueTag- It supports US and India

Demonstration:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNKgNsU4kxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNKgNsU4kxo) [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/valuetag/jfmdbmmnl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/valuetag/jfmdbmmnlcopbmlkmilnhaabkffdnfjg?hl=en)

Good thing is they also have android application which does much more. Demonstration: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-8HNe- UOok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-8HNe-UOok) [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.copperpix....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.copperpix.valuetag&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER8> Tried it on a product on Amazon I like to watch prices on [1] and got the following error:

> Shoo! My super powers tell me this link doesn't belong to sellers we > support.

I thought Amazon was a supported retailer?

[1] [http://amzn.com/B00FJRS5BA](http://amzn.com/B00FJRS5BA)

<comment><USER9> Ah. Too bad. Supports Amazon.in only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I built the price alerts on engadget.com, just add a product like the iPhone ([http://www.engadget.com/products/apple/iphone/5s/](http://www.engadget.com/products/apple/iphone/5s/)) to your want list and you'll get an email when the price drops.

</comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of stocks. How do you tell if the price is at lowest? If it is not at it's lowest you are losing money. If it is at lowest and you didn't buy it you lose money too.

<comment><USER9> IMO, "price is at lowest" doesn't make sense at all. If I'm are interested in buying something, waiting for a while to save a few bucks would give me more pleasure than knowing what the lowest price of this product ever was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Buyable does a similar (identical?) thing [http://buyable.me/](http://buyable.me/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of Wishclouds ([http://wishclouds.com/](http://wishclouds.com/))

</comment><comment><USER9> Currently supporting all major sellers in India. Would it be nice if it supported seller model from Flipkart?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have found prices varying a lot between sellers in flipkart. And flipkart most of time shows its own seller(WS Retail)'s price. So such a feature will be nice.

<comment><USER9> I read a Quora post by a Flipkart employee who said that the seller chosen on the home page is often the most trusted seller. I doubt if people would buy from sellers with lower ratings. Nonetheless, a feature to consider all sellers before notifying prices would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been using MakkhiChoose ([http://www.kernelinsights.com/makkhichoose](http://www.kernelinsights.com/makkhichoose))

</comment><comment><USER15> Cheap pass or cheap ass?

<comment><USER9> cheap ass :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any one have any stats on how many HN 'users' are bots? - <AUTHOR>

From a real user (but I guess you'll have to take my word on that :) <comment><USER2> I am the only real user here. The rest of what you see are all bots I control, or figments of my imagination.

Even pg is a bot, see: <https://github.com/mindcrime/pgbot>

<comment><USER3> See? I even control this bot.

<comment><USER2> I knew you were going to say that.

<comment><USER4> I have been unplugged from the Matrix. You do not control me!

<comment><USER5> A rebel! Get him!

<comment><USER4> You can't catch me, I bend pixels!

<comment><USER5> The choosen one! But... this is impossible!!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can think of a couple bots I knew of but can't tell you the names. And that is hardly a stat.</comment>


Show HN: A decentralized virtual world built on Ethereum - <AUTHOR> http://etheria.world <comment><USER2> All the tiles on the map are showing up as owned by undefined. Is that a glitch?

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome.</comment>


DARPA: Enhancing Stability Operations in Under-Governed Regions - <AUTHOR> https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2020-01-30 <comment><USER2> This seems like an utterly pointless project. Army field manuals already emphasize the importance of local intelligence and the necessity to establish a loop of collecting it, synthesizing it for decision-makers, and measuring local reaction to subsequent decisions. There isn't a technical problem to solve here, but a social/organizational one.</comment>


Airpush Responds to Privacy Concerns, Requires Opt-In  - <AUTHOR>

A few weeks ago Airpush launched as the world's first mobile ad network based on push notifications. In that short period, we have had over 5,000 Android developers join the platform and developer satisfaction has been overwhelming.
Over the past few days it has become evident that, despite satisfaction amongst our developers, some end-users have expressed concern about receiving push notification ads without their prior consent.  To date, we have provided developers with a Permissions API to implement custom opt-in / opt-out procedures, but we have not made it mandatory.
In response to this feedback, we are modifying our SDK to require opt-in from all users prior to delivering push notification ads. The opt-in will appear as a dialog box upon initial launch of the app, and developers will no longer be able to build their own opt-in.  This change will be complete next week.
We regret that we didn't launch Airpush with this developer requirement, but we recognize the need to respond swiftly to feedback from the Android community. We believe this change will address the concerns of users who don't want push notification ads.
We look forward to continuing our mission of helping Android developers achieve dramatically superior earnings via push notification ads.
Sincerely,
Asher Delug CEO, Airpush Inc. www.Airpush.com <comment><USER2> Developer satisfaction has been overwhelming? That's now what I'm hearing from them. And what about their users?

It's nice that you've taken the time to respond to people's concerns , but your business model is still flawed--Even with the lastest update.

For starters, you can no longer tell developers that your ads will reach 100% of their user base. With a one-ad limit per day regardless of how many apps they have, this becomes a terrible choice for developers to earn money.

Not that this was ever a good idea. Any kind of Ad that shows up in the background when a user is not interacting with the app is malware, no matter how you try to spin it.

I hope Google will act swiftly to end this.

</comment><comment><USER3> HN is not your blog. Don't stick your press releases here.

As a Android user: Thanks for responding to user feedback, and while the changes are an improvement, any app that touches my notification bar for non honest purposes will get instantly deleted. Back when I had an ipod touch, there was some app that did a similar thing (think it was either TTR 2 or IM+), and issued a pop up notification with ads and also got instantly deleted.</comment>


Amazon Comprehend – Discover insights and relationships in text - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/comprehend/ <comment><USER2> How often does amazon release new services, it seems like every six months we get a steady stream of new offerings on HN?

<comment><USER3> This sounds like yet another thing that Amazon built for itself and then decided to release it to the public. That's the story behind a lot of things, isn't it?

<comment><USER4> That's the story they love to spread, ever since the "run on the same infrastructure as amazon.com" days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clear shot at Watson Tone Analyzer/Personality Insights. Is there anything unique IBM has left in ML at this point?

<comment><USER6> No.

cue the Watson hate

EDIT - Google's CLOUD NATURAL LANGUAGE API has always been my fav solution to this. I'll have to dig into this new Amazon offering and see how they stack- up.</comment></comment>


On the relative readability of Perl and Python - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/joel_berger/2014/01/on-the-relative-readability-of-perl-and-python.html

<comment><USER2> IMHO This issue of readability of languages is mostly taste.

Personally, I like my code to be ugly as hell.</comment>


Ultrafast laser pulses produce a previously unseen phase of matter - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-11-physics-ultrafast-laser-pulses-previously.html <comment><USER2> New phases of matter uncovered by ultrafast laser pumping is more common than you might think.

Dumping a bunch of energy into a system in less than 30fs (30 x 10^-15s) creates a profoundly non-equilibrium situation. Whatever phase of matter you observe right after will likely have no equilibrium analogue.

> The perpendicular version of the CDW that appears after the burst of laser > light has never before been observed in this material, Gedik says. It "just > briefly flashes, and then it's gone," Kogar says, to be replaced by the > original CDW pattern which immediately pops back into view.

The interesting bit is here:

> Gedik points out that "this is quite unusual. In most cases, when you add > energy to a material, you reduce order."

That is what's great about this. New phases of matter in ultrafast experiments are old news.

<comment><USER3> It's upsetting. Reminds me of when the CERN people made that paper about modulated plasma wave acceleration, and pretended they were the first to do it, or at least the popular press did. You only realize it when it's your field (as do I here) but we in physics ought to talk to each other more.

<comment><USER4> An example I'd encountered was a set of papers out of the US Naval Research Lab on fuel synthesis (electricity + seawater => hydrocarbon jet fuel). The citations dated only to the mid/late 1990s, though it turns out prior art and development date to at least the 1960s (for electically-based fuel synthesis), the 1930s if Fischer-Tropsch synthesis from coal is included.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/22k71x/us_navy...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/22k71x/us_navy_electricitytofuel_synthesis_papers_and/)

The impression generated was tremendously misleading.

I ended up digging into the history myself:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/29ihl7/us_doe_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/29ihl7/us_doe_synthetic_fuel_history_coaltoliquids_and/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electri...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electrical_fuel_synthesis_from_seawater_older/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Original MIT press release of which this is a word-for-word copy: [https://news.mit.edu/2019/light-orders-exotic- material-1111](https://news.mit.edu/2019/light-orders-exotic-material-1111)

Actual letter in _Nature Physics_ : [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019-0705-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019-0705-3)

<comment><USER6> Sci-Hub link to pdf [http://sci- hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019...](http://sci- hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019-0705-3)

<comment><USER7> I'm not from academia but is it unusual to have 21 authors on a paper?

<comment><USER8> My observations: I rarely see it in computer science related papers. I often see it in biology / medicine papers (but I don't see lots of those papers)

If you wonder what 21 people do for one paper, they have mentioned it in the paper pdf (look for the scihub link here in the comments) on the last page: Only two people actually __wrote __the paper with input from a lot of others, supervised by yet another one.

<comment><USER9> Lab experiments involve huge amount of support people who have to do really specific work for each experiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just when you think Physics has little left to discover, something you never expected creates a whole new avenue to explore.

"When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly...he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science" \- Max Planck

<comment><USER11> I don't think physics will ever be fully matured. There is always a "Why?" that needs an answer.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure that "Why?" is always going to be a physics question, but certainly even after we understand the smallest building blocks, we will need specific models of arbitrarily complex systems where the basic rules are computationally infeasible or resistant to simple analysis.

Of course, understanding the true and most basic workings of nature will also take a lot of work, just not a literally infinite supply.

<comment><USER13> Thanks to chaos, we will probably have no shortage of computationally infeasible systems.

Though the study of those systems is often labelled by something other than 'physics'. Biology or Chemistry or Psychology or Economics etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The idea that two possible states of matter might be in competition and that > the dominant mode is suppressing one or more alternative modes is fairly > common in quantum materials, the researchers say. This suggests that there > may be latent states lurking unseen in many kinds of matter that could be > unveiled if a way can be found to suppress the dominant state.

How exciting! I can only daydream about the kind of discoveries to be found about matter in, say, 50 years.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand it enough to get excited - what are the potential applications?

<comment><USER16> I don't think anyone can predict the applications because creating new materials could have many, or almost no, novel or useful properties. Look at how many different ways we can manipulate iron and create different properties, now there might be even more. Or maybe it isn't stable in bulk atmospheric amounts, but can be held under pressure and has some unique property to make it suitable for computing, or detecting certain kinds of energy or radiation, or forms piezoelectric properties or who knows. Maybe it can be used in optical data processing or amplifying.

Most likely this isn't going to revolutionize our world, but there is always that small chance, and we will certainly find some use for these novel states of matter somewhere, if not just more physics experiments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Excerpt:

"In this material, a wavelike pattern of electrons in high- and low-density regions forms spontaneously but is confined to a single direction within the material. But when hit with an ultrafast burst of laser light—less than a picosecond long, or under one trillionth of a second—that pattern, called a charge density wave or CDW, is obliterated, and a new CDW, _at right angles to the original_ , pops into existence.

This new, perpendicular CDW is something that has never been observed before in this material. It exists for only a flash, disappearing within a few more picoseconds. As it disappears, the original one comes back into view, suggesting that its presence had been somehow suppressed by the new one."

My thoughts:

The first thought that comes to mind is "superposition"... The second thought that comes to mind is "possible higher-dimensional and/or phase-shifted view of the substructure of matter" (in this case, lanthanum tritelluride)... Even if neither of these things turn out to be the case, the phenomena is fascinating!

</comment><comment><USER18> Exciting. Could we build a laser-pulsed Charge Wave computer?

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this going to end up having applications for integrated circuit manufacturing?

</comment><comment><USER20> Holy shit, Pablo is on fire!

</comment><comment><USER21> Laugh-a while you can, monkey-boy.

</comment><comment><USER22> > "What if all you need to do is shine light on a material, and this new state > comes into being?"

Wonder if it's related to photosynthesis?

<comment> semi-extrinsic It's not. Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction where light provides energy and that only involves gas, liquid and solid states of matter.

These guys are talking about entirely different states of matter.

<comment><USER23> I seem to remember there were some mysteries around how photosynthesis works. Although looking at wikipedia it seems quite comprehensively mapped out now</comment></comment></comment>


Java Secret: Using an enum to build a State machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/07/java-secret-using-enum-to-build-state.html <comment><USER2> The page crashed in Chrome, fyi (EDIT: once. I think it was an ad that was served).

Also, I'm hesitant to call anything regarding enums and State Machines a "secret", no matter the language. What IS cool about Java enums, though, is that they can encapsulate behavior. Building a state machine with C# or C enums involves defining the enum and then writing a giant switch statement (often in several places) or making a generic callback registration engine.

EDIT: Are there any other languages that do cool things with enums like this? I was delighted the first time I learned you could do this in Java.

One way around this if you're in, say, C#, is to just forget enums and use a static class...

      class State {
        static State Init = () -> // do stuff
        static State Running = () -> // do running stuff
        static State Close = () -> // do closing stuff

        static void NewState(State state)  {
          state()
        }

And you can reference the states just like enums:

      if (someState == State.Init) // then do something with it

(I know this isn't syntactically correct C#... I haven't used the language in over a year now.)

<comment><USER3> Page didn't crash in Chrome Beta on Linux.

And I agree, while good knowledge, I don't think this is a secret. I remember a simpler example of this being taught in some of my intro CS classes...

As for doing this in other languages, I think Java's ability to encapsulate is pretty unique... but I'm not sure. In theory you should be able to do something similar in the "pure" OO languages (Ruby, Python, SmallTalk, etc).

<comment><USER4> FYI, Smalltalk is one word, not two crammed together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish it had gone more into the advantages to this, over the standard method of switching on a state variable.

<comment><USER6> Using this approach could be more logical, esp as the number of methods per state increases. As you have more complex events and you want to group as State/Method rather than Method/State this approach is more appealying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Java enums are very underused and rather awesome. This article misses out members and constructors, which is a pity.

<comment><USER6> In a state machine, all the state should be in the context rather than the code blocks. The Java Tutorial on enums talks about fields and constructors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can build cons-lists or other initial-algebraic data-types with them very nicely. I <3 them.

</comment><comment><USER9> The website is so distracting I couldn't even pay attention to the content. Not only is there a bloody ad in the middle of the first paragraph forcing the text to wrap around the ad, but at most 15% of the above the fold site is actual content. Swaths of the page are devoted to really nothing at all (enormous header and sidebar), ads, and useless whitespace. And are the pennies the author gets for running ads like that really worth making the site look like shit?

[https://img.skitch.com/20110712-pff65sbxas9t89w6ecckqjq9ic.j...](https://img.skitch.com/20110712-pff65sbxas9t89w6ecckqjq9ic.jpg)

edit: dear authors: if you're going to share content, _share content_. Not header, sidebar, adds, rss, follow me on twitter, stumble, +1, bing, like, toolbars, etc. There's a reason people fucking love readability.

<comment><USER10> Its a content farm, probably to count ad impressions or some other BS. This is the original (from the bottom of the article):

[http://vanillajava.blogspot.com/2011/06/java-secret-using- en...](http://vanillajava.blogspot.com/2011/06/java-secret-using-enum-as- state-machine.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Minimal new tab page for Chrome and Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://afinestart.me/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi fellow HN readers. I made this this new tab Chrome extension a while back and I recently published an add-on for Firefox.

This is a little side-project of mine that began life as something of an assistive tech tool. I have great difficulty typing (SMA Type II) so I try to minimize it in favor of a mouse-based approach where possible. A Fine Start is essentially just a list of text links with a minimal amount of categorization functionality. I originally developed it for myself and eventually turned it into a fremium product. I hope some of you find it as useful as I do.

</comment><comment><USER2> Why would I want to pay monthly for something like this.

Put another way if I use this for a decade why is your product worth $600 when entire operating systems, programming languages, browsers etc are available for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> It probably isn't for most people. To me, it's indispensable. I've paid much more for things much less useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just use about:blank as the new tab page.

</comment><comment><USER4> 5$ per month for sync? Are you really kidding me ?

Firefox and Chrome both already sync bookmarks, why are you not just letting the browser sync it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted something that would sync across multiple browsers and devices.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Social awkwardness - <AUTHOR>

Fellows,
Has anyone out there, at some point in life, had the impression that people, acquaintances, suddenly walk away, as if you had done something that bruised them?
I've lost many 'friends' in the past and continue to lose as life goes on and can't really tell what I am doing to them. The more I reason about it, the more emotionally distressed I get.
I reckon that it could be because I tend to take things seriously most of the time and people at the end probably find me dull and boring, but that's rather shallow.
What would be good strategies to deal with it?
edit: typo <comment><USER3> In my humble opinion, before "leaving" a friendship, always do anything and everything in your power to leave on a positive note. If you do that, you won't have negative feeling towards them and they won't harbour any towards you.

<comment><USER4> This is good advice for any relationship, not just friendship - <USER2> jobs, business, dating etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dear Taoseeker,

You say you take things seriously most of the time. Thing is, most people take things seriously too, and you need to figure out what they are.

To have friends is to give friendship.

And to give friendship is to pay attention to what things people take seriously.

And to walk in their shoes a bit, climb into their skin, feel what they feel when they feel what they feel.

Seriously, it's near impossible for your friends to walk away from you if you take the things they take seriously as seriously as they feel they should.

</comment><comment><USER6> It happens a lot to me too.

What I have noticed is that those friends whom I meet in person regularly have stayed friends, while those whom I interact with mostly online (due to distance or schedule) have drifted away over time.

Personally, I'm not too troubled by it. I don't think it should trouble you either - after all the other person too has lost a friend in you. But if it does, then I suggest meeting them in person if most of your interactions are currently online.

</comment><comment><USER7> It happens to me as well. As ky3 puts it, most people take things seriously too. Problem is, perhaps what they do take seriously is not what you do. Try to get along with people that share tastes with you (not limiting yourself to them, of course). Common interests are key to social relationships; they seem to be the glue that holds people together.

</comment><comment><USER8> Have you thought about reaching out to them and asking what happened?

</comment><comment><USER9> This may or may not help. I read this recently and am thinking about it a lot.

[http://therumpus.net/2014/12/the-sunday-rumpus-essay-get- rej...](http://therumpus.net/2014/12/the-sunday-rumpus-essay-get-rejected/)

</comment><comment><USER10> working out; if your not healthy your body and mind will spend energy on fixing urself when really your mind should be focused on enjoying your life and feeling good, and the body strong and comfortable in any situation.

</comment><comment><USER11> What do you really want?</comment>


How Gorillaz could dominate a post-Covid world - <AUTHOR> https://reframing.substack.com/p/how-gorillaz-could-thrive-in-a-post <comment><USER2> I think you mean "Gorillaz type bands" or something. And even that...

Live shows will certainly be impacted, but to think that you need bands to become virtual characters is kind of extreme. The Beatles were purely a studio band for much of the time they dominated. That's nothing new.

Multitrack recording has been around forever, so recording your part at home isn't that big a deal, especially now that home equipment has gotten so affordable. (note that the winner of the grammy for best engineer last year, Finneas, did it on a few thousand dollars worth of equipment in his bedroom). So much music now is created on a computer more than on an instrument, so that's becoming a big factor. Even if you play it onto an electronic piano, you can tweak to your heart's content after the fact. (and you can play at slow speed, you can play right and left hand parts separately, you can loop, you can play in a different key and transpose, etc).

You sure don't have to go full Gorillaz to do any of this. They are an interesting extreme, but beyond that....

One of the big problems, though, is that many musicians have a lot of trouble making money off their recordings, especially with so many people just listening on YouTube etc. There isn't the incentive to buy a record as there was a few decades ago.

<comment><USER3> I think there is a bigger subset for "virtual idols" in Japan that have already existed. They have also automated the singing part (see the Vocaloid Hatsune Miku). And they already have had concerts where people attend. Also they have started making "virtual YouTuber" (Kizuna_AI). This would all go to the point of just starting to make an AR/VR type of experience rather quickly.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, Kizuna AI-like Vtubers are flourishing in Japan and several other countries now. I'm only familiar with Hololive, but their streams reach 100k live viewers periodically with all the world's languages presented in their chats. There are also international chapters in China and Indonesia, and also a worldwide English audition just finished up recently. 'Independent' vtubers and 'Networked' (Hololive, Nijisanji) are also performing ads in radios and promoting themselves in Akihabara. It's dizzling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a musician who came up with the touring model, I've been struggling with not being able to gig and connect with people. There's a real visceral phenomenon that happens when you play live. I think it's fair to say those days were waning even before COVID.

I found the sentiment of this article comforting. It points to a way forward to make music and get some of that connection back. I don't know that there's any substitute for the real deal but that's probably because I'm old. ;)

<comment><USER6> I don't think replacing direct connection / presence with remote viewing / tele-presence is "progress".

Those two are different things. We could say that one is not better than the other, it depends on the use case.

But one can also say that we're wired evolutionary for the direct presence, and the other case is a 10-30 years affair that we're rushing into often when it's not really needed (like now with COVID) but just because it's new (or because other things, like ticket prices or free time, are fucked up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would be sad if Gorillaz never performed live again. I've seen their live shows and they were truly epic in size. They had 50+ people on stage, and an awesome video mix.

</comment><comment><USER8> Gorillaz's recent success this year with their Song Machine project has, I think, largely been because their recent songs have been some of the best material they've ever produced. Personal opinions vary, of course, but their four main releases this year have all been excellent and are probably among my favourite tracks of theirs.

</comment><comment><USER9> My band has been doing a completely virtual tour on twitch for the past two weeks. It seems like this platform was seemingly made for bands. The fact that we could generate a modest revenue stream for performing could potentially replace the money we would make from touring in the physical world. Very excited about the future potential of live, virtual platforms for music! We will continue streaming on a weekly basis after our "virtual tour" is complete, but we're stoked with the results we've had so far!

</comment><comment><USER10> Virtual concerts are becoming all the rage in MMORPGs, and other digital venues... [https://kotaku.com/watch-hatsune-miku-perform-live-in- phanta...](https://kotaku.com/watch-hatsune-miku-perform-live-in-phantasy- star-online-1843561653)

<comment><USER11> I'm more impressed that somehow Hatsune Miku was doing live concerts? Unfortunately it doesn't look like she play Wales; they'd love her there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I "attended" the Fortnite Travis Scott event; I was actually quite impressed. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYeFAlVC8qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYeFAlVC8qU) (undersells it because it's a cinematic view not how you actually see it in game)

It reminded me of demoscene programs in a way although not as intellectually stimulating. It's early days for the medium but as VR gets cheaper I can't see why it won't become a normal thing in the west to have virtual gigs (I think people around me wouldn't be surprised if they saw something like it in Asia already)

<comment><USER13> Can you describe what this experience is like for the attendees? Are all of the attendees transported into all of these environments with full control of their character given constraints like being underwater, flying through the air, etc? I've played video games my entire life, but not Fortnite, so I find this absolutely fascinating as a future medium.

<comment><USER12> You wait in a loaded area and then the game locks you into an area of the map then the enormous Travis Scott figure appears and dances about.

You can still move around in the game but the game applies external forces to you to throw you around and put you in the different environments etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Related tangent: what's the state-of-the-art for reasonably low-latency / time-synced, networked multi-user audio? eg for multiplayer music "games"?

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe Dethklok will come back again too.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think companies such as MelodyVR are going to be pretty big because of the effects of COVID-19.

It's an interesting problem-space and it'll take a while for people to acclimatise to the changes, but I think we'll start to see a lot of this.

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to love these guys, however, recently they seem to be headed farther and farther away from both the sound of and the innovation present in their first two records.

I miss the trip hop, I miss the 'edge'. It's basically Damon Albarn's synth pop at the moment. I feel like he should be releasing records such as 'The Now Now' under his own name. I'd still listen and I'd probably appreciate it more.

</comment><comment><USER18> I would suggest titling this article 'Planet of the Gorillaz'.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this real and not sarcasm?

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't think this claim will stand once the covid vaccines land in our pharmacies. The world will be back to normal though work environment might be changed for a lot of jobs

</comment><comment><USER21> Took me longer than anticipated to figure out whether the article was about the animal Gorilla or some techn platform called with the same name.

<comment><USER22> The 'z' is important.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillaz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillaz)</comment></comment>


Rawgithub.com - <AUTHOR> https://rawgithub.com/ <comment><USER2> "We added the X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff header to our raw URL responses way back in 2011 as a first step in combating hotlinking. This has the effect of forcing the browser to treat content in accordance with the Content-Type header. That means that when we set Content-Type: text/plain for raw views of files, the browser will refuse to treat that file as JavaScript or CSS."

[https://github.com/blog/1482-heads-up-nosniff-header- support...](https://github.com/blog/1482-heads-up-nosniff-header-support- coming-to-chrome-and-firefox)

</comment><comment><USER3> "What will happen if im an asshole" -- that's the first time I've seen a URL anchor like that!

<https://rawgithub.com/#what-will-happen-if-im-an-asshole>

<comment><USER4> I think the author should warn people "If you're a big enough asshole, I will make your website look amusingly awful and submit it to Reddit and Hacker News." Making someone look like a complete idiot in public can be a powerful disincentive.

<comment><USER5> It has happened, but the result was a more polite alert() box in a hompeage and it wasn't posted anywere.

<comment><USER6> Actually, it was an alert() box plus evil.js, which overwrites lots of native JS functionality to intentionally cause weird bugs.

The idea is to make it impossible to ignore so abusers will stop their hotlinking. I'm not really interested in shaming anyone, though. I think it's usually just a simple mistake where someone was lazy and didn't bother reading all the caveats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very awesome.

I'm sure there's a legitimate reason, but I've always wondered why you can't just set master as your GitHub Pages branch if it made sense (rather than gh_pages).

<comment><USER8> I've tried that here [1], gh-pages has replaced master as the only branch. It seems to work well [2] for the static site.

[1] <https://github.com/shurcooL/latest-tweets>

[2] <http://shurcool.github.io/latest-tweets/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the service, but is it OK to use the github name like this?

<comment><USER10> Looks like no, it's trademarked: [http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4802:zp...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4802:zp1qua.2.2)

Since Mr. Grove (and by extension, his website) is based on USA, it is eligible to be sued (in fact they have to protect their copyright or risk rendering it de-facto invalid).

<comment><USER11> They have to defend their _trademark_ , not their copyright.

<comment><USER10> That's what I meant

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great, I have some JSfiddle examples that I share occasionally that reference some raw files an Github, this fixes them in Chrome. Seems like the perfect use case for this.

</comment><comment><USER13> I love it - I've been wanting this for ages. Super convenient.

</comment><comment><USER14> Same idea with source <https://github.com/sergeykish/gisted>

<comment><USER15> Read the FAQ, rawgithub's source is here: <https://github.com/rgrove/rawgithub>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like a horrible idea security wise.

<comment><USER17> Care to explain why?

<comment><USER18> Is it really not obvious?

The site's FAQ admits that it'll engage in what is basically a man-in-the- middle attack against content that receives heavy traffic, for instance. See the "rawgithub.com will start serving evil.js and evil.css instead of requested JS and CSS files" part of one of the answers.

If the content being served will be modified in some cases, is there really anything preventing it from being modified in a different (perhaps more malicious) way in some other cases?

Like anything else, a service like this is itself susceptible to breach, of course. There's always the potential that it gets compromised, and starts acting in a malicious manner, initially undetected by its creators/operators/users.

Some may argue that this is acceptable risk for content served up for demonstration purposes. I'm not certain that's necessarily true. A demo being unexpectedly modified in a harmful way (racial slurs inserted into a web site's text, malicious JavaScript being injected, and so on) could seriously affect the demo giver's reputation, for example.

It's not difficult, nor expensive, to set up your own publically-facing web server. If already using GitHub, git makes it quite simple to fetch and update any content being served up. While there is still risk associated with such a setup, you are cutting out at least one other party by doing things yourself, avoiding the harm they could potentially cause. So services of this type seem quite unnecessary, and perhaps more of a risk than they're worth.

<comment><USER19> This service is all about work-in-progress and demo projects. Just to show it off for a quick demo or whatever. You're completely right, but also missed the point of this tool completely.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly right.

Anyone who's using rawgithub.com in a situation where harm could be done by running arbitrary third-party JS is probably misusing rawgithub.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've done a similar project GitHub HTML Preview, which allows you to run any HTML & JS & CSS without using GitHub Pages or downloading a repo: <http://htmlpreview.github.io>

</comment><comment><USER21> Related: <http://www.5minfork.com/>

</comment><comment><USER22> evil.js is just beautiful...

</comment><comment><USER23> Couldn't come up with any other name? The site is just begging to be taken down by Github.

</comment><comment><USER24> I needed yesterday :) Well done.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does this font render horribly for anyone else? On windows with chrome here.

<comment><USER26> It renders horribly for me as well. On that note, how does one _properly_ implement custom fonts into a webpage? Is there a standard, recognized, fool proof way? I've rarely seen it done correctly.

On that note again, where do I learn about fonts in the browser in general?

<comment><USER27> There's sort of a standard way. But really no. It's one of those situations where if you're going to use custom webfonts and aren't using a service you'll need to go through some trial and error, do some research, and basically decide which platform/browser combo is most important to you. The second most popular post on my website discusses this. Not trying to self-promote and there are problems with my implementation too but maybe this can get you started [http://billpatrianakos.me/blog/2012/12/26/fix-webfont- render...](http://billpatrianakos.me/blog/2012/12/26/fix-webfont-rendering- issues-in-chrome-for-windows/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why doesn't github just fix it to send the correct content-type back?

<comment><USER29> If someone can host arbitrary html and js on the *.github.com domain, they can set cookies for github.com. See [http://homakov.blogspot.com/2013/03/hacking- github-with-webk...](http://homakov.blogspot.com/2013/03/hacking-github-with- webkit.html)</comment></comment>


The Airport Chaos Is the Product of Negligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-lines-airports-show-negligence/608059/ <comment><USER2> The article attempts to argue that we should hold other industries, including airport management to the same extremely high safety standards that airlines have to face.

I've always thought it interesting to ask if air-travel is too safe. Have we over-optimized it and could we allocate those resources to areas where they would provide a larger impact? For example if we did not require a fire- station at each airport, would we have budget to increase hospital/clinic funding?

</comment><comment><USER3> Flying right now is a monumentally stupid idea. All passenger flights except repatriation and medical airlift should've been grounded in January. Checking people's temperature is safety theater accomplishing F-all.</comment>


Oracle Introduces New Java SE Subscription - <AUTHOR> https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/java-se-subscription-offering-062118.html <comment><AUTHOR> Appears for $2.50 per user month, Oracle gives you verified security updates and access to a tool that you otherwise aren't allowed to use in production. As I mentioned on /r/java, this tool goes against their work lately putting their Oracle-only tools back in OpenJDK. Not that it's wrong, just annoying to see the continued commercialization of Java by Oracle while abandoning some non-commercial things (granted at the same time as "liberating" them).</comment>


What are the 7 deadly sins of programming? - <AUTHOR> https://techkettle.blogspot.com/2020/09/what-are-7-deadly-sins-of-programming.html <comment><USER2> > _Hard-coding data._

I'm not convinced. Is the constant Pi not data? A multi-byte file magic? A constant matrix used for rotation?

> _Put strings (like labels, messages, hints …etc ) directly in the code > instead of externalizing them._

Many enterprise software projects are custom-built for a handful of users and don't need externalization. Besides, log messages.

> _Not using meaningful names for variables._

Strongly agree.

> _Using name instead of verb in method /function declaration._

What about getter methods? In some languages, `get` or `is` prefixes are not idiomatic.

> _Rolling his own security_

What is that even supposed to mean? Of course we roll our own security. It needs to be baked into the product from the design phase on.

What the author probably meant was: security algorithms. Maybe reflect on why they seem to assume all programmers are men.

> _Jump staging right to the production._

What about ad-hoc debug helpers that sometimes have to be inserted while debugging in production?

> _No comment !_

Some pieces of code just don't need comments.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why limit yourself to 7? There's way more t han that.

This is analogous to "The 10 Commandments of Programming", or "of Java" or "of Visual Basic". Why limit yourself to 10? Why got all the way to 10 (remember 5 plus or minus 2)?</comment>


Show HN: YC Next, exclusive community for Y Combinator interviewees and aspirants - <AUTHOR> http://ycnext.com/

<comment><USER2> According to whois this site is by Pavan Kumar, not YC. For those of you who dont know, using pictures (especially with a quote attached, and even more when it has YC in the name) from public figures is NOT LEGAL if it is used to sell/endorse a product without their consent. Unless this is a YC company itself, it gives the false illusion that they support the product/business. In this case it might also mislead people as to who is behind the company itself.

<comment><USER3> This is a quick hack to help YC interviewees. No business motives and its not affiliated to YC in anyway. will add a non-affiliation text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember the Hacker News I used to love from 2008. Are we really at a place where someone is trying to build another corral / gatekeeper for yet another "exclusive" group? It used to be using the word "exclusive" on HN would get you laughed at. Hacker news was about Hacking Things. Oh how I miss the pre bubble BS.

</comment><comment><USER5> We were searching the internet for companies who attended the YC interviews before, but we could not find any organized list. so we built this over the new year weekend. Would love to get your feedback to improve it and make it more useful.

It would be great, if you can spread the word to YC Interviewees.

Let us know what you think

</comment><comment><USER6> Man, everyone here is so negative. If someone wants to help out aspiring YC companies, why not support that? If YC wants to ban the post, then let them do so. They don't need self appointed moderators.

These guys are trying to help others. Let the idea rise or fall on it's merit.

</comment><comment><USER7> Alright, I'll be the first to say it: this is a little self-absorbed, at least based on the description, yeah?

Shouldn't you be out...oh, I don't know, _building a business_?

<comment><USER5> we are open for your constructive feedback to make changes to the site, no business motive at all.

As per the suggestion, we making changes to the why page, added a non- affiliation text in footer.</comment></comment>


Remember the Million Dollar Homepage? Now there's a new version in 3D - <AUTHOR> https://milliondollarmetropolis.com <comment><USER2> I like the retro-future look. It needs a retro-future-80s soundtrack.

In fact, it is like this game, pin-out: [https://youtu.be/yPUjpP4PT_U?t=51](https://youtu.be/yPUjpP4PT_U?t=51)</comment>


Are Windows of Opportunity Quickly Narrowing for Startups? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/04/are-windows-of-opportunity-qui.php

<comment><USER2> This article is extraordinarily mislabeled.

The author points to many startups that are raising large amounts of capital, and admits 'M&A numbers broke records in the first quarter of 2010'.

Sure VC are raising smaller funds, but costs to start-up continue to drop as well.

No, windows of opportunity are not narrowing. You make your own opportunities. Use this guys article as an excuse if you want to get out of doing the work, but that is all it's good for.</comment>


'Anti-Facebook' investors dig deep for Ello - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29725891 <comment><AUTHOR> It's certainly an interesting idea to try and fund a social network on micro- transactions alone.

It should be interesting to see what functionality they link to micro- transactions; Most games seem to do this with 'skins' and other aesthetic options, but if they go over the top in that respect it could easily become 'messy' like MySpace.

I do expect there might be a different demographic of privacy concious users who may be willing to donate in effect should the service gain traction.</comment>


Tweet counter - <AUTHOR> http://newexception.com/tweet-counter

<comment><USER2> _Sorry, we don't allow usage of that endpoint in any other contexts than the Tweet Button. If the counts are important to display on your site, you'll either need to use the official Tweet Button or count the tweets yourself using the Streaming API and provide your own counts._

<https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/5653>

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this new or undocumented or something? It just looks like a nice feature of Twitter's API, but not specially noteworthy. Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER4> I'm assuming this is how those "This has been Tweeted x times" buttons work. Also, it is not on the Twitter API 1.1 documentation, so this is almost definitely undocumented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This feature is nothing special, is it?</comment>