"We are only collecting the list of applications you have installed." - <AUTHOR> https://support.twitter.com/articles/20172069 <comment><USER2> > If you're not interested in a tailored experience you can adjust your > preferences at any time

I don't mean to nitpick language, but does this sound incredibly condescending to anyone else? They might as well have written "If you're a paranoid loser I guess you can have the shitty experience where we don't try to ham-fistedly guess at your interests"

The funny thing is I think if they just didn't speak in idiotic PR-speak people probably wouldn't care. Sometimes I'm more annoyed that companies aren't just direct. The direct case isn't even that bad: "Hey, so we have to sell ads to make our business work and feed our families. It's better for you and the advertiser if we can try to give you ads that you might like so we can waste less of your time and the advertisers bandwidth. There's nothing in it for us to mess with your important private info, and a world of legal and PR downside. We're just asking to take a peek at your interests so we can guess at what you might like."

You'd still be justified in saying "nope", but at least you'd feel like you were treated like not an idiot.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like pretty typical obfuscatory doublespeak to me. "tailored" really means "targeted" and "experience" is a word used so often that it has lost almost all meaning.

The other words that evoke an almost visceral reaction of disgust for me are "offers" and "deals".

<comment><USER4> It's a disruptive synergistic cloud experience!

<comment><USER5> You mean it's a disruptive synergistic cloud experience offer!

There seems to be some kind of institutional mental illness that forces corps to think of users as exploitable prey who can be herded down a value- extracting marketing funnel, and not as people who want a service.

It's disturbingly common, IME.

<comment><USER6> I have alway thought "converting users to our brand" sounds suspiciously like "converting people to our religion/cult" just say you want loyal customers, not "devoted followers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple should ban the app for this, right?

[http://danielamitay.com/blog/2015/5/29/shutting- down-a-500mm...](http://danielamitay.com/blog/2015/5/29/shutting-down-a-500mm- requestsmonth-api)

<comment><USER8> Is there an API in iOS to get information about other apps? How is Twitter doing it? I thought all apps were 'sandboxed' in iOS.

<comment><USER9> Apps can register custom URL schemes to enable other apps to open them, pass them data and even deep-link to within them. There is an official API called canOpenUrl: which will let you check if a particular URL scheme is registered on a particular device. So that, along with a database of public URL schemes published by other apps, lets you detect which apps are installed.

I wasn't aware of this before but apparently you can also use sysctl() to check the names of running processes (which is less reliable as processes will get bumped off if the foreground app requires more memory).

More here: [http://danielamitay.com/blog/2011/2/16/how-to-detect- install...](http://danielamitay.com/blog/2011/2/16/how-to-detect-installed- ios-apps)

<comment><USER10> There is also private API that is not very difficult to hide, which gives you all the installed app bundle identifiers.

<comment><USER9> How would you hide calls to private APIs?

<comment><USER11> Hardcode the address on all known platforms and skip it on unknown ones, or disassemble a public function that calls it and figure out the address from there, or read the Mach-O headers and write your own dlsym, etc. etc.

Apple once blocked a updates for everyone using a common SDK because it had named a symbol something that happened to be the name of an unrelated private API, and the review process couldn't tell the difference. That implies things about the rigor of the review process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Raise your hand if you feel like this is an unwarranted breach of privacy, but you have a gmail account and heavily depend on Google services.

<ashamed>Raises own hand.</ashamed>

I was so trusting and willing to give away my emails to Google when I was a kid (despite being fully aware of their intentions), but now, even though privacy infringements from all these other companies disturb me, I'm still a hypocritical sheep in Google's herd.

Time to make some pretty heavy changes...

<comment><USER13> For most people it is just search and email. Replacing email is easy, but search is harder since only Google has really accurate and relevant results( besides other giants that also snoop ). The best way to replace search is to use engines that respect privacy and if you need relevant results, those that convey Google's results to you.

<comment><USER14> Search is the easier: DDG. I've been using it all-but-exclusively for nearly three years solid (and another couple on-and-off before). I do still make use of some Google special collections (Scholar, Books), and for time-bound searches (really wish DDG would support those).

Email took me a while longer to sort, but while I have a primary personal account somewhere safe, anonymous / pseudonymous accounts were harder to provision. Yahoo and Microsoft both throw barriers (phone confirmation required) in the way. I ended up with an inbox.com account, like that.

<comment><USER13> DDG is the fastest of all the privacy-respecting engines, but it consistently gives me the least accurate results. It works if you search for mainstream keywords, otherwise it mostly doesn't.

<comment><USER8> Google's strength lies in (and always has been in) the tail and ambiguous queries. Everyone can get the query "facebook" right; try the query "how to disassemble tile" on Google[1] and Yahoo[2] or Bing[3]. Google knows the difference between "tile" (the gadget) and "tiles".

[1] [https://www.google.com/#safe=off&q=how+to+disassemble+tile](https://www.google.com/#safe=off&q=how+to+disassemble+tile)

[2] [https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=how+to+disassemble+tile&fr...](https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=how+to+disassemble+tile&fr2=sb- top-search&fr=sfp)

[3] [http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+to+disassemble+tile](http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+to+disassemble+tile)

<comment><USER15> Interesting example. The results for ddg improve dramatically if you add "tracker" ("tile tracker"). I'm not sure I'd consider Google's default results better -- but then I don't own a "Tile". I do get that inferring that the connection "disasemble tile" implies something other than ceramic tiles (as opposed to "repair tile" \-- here ddg and google are very similar for "repair tile" and "repair tile tracker" \-- although none seem to give a result for software/a device to track progress of repairing ceramic tiles...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > > What is Twitter using my app graph for?

> Twitter is using your app graph to help build a more tailored experience for > you on Twitter.

No thanks.

> Some examples of how we may use your graph data include:

> \- Improved "who to follow" suggestions that share similar interests

No.

> \- Adding Tweets, accounts, or other content to your timeline that we think > you'll find especially interesting

Good lord, no.

> \- Showing you more relevant promoted content.

Please, no.

<comment><USER17> Amazing they're doing all this trying to make their service "better," yet they continuously show me a feed of content I resent.

<comment><USER18> > they continuously show me a feed of content I resent.

Then why do you use Twitter at all?

<comment><USER17> To be clear, I don't hate the content I choose to view from the people I follow, I hate the content that Twitter provides for advertising. There was a weird time when Twitter was actually showing me relevant ads - about computer stuff, startups (close enough). Now the ads are all random.

<comment><USER19> Maybe they'd do a better job if they knew what asps you have installed? /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Please leave a comment on the app store. That is the only way these companies will learn to not snoop on their users:

iOS - [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id333903271?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id333903271?mt=8)

Android - [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twitter.an...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.twitter.android)

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if the Twitter app will also be removed from the Apple Store due to using "public APIs in a manner nor prescribed by Apple." Hint: it won't.

<comment><USER22> Apple may not remove it, they'll just refuse updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _We 've designed app graph to exclude apps that appear to be especially sensitive, such as ones dealing with your health, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs._

I was alarmed until I read this. It is really nice of them to choose to keep our sensitive private information private. Thanks Twitter!

( Of course I completely trust Twitter to make the right decision on which apps are considered sensitive. )

<comment><USER23> The sarcasm is strong in this one. Hopefully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The majority of Twitter's revenue comes from mobile ads, and app install ads are a major component of that major component. Knowing what apps you do or don't have installed allows them to better target app install ads, and I imagine that's the reason for collecting this data.

So, if you don't have Clash of Clans installed, they can show you a Clash of Clans ad. If do you have Clash of Clans installed, they can then prompt you to reengage with it, or suggest other apps you're likely to install on the basis of your having shown an interest in games.

</comment><comment><USER25> Ironically, currently a few entries away from this article on HN, there's this one [1] about iHasApp that has shut down due to "using public APIs in a manner not prescribed by Apple".

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9625916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9625916)

<comment><USER26> That article links to this Twitter support page, which is undoubtedly why someone submitted this to HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is such bullshit. I refuse to use any app that does this kind of snooping. Twitter ought to be ashamed of itself.

</comment><comment><USER28> Simply put: if you have to setup a help page like this, you probably shouldn't have added such feature first place.

</comment><comment><USER29> That sounds rather scummy. Any time you are collecting information unrelated to your own application is inexcusable.

</comment><comment><USER30> I do not trust Twitter to do the right thing with the special level of trust Apple has granted them.

<comment><USER31> btdollar it appears you've been hell banned.

I really think this is a cruel waste of peoples time, and HN should strongly reconsider this method of moderation.

EDIT: Down votes for telling someone they are hell banned? Pathetic.

<comment><USER32> How would you know if someone else is hellbanned?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just removed the Twitter app... Sorry Twitter but no thank you.

</comment><comment><USER34> Notice how they casually slip in "..and occasionally updating". This means that Twitter now has a nice list of all apps on your Mobile via the malicious Twitter app that snoops on your phone. They get to then sell this info to advertisers so that they can tailor their "tweets" to you.

And Twitter is a relatively good citizen as far as apps go. Just imagine what other apps who don't care where their next buck comes from are capable of...truly scary stuff.

<comment><USER35> The worse problem is that even if you do research on the developers and owners of an app before allowing a permission that warrants a lot of trust, they can at any time be sold to a scummy company or data-mining agency who exploits the trusting user-base. This is exactly what happened to SourceForge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "App graph". Something about that phrase makes it sound even sneakier, like an innocuous technical thing that has nothing to do with people. Nothing to see here. Just an app graph.

I think I will build a social network where your profile pic is a split screen of your headshot and your exposed genitals. You will use your real name, home address, and cell phone number, and frequently upload your credit card statements.

This way, we can all just get it over with already.

<comment><USER37> So basically just a frontend to Experian?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "You can opt out any time...three stages deep in the settings." What a cop out.

That's provided because 99% will never even know it's there. It doesn't matter if it's technically an option.

When your product is used by millions of people and updates automatically, the defaults matter.

<comment><USER39> Not only that, I followed the instructions (on iOS) and there is no "Tailor Twitter based on my apps", only "Tailor ads based on info from ad partners".

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Twitter really is a terrible: Refer to first comment in link below. In the name of providing open source tools to Developers, They are collecting Contact lists of app users that has their SDK's: [http://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/37hx7y/twitter_j...](http://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/37hx7y/twitter_just_open_sourced_twitter_kit_and_digits/crn9ivi)

</comment><comment><USER41> _" We will notify you about this feature being turned on for your account by showing a prompt letting you know that to help tailor your experience, Twitter uses the apps on your device. Until you see this prompt, this setting is turned off and we are not collecting a list of your apps. If you do not see Tailor Twitter based on my apps in your account settings, app graph collection is not occurring for your account."_

</comment><comment><USER42> This should be opt-in not opt-out.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is how they do it: [https://github.com/danielamitay/iHasApp](https://github.com/danielamitay/iHasApp)

The read me explains that Apple does not approve of this.

Twitter should back off on this. The goodwill lost is not worth what they are getting here.

</comment><comment><USER44> Upon reading this, this is the first thing that came to my mind: [https://i.imgur.com/WiOMq.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/WiOMq.jpg)

Now, how do we get people to pay for the services they use? Is that even desirable for us, the consumers?

</comment><comment><USER45> Why do iOS and Android give apps this data in the first place? Mobile apps will invariably abuse any trust granted to them, so platforms should just stop granting any more trust than necessary.

<comment><USER43> They don't explicitly provide it. Twitter uses a form of IPC built into iOS (canOpenUrl) to find out by brute force whether or not well known apps are installed.

In other words if you just submitted mynewobscureapp to the AppStore, Twitter would not be able to detect it until they added your app to their targeted list.

<comment><USER46> Sounds like the technique that uses CSS to "brute force" your browser history. [http://davidwalsh.name/jquery-spyjax](http://davidwalsh.name/jquery-spyjax)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I hate how this is opt-out instead of opt-in.

I can see why they want to do this but it just feels kind of icky or something.

</comment><comment><USER48> One more reason I'm glad I don't use the official Twitter app. I highly recommend Twidere.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's been said, but really, it should be opt-in rather than opt-out. If you really need this, just ask. If I'm feeling particularly nice that day, I might even allow it, but when I discover their mischief after they've done it, there's no way I'll be okay with it.

If there's one good thing, they remove the data they've collected from you if you opt-out. (But it'll be already fed to the machine learning system, I guess.)

</comment><comment><USER50> I removed Twitter and Facebook from my phone because I found them too distracting. Not having them snoop on what else is on my phone is just a bonus.

<comment><USER51> to be fair the web apps work well. I did the same on my mobile, no more snooping. But i had to root my phone to remove Twitter and Facebook so everybody can't do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> And while making the UX of their Android app shittier and shittier, they block popular 3rd party clients. This time on the shitlist: tweecha ([https://twitter.com/tweecha_en](https://twitter.com/tweecha_en)).

Seriously, I like Twitter but the way they keep degrading the user experience, it's no wonder people leave en masse.

</comment><comment><USER53> Ugh! It's such a shame companies like Twitter do this shit. I'll admit, twitter and facebook provide useful services, they really do, but it's all this sneaky invasive stuff that makes me hate it all. I know you have to make money, but this kind of behavior is going to be their downfall.

</comment><comment><USER54> I am using the latest iOS version and the setting to disable this is nowhere to find. This is fucked up.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's hilarious how these guys have spent billions looking for the lost city of targeted advertising and all they've done is invent new ways of scaring away customers.

How about telling us what's on sale at nearby grocery or hardware stores?

</comment><comment><USER56> Only? I don't want Twitter to collect a list of applications I have installed. That is none of their business, massively violates my privacy, is an illegal practice in many countries, and constitutes a unique fingerprint.

</comment><comment><USER57> Ihasapp (2011): [https://github.com/danielamitay/iHasApp/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/danielamitay/iHasApp/blob/master/README.md)

Discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8671080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8671080)

Fun fact: Lots of major analytics SDKs read out your app list in this way (Android is even simpler). Your app list is already known to lots of 3rd parties if you have downloaded any of about 80% of the top 100 apps in the last 4 years.

</comment><comment><USER58> Questions about using an older version. I no longer update my mobile apps. Twitter state:

"On versions of Twitter for iOS before 6.19.1, the Tailor Twitter based on my apps setting may not display correctly. If you are impacted by this issue, please upgrade to the latest version of Twitter for iOS."

Does this mean that it is disabled for those old versions? Does it mean that they will do it but users will not be able to disable it? Does it imply that the old apps are already sending this data to them? Or is it a ploy to get people to upgrade, and not upgrading could also be a way to remain more private?

</comment><comment><USER59> Well that took about 2 seconds to delete..

</comment><comment><USER60> How does Twitter actually do this on iOS? Is it only apps that use Twitter logins? Are they using canOpenURL (I kind of doubt it)? sysctl()?

</comment><comment><USER61> Hehe, well yeah... thanks but no thanks. I mean at least they are honest about it, but when this option exists within the app, doesn't mean that they are not using it. Maybe they are just not giving you your "tailored" information but are still grifting your data.

</comment><comment><USER62> I would say it's safe to assume many, many apps do this. For anyone looking to tailor ads/recommendations to their users, the opportunity to peek at all the apps you have installed is too tempting to resist.

</comment><comment><USER63> My solution is to install as few apps as possible. Go to mobile website, from browser menu select "Add to Home Screen". I get fewer features that way but fewer distractions.

<comment><USER64> > I get fewer features that way but fewer distractions.

Not necessarily. I use the Facebook web app because I'm not crippled from using Messenger as I am on their main app. Who needs the notifications anyway?

And seriously, why does Facebook need to be a >30 MB download? It's just a frontend pulling from an API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Stick this in 140 characters: "Twitter has and always will suck, as a service and as a corporation".

The medium is ridiculous, I really see it as the dumbing down of our society.

</comment><comment><USER66> Just out of curiosity, is there even something else in the "other" part of the Twitter client's settings, or is that just a typical obfuscation?

</comment><comment><USER67> Geee thanks twitter ... you can learn nothing for me from the fact that I have grindr installed /sarcasm

</comment><comment><USER68> I see a lot of (rightfully) upset comments but this doesn't really come as a surprise to me given that Twitter (and others like FB, GOOG, ad networks) already track websites you visit.

I know there are ways of blocking that but I would have a hard time believing that many (outside of HN readers) block that type of tracking.

</comment><comment><USER69> stopped using their native app few months ago , hope they won't remove their mobile web app . even if they do I will just spend more time on hacker news !

</comment><comment><USER70> What the F __* is wrong these big money makers?

</comment><comment><USER71> Android user? Just go to settings > applications and count how many times 'Google' appears in there. Twitter is a small child

</comment><comment><USER72> What the fuck? Is it April Fools?

</comment><comment><USER4> It amazes me that people are still dumb enough to install apps from any of the social networks.

</comment><comment><USER73> If the app checked what other apps were installed and used that data locally, no big deal. Calling home with private user data is evil.

<comment><USER36> I'm trying to think of a scenario wherein an app would wholesale collect all other installed apps for local use. Querying for specific capability via the existence of an app or URL handler, maybe. But iterating all installed apps?

<comment><USER74> Tasker (for Android) does, to let you choose one to launch automatically when something happens. But apart from automation and possibly "personal analytics", I don't remember any other use case.</comment></comment></comment>


OLinuXino, a good alternative to the Raspberry Pi? - <AUTHOR> https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ <comment><USER2> The iMX233 variety is a considerably slower chip than the BCM2835 and I don't believe it has anywhere near the video capability. These were the same chip line as the 2nd gen 3.5" Chumbys (may have slight variances.) It is still a cool chip but it's not the same setup.

The A13 variety is more powerful, but less widely available and the chip hasn't been used as much.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly enough, it appears they also have an A13[0] board for sale. It's a bit pricier at 45 euros.

[0] <https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/A13-OLinuXino/></comment></comment>


Why did 30-year-old former Microsoft engineers apply to YC? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/d639607056f6

<comment><USER2> I don't like doing this because I'm a founder too and, well, "you don't shit where you eat" \- you don't go and pass judgement about the ventures of others because you don't want to be in their spot yourself.

Nevertheless, I couldn't help but notice their landing page reeks of buzzword laden hustle and nothing more. This, to me, is not a legitimate venture, or at least not presented as such.

1\. The service doesn't seem to exist;

2\. The landing page textual content is badly made and badly spelled, which makes you question the capabilities and efforts of the team behind it;

3\. They have this slider that name drops companies they have nothing to do with (AirBnB, CoffeeTable etc) with some headline stats and icons, and slides out of your way just before you begin to read the smaller print, which is about how these companies improved business metrics using push notifications. It has nothing to do with _their_ product whatsoever. But you wouldn't think that on first glance, as they deliberately made it look like customer testimonials. This to me is a huge red flag;

4\. They have a $599 recommended plan which is way above what SaaS MVPs usually aim for;

5\. Microsoft employs ~100k people worldwide. Being a Microsoft employee is completely meaningless in this context, and I feel is only used to lend them credibility in light of points #1-#4.

There's a very fine line between MVP, hustling and outright scamming. I feel they went too far. I'm sorry if I hurt someone's feelings but I doubt this is YC material.

<comment><USER3> I think the service looks very, very interesting. A potential conversion game changer.

There's actually not a single link to the website in the post, I'm pretty certain they've not even got an MVP yet, or if they do it'll just be string and duct tape. He talks about phone interviews, they're still in customer exploration.

I think it entirely depends on the light you look at it in. Turn to the left slightly, and it suddenly looks like the beginnings of something that just needs a bit of tiller correcting, a bit more businessman, a bit less engineer.

That style of writing on the blog and on the website, to me, is very Indian. I think it's just a cultural difference, try re-reading it.

And in the end if all they get out of the application is a clearer vision, they still got something out of it.

OTOH I'm not sure why he thinks YC doesn't accept 30 year olds with solid engineering backgrounds...

<comment><USER2> [http://informion.com](http://informion.com) is what I assumed their service is. I apologize if this is not the service they discuss (this is what appears on the author's bio line at the bottom).

When I wrote my comment it was really coming from a place of honest criticism. It wasn't cautionary, as I don't expect most HN-ers to go dropping $599 on their recommended plan. As a founder myself, I felt I had to give them my opinion of how this looks from the outside. Yes they had spelling errors as other posters politely noted but this is just going around the edges of the core issue here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good luck. As constructive criticism of the headline, my mind fleetingly tried to parse what a 'yo' engineer was (and a Microsoft one at that), and why 30 of them had applied for YC. :)

<comment><USER5> Good point and well 30 yo's applying to YC was funny .. Fixed it in the original post.

</comment></comment><comment> kgb-11 note to founders, your landing page has several typos. the headline is the most glaring one.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Do not have network intros to YC-Partners" that got me thinking what are my odds of getting in. pg once said "your chances are either very high or very low". No intros. Haven't co-founder a successful startup in the past. Haven't worked for FB. I'm from "middle of nowhere".

<comment><USER5> We really have none of these - yet wanted to apply and encourage others like us to apply. We laid out our reasons with the hope to encourage a few more to polish their customer pitches using the framework we used ...

For us it came to two things: a. Did we FEEL that the guys running the accelerator cared b. Had we developed respect for their OPINIONS As I said we found 3 fitting our criteria and YC was only one

That Ethos seems to be have been lost :( ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please don't use caps meaninglessly. This blog is awfully hard to read.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how big of an effect getting on the front page of HN has on your YC application. I can't imagine it being that much, but this won't be the first time someone has tried (and succeeded).

<comment><USER5> I must say that we really didn't plan it this way we wrote this yesterday given we felt strongly about it.

The intent was not necessarily to talk about YC but to:

1\. Spell out the framework we used to evaluate accelerators so others could use it as appropriate For us it came to two things: a. Did we FEEL that the guys running the accelerator cared b. Had we developed respect for their OPINIONS As I said we found 3 fitting our criteria and YC was one among those – it depends on what pre-access founders get to these guys/their thoughts – being in Seattle guys @ 9 mile have helped us out from even before we left our day jobs, similarly Andy and Techstars alum has been nothing but vested. Thought this will be helpful for others deciding on accelerators.

2\. Using YCs app as a tool for improving sales/pitches We found YCs application & what they expect to have most resonance with what customers asked and expected – I would concur that almost all applications have these questions in one form of the other but PG has done well to express what they expect in his essay – we found him echoing what our customers expected but never demanded – so the app could be a tool one could use to refine the sales call/pitch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You've misspelt "notifiactions" on your main page.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! Fixed it. Please let us know if you spot any other typos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> tl;dr: because we think that the questions asked on the application are good ones to have considered simply for the future of a startup anyway.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems like 30 year old engineers from Microsoft/Amazon would pretty much fit in perfectly to an ideal YC founding team.</comment>


Fear of learning - <AUTHOR>

I have a pending task, which is kind of new to me so I have to learn how to do it and do it. Although I am in the middle of it, I found it very stressful, is like fear of learning.
That does not happen when I have to fix something, for some reason I get lost in finding the solution until I fix, and actually enjoy the process.
I guess is only some idea that if I am not good enough for something I really enjoy doing  then I would not be allowed to do it anymore.
Does anyone feels this way and how do you fight it? <comment><USER2> I've experienced the same type of anxiety when faced with a daunting task. I try to be objective, and I try to focus on the problem itself, rather than the problem in relation to other things, like what someone else might expect as a solution. I focus on the exhilaration of finding a solution to the task I had no idea how to do when I started.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with you. I won't call it fear, it's more of anxiety. Whenever I think of learning, I get overwhelmed. It's like learning what? I end up spending precious time being anxious and watching a movie....Sad but true.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably part of it is just laziness but is 10x times greater when is related to something I want to be good at.

Is like hard for to accept that I am not an expert, even when I haven't put the hours of learning into the subject.</comment></comment>


Browser extensions are underrated: the promise of hackable software - <AUTHOR> https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2019/07/29/browser-extensions.html <comment><USER2> > The modern browser extension API has done a good job balancing extensibility > with security

No, it hasn't. Almost every single extension I install tells me some variant of "This extension can intercept and modify all of your browsing traffic". That's not "well balanced", it's completely broken. This is happening clearly for extensions by well intentioned people that _do not need those permissions_. I can't help but cynically interpret the current situation as intentional on Google's part because having the security model be "trust Google to vet the extensions" happens to centralise all the power with them. If you can't trust an extension from the wild then they might as well not exist, right?

People laughed Java out of the browser because it took 500ms to start, but at least it had an actual security model.

<comment><USER3> +1000

Extensions should be able to have their permissions limited by domain (e.g. to customize YouTube or Reddit) at a minimum.

And I'd also really like a way to track both injected scripts and elements so that they wouldn't be able to make any HTTP requests without additional permissions, not even an <img src="..."> tag if the src isn't just a data URL or local extension resource.

E.g. I want to be able to install an extension that stops YouTube videos from playing as soon as I navigate to the page, without worrying my entire browsing history or worse is being sent to a third-party.

<comment><USER4> > Extensions should be able to have their permissions limited by domain (e.g. > to customize YouTube or Reddit) at a minimum.

They already can: extension authors can specify that their extension only operates on specific URL's.

The problem is that most extensions are designed to work on all web sites, so you have to choose between security and convenience.

Most users pick the latter and trust the former.

This model works pretty well overall since harmful extensions never take long before getting flagged by the community.

<comment><USER5> > This model works pretty well overall since harmful extensions never take > long before getting flagged by the community.

No, this model works pretty well for stealthy extensions which take malicious actions without getting detected.

<comment><USER6> It also works well for normal useful extensions. We can figure out ways to eliminate stealthy malicious extensions without removing the most useful feature of extensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I believe many people should attempt to create their own web extension, even if they don't publish it.

In my younger years, I used to crack and hack software just for fun. Those were my Softice years. Later, when Opera was not Chromium based, I also had several site customisations, since it was very easy to add my own JS and CSS to any web site.

Nowadays, I have 4 extensions created and tailored for my needs. One that deals with cookies (mostly "delete everything" outside of my white list) and three that add functionalities to specific sites (automating, managing lists, hiding or highlighting content, etc). Building them was fun, though not as much fun as playing against "copy protections" long ago: like going from competitive chess to creative DIY.

The only pain with custom made extensions is that Firefox is very reluctant to load them. I don't want to upload them them on some Mozilla server, so I have to enter some cryptic "about:..." URL, then click and navigate to my extension, for every extension at every browser start. This is one of the main reasons I'm using more Vivaldi than Firefox these past months.

<comment><USER8> Besides having to do it on every restart, that's a good thing. It should be convoluted to do unsafe operations to protect the average user but allow the advanced user flexibility.

<comment><USER9> I feel like having a big scary warning would be sufficient instead of making it inconvenient. It's easy for a competent user to ignore a warning that they fully understand while it scares off those that are clueless.

<comment><USER10> The issue isn't about having a sufficiently scary warning. It is that the browser has to store the fact that the user has agreed to this warning somewhere (ie, presumably in the user's profile). That means any other software running on the computer with regular user permissions can make the same modification to the profile and then install an unsigned extension without the user's consent.

Typically, when Mozilla finds out about software installing extensions without user consent, the extension is added to the blocklist, but if the extension is unsigned it can just claim that it is ublock origin or adblock plus or some popular extension, leaving no practical way to block it.

This is described in greater detail at [https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/04/15/the-case-for- exte...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/04/15/the-case-for-extension- signing/)

(in full disclosure, I am a Mozilla employee)

<comment><USER9> Ah thanks, that's useful context. I was responding primarily to the claim that convolutedness is necessary to protect unsophisticated users, which I interpreted as meaning that the complexity of the UI scares users off. But this is a separate technical limitation that makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Browser extensions are also really important for accessibility. People with many kinds of disabilities use extensions to make websites more readable, easier to navigate, or more accessible in other ways.

Unfortunately, the big mobile browsers do not support extensions, which is a huge blow to accessibility. I think Firefox for Android is the only mainstream-ish browser that supports extensions. Apple prevents them from doing the same on iOS because it would be considered "an app store within an app", which is forbidden.

The only thing Apple allows is action and share extensions, which have to be manually activated on every single page (2-3 taps to do so — which is super user-unfriendly, esp. for PWD). It's great that Apple does a lot for accessibility in general, but I really wish they would open things up a bit more so that users could customize the iOS experience to make it more accessible.

As a dev, I would be more than happy to have my code scrutinized even further in order to ensure that what we're doing doesn't create security, privacy, or performance issues. We'd just like to make our accessibility software as useful for folks on mobile as it is on desktop!

<comment><USER12> Which specific extensions work well? My wife is visually impaired and she has tried a several extensions. All of them have cause more problems than they have solved. In addition, IE and firefox's attempts to change behavior when using windows high contrast mode also breaks many sites. Safari is the browser that works the most reliably.

<comment><USER11> Well, I'm the founder of BeeLine Reader[1], and our extension is used for speed reading as well as accessibility (vision impairment, dyslexia, ADHD). I don't think it breaks websites, since we let the user decide how aggressively it should try to run. There are also night mode extensions, as well as site- specific ones (like for wikipedia) that are great.

1: [http://www.beelinereader.com](http://www.beelinereader.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Extensions can be uninstalled, revoked, disabled at will. Can't really bend BigTech to do your biding, and that trumps whatever the security argument brings to the table, imo. Extensions should be done in a security friendly way [0], and not the other way around of making software secure by disabling all extensibility [1].

Take the example of the Android ecosystem: If plugins were allowed for apps, pretty sure there'd be a better story around privacy today. An astonishing 40% of connections from an Oppo/Vivo or Xiaomi phones are to ad networks and trackers. And there's nothing you could do (without root) except to firewall it (apps have started working around pi-hole esque setups). XposedMod has brought plugin based development to Android [2], but it is niche and requires not just root, but replacing key framework components. Using it might still be worth it, though, given the relentlessness of OEMs and carriers.

And that's just sad.

[0] One way to tackle the problem of developers selling away rights to their extensions is to legally make it binding to publicly declare whenever ownership changes hands. Disable extensions across all installs, and let the users enable after the fact is made obvious to them.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial- interopera...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial- interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay)

[2] [https://www.xda-developers.com/best-xposed-modules/](https://www.xda- developers.com/best-xposed-modules/)

<comment><USER14> > If plugins were allowed for apps, pretty sure there'd be a better story > around privacy today .

Honest question : Can you expand on how this would work please?

If anything, extensions as in chrome extensions is something I try to avoid as much as possible : giving access to all of my data to a third party extension promising that is going to increase my privacy but that I need to trust 100% with a complete access is less than ideal.

<comment><USER13> > Honest question : Can you expand on how this would work please?

Such a thing is already possible today. Some require root, some require breaking PlayStore's terms of use.

One such example is: XPrivacyLua [0] by the creator of NetGuard. It helps fake location data, hide contacts and calendar, fake device-id, IMEI, MAC addresses etc on a per-app basis.

Another example is how VPN in Android [1][2] is widely used to block trackers and ads.

A third example would be how the accessibility service APIs are (ab)used to temporary grant permissions to apps [3].

A fourth would be reversing engineering tools like Frida [4] that help with inspecting apps, and even change their behaviour.

A fifth is repackaging APKs with advertisement and tracking code removed, like with YouTube [5].

I am attempting to build an app with most of these features combined in to one, lets see how far I get. My aim is probably to build something as close as possible to uMatrix/uBlockOrigin but without requiring root.

\---

[0] [https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacyLua/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacyLua/blob/master/README.md)

[1] [https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard](https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard)

[2] [https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada](https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada)

[3] Sam Ruston's Bouncer app: [https://samruston.co.uk/](https://samruston.co.uk/)

[4] [https://securitygrind.com/bypassing-android-ssl-pinning- with...](https://securitygrind.com/bypassing-android-ssl-pinning-with-frida/)

[5] [https://youtubevanced.com/](https://youtubevanced.com/)

<comment><USER14> None of these answer my question though.

Repackaging, leveraging a security flaw to use xposed, etc, all of these add more vectors that can compromise your data.

You need to have complete trust in the person that wrote these, way more trust than just in the creators of an app that can just use the permissions you give them :/

<comment><USER13> I agree. My point was the security risk is worth it if extensibility is achieved. I cited the example of browsers and content blockers.

There are many intrusive permissions that already are major privacy and security risks-- Launchers, SMS apps, VPNs, and even alarm clocks that mine location data. The playing ground isn't level, right now, to counter this intrusion.

One way to affect what other apps do, without root, is to route the traffic via VPN and firewall as appropriate. That's possible only when a user enables a VPN to do so. Similarly, the plugins could also require a user to explicitly grant or deny permission for them to work. This is enough of a security measure as its on par with the current system in Android (regardless of its notoriety).

> None of these answer my question though.

May be I understood you wrong. I hope I made my point clear to you above?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Extensions are awesome but I think this article is a bit too optimistic. I mean I share the optimism but in practice a major challenge is the platform.

Chrome for example has a ton of limitations:

[https://getpolarized.io/2019/04/05/Google-Will-Kill- Chrome-E...](https://getpolarized.io/2019/04/05/Google-Will-Kill-Chrome- Extension-Innovation.html)

If you want to do anything significant you have to get their 'permission' and at that point they throttle your extension release updates.

You can't just push an update immediately that gets sent out. They take a week to approve your extension.

This might sound reasonable until you realize that a week is an eternity for a continuous development shop. That might as well be a year.

ESPECIALLY if something is broken.

Imagine if you had a bug that destroys data and you need to rush out a fix. Nope.. You need to wait one week for that to go out.

<comment><USER16> I experience the same one week delay with an extension. The publishing delay is always about a week, and that is highly unusual.

They state that the extension update is under compliance review, which may take several business days, though the similar approval times indicate that this is actually an arbitrary publishing delay, and that no human review takes place in all cases, otherwise there would be more variation between approval times.

<comment><USER15> It's always a week AND it's also applied at a week even if you change an image. They don't need to audit an image.

I'm suspicious that they might be doing this for other reasons more likely to punish people for more aggressive permissions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I launched my side project ([https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/), a website best practices checker) as a paid Chrome extension and have been happy with the experience so far. The browser extension platform lets me easily support Linux, Chrome OS, Mac and Windows, with automatic updates and small installation size (~1MB). I get traffic from people discovering the extension via the Chrome store, and users can install and launch the app in seconds which lowers onboarding friction.

Compared to native apps, I think browser extension based apps reduce a lot of headaches for developers and users.

<comment><USER18> Looks useful, how do you manage distribution and the payments? I am looking for examples and resources of successful paid extensions who offer subscriptions [https://readmo.app](https://readmo.app)

<comment><USER17> I use [https://paddle.com/](https://paddle.com/) for subscription payments. Paddle deal with EU VAT for you which is a big benefit for me.

The Chrome store lets you take payments but it's not very flexible and it's tied to Chrome.

<comment><USER18> ah sweet, so the extension is hosted on the Chrome Web Store but you manage payments and licenses with paddle?

<comment><USER17> That's right. This gives more flexibility like selling a license that works on Firefox + Chrome, and selling team based licenses.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google killed Chrome store payments in the future as well - I pretty much never hear mentions or updates about it. I wouldn't want to lose all my subscribers if that happened.

<comment><USER18> Makes perfectly sense. Thank you for the tips!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not just browser extensions. I miss an API in all kind of software we use at work.

No wonder the half of the companys in this world run on excel.

<comment><USER20> Me too.

It's a thought I keep repeating that is probably worth expanding into an article - modern software eschews interoperability, and in particular, SaaS is based on preventing interoperability. What used to be a desktop application operating on an independent source of data (filesystem) now vacuums the data and offers it back over an official interface and an extremely limited and locked-down API.

Wrt. those APIs, note that what just a decade ago on desktop was considered normal interop, nowadays often requires the interoperating parties to _sign contracts_ , adding a legal dimension that further shuts out end users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Browser extensions are being underrated deliberately by browser developers. Ever since we lost XUL Firefox, anyone who wants to really do anything worth doing around a web browser should have already switched to Pale Moon. Doubly so with Google's Manifest v3, which is going to kill selective content download management.

<comment><USER22> Even as much as I want my old Firefox extensions back I reaaly don't feel I can trust a small bunch of developers to keep something as complicated as the old Firefox patched in this day and age.

Am I wrong?

<comment><USER23> I'm afraid you're

[https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22399](https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=22399)

[https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=22270&p=168663](https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=22270&p=168663)

<comment><USER22> Sounds good! I'm all for more competition in the browser space and will consider using it for my personal laptop as a first step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Next ([https://github.com/atlas-engineer/next](https://github.com/atlas- engineer/next)) might be a truly hackable browser.

<comment><USER25> All I really want is emacs for the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't agree with the author. He pays lip service to security being important, but then proceeds to ignore the threat because he thinks extensions are great. I think people should be more hesitant to install a browser extension than just about any other piece of software.

The threat is absolutely real. Bad actors regularly offer large paydays to lone developers with popular extensions so they can roll out an update that quietly adds a backdoor.

There's at least _some_ publicly documented evidence that Raymond Hill (uBlock Origin) isn't likely to cave to this sort of pressure, but do you really believe that _none_ of the other authors of your fifteen favorite extensions would look the other way for $100k?

Keep in mind that these offers don't look like "Here's some money, please let us roll out an evil update to your extension." They look like "Our company has a product with a similar name. We love your extension and would like to offer to acquire it from you so that we can use the name. We'll even let you keep the rights to your software so that you can re-release it under a different name if you'd like!" They'll make it really easy for the developer to remain in denial about what they're actually facilitating.

<comment><USER17> > Keep in mind that it's not "Here's some money, please let us roll out an > evil update to your extension," it's "Our company loves your extension and > would like to acquire it."

I get messages like this every now and then for mobile apps and browser extensions I manage and they're painfully obvious to spot.

They're often from sketchy looking generic email addresses, have no information about the buying company, don't even attempt to demonstrate knowledge of the app, and most importantly mention nothing about how they plan to grow the app.

It's always just "would you like to sell?" and "how many users do you have?".

A recent one:

> From: firstname.lastname@example.com

> My name is John.

> I have noticed your google extension > "[https://checkbot.io/](https://checkbot.io/) Checkbot: SEO, Web Speed & > Security Tester ", its looks interesting would you considering to sell it?

> Best regards

I've had more elaborate ones but they're always generic with no obvious business interest in the specific app they're asking to buy.

<comment><USER16> Same, I get an offer every month or so for some of my extensions. One has quoted an offer of $0.25/user for the Firefox version of Search by Image in their introductory email. That kind of money would significantly improve my life, but it's all too obvious what they would do with my users.

Most extension developers are not getting any significant income from their work, despite serving millions of users, and unless browser vendors will begin to recognize the value of that labor and provide better tools for sponsoring developers, we will continue to be vulnerable to such offers.

<comment><USER17> > Most extension developers are not getting any significant income from their > work, despite serving millions of users, and until browser vendors do not > start to recognize the value of that labor and provide better tools for > sponsoring developers, we will continue to be vulnerable to such offers.

Any ideas what specifically could be done to help? You can integrate your own payment systems into extensions and there's some ad vendors that support browser extensions.

<comment><USER16> I'm specifically talking about extensions that strive to be free and accessible for everyone.

A great example for how Mozilla is deprioritizing contributions for extension developers is the new design of Firefox Add-ons. The contribution button was pushed down below the fold. Previously it was at a very prominent place next to the install button, and several modes for requesting contributions before or after installation have been deprecated.

Yes, adding a donation button to your extension is a possibility, but it would send a whole different signal if Mozilla would encourage users to support developers, from a unified and trusted user interface, and experiment with better ways to ensure that users are aware of support options for their favourite extensions.

Mozilla directly supporting extensions which they consider to be of great value could also be explored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's an opinion that is likely to be controversial: I like Gnome Shell for exactly the same reason. To be fair, it's something like 7 years since I used it, so maybe things have changed a lot. I ended up abandoning it because I don't like Gnome in general (I want something significantly more light weight). But I _loved_ the idea that I could completely change the way my window manager worked by writing a surprisingly small amount of JS. Not only that, but it had (I hope still has) hooks into mutter, so you could do anything you want to the compositter as well. For example, one of the things I did was to have windows that zoomed the contents when I resized them rather than increasing the size of area in the window -- I did it because I have terrible vision and virtually every time I want a bigger window it's because I want it magnified.

I just noticed Xlambda which was featured very recently on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20316920](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20316920) I wonder if there is compositor I could talk to as well... compton doesn't do the kinds of things I want to do...

</comment><comment><USER28> On the contrary: Browser extensions are horribly overrated. They're a massive security problem (the number one place malware is found on a computer) often for the benefit of replacing the word "cloud" with "butt". They are rarely adequately audited or restricted and have far more access to private data than anyone generally realizes.

<comment><USER29> >> replacing the word "butt" with "butt"

Do you mean to say that extensions do nothing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Browser extensions are an important part of my small business since there are some things I can't reasonably do without them. [https://autoplaylists.simon.codes](https://autoplaylists.simon.codes) is a good example: Google Music just doesn't make some metadata available over their OAuth apis.

I understand the broader extension security situation is pretty atrocious, but I like to think there's some small improvement from url-limited extensions like mine (that would otherwise exist as scripts that ask for plaintext credentials).

</comment><comment><USER31> I gave a highly related talk in 2010 called "Even Software Should Have Screws" at TEDxAmericanRiviera, based on my background working in the iOS jailbreaking community, where I maintained a software ecosystem similar to browser extensions, but for apps and system software.

[https://youtu.be/ReKCp9K_Jqw](https://youtu.be/ReKCp9K_Jqw)

</comment><comment><USER32> > personally use Chrome extensions that fill in my passwords, help me read > Japanese kanji, simplify the visual design of Gmail, let me highlight and > annotate articles, save articles for later reading, play videos at 2x speed, > and of course, block ads.

So, autofill, autotranslate, HTML-only mode in gmail, (?), literally just bookmark it, any html5 video player, and of course, block ads (which most browsers seem to be moving to do by default). These are all either offered by the browser by default, or will be (though firefox seems more interested in adblocking than chrome right now).

Obviously they may not do it the same, but as someone who is suggesting addons offer a lot of power, the writer is not actually _using_ most of that power. I kind of agree with browser developers that more often than not, extensions just offer a new vector for malware and no one really understands what power they have so they make bad choices.

</comment><comment><USER18> Shameless self-promo – I built Refined Twitter Lite which customizes the new Twitter introducing features like Single Column layout.

I primarily built it for myself but maybe some of you folks might find it useful too [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/refined-twitter- li...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/refined-twitter- lite/adhbafkkfbonbogdlaebnoegpoogngcc?hl=en)

It is open source of course [https://github.com/giuseppeg/refined-twitter- lite](https://github.com/giuseppeg/refined-twitter-lite)

</comment><comment><USER33> We won an internal hackathon by writing the API and no front end, using a browser extension instead to manifest the client on the third-party page we couldn't get API access to in time. It sure was easy to write.

</comment><comment><USER34> I was involved into developing a simple app for WebExtension. Not gonna lie, the experience is awful, for example, no IPC support, being way too complicated in terms of API design and that really hateful manifest schema file which echoes the horror of Android API permission XML. I give up at some point, but I could provide the source code if I could get a chance to recover my files.

<comment><USER34> well no it indeed had IPC with WebWorkers, however it is also very difficult to work with: data sharing between scripts is a complete clusterfuck. I had found my code, it is written in Vue/Vuex and I will attempt to convert it to using nuxt and upload it github maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> We recently launched a browser extension ([https://www.getnobias.com/](https://www.getnobias.com/)) and have been happy with the use cases we've been able to build around existing websites. Much easier than convincing news publishers to integrate our products directly into their websites. Users get to choose their experience.

</comment><comment><USER36> here's a shameless link to my small batch of extensions, hopefully some find useful. all open source of course!

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/user/13170802](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/user/13170802)

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone with a foot/feet in pentesting/appsec feel that there could be a good omni extension that encompasses cookie editing, header editing, local storage, proxy toggle, and has other potential features?

</comment><comment><USER38> I love that extensions turn the idea of browser differences into a strength.

It's a reminder that the websites you make don't just go into a black box, they have to co-exist with individual user preferences/needs.

</comment><comment><USER39> Sometimes popular abandoned browser extensions get bought up by malicious actors that inject malware into your browser without you ever knowing because extensions get automatically updated.

<comment><USER40> That's why you uncheck "update add-ons automatiocally' in the add-on manager.

<comment><USER39> Standard users would have no idea they can do that or even bother. Extensions are risky additions to the browser because it's 3rd party code that can read your web pages and local storage values.

<comment><USER40> Yes, but I didn't talk about standard users.

Also, most of my extensions are not 3rd party code and I want them to have full access.

For the rest I update them once in a while and go check

        ~/.mozilla/**/*.xpi

for changes with something like this.

        find -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d ! -name .git -print0 | xargs -0r rm -rf

        for f in ../extensions/*.xpi ; do
                unzip "$f" -d "$(basename "${f%.xpi}")"
        done

        git add -Af .
        git commit -m "Changes"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I would really like a browser which attempted to be extensible the way emacs is. No modern browser appears committed to extensibility as a key feature / differentiator.

<comment><USER42> You mean like Next[1]?

[1] [https://github.com/atlas-engineer/next](https://github.com/atlas- engineer/next)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Check out some kickass WebExtensions by Nodetics: [https://nodetics.com](https://nodetics.com)

</comment><comment><USER44> I would say that maybe they are underused or not well known by the general public, but not underrated.

</comment><comment><USER45> Hacking extensions are underrated, your browser software is unbrowseable.

</comment><comment><USER46> I haven't cared since XUL died, and I don't imagined I will. New extensions are just webpages.

I can already make webpages.</comment>


How Powerful Are Microsoft Azure's Free Jupyter Notebooks? - <AUTHOR> http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=6351 <comment><USER2> Nice to see this on HN! For folks that don't know what this is... it's a free hosted Jupyter service, provided as a "thank you" to the Python, Jupyter, and general OSS community by the Microsoft Python team.

Regarding the perf #'s - just a heads up that you were probably on that VM all by yourself :). Though once enough people sign in or cpu threshold gets to a certain level, new VMs are allocated.

PS On a related note, we are wrapping up at PyCon in Portland, and one of the hit swags was the "Jupyter Notebook Notebook" :). See pics here:

[https://goo.gl/photos/L9C4fq6AsPxU7bfq5](https://goo.gl/photos/L9C4fq6AsPxU7bfq5)

/disclaimer: team lead/

<comment><USER3> The benchmark here was probably calling into Intel's MKL, which automatically determines the number of cores to use based on matrix size and CPU type.

How well does it behave when you've multiple VMs running on the same hardware?

Also, is it possible to setup prebuilt environments on your platform?

<comment><USER2> Hi -

* It's possible - Anaconda comes with an MKL enhanced version of its math libs.

* There are multiple VMs, and each VMs hold multiple docker containers, one for each Library/user (library == collection of notebooks)

* Right now, no, but we are working on it. You can have a "prep" notebook where it readies your environment with !pip, !wget, ... etc. and then actual work notebooks. We'll soon have an initial "install.sh" that will be run upon start to run any prep steps you might have.

thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sort of off-topic, but for me Jupyter is 90% of the way there to dominating my data analysis / ML work-flow, but that last 10% kills it for me:

\- Weird behavior when disconnecting / reconnecting to sessions, especially from multiple computers.

\- Tendency to flake out on long running jobs, i.e. 2 hours of the way through a 4 hour algorithm something dies and I have to restart or run from terminal.

Unfortunately this relegates it to exploratory viz for me, but maybe that's the intended use case anyway. But when I've wanted to build semi-persistent dashboards or check in on running jobs I've had better luck with ssh+screen and then dumping pdfs of results with matplotlib to files that I serve from a webserver with a little auto-refresh javascript wrapper.

<comment><USER3> What versions are you running? Jupyter or at least its predecessor IPython notebook have always been rock solid for me, running for days and days.

That said, I always made sure to save before disconnect and refresh on reconnect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jupyter Notebooks are great since you can have put your experimental data and share it in an interactive format. They have the potential of becoming the de facto standard for scientific collaboration.

But what if you add a library where you can only load data from Azure ML Studio? then you cannot share your notebook anymore. Your notebook got tainted with proprietary stuff from a specific vendor...

Science is about being able to universally reproduce experiments, and vendor lock-in prevents that. We already have enough problems in scientific publishing with journals.

So if you like Jupyter, and you want it to become the standard science needs, avoid proprietary extensions. Let's not go back to share stuff in paper or its modern equivalent, PDFs.

<comment><USER2> Your concern is valid. One easy way to avoid depending on a particular cloud's APIs is to either wrap them with your own, or just grab data from other neutral locations, such as github using !wget, requests, etc. There are pluses/minuses to each approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can actually run shell commands with '!' in the ipython notebooks on Azure and do a dmesg or lscpu.

<comment><USER2> Also, click on the Jupyter logo, then Select New, then Terminal, and you get a full bash prompt into your instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how Microsoft treats the GPL3 licensing of ZeroMQ (used by Jupyter for client-server communication)?

In my workplace, Jupyter needs special approval and can only be installed in limited environments because the company is afraid some developer will inadvertently do something that contaminates our code with GPL3.

<comment><USER8> Why would the GPL apply to works created with Jupyter? I understand if you're redistributing a commercial version of it, but using it would be akin to using GCC no?

<comment><USER7> My understanding is that works created with Jupyter wouldn't have a problem, but that the admins are just trying to minimize the footprint of GPL 3 libraries on our systems. It seems pretty knee-jerk to me, but then I'm not an expert.

<comment><USER9> In a technical audit during acquisition, for example, any use of GPL warrants extra scrutiny. Even when you're complying it is an extra bunch of work, often with lawyers reviewing, so many people would rather avoid that if possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fBwfhmg...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fBwfhmgfm- EJ:www.walkingrandomly.com/%3Fp%3D6351+&cd=1&hl=da&ct=clnk&gl=dk)

<comment><USER11> Thanks! Figured there was too much traffic when the main link was unavailable a few min earlier. Was wondering whether it was a direct view of a notebook like via nbviewer (in which case, would be ironic.)</comment></comment>


Boeing to build XS-1 spaceplane, designed for 10 launches in 10 days - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/36985-darpa-xs-1-spaceplane-boeing-phantom-express.html <comment><USER2> Am I too cynical for immediately thinking: a) this is a byproduct of SpaceX's successes lighting a fire under establishment aerospace corporations and b) we're more likely to see 1 launch in 20 days when fully implemented?

<comment><AUTHOR> People on HN, maybe not you, love Musk. He accomplishes a lot in tech but must he get credit for everything, even the things others do? Boeing has a long track record of major technological innovation and development. They also build the X-37, which seems much more similar to the XS=1 than SpaceX's systems.</comment></comment>


Again, What Were the Benefits of Locking Down? – AIER - <AUTHOR> https://www.aier.org/article/again-what-were-the-benefits-of-locking-down/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: A handful of rather rural states did no or limited lockdown, and their economies are better off and there were fewer deaths. So therefor the lockdowns made things worse rather than better.

This piece is high on speculation. It uses 8 rather rural states, 3 of did have some level of lockdown, to speculate what would have happened in more densely populated states if they had not done a lockdown.

It really takes 3 variables (govenor lockdown, unemployment, deaths), and tries to draw some outsized conclusions.

As a counter point, that data also shows that Nebraska (no lockdown) had similar unemployment but 50% higher death rates than very similar neighbor Kansas.</comment>


Seth Godin: You might as well quit if you are going to be average - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/seth-godin-if-youre-going-to-be-average-you-might-as-well-quit-2012-9

<comment><USER2> What exactly is tangible about this advice? The only thing tangible about it is that everyone is going to be trying to analyze everyone else to see if the fit into the mystical buckets of A players versus B players.

Seth Godin sometimes has interesting insights but this type of stuff is just selling self help advice that leads to nowhere. Just do what your interested in and think your good at - stop trying to put yourself and others into meaningless buckets, people are people, not A vs Bs.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's it, by definition, impossible for everybody to be above average? Wouldn't that just constitute the new average?

<comment><USER4> The title is poorly worded. The actual statement is along the lines of "if you are settling for average, it is a sign to move on". Being average is the problem, not striving to be better is.

<comment><USER5> Right, if you are devoting time being average and not growing at X when you can be grow and be extraordinary at Y, it's time to move from X to Y.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> " 'Never Quit.' What a spectacularly bad piece of advice. I think the advice giver meant to say 'Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can't deal with the stress of the moment'. Now that's good advice."

That's fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER7> Effin middle class. What a waste of oxygen.</comment>


A year ago, We picked up, tracked, and analyzed 130k pieces of litter in SF - <AUTHOR> A year later, that worked helped get a trash can on nearly every intersection of SoMa West.
Link to my post from Sept 18th, 2019. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008760
Link to medium about the Big Belly's that got installed and how we maintain them.
https://medium.com/rubbish-love/rubbish-launches-touch-less-cleanup-platform-in-soma-west-d7d7af6c60df <comment></comment>


How to teach my 8 years old son programming - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I would like to introduce my son to programming. He keeps asking me what I do at work and when I started talking he was very interested.
Are there any programming tools, languages etc that would help me to introduce him to programming. I am talking about simple stuff like program robot to walk couple of steps, turn right, pick up box walk, turn left, drop the box. You get the picture.
Thanks a lot,
T. <comment><USER2> <http://pythonturtle.org/>

Make a little turtle icon move in any direction you choose!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great! I like Python. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Games Factory

[http://www.clickteam.com/website/usa/the-games- factory-2.htm...](http://www.clickteam.com/website/usa/the-games- factory-2.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps Lego Mindstorms? I've never used it, but from what I know of it, it seems to fit the use case you have in mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> Try Scratch, it's made by MIT aimed specifically at kids. The "Language" is visual, but it is turing complete.

</comment><comment><USER6> trusko,

i think a graphical programming 'language' would be best for introducing the core concepts without getting bogged down by syntax.

have you found something yet? i'm interested to know.

-p</comment>


Why Doesn't Medical Care Get Better When Doctors Rest More? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/08/hospital-residency-hour-limits-problem-with-medical-care.html

<comment><USER2> Many things right familiar to our IT experience.

1\. From the Mythical Man-Month, as team size (and capacity of productive work) grows linearly, communication overhead grows quadratically.

2\. Attempts to manage with traditional tools get sidetracked by impossibility to create standard procedures that account for overwhelming detail and the need to apply experience, knowledge and raw common sense on every level of decision.

3\. Do we have some insights to offer? Maybe instead of having lone residents falling in and out of context over short shift, a solution similar to pair programming can be implemented. Think of pairs of residents, the fresh one (less than 6 hours in the shift) doing the driving and the one with more hours behind providing tactic advise and context for what have happened in the previous shift. Could such a team eventually take care of (at least) 80% the work load of the two doctors working independently in parallel?</comment>


France to create $9 billion of wealth by designating new Champagne-producing land - <AUTHOR> http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/26/style/26champagne.php

<comment><USER2> This is not wealth per se...just a fancy way of tricking rich people into giving away their money. How much better will my life get if I get 5000$ of heated water or gasoline, versus 5000$ of "C"hampagne?

I wish the best of luck to these winemakers. But let's keep down our illusions that they will make the world a $9 billion better place to live. Hell, they even intend to make the same wine, except with a capital C on the label. How much of an improvement is that?

<comment><AUTHOR> The wealth is in the increased value of the land which becomes as much as 200 times more productive with the new designation.</comment></comment>


JFK Solomon Swims Survivors - <AUTHOR> http://www.orwelltoday.com/jfkptkumonarescue.shtml

<comment><USER2> The whole site has a "Planet Earth about to recycled. Your only chance, leave with us!" culty feel to it. I quit after the third paragraph... "godcidental?" Is that something people actually say?</comment>


Why We Sleep, and Why We Often Can't - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/why-we-sleep-and-why-we-often-cant <comment><USER3> If you don't have, or don't think you have, a concrete reason for your insomnia then try this.

When you yawn or feel drained go to bed, take a nap, or find a quiet toilet cubicle and close your eyes for ten minutes. Don't ignore your body.

If your at home and have the option to sleep what I find works for me is lying flat on my back. Then relax, in sequence, your forehead, shoulders, upper arms, lower arms, fingers, chest, stomach, groin, upper legs, lower legs, toes. Take around 1 minute to relax your whole body. If you can't relax something tense it up, then release it.

Once your fully relaxed close your eyes and clear your thoughts. What works for me is trying to focus on a spot in the dark directly in front of me. As your mind wanders pull it back to focusing on the spot in the dark. Sometimes I need to repeatedly relax my forehead and eyes while doing this, just let your eye sockets go limp.

Occasionally when you are pulling yourself back from your thoughts to focusing on that spot in the dark it can be jarring. Just keep trying. Eventually I fall asleep.

I've noticed recently that this is meditation, except without the sleep part.

<comment><USER4> I've tried so many things to go sleep

\- warm milk

\- meditation

\- room for sleep only

\- go to bed only when sleepy( I am not sleepy anymore once i get into bed)

\- melatonin

\- counting sheep

\- sleep sounds, sleep talking youtube videos

\- ambien ( sigh)

\- clean sheets

\- low room temperature

\- body pillows, weighted blankets

\- daily excersise / yoga

\- Ice cold showers/ hot showers / no shower

\- no food after 8 pm, no coffee after 12 pm

\- no alarms/alarms

\- no screens

None of these had any consistent results, you simply cannot "trick" your brain. Then I observed my (then new) girlfriend how she would fall asleep in < 2 mins. I realised I had strained relationship with sleep at some point in my life and never corrected that relationship. My problems started when I was teenager in residential school where you had to wake up at 5 am.

My girlfriend associated sleep with cozy, warm, relaxing happy space,I associated it with stressful battle. I've had good success trying to mend my relationship with sleep. Ironically the thing that worked the best for me is 'sleep restriction', sleeping less and less everyday till my brain associated sleep with something it needs to chill, not something foisted on it by a strict schedule.

<comment><USER5> I tried a mostly similar list, with little success. I've since found some success (not perfect, but much better), so if you are still willing to experiment ...

\- 10,000 IU of Vitamin D3 before 10am

\- 400-1000 daily milligrams of Magnesium chelate (or magnesium citrate, if you are ok with liquid stool for a while until you adapt)

\- Make sure you have sufficient protein in your diet - rule of thumb is 1gr protein for 1kg of body weight (or 0.5gr per 1lb). That's often more than non- athletes are getting.

Do your own research about D3 and Mg - both are way above the RDA, and some people will tell you that D3 in this amount is bad for you (and they'd be wrong unless you spend all day in the sun, but don't trust me on that - <USER2> your own research)

I still have the occasional 3-4 day streak of unable-to-fall-a-sleep a month, but this combination has reduced it from 25-30 days a month ...

<comment><USER6> I think you might have scrambled up your protein recommendation of 0.5/g/lb. The RDA for protein is 0.8g/kg of body weight. Maybe you meant 1g/lb?

[https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-much-protein-do- you-...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-much-protein-do-you-need- every-day-201506188096)

<comment><USER5> A 100kg person (so 220lb) would require 80gr protein with this RDA; so 1gr/lb would be 3 times RDA (whereas 0.5g would be 110g protein so only 1.4 RDA)

The 1g/kg is easy to remember, as is 0.5g/lb ; they are 120-140% of recommended for a sedantry lifestyle, but only 60-80% of what's recommended for an athlete - so I use them as an easy to remember back-of-the-envelope numbers.

RDA is much less precise and scientific than one would think; it basically means "we know there are no serious defincies or overdoses if you keep this forever" - but they are not optimized for anything else; e.g. higher dose vitamin C was shown to shorten common cold recovery, and higher dose vitamin D with generally better everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> New Yorker has wised up to content blockers, and appears to be postfixing their class IDs with random gibberish. This is a common trend; I can't say I'm terribly surprised by it.

Fortunately their _prefixes_ are relatively sane, and CSS supports wildcard matches. I like to block the sidebars on article sites like these because they usually contain the bulk of the distracting content, and this rule works wonderfully:

      www.newyorker.com##div[class*=ArticlePageSidebar]

Just thought I'd share.

<comment><USER8> I'm out if touch with HTML & CSS, and I use something like umatrix instead of an ad blocker so I'm curious...

How is it that the entire web isn't already obfuscated to make this as thorny as possible? If we're passing our JS through minifiers, why aren't we doing similar to HTML such that element IDs are randomized/hashed every time the page is generated?

<comment><USER9> It's been happening for a while, but it makes it harder for developers to debug their sites. We'll see full minification of css soon, but of course we'll probably also see machine learning systems for blocking ads, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Man, this article really set me up for disappointment.

> It is a beguiling idea, that one might transform one's sleep, and the rest > of one's life, with a few virtuous acts of renunciation—no electronics in > the bedroom, no coffee after 2 P.M.—and a few dreamy self-care rituals > involving baths and tea.

Okay, great. I'm ready to cut through the bullshit. Let's go.

> Aristotle called sleep "a privation of waking," and a simultaneous longing > for and resistance to that privation seems to lie at the heart of insomnia's > torment.

Oh.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. That was a terrible article. With a headline like "why we sleep and why we often can't" I thought it would be about why we sleep and why we often can't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have seen many doctors, including sleep specialists, regarding insomnia. They all pointed to one source as the reason for the sleep issues: stress. And they all wanted to put me on prescription sleeping pills. I said no to that. Sleeping pills are addictive and you have to take them for the rest of your life. As a software engineer, I am used to finding and fixing the underlying problem as opposed to the quickfixes these doctors were offering me.

After much research I figured out the underlying problem, and the fix for it. The underlying problem is magnesium deficiency. As a software developer I am using my brain more intensely than most people. This is the stress the doctors are talking about. Stress depletes magnesium. The cells in our body depend on two essential minerals for normal function: Calcium and magnesium. Cells go into ON state when calcium goes in, and OFF state when calcium goes out. Calcium doesn't go out on its own: magnesium has to go in and displace the calcium. When you are low on magnesium, cells can't go into OFF state. When that happens your muscles become stiff and you need massages, and your brain can't turn off and you can't sleep. The solution is magnesium supplements. This fixed my muscle stiffness issues and my sleep issues. A special compound of magnesium called magnesium l-threonate is especially helpful for sleep because it can penetrate the "blood brain barrier".

Scientific sources for this are hard to come by. I had to piece together all this from multiple sources. Here are some: [https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of- nutrition...](https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of- nutrition/magnificent-magnesium/) [http://www.drsinatra.com/benefits-of- magnesium-supplements-f...](http://www.drsinatra.com/benefits-of-magnesium- supplements-for-heart-health/) [http://paleoforwomen.com/soul-crushing-stress- and-the-miracl...](http://paleoforwomen.com/soul-crushing-stress-and-the- miracle-of-magnesium/)

<comment><USER13> I feel like this could easily be read as "software engineer finds placebo sleeping pills".

You very well could be right, but those sources are not scientific. If you want to show me that magnesium helps people sleep, show me a PubMed article on the subject.

<comment><USER12> "Supplementation of 500 mg of Mg has been associated with significant improvement in the insomnia severity index, sleep time, sleep efficiency, sleep onset latency, serum cortisol concentration, serum renin, and melatonin" [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637834/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637834/)

More: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23853635](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23853635) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8232845](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8232845)

<comment><USER14> I'll pit my anecdata against your anecdata: Magnesium supplementation didn't do anything for my insomnia. I used the magnesium glycinate formulation from reputable brands at appropriate dosages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've always said to insomniacs that they should read textbooks. They'll either end up geniuses or fall asleep like the rest of us.

Is it making light of what's probably a very serious issue, I suppose so.

This article makes me very glad that I can fall asleep easy at night. Just another thing to be thankful for. The few nights I can't fall asleep quickly are torture, I cannot imagine what it must be like for someone to suffer through that frequently.

<comment><USER16> > I've always said to insomniacs that they should read textbooks.

I'm not a good sleeper and quite like reading. If I'm in a state where I'm very tired but also having trouble getting off to sleep then I'm generally too tired to read. I may be able to manage a paragraph or two before my eyes start to lose focus but that's it.

I'm not wide awake and fully functioning, I'm lying there tired but unable to get off to sleep - these are quite different states.

The best thing I can do is to close my eyes and build 3D models in my head and fly around them. That sometimes helps, I think it concentrates the mind.

<comment><USER17> I've started doing that whenever I have trouble sleeping. I start with a random world, set it to orbit, then make another world, have it orbit the first world, then add a third. I let them all orbit eachother.

<comment><USER18> That's super cute!

Do people who do this 3D modelling in their mind thing do a lot of visual things regularly? I would find it difficult to start doing that without being distracted by the million thoughts after 10 minutes.

<comment><USER17> Well, I'm not sure. I used to do a lot of drawing when I was a kid, but now I do more programming and teaching.

I think the exercise is really just to distract me from thinking "go to sleep go to sleep" over and over lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had medication-induced insomnia a few years ago due to some drugs I was on for another condition. It was horrible, I was so tired but wide awake and couldn't fall asleep. I would go multiple nights with zero sleep and my mind wouldn't function. I wouldn't even get close to sleeping. The doctors had to give me antipsychotics to get me to sleep since I wouldn't even react to sleeping pills.

I did learn a lot about myself and I now have amazing sleep hygiene. I don't do math or programming before bed but I will read books on the topics. Anything that makes me think too hard is gone. I've actually shifted my sleep routine to 8pm-4am so I can wake early and do programming.

<comment><USER20> Prescription amphetamines ?

<comment><USER19> Anti depressants

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you are having trouble sleeping or want to improve your sleep, a sleep monitor may help your situation. While a 6-lead EEG that you would wear during a sleep study is the most accurate way to determine your quality and quantity of sleep, consumer-grade sleep trackers are accurate enough to give you ballpark numbers on your sleep.

You can start with a Fitbit (Apple Watch battery isn't robust enough for monitoring all night). The best is to use a non-wearable sleep tracker so that you do not have to wear or remember to do anything.

[https://amp.businessinsider.com/best-sleep- tracker](https://amp.businessinsider.com/best-sleep-tracker)

[https://www.nosleeplessnights.com/best-sleep- tracker/](https://www.nosleeplessnights.com/best-sleep-tracker/)

I found that adjusting the thermostat down 5 degrees Fahrenheit at night helps from waking up in the middle of the night.

Also, if you want 8 hours of sleep, it means you need to be in bed for about 9 hours.

<comment><USER22> I haven't been able to find whether the recommended 7-9 hours per night refers to the time in bed or to actual sleep time (~1 hour less). Does anyone know?

<comment><USER23> I've wondered the same thing. I assume it means time in bed, otherwise the recommendation would need a disclaimer about sleep efficiency and time in bed vs actual sleep. Some people are able to get by with around 6 hours of sleep, I've assumed these people have higher sleep efficiency while the 8 hour recommendation is for people with around 85% efficiency.

<comment><USER24> If it meant "time in bed", _then_ they'd need the disclaimer about "efficiency". Someone who takes an hour to fall asleep would be "inefficient" and need more time in bed, but they wouldn't actually need more sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A little while ago I read that various historical records indicated that we would naturally sleep in two sessions overnight. This was changed by a combination of artificial light and also the industrial revolution giving us more regimented working hours.

"The myth of the eight-hour sleep" at [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783) is an interesting starting point.

<comment><USER25> That's disputed by Matthew Walker in Why We Sleep.

He writes that biphasic sleep was a cultural phenomenon with no basis in sleep science, and that only one Western society ever really practiced it, whereas e.g. "primitive tribes" all have one uninterrupted phase of sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I found CBT for sleep helped my insomnia. A good book on this is called Goodnight Mind. I also read Matthew Walkers book while I was going through insomnia as well, and I can say this book is likely to make your insomnia worse. Half of it is just telling you all the ways in which you're killing yourself by not sleeping. Not a great thing to read when you can't sleep.

<comment><USER27> I can second that. Got worse when I started reading it. I'm guessing it's aimed at people who can sleep but don't think it's important. I secretly despise those people. It's sort of like they're being perfectly healthy but choose to smoke while I'm forced to work in a dusty coal mine. I know it shouldn't bother me but it does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Timely article, after listening to 4 hours of constant firecrackers in the neighborhood from 10pm-2am, I did not fall asleep until 6AM; thankfully today is not a workday. At least once a month, and in the past year more like once or twice a week, I can't fall asleep until right before I have to get up. Yet other nights I do exactly the same things and sleep 7 hours or so.

When my body is in the no sleep mode (which I presume is an excess of cortisol) no matter what I take nothing will put me to sleep until that wears off. Working in a high stress environment writing code and managing a team in something with CEO level visibility (in a big company) I am sure its stress related. I can see why Michael Jackson went to ridiculous extremes trying to sleep (and paradoxically not actually sleeping). It's a miserable experience to trying to function one hour of sleep and do anything complex.

<comment><USER29> Something you can try: exercise. Really. Get tired. It may work for you too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is how I fixed my insomnia. I changed three things:

1\. Before going to bed I meditate (I usually listen to the app from Sam Harris)

2\. No more caffeine after 11 in the morning

3\. Strict "bed hygiene", meaning: when I go to bed I immediately switch off the lights and sleep. I do nothing else. Also, I try to always sleep around the same time, even on weekends.

I believe 3) has made the biggest difference. I used to read and even sometimes watch movies in bed. I miss reading in bed but since I stopped doing that and only focus on sleeping I have never had problems to fall asleep anymore, despite going through some stressful times.

I do sometimes still wake up during the night, but since I sleep well before I can handle those days pretty well. My life has changed a lot for the better, one of the best things I have done recently

</comment><comment><USER31> Try the Navy Seal technique to sleep quickly. Has helped me.

</comment><comment><USER32> .

<comment><USER33> I understand your frustration but this isn't a place to vent out profusely. If you have nothing to add to the discussion, please refrain. Hope it gets sorted out for you.

<comment><USER32> Okay, sorry.

<comment><USER33> Thank you</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it time to say goodbye to the startup world? - <AUTHOR>

There has been a lot of threads* with people becoming disillusioned with the startup world.
A prominent startup figure has mentioned that there is a lot of posturing, positioning in the recruiting process.  Great people just want to work with one another, but, I'm finding the interview process more and more stifled and ridiculous compared to 9 years ago - when I first started working with startups - and even 3 years ago.
I just want to work with one GREAT company for 30-40 years and am starting to think such a company only exists in more traditional sectors (hospitality etc).
Has anyone here ended their career in high tech and not looked back? (You probably wouldn't be on HN if you didn't look back :-P)
EG.,https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8177259 There's no search function for me to pull up threads with the title "programmers becoming disillusioned", there was a bunch of them.
* Edit: To think of it, is this just with SF Bay startups?  I interviewed with about 15 startups, and they are noticably more fickle than East Coast startups. <comment><USER2> _Edit: To think of it, is this just with SF Bay startups?_

It's just a guess, but I'd say there's a good chance of that. I mean, I'm on the East Coast, and from what I read on here about SF / Bay startups, I get the feeling that a lot of things here are less competitive, less hyberbolic, more relaxed, etc.

Which is ironic in a sense I guess, since traditionally it was the West Coast were people were considered more chill, laid back, etc. But in terms of the startup scene, I feel like that may be a bit backwards. It's hard to say though.

</comment><comment><USER3> What I've found is that startups have impossibly high standards during a physical "interview" process, out of fear. It's like their lack of management skills make them unable to decide unless someone is clearly a 1% hire.

</comment><comment><USER4> "I just want to work with one GREAT company for 30-40 years..." \- and yet you are applying to companies, 90% of which are likely to fail?</comment>


VengeCycle –  a GPS-activated explosive hidden in your handlebars - <AUTHOR> http://vengecycle.com

<comment><USER2> Great!

When this idea fails to market you can pivot quite easily into the explosive nun-chuck market, but everyone knows that that's the easy way out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clearly a joke.</comment>


BSA IT industry rankings: The countries catching up to the U.S. are not the usual suspects - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/09/16/bsa-other-countries-it-industries-catching-us

<comment><USER2> This just in: auto industry claims that manufacturing is at the heart of US industry. Chemical industry claims that materials science is at the heart of US industry. And so on. This is a lobbying group we're talking about; remember that.</comment>


A tale of two decompilers - <AUTHOR> The last 3 years or so I've been working on a decompiler, and it is like a compiler in complexity, engineering, and testing. But different.<p>In https://github.com/rocky/python-uncompyle6/wiki/pycdc-compared-with-uncompyle6 I compare two Python decompilers which I submit for your review. Of course, since I am working on one, I am not impartial. So I rely on others here to set the story straight. <comment><USER2> Try submitting again the URL without text. "self" submission have penalty here, so it's more difficult that they get traction.

If you wish, after submitting you can add a comment like "Author here. I have been working in this for 3 years. I'm happy to answer any question."

(Also, in the text I prefer when there are 3 or 4 subtitles that split the text in the main parts.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not sure I understand the part about the text in 3 or 4 subtitles. You mean section headings on the wiki page, right?

If that's what you meant that is done now. Yes, I think that helps.

<comment><USER2> Yes, section heading or something like that, like the ones you added.</comment></comment></comment>