Papers in Computer Science: summary and discussion of important papers - <AUTHOR> http://papersincomputerscience.org/

<comment><USER2> Looks like they ran out of steam? The last post is from early July. Before that there were several per month.

Not that it devalues the content already there. There's some real classics, and the summaries are pretty readable. But it's too bad there won't be more trickling in.

<comment><USER3> It looks that the author actually was accepted into Graduate School and is probably too busy now :)

<comment><USER4> There's of course the old joke that once you get into grad school, you'll be too busy the first two years to read many papers :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a good discussion of IP=PSPACE there.</comment>


Transdifferentiation of human adult peripheral blood T cells into neurons - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/05/30/1720273115 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/06/human-blood- ce...](http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/06/human-blood-cells- transformed-into-functional-neurons.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> IIRC T cells are among the very few cells that can be "taught" or "programmed": they are "programmed" to react to specific antigens in thymus [1].

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thymus#Function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thymus#Function)

<comment><USER3> It's not actually teaching what happens in the Thymus and bone marrow, to be honest. When a T-cell is generated, certain sections of its DNA are mutated so that it can respond to foreign proteins.

However, the process of mutation is inherently random. What the 'teaching' in the thymus and bone marrow do is that if these cells do not respond to foreign antigens, or if they respond to the body's own antigens, the T-Cell is killed.

EDIT: Damn. Sarnath'ed.

<comment><USER4> Its the same thing as police training via shooting at the targets that pop up.[1] If someone keeps shooting the hostages/civilians instead of the bad guys they will wash out.

[1] [https://shop.actiontarget.com/prodcat/papercardboard- scenari...](https://shop.actiontarget.com/prodcat/papercardboard-scenario- hostage.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this related to transubstantiation of adult blood to wine and flesh to cracker?</comment>


Rebound - simple, addictive "stick" game - <AUTHOR> http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22487

<comment><AUTHOR> My most effective strategy so far is patiently bouncing the stick higher and higher early on by landing it almost perfectly vertically with a force into the ground just before it hits, then using that big air on the rest of the course to slowly and carefully jump over the obstacles in chunks with almost completely vertical but very high bounces. If I ever get into the micro- navigation of an obstacle instead of just sailing over it entirely then I know I'm in trouble. I got to 180 this way, getting just beyond a wall with a hole in it which I easily leapt over before making a mess of the landing (!).

Disappointingly there seem to be some glitches which sometimes cause the stick to, erm, _stick_ into the ground when landing straight as in my strategy above. When that happens I tend to ragequit, then find myself sneaking back for another session a few hours later...

I'd be very interested if the course has an "end". My hunch is that it does, and it's a cliff much like the one if you try going left. I suspect that before this cliff there is one final obstacle though which can be used skillfully to propel the stick a decent hail mary distance. Haha, I feel like I'm on my BBC Micro in the early 90s again speculating wildly about later levels of games that are just too hard for me ever to see them!</comment>


Female Passengers Say They Were Targeted for TSA Body Scanners - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/female-body-scans/

<comment><USER2> While I'm very, very anti-TSA and this sort of thing wouldn't surprise me a single bit, saying you "found patterns in complaint data" is silly. Such data is _obviously_ biased from the start; we can do far better than this, with simple actual statistics on persons examined.

But in the end, this is what you get when your "random screenings" aren't actually random in any way, not recorded for future analysis, and (due to the previous point) not audited for bias. You can make arguments why we wouldn't actually want random screenings in this stuff, but I think we all know that it's pure security theater regardless.

</comment><comment><USER3> The desire of some people to look at others naked should come as a shock to no one. Plus, the abuse of the power of looking at people naked without retribution should surprise no one.

This cuts to the core of humanity: sexuality and power.

</comment><comment><USER4> I rather enjoy opting-out of this crap. The TSA folks seem to respect it, especially when they ask the reason for their clipboard and I say "health." I've never been millimeter scanned and frankly the radiation aspects of it scare me.

What I don't understand is why anyone _wouldn't_ opt-out. Even when I've been on the late side for my flights, the time a pat down takes doesn't make a difference in catching the flight.

<comment><USER5> I've been through it once before I even realized what was happening.

They didn't tell me "you are now being subjected to the new millimeter wave scanner" or offer me the choice of a pat-down, they just pointed and herded my fiancee and I through the machine without any mention of what it was or that I had a choice to not go through it.

It was only after that I realized it was the new scanner I had just gone through, and I only realized that because I read sites like HN.

So, to other travellers: when you've opted-out did you basically have to halt in your tracks and demand an opt-out? I guess I naively thought opting out would be more obvious... but I was wrong.

<comment><USER4> I usually try to play it cool until the moment the point me toward the radiation machine. Then I say "I'd like to opt-out". They are always very professional about it, and have a procedure (different in different airports) where you basically stand there and watch other poor suckers go through the machine, until they find someone to pat you down.

The reason I play it cool is because about 1/3 of the time they end up pointing me toward the regular metal detector at the last minute (I guess I'm not a cute girl...)

<comment><USER6> I always opt-out, and it's never been a civil affair.

The _least_ obnoxious was when the TSA agent heard my "I'd like to opt out" message, shouted "REFUSAL", made me stand _next_ to the scanner for approximately 15 minutes before finding someone who could pat me down, occasionally glaring at me for effect.

The pat-down was respectful, though it was done inches away from my 9 year old daughter, but the core of the issue, to me anyway, is that I object to both the new scanners AND the pat-down.

I've adopted an "only fly when I have to" policy, which meant 6 hour drives replaced flights to New York, but there is regrettably no way of avoiding all my business travel in lieu of driving.

<comment><USER4> I was raised by lawyers, and I think from that I learned how to present myself in a way that is both courteous and has a subtext of "the paperwork involved in fucking with me will crush you." The easy to articulate bits of this include good posture, eye-contact and precise diction. There's probably more to it than that which I'm unaware of. This also seems to work when I get pulled over.

<comment><USER7> @jchrisa, If you don't mind, please could you let know how to politely convey the subtext etc.? Thanks.

<comment><USER4> Wish I could help more -- I think if you appear deferrential to the law (more so than the officer), it helps remind the law enforcement officer that they are also subject to the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is the statement from the TSA claiming they are mapping each individual body scan to a standardized body model? Doesn't this distort the scan and therefore reduce its value? I don't quite understand how they could adjust it so that it can no longer see the shape of an individual's breasts, for example, but can still identify suspicious bulges on the body. I don't mean to be crude, but I am very suspicious about this claim.

<comment><USER9> From what I understand, this system is only being installed on millimeter wave scanners and not on backscatter devices. In my experiences, the backscatter devices are much more prevalent.

<comment><USER10> You are correct. Here is more info (plus a small photo) of what the _new AIT software upgrade_ looks like: <http://www.tsa.gov/approach/tech/ait/index.shtm>

Even with the new software, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a _team_ of TSA employees looking at the raw images in a dark room somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really disturbing - but not unexpected. Give people the power to choose who they want to see naked and it's inevitable that some people will abuse this power, I think.

</comment><comment><USER12> The conclusion by a friend's father, when he went from Minneapolis to Chicago and back, was that the TSA only pulled a side young females (20s & 30s) for full body scans.

<comment><USER13> I've been pulled aside twice in about 10 or so flights. I'm male, old, and have a gut. Anecdotes != data.

My regular comment has been, "I don't mind the scans, but I'd appreciate it if they would stop giggling."

<comment><USER10> During 2010 and the first half of 2011, my significant other (female) was _randomly selected_ for the scanners 11 out of 12 times. The 1 time she wasn't selected was because the scanner was not in operation. I (male) was randomly selected 0 times.

Every time she asked for a pat down, the female TSA worker (who would be performing the pat down) would scowl at the young male worker. It seemed that female pat downs were in higher demand, making her job harder.

Now that more scanners have been installed at the airports we frequent, the TSA workers try to send almost 100% of the people through the scanners. Though, my significant other now gets directed over to the metal detector if there is a long line for the scanner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hate the TSA and everything, but can't you just look at someone and imagine what they look like naked in much higher resolution than the body scanners provide? People are afraid of being naked, but we all pretty much look the same.

<comment><USER15> Don't understand your point. Should we say to women: "you have no right to feel violated because the blurry outline of your breasts and vagina looks very similar to the blurry outline of that woman behind you (trust me I've seen a lot of blurry vaginas)"?

as an aside, I have to say I felt pretty uncomfortable seeing a man send my SO through the scanner; we weren't expecting it at our airport and she didn't really know what it was until she was already through. The power dynamic was a big part of this.

<comment><USER14> Why do you care about the gender of the rent-a-cop that tells you to stand inside an x-ray machine? He doesn't see the images, and even then, what difference does the gender make? There are plenty of people that are sexually attracted to people of the same gender.

I don't like the body scanners, but I could care less if someone sees me naked. The reason we should fight body scanners is because the cost/benefit ratio sucks. It takes too long to move a line of people through these things, so they aren't used on everyone. So all you've done is thwart terrorist groups that only have one member.

There could be no airport security at all and it's unlikely that many more people would die. If we lost one 747 a year, it would be a rounding error compared to the number of people dying in car accidents or from excessive consumption of unhealthy food. So why do we spend any time solving this non- problem? It just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER16> I think the point to be made is that not everyone has the same comfort zone as you do. You may not care about strangers seeing you naked, but other people do. Being naked in front of someone can be an intensely vulnerable experience, and the feelings of vulnerability can be compounded by a wide range of factors, including power differentials, the fact that they are strangers, or that those strangers may be letching on your naked body.

For instance, I don't particularly care about being naked in front of people, but when I feel like I'm being objectified/letched on, that makes me uncomfortable, regardless of my state of dress.

<comment><USER14> Where do we draw the line? Some people feel uncomfortable when they aren't carrying a gun. Should we let those people carry guns onto planes?

<comment><USER16> Uh. what? I was trying to explain that feeling uncomfortable or violated was a reasonable reaction to a virtual strip search for people who aren't you. What the actual bleepity bleep does not allowing weapons onto planes have to do with the price of peas in Persepolis?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In most Canadian airports passengers step on a map which randomizes some numbers and then determines if you go for scanning or not. Of course, you also have the option to opt out.

On a side note, did the guy say "gingerale" at the end of the video?

<comment><USER18> Yeah, this is a sort of problem with well known solutions which aren't being used in the US for reasons that are entirely opaque.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if finding sketchiness in those image results could be automated. Everyone through the machine stands in the same position, they're just of sort of various statures.

I mean, the supposed upgrade would mean that they are reducing the ability of operators to observe images. What's the point in it then? At a certain point, the humans won't be able to beat software.

I know the reasoning of security theater(that none of this actually matters), but it's pretty fun to imagine what we could solve with technology and software.

<comment><USER20> It's a little difficult. If an employee screws up badly, they can be fired. If the software screws up badly, we can fix it, but people still lose their trust immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd prefer this technology goes away, but if it doesn't, I'd be more comfortable if there was an impermeable wall between the people who see the scans and the people who select passengers for scanning. I don't see why they even need to be at the same facility. Why isn't there some central scanning office somewhere where all the scans are reviewed? That would eliminate a lot of the opportunity for abuse.

Of course you introduce the risk of network issues shutting down the scanners - but - uh - no big loss

<comment><USER22> Because I would prefer an image of me being sent to a centralized center where faceless, unnamed government employees equivalent to postal workers make decisions about my character without any option for petition, verification, or identification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I flew through Kiev airport last week, and the metal detector was in front of the scanner... so if the detector beeps when you step through, you get told to halt in the scanner. If it doesn't beep, you walk through.

No idea what would have happened if I'd tried to opt out, and the relative levels of their English and my Russian meant I didn't really feel like finding out.

</comment><comment><USER24> SO when will we end this security theater cluster fuck? I say if all depts have to face budget cuts body scans go away

<comment><USER25> Never under Obama or most Republican candidates (you can take a guess who's against the TSA), unless there's a major public outcry, at least as big as the one for SOPA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ugh. Its a licence to sleaze with ease. And no comeback. Deplorable. Makes one's flesh literally creep.

</comment><comment><USER27> HN has been mocked repeatedly for having stories about TSA scanners on the front page... Yet here we go again.

Anyone care to explain how this is relevant to hackers?</comment>


Show HN: List of remote jobs only from leading companies / fast-growing startups - <AUTHOR> https://www.prospercircle.org/ <comment><USER2> Congratulations on the launch, first impressions are good, you guys have a very neatly designed website with focus guiding the eye to relevant parts of the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback.

Any suggestions on messaging and copy?</comment></comment>


Windows 8 a certifiable flop - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/computers/windows-8-a-certifiable-flop-20131203-2yo3r.html

<comment><USER2> After using Windows 8.1 on my >5 year old laptop for the last month, the only thing I really _dislike_ about it is the schizophrenic impedance-mismatch between the "Desktop" metaphor and the new "Metro" interface. Like on reviewer said, "at boot, you get this tablet interface, but then you click the Start button, and it's Windows 7 underneath." Me, I'm a techie, so figured things out pretty quick, and I love the fast boot, improved file copy dialog, and much improved Task Manager

I think that Windows 7 is the new XP: It's a great OS, with perhaps no obvious warts, so nobody really _needs_ to upgrade, as wee needed to upgrade from Windows Me (Ugh!). It looks modern enough, is very stable (c'mon now, let's admit it) and simply does its job. For most people, why bother upgrade?

In time, of course, we'll see Windows 8 numbers improve, as people replace old computers. But most laptops now, are like Windows 7, and XP before it: They're good enough for most people, so why bother upgrade?

</comment><comment><USER3> They need at least one killer "Modern" (windows 8 only) application.

I can't see anything modern apps can do that normal desktop apps can't. The interface is dramatically different, and that can be a plus if the right app came along that you WANTED to use your fingers to control over a keyboard and mouse.

Off the top of my head, I could imagine a hardware/software combination that automates your house. A wifi connected controller box would use the power lines in your house to transmit information (like x10 does) to cheap replacement switches and outlets; letting you control what does and doesn't get power. Maybe the outlets track how much electricity your household devices are using and you can get a pretty graph. Maybe they use a threshold to determine when a device is in standby mode and give you the option to automatically cut it's trickle power. Maybe an IR breakout box lets you control your entertainment center. Some sort of wifi streaming box lets you stream audio from one room to another. Maybe a few wifi enabled cheap cameras you can mount around let you monitor your rooms. All of these features would be controlled centrally through a windows 8 modern device. I could see something like this being a good use of the simple design of metro applications. Wasn't there a Microsoft home concept a long time ago? What happened to that?

I hope Redmond devotes more energy to developing killer apps in the near future. I think they could turn this around if they get normal consumers inspired.

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought Microsoft OS releases were generally agreed to be like Star Trek films - you really only need to see every second one.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think in the larger scheme of things Windows 8 will prove to be a win. It greatly simplifies the overall interface for the average user. It will take time for MS to work out some the rough spots --and they need user feedback to do that well. But it will get there.

Meanwhile Android is feeling pretty clunky.

<comment><USER6> >It greatly simplifies the overall interface for the average user.

Funny, it was the average user that told _me_ time and time again that they just wanted a normal Windows. Not this childish looking tablet UI. And the first order of business for me was to wipe that Tile Fest and install an OS that average user actually wanted to use.

As long as MS plows ahead with this unification nonsense of systems that are inherently different and are therefore by definition not able to be unified, Windows 8 and any iteration they put out in the future will see the same reception.

If what feels like 90% of the users tell you "once you install start8 and boot to desktop its not that bad", you should know that the Metro crap doesn't fly on desktop. But does MS listen? Hell no. Plow ahead with unification.

Whoever had this idea that systems which are so different from each should be "gifted" with an identical, non optional UI should have been fired a long time ago.

Remove the Tiles shit from the desktop version, apologize and promise to never do that again and then we can talk about me upgrading my desktop OS. But until that happens, it stays on Win7 and nothing of value was lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> what about windows 8.1? what about windows vista as a point of comparison? what about how its nearly just windows 7 with extra stuff?

new machines are being churned out with windows 8 preloaded. it seems like its just a matter of time before it, or its progeny become accepted as 'the standard'... until mac or *nix seriously up their game (still we are saying this?) i don't see any alternatives - unless MS ship Windows 9 that does for 8 what 7 did for Vista.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have to wonder if the plan with Win8 all along was to give the OEMs a savage beating before MS steps into the market to compete with them directly.</comment>


John Carmack on Inlined Code (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://number-none.com/blow/john_carmack_on_inlined_code.html <comment><USER2> Previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374345)

</comment><comment><USER3> Incidentally, this style of coding (loop free) is also what Simulink (in discrete stepping mode) enforces. Algebraic loops are not possible, period; you have to insert a one-step delay. A side effect is that step time is much more predictable (I have not found this advantage being mentioned in the article).</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite language and tools for web development? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Python + Django + Pythonanywhere if I want to very quickly test an idea and make the prototype available on the internet instantly. As the project grows bigger, I would switch to PyCharm.

If I need a front end, or easy to set up background jobs, or I don't need an admin interface much, I choose Clojure / CLJS and Emacs + CIDER.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your most controversial or contrarian idea to improve the world? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Decriminalise all drugs. Not just on the demand side (purchase/use of drugs) but also on the supply side (manufacture/sale of drugs). The goal would be to decimimate the drug syndicates that hold entire communities to randsom under regimes that are no less brutal than Isis. They use terror to control a lucrative illegal trade. Instead of making these drugs illegal, strongly discourage their use with policies like the successful measures that Australian governments have taken to discourage the use of tobacco and addictive prescription drugs and the successful measures that Portuguese governments have taken to help the users of street drugs to put their lives back together.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nutrition and lifestyle should be our first line of defense for health issues.

It seems like that shouldn't be controversial, but it apparently is. See, for example, this comment that is downvoted and rebutted:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18270736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18270736)

Expecting a billionaire to pursue a good solution is crazy talk? Because it's too hard for a billionaire?

</comment><comment><USER4> Eliminate governments (as we know them today) and move to a stateless society[1] with an individualist anarchist[2] style of self-government[3].

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

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

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- governance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-governance)

<comment><USER5> Personally I'd love it, but in general most people are essentially spiteful and lazy and won't self govern unless you force them, which defeats the whole purpose.

This article gets into it:

[https://mystudentvoices.com/fyodor-dostoevsky-on-the- irratio...](https://mystudentvoices.com/fyodor-dostoevsky-on-the- irrationality-of-people-and-the-futility-of-utopianism-e7c651a64e5f)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would like to see a city where there is way less government. I picture a city in the desert like a new Las Vegas that had government backing as an experiment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All laws should include the reason for why they were made.

<comment><USER4> If we're going to continue to have "governments" and "laws" as such, then I'd propose that all (or most) laws should have an expiration date, and should require renewal on some periodic basis. This would limit the impact of bad laws, by making it easier to get them off the books (since now there are two options: explicit repeal, or quiet expiration).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm launching a physical consumer product, reusable cloth pads, but I'm going to open source the pattern so people can make it for free too if they'd like.

My main goal is to fight period poverty so my thought process is that I didn't want to limit my product to only people that could afford it- and the numbers were not adding up to build a one for one model, so I decided that maybe open sourcing the pattern at the same time might be the easiest and simplest, occam's razor solution.

I plan on trying to disrupt by releasing an open source pattern with each product. I think people deserve the right to choose and that the knowledge for basic things like taking care of yourself as a woman or making your own underwear if you want to should be free.

</comment><comment><USER8> Take computers out of the classroom. Adopt a classical Greek curriculum until maybe High School.

</comment><comment><USER9> Design with the earth in mind (environmental sustainability), and that food and products must be thought of from creation, delivery (less carbon footprint), to end-of-life cycle (eco-friendly/green packaging waste) in a way that is good for the earth. This should be law.

I often feel bad when I open a package and see extraneous crap that will just be thrown out. Our garbage will outlive us all. There is no need for that!

</comment><comment><USER10> eliminate barriers to genetic engineering of humans

remove all borders and switch to governance that is not based on physical proximity but shared ideas/values through online collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER11> For any kind of work that takes place in an office (as opposed to manufacturing or services), the default should be remoting instead of commuting to that awful places.

</comment><comment><USER12> Abolish copyright and patents. Many other laws also can be reduced, to have more freedom. It isn't anarchy, but minarchy, which is minimal law system. Some law is still needed, such as environmental protection, and a few others. But, no world government; instead you can have separate governments but freely to move between them instead of being blocked everywhere by the border.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Regulate freedom of choice in food like they do drugs.

Set a standard of what is accepted. (like maybe it's only legal sell a hamburger that has 500 calories or less).

People are literally killing themselves with bad food choices (like diabetes) and then asking society to pay their medical bills.

</comment><comment><USER13> Control population to have less people.

</comment><comment><USER14> Stop using most of the smartthings. Most of them are totally useless.

<comment><USER10> what to do instead? A lot of civil society predicated on keeping crowds occupied.

<comment><USER14> First, I deeply think that "world" (but first, your family/friends life) will be improved with a real social life and not only with consumer goods. By social life I'm not speaking of sharing the last meal you eat on instagram or sharing your last training you've made with your connected watch :) There are plenty things to do : go outside, meet people, read books (i'm not saying that there are only good books and boring articles on internet, but just disconnect from the phone/computer/smartthings), play with your kids instead of giving them a connected ipad or phone, help others, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just wanna plug Peter Thiel's book Zero to One as it's based around a similar question.

</comment><comment><USER5> Increase foreign exchange student programs by 10,000 times, with subsidies for low income children. Introduce broad city/county/state student exchange programs.

</comment><comment><USER16> Elect a government for the world through universal adult franchise and make all the countries subservient to the world government.

</comment><comment><USER17> Corporations shouldn't pay tax, people should.

</comment><comment><USER18> Don't.

People who have set out to fix the world in grand terms have resulted in the 20th century regimens of Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

Setting out to make our own life a little better through capitalism has resulted in a world that is much, much closer to ending poverty[0], eradicating polio[1] and just outright a better world.

[0] [https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/poverty/](https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/poverty/)

[1] [http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/polio/en/](http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/polio/en/)</comment>


Show HN: Datarow.io – an easy to use data integration platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.datarow.io <comment><AUTHOR> DataRow.io is a fully managed, pay as you go data integration platform. With an intuitive drag and drop web interface, it helps you to build big data pipeline in minutes: move and transform data from A to B, handle stream processing, schedule data pipeline jobs and more.

You can try the free version by signing up at [https://aws.datarow.io](https://aws.datarow.io), no credit card required. If you want to sign up the full version, contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com. You will get the entire platform with full features and support all free for 9 months.

Try it here: [https://aws.datarow.io](https://aws.datarow.io)

Our website: [https://www.datarow.io](https://www.datarow.io)

Documentation: [https://doc.datarow.io/overview.html](https://doc.datarow.io/overview.html)

Cheers,

DataRow.io Team

</comment><comment><USER2> Just checking out the main website.. it was a bit slow. Even the JS/CSS stuff was a little laggy on the mouse:hover sections and the modal loading.

I haven't see the tool's UI, but if I was to check out just that landing page.. it gives a low expectation of the tool that it leads to.

I opened it with developer tools, and it looks like you have a LOT of resources loading (webpacks, scripts, etc.). Pretty bulky setup.

Just food for thought on the lead-conversion side. I wanted to be helpful..

<comment><AUTHOR> That is definitely helpful feedback, thanks! Although the platform's UI is completely different from our website. So, if you want to give it a try at aws.datarow.io, it only take half a minute to setup a free trial. Thanks for your comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's the underlining tech the pipeline runs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Apache Spark on AWS EMR.

For full version, you can grand DataRow access to your AWS account's EMR and run your job within your private network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congratulations on launching! Is there a github repo available? How do you differ from stitch or airflow?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We don't have a public github repo currently.

The main focus on DataRow is to make create data pipeline easy. We provide a large number of built-in connectors to support all commonly used data sources, from a Parquet file in S3 to your RDS MySQL database, from Cassandra to Elasticsearch, etc. You don't need to pay for using these connectors, the fee is based on the computer resource used for the job alone. There is little limit on how the job pipeline is defined, check out one of our blogs to see an example. [https://www.datarow.io/blog/archive-avro-formatted-kafka- mes...](https://www.datarow.io/blog/archive-avro-formatted-kafka-messages-to- hdfs-as-parquet-file)

Let me know if you have any other questions or suggestions, thanks for your comments!</comment></comment>


Facebook Building Voice Assistant to Rival Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/17/facebook-building-voice-assistant-to-rival-amazon-alexa-and-apple-siri.html <comment><USER2> Have voice assistants significantly changed folks' lives? I have Siri on my phone, but I only use it to set alarms/timers, or ask basic questions that lead to web searches. Those that I know with Alexa or Google Home use it for similar purposes, or home automation.

What are people using these devices for?</comment>


Application Development Cost in your country - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>I am Ozgur from MobGe. We develop games and to survive we develop applications to the customers. Last task we finished Online Market app. its available for iOs , ipad with different ux, android. All developed natively.<p>My question is how much is takes to finish in your  country such application that has:<p>Side Menu
İtem List
Item detail
Shopping card.
Payment Steps
Social and normal logins.
Previous orders
Settings
All custom views.
UX design
UI design.
Customer's database api integration.<p>Since we are very transparent I am giving you how much we get for this application.<p>We finished application in 3 months. And get 30K$. But I am planning to get 50K for the next customer because it does not worth for us last time. But with 60$ we would create even better application.<p>Best.
Application Links: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobge.onlinemarketv1 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/online-market/id880718349?mt=8
See our site: http://mobge.net/Projects/
Best. <comment><USER2> You smell like spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> No i am not :)</comment></comment>


Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20100104211620/http://www.linux.org/people/linus_post.html <comment><USER6> Although I've read this probably a dozen times. What I think about this today, as I'm about to reviel my next project is that it's so crazy how things evolved for open source. Nowadays people compete with companies and having an announcment like this usually includes :

\- website explaining as a pitch what is better about your software

\- ready to use examples and templates to support your claim

\- branding with a logo that makes you look more professional

\- issue tracker

\- github repository ( even mirror of yours )

\- bugfree software ready for production from day one.

And many more which I probably miss.

Writing something "cool" nowadays is not enough to be taken from the folks seriously.

<comment><USER7> And yet with all that ... I likely still won't understand what exactly the product or thing is or does.

Meanwhile I understand Linus's email well enough.

<comment><USER8> I can't count the number of times I've read an announcement of some OSS project, gone to the project home page, read it all and still had absolutely no idea what it was, what it did or why it might be important.

It is impressive how much Linus had working at that point though. Getting bash and gcc working and a multithreaded FS is no mean feat, and is enough for other people to actually make useful contributions without excessive pain.

<comment><USER9> It probably means you're not the target audience.

<comment><USER10> Most often it is that the author is so involved they forget to given enough context. They are so passionate about a topic, but don't realize that others do not drink the same Kool-Aid every day.

More than half of the emails I get from technology companies fail to start with a reminder of what their product or service does. I see this much, much less frequently with consumer products — better marketing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> people give Jobs and Gates a lot of credit because they focused on commercial products that were marketed to the public -- Linus, for me, is probably the single most important person to technology (software) in the last 35 years. With Linux and Git alone, it as impactful and game changing in this industry that I can think of. I cannot think of any person that's been this important to my career and my income.

<comment><USER12> Somewhere in a cavern full of sandals, a Stallmanu is quietly weeping.

<comment><USER13> I really dislike this snarky comment, but rather than down vote it, I thought I'd give an alternate view.

I was around at the time that Linux was born. I remember the HURD. I had done some work on Mach while I was in university and I was hugely interested in working on the HURD. I sent email to MIB and essentially received a reply "We don't need you kid". But this is the way it was at the time. People working on GNU were used to doing things in a Cathedral fashion (to put it in ESR's terms). They had small teams where only a few trusted people had input. The rest were users, not collaborators.

The internet was not common at that point and we didn't have things like distributed source repositories. Development was usually done using CVS and you had to be a core contributor to have access. You got access to source code from releases only. And while some projects had fairly regular releases, some did not. For the HURD, I think the idea was that there was no point to having regular releases because it wasn't even self hosting yet.

Linus showed up and changed the world. He said, "Here's this thing I've been working on" and he didn't care who you were. If you sent him a patch, he looked at it. This was completely different from how things used to work for most projects. Linus didn't make you sign over your copyright. He didn't vet you as a core or non-core developer. He just took your patch and evaluated it on its technical merits.

The whole Bazaar approach that is common today, stems from how Linus ran kernel development right from the start. It changed everything in free software development because it was just 100x better. No friction. Welcoming. Not discriminatory.

But if you think RMS is _sad_ about this state of affairs, I think you are terribly mistaken. The HURD was a failure because the world changed under them. Linus came around and showed everybody how software freedom is supposed to work in practice. This took a powerful but small group and expanded its reach to the everyday programmer. RMS's dream of a world where normal developers _valued_ free software over proprietary software came about _because_ of this shift -- and he's smart enough to realise it.

RMS was clumsy about the whole GNU/Linux thing, but Linux only existed because GNU existed. Back in the day, the first thing I would do when I got a new Unix box was to install GNU -- because it was massively better than whatever crap came with the Unix system. Even now, despite the advances of BSD systems, I would _still_ install GNU on top of a BSD kernel if I was running BSD.

Occasionally I hear people asking the question, "If Android is running Linux, why can't I run my Linux apps on my phone?" It drives me crazy. It's because you've got an Android/Linux box instead of a GNU/Linux box. The bit you want is GNU, not Linux. This is precisely why people like RMS wanted to stress the importance of GNU in the equation. I don't agree with his approach, but it's foolish to deny the basis of the argument.

Without RMS's vision, we would not be where we are today. I lived in the world where I had to use $5k per seat proprietary libraries to get anything done. I lived in the world where large corporations who built compilers told me what I was allowed to build. RMS rescued us from that. ESR gave us a vocabulary with which to talk about this stuff. He categorised the kinds of ways people approached things and allowed us to think critically about what we were doing. Linus showed us how to actually make it work. All of these people have disagreed with specific things the others have said, but they also show massive respect for one another -- for good reason. Without them, our lives as developers would be infinitely worse.

<comment><USER14> That was quite a story. Younger people like me just don't know/appreciate how history actually developed and why things are the way they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> <sidebar> I just finished reading the book "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky (circa 2008). In the book he mentions this very "announcement."

What's fascinating, per the book, is Linux was one of the first significant byproducts (if you will) of (internet) connectivity and how that enabled easy group / team formation.

In the case of Linux, its growth helped to further connectivity, etc. That is, in creating Linux, it helped spread Linux.

Great problem to have ;)

</sidebar>

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

<comment><USER16> I don't know that I would call Linux "one of the first". Usenet had been around for a long time, and there were plenty of projects that were enabled via Usenet and mailing lists. For example, perl predates Linux by four years.

<comment><USER17> It's also why NetHack (from 1987) was called "Net"Hack.

<comment><USER18> And "Net"BSD. Collaborating over the Internet was novel at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Such a humble announcement. I miss these kinds of projects. Most new projects today (by individuals or otherwise) are usually "best of", "world changing", "ground shaking", emoji filled nonsense, usually biting more than the developer(s) can handle, causing a buggy mess.

<comment><USER20> To be clear, Linux was definitely a buggy mess at the beginning and definitely more than Linus could handle, but they got through that by building community around fixing all of that.

<comment><USER19> That's fine, bugs are acceptable and expected as long as expectations are set accordingly. It seems clear from the start that the project didn't promise the world and its sister.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I remember when I first installed Linux and was trying to find my way around (1994ish) and I couldn't help but feel hopelessly behind, like everybody had way more experience than I did, and knew way more than I did.

Funny thing was, of course, that WAS true at the time, but it wasn't a reason not to do it. Let that be a lesson to anyone who hasn't learned the lesson themselves yet!

<comment><USER22> This is a great example of the Inspection Paradox, mentioned on HN earlier this week:

[https://allendowney.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-inspection- para...](https://allendowney.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-inspection-paradox-is- everywhere.html)

<comment><USER21> This is great! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, fascinating. I love the detail about probably never supporting anything other than AT hard disks and 386; isn't it funny now that Linux supports more hardware than just about damn near any operating system, free or otherwise?

<comment><USER24> ...and it doesn't support 386 anymore!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > I'm doing a (free) operating system (__just a hobby, won't be big and > professional like gnu__) for 386(486) AT clones. [...] and it probably never > will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

__just a hobby, won't be big and professional like X__ probably is how most of the startups get started.

<comment><USER26> Not anymore. :-(

Sell before you build a product!

Don't build what you want, build what other's want!

Build what other's are going to pay money for, hell, sell it, get a contract before you write a line of code!

If you don't have a market size of multiple billions is not worth doing!

Are you going to make billions upon billions? No? don't do it!

Hobby? It's not even worth of a side project.

<comment><USER27> I'm currently doing the opposite of every 'rule' and loving it.

Building what I want, because I want it to exist. Showing it to nobody else to test or get feedback on; no focus groups, no beta testing, no external input. Solo founder effort. Not taking VC; not under any circumstances or terms. Not selling or promoting anything before it launches. It's commercially minimalist by design and ethos, ideally it takes in the least amount of money necessary to fund its own expansion. There's no exit, hopefully it lasts perpetually; I aim to at least guarantee and pursue its operation for the next decade (it'll take that long to really build it out). It's thin on both the front and back ends, inexpensive to run and scale. Something like it doesn't currently exist and it will benefit humanity very modestly if I get it up to scale.

It's the first time in the last 20 years I've built something very large in scope that wasn't about making money in any manner. Something that is more important than my own ambitions in life. Going to launch it with a Show HN in the next two months or so. Hopefully it works out, either way it was a lot of fun to build (it will have likely taken seven or eight months of work from conception to kicking it out the door).

<comment><USER28> This was probably your intention, but I really want to know what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Weirdly, every time I see this e-mail I curse AT&T and think how much time and opportunity they cost the BSDs.

</comment><comment><USER30> Just yesterday I was watching his interview from a couple of years ago (in Finnish, sadly he doesn't do many of those any more).

He credited having a fair amount of free time during his 8 years of studying at University of Helsinki being a fairly big enabler of how Linux happened (or how he had time to work on it). I found that interesting

<comment><USER31> I'm from the Helsinki University of Technology and it was not uncommon that people got their masters degree in about 10 years of studying and working simultaneously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there something special about today that this is being posted again?

</comment><comment><USER33> _" PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code"_

That's kind of interesting now. Most Linux installations today coexist with a management processor running Minix. So what was a sort of mild rivalry is now a détente.

<comment><USER34> I'd say most Linux installations today are Android mobiles. Do those have Minix too?

<comment><USER33> No, but Android does use a different microkernel (LK) as it's bootloader.

It's also likely that Google will replace Linux on Android with Fuschia, yet another microkernel OS, derived from LK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Debate Question: would Linux have done so well without the wintel monopoly/monoculture on which it spread?

<comment><USER36> You mean "IBM PC clone". "Wintel" wasn't really a thing until Microsoft's dominant consumer and business OSs were Windows, starting with Windows 95, by which point Linux had already done a lot of spreading.

<comment><USER37> It's because MS-DOS and to a lesser extent Windows 3 was so bad at isolating you from the hardware that all the hardware had to be identical. If MS-DOS had been more like, say, CP/M then we would have had loads of weird machines from different manufacturers isolated from the software by proprietary BIOS[1] blobs. This would have made it harder to provide a useful Linux that worked across multiple machines.

[1] I mean "BIOS" in the CP/M sense of a layer that completely abstracted the hardware to the BDOS.

<comment><USER38> Q-DOS from which MS-DOS is derived is basically a clone of CP/M. I've written a CP/M bios for fun to bootstrap my IMSAI. It's not really that high level. You got even more from IBM's BIOS but of course that was too slow for what people wanted to do with those machines - so everyone talked to the hardware directly.

In those days it didn't matter what you were doing - the hardware was too slow. It's not like today where you can trade off performance for reliability or cleanliness. People praise Wozniak for his genius of trading hardware for software, but the tight coupling made it really hard to make future iterations. People didn't value upwards compatibility yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > It is NOT protable

Made me laugh, as I don't know any other OS that runs on such a variety of hardware nowadays ;-)

<comment><USER40> NetBSD!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Summary: small poll for my new operating system

I'm intrigued. Does the email standard actually include a 'summary' field? If so, why doesn't that still exist?

<comment><USER42> As zerohp said, Usenet. Here's an RFC link I just chased down:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5536#section-3.2.11](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5536#section-3.2.11)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> One question: Being noob at OS stuff, I feel quite impressed that bash and GCC could work on the Linux that Linus built on his own. But everybody says that Linux really was something interesting as soon as a proper memory management was added to it. And that was done, but not by Linus. So, which achievement sounds to you the most impressive? Building the first Linux? Or adding that (afaiu, critical) memory management feature?

<comment><USER44> What do you think that "proper memory management" was?

Linus himself implemented virtual memory support with paging to disc in Linux version 0.12 (Jan 1992). This made people to switch from Minix to Linux.

Maybe you mix it up with some other important feature? X was ported to Linux by Orest Zborowski in 92. Or networking? That was not a one-man show.

</comment></comment><comment> rv-de The photo shows a beer bottle and he refers to the development as "brewing". Being a home brewing enthusiast - that sure caught my attention.

</comment><comment><USER45> "Fun fact": I just noticed that he is using an old email address, after that I believe it was changed to @cs.helsinki.fi and after @helsinki.fi

" At the moment, the City of Helsinki uses the address Hel.fi, while the address Helsinki.fi belongs to the University of Helsinki."[1]

[1] [https://www.hel.fi/helsinki/en/administration/information/in...](https://www.hel.fi/helsinki/en/administration/information/information/nic.helsinki/)

</comment><comment><USER46> Curious - what about Linux in particular made people interested in it so much as opposed to contributing to some *BSD, or Hurd? Strictly the license?

<comment><USER47> In 1991, the BSD's as we know them today didn't exist.

      386BSD - <USER2>
      FreeBSD - <USER4>
      NetBSD - <USER4>
      OpenBSD - <USER5>

There were also ongoing lawsuits concerning AT&T code:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD#History

I'm not 100% sure but from memory I don't believe the HURD (Mach-based) kernel was even bootable in 1991. I didn't see bootable HURD releases till much later in the 1990's and they were notoriously unstable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Didn't people on usenet pay his computer off?

</comment><comment><USER49> In 1991 I printed MINIX code and was studying it

</comment><comment><USER50> this is rather inspiring. humble beginnings, mountains moved.

</comment><comment><USER51> I can only imagine the first comment was someone telling him it would never work.

<comment><USER33> Nope: [https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/comp.os.minix/dlNt...](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/comp.os.minix/dlNtH7RRrGA)

Though Usenet could get toxic at times.

<comment><USER52> I like how the first comment muses about porting it to Amiga, and Linus reiterates that no, sorry, it's _completely_ impossible to port. Just way too hardware-dependent, don't even bother trying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Shameless plug of my related submission of yesterday : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18345058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18345058)

If someone can explain it, I'm open to new hypothesis.</comment>