Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-28/microsoft-says-companies-are-no-longer-comfortable-storing-data/10946494 <comment><USER2> I have migrated to Australia many years ago and I have recently become eligible to become a citizen. However I've heard stories of tech companies refusing to hire Australians because of the AA Bill, so I'm holding it off for now. The problem seems to be the provision that a tech worker can be coerced by the Australian Government into creating a backdoor, and they are not authorised to disclose it to their employer. I don't want to hurt my future employability. On the one hand, if I had my citizenship then I could vote at the next elections, but on the other hand the AA Bill has been supported by all major Australian parties so I feel powerless.

<comment><USER3> Is this true ? There is no way I am hiring an Australian citizen then.

<comment><USER2> "For example, Australia's law enforcement could compel Apple to provide access to a customer's iPhone and all communications made on it without the user's awareness or consent. An engineer involved would, in theory, be unable to tell their boss about this, or risk a jail sentence."

Source: Sydney Morning Herald [https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer- affairs/dangerous-o...](https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer- affairs/dangerous-overreach-on-encryption-leaves-backdoor-open-for- criminals-20181214-p50mak.html)

That would be a 5-year jail sentence apparently:

"The Australian government could demand web developers to deliver spyware and software developers to push malicious updates, all under the cloak of "national security." The penalty for speaking about these government orders—which are called technical assistance requests (TAR), technical assistance notices (TAN), and technical capability notices (TCN)—is five years in prison."

Source: EFF [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/australian- government-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/australian-government- ignores-experts-advancing-its-anti-encryption-bill)

<comment><USER4> So developer discusses with his boss. Developer A adds back door. Developer B then patches back door. Boss fires developer A. Developer A then uses this TAR crap to sue government for forcing him to do something and lose his job.

I can't see the government being able to defend itself. We elect the government to serve the people and the decisions of the government are negatively impacting the people no matter which way you spin it.

My 2cents.

<comment><USER5> 'developer discusses with his boss' => that's 5 years prison right there, not joking

It's 5 for not doing it and 5 for telling anyone, 10 for both

<comment><USER6> Assuming it could be proven, surely?

And there have to be limitations as to how far an individual could go as to subterfuge, so if your company enforces a 2-person code review and there aren't other authorized Australian nationals at hand, you could point at process preventing you from doing so without others' knowledge (how naive this defense is, I have no idea)

<comment><USER7> You opt into participating that process by accepting the job, though. So from Australia's perspective, the way to comply with their law is to not take such jobs, and to leave if the process changes prevent you from complying.

<comment><USER8> I think you're inventing scenarios here that are too unlikely even for a pretty corrupt country. There probably exist laws in a number of countries which would technically jail you for taking some not-explicitly-illegal job. But this is absurd. Unless you're an actual lawyer giving opinion here?

<comment><USER9> I think if you trust people to not be corrupt you will wind up with corruption. A bad law is one that requires the empowered to not abuse it. A good law can't be abused. Harsh and cynical but true - reducto ad absurdum giving someone the legal power to murder anyone and relying on it to "not be abused" is a law literally bad enough to be causus beli for a civil war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's one of the biggest things that lawmakers here couldn't seem to understand - tech companies have high mobility across borders. Even if a law has no teeth, why would Microsoft store data in Australia when the next country over can still serve data for the region? It just creates too much risk, from a privacy and PR standpoint. Startups will be more adverse to founding in Australia as well. It just creates a black mark on their record from the start. These data laws were very poorly planned by the Australian Government.

<comment><USER11> I think that "high mobility across borders" is an assumption based on existing trade regulations. From recent developments it's clear countries can and do force companies to do things they don't want, and companies will do it because they can't or won't lose access to consumers in those markets.

For example, Apple has begun storing Russian user data in Russia in compliance with Russian data storage laws ([https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/01/apple- will-reportedly-sto...](https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/01/apple-will- reportedly-store-russian-user-data-locally-possibly-decrypt-on-request/)), and Google is still working on its censored search engine in China.

Of course, if nobody else does this, this means you may have older software on your systems or less priority in development roadmaps or whatever as your country is an edge case, and you can probably say goodbye to market leadership and have to coast on your existing advantages. However, if _everybody_ begins to cartelize the Internet, you may not lose as much in comparison to everybody else, since you will no longer be the edge case but the common case, and it will be a bad time to start a company or store data anywhere you go at any time. Companies will simply have to live with the geopolitical reality. In this sense, the Internet devolves into a suboptimal Nash equilibrium, where everybody has data localization laws and nobody will want to loosen up because storing your citizen's information on servers in another country will leave your citizens vulnerable. If this happens, the large homogeneous markets with a single language, government, and economy (U.S/China) may have an advantage.

This is sad, and I hope they reverse this law. An open Internet is good for economic and societal dynamism (and as a civilization is tautological to organized chaos, slowing that down weakens said civilization), and I wouldn't know how to work backwards to where the Internet should be. In the meantime, maybe this will lift some open source, decentralized communications means past some threshold of viability.

<comment><USER12> The Trump Administration also passed a law that affects companies that store data overseas so that they can get that data, after big companies fought such subpoenas.

<comment><USER13> The case[0] started on Obama watch though.

What happens now is that after many appeals it goes to the supreme court.

[0] - [https://mashable.com/2014/06/12/microsoft-u-s-government- dat...](https://mashable.com/2014/06/12/microsoft-u-s-government-data-foreign- servers/#qYJesfHDogqd)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ironically OpenSSL started in AU because the crypto (export) laws of the US were too stringent:

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

Now it's the opposite?

<comment><USER15> Encryption isn't illegal due to the bill. In fact encryption law itself hasn't changed. The bill gives the government the ability to compel someone to circumvent encryption (backdoors, spyware etc.) if technically feasible while acting to service a warrant.

It is much worse than banning encryption as it is silent subterfuge and forcing the hand of citizens who would otherwise just be going about their day.

Laws should be able to stop people from doing certain things but forcing people to do something they had no business doing in the first place is insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The three areas of contention in the bill:

> A technical assistance request (TAR): Police ask a company to "voluntarily" > help, such as give technical details about the development of a new online > service.

> A technical assistance notice (TAN): A company is required to give > assistance. For example, if they can decrypt a specific communication, they > must or face fines.

> A technical capability notice (TCN): The company must build a new function > to help police get at a suspect's data, or face fines.

This approach is ripe for abuse. Even if a company is served with a TAN and "can't technically decrypt" then a TCN can force them to downgrade/backdoor the platform security to comply. The TAR seems token at best.

<comment><USER17> Thought experiment: Company gets served with a TCN. They task Jolene (Snr Programmer) to implement the backdoor. She does so in a way that spews information far and wide in a highly visible manner. What are the consequences for Jolene and/or the company, especially when the spooks cry foul and Jolene's lawyer/Company replies with something along the lines of "I guess she's just incompetent and did a bad job. Sorry. But we did comply with your TCN."

Does this law actually address such a scenario?

<comment><USER18> Jolene and some people from the company go to jail for exposing the Gestapo overreach.

The govt talks about being tough on baddies, coal keeps being sold, there's no pedophiles in my house and wow, it's Sunday so lets all watch the footy!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's incredible to watch the degree to which intelligence wants and needs are dictating the coming regulatory environment of internet & tech generally.

Losing access to an information stream due to routing or encryption. Matching allies' and rivals' levels of information access (a la prism). Denying them access... From the perspective of the spooks (asio, in this case) these are equivalents to exposing a microphone in Bin Laden's proverbial cave.

Meanwhile, FB & Google's revenue streams are, at this point so big and so tightly coupled with creepy ad-tech/spyware that the economy depends on privacy intiatives failing. Narrowing down a list of FB users who are >n% likely to sign up to a new candy subscription is a lot like producing a list of >n% likely to march in charlottesville or support some specific jihad. Colaboration is inevitable.

Lets not underestimate where these roads are leading.

</comment><comment><USER20> Aussie entrepreneurs aren't too happy about this law or some of the other ones, eg. the immigration laws.

One friend (health related ml/ai) is moving from Australia to Thailand next week. He is PISSED the Aussie government wouldn't let him hire one guy who was already in the country but not a citizen. That cost 6 other domestics their job. They were sent packing last week.

He's not the first and he certainly won't be the last to move his company overseas because of the govts anti biz policies.

</comment><comment><USER21> From what I understand, Australia (and other nations) don't give their citizens explicit rights, such as to personal and property privacy.

<comment><USER22> Australians have very few constitutionally guaranteed rights (compared to countries such as the US). The Constitution only gives us the right to vote, the right to a trial by jury, and freedom of religion (and a few others). But many more rights, including extensive privacy rights, exist in statute law and elsewhere.

The main argument against adding more rights to the Constitution, is: "we don't want to end up with obsolete rights that do more harm than good, and that are virtually impossible to get rid of, like the US with its right to bear arms".

<comment><USER23> The U.S. actually goes a step further... the only rights the constitution actually spells out are the rights of government. Most encroachments have been under the guise of "interstate commerce" or "taxation" in general...

> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor > prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or > to the people.

As to the bill of rights, so long as the police are armed and can act with impunity... imho, the populace should be able to be armed. I don't personally own a firearm... I also don't spew racist rhetoric. I am a strong believer in all civil rights.

<comment><USER24> Maybe if the police in America wasn't armed to the teeth and scared of being blown away by armed populace they wouldn't act like they do. For a country who keeps guns to hold governments accountable, your government is just a unaccountable as everyone else; if not more so.

<comment><USER25> We've also been around for longer than anyone else with a modern democracy, and our goal is longevity of a sustainable relationship between the people and their government.

We have some issues in our country right now, but I have a good feeling we'll get them worked out in the next few years.

Many of our laws and rights are in place not for short term feelings about safety between people and police, but for long term safety of the people from a tyrannical government. And that tyrannical government might take hundreds of years to begin to form in a democracy... But the bill of rights and ability of the people to feel secure without their government's support, keeps the government from getting too power-hungry or separating too far from the will of the people.

<comment><USER26> > We've also been around for longer than anyone else with a modern democracy

No, we haven't. In fact, we copied it largely from the UK. (We didn't like the fact that as a colony we didn't get representation in the national legislature or the full range of rights citizens in the UK itself had, but, hey, the US does the same thing. Initially, and still partially, even to it's _capital district_.

We've got the oldest surviving written Constitution, sure, but that's a different issue.

<comment><USER27> The US has a very different system in a lot of ways. The UK doesn't have a formal constitution, its executive is subject to the legislature in a way it isn't in the US, one house, etc. The UK is a parliamentary democracy and the US is a republic. Also, the UK wasn't a democracy in any meaningful sense in 1776. The History Of Parliament Online is a very useful resource ([https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/constitue...](https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/constituencies/constituencies-1754-1790)). Out of some 6 million people in 1776 that lived in Britain, approximately 100,000 had the right to vote, most of which were in a small segment (i.e. the ability to vote was highly geographically concentrated).

<comment><USER26> > The UK doesn't have a formal constitution

The UK doesn't have a single written document that lays out the Constitution, but I wouldn't necessarily call the Constitution _informal_.

> its executive is subject to the legislature in a way it isn't

True.

> one house,

The UK still has a bicameral, not unicameral, legislature, though it now has priority in the lower house (unlike the US, which retains greater power in the undemocratic upper house, a feature it copied from the UK which has since shed it.)

> The UK is a parliamentary democracy and the US is a republic.

The UK is a representative democracy with a ceremonial monarch and the US is a representative democracy without a ceremonial monarch; the absence of a monarch is the sum total of the difference indicated by "republic".

> Also, the UK wasn't a democracy in any meaningful sense in 1776.

Neither, though, was the US in 1776, or 1789, for much the same reason: the colonies had imported and retained (in some cases added to) the kinds of restrictions on the franchise found in the UK, and kept them past the revolution and Constitution, which left decision of who could vote to the States (and, while not in the federal government, also often had even more stringent property, etc., requirements for office _holders_.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was about ready to move all my email over to Fastmail before this happened. But not now.

<comment><USER29> There was a thread I made about ProtonMail v FastMail and this one point came up at the top. However ProtonMail's inability to support standard clients without an awkward bridge app seems to take edge off it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19372882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19372882)

<comment><USER30> > ProtonMail's inability to support standard clients without an awkward bridge > app

Isn't that one of the pros of Protonmail? All the data is encrypted and decrypted on the client. There is no way to have mail apps access the data without a piece of software that handles the encryption.

<comment><USER31> Unless you only send email to yourself, the hole in that idea is that all the recipients have a copy of your email.

<comment><USER32> So I should store all my bank statements in clear text because my bank has a copy of them too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Who could have guessed that laws which turn encryption into a legal quagmire in Auatralia would make companies that do encryption things less interested in working in Australia ...

</comment><comment><USER34> Here are my thoughts on jurisdictional sovereignty, in terms of your data, and how an American company calling out Australia is the pot calling the kettle black.

[https://www.krisconstable.com/its-time-to-think-about- jurisd...](https://www.krisconstable.com/its-time-to-think-about- jurisdictional-data-sovereignty/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Hey Microsoft, please move your Data Centers to New Zealand. ;)

</comment><comment><USER36> The Australian government is increasingly becoming an abuser of human rights. I could not have left fast enough.

</comment><comment><USER37> My employer (S&P 100 sized) is rapidly deciding to move away from all Atlassian products including Jira. If enough people stop doing business with Australian tech companies, this law will likely be punted. Money talks, politicians run.

<comment><USER18> Is your employer a mining company?

If not, the Australian government doesn't care.

Sell all the things!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's ok, a lot of us Australians work for the major USA tech companies anyway.

What should be more concerning is that your govt uses our govt to spy on you.

You didn't really think it was Australia that wants your secrets did you?

</comment><comment><USER39> i'm just sitting here looking from Africa smiling... eventually you'll come to us.

</comment><comment><USER40> Beware that Indian companies can hand over your data to Indian agencies anytime without any court order[0].

[0]:[https://m.slashdot.org/story/350062](https://m.slashdot.org/story/350062)

</comment><comment><USER41> In case anyone has any questions regarding the AABill (now TOLA), please see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19508937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19508937)

</comment><comment><USER42> "Nice user network you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it, eh?"

\- Always yours, Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER43> Yeah as if the NSA/FBI doesn't have the same powers in practice in the US.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's quite sad that Australia has such a stupid law.

<comment><USER39> are you sad about any of the "stupid" (relative and subjective term) laws in the US? Would be curious to know which, if any.

<comment><USER27> What? Of course everybody has some laws they dislike that are stupid. To get a sampler, check out @crimeaday on Twitter ([https://twitter.com/CrimeADay](https://twitter.com/CrimeADay)).</comment></comment></comment>


Will Life Be Worth Living In 2,000AD? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelmatic.com.au/2000/ <comment><AUTHOR> I noticed that all the transportation predictions didn't come true, but the predictions on information systems and computers can be considered to be fairly accurately predicted. However, I suppose because they left out details like how machines will talk to each other, or how mail will be transcribed, they seem to be spot on.

Notice they didn't say anything about a worldwide network of computers, nor anything about search, nanotech, human genome, cell phones, personal devices, or genetic engineering.

</comment><comment><USER2> did you see peter norvig at the SF singularity summit last month? he discussed predictions from an early 1900s ladies home journal article. there seemed to be no pattern in what sorts of things came true.

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems fake. The typography of the article doesn't match the ads, and the ads are too concentratedly picturesque.

</comment><comment><USER4> "It's the way they think the world will live in the next century - if there's any world left!"</comment>


Cloudo - The Pretty WebOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/22/cloudo-the-pretty-webos-formerly-known-as-xindesk/

<comment><USER2> I never saw the point in a web OS. I have to have an operating system, with a browser, to get to my operating system?

With all the plugins I have in Firefox to get everything to my liking, my browser's almost an OS in it's own right, so adding in Cloudo would be some unholy trifecta of OSes.

Just... why?

</comment><comment><USER3> I never liked web sites that pretend to be your desktop. It just never is your desktop, now if they found a way to actually be your desktop when you booted your computer, it loads there site in place of your desktop. Now that would be a desktop. They would probably need to write there own browser that can access your local programs so you don't loose anything in the process.

</comment><comment><USER4> These are not operating systems in the normal sense of the word.

The web browser/server is the operating system, this is more like a window manager. But you still need the browser, which is also like a window manager. It all just doesn't really make sense.

</comment><comment><USER5> What ever happened to YouOS?</comment>


Mexico's take on the Cornish pasty - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180520-a-piece-of-britain-lost-in-mexico <comment><USER3> One of the less horrible aspects of British colonialism I guess.

Being born a Cornishman I remember my father recounting a somewhat apocryphal tale of a grockle* visiting a pub and asking for chips (fries) with his pasty. The landlord looked at him somewhat aghast and asked him if he was sure? The tourist replies that he was hungry and always has chips with his pasty back home. A little while later the landlord returns with the customers lunch. A small crowd of locals had now appeared as the customer is presented with a a standard 12 inch long pasty occupying the whole plate and a basket of chips. Very sheepishly the customer eats the pasty and eventually the chips, pays and then proceeds to very slowly walk out moaning and groaning.

* Cornish (derogatory) term for a tourist

For those wanting to know the proper Cornish recipe it is simply pastry (rough puff style typically) and declining quantities of potato (shredded), swede (also shredded) and onion (shredded again). Topped with beef (preferably skirt) and seasoned with a _little_ salt and pepper. The pastry is then folded up over the filling and crimped. In the oven for about an hour (for a proper sized pasty)

I have never sat down and worked it out but those bog old handmade pasties must be 2000 calories minimum, certainly it's a struggle to eat anything else... Perfect if you have to spend hours down a mine though.

The crimp was originally not eaten as the miners would want to avoid eating the toxic metals, but those knurls of pastry are one of my favourite things.

Such a shame most pasties sold now are tiny, over seasoned and full of rubbish meat.

<comment><USER4> _The crimp was originally not eaten as the miners would want to avoid eating the toxic metals_

Toxic metals..?

<comment><USER5> Mines are really dirty, and modern sanitation doesn't exist in them.

Having recently gone on a tour of coal mines in eastern Canada, the way it worked was that a miner would put a pasty in their clothes (to keep you and then it warm), take it out and eat it (without washing your hands) when lunchtime came, then threw the crimp end that was covered in dirt/muck to the mine rats.

<comment><USER4> Oh, ok. I assumed they would just avoid touching it directly, by wrapping it in a cloth or something.

EDIT: Like this one, actually :) [http://cousinjackspastyco.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/IMG...](http://cousinjackspastyco.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/IMG_20120916_152233.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love pasties. The upper peninsula of Michigan used to be full of mom and pop pasty stands. I hope it still is, I haven't been there in years.

<comment><USER7> I get them mail order sometimes from [http://www.pasty.com/order.html](http://www.pasty.com/order.html) in the UP when I want a fix.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for this. Really, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a funny coincidence. I'm eating this today in Guadalajara Mexico. Mine is filled with green mole and pork and my wife's is a mushroom one because she's vegetarian.

<comment><USER9> I get them once a week here in Santa Tere. Usually ham and cheese because it reminds me of a kolache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Come to Cornwall for the pasties, beaches, and (tiny) burgeoning tech community

<comment><USER3> And scones. And sea food. And coastline. And historic buildings.

I love Cornwall, just a shame it's so slow to get to.

<comment><USER11> The A303 tunnel under Stonehenge should eliminate one significant bottleneck, at least. As well as bury the ugly, noisy road that spoils our world heritage site!

[https://highwaysengland.citizenspace.com/cip/a303-stonehenge...](https://highwaysengland.citizenspace.com/cip/a303-stonehenge/)

<comment><USER12> We've been waiting an awful long time for that and "duel the 303" through Somerset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nancy's Pasties in Butte, Montana. Ground beef, diced potatoes, a bit of salt and pepper. And that's it.

Ridiculously good, freeze really well, make for a great meal.

Of course, you have to live in Montana to get 'em. :D

</comment><comment><USER14> I was expecting this to be about the empanada (although in hindsight that would be an odd title for an article about empanadas). It says here that the key difference is that an empanada's filling is cooked before being wrapped, whereas a paste's is not:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paste_(pasty)#Differences_with...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paste_\(pasty\)#Differences_with_empanadas)

And the pastry is different, but i suspect the pastry of both varies so much that wouldn't hold up empirically.

<comment><USER15> Empanadas are said to originate from the region of Galicia, Spain. Thus Celtiberian navigators sharing recipes with the Cornish isn't beyond the realms of pseudo-history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Perhaps one could reverse engineer the article?

The Wikipedia entry on the Cornish Diaspora: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_diaspora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_diaspora)

I imagine that they'll be pasty inspired meals at these places. Mind you I don't think Gregg's was set up by Cornishman.

Should these people be referred to as Pastonistas?

</comment><comment><USER17> Cousin Jacks Pasties or Marshals Pasties in Grass Valley, California - <USER2> recommended.

Like Hildalgo, Cornish miners worked the mines in the Auburn/Grass Valley/Nevada City area of California and brought the pasties with them too.

<comment><USER18> As I recall marshalls will also freeze/ship them by the dozen as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You can still get them in Butte, MT. The straight up meat and potato variety.

<comment><USER13> Still my favorite kind. I'm guessing we have a similar supplier...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> On a side note, is anyone else disappointed that there was no picture of the "4.5m long pasty"?

<comment><USER21> Here's one

[https://twitter.com/BBCCornwall/status/919835097184002051](https://twitter.com/BBCCornwall/status/919835097184002051)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Claudia's in San Mateo is great!

<comment><USER23> They now distribute Claudia's pasties at Proper Cup locations. Can confirm their beef one is pretty legit!</comment></comment>


Amazon responds to Apple: "app store" is generic, drop the suit - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/04/amazon-responds-to-apple-app-store-is-generic-toss-the-suit.ars

<comment><AUTHOR> My comments as posted last month when Apple first filed this suit are here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352076> (analyzing the pertinent trademark issues in some detail).

<comment><USER2> An argument that I'm surprised nobody has realized is the fact that "killer app" was in general parlance way before the iPhone was released (at least a decade). This is killer evidence that app was a generic term way back when Apple was struggling to sell plastic purses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> IMO, so is "1-Click".

<comment><USER4> Is Amazon suing anyone for saying something like "I did it in one click" ?

<comment><USER3> Not that I know of.

But if I remember correctly, it wouldn't/doesn't let anyone use "1-Click" for ecommerce checkout buttons without licensing it. And I think it even tried to prohibit others from enabling a one-step checkout process. In other words, retailers had to at least have a two-step checkout process.

That's just bad for the end-user.

<comment><USER5> That's a patent, not a trademark (well, I mean, they might have a trademark too since Amazon owns the whole idea, but it was the patent that got their lawyers so heated up). Amazon patented the idea of buying the items in a shopping cart with one click.

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure there is not a shopping cart involved. You just click the item and it aggregates your shipments as necessary and automatically selects destination and payment as configured by the user.

It's a business process which I thought were not patentable but it was reaffirmed in 2007. It's set to expire in 2017 so in a few years whatever advantage this patent gave Amazon will dissolve. Personally, I'm scared of all the half-assed implementations that will no doubt mushroom all over the web at that time.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's fun to take a look at the history of the trademark application here: [http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...](http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77525433)

It appears the first application was rejected (without a third party objecting), following amendments went back and forth twice before amazon's intervention. So much drama

</comment><comment><USER7> Amazon calling their store the "app store" is confusing as hell, and is meant to confuse your average user into believing it's the same thing as Apple's.

"App Store" is about as generic as "Amazon".</comment>


Trump admits he is undermining USPS to make it harder to vote by mail - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald-trump-usps-post-office-election-funding <comment><AUTHOR> There's been a fair amount of discussion and speculation here lately on what's happening with the USPS. Now the quiet part has just been said out loud. Perhaps a useful bookend to speculations.

<comment><USER2> As a strategy, it's hard to see how this benefits Trump, though. If he isn't re-elected, he gets ejected from the white house on jan 20. Walking through the various outcomes, it seems like any legal attempts to prevent mail-in ballots from being delivered and counted would be fast-tracked to the Supreme Court. The SC is unlikely to show any explicit favoritism for Trump and in general, the entire country is tired of his chaos engineering, so it would seem that almost certainly, the vast majority of ballots (both in person and by mail) will be counted.

IE, there really isn't a path for Trump to remain president; I have to conclude instead that his goal is maximum chaos. It's pretty clear that the institutions aren't going to be favorable at any attempts he makes at a permanent power grab.

One more thing- many people who vote for Trump will be using mail-in ballots. So his attempts to suppress counting could very well hurt him as well. none of this suggests that trump has some sort of "master strategy" to remain president if he doesn't win the electoral college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this issue is vitally important for our democracy.</comment>


Olivetti – Programma 101 (1967) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnItIQSwfSw <comment><USER2> As an Italian, it's so sad to see how the second PC (and possibly first commercially-viable PC?) was Italian and it all went downhill from there :-/

<comment><USER3> Past performance will not necessarily reflect (and should not dictate) future returns :)

Also, the Arab world is arguably worse off... Invented much of math, and is now dominated by ascientific theocracies

<comment><USER4> > Also, the Arab world is arguably worse off... Invented much of math

This is historically not true. Sure we get terms like "algebra", "algorithm", etc from the arab world, but the arab world didn't invent these mathematics ideas/fields. These ideas/fields go back to the mesopotamia and ancient greece. Also, the mathematical concepts developed throughout china, india, etc also.

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

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

Certainly the arab world made contributions to math but they certainly didn't invent most of math.

> and is now dominated by ascientific theocracies

Even during the islamic golden age, it was dominated by "ascientific" theocracies. One doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case you think this is fake revisionism and computer revolution and Italians don't mix well: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin)

<comment><USER6> I would say that Redis counts as a counterexample, too :)

<comment><USER5> You too gente :-) Redis is just the incarnation of technology available, so it does not provide any real added value in perspective, however people like Faggin are not isolated cases. Italians insist in believing that the creative force of our country is something lost in the history, but this is not true. For sure in the latest decades there was a serious issue due to the fact that school, once very rigid, became a joke now.

<comment><USER7> Do you think the gap was caused by a decline in the quality of education? I'm convinced the Italian software industry was set back in the Eighties due to the lack of laws protecting intellectual property. It was more convenient and risk-free to sell compilations of pirated software on datasettes in newspaper stands, than set up a software development company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah, Olivetti. That brings back memories of the M24 my dad bought through his work, I think it was in '88\. An 8086 at 8Mhz, 640Kb of RAM (more than enough :) and CGA color graphics (that's a whopping 4 simultaneous colors).

<comment><USER9> My Dad had one too, but I don't remember the date. It was probably one of the first in Northern Ireland at that time based on later discussions with him. I always gravitate to my Amiga when I visit home, but we still have the M24 knocking around. I wonder if it'll still have the old Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets he was working on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a great movie about the life of Adriano Olivetti. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2450898/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2450898/)

</comment><comment><USER11> The businessman having his wife/secretary operate the machine poolside after a dip might be the best thing I've seen in advertisement ever.

<comment><USER12> There is no way any company would dare pull that in the present political world...

I found it more interesting when the engineer picked up the readied punchcard and filled in some numbers. I suspect that beyond the storage medium (these days he would probably open some Excel template file), this is what most computing is still about today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you are not familiar with Olivetti (the company), or the founder's son (Adriano), you should.

In a parallel universe, Olivetti is the market leader in chip manufacturing, and Intel never existed.

<comment><USER14> In a parallel universe, SV is in Italy. Yeah, sure. Let's keep dreaming, fellow Italian.

<comment><USER15> This reminded me of the scene in "Sopranos", when Paulie visits a Starbucks- like cafe [https://youtu.be/cUKJWsnAAXs?t=1m1s](https://youtu.be/cUKJWsnAAXs?t=1m1s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> going from home use, to stored programs, to multivariate math subroutine in 10 seconds</comment>


What if I waste my time trying to learn programming? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/samborick/what-if-i-waste-my-time-trying-to-learn-programming-56ji <comment><USER2> I taught myself how to code when I was in primary school, decades ago.

I just happen to have a university degree and work on IT now, but I consider programming about as important as literacy and elementary level math. That is, I would be absolutely handicapped if I didn't know programming.

I can't fathom how society doesn't recognize the importance of this skill. despite how much computers are used. Everybody spends so many hours on them now, and they do so without any efficiency because most can't code, so they can only get things done as directed by a program that's been written by somebody else. Insanity.

<comment><USER3> I started using a computer and playing games around elementary school too, and even I'm not a programming wizard now. Since I was more about playing games, and following random instructions to get my games to work, I gained familiarity with computers in the sense that I know how to look for information that tells me to smack the tv a few times to get it to work. Also just spent a lot of time online in general reading stuff and being involved in the gaming forums. So I understand how normal people who just use computers for work, chat, listen to music, etc. have no reason or need to ever learn any of this stuff. It doesn't help that developers strive to make their stuff juST woRK for these common people, so they'll never have the experience of having to research and troubleshoot their issues. What do people usually do now? Complain about it until someone else fixes it I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Trades have apprentices perhaps computer programming should make use of apprenticeships as well</comment>


Ask HN: What company/companies would you acquire and why? - <AUTHOR> Imagine you were heading a large, successful American tech company based  in san Francisco, and you wanted to make an acquisition.<p>What company/companies would you acquire and why? <comment><USER2> Apple.

I think with the right leadership, they could probably become relevant to the market again. They've been playing so much catch up for the last several years, and also been making several missteps in how they handle user data inside of their operating systems.

Plus, generally pissing off iOS/OSX software devs doesn't really help sell the platform very well, as some developers have dropped iOS and OSX as a legitimate platform, and develop for Android and/or Windows only.

<comment><USER3> > some developers have dropped iOS and OSX as a legitimate platform, and > develop for Android and/or Windows only.

Hopefully they enjoy it. Android-only contracting is a successful niche since it is much more difficult (it has gotten better but Android Studio/the Android community still lags Xcode/the iOS developer community) to develop a beautiful and functional app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yahoo.

Because sometimes, you just have too much cash and need to burn some of it.</comment>


Correlation between religion and programming language preference? - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1clrlqg6p9BSPYa70SX3ianQmiy2tbw9ZaFgyGYMHPII/viewform <comment><USER2> > Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist

I don't think it's accurate measure to group these.

<comment><AUTHOR> Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations#Adherent_estimates)

<comment><USER2> Err... I don't understand. Are you saying that another statistician made a glaring error by massing 15.5% of an obviously diverse sub categories in a group of the world population so, using it as the source, you did the same?

People can and do identify as strongly religious or spiritual and atheist. Likewise, there are many agnostics who just don't care. My point being, Atheist, agnostic, and non-religious are distinctly different, you don't find many who are on the fence about being atheist. At the same time I don't know that they identify as non-religious. To me non-religious is avoiding the conversation all together. Atheists have a leaning, they have beliefs, and in that, they have a religion. (Where it's FSM or whatever)

These three groups make up what is other wise 15% of the human population (or the third largest group of all groups)it my be worth counting atheist apart from non-religious. At the same time charting Rasta at 0.06% seems a little unbalanced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any interest in one with programming language and musical, car, computer, phone, tipple, OS preferences?

<comment><AUTHOR> Religions and programming languages are actively practiced/believed, and change the way one thinks. Musical instruments too. Recorded music, cars, computers, booze, and system software are more consumer goods, so I guess I'm less curious in the correlations.

I made this out of curiosity about whether certain religions/denominations favored particular programming languages/paradigms, e.g. Do Catholics show a preference for static typing? Do members of non-Abrahamic religions seem to favor functional programming? Is Lisp only for atheists?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No Orthodox Christianity represented.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, added Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, and Restorationism & Nontrinitarianism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No Pastafarianism? No Jediism?

</comment><comment><USER6> No way to see the results?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll publish the data.</comment></comment>


The Python Paradox is now the Scala Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://www.yes-no-cancel.co.uk/2009/09/18/the-python-paradox-is-now-the-scala-paradox/

<comment><USER2> I disagree somewhat about the "not very productive" part, at least in the particular case of scala.

I've developed several large projects in Python (specifically CPython 2.x) for $$ for about 6 years and I am learning scala right now. So I have a somewhat interesting perspective on both.

Although I suppose I could be termed a Pythonista since I "do python" for a living, I consider myself more of a true polyglot... I also use Perl, Ruby, C++, Java, Lisp, C#, whatever language I can get my hands on that fits for the project at hand. I don't subscribe to the Golden Hammer theory.

So far, scala does feel like it has that 5x productivity improvement as compared to using straight Java, on par with what I experienced when I started porting significant portions of the code base of a large application from C++ to CPython (embedding CPython in C++, or vice-versa as needed).

I personally see scala being somewhat in a different category from CPython for 2 main reasons: JVM (stability, maturity) & Java interoperability (vast library resources).

1\. The JVM is arguably the most widely used, stable, and mature virtual machine ever developed. Not surprising since Sun and IBM have both invested millions (billions?) in JVM development over the last 15+ years. The latest generation JVMs sport multi-threaded garbage collection, profiler support, remote debugging, remote method invocation, compile-and-reload while debugging, and very advanced JIT. JVM runs in more places than any other VM to date. 'Nuf said. Yes CLR is probably on similar footing nowadays. By comparison Python, Ruby, Perl, scheme, or any other language that has its own home-grown VM is always going to be behind that curve... for example, I was just reading about how most of the Common Lisps (many pre-dating the JVM) are still working on adding multi-threaded garbage collection.

2\. The other (main) reason I'm looking at scala is the HUGE advantage of JVM interoperability and the vast libraries available.

From my Python & Java & other language experience, I have learned that:

=> cool-language-features-productivity-multiplier = 5x to 10x productivity improvement, such as what Lisp and most of the dynamic interpreted languages (CPython, Ruby, Perl) claim and pretty much deliver

=> existing-library-productivity-multiplier = 100x or more, since I don't have to re-invent every wheel every time for file format X reader/writer, GUI widget, or other library du-jour. Let's face it, we have to interoperate and communicate with a lot of different gizmos & whatzits nowadays, right?

We all know that we as programmers are vastly more productive when we can get almost any library imaginable (usually open source) to do almost anything we want... GUIs, Charting, FFTs/Numerics, networking, 3D graphics, Neural Nets, , and can even leverage Eclipse environment and toolkits for programming in the large for GUI building, writing rich-client platforms (building entire IDE's), Web server frameworks, web services & SOA development, DSLs & modeling, reporting, DB persistence, and then write our glue logic in scala or other JVM language of choice.

We can even intermix them with other JVM languages in the same project (Groovy, Jython, Jruby, clojure, PNut, etc).

The good news is... if I pick scala, and it doesn't work out... I can always selectively replace out the pieces I don't want to keep one-at-a-time in Java or any other JVM language as time permits. But if it works, I'll just leave it alone. Nobody even needs to know my JAR is written in scala except that they have to put a couple of scala JARs on the classpath. Not so for CPython where the installation & deployment overhead is much steeper in my experience. Not everyone has CPython 2.6 installed on every machine for example, but most everyone has a JVM 1.5 or greater whether they know it or not :)

Wow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Esoteric languages are a lot of fun. But they're not very productive, exactly for the reasons mentioned: lousy IDE support, buggy compilers, few libraries, few bindings to existing libraries, and so on. When you work in a stable language, you can assume that when something goes wrong -you- messed up. In a new and cool language you don't have that luxury.

You'll be less productive, but you'll have more fun when you get to program in language. A good trade off? I don't think so. A few years down the road you'll have to maintain the same project. The honeymoon period is over, and the code base isn't quite as good as you'd like it to be (you designed the project back when you didn't know the language very well, and it shows). You know you could spend a few weeks refactoring, but that would probably introduce bugs and you'll drive the other people in your team crazy if you start renaming methods, and move stuff around just to make the code "nicer". And besides, you'd much rather be programming in the next-nifty-language, because it lets you extend the syntax at runtime and it has a debugger that will let you go back in time.

The bottom line is that when you pick a language that is on the cutting edge of cool right now will no longer be cool a few years from now, but it still won't have any libraries and other essentials. Languages too have to cross the chasm, and they all have to go through a period where they're neither new and exciting nor stable.

If you're serious about software, concentrate on writing something that is reliable as hell and easy to maintain and install. Want a challenge? Write your app in such a way that power can be lost at any point in time without losing any user data. Or (for desktop apps) make sure that the UI -never- hangs, even when the hard drive has to spin up. Software is never done, there are always things you can make better, more fault tolerant, faster. It's not as if we've run out of challenges.

Messing around with unstable languages is a lot of fun. It's educational too. But don't build your business around it. Python/Django and Ruby/Rails are only barely stable enough to work with. Thinking that using Haskell, Clean, IO or Lisp will be a net benefit to productivity is foolish.

(Of course there are obvious exceptions, and that Clojure and Scala use the JVM does make the whole library thing less of an issue. But it's still a big deal.)

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure how true this is. I was into Java in '95 when it had "lousy IDE support, buggy compilers, few libraries, few bindings to existing libraries, and so on". Java fell far short of its potential, and the ambitions Sun had for it, but still, that wasn't a bad call. People who got into Python early on made a similarly good call.

And also, some esoteric languages, like Haskell, the ML family, Erlang and so on have deep roots, they may not be mainstream but they aren't going away anytime soon. And sometimes something funny happens; anyone who has ML experience is going to feel right at home on F# and suddenly the library problem is solved, the IDE problem is solved, the bindings problem is solved...

<comment><USER5> > some esoteric languages, like Haskell, the ML family, Erlang and so on have > deep roots

None of Haskell, ML or Erlang is an esoteric language.

<comment><USER6> I think you have a fairly high bar for esoteric :).

<comment><USER5> No. Esoteric languages are a fairly clear category of languages created to test the boundaries of language design.

Esoteric languages are not created for real-world usage (or even for usage at all), examples of such languages are INTERCAL, Thue, Unlambda, Moo, Befunge or Java2K. They can be turing tarpits (languages with extremely low number of commands), funges (multi-dimensional programs), nondeterministic (from a given global state A and a current instruction f, the next state `f A` of the system can't be predicted)…

There's nothing esoteric about a language such as Erlang created very specifically to solve industrial problems, or even about languages originally created for research (ML or Haskell), especially when they've now leaked into practical, real-world programming outside of academia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Scala is _not_ some esoteric MIT, CMU language to make a point exercise. Its a pragmatic and practical attempt to "fix" Java so it has all the capabilities of Java with the proper foundational coherence which allows for additional, some yet to be defined or added, capabilities. Java has long ago painted itself into a corner. It has reached its evolutionary dead end.

As someone who lead a team which wrote one of the largest retail websites in the earlier days of Java, and as someone who has spent the last year rewriting legacy business logic in Scala, there is no comparison.

Scala wins not because its the new hipster language, it's distinctly superior across the board. You can write better, clearer, far more robust, far more scalable and far more easier to maintain and modify business logic at higher levels of productivity. That and its ability to work with legacy Java code makes it ideal. This is from direct and in-depth experience.

My concern with gizmo's post is its complete lack of claimed experience. No context of based on my experience where ... so we ... and then did a POC comparison with ... and found .... and concluded ...

In fact it appears very much to be a direct quote of from the preamble from the "Enterprise IT Managers Survival Handbook For Those Without Experience Or Knowledge Of Software Development Fundamentals"

Privately I've played with all of them. I love the shear outrageous power and beauty of Scheme (PLTs impl) and Haskell, the base competency of SML, and I've even used them in the enterprise in isolated in very few situations where the situation demanded it.

However, never once did it cross my mind to even "think" to introduce any of them into the enterprise (well a brief fling with Python for our operations group, it was found to be too hard).

Scala deserves to win. It is decidedly superior, however, lots of deservedly good things, in fact most, never see the light of day in IT.

<comment><USER3> Note that I primarily object to the "let's do a startup with language FOO, because then everybody can see how cool we are and every smart programmer will want to join us because the language is so awesome!" attitude.

It's fine to take a calculated risk (Scala) if the direct benefits are measurable and significant. I'm not claiming that people should dogmatically stick to languages from the 90ies because they're safe. I'm saying that you need a very good reason to use a language with an uncertain future.

Also note that I (deliberately) didn't put Scala in the list of foolishness that contains Clean and IO.

<comment><USER8> "Note that I primarily object to the "let's do a startup with language FOO, because then everybody can see how cool we are and every smart programmer will want to join us because the language is so awesome!" attitude."

(a) no one ever diplayed such an attitude on this discussion or put that argument forward. Strawman.

(b) This is what you said.

"Messing around with unstable languages is a lot of fun. It's educational too. But don't build your business around it. Python/Django and Ruby/Rails are only barely stable enough to work with. "

which is different from reacting to the non existent "everybody can see how cool we are if use language foo" argument.

"I also note that I (deliberately) didn't put Scala in the list of foolishness that contains Clean and IO."

But you did say " Thinking that using Haskell, Clean, IO or Lisp will be a net benefit to productivity is foolish."

You never really showed where the "foolishness" is.

Also, from your original list that still leaves Haskell and Lisp as languages that don't "provide a net productivity gain", which is a very strange (and as pointed out by boskone above, unsubstantiated) claim. There are profitable businesses built on both these languages (lisp is a family of languages but still .. ), and very capable programmers being massively productive using both.

You said something stupid with nothing to back it up, got hauled over the coals and are now backtracking trying to make a less objectionable claim.

You then claimed Perl didn't exist in 1995 (!) and that's why PG used CL for ViaWeb (!).

quoting boskone "In fact it appears very much to be a direct quote of from the preamble from the "Enterprise IT Managers Survival Handbook For Those Without Experience Or Knowledge Of Software Development Fundamentals"

Indeed.

<comment><USER3> It's only a slight exaggeration. In the OP he states "my heart just said yes, it wasn't' a rational choice but an instinctive emotional one". The original article also states/quotes that picking an esoteric language is a good idea because that way you attract people who learn languages for fun. The "let's use a cool language" attitude is very visible here on HN.

I stand by what I said in (b). That you shouldn't pick a language because it's fun -- this I find almost self-evident. When you want to build a business you need to be more pragmatic and you need to consider other factors. Django and Rails are now probably the most popular frameworks for web 2.0 shops. I claim they are not very stable (and I provide supporting arguments in other posts). So I argue that using Django/Rails is adventurous enough. Barely stable enough obviously doesn't mean that it's unusable or worthless. The success of many Django/Rails projects is evidence of that.

The onus is on those who use non-mainstream languages to provide evidence there is an advantage. I claim there is no advantage, and I point out several downsides. If I claim that using Assembly for web programming is foolish you wouldn't expect me to show you why either.

"But of course there are obvious exceptions" covers the few businesses that have become successful. Here too, the onus is not on me to prove that Lisp did not contribute to their success, the onus is on those who are successful to show that it is Lisp that made it so. The reddit people drank the cool-aid, and it didn't work out for them. A single data point, I know.

I'm not taking back anything I said. I stand by it. I find that some of you are looking for things to disagree with, and you read my statements in the most objectionable way. You're saying you know what I meant better than I did when I wrote it. That's quite presumptuous. To attack my character by implying I'm trying to weasel out of anything is most uncalled for.

My claim that Perl didn't exist when viaweb was started was indeed stupid. Had I known viaweb started in 1995 I would never have said that. I (mis)remembered something pg said some time back, along the lines of "if I had to start viaweb today, I would use Python or Ruby". Maybe pg never said that, I don't know. Either way, I was completely wrong there.

edit: found the reference <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36905> (I was wrong)

<comment><USER8> "The "let's use a cool language" attitude is very visible here on HN."

Some evidence would be nice. I don't see it at all in the sense you claim i.e "we'll use a cool language because it makes us cool". No one I know on HN ever makes that claim or thinks that way. And yet to you it is "very visible". Links please?

"The reddit people drank the cool-aid, and it didn't work out for them. A single data point, I know"

But you don't accept "single data points" in the other direction do you? ViaWeb, Jane Street, Orbitz, FlightCaster?

"single data point I know" ;-)

"The onus is on those who use non-mainstream languages to provide evidence there is an advantage."

You are the one who makes outrageous claims that there is no productivity gain _without_ ever actually using "esoteric" languages in a business context, so you could have some experience backing t your claim that there is no productivity increase. Your troubles upgrading Python (or whatever, your arguments on this are very vague and unconvincing) are not sufficient. Sorry.

When people who actually do use powerful languages to run their businesses report increased productivity, you refuse to accept it or consider it a possibility.

<Shug> Flip Bit. Move on.

"You're saying you know what I meant better than I did when I wrote it."

I don't know you in person. I have to judge your argument by what you actually write not by what you thought in your innermost heart when you wrote it. In your _writing_ you come across as uninformed wrt your claims, and constantly shifting positions when confronted with counter claims, citations or evidence.

That said, I am done discussing this with you. Your argument has nothing backing it but "I think thus and thus with no experience or data or evidence and I refuse to consider anything contrary to my stated position".

Good Bye, Have a nice day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Because it's down now, a vague summary from what I saw._

Python and Ruby are now basically "mainstream" languages with little of the all new sparkle they had several years ago - little early adopter aura around them. What languages have that 2004 shine in 2009? Author decides to try Scala for this reason and likes it. Author thinks Scala is the new Python because people are excited by it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have to say that, even as someone fascinated with Scala this week, I find the argumentation here a little disingenuous. There are a lot of ways to filter developers and I don't think that the ability to learn a new language sets the bar high enough to actually select for the good ones and potentially means selecting the wrong tool for the job.

There are a large group of people that are effectively programming language hobbyists, frequently learning new programming languages for kicks, and while that set intersects the set of good developers, it is not a subset of it.

<comment><USER4> The initial hump in hiring is always the shortlist - you might get a hundred (or a thousand!) CVs and you can maybe first-interview 10 and second-interview 2-3. So the priority is always to get down to a manageable list by rejecting candidates who are obviously unsuitable.

So you are correct, but you could probably even trust your HR department armed with a suitable list of esoteric languages keywords (instead of their usual "Java" etc) to build you a pretty good first-interview shortlist, even if you were after Java developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Haskell Paradox, too.

<comment><USER12> He mentions that. And Erlang, too.

<comment><USER4> He forgot OCaml ;-)

<comment><USER13> I am not sure OCaml has gained any traction lately. The only paradox of OCaml is why people use it~

<comment><USER11> Jane St likes it because of the rock-solid type system, but they've been eyeing Haskell compiled with -Wall for the same reasons.

<comment><USER14> I think these guys use O'Caml as well: <http://skydeck.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Site down. Cancel.

<comment><USER16> Google cache has it though:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:http://www.yes-no- cance...](http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:http://www.yes-no- cancel.co.uk/2009/09/18/the-python-paradox-is-now-the-scala-paradox/)

<comment><USER17> Cache is not working for me :(</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN or PG: Is there a list of HN banned domains? - <AUTHOR>

I just submitted a story I ran across yesterday from Valleywag. It was immediately marked as dead, and I assume this is a result of an automatic ban. Is there any list of banned domains to consult when a post is auto-dead? Or is this intentionally not listed?<p>The post in question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6225312 <comment><USER2> I think it's pretty safe to assume Valleywag is banned; it was in the original banned site list, and I haven't seen a story from them here in ages. Good riddance.

Here's my suggestion: if you find a particularly interesting story on Valleywag, first consider that it may not be interesting. After all, it's captured the attention of Valleywag. But if you can't shake the feeling that there's something really worth talking about that simply has the misfortune of being oozed out of Valleywag's kontent cloaca, try writing a short blog post of your own, linking to the Valleywag story.

Your blog certainly won't be banned here. I know that sounds like linkjacking, but it's actually a good thing in this case. I don't pretend to understand Brannigan's Law; I only enforce it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input, that makes sense. I can't remember the last time I intentionally visited their site, but ran across this article and it seemed as if it had enough merit to share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a comment from pg four years ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044)

that lists what he described then as the "complete list" of banned sites. This is suggestive of what kind of sites are autokilled on submission here on HN. Presumably, the list has been updated somewhat since then, but I don't know for sure whether or not a more recent list has been disclosed as a post to HN; this is just what came up in a quick HN Search result.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate the link.</comment></comment>


On showing URLs: why security and usability always have rocky relationship - <AUTHOR> http://tommorris.org/posts/8904

<comment><AUTHOR> Actual title is "On showing URLs and why security and usability will always have a rocky relationship", but the submission form has an 80-character limit. (Mods, can you get around this?)</comment>


Ask HN: What problem gave you the idea for your startup? - <AUTHOR>

How did you come up with the idea for your startup? What problems gave you a viable product to combat them? <comment><USER2> I needed a toilet. This is why I decided to sell toilets online.</comment>


How to Edit the Hosts File on Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.virtualspecies.com/2017/10/how-to-edit-hosts-file-on-mac.html <comment><USER2> I use Gas Mask to manage my hosts file (on macOS High Sierra). It lets me easily merge custom domains I want to block, and lists hosted online.

[https://github.com/2ndalpha/gasmask](https://github.com/2ndalpha/gasmask)

[http://geekussion.com/mac-os-x/gas-mask-mac-80/](http://geekussion.com/mac- os-x/gas-mask-mac-80/)</comment>


Ask HN: Crowd Sourced Localization Database? - <AUTHOR>

I started this app localization spreadsheet a while ago.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArVkFagUZg7bdHB0MTNuMDJySGpnazFpWVZMVUVVNmc&usp=sharing#gid=0
I was wondering if there's any interest in crowdsourcing the rest of it? If so, please email me (see spreadsheet).  Of course, it would be nice to add a few hundred more common words and expressions. <comment><USER2> Pretty cool. I'd be interested in seeing the vocabulary expand :-)

<comment><USER2> I see Hebrew in the Arabic column.

Pretty inflammatory that :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Eventserver: broadcast HTML(5) server-sent events with JSON - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/shinetech/eventserver

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I'm the original author of eventserver and an employee of Shine Technologies. These are my thoughts, I'm not speaking on their behalf, yadda yadda yadda.

I wrote this over the course of a couple of hours yesterday morning based on thoughts I'd been having for a few weeks about HTML(5) server-sent events and the possibilities that come with it.

eventserver effectively listens on two ports: a "publisher" port and a "subscriber" port. The subscriber port implements the interesting bits of the server-sent events working draft. The "publisher" port simply accepts (JSON) messages over HTTP. These messages are then forwarded to all connected subscribers using the server-sent event protocol.

The server itself is written in NodeJS, messages are not stored, and things like Last-Event-ID are not (yet?) implemented. Just a toy for now, but perhaps an interesting one all the same!</comment>


Ask HN: Finding your weak spots? - <AUTHOR> Just wondering if anyone has any advice on finding gaps in their programming skills?
My mind turns back to how musicians drill repeatedly on aspects they are weak at.
I'm wondering: how do you find  those weak areas? <comment><USER3> "You don't know what you don't know", so for me code-reviews were always extremely beneficial. Not only getting my code reviewed, but reviewing other's code. By getting my code reviewed, I'd be made aware of inefficiencies or improvements that I was not aware of, and by reviewing other's code, I became aware of techniques and strategies for writing better code. I think a social aspect to development is very important for improvement.

Another way I have improved my coding skills in the past is to take note of things I am unfamiliar with and look them up. A key to growth is learning new things, so it's important to not ignore things that you don't know, but to actually go look them up. I often go down a rabbit hole doing this, and it takes more time, but you will learn a lot. When researching a topic or how to do something that I don't know, if I encounter something else I am unfamiliar with, I either look it up immediately (if it blocks the current problem I'm on) or I make note of It and make sure to look it up afterwards. This way you are always improving and working to fill the weaknesses in your skills/knowledge as you come across them.

<comment><USER4> Yep code reviews are great.

Similarly; learn new frameworks and languages. As you learn things that are unfamiliar to you, you will start to understand why they were designed (or evolved) that way. You can then decide whether you agree with the decisions or not from an informed perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Try looking at Stack Overflow questions in a particular subject area. If you can answer 80% you're probably on top of it. If you can answer <20% you're probably a long way from mastering that subject and need to practice more.

Many of those questions probe really odd behaviours you'll rarely see, so they're great training. 95% of what you do as a developer uses maybe 1-2% of your actual knowledge. It's the remaining 5%, those ugly bugs, those quirky edge cases, that really test you.

The more you can expose yourself to those outliers, the more quickly you can gauge your knowledge. It helps assess if you're really good at just going through the motions, or if you actually have a deep understanding.

</comment><comment><USER6> I go about it in a bit of a round-about way. I'm a pretty introverted guy, so I make a point to work on soft skills like communication or public speaking to do demos. I've found that by getting out in front of others, they'll inevitably have questions for you, some of which you can't answer. If you let them know you'll get back to them with the answer, you become the "go to" person and you have someone else find an area you can improve on. The more you do this, the more you'll learn and eventually everything kind of falls into place.

</comment><comment><USER7> Programming skills, that's great. What about your non programming skills? Communicating, persuading, domain modelling, being able to explain your design decisions. They can be as important as programming itself, so don't neglect them.

<comment><USER8> I'd agree particularly with domain modelling and being able to explain your decisions. Working on those helps both technical and interpersonal aspects of your work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing that is very valuable is human feedback from coworkers. However, like most communication, there is a skill to getting and receiving feedback. The book Thanks for the Feedback from the authors of Getting to Yes is a well- written and presents some solid implementable ways to improve how you handle soliciting, interpreting, and healthily responding to feedback.

[https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Business/Thanks-for-the- Feedbac...](https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Business/Thanks-for-the-Feedback- Audiobook/B014WLTBCK)

</comment><comment><USER10> Oddly enough, I benefitted from interviews early in my career - <USER2> probing for my knowledge boundaries would usually find some technical questions where my knowledge was weak, so I'd make a mental note to learn about that thing later.

Figuring out flaws in your development process can be harder, but it's worth asking for coworkers/manager for insight, they can often see what you don't even think about.

In terms of improving comfort and knowledge of new tech, I do personally projects and try to incorporate one new tool, language or framework every time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Cooperative coworkers who still compete in the spirit if play (Lao Tzu). HR and the low trust/greed driven SV economy make it hard in the bay area, but other cities like Denver and Minneapolis are where I've met best friends who are also passionate programmers. Still looking for an answer myself locally as I've not found many growth minded programmers who also want to/are able to cooperate here.

Tldr: feedback, personal investment, competition

</comment><comment><USER12> For instance when I started doing stuff in mvvm in WPF it was a bit tiring. But then I also stumbled onto knockout.js and then I used mvvm in two different ways then common patterns clicked in. If you see some improvement area maybe try it from different angle, even better from multiple angles.

</comment><comment><USER13> I define weak spots in terms of things I'm trying to accomplish. If I'm weak in areas I'll never need, then who cares? When trying to accomplish something you'll find out pretty quickly the things you need to improve and be dragged towards improving them fairly naturally.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you are looking to advance your career, you might want to consider focusing on understanding large scale distributed systems architecture rather than programming.</comment>


How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Interactive Edition - <AUTHOR> http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/thinkcspy/index.html <comment><USER2> This online book is what inspired me to develop Pythonroom (pythonroom.com) - I wanted shorter curriculum that my younger students could more easily digest, and a cleaner interface for running code with the in-browser implementation of Python. In case someone is interested, our introductory book is freely available at [https://pythonroom.com/book/learn](https://pythonroom.com/book/learn).

</comment><comment><USER3> This was my first book on learning how to program (the original edition) and I couldn't recommend a better resource for beginners. I tried for a long time to learn how actual programming worked instead of just wiring together HTML (before CSS was even a thing) and this really helped.

It taught me how /programming/ worked as told through Python, instead of how Python worked. Even for new engineers looking to learn JavaScript or something else first, I highly recommend starting here, because with this as your foundation, you're set.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have found this resource to be extremely useful in going over data structures and algorithms to prepare for interviews. Although the author doesn't always conform to the standard implementations of certain data structures and often is overly verbose in his code, it is a pretty robust treatment of the basics

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a way to get this website for offline use?

I know it makes use of cloud computing to compile entered codes.

<comment><USER6> umm, if you are offline isn't better to just run a vanilla python interpreter?

<comment><USER7> It's more than just an interpreter accessible online, it's a curriculum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Brilliant! This will be a huge help to aspiring programmers. The PDF link i used to send to people and now i can point them to this. Oh and i might spend a few hours doing some of it myself - old dog learning new tricks.

</comment><comment><USER9> The click target for the arrows to go forward/back is much too small. Need to add some padding so they're a good size. They could probably be positioned better too, maybe centered vertically with the top frame with the written content.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice! This looks really cool. Anyone familiar with the other titles on the site?

[http://runestoneinteractive.org/library.html](http://runestoneinteractive.org/library.html)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, they're mostly made by CS educators, but the content is generally well put together. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "Codelens" feature for step-by-step program execution only works for the pre-programmed examples. If you want the same visualization for your own programs you can use pythontutor.com

</comment><comment><USER13> This is incredibly cool! I wonder how useful it really is for people not familiar with the subject already. Anyone new to Python care to chime in?

<comment><USER14> I used to this site for the Intro to CS course I taught. Coupled with slides and assignments, my students were perfectly capable of handling most of the work I threw at them. I'm actually looking at how its user interface is laid out to see if we can help build better course UIs (since they can be atrocious).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How is the python code running in the browser, does anyone know? Which version of Python?

<comment><USER11> There is a mix of stuff, but the two interesting components are OnlinePythonTutor[1], called "CodeLens" and Skulpt[2].

OPT actually sends data to a server and has a program inspecting a debugger which sends data back.

The other exercises rely on Skulpt, which is a JS-based reimplementation of Python.

1\. [https://github.com/pgbovine/OnlinePythonTutor/blob/master/v3...](https://github.com/pgbovine/OnlinePythonTutor/blob/master/v3/docs/developer- overview.md) 2\. [http://www.skulpt.org](http://www.skulpt.org)</comment></comment>


Study shows humans still evolving - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-humans-evolving.html <comment><USER2> Here's the original study: <http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/09/28/1104210108>

It's really quite fascinating.</comment>


Tesla Becomes the Biggest U.S. Automaker in History - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/tesla-becomes-the-biggest-us-automaker-in-history <comment><USER2> Tesla produces 367,500 vehicles per year with revenue of $21.46Bn, employing circa 45,000 (2018 number).

Ford produces 6,000,000 vehicles per year with revenue of $160Bn and circa 200,000 employees.

Please explain to me what big means again? Most valuable maybe, but I don't think 'biggest' is a reasonable description.

<comment> tom-thistime The headline is misleading, but they immediately follow up with a qualification that makes the headline technically not wrong. They're saying just market value of the equity. That can be very different from market value of the enterprise, which includes the market value of all financing: debt as well as equity.

The metric they're using is not necessarily a meaningful way to rank the "biggest," or even "most valuable" auto making operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Tesla delivered an impressive number of 112,000 vehicles during the final three months of 2019."

I get that people like this company, but this isn't even as credible as pop stars who've been said to be more popular than The Beatles ever were because of the increased number of people listening to music: GM sold 10 million cars in one year just a few years ago.</comment>


Integer overflow in glibc strncat - <AUTHOR> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=19390 <comment><USER2> It was easier to find the source page via a search engine than from the bug reporting details page...

[https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/GlibcGit](https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/GlibcGit)

[https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/x86...](https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/x86_64/multiarch/strncat- sse2-unaligned.S)

[https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/x86...](https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/x86_64/multiarch/strcat- sse2-unaligned.S)

It's been too long since I've done any assembly programming, but this really doesn't appear to have good documentation for maintainability; or anything resembling sufficient documentation at all.

<comment><USER3>
      /* Inline corresponding strlen file, temporary until new strcpy
      implementation gets merged.  */

git blame reveals this is from March 2013. "Temporary" indeed...

<comment><USER4> Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing you mean this in jest, but I believe it is literally true.

Temporary code is usually poorly documented, poorly designed, deeply coupled, ugly code. Those are all the exact qualities that make it _harder_ to change than high quality code.

Unless you work very hard, the natural tendency is for all good code (which is correspondingly easy to change) to eventually be replaced with worse code that is harder to replace.

Natural selection applies to code too and, unfortunately, the qualities that lead to longevity are often exactly opposite of the ones that lead to good code.

<comment><USER6> Those are all factors, but I think there's a deeper one: the same pressure to create a temporary solution also tends to keep it in place. On the other hand, when you are at your leisure to search for an ideal permanent solution, you probably have more time to keep changing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems to give more credence to: [https://www.sudo.ws/todd/papers/strlcpy.html](https://www.sudo.ws/todd/papers/strlcpy.html)

<comment><USER8> Not really. The strlcat function is safer because it always NUL terminates the destination buffer, and therefore makes bugs in user code less likely. The flaw here is just an implementation defect.

Also note that SIZE_MAX is an unreasonable input, one would even say it violates preconditions.

<comment><USER9> > Also note that SIZE_MAX is an unreasonable input, one would even say it > violates preconditions.

Annex K adds rsize_t, RSIZE_MAX, and friends, which restrict inputs to reasonable values. Unfortunately, it doesn't retcon the old functions like strncpy, and worse, no one actually implements it.

<comment><USER10> No one? I thought Microsoft implemented it, or at least an early version thereof.

<comment><USER11> A very early version. Among other differences the functions don't care about RSIZE_MAX (even though newer VS versions define and use rsize_t). However the Windows SDK contains <strsafe.h> which does limit the length of strings (STRSAFE_MAX_CCH).

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/ms6...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/ms647466%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What'd be a use case of strncat(s1, s2, SIZE_MAX)? It seems like this would be hard to find in the wild

<comment><USER13> Commonly, a policy declared that all use of `strcat` must be replaced with `strncat` and at one or more locations in a codebase an actual size bound could not be ascertained without more engineering effort than management was willing to spend.

<comment><USER8> Ah yes, we are absolutely certain that this new code is incorrect, but it doesn't go against corporate policy.

<comment><USER13> The new code is precisely equivalent to the old code (except for the bug report linked here).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yup, I reported the same issue a year ago ([http://blog.httrack.com/blog/2014/08/31/i-found-a-bug-in- str...](http://blog.httrack.com/blog/2014/08/31/i-found-a-bug-in-strncat/))

</comment><comment><USER15> I would argue that copying _more_ bytes (as demonstrated) is correct behaviour:

(1.) The function is supposed to append a string to another, not paste a byte range into another one, leaving extra bytes at the end untouched. Thus the functional result in the test code is correct (i.e. contains the concatenated string with for the usual definition of NUL-terminated strings.)

(2.) The strncat man page (and similarly the C99 standard) says: "[...] the size of dest must be at least strlen(dest)+n+1." It does not specify what happens to unused bytes at the end. It would be incorrect if the function would ever touch more than `strlen(dest)+n+1` bytes in dest, but it doesn't. Supplying a proper value for n in the code (e.g. `strlen(s2)`) shows that it wouldn't overrun the buffer.

Thus supplying SIZE_MAX for `n` would be a bad idea (because the function could overwrite random memory locations) and would probably be incorrect in most cases (e.g. on amd64 with SIZE_MAX=2^64-1 it would only be correct for the null pointer.)

Copying _less_ would obviously be incorrect. I couldn't reproduce that though. (The _more_ case even appears on Ubuntu with eglibc on both x86 and amd64.)

Also, this is probably still a bug and not the anticipated behaviour. (As in: whoever wrote that didn't think of those cases and the overflow happens by mistake.)

<comment><USER13> > The strncat man page (and similarly the C99 standard) says: "[...] the size > of dest must be at least strlen(dest)+n+1."

No, the standard does not say that. It (both C99 and C11) says, verbatim: "the maximum number of characters that can end up in the array pointed to by s1 is strlen(s1)+n+1." If the manpage on your system says that, that's a fairly serious deficiency in the manpage.

The standard also says "characters that follow it [a null character] are not appended", so copying extra bytes is explicitly not correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Huh, I never use str(n)cat, because it's inefficient by design.

<comment><USER17> what's inefficient about it?

<comment><USER16> The typical strcat code you see in the wild:

char buf[100]; buf[0] = '\0'; strcat(buf, "Hello"); strcat(buf, " "); strcat(buf, "World"); strcat(buf, "!\n");

The inefficiency is that each time you do strcat, the existing characters of the string are iterated. So something like a common sequence of building a string by appending little pieces has quadratic inefficiency.

<comment><USER18> It's unfortunate that strcat & friends don't return a pointer to the new end of the string, or a count of the characters copied. You could use those to make subsequent cats more efficient.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nintendo is up 35% on Pokemon Go success - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=NTDOY&ql=1 <comment><USER2> I want to voice my concerns about the future of Pokemon Go so I'll do it here.

The power inflation is insane. The game will probably be unplayable to new players by the end of this month. Unlike Ingress, the game does not have a way to "remove" power from the game. You can increase the combined combat points of your pokemon collection unbound, and you have a massive power inflation going on. Sure, you get diminishing returns on the training but in the end the pokemon don't disappear and you have a permanent increase in strength. Ingress mechanics always removes XM from the system and you get an equilibrium with the spawn rate of XM and the consumption rate of XM (roughly equal to the rate of portal turnover). Pokemon Go has none of that. If this isn't addressed properly I think the game might just die.

<comment><USER3> There's two things of interest here. The game itself, which is really thin as far as gameplay and will dry up like a standard MMORPG as people go crazy leveling and the initial rush dies down. But the social aspect of meeting up at hotspots and dropping lures to get a party started and all that feels like a new sort of sensation that should persist beyond this one game.

The real key is the location data from Ingress. There's plenty of room to expand into other games, to create a cross-game persistent world or do any number of fun things (they already have the original Ingress game and a travel app based on it). It'll be interesting to see if they can keep branching off from this. I think ultimately it could become a sort of better Foursquare and that's where real advertising $ could come into play.

It's been an advertiser's dream for a while for a phone app to make some sort of "location alerts with coupons" hit critical mass and slathering that over this game would be extremely easy (go to the Starbucks to get a Pikachu or free lure!)

<comment><USER2> Well, it's a fun game. I dropped a lure near my place and a few people showed up and we had a nice chat. Pretty compelling story TBH.

What I'm concerned about is the disturbing lack of attention towards game economics management. (read more here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pokemon Go should implement a way for businesses to request pokéstops be placed at their store front, for which the Pokémon company could charge a small fee. Think of the revenue they could generate. Consumers would actually seek out the advertising instead of blocking it.

<comment><USER5> I doubt this is a great opportunity for businesses other than having an image of the storefront in the app. Geolocation range is wide enough that players don't need to go inside the store or be in front of it in order to have access to the Pokéstop. I guess for areas with low density of commercial storefronts could attract some foot traffic, but doubt it will be that significant in long term.

<comment><USER6> Seems to work great for the local Dunkin Donuts where I live. You have to enter the parking lot to get the PokeStop, then you see their store, and are probably more likely yo come in and get a donut or coffee. I've grabbed more coffee from them since. It's basically like free advertising for them since people have to go walk by their store and actively think about going in or not vs. never entering the parking lot and maybe not noticing it. Sure the free advertising won't pull in every customer, but it will increase the average number of customers who come in.

<comment><USER7> I'm imagining a future where there are multiple location based games and local businesses will need a way to keep track of all the games and which ones drive foot-traffic.

I'm also imagining a startup that manages all of a businesses "in game" listings so they don't have to deal with going in and out of apps all day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hope the success of Pokemon Go convinces Nintendo to do a proper mobile port of Advance Wars, or maybe even a native mobile game. Warbits is good, but I'd love to see what Intelligent Systems could do with a native iOS game.

<comment><USER9> I was just thinking -- as any NES-era child does -- that perhaps the greatest benefit of Pokemnon Go (ive never played a Pokemon game) is that it convinces Nintendo to port its classic IPs to mobile. As a very disappointed WiiU owner, mobile seems like a brighter future for Nintendo than the console wars.

<comment><USER10> Nintendo 3DS is continuing to do so well right now I don't think they have a big incentive to port to iOS/Android. I personally was just deciding whether or not to buy a 3DS (my first *DS) and the content available for it but not on mobile was the biggest selling point.

Making the games available on mobile could very well eat into their platform profits. Unless they start failing in that area I don't see them investing in it in the short term.

Although it would obviously be a big cash cow if they chose to either way. But they wouldn't be able to sell games for $39 like they do now on the Nintendo eShop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I bet it would be up even higher if Niantic (sp.?) and Nintendo had a formalized data sharing agreement. See HN discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12071098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12071098)

<comment><USER12> Because folks trading $NTDOY surely are deeply concerned with formalized data sharing agreements...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> And they didn't even make proper Pokemon game. What I mean by that, this is something expected, since AR gaming on Nintendo's platforms is nothing new. What led to popularity is the iOS/Android platform.

This game is bollocks, I didn't even installed it after I saw _total_ permission request over Google Acc.

And what shocked me the most, is how lazy this game was done, I am not saying that infrastructure behind it is bad, I do not know about it anything, but the lack of combat and everything else makes me feel this is rather bad attempt to recreate Pokemon experience we all know and love from other Nintendo systems.

tl;dr: I really do not get the hype behind this game.

<comment><USER14> Honestly it sounds like you didn't even give it a chance. The game has a ton of success largely because it gets people out into the world, finding new Pokemon as they go. Niantic is going to expand into PVP battles and the like, but it's not that bad of a game. Just needs some time to grow.

<comment><USER8> It currently feels like an MVP. I'm sure it will be great once they add a proper battle system. I can easily see myself sinking hundreds of dollars into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One more thing I dont understand the value of, just like twitter.

<comment><USER16> I think this is just a glimpse at Nintendo IP's potential on mobile. They've kept their IP's very close to their own hardware until recently.

<comment><USER17> Having a Pokemon mobile game is a no-brainer, and I don't think that's just in hindsight. What other major mobile opportunities are there for Nintendo's IP besides porting classic games and such? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER16> That's true, that particular IP makes extra sense on mobile devices. I think the number of individuals now in the category of having plenty of disposable income but not necessarily having the time/drive to buy Nintendo's dedicated consoles will prove a very profitable audience on the devices they already own (iOS/Android). Nintendo could charge a serious premium for any of their apps and I bet many people would pay it. Or they can release freemium apps with gobs of unlockable content... Either way, it seems like its inevitable at this point that they will venture outside of their little walled garden with their closely guarded IP's.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MIT introduces the first cryotron (1957) - <AUTHOR> http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201202/physicshistory.cfm <comment><AUTHOR> According to this 2012 article, Dudley Allen Buck also worked with Ken Olsen (who later founded DEC) at MIT on the development of ferrite core memory in 1952.</comment>


Jason Hunter of JDOM fame, explains MarkLogic NoSQL with beer - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIenyXa8dDQ How to demonstrate nosql with beer ... quite funnny, I especially like the performance demonstration! <comment><USER2> It's time to expand our lexicon of metaphors used to explain computing. Desktops and filing cabinets are becoming dated, but beer never gets obsolete.

</comment><comment><USER3> I vote for a part 2 to show a real-time beer supercluster with more Dale Kim appearances.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I especially like the performance and real time query demonstration!

</comment><comment><USER4> I especially liked the Trash Can Moment .. a literal ROTFL

</comment><comment><USER5> ... a novel way to describe NoSQL at parties ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Totally cool way to understand the technology!

</comment><comment><USER7> Way to go! Next up MVCC using do-nuts

</comment><comment><USER8> Love the trash can!

</comment><comment><USER9> I like it! :-)</comment>


Show HN: I created a platform to use Google's Location History to fight Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://covid19tracing.org <comment><USER2> Nice, I think they did something similar in China.

Cherry on top of the cake would be to provide an app, where people could voluntary agree to anonymous location tracking and for their COVID-19 status to be updated by health authorities (or themselves in case they already know).

Having that, I think it wouldn't be too complicated to alert other potentially not infected people that someone that has been exposed to the virus was nearby.

Once someone was diagnosed as being infected, would could taint and steralize all the locations this person visited in the X number of days prior.</comment>


SpaceX sets Launch Date for Later this month, sea landing likely - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/spacex-sets-launch-date-for-later-this-month-sea-landing-likely/ <comment><AUTHOR> After watching the California attempt where they came really close, it occurred to me that if the booster falls over, even after its landed, it explodes. So even if they stick the landing and have it sitting there on the platform, what prevents the rolling ocean waves from tipping it over on the drone ship?

I suppose once they are at 0,0 and "landed" they could just vent the LOX in an attempt to mitigate the explosion threat.</comment>


'Yelp for conservatives' MAGA app leaks users data - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/yelp-for-conservatives-maga-app-leaks-users-data/ <comment><USER2> Definitely some schadenfreude going on here. My only problem with this story is that he didn't directly inform the app powner before going public. I think that regardless of who the targets of a security leak are, you should still be a professional security researcher and do responsible disclosure (with some caveats around exposing criminality, oppression, etc... but which do not apply here).</comment>