Net neutrality: Are all bits created equal? - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/8512843.stm

<comment><USER2> If net neutrality fails, companies like Google can easily play hard ball and potentially bring ISP's down. Everyone on the throttling ISP's network asking for money from website owner, instead of getting Youtube or Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and the many other Alexa top 100 sites, they get "This website cannot be reached by your service provider, please consider switching Internet Service Provider".

I'm sorry, if all my favourite websites start telling me I have to change ISP to use them, I'm going to change my ISP. Without google I'm out, it has my Docs and my Emails, plus I wouldn't know how to find something online without it (I could, but Bing is suck ass and beyond Yahoo my suckometer stops registering). Even now, if google suggested I switch ISP for better performance, I'd switch ISP. Heck, I even have my DNS through google! I wouldn't have websites without google right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would like a bill that expressly prohibits the blocking of ports or protocols without the account holder's permission. I also wish I could prioritize my own traffic (skype > download). Yeah, I know, I want the pony.

<comment><USER4> I would prefer legislation that attempts to nerf the power of broadband providers by increasing competition. This might look like open access rules, it might look like something else.

The problem isn't that particular providers do things that their customers might not like, the problem is that a large number of those customers have (at best) the choice of two companies to buy from... and those two companies are state subsidized monopolies.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but there are plenty of places in the USA (and I suspect other countries) where there will only be 1 or 2 providers based on geography and profit analysis. So, I really would like the protection.

<comment><USER2> Could be resolved, but the steps taken would be difficult to accomplish. Essentially the government would need to claim ownership of the fibre, and all ISPs lease fibre based on usage. Essentially if I switch service, ISP1 stops paying for my usage and ISP2 picks it up.

However, this presents the problem that the government will then control the fibre and maintenance costs will rise like a rocket to the moon. So perhaps the ideal resolution to our problems could become the biggest hindrance to lowering costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Another ISP tried to restrict bit torrent traffic and got pages and pages of bad press as a result._

That would be Comcast.</comment>


Show HN: Product Hunt Reviews Widget - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/product-hunt-reviews-widget <comment><USER2> Very well done landing page and service execution. Are you planning on monetizing it in some way so it can stick around?</comment>


Bacteria in the Intestines May Help Tip the Bathroom Scale, Studies Show - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/health/studies-focus-on-gut-bacteria-in-weight-loss.html <comment><USER2> I think this is a great example (well, counter-example) of how screwed up nutritional research has been. We spent the last 30 years trying to shoe-horn the low-fat-low-cholesterol-is-everything, when we had _no_ idea how the body works.

It is great to see research like this happening. I've followed nutrition for a long time as I've dealt with chronic weight problems, and things have gotten much more interesting (read: less parroting of the "party line" and more new research) in the last 5-8 years.

It's unfortunate that so much time was lost, because it takes 10-15 years to go from mice to people. Now if we could only get some experiments with decent controls, so we can actually learn something.

<comment><USER3> It isn't screwed up. In broad strokes, we understand very well. Calories in - calories out = weight gain. This has been demonstrated in thousands of lab studies.

That's about 85%. Now we are just figuring out details and special cases.

<comment><USER4> Exactly, that's 85%

Someone with a (big enough) caloric deficit _will_ lose weight, sooner or later

Someone with a (big enough) caloric surplus _will_ gain weight.

Big enough is because the body will adapt its metabolism to small (and one shot) caloric surpluses/deficits.

But what happens beyond that is very interesting. And so beyond the 'food pyramid' and "conventional knowledge" it's not funny.

Oh and by the way, protein diets (usually) work. Why? Caloric deficit (of course) promoted by modified hunger sensation (that's another piece of the puzzle).

<comment><USER2> Losing weight is immaterial. Keeping weight off is what matters, and pretty much every study for the last 100 years has shown reducing calories does not keep weight off. Just the opposite: reducing calories invariably leads to a gain of 5-7%.

<comment><USER4> "and pretty much every study for the last 100 years has shown reducing calories does not keep weight off."

That is possible if it's a small reduction of calories and you're not very far off your ideal weight.

Otherwise is a thermodynamical impossibility.

And yes, losing weight is one problem, keeping it off is a different matter.

<comment><USER2> It is not thermodynamicly impossible because your body is not a fixed system. It can (and does) regulate energy usage based on how much energy it is receiving, what kind of energy it is receiving, what the environment is (primarily reflected through cortisol and stress), etc. all of these intertwine, making it nearly impossible to look at calories alone to measure, well, much of anything.

Reducing calories causes the body to reduce its calorie usage and starts pumping hormones that cause fat to be retained and your desire to eat to increase, until the hormonal system forces an "override" where you _have_ to eat more. Sure, there are some people who manage to overcome the hormonal override, but they are by far the exception and not the rule, and any weight loss program that tries to override the body's built-in protections against starvation (which go back who knows how long and exist in pretty much any animal) is a recipe for failure.

The keys to the whole hormone cycle are insulin and leptin. Any successful weight loss regimine will have to address those hormones, which calorie reduction "inflames" rather than "pacifies".

<comment><USER4> Yes, you are right (and explained it quite nicely)

But there's an absolute minimum of calories the body need to operate, even at 'low gear' (I'm not sure, but this is around 1000kcal per day), so if you're really limiting the calories below a certain point you will lose weight.

Apart from that, if you're trying to lose weight, but not actually consuming less calories, of course you may have a weight gain.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, but I would say that's only useful if you are wanting to lose a little weight before a cruise or want to get into a lower weight class for a wrestling match. Weight loss that doesn't "stick" is probably more dangerous than not losing, because it tends to focus as visceral fat instead of subcutaneous fat; and, unfortunately, study after study[1] show that dieting does not result in long-term weight loss[2].

1\. This is a review of 31 studies that comes to the same conclusion: <http://mann.bol.ucla.edu/files/Diets_don%27t_work.pdf>

2\. My anecdotal story, I tried restricting calories for 15 years with the result of hitting 350+ pounds. Seven years after a gastric bypass, I've found low-carb to be the _only_ way I can maintain my weight. Even with the gastric bypass, I can't limit myself to the 1200 calories or less a day I would need to maintain (and I feel like crap). Low carb, I never have to even think about the number of calories (I trade one number for another :) and my energy goes up.

I was experimenting with this and, when the results were positive, it really drove me to understand _why_ the results are positive. I'm (slowly) starting to get an understanding of the biochemistry involved (that is a lay understanding, for sure!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The mouse studies, the C.fid studies, fascinating stuff. Would be a hell of a project to do flora studies. Perhaps we could blend it with Gate's new toilet initiative, press this button if you're you willing to enter a survey of gut flora and a chance to win an Amazon Gift card! Now please don't move while the swab extends ...

</comment><comment><USER6> I read something similar recently (though the blog post itself is from 2008): [http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2008/10/06/human- gut...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2008/10/06/human-gut-bacteria- linked-to-obesity/)

The whole gut bacteria thing is quite fascinating. It evolves depending on our diet. The intestinal flora of a fetus is boootstrapped with bacteria from his mother. Gut bacterias can get genes from ingested bacterias: [http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2010/04/07/gut- bacte...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2010/04/07/gut-bacteria-in- japanese-people-borrowed-sushi-digesting-genes-from-ocean-bacteria/)

And this kind of symbiosis with bacterias is not limited to humans (the rumen of cows is filled with bacterias that break down normally undigestible components of grass such as cellulose.)

I bet research on this symbiosis will produce lots of interesting results!

</comment><comment> __--__ For as logical a group as I perceive HN to be, any nutrition related article reminds me of the simple fact that most people can't assimilate new information when it conflicts with previously held mental models. For whatever reason, diet is something we get drilled into our head from the time we're very young. Even though most of it has been thoroughly debunked by scientific studies (cholesterol, the food pyramid, excessive cardio, saturated fat, wheat) people refuse to believe it. Every time, I see people trot out the same arguments (calories in/calories out seems an especially stubborn one).

So, my question is this - How do we communicate new science in a way that will change people's minds? Or should I just be content that the next generation might stumble on this stuff through a web search before what they are taught in school firmly takes hold?

</comment><comment><USER7> I really don't understand arguments like this - the problem is that some people have digestive systems that are "too" efficient, and so the "solution" is to cripple their ability to properly absorb nutrients. It seems rather wasteful.

<comment><USER8> _It seems rather wasteful._

Honestly who cares? It's not like the food saved will go to feed a starving kid in Africa or something. Food is rotting in warehouses already, so it' more of a logistics /distribution thing. That takes time to solve and is a totally separate issue from the medical one..of people dying and suffering from fat /obesity. Different groups can work on separate issues.

<comment><USER9> > That takes time to solve and is a totally separate issue from the medical > one..of people dying and suffering from fat /obesity.

AFAIK, studies about deaths correlated or caused by being fat have been totally debunked and had nothing to do with body weight in the first place. To that end, one does not die from being fat and being fat doesn't mean you are suffering (except for how people and society treats you as a fat person).

<comment><USER10> Sources?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mouse studies always turn out to be a tease when it comes to weightloss. I say we skip all the probiotic piddling and go straight for human fecal transplants.

Unfortunately, it is hard to get researchers and patients to agree to get an enema of someone else's poo.

<comment><USER12> It's not that hard when patients are suffering and the treatment works. Fecal transplants are already being done for other disorders, and patients are demanding it:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/health/disgusting-maybe- bu...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/health/disgusting-maybe-but- treatment-works-study-finds.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Before people get too excited, remember, correlation isn't causality (aside: I never thought I'd get to be _that guy_ on HN who says that).

It's just as possible that different microbial populations follow from obesity.

Actually, it seems more likely that this is the case, given that the populations change after band surgery.

And, as always, there is no biological mechanism so far discovered that transcends the conservation of energy and matter.

Given how hilariously silly any thread on diet becomes on HN (because for some reason saying "net caloric balance is the sole predictor of long term average body mass" drives people _nuts_ ), I believe I will sit this out to avoid getting a severe case of XKCD386.

<comment><USER14> I'll bite.

Net caloric balance is an important predictor, but not the sole predictor. That's why it "drives people nuts" - because it is not true.

For example:

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23127-abnormal-gut- bac...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23127-abnormal-gut-bacteria- linked-to-severe-malnutrition.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this suggest that maybe we should be sharing each other's poo to prevent our gut being dominated by a single bacteria?

And does that suggest, maybe, that obesity is in some way partly caused by modern hygiene and hand-washing preventing this from happening 'naturally'?

It seems ironic that, after decades of bleach and bacterial hand-wash, I might be 'cured' of my obesity by eating a capsule someone else's fecal matter.

<comment><USER16> The one situation where a suppository is the preferred alternative?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Could we see a legit probiotic capsule that is sold over the counter that has fat burning capabilities? so we identify the bacteria common in thin people and let fat people spend $$$ to acquire it?

<comment><USER12> I'd guess that the balance of bacteria depends more on whole-system factors, especially diet and personal chemistry/digestive-tract-structure. Unless a strain is completely missing, adding a few more of one kind might be unlikely alone to change the equilibrium.

Now, if you knocked out the old strains with antiobiotics, the repopulation might be more sensitive to the small amounts first reintroduced. These studies of a wasting disease in Africe offer more hints of the interplay of gut microbiome, diet, and antibiotics:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/health/antibiotics-can- sav...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/health/antibiotics-can-save-lives- of-severely-malnourished-children-studies-find.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What happened to eating _less_?

<comment><USER19> Sshh, don't be insensitive, some people have a rare metabolic disorder.

<comment><USER18> Sure. That's why one third of the USA is overweight. Probably a rare metabolic disorder. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Freakanomics had a good podcast on the subject of the healthful role of bacteria in the intestines. They covered the transplant of fecal matter.

[http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/04/freakonomics-radio- th...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/04/freakonomics-radio-the-power-of- poop/)

Memorably, they called a fecal transplant a "transpoosion".

</comment><comment><USER21> They say this explains why gastric bypass works, but from what I've seen, people who get gastric bypass can only physically eat a few calories per day in the beginning without terrible consequences. Eventually you can eat more, and I've seen the weight go back, so I'm confused why it would be bacteria.

<comment><USER22> They say it probably accounts for 20% of the weight loss.

Outline of the experiment:

Take a mouse model of human obesity. Divide your sample in three groups:

        * Gastric bypass
        * Sham surgery (fake bypass, the surgical equivalent of a placebo)
        * Sham surgery + caloric restriction.

Observe gut flora change in the first group only.

"Graft" some of the gut bacteria of the three groups in obese mice who didn't undergo surgery.

Observe a moderate weight loss, only in the mice who received a stool sample of the first group.

Here's the abstract:

        Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) results in rapid weight loss,
        reduced adiposity, and improved glucose metabolism. These effects
        are not simply attributable to decreased caloric intake or absorption,
        but the mechanisms linking rearrangement of the gastrointestinal tract
        to these metabolic outcomes are largely unknown. Studies in humans and
        rats have shown that RYGB restructures the gut microbiota, prompting the
        hypothesis that some of the effects of RYGB are caused by altered host-microbial
        interactions. To test this hypothesis, we used a mouse model of RYGB that
        recapitulates many of the metabolic outcomes in humans. 16S ribosomal RNA
        gene sequencing of murine fecal samples collected after RYGB surgery, sham
        surgery, or sham surgery coupled to caloric restriction revealed that
        alterations to the gut microbiota after RYGB are conserved among humans, rats,
        and mice, resulting in a rapid and sustained increase in the relative abundance
        of Gammaproteobacteria (Escherichia) and Verrucomicrobia (Akkermansia). These
        changes were independent of weight change and caloric restriction, were
        detectable throughout the length of the gastrointestinal tract, and were most
        evident in the distal gut, downstream of the surgical manipulation site.
        Transfer of the gut microbiota from RYGB-treated mice to nonoperated, germ-free
        mice resulted in weight loss and decreased fat mass in the recipient animals
        relative to recipients of microbiota induced by sham surgery, potentially due
        to altered microbial production of short-chain fatty acids. These findings
        provide the first empirical support for the claim that changes in the gut
        microbiota contribute to reduced host weight and adiposity after RYGB surgery.

<http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/178/178ra41></comment></comment>


Help Reach Goal: SunWater - Affordable Solar Powered Pumps for Poor Farmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sunwater-affordable-solar-powered-pumps-for-poor-farmers

<comment><USER2> My physics are a bit crap lately but aren't there some cheaper and low tech solutions to the problem. If you got the mirrors and the heat won't some kind of sterling engine with the cooling element dug in the earth have substantially lower costs?</comment>


How can I get addicted to programming? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/818937/how-can-i-get-addicted-to-programming

<comment><USER3> As addicted to programming as I am, I can't sustain the same levels of intelligent programming as I can the consumption of media, be it playing a game or reading a book.

When programming, I can stay on-task for 12 consecutive hours a day with enough caffeine, but after the first ~5 hours, I'm doing it by rote, and hopefully I've made good design decisions earlier in the day. After around 8 hours of it, I'm just a zombie. I'll be producing poorly factored and poorly tested code, I won't be considering the corner cases, and I there will be a lot more bugs. If I do this for enough days in a row, I'll _start_ the day a zombie.

When playing Diablo II, I can easily spend 6 hours playing it in a row without noticing that my skin has gone pasty-white and I've ordered my second pizza ;) I may not be as intelligent towards the end, but the game is nowhere near as demanding as programming and it really doesn't matter.

<comment><USER4> Same.

I think the key here is persistence. Recently, it took me over four days to solve a certain 3D animation problem. It was frustrating when it wasn't working, but because I threw all of my spare time at it, it eventually got done, which is very satisfying.

I don't know how to _want_ to be persistent. I just am. Getting started each day is usually the hardest part. If I give in to the temptation of playing a game, it's almost a guarantee that I won't be getting anything done for a few hours, if at all.

It helps a lot to be very interested in the problem domain. If you're avoiding a task, try re-framing it to make it fun. For example (I'll use a gamedev example since that's my field), instead of writing a way to play a 3D animation, write a way to blend between a bunch of different animations simultaneously, then play the result. Sure, it's more challenging, but it's also more fun. That kind of "re-framing" is very valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't like the "addicted" metaphor. I think he's really saying that he wants to get into _flow_.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi#Flow>

Flow happens when you have high skill and are attempting things at the limit of your ability. The little mental rewards for achievement come quicker and propel you to the next step.

So the unfortunate truth is that he's going to have to spend a lot of time practicing and honing his craft, before he can truly get into flow. Perhaps it's better to try mastering simpler tools and simpler tasks and iterate from there.

There are programming methodologies that help you get into flow. Extreme programming is a silly name, but pairing with someone else really does help with focus. Also, building a skeleton system with lots of dummy classes or functions and "filling in the blanks" can feel extremely rewarding. A test- first practice can also help, where you set up lots of tests that all fail and make them pass, one by one.

</comment><comment><USER6> > I left my job for a tech company and took a job as a barista at a Starbucks.

I can second this, although I don't know if I could make the choice to do it voluntarily. I was unemployed a couple of years ago and working full time hours at Tim Horton's serving coffee. I found it really exhausting, both physically and mentally, and then when I got home all I wanted to do was program - I think I would have had to force myself not to do it. Maybe it's even something about being around the smell of coffee all day too!

<comment><USER5> Sometimes I fantasize about doing this. I've been unemployed and tried to make things happen, but days spent alone in front of a computer really depressed me. My current job is about as awesome as a job can get, but it's still not really my own ideas...

It seems to me I was most enthusiastic about programming when it wasn't my "real" job. Maybe I just want to recapture those days.

Also, I had no idea how ignorant I was, which certainly helped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting discussion. My answer would have been the classic one: work on a tiny sw project _of your own choosing_ , totally not related to work and on something that you find really cool. Then, start a bigger one.

That being said, I think his attitude of "If I can get hooked on programming like I am on gaming, I'll be in heaven" is totally wrong. You should know that there are other things in life. Read the classics. Fall in/make love. Learn how to make something with simple tools. Volunteer. Repeat.

<comment><USER8> I agree. Have always had difficulty just "learning" programming languages. But when I try to make small web apps using scripting languages, I've had far more fun...I'm just going to learn the tricks needed, but none of the really advanced stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my case, it's all about getting into the computer science rather than "programming" per se. I love reading papers and articles related to the problems I'm solving and then working out if they'd help me. Taking sloppy O(n*n) algorithms I've bashed together and getting them down to O(n) - <USER2> whatever - is very fulfilling.

This might just make me weird though ;-) I guess I like to think I'm working towards actually making an academic contribution to the world one day, rather than just doing something to earn some money - that's a big driver for me in terms of life ambition.

</comment><comment><USER10> In lieu with my goal of learning algorithms, I've found all these great sites that provide programming puzzles for people to solve. Your submissions are automatically ran against a system judge for correctness. For instance, topcoder.com.

This is great. This sort of thing is very similar to a video game - I try to get high scores, and I can mark off the problems I've succeeded to see how well I'm progressing. Just yesterday, I think I spent a good 4 hours in flow while working on a problem. I barely noticed what was going on in my surroundings at all. It was awesome.

<comment> barry-cotter Could you list off those sites? Besides Topcoder.

<comment><USER11> <http://www.spoj.pl/> is a good multi-language site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find that I'm very addicted to writing code when it's just you and your language of choice.

The difficulties in motivation start when I hit something 3rd party that I don't know very well.

There was a productivity tip on HN a while back about how you should always walk away with something incomplete so that it's easy to come back to. You know exactly what you need to do next.

But when coming back to programming means spending another hour or so reading documentation and playing with settings until it works, things get a lot more difficult I find.

</comment><comment><USER13> I dont mean this to be patronising, but this is less to do with code and more to do with a work motivation. Let me explain.

Every day is different and some days I code because I love it, some days because Iam good at it, and some days I absolutely hate to code. Regardless of what mood I am in I think of the money....code pays my bills, I use this fact to focus my attention ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> The easiest way to get addicted to programming is by creating something that _you_ think is cool.

Let the ego trip begin and soon enough you feel like a god.

Once you feel like god, you are addicted. Hopefully, you can live in denial as long as possible until the real world decides to kick you in the ass.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think that your first step in becoming "addicted to programming" is understanding what building stuff really is: intense sprints of orgasmic discovery separated by long periods of building the prerequisites. Once you understand which phase you're in, you can better understand why you feel the way you do.

A perfect example was my project last week. I had to make 14 changes (including 3 major structural reworks) to an existing application to produce one additional output. This output was key for a fundamental shift in thinking about the use of the app.

My week was actually fairly predictable:

Monday was fun for a while, thinking about how it would work, what needed to be different, how the data has to be restructured, and how cool the new results would be. But things became drudgery when I had to lay everything out build my work plan.

Tuesday sucked, tearing apart code while trying to maintain an audit trail and balancing the new functionality with keep everything old still working.

By Wednesday, I didn't even want to work on it and spent a lot on time on hn, playing games, and surfing the internet. I struggled getting the final pieces in place.

On Thursday, my interest piqued when regression testing went almost flawlessly. But no matter, even if it didn't, being in "getting it to work now" mode always captures my attention.

Friday was bliss. I was cranking code, unit testing, regression testing, reworking, getting the results I forsaw on Monday, and doing a happy dance every 20 minutes or so. Time flew as I worked into the night getting all this cool stuff working. I wish every day could be like Friday, but I needed to pay my dues earlier in the week just to get to that point.

I wish I had an easy answer for collapsing the long hours of building the prerequisites and expanding the time spent "in the zone". The only suggestion I can make is get to the point of having _something_ for output as early as possible. That's when the fun usually begins. Until you reach that point, just understand you're in "courting" mode. Just keep on working and the digital orgasms will arrive. Once they do, it'll be worth it. Don't worry, you'll be "addicted".

<comment><USER16> I guess this is one of the best descriptions of my own "hunting" habits. It is amazing to me how hacking/making seems so similar to the kind of persistence hunting that our ancestors used to depend upon (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o>). As I meditate more about these traits and my own struggles with ADD/bipolar tendencies, it is becoming clearer that most hackers are indeed "hunters in a farmers' world".

<comment><USER17> I wish I could give you more than one vote - that's one of the most insightful comments I've read on here.

(NB I've always been fascinated by prehistory and how our ancestors experiences shaped our own behaviour).

<comment><USER16> If you really like it, please have a look at [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/12/hadza/finkel...](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/12/hadza/finkel- text). This has taught me more about hacking and life than most books I ever read. I believe pg was on the right track with the "Hackers & Painters" thing, but we are not only makers, we are actually the descendants of the original pre-historical hunters.

<comment><USER17> Have you read this?

"After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC"

[http://www.amazon.com/After-Ice-Global- History-000-5000/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/After-Ice-Global- History-000-5000/dp/0674019997)

<comment><USER16> Not yet, but it is definitely worthy a look. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I started out programming on an Acorn ATOM 2k+2k, upgraded to something like 12K total, which gave 'hi-res' graphics, and wrote little games I used to play myself.

There's really nothing quite like the joy of having a simple game come together and be fun enough that you play it yourself. Here's one I did in java. The source is available!

<http://jonathanwatmough.com/jplanetoid/ptoidApplet.html>

Of course, I write bigger programs now, but the same joy of getting something to work should always be there. If it's there, it should shine through in your code and UI, and people should love your software. Make people happy.

Just as an example, today's task that I got done, I managed to move some audio streaming code onto its own thread and get vastly improved performance in the UI of an iPhone app I'm building. It's just sooo addictive when a plan comes together!

And one other thing. Pick a programming language to write in that is fun and powerful enough to be addictive. Clojure is a wonderful language, and so is Objective-C. Both have enormous power, yet are relatively easy to write once you have the basics down. Many people will say similar things about Ruby or Python, or hacking things together in Perl. The important thing is to pick something where __you __say 'just 5 more minutes on this'.

Then you're addicted.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think that video games or movies are so moving, that everything else in life seems fade.

That's why they're so addictive, because they're so much "more" than reality.

The only solution is to reduce the consumption of them. Than reality will "bloom" again. I have been there before.

Unfortunately I'm currently again on the other side, and I know hard it's to reduce it.

Edit: The funny thing is, that reducing them makes them again more enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER20> You have to inject the drug properly :) From what I understand, a lot of the rush in problem-solving comes from release of dopamine, and dopamine itself is the fuel for problem-solving.

So start slowly, solve a simple task, then ride the dopamine levels upwards by solving more and more, until you hit the flow.

Although, I do not understand why would anyone want to get addicted to programming. Trying to have something that can earn money while getting you high naturally is one thing, trying to imitate successful addicts in hopes of huge success is a cargo cult.

</comment><comment><USER21> How about a game that requires that you solve typical programming problems at certain points? addictive most of the time, but then get 5 or 45 seconds to solve a real problem.

</comment><comment><USER22> When you're in the flow, you're addicted and everything else becomes second. It's just that lots of grunt work is the prerequisite for getting into a good flow.

So the answer is that you can't get addicted to programming even if you wanted to but occasionally you will even if you didn't want to.

</comment><comment><USER23> Three basic principles of motivation: mastery, freedom/control, and purpose. Game is all about the mastery of the well defined rule set in an artificial environment with player-controlled actions to achieve well spelled out goals. Now just work that into programming.

</comment><comment><USER24> Try to program a game maybe?

<comment><USER25> Coding a game is polar opposite of playing one. You might not even like video games after you're done.

<comment><USER24> Not in my experience, but it probably depends on the type of game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Kill your television.

</comment><comment><USER27> Forget all this complicated thinking and work hard crap, why has nobody suggested the Ludovico technique?</comment>


Lonely, but united: Sherry Turkle and Steven Johnson  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/5/3459938/sherry-turkle-and-steven-johnson-on-technology-pain-promise

<comment><AUTHOR> "The best artists learned to find solitude in the middle of the metropolitan space," she said. And "we need to learn to find solitude in the technological space." -- _Paul Miller quoting Sherry Turkle_

I submitted this short piece by Paul Miller (who has left the Internet for a year) to see how we feel about reflection in the age of the firehose.</comment>


ArangoDB - <AUTHOR> http://arangodb.org/ An open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values. Build high performance applications using a convenient sql-like query language or JavaScript extensions. <comment><USER2> > As a relational database user we are used to treat the database as stupid > and mainly use it to save and retrieve data. ArangoDB lets you extend the > database using Javascript (production ready) and Mruby (experimental).

?!? A common complaint against relational database people are having "too much" logic in the database. (I clearly don't agree, using store procedures and custom extensions ;P.)

<comment><USER3> Personally I loathe stored procedures because often they include a lot of logic that _shouldn 't_ be on the database and they also generally involve SQL extenstions that are pretty terrible for the general-purpose computing you see them used for.

But if that layer is primarily used for providing, controlling, and optimizing access to the data I can see the appeal. And in that case? Being able to write the procedural parts in a language that's less-terrible than typical SQL extensions would be really nice.

<comment><USER4> "Being able to write the procedural parts in a language that's less-terrible than typical SQL extensions would be really nice."

Postgres allows writing functions in many languages, including C, python, and javascript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a feeling, tell me if you share it.

"Wouldn't it be cool to have a multipurpose database which we would be able to query with a language, but not SQL, because SQL sucks, for some reason.".

Put it differently, what does ArangoDB, MongoDB, whateverDB bring that relational databases didn't bring 30 years ago?

<comment><USER6> To name just a few: \- being relaxed about schemas: no more long-running ALTER TABLE commands, no more up-front schema definitions that waste time when doing proof-of-concepts etc. \- being friendly to variable and hierarchical data: no more entity-attribute-value patterns and necessity to store JSON etc. as BLOBs \- integration of scripting languages such as JavaScript, so you can have one language for the full stack if you want \- embracing web standards (HTTP, JSON) \- no object-relational mismatch (there are no relations), as you can more easily map a single programming language object to a document

Relational databases partly offer solutions for this, too. But in a relational database, these things are (often clumsy) extensions and not well supported.

<comment><USER7> I do all of what you mention using SQL Express (I don't use JSON though, because binary serialisation is faster). Abstraction means I save my data as documents/blobs, can still do joins, don't have to alter tables (when de- serialised entities are self-describing), fully indexed entity content.

It means thinking about what and how you're going to do something before you start coding (design up front). It means creating a throw-away proof of concept before you start coding. But it is flexible, extensible, and changes to the schema, as it were, do not impact up-stream dependencies.

<comment><USER8> SQL Express guarantees consistency, but most NoSQL databases guarantee availability. Although many SQL databases can be used to implement the same functionality as a NoSQL database, that doesn't mean it's as easy. And easiness is what matters, because if something is easier, you may spend less time working on it and that saves money.

The term "NoSQL" database is a bit problematic, because the definition only says that the database is not relational, but the average NoSQL database has other differences with the average SQL database: using JSON and JavaScript, and perhaps queries with HTTP and so on.

The point is not "what is possible", but choosing the best tool for the job.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. Although I'd say most no-SQL databases guarantee partition tolerance (I can guarantee availability using a SQL database).

SQL Express runs as a single instance on a client so you get all three - consistency, availability _and_ partition tolerance[1]. When running something else on more than one node you can choose two of those three. Availability and consistency are usually chosen because of business drivers. If partition tolerance is required (I've yet to encounter a scenario that makes a compelling case for it [2]) then eventual consistency is the price.

There are databases out there that will suite any combination of the three. Unfortunately the equation is somewhat more complex because databases that offer consistency and partition tolerance (for example) don't typically offer JOIN -like functionality.

Everything's a trade-off. Other considerations are tried and tested v. bleeding edge; painful v. painless; ideal v. affordable; and so forth.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem)

[2] I'm not saying there aren't scenarios where it makes sense (Google, for example) - just that I've not encountered one. I do run into many people that want Mongo and, not understanding what they're asking for would be better of with a relational database.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Transactions in ArangoDB are atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable (ACID)." "Collections consist of memory-mapped datafiles...". "by default, ArangoDB uses the eventual way of synchronization...synchronizes data to disk in a background thread."

So it's not ACID by default and practically not usable with immedaite sync turned on (huge amount of seeks due to use of mmap), just like mongo.

<comment><USER6> As in many databases, ArangoDB allows some choices regarding durability. Immediate disk synchronisation is turned off by default in ArangoDB. Synchronisation is then performed by a background thread, which is frequently executing syncs. By the way, several other NoSQL databases have immediate synching turned off by default, e.g. CouchDB, MongoDB.

In ArangoDB you turn on immediate synchronisation on a per collection level, or use it for specific operations only. So it's up to you how you want to use it. This gives the database user a fine-grained choice.

I remember using some relational databases in the past where we turned immediate synchronisation off as well to get more throughput. So it's probably not fully uncommon to do it, but I understand the expectation of relational users that everything is fully durable by default.

Memory-mapped files don't have anything to do with ACID. It's just a detail of the internal organisation of buffers. You can have full durability with memory-mapped files. You just have to use msync instead of fsync/sync.

<comment><USER10> IM pretty sure you can yank the power cord from couchdb as soon as you get a (positive) response and the data will be saved.

Unlike mongo, couch has a sophisticated append only btree format for storing data, that is almost impossible to corrupt.

<comment><USER11> Saved (durable) and hard to corrupt are different properties of a database. For example elasticsearch uses the lucene index format in the background. It's write once per segment. Once a segment is written, data is save and it's (apart from disk corruption) impossible to corrupts, since the file is never opened for writing again. However, segments are not written immediately after a document is received - so when yanking the power cord right after a write to the cluster, you'll loose data - however without any danger of corruption since the last, partially written segment is discarded. Couchdb behaves in a similar fashion: If the last bit of the storage file contains corrupt data, it is discarded. I'm not absolutely certain atm about the default durability settings in couch, so I can't say if the write happens before or after the "ack" from the server. However, since disk controllers cheat and sometimes a "flush" to disk doesn't actually flush, you can get data loss regardless of the promises your database makes.

<comment><USER12> Durability is indeed hard to archive - as you pointed out disk controller sometimes simply tell you a lie.

With respect to corruption ArangoDB behaves similar: It uses an append-only log file with CRC checksums. So, if the last bit of storage contains corrupt data, it is discarded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "In typical applications with "complex" database operations there is often > no clean API to the persistence layer when to or more database operations > are executed one after each other which belong together from an > architectural perspective."

Is that even a real sentence?

</comment><comment><USER14> > Put it differently, what does ArangoDB, MongoDB, whateverDB bring that > relational > databases didn't bring 30 years ago? (Let's leave MongoDB out > here ;-) What I really love and what the relationals do not have are:

* Graphs as first class citizens! (try to view them in the web gui :-) * The tight V8 & JavaScript integration (FOXX is more then cool. Hope I will be able to use it from Clojure Script)

What you might find in earlier databases but not completely in others today is (my personal hitlist :-) : * The increadible amount of indices with even skip and n-gram! * MultiCore ready * Durability tuning (already mentioned by Jan) * AQL covering KV, JSON and Graphs! (Martin Fowler was quite sceptical that this model integration could work...) * And a MVCC that makes it SSD ready. * Capped Collections * Availablity on tons of OS versions as Windows, iOS, all UNIXes and even Travis-CI (how cool is that?!)

Try it. Might be fun in production compared to other famed NoSQL DBs.... (at least to me)

</comment><comment><USER15> > There are driver for all major language like Ruby, Python, PHP, JavaScript, > and Perl.

I chuckled at the absence of the most widely deployed language on the planet.

I dare say that there _is_ a driver for Java - didn't look, because after browsing through a reasonable portion of their site, I still couldn't get a simple explanation of what this DB allegedly does and doesn't do.

<comment><USER16> There is a Java driver and even an object mapper based off jackson - [https://www.arangodb.org/drivers](https://www.arangodb.org/drivers)

This seems to be a mongodb clone with some extra features added on to make it a bit closer to a relational db, I guess. Looks interesting but likely suffers from the same problems MongoDB suffers from (data safety, scaling difficulties, etc)

EDIT: Have to say, the idea of a mongodb database with graph operations built in is pretty attractive for small network oriented problems...

<comment><USER17> I jumped on arango, looking for a small graphdb I could run locally on my machine. They've since moved it to a much wider scope. Turns out I abandoned that project idea (like most... :D), but I think Arango is sufficiently unique to merit more investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have tried to run ArangoDB under Node.js had some little successes, but in general their claim that they have drivers for many platforms is far from reality. Also why not to release node.js binary drivers instead of pushing people to use foxx. Also simple browsable docs would be nice instead of chunked documents covering hell knows what. Finding link to their query language was a big hassle :) Also their graph traversing is still in infancy as I understand.

<comment><USER19> I would call [https://www.arangodb.org/manuals/current/UserManual.html](https://www.arangodb.org/manuals/current/UserManual.html) a browsable doc (3 clicks from the main page). And a further click fires up the chapter about AQL...

<comment><USER18> I would preffer more or less the api style docs with short general examples. than a lot of unusable text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like that they're sufficiently ignorant of MongoDB's implementation to misattribute the primary cause of excessive space usage.

Gives me confidence trust them with my data.

<comment><USER19> The big advantage of ArangoDB with respect to memory/disk usage is that despite the Schema-less-ness, the database automatically recognises common "shapes" of the documents in a collection and thus usually does not have to store all attribute names many times. In addition, the possibility of transactions makes it less necessary to keep many old revisions of documents, in comparison to for example MongoDB.

<comment><USER20> I'd be more interested in a document store that was historical and didn't mutate.

Failing that, I'll just keep using RethinkDB for this sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > In ArangoDB, a transaction is always a server-side operation, and is > executed on the server in one go, without any client interaction.

It doesn't seem to support interactive transaction. That means only simple batch read & write, no complex transaction. It seems in between CAS and _real generic_ transaction. Doesn't seem to be much useful.

<comment><USER22> No - it goes way beyond simple batches of operations. Basically you have to write your transaction as JavaScript program. So, you can do anything you could do on the client-side - with the exception of waiting for another source (i. e. user interaction). You could read a document from one collection, chose different actions based on the attribute. Change documents in multiple collections. I think the PHP driver uses some kind of abstraction to hide the JavaScript from the developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This will be even cooler if they add 'turn-key' scaling. Their scaling approach is still a work in progress.

[http://www.arangodb.org/2013/05/22/replication-and- sharding-...](http://www.arangodb.org/2013/05/22/replication-and-sharding-in- arangodb)

Anyhow, good job so far to ArangoDB team.

<comment><USER19> Thanks, and: you are right, scaling by sharding is important, and that is why we have made this our top priority for the coming three months.

<comment><USER23> Good to hear. I'd love to consider ArangoDB for analytics project at that time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> By the way, if someone gives this a try on a VM, I wrote an blog post about it here: [http://thinkingonthinking.com/A-Data-Platform- in-15-minutes/](http://thinkingonthinking.com/A-Data-Platform-in-15-minutes/)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm really excited about the look of this. Being a big fan of Mongo et al. for the structurelessness I also sometimes miss the graph-like structure that you can easily create with SQL. Arango looks cool. I shall try it :)

<comment><USER12> There is a screencast by McHacki about the graph explorer he wrote: [https://www.arangodb.org/2013/11/29/visualize-graphs- screenc...](https://www.arangodb.org/2013/11/29/visualize-graphs-screencast)

<comment><USER19> This is awesome. I like the way the vertices are automatically moved in a way such that they do not overlap very much and that the edges are easily visible. It is also good that "similar" vertices are automatically collapsed into a "multi-vertex". I think this is very useful functionality to inspect a big graph locally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What I particularly like is the functionality to process graphs and explore them interactively in the browser. This has been added in some recent version, and it makes working with graphs a lot easier than before.

</comment><comment><USER27> Quickstart link doesn't exist: [http://www.arangodb.org/quickstart](http://www.arangodb.org/quickstart)

Looking forward to learning more when it's online!

<comment><USER12> [https://www.arangodb.org/quickstart](https://www.arangodb.org/quickstart) works. There is also an online tutorial [https://www.arangodb.org/tryitout](https://www.arangodb.org/tryitout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What I like on ArangoDB is the speed of development, as well as its native support for building RESTful interfaces.

Last but not least, it is open-source!

<comment><USER26> Building a REST interface with access to your data is easy thanks to ArangoDB's Foxx framework. You can implement all your backend code in JavaScript and upload to the server. Thus you can do any sort of preprocessing on the server and make that available to frontends. And it's easy to integrate with a front-end because it's all about passing JSON around via HTTP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> And the tree v. table debate continues...

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder how it compares with RethinkDB?

<comment><USER24> also the query language of RethinkDB looks interesting: [http://www.rethinkdb.com/docs/rethinkdb-vs- mongodb/](http://www.rethinkdb.com/docs/rethinkdb-vs-mongodb/) \- compare with [https://www.arangodb.org/manuals/current/Aql.html](https://www.arangodb.org/manuals/current/Aql.html)

<comment><USER29> Wrong link for ReQL, for anyone checking. ReQL reference is here: [http://rethinkdb.com/api/javascript/](http://rethinkdb.com/api/javascript/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this named after Juan Arango?

<comment><USER31> Arango is a special sort of avocado - but Moenchengladbach (where Juan ARango currently is under contract) is next to Cologne, ArangoDB's head quarter :-)</comment></comment>


How Not to Do It: Liquid Oxygen Cylinders - <AUTHOR> http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/03/10/how_not_to_do_it_liquid_oxygen_cylinders.php

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of high school: "Chemistry teachers have all the fun." It seems like they have all made a deal with the devil (or school board... which may be redundant): covalent bonds, redox equations, and titration are boring beyond all speaking of it. None of you want to teach it. I'll teach it. In return, you will give me a materials budget, and _I will blow stuff up_.

<comment><USER3> I enjoyed the titration lab :-(

Maybe boring when you have to do it often, but I enjoyed watching the liquid all of the sudden change colors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of the students who attempted to flush an elemental Lithium compound down a toilet. Lithium is extremely reactive in an exothermic manner with water. Lithium floats.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, and Darwin came up empty-handed. Amazing. Blew a O2 dewar in their truck, crashed through an apartment, broke a gas line, and no deaths.</comment>


Find potential bugs in your services with Diffy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/twitter/diffy <comment><USER2> This is a cool approach to finding bugs in non-deterministic services. Basically, each request is played against three servers: one running the code to test, and two running known good code. If the variation in responses between test:good is no different than the variation between good:good, you can assume that no regressions are present.

</comment><comment><USER3> When we moved the Twitter web frontend from the RoR stack to the Scala stack we used a similar tool built into the proxy we called Tap Compare. The new thing in Diffy is to use two calls to known good services rather than one call to filter out the non-deterministic bits. With tap compare we basically had to whitelist those parts of the page. This kind of strategy is pretty powerful and you will likely find lots of places in your infrastructure where it makes sense to use it.

</comment><comment><USER4> ahem "Build failing"....

not the greatest way to start off my interaction with a tool that's supposed to find bugs.

<comment><USER4> coverage 13% doesn't help much either.

<comment><USER5> We've been using diffy to test diffy :) Just kidding. Contributions welcome.</comment></comment></comment>


OpenWorm - <AUTHOR> http://www.openworm.org/ <comment><USER2> Wow. So this is a science study trying to be as open as possible. I think that's a great idea to attract people to help out in every possible way.</comment>


Ahmed Mohamed will not face charges related to device [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.irvingisd.net/cms/lib010/TX01917973/Centricity/Domain/4/Media%20Release%20091615%20MacArthur%20Student%20Will%20Not%20Face%20Charges.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm glad Ahmed got all the support and encouragement he did but not one person of note/power, including Obama and Hillary Clinton (who offered their cute tweets) have talked of punishing, penalizing, or in the very least reprimanding the officers and teachers who put him through this. How is that?

It's criminal to handcuff and interrogate a 14-yr old in front of his entire class and school when they found nothing to implicate him. It's an unconscionable act. These people are not only stupid (look at that 'suspicious' device), they are abusing power with no repercussions.

"The student was handcuffed for his safety and for the safety of the officers". Are they out of their mind?

<comment><USER3> >I'm glad Ahmed got all the support and encouragement he did but not one person of note/power, including Obama and Hillary Clinton (who offered their cute tweets) have talked of punishing, penalizing, or in the very least reprimanding the officers and teachers who put him through this. How is that?

Maybe because the world has bigger problems than one police officer and a teacher acting out of line. It's a story the internet loves and perpetuates but frankly absolutely unimportant.

<comment><USER4> Police culture is currently toxic and is a danger to all US citizens

<comment><USER5> I would say to all residents of and visitors to USA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's amazing how these assholes are incapable of admitting that they're wrong.

"Attached is a picture of the device that shows it was suspicious in nature."

I bet they don't even realize they just sound like idiots.

<comment><USER7> They _knew_ it was not a bomb. They were bullying him. If the school or police had actually thought it was dangerous they would have:

1\. Evacuated the school 2\. Called the bomb squad

<comment><USER8> Their justification is in the linked PDF: "Under Texas law, a person is guilty of possessing a hoax bomb if he possesses a device that is intended to cause anyone to be alarmed or a reaction of any type by law enforcement officers."

<comment><USER9> This is another way that governments (those with the monopoly of the use of force) expand their reach.

By putting the precipice of wrongdoing not on what happened but on the reaction of state agents, it becomes extremely difficult to call out bullies like this.

<comment><USER8> I read that line as more along the lines of yelling "fire" in a movie theater. Clearly there was no intent of causing hysteria with Ahmed's suitcase clock, which I assume is why he was freed. But, clearly, this shouldn't have gone as far as it did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The student only would say it was a clock and was not forthcoming at that time about any other details."

What did they expect him to say? It WAS only a clock. There were no other details regarding its nature or use.

<comment><USER11> Note how they impugn his character, implying he was and is less than candid. He couldn't win: either he implicates himself, justifying their actions, or they call him a liar, excusing their idiocy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This should have included some introspection on the part of the school and/or police force involved. Instead they are digging in behind the narrative that their fear was reasonable and their reaction was justifiable, and that Ahmed somehow withheld information that would have changed their mind at some point.

This is classic school faculty behavior: do it our way or else. He could have 'played ball' and explained in detail the project he worked on, but he didn't. He shouldn't have to either. They can expel him or send him home, but they went further, to teach him a lesson for being 'smart'.

It's clear they didn't fear the device. As others have pointed out, the school wasn't evacuated. They knew it wasn't a bomb.

<comment><USER13> He did explain in detail. The only part he left out was the not true part about it being a real or fake bomb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, I'm not worried for Ahmed at all, in 15 years he will be in much better shape compared to 99% of the population. I'm just concerned about all the other kids given those teacher and school admins.

<comment><USER2> You're wrong, I'm sorry to say. The other kids will be just fine. He will be the one who will remember this and it _could_ affect his life in ways that we can't say yet.

<comment><USER15> I don't think the parent was commenting on how the other students would be more affected by this incident, but will affected simply by attending a school with horrible administration. He, on the other hand, has been invited to places like Facebook by Zuckerberg himself because of this incident. Not the worst outcome.

<comment><USER16> > invited to places like Facebook by Zuckerberg

Ah so now Ahmed will get to see the worst of the worst on a different end of the spectrum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really _really_ hope he wins a multi-million dollar lawsuit for wrongful arrest and turns it into a billion dollar company that makes precision timepieces.

<comment><USER18> Poor kid has been humiliated and called a genius inventor on same day, imagine the pressure he'll get to live up to this expectation as a future engineer/scientist.

<comment><USER19> I feel bad about the pressure he's already under -- everyone wants him to show off his clock and/or himself. Judging by this [[http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/16/9341309/ahmed-mohamed- scho...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/16/9341309/ahmed-mohamed-school- transfer)] I guess he's up to it though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems to me that Ahmed's story is turning out to be this perfect intersection of zero-tolerance, racism, technological illiteracy, and police overreaction. It's an entire decade of nonsense in a tidy little package.

</comment><comment><USER21> What's really shitty about this isn't that the school or police overreacted at first. It isn't that this somehow affects Islamic-American relations or American-Muslim citizens. It isn't even that this may have discouraged Ahmed from future creativity. What's so concerning about this story is that if it wasn't picked up by the news, a defenseless 14-year-old would have a criminal record for bringing a personal project to school.

Situations like this make me think of all the similar incidents that never got picked up by the news because some terrorist was shot or the stock market dipped and the story was no longer important enough to report.

</comment><comment><USER22> Child Arrested Because Adults are Stupid: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/child_arreste...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/child_arrested_.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is so stupid. This is as much a bomb as a disassembled alarm clock is. Everyone involved should be fired, from the school through the police department. Words cannot describe how terrible this situation is.

<comment><USER24> > This is as much a bomb as a disassembled alarm clock is.

In large part because that is _precisely_ what it is!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> >> Attached is a picture of the device that shows it was suspicious in nature

Please. Suspicious if you've never seen electronics outside of a case, perhaps.

<comment><USER26> To play devil's advocate, though, most people have probably never seen electronics out of a case.

Although the police really have no excuse not to know what a bomb does and doesn't look like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The real problem is that the system that bubbled up this exceptional and notable instance of idiocy has just been churning away day in, day out for years and decades and affects a tremendous number of people's lives. Schools that are just industrialized baby-sitting facilities where kids are subjected to so much useless busy work it's a wonder that any enthusiasm for knowledge remains. And school and legal systems which treat non-white kids as terrorists or gangsters until proven innocent. Zero-tolerance, zero-compassion, zero- humanity, zero-education. It's shocking that the system isn't even more broken than it is given how terrible so many of the components are.

<comment><USER28> It's a little ridiculous thinking that institutions supposedly founded to increase intelligence insist on being governed by rules demanding it's absence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> General question: How come we're able to see his photo plastered everywhere? I thought there were laws about identifying minors?

<comment><USER30> The family released the photo not the school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > there is no evidence to support the perception he intended to create alarm.

Good to know he didn't make an alarm clock.

</comment><comment><USER32> Looking at the photo of the device I certainly can't see how that looks even remotely like a bomb. Nothing resembling an explosive payload or a detonator in there.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Attached is a picture of the device that shows it was suspicious in nature."

Nope, it shows no such thing - I see bare electronics, that's all. I really do think that the idea that that is intrinsically "suspicious" needs to be challenged, or better yet ridiculed.

<comment><USER13> Or best, educated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Last Insaw about an hour ago, he is still suspended through Thursday (tomorrow). Is this still true? I don't understand why if the charges were dropped...

<comment><USER35> The school system and the court system are two different systems. It's possible to be suspended without being arrested. It's possible to be arrested without being suspended.

<comment><USER36> And if you think _court systems_ have trouble admitting wrongdoing, they're nothing compared to school systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The small metallic type suitcase/box may have been a perfect container

1) To cram in all the ugly looking wires inside while the outer appearance of the product looks polished 2) Nice platform to tether the circuit boards etc to keep them in place 3) Doubles up as a carry box to move around his project and display/show to friends , teachers etc

On the flip side

1) There is subtle difference between timers vs clocks 2) Doesn't look anything like a traditional clock, but more like a James Bondish suitcase/gadget, especially if I just saw the picture of the device alone with no other context given to me.

Having said that, , I am in no way defending the action of police or the school.

What is needed was context, ability to do minimum analysis and common sense. And the teachers, school administration, police had plenty of that. It could have been a simple matter of explaining to the kid , while his zeal is appreciated, to notify his teachers in advance in future, to make sure his projects don't disturb the class, and to encourage more such robotic/electronic projects for science fairs etc (appropriate time and place for everything)

Also unfortunately, due to the current security song and dance every where, kids (and adults too) have to be taught about being sensitive to fear and perceptions of others timing/location/context . Even kids may have to be explained to be sensitive to such things.

May be all or some involved may be bigoted towards the muslim community as the media or comments suggest and that may have played a role in the escalation.

And may be some(or all) weren't. But generally concerned about past incidents related to school environments and violence in schools (Shootings etc). Some of these were perpetrated by fellow students, which can't be discounted in playing into the fears of those involved in this incident.

We can't say for sure , religion/color was the sole motivation. Some past violent incidents were perpetrated by white kids/persons. So if it were a white kid in this situation, can we absolutely discount 100% that similar amount of concern might have not been triggered in the class teacher's mind, or the administration or police.

The point is, reasonable benefit of doubt can be given to the teacher, admin, police for going into a heightened/alert mode.

But what cannot be justified is the failure in subsequent analysis and diffusion of the tension at every level. The teacher could have clarified the intention, and diffused the tension and not escalated it after establishing facts (and the awareness of the enthusiasm and character of a kid of their own class that they should be familiar with). Or the next level, school security/admin could have diffused and de-escalated the situation. Or the police could have done that.

But, no, escalation seems to be a one way process for authority/admin/police these days. What happened to 'peace keeping' part of their job ?

<comment><USER38> Can folks downvoting this comment explain what you're taking issue with?

I see this post as a thoughtful plea for context and consideration. What am I missing?

<comment><USER23> One of the officers made a comment that indicates a certain level of racism.

The police were not fearful enough to evacuate the school, yet made the claim that this seemed to be a bomb.

Explaining their actions without that context is a bit trite.

<comment><USER39> To be fair (and I slightly hate myself for speaking up in their defence) the cops were claiming "bomb hoax", not "bomb".

Of course the police are also claiming "not racially motivated policing", so as we gauge their level of truthfullness we should keep both those facts in mind...

<comment><USER23> My response to that is how did he attempt to perpetrate a hoax? What evidence did the officers have that his intent was to do so?

<comment><USER39> He didn't, and none.

The kid did nothing wrong. The supposed "adults" and "authorities" are 100% at fault here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm interested to see if this changes anything.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why does that look so much like a bomb though?

<comment><USER42> How does it look like a bomb?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> A ticking device that is not supposed to be brought to other classes(he was notified by his science teacher), and is closed up with some string so you can not see what's inside, and by a 14 year old Muslim student, and suddenly it starts to tick during a class. If I'm the teacher I will call the cops too. Yes I know I'm politically incorrect here, and will get down votes for this, but if I'm the teacher I will do the same, though I do agree the cops can be much nicer to handle this.

On the other hand, I frequently found to speak your true thoughts here at HN, it _scares_ me to some extent, because different thoughts here will immediately be punished by down votes, such as the one above. Maybe it's time to close my HN account all together.

<comment><USER44> Looks like you missed the point entirely. Taking precautions about the device is understandable, if a bit silly -- and if they had left it at that, this would be nothing more than a "not The Onion" story to laugh at. What happened _after_ (the arrest and suspension) is outrageous.</comment></comment>


Germany ramps up coronavirus tests to 500k a week - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelocal.de/20200326/germany-ramps-up-coronavirus-tests-to-500000-a-week <comment><USER2> They should stop quoting the 'death rate' as being so different.

Countries that do more widespread testing have a lower rate of death / those tested, but that's not the 'death rate'.

What we need to start doing now is random samples of 1K completely random people. We need to get a grip on how prevalent the disease is in the population at large, not just those who went for tests.</comment>


Discovery: Fish Live Beneath Antarctica - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/discovery-fish-live-beneath-antarctica1/

<comment><USER2> If anything, this is just piles on hope (for me) that we'll eventually discover life on other planets that live in conditions we originally expect to be much too harsh to support life.

It seems our definition of life, or the conditions required for if to exist, are constantly challenged. From thermal tubes to 850 km from sun light, complex life forms exists in some harsh places. I'm willing to bet that we haven't even scratched the surface of the insane conditions under which life outside our understanding is able to survive and thrive.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but liquid water is probably required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whillans_Ice_Stream](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whillans_Ice_Stream)

Mentioned in the article, "feeds" the Ross Shelf from the ice on land. Has two earthquakes every day for unknown reasons.

</comment><comment><USER5> > But Deep-SCINI also encountered... a handful of other marine invertebrates > that the team has so far declined to describe.

Why would they decline to describe some animal? That's an odd way to put it.

The only reason I know that deep sea ecosystems are considered sensitive is if the presence of species suggests oil. E.g., diatom fossils.

<comment><USER6> Another possible reason is suggested by the fact that the sentence sounded like a line from H. P. Lovecraft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, are those fish residents of that area? Or did they happen to just wander in? If it's typically pitch black there, why would they still have eyes?

<comment><USER8> That bothered me too. Perhaps there's an underground tunnel connecting that area with the ocean?

<comment><USER6> IMHO that almost has to be the case. There is no reason for anything down there to have eyes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Neat. Perhaps Europa has something similar.

<comment><USER10> It might, but keep in mind the history of the planet. Those fish more likely came from a species that already existed in warmer waters. Over the course of time they slowly drifted in and adapted. Then they could be shut off from the outside world and still thrive due to their earlier adaption.

<comment><USER7> I wonder what the ethical implications would be if we found out for certain that Europa was a barren world with a salty ocean under the ice, and then dumped a few tons of marine life into it.

<comment><USER11> I would argue that it would be our _duty_ , given that we value life and intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice to see Montana State University showing up in this story. Go Bobcats!

The Solar Physics group has had some great work published in the past, but having the Priscu[1] group getting results like this is also amazing. Kind of funny, that they're in the College of Agriculture and working in Antarctica.

[1] - [http://www.montana.edu/priscu/](http://www.montana.edu/priscu/)</comment>


A study of disk sanitization practices - <AUTHOR> http://simson.net/clips/academic/2003.IEEE.DiskDriveForensics.pdf <comment><USER2> dban is free and crazy good.

[http://www.dban.org/](http://www.dban.org/)

(The same Darik from zfs on linux.)</comment>


Siri for everyone, with Pioneer's Zypr API - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/11/siri-for-everyone-with-pioneers-zypr-api.ars <comment><USER2> Direct link to product site. (working as of Monday 11/7 2:00p CST): <http://www.zypr.net/>

</comment><comment><USER3> if they can't keep up a demo website, there is no reason any developer should trust pioneer to invest their time in testing / using zypr...

<comment><USER4> haha, I saw the site was down and thought... "my app will not use an api from a company that cannot keep a static site up"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why I don't get the fuss everyone is making about Siri in relation to being an "{x}-killer". While the tech is impressive, it's going to be reproduced very easily- Google could dedicate a tiny amount of their resources to it and have a Siri competitor on Android within a couple of months.

<comment><USER6> I guess one reason people see siri as a threat to google is that if voice based interfaces take off, no matter who does it, there is less scope for advertisements - which are more annoying when spoken out loud. It's still too soon to say, of course, maybe voice apps will always be a smaller share or google could possibly find another business model.

<comment><USER7> Whilst I do agree it changes things, this type of interface doesn't necessarily rule out advertising.

At the end of the day, someone needs to pay the bills. With Siri, you're arguably paying the bill when you give your money to Apple.

A future free 'Siri', from Google or elsewhere, might have to rely on advertising money. A lot of Siri's functionality is search - there's no reason why Siri couldn't serve up sponsored results when you make a search just as we're used to with more traditional search engines.

<comment><USER8> That's one of the things that we're exploring over at Zazu (voice-enabled hyper-contextual advertising) -- we've stumbled upon some really interesting things that happen when you combine voice, context, and advertising; one of which is that our users have 8x more interactions with advertisements than they would any other mobile advertising platform.

<comment><USER9> Do they enjoy having 8x more interactions with advertisements? Or it is inescapable?

<comment><USER8> We'd hope so. We're not trying to advertise to you -- only tell you about something that we think you'd like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is an API freely available on .NET (assuming you have a Microsoft Windows OS) for voice recognition and text to speech. There are even multiple language kits.

If you are interested I wrote an article about it a few weeks ago: [http://blog.databigbang.com/voice-recognition-content- extrac...](http://blog.databigbang.com/voice-recognition-content-extraction- tts-innovative-web-browsing/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I built a Zypr clone for software development -> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3214934>

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anybody know how deep their natural language processing is? i.e. Will it understand when I ask 'List all of my Twitter followers how also follow John Doe?'

</comment><comment><USER13> But does it work? Siri's main advantage is that it does most of the time. We've had speech recognition for a long time, but it just wasn't reliable.</comment>


Twitter moves from Rails to Java - <AUTHOR> http://www.gmarwaha.com/blog/2011/04/11/twitter-moves-from-rails-to-java/

<comment><USER3> _"Could this mean that Java is a better platform than Rails for high scalability needs?"_

Isn't this very much common knowledge for systems the size of Twitter?

</comment><comment><USER4> As has been said many times before, this is not really a knock against Rails. It's what allowed them to even get to the point where they need massive rearchitecting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wasn't posting it as a knock on rails; simply thought it was interesting since Twitter has been one of Rails' examples of big projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perpetuating this misleading meme: flagged.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you even _read_ the article? Even if that is the case, for simpler scenarios, the beauty of RoR out-weighs Java's performance.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, which is no doubt why Twitter _is still using Rails_.

The sad thing is that there _is_ an interesting tech story in this recent change in the Twitter Search architecture - "large company moves from synchronous web framework to asynchronous I/O and workflow framework" - <USER2> it's getting no discussion, because everyone is misreading Twitter's blog post as another chapter in the "Rails doesn't scale" non-story.

There are interesting discussions to be had about language beauty and performance, but this story is not part of them. (Indeed the closest the Twitter post comes to discussing beauty is saying how their old Rails codebase was full of technical debt.)

Read the original blog post [1] on the Twitter engineering blog - which the author of this article clearly didn't - for the real story, which is not about language wars, but about scaling a non-traditional web app.

[1] [http://engineering.twitter.com/2011/04/twitter-search-is- now...](http://engineering.twitter.com/2011/04/twitter-search-is- now-3x-faster_1656.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Geologic Map of Mars - <AUTHOR> http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3292/

<comment><USER2> The USGS is amazing. They have incredibly detailed information for the US: elevation (within 10 ft in many places), demographics, geology, and others. They have an amazing geologic map for Big Bend National Park [1] (a very geologically interesting park in southern Texas). Global maps are a lot harder to come by, unfortunately, although I did find a similar geologic map of the Earth as the one for Mars (divided by pieces) at [2].

[1] [http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3142/](http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3142/)

[2] [http://energy.usgs.gov/OilGas/AssessmentsData/WorldPetroleum...](http://energy.usgs.gov/OilGas/AssessmentsData/WorldPetroleumAssessment/WorldGeologicMaps.aspx)

<comment><USER3> The USGS really is great. It's one part of my government that I'm very proud of.

Here's a file I found a while back. Not Mars related, but pretty amazing. The national file is a delimited txt file with just about every geographical point of interest in the U.S. I've imported it into a SQL database and now run queries against it when I'm looking for a weekend road trip.

[http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/download_data.htm](http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/download_data.htm)

<comment><USER4> Which file is it? There seem to be a lot of options on that page.

Would there be a way to query wikipedia for the same type of information, or combine the two sources?

<comment><USER3> It's "NationalFile_20140601.zip - Download all national features in one .zip file "

I can't think of a way to query wikipedia - not like this allows. Once this file has been imported into sql (I use SQL Server), I run queries like _SELECT DISTINCT [feature_type] FROM dbo.nationalFile WHERE [state] = 'California'_

This will give me a list of all types of features in California. From there, I'll see something that looks interesting (like "lava field" or "mine") and I'll run another query like _SELECT [feature_name], [latitude], [longitude] FROM dbo.nationalFile WHERE [state] = 'California' AND feature_type='lava field'._

This will give me a very clear list list. I can't imagine there would be a way to do this with Wikipedia, or any other online source that doesn't offer an API.

<comment><USER5> The structured data (such as geodata) in Wikipedia is being migrated to Wikidata, which does offer APIs:

[https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page)

If you dig, I think you can find RDF dumps of the database.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This map is certainly very interesting, but it suffers as a visualization. The topographical map is nice, due to its simplicity and well-chosen color scale, but the main geological map certainly has some problems.

The biggest problem is that they are choosing two represent two different dimensions of data(age/time period and terrain type), but are using seemingly random variations of hue to show these variations. Additionally, with so many distinct hues, it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between some areas on the map (for example, Hesperian basin unit and Hesperian polar look very similar).

A more effective way to visualize this data would be to apply a separate hue to the 8 categories of terrain unit, since these are categorical data points. Then, visualize the geological age on a brightness scale, since this is more of a quantitative measurement (obviously the current map also show the particular time period, we'll just ignore that for now). I think this would provide a much clearer view of the data, though you would lose a small bit of granularity.

<comment><USER7> I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but here's some relevant explanation of their color choices which largely seem to have been chosen for consistency with previous publications:

[http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3292/pdf/sim3292_pamphlet.pdf](http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3292/pdf/sim3292_pamphlet.pdf) Page 10, search for the word color.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting, thank you. It's also a nice benchmark for PDF.js.

</comment><comment><USER9> Watching the individual shapes render on the PDF in Firefox's PDF viewer reminded me of fond memories of DOS-based mapping software I had as a kid on an 8MHz 8088 PC-XT with CGA graphics. Once upon a time, you actually had to wait for each individual vector shape to be drawn :-).

Edit: maybe this comment should have been a reply to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8046656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8046656)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is lovely, would probably make a nice print! I'm working my way through Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy; this makes a great accompaniment.

<comment><USER11> I just finished the second book myself and had the same thought. All the various escarpments and planae are hard to keep track of. There's a lot of geography in those books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am particularly fascinated by the small topological map. I like imagining what Mars would be like under Earth-like conditions - if a watery planet looked like that, how would people live? Where would the population be most concentrated? How would the political landscape be influenced by the geography?

I guess I spent too much of my childhood playing Role Master :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've started work on visualizing this in WebGL - looking through docs and the large DBs to see how I can render it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone know if it is possible to get a large-format print version? Or even how I could find it in the library?

<comment><USER15> You can go to the map store ([http://store.usgs.gov](http://store.usgs.gov)) and search for _Geologic Map of Mars_. Make sure you get the one from 2014.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is anyone else's computer getting extremely slow trying to move/open the file? (after downloading)

</comment><comment><USER17> I suppose I'm a little late. All I get are 404 errors. :-(

<comment><AUTHOR> It's still working for me, but the big map is taking a long time to load. I expect they're having some trouble handling the influx of downloaders from the media attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Any way to get this in Google Earth yet?

</comment><comment><USER19> Doesn't work for me</comment>


I focused on growth: app downloads grew from 1 to 1355 a day - <AUTHOR> Typeli Notes (http://www.typeli.com)
Imagine putting a ton of work (months of development) into building outstanding software, pricing it at less then a cup of latte (2 minutes of 'development'), so you can reach everyone,  and then only being able to get on average 1 purchase/day. Discouraging, no? Well, that's my experience with Typeli- a note-taking app I launched a few months ago.
On the upside, those few "spenders" who bought it, loved it. And not only did they like it, they thought the app was worth the money.
So I researched a bit and it seems that we've collectively exhausted our trust. I think we cried wolf way too often- said that note-taking app, a todo list, a chat-client was ground-breaking, revolutionary, worked like magic- except it didn't. And $1.99 after $1.99, our patience steadily diminished. When you buy a $5 Starbucks, you know what you're getting. When you get the $2.99 Typeli, all you have is the sour taste of some unpleasant previous purchases.
Now, we can't easily change the status quo, but once we understand the environment, it's much easier to align yourself with people's expectations. So since yesterday, I'm been giving away Typeli for FREE.
Reaction? New daily purchases grew from 1/day to 1355/day.
Obviously my revenues are $0 but I think of this as an investment. I'm acquiring new users for $10/each (average price for similar apps). Once I have the base I can then add value by offering extra features that people need and are more than willing to pay for.
(e.g. ability to type auto-highlighted code- hell yeah I want that for $1.99, pictures in my notebooks- definitely worth $0.99 etc.)
I wanted to marinate you with this data to get feedback and spread the word about the realities of the Mac Appstore. Please feel free to share your thoughts and questions. <comment><USER2> We actually did the same with our app Soundbox ([https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/soundbox-for- youtube/id44466...](https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/soundbox-for- youtube/id444661413?mt=8)).

On "regular" days we tested price points $0.99 and $1.99 to see which worked better. On holidays & long weekends we'd give it away for free.

It worked fabulously in terms of getting users...and surprisingly, the retained % of users was the same irrespective of whether they were paid or unpaid. On a particularly good weekend we got ~30,000 downloads.

We wanted the high number of users to: 1\. Prove that people actually wanted the app 2\. Using the high number of users as a channel for growth

We achieved #1 without question, the #2 is yet to be achieved.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could also consider the very long trial approach as WhatsApp. In that way, you will get a lot of users that will think that they have plenty of time to try your app and then look for another as good as yours, or switch before if they are dissatisfied. If yours is really that cool, they will rather pay three dollars at the end of the year, than look for another disappointing unknown app. Still have a lot of guinea pigs for the long haul to make yours the best out there.

PS: It seems that you need to update your homepage 'Buy Now' -> 'Get if for FREE now!'... (good place to make some marketing) you could A/B experiment with different phrasings like: 'Free for a limited time!' and others...

<comment><AUTHOR> @"BuyNow Button" thanks for pointing that out.

I very much prefer the long-trial solution. From what I understand though, Apple doesn't let you do that on the Mac Appstore- which is really good in the beginning for handling security, payments, returns, and marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would differentiate between "Purchases" and "Downloads" here. Purchases mean people paid for the application, while downloads imply no revenue.

It's great that your app took off when you dropped the price to free, and it's a good idea to pivot to offering extended features to power users. You're pivoting your app to a more 'freemium' model.

You might consider taking a survey of your users to find out what they want out of Typeli. iMockups has done this a few times, and it's worked well for them. Are you sure that your users want "auto-highlighted code"? You'll experience the same disappointment with sales if you build something before considering what your users actually _want_ from your app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I will definitely work off of the user feedback- at this point it's still the best idea (as opposed to pure innovation). The "auto-highlighted" code is just an example I choose for HackerNews, something that I really want, and some of my hacker friends asked for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its been a while since I've used the mac app-store since my recent switch to pc. I have found that the app store is cluttered by apps that are simply useless and either preform poorly or not at all. If the app works well I would say that the next step is adding mini purchases within the app. This could be things like language packs, mathematical equation inputs, ect. I would go to people of different majors and see what kind of things they most often wish they could transfer from their notebook to their laptop. That will give you the best idea of what to add next.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's the idea. People will pay but only if they actually really need something- can see how it will improve their life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The good thing about having lots of users is that you now, also, have lots of guinea pigs.

So you can listen to your users clamor for more features, and then monitor how often those features are being used once you add them. Then you can find ways to differentiate which feature requests are adding value to your app, and which ones are just noise.</comment>


Vimward - Dynamically filtered Vim cheat sheet - <AUTHOR> http://vimward.com

<comment><USER2> Nice idea and good implementation. It takes the complete opposite tack from task-focused references. Those may be more useful if you're starting out, but variety is good, and this gives you fast browsing and random discovery, as well as a way to refresh your memory on a particular key or check for binding conflicts. So intermediate-to-expert users could use it to fill in gaps.

It also had a potential advantage (not fully realized yet) over a static cheat sheet, in that it has more room for description. It doesn't have to fit almost everything onto a picture of a keyboard.

The one negative so far is that several key bindings are missing. g, q, v, V, and ^X jumped out at me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

That's a surprisingly small negative, all things considered :)

Maybe the project will be revived after all...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not terribly full featured, but done in about 30 minutes one night :)

Maybe it will be worked on again some day, if anyone cares.</comment>


IPhone Jailbreaking Could Crash Cell Phone Towers, Apple Claims - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/07/jailbreak/

<comment><USER2> Cell phone tower infrastructure has always been a walled garden, with the presumption that the carriers will always control the software and hardware used to communicate with the network. This might arguably have been a valid assumption when the cell system was engineered. It is certainly not a valid assumption now.

Jailbreaking is a fact of life. What are they going to do? Make it illegal? Let's assume they do. Does that make the network more secure? Did outlawing SPAM decrease the amount of SPAM? Did criminalizing cyber-attacks even decrease the number of said attacks?

To beg a legal remedy to circumvent the threat of cellular attacks in itself means that Apple, or rather AT&T (who is, of course, behind this claim), has a security methodology that is utterly broken, and absolutely _begging_ to be exploited.

They might as well have hung a sign on the towers which said, "Hack Me. I'm Easy".

</comment><comment><USER3> So, fix the damn cellphone towers. If a jailbroken cellphone can crash them, then surely a malicious person with a laptop and an antenna of the appropriate type could also crash them.

<comment><USER4> But they would have to be experts in GSM signalling. And those experts tend to have better things to do. Also, a laptop and a antenna would not suffice, software-defined radio would be required and currently there is no SDR design on market with sufficient performance.

If the unwashed masses suddenly gain access to such capabilities effortlessly then it would be a concern. Presently it is not, because smart phones have GSM subsystems carefully separated and 'dumb' phones have certain limitations built in. Behaving graciously is assumed a mobile station's role in the GSM system.

Recall the Nokia 1100 rumor eariler this year where underground allegedly gained acces to frimware memory map of certain series of this phone and its price skyrocketed on second hand market.

<comment><USER5> If a USRP can be a GSM cell tower, it can probably be a phone. <http://openbts.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER4> It can't be a tower, at most a sort of bridge and barely at that. Harald Welte's OpenBSC is more advanced <http://bs11-abis.gnumonks.org/trac/>. It is built on Siemends industrial design and not USRP as the BTS.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't surprise me that OpenBSC is more advanced given that my understanding is that the Siemens hardware does a lot of the hard work. OpenBTS is more impressive (and more customizable for evil) since it has to do everything in software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So preventing the legalization of one activity will prevent already-possible illegal activity? If I want to jailbreak my iPhone for illegal purposes, what does it matter whether that process is legal?

</comment><comment><USER7> The idea that anyone would take Apple's argument seriously illustrates the growing gap between people who understand what computers are and people who don't.

It's easy for us to say "well, obviously that makes no sense, because you could do the same thing with an Android phone or a laptop" because we understand a computer to be a universal machine, but the people making the law usually understand computers as no more than a glorified wrench or hammer, capable of doing some particular subset of Useful Things.

<comment><USER8> There has ALWAYS been a "gap between people who understand what computers are and people who don't"; the growing problem is people who THINK they understand computers because they use them, but don't really have a clue beyond what to button to click to get their email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _a local or international hacker could potentially initiate commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data_

Far be it for me to comment (as I have no experience in the software) but does that not seem like something of a MAJOR flaw in the tower software?

<comment><USER10> Yes and no. When the software was written for these towers, they weren't taking into account phones such as the iphone. Compared with the phones available just a few years ago, the iphone is a relative supercomputer. So I'd say if anything, its more of a lack of foresight rather than a flaw. Who, save for Steve Jobs, saw the iphone coming a few years ago with the force that is has.

<comment><USER4> It hasn't to do with the kind of phone and if it has more power or not. Years back I saw a quite detailed document on how to modify certain areas of memory in low-end Siemens phone so it would agree too cooperate on exhausting timeslices form unsuspecting BTS. BTS's trust mobile stations by design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Then why isn't android or any other open platform a threat?

<comment><USER12> Perhaps T-Mobile has an infrastructure isn't as insecure and fragile as AT&T's.

<comment><USER13> Android phones work fine on AT&T.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's official: jailbreaking aids terrorists and drug dealers. But I was surprised not to hear about it also aiding child-pornographers. Were Apple's lawyers having a slow day?

<comment><USER5> Come on, everybody knows the infocalypse has _four_ horsemen; you forgot about the money launderers: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyps...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really getting tired of Apple man... Compared to AAPL MSFT seems benevolent

<comment><USER15> You run a lot of custom apps on your Zune? Gotten around the shared music deletion issue yet?

<comment><USER16> I run a lot of custom apps on my WinMo phone. In fact, my entire phone experience has been customized (of course, it's terrible to begin with).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apple's claims are fake. Here is what you should know <http://www.taranfx.com/blog/?p=1499> <http://www.taranfx.com/blog/?p=1499>

</comment><comment><USER18> Rotten Apple.</comment>