Towards fungal computer (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6227805/ <comment><USER2> So they made some gates out of fungus?

> Thus, it would take about half an hour for a signal in the fungal computer > to propagate 1 m. The low speed of signal propagation is not a critical > disadvantage of potential fungal computers, because they never meant to > compete with conventional silicon devices.

> Likely application domains of fungal devices could be large-scale networks > of mycelium which collect and analyse information about environment of soil > and, possibly, air and execute some decision-making procedures.

Pretty neat. There's a computer growing in the corner of my room.

<comment><USER3> Sort of - the experiment was more limited than that. Basically they show some congruence between electrical potential propagation in actual fungi vs a simulation model, then demonstrate that it's possible to build gates in the model.

Actually building gates out of fungi is left for future work :

> ideas developed in the automaton model of a fungal computer should be > verified in laboratory experiments with fungi.

Still fascinating that spiking electrical potentials travel through mycelium (where the "spikes" average 4 min in duration, and are separated by hours). Fungal computers seems more suited to some kind of Church of the Long Now project than anything you'd want to interact with.

For low-power multi-acre fungal computers in fiction, I can recommend "Surface Detail" by Iain M Banks. (not the focus of the story, but they do end up being a key plot element).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Imagine in the Stone Age where people discovered and used this

<comment><USER5> I can't help imagining an alternate history where a follower of Pythagoras stumbles across the mathematics underpinning universal computation. They or someone else creates a rudimentary programming language to fully express these ideas. Then Archimedes builds a mechanical computer to execute programs in that language. Perhaps Hero of Alexandria develops a steam-powered variant, and one of the successors of Alexander The Great puts the computer to use in warfare and conquers the world. Science is accelerated so that nuclear physics is discovered by the time Jesus is born...okay, enough for now.

<comment><USER6> I assume that people have debated this before, but... Why exactly did the industrial revolution happen when it did? And what factors could have caused it to happen much earlier?

<comment><USER7> This might seem rude or presumptuous, and I really don't mean to come across that way but I don't know another way to say it.

Go open a history book.

Seriously! Not enough people here, and (broadly) in computing circles, actually bother to obtain even basic undergraduate or pre-undergraduate knowledge about other fields, and yet they feel more than content to argue about a myriad of topics and to even form opinions and _argue for them_ , based on this complete and utter lack of knowledge! There are too many people on this site and others arguing about, say, sociology, without even bothering to _google_ about the topic, let alone opening up a sociology 101 textbook and skimming it, and it is blisteringly obvious (and extremely depressing) to people who _have_.

Any answer you have here can only be answered by someone who has studied the industrial revolution, anything else, and everything else, is pure conjecture. Unfortunately it won't be treated as such, because argument ex culo seems to be the norm for people inducted into computers or statistics.

A lot of the 'debates' here could be completely nullified (or raised to a higher level) if the people arguing about topics here actually took half an hour out of their day to read an introductory undergraduate text first, or even just opened up google and typed in their question first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "I acknowledges pearl oyster mushrooms P. ostreatus for their cooperation in the studies."

</comment><comment><USER9> It's the dawn of mycocomputing!

</comment><comment><USER10> +1 for the acknowledgements.

The author has done quite a bit of work on computing with slime mold and other biological substrates.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Adamatzky%20A%5BAu...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Adamatzky%20A%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=30443330)

</comment><comment><USER11> See also "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" (youtube.com) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698)

</comment><comment><USER12> Related from earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21962075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21962075)

</comment><comment><USER13> So, from this, it would be true that any set of living things can be modeled into a general purpose computing device that can process certain Turing complete language.

</comment><comment><USER14> related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_(Discworld)#Structure_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_\(Discworld\)#Structure_and_technology)

</comment><comment><USER15> I have to read some Rudy Rucker again...

</comment><comment><USER16> This was part of the plot of a recent Star Trek Discovery season. Left me wondering if writers had eaten mushrooms...

<comment><USER17> I had the same thought</comment></comment>


Exec order could nix EU-US data flows, strips privacy rights of non-US citizens - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/26/trump-order-strips-privacy-rights-from-non-u-s-citizens-could-nix-eu-us-data-flows/ <comment><USER2> Isn't the Judicial Redress Act a law now? Why would an executive order override that?

[https://www.scmagazine.com/president-obama-signs-judicial- re...](https://www.scmagazine.com/president-obama-signs-judicial-redress-act- into-law/article/528796/)</comment>


What I've Learned So Far (Python in 30 Days) - <AUTHOR> http://rodriguezcommaj.com/python-in-30-days-halfway-there/

<comment><USER2> We're alike in many ways, J. I am a self-taught web-designer who, in his 10 years, learned HTML, CSS, Photoshop, Illustrator, and SOME Javascript on his own. I'm no pro by any means, but I've built some pretty neat looking things without being able to create dynamic experiences/sites.

8 months ago, I couldn't write a single snippet of Python. I had a simple site I wanted to build just for experimental purposes, and kept asking my friends for help, until I realized that it just wasn't going to happen.

I initially started with Ruby with the intent of learning Rails shortly after. However, I had read enough posts on HN to have me switch to Python with LPTHW by Zed A. Shaw. I got all the way up to the exercises for building your own game, and, frankly, I just quit. I felt I was ready to dive into Django. Boy was I wrong. There were a lot of things that I didn't understand and I had done the simple exercise on the Django Project site three times!

Anyway, I kept at it. I continued to Google topics I didn't understand. I went through two Django books and numerous YouTube and videos slowly gripping some of the ideas before I found my saving grace written by, none other than, one of the creators himself. After that, I was able to push out a nice looking site in two days with a lot of help from Twitter Bootstrap.

I just want to say that learning by doing is the way to go. It took me far more than 30 days to learn everything that I know, but this is because I had to learn these along the way, too: command line, working with Linux, using a more powerful editor (Vim - can't go back to notepad), version control with Git, and then deploying, which can be a beast of its own.

Keep at it!

<comment><USER3> "found my holy grail Django books"

Curious - what are these?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious what problems you ran into with Python on Windows. I develop with Python on both a Windows desktop and a Macbook. I found moving between the two platforms pretty easy with the exception of certain database python packages like psycopg2.

The command line and a file editor is all you really need. If you want to keep your file editor consistent, you can work off vim on both. Granted, I prefer Visual Studios if I'm on a Windows machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sure that a lot of it is specific to me and what I am used to, so many other people probably have a good experience working with Python on Windows. The main thing is that I am just not comfortable using Powershell and the directory structure on Windows. While I am still somewhat new to using the command line on a unix environment, I feel that a lot of commands are almost muscle memory, so I was quickly frustrated when things didn't work correctly using Powershell.

I know there are a ton of arguments for Visual Studio, and I actually use it at work on a daily basis (I am a front-end designer and am usually split 50/50 between VS and Photoshop/Illustrator), but I honestly just don't like it. It always feels too bloated and the stuff I do code, I usually do by hand anyways so I don't rely on intellisense or any code-completion. I do use Sublime Text cross-platform as well - but like I said in my article, I prefer using vim on a linux box via ssh from my iPad. It is familiar and portable, which is what I want at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went through the LPTHW program a few months back and it was definitely the best system or book I found on the subject. To be honest, I need to go back through now and do it again, using your advice to do each lesson twice.

My first go through, I kind of rushed through parts because I had an idea I wanted to try out and just wanted to learn enough to get it done (which I did :D)but I think I cheated myself out on some essential Python knowledge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I am definitely glad that I am sticking to some sort of system when doing the exercises, but I admit to not doing every extra credit and glancing over some parts. I could see myself going back through a lot of exercises a year from now as a refresher.

I am hoping that going through it will lay a good foundation for programming, though. With any luck, I will find myself in a position of knowing a fair amount about programming and being able to build up that knowledge by tackling harder material and tutorials while building programs that I am interested in.

Thanks for reading and commenting, by the way. I appreciate any feedback and it's a great motivator when doing an experiment like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sublime Text 2 + Cygwin on Windows works just fine.

</comment><comment><USER7> Did you build that Wordpress theme on Starkers? I love it!

<comment><AUTHOR> I did, and thank you. Just heard that Keir Whitaker and Elliot Jay Stocks released an updated version - <http://viewportindustries.com/products/starkers/>

Mine is pretty damned basic, very stripped down. I've had other incarnations of personal sites before under a variety of domain names, with some pretty complex themes, but in the end I wanted something very simple, relatively light weight, and dead easy to maintain. My goal is to be able to focus on writing and posting content over maintaining or styling a theme.

Plus, with a simple style like that, it allows the content to style the page when I post images, not have the page overwhelm any content.

Thanks again!</comment></comment>


The difficulties we face to monetize our open source project - <AUTHOR> http://www.locomotivecms.com/articles/we-tried-to-solve-the-open-source-revenue-equation#.VDxcEhHF8Wx <comment><USER2> I'm curious whether the business model is truly the problem. While I'm sure LocomotiveCMS is a nice product, it's operating in a very crowded space with numerous and established open-source, proprietary, and hosted solutions. From the way it's described on your website, it doesn't seem particularly specialized and thus highly valuable to a niche of the marketplace.

I wonder what would happen if a) you focused v3 on having features that specifically made it awesome for dentists with HIPPA compliance issues. Or cross-eyed investment bankers. Or someone with deep pockets and an unusual, unmet need and b) shifted the value of open-source from shared development costs to risk-avoidance. Namely: customers have an escape hatch if you cease development because they can update the source, export data into novel data formats, etc.

<comment><USER3> This is certainly true. Content management systems are a dime a dozen. Locomotive is nice, but others have more developers, features, mindshare, exposure etc. Hard to compete with that.

Still, I believe Locomotive already serves a niche: It is one of the few available ruby on rails cm systems. And it it possible to integrate Locomotive with an existing rails app. That is why I guess their main audience is rails developers who need some content management functionality in their apps. And those do not need hosting.

This is consistent with what they describe in the post: Many people using the open source software, many consulting gigs with developers but only a few hosting customers.

I wonder if a better business model in this case would be some kind of productized service. If access to Didier is a scarce but sought after resource, they might want to try selling support contracts that guarantee a certain amount of Didier's time.

<comment><USER4> > That is why I guess their main audience is rails developers who need some > content management functionality in their apps. And those do not need > hosting.

That's a great point, and another illustration that a business model that works for one product might not work for another, even if they appear similar on the surface.

<comment><USER5> That is correct, a vast majority of our users are Rails developers and we don't have a paid product for them right now. So we'll have to reach larger audiences for the hosting and find a good product for our early adopters. It's not so easy to combine both and that makes our website copy not as clear as it should be.

We're trying to talk to Rails developers because they are the most likely to see the technical possibilities of the product and to other developers because they are more likely to use our hosting solution. And we also insist on the free and open source side of the business while trying to monetize the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read this with interest as I'm a founder of another CMS - [http://grabaperch.com](http://grabaperch.com) \- that I guess is a competitor (although we're PHP & MySQL).

We launched in 2009, and have always been licensed on a commercial basis. This means that we've been able to bundle top notch support in with license fees, and continue to develop the product based on user feedback. I really love the idea of things being open source and there are definite benefits of being so, but in reality it is very hard to make that model pay.

Instead we've gone for the paid license route, meaning that we could - when we were also doing client work - ensure that Perch was a "first class citizen" and not abandoned for stretches while we chased client projects. As the customer base grew, we could dedicate more time to it.

It's still a tough business to be in, but we've carved out a bit of a niche in it. We aim squarely at small design agencies and freelancers who are rapidly building smallish sites for clients. They buy multiple licenses per month and know that we're around to support them and also that we listen and consider features that they need.

<comment><USER5> Thanks Rachel, I really appreciate your comment. When we introduced our very first paid services, we were very afraid to scare our open source community away and consequently, we were way too shy in our marketing efforts.

But that was a mistake and this led to the situation we are in right now. And of course, we can only offer limited support to our free users because it would just kill our business otherwise. We'll work on improving our onboarding process and be more agressive in terms of marketing to generate more revenues that every one will benefit from in the end.

<comment><USER6> At Perch our biggest cost is support in terms of our time and the requirement for more people to scale it, it's why we don't offer any kind of free version.

We actually only hear from about 25% of our customers and only 10% raise more than one query, but if you take a look at our forum you'll see a lot of the support we get isn't even anything to do with our product. We're now experts in the horror that is shared PHP webhosting, we end up helping people with their CSS.

So we have a license fee that covers support. People can come into our forum and we'll help them out. As a business focused product that is massively important. If a designer has used Perch to create a site for their client and they have trouble adding the free blog add-on for example, they need to know they can come and ask us about it. That's the biggest difference between us and a "free" product, you get help when you need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Our only monetization strategy so far has been LocomotiveHosting. We had big hopes for it, but it has gained little traction and too little interest from our users."

[http://suckysales.locomotivehosting.com](http://suckysales.locomotivehosting.com)

<comment><USER8> So true, overall #2. There is room of improving the conversion rate. Also what's a 'non white label' hosting but with a custom domain?

<comment><USER5> There sure is and these comments will definitely be taken into consideration in our website makeover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Estelle from LocomotiveCMS here. Thanks everyone for the comments! We're in full agreement agreement that we need to improve our marketing, many thanks for the suggestions.

You'll see huge changes on our sites very soon. We actually paused all our marketing efforts for a while to focus on development but it seems that it has to be our priority #1 right now.

<comment><USER9> Even with my dev hat on I'd say marketing should always be top priority :-)

Go for low-hanging fruit. This may stimulate office discussion

[http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/how-wordpress- makes-...](http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/how-wordpress-makes- money/7576/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am the founder of another open source project ([https://erpnext.com](https://erpnext.com)) and we monetize from the end-user (non-developer community). This is the community which values hosting services else they would need a third party to host your product. If you identify that group, they are more likely to trust your service rather than go with someone else.

If you have a product that is targeted squarely on the developer community, it is hard to monetize unless you are a platform (i.e. GitHub). On similar lines, Wordpress makes money from bloggers, not web designers, hence the "hosting" service is value for money.

Do you target end customers for LocomotiveCMS? Look at your hosting customers and see why they signed up for your hosting. Identify a niche and focus on marketing to that niche.

Blog posts like this will definitely help. Wish you all the best!

<comment><USER5> No, we don't target the end customers. Though V3 and it's new user interface is definitely aimed as making content editing way more fun for them.

You know, at first if felt really good talking to developers and trying to solve their problems rather than having to provide support to non technical people.

But we are indeed considering serving a niche we think is underserved and that would actually need only a fraction of the features we've developed. That would be a more manageable project though I hate the idea of letting down our early adopters and all the people who believe in Locomotive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If there's truly a need and the product is a 10x improvement on the competition (even for a small niche), you shouldn't need to pay people to work on an open source project like this. There are plenty of niches, and the main one I can think of is focusing on a super lightweight drop in CMS for existing Rails apps. Perhaps it generates static files into the `public` directory.

<comment><USER12> Exactly this.

One of the biggest flaws of the CMS space is assuming or requiring that they are completely in control of the application. When in reality, all I need is a CMS for is a subset of pages. At most it can be in control of a subset of domains -- but never all of them.

For example, a common requirement is a faq-like page, a blog section and easily being able to edit other public pages (about, team, contact, index, etc.). Then the real bread and butter of the application is behind some sort of login wall or is all internal and requires custom code and logic. I shouldn't have to stand up two applications to achieve this (increasing application maintenance by an order of magnitude in the process), fight the cms, or roll my own every time.

Ideally I should be able to tell a CMS a single page it can control (or subset of domains), and it takes the existing content and allows editing and saving of it.

Start with that idea, then add premium features like easy a/b testing.

edit... Also, in my experience CMS is a race to the bottom when it comes to client quality. You end up making very little money per project as the person looking for a wordpress/cms solution is either pinching pennies or just plain cheap. The real money clients come from those looking for real solutions (which are almost always custom solutions) to enhance their business' bottom line, not give it a crappy web presence that wont change for the next 10 years.

<comment><USER13> > For example, a common requirement is a faq-like page, a blog section and > easily being able to edit other public pages (about, team, contact, index, > etc.). Then the real bread and butter of the application is behind some sort > of login wall or is all internal and requires custom code and logic. I > shouldn't have to stand up two applications to achieve this (increasing > application maintenance by an order of magnitude in the process), fight the > cms, or roll my own every time.

I think your approach is good, but LocomotiveCMS takes a different (I think also very valid) approach. A single LocomotiveCMS instance is designed to serve the static pages for dozens or even hundreds of sites. You keep the meat of your application in the platform that fits the project (rails, node, clojure, whatever) and let LocomotiveCMS handle the plain content pages for all of your sites. You can get the content into your app using JSON APIs or you can proxy pass to the pages themselves.

So it's true that you have to spin up two apps the first time, but after that, you can keep using the same instance to add pages for as many sites as you want. You provide the app, LocomotiveCMS provides tools for your clients to edit and create the static pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's a marketing tip, your comparison page only compares to WordPress. "Better WordPress" doesn't impress me. Try comparing yourself to a better product. One that people are currently paying money for.

<comment><USER15> Millions of people pay money to wordpress developers, wordpress hosting companies, wordpress themers, wordpress plugin makers, etc. Wordpress runs half the web. I'd say building a better wordpress is a worthy goal.

<comment><USER16> A majority of those customers won't consider a "better wordpress", either because choosing wordpress is the safe option, or they are invested in the Wordpress ecosystem.

The customer looking at the LocamotiveCMS webpage has probably already decided they want a better Wordpress, and they are trying to compare between the other options available.

I'm not saying they shouldn't compare against Wordpress, but it wouldn't hurt to include a few more comparisons.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's debatable that there are people out there familiar with WordPress who don't like it much and are looking for something else.

Whether this is 90%, 50%, or 1% of WordPress developers doesn't matter much. Even in the worst-case scenario it's still going to be a big enough niche if you're able to reach them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Holy Contrast Rebellion, Batman! [http://www.contrastrebellion.com/](http://www.contrastrebellion.com/)

LC;DR - Low contrast, didn't read.

</comment><comment><USER18> Considering why this happens, perhaps the issue is... paid support on a small personal project feels like cheating, even if it saves you tons of time and reduces headaches. I guess people take pride in knowing their software stack from top to bottom. For larger projects egos are put aside because the more important factor is reliability.

I don't have any answers of how to change things for your project, but hopefully this comment can be of some use.

</comment><comment><USER19> In the Joomla world, at least, there are a lot of companies who seem to be making money off of open source plugins. One common model is to allow downloads only after you've subscribed. (Yes, the plugins are typically GPL.)

These usually come with automatic updates for a year for subscribers.

Sometimes this can be bundled with "priority support" for 3x the price.

And, of course, there's always the classic "upgrade to the pro version" pitch

</comment><comment><USER20> They really need basic marketing, for example, they aren't mentioned on the wikipedia list of CMS...

</comment><comment><USER21> I have worked for a company that did / does a lot of money by providing a closed-source CMS for mainly Rails apps to its clients.

I must say that getting paying customers for any CMS is a lot of work.

If you are going for larger companies, you need to have an entire sales department that is going to try selling your product together with customized solution.

Actually, what worked best for that company was selling a licensed CMS + consulting and building really customized solutions.

Maybe your business could work out this way too, but with an open-source model at the core. You could extend the open source version with some enterprisy features, charge for it and offer support and consultancy in order to build truly customized solutions.

Still, the really tricky part, is selling the product in a market that is pretty crowded by now.

<comment><USER5> It seems like we're heading in that direction. One thing that LocomotiveCMS did bring us is clients who need a custom CMS. In most cases, they'll start from some of Locomotive features and we build whatever they need from there. These are usually high quality clients though it means that we have way less time to devote to the open source version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I were a Ruby guy, I might have contributed code by now. I frequently look at popular PHP frameworks on Github to see if I can improve them. Sorry to hear nobody's volunteering any contributions to your Ruby project.

</comment><comment><USER23> One recommendation for you: I wanted to try out this CMS after reading the blog post, so I click on the "Get Started" link on your website... it requires me to subscribe to an email list?! Huge stumbling block there. There are SO many CMS's out there, and if I can't get a feel for it within a few minutes I'm going to just move on to the next one.

As a developer, I'm looking for easy-to-find docs. Having it in a downloadable PDF is already not so great... having to register for it is terrible.

<comment><USER5> I understand your concern. To be honest, until a year ago, we didn't have a CTA on our homepage. We opted for that solution that was meant to be temporary and that should have been replaced by a demo website. And this is one of the many projects that was postponed because we needed to speed up product development.

But once more, this proves that we should pause product development for a while (the only thing that Didier really likes to do) and focus on onboarding, good marketing and a good demo of the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. My start-up (also roughly a CMS) is considering going open source to increase awareness and the size of our target market. We were also considering continuing to make money via a hosted solution, although their revenue numbers don't get me too excited about the prospect.

</comment><comment><USER25> Don't think "code & features", think "product". We developers often miss the product side of what we do, yet it's often the gut feeling that makes people follow certain trends while ignoring others. Any solid logic can be defeated by instincts (yes, we too can behave like our girlfriends). A more compelling product is better at sales that a more clever one. Yes, it's more often irrational than not.

From the presentation standpoint, your website likes identity. It's bland and super easy to forget. It just doesn't grab me. Product needs to imprint itself at the unconscious level, it gotta be likable. Use your creative vision or ask for help.

</comment><comment><USER26> While unrelated to the content, I find it it really hard to read when so much text is in bold. It's hard to focus on the sentence I am reading at the moment as my eyes are unconsciously jumping to the emphasised bits. I guess it shows how powerful bold font might be, and at the same time how negative it can be when abused. I think bold text is great in short paragraphs (e.g. on landing pages) but probably not on a text as long as this.

</comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't Locomotive help you acquire new clients?

<comment><USER28> I like how people just assume that HN is where the writers of any random blog post will go to respond to questions.

<comment><USER29> Update: Ah, apologies for assuming it's "his" post. The author is clearly a woman and I'm a moron. Sorry.

Original:

I think it's a pretty reasonable assumption that someone who's trying to run a web services company/consultancy would know when his post is on the HN frontpage. If he isn't, that probably says more about the business than anything in the post.

<comment><USER5> We're in Europe. We made it to the HN frontpage during the night and I have better things to do during the night than anxiously monitoring what progress the post is making.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Join over 300 hackers at the abortion access hackathon March 4/5 at GitHub HQ SF - <AUTHOR> http://abortionaccesshackathon.com <comment><USER2> Related: [http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comics/1485149100-451.png](http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comics/1485149100-451.png)

<comment><USER3> You can post snarky comics and point and laugh, but that's not exactly helping the resistance. The event is being cosponsored by a reproductive health provider, Women's Health Specialists. Are they just a bunch of Tech Bros and chumps for participating?

<comment><USER2> _> You can post snarky comics and point and laugh, but that's not exactly helping the resistance._

One of the things that would do the most good--and I say this from Texas, which is boneheaded by every measure when it comes to women's rights--is to actually help defray the expenses of folks who need access to abortion. In states like mine where you have to travel sometimes multiple hours to see a physician, and then cough up multiple thousands of dollars to cover the procedure, there is no replacement for cold, hard cash and support for the people who can't afford the procedure.

Also, please reconsider hyperbolic terms like "the resistance". That sort of rhetoric makes people that are serious about resistance annoyed, makes people that are on the fence about your cause take you less seriously, and makes people that are looking for an excuse to make our side look bad have an easier time of it.</comment></comment></comment>


Hitler Uses Docker, Annotated - <AUTHOR> https://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/hitler-uses-docker-annotated/ <comment><USER2> Best moment:

"I'll move everyone to windows!"

-> Girl crying

-> "Don't worry, you can use bash on Windows 10 now".

<comment><USER3> I lost it at that one!

Kidding aside, this is highly educational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "You think everything in [a] public repo is secure because it's OSS?!"

The original line was:

"Everybody has been lying to me. Even the SS!"

The timing of the "SS" part matches almost perfectly. That was a really nice touch. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER5> Hilarious:

"You don't even run your own machines anymore! People run on GCE, in VM instances that run in Linux containers on Borg!"

</comment><comment><USER6> Or just use zones or jails. They don't solve all your problems, but they ARE secure, and you don't have to run them on a vm in production.

Just sayin'.

<comment><USER7> You know Oracle is about to release a Docker for Solaris port? Using zones? Docker is a set of tooling that makes process isolation technology easy to use, if you don't like Linux that is a different issue.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure Docker makes isolation and resource constraints significantly easier, compared to pre-existing technologies (OpenVZ, LXC) - such things were already very easy to use with those. Maybe Docker makes some things even easier, but just slightly - like pre-configured port forwarding.

Moreover, I'm not really sure Docker is about isolation any much. I think I've read that I shouldn't rely on isolation it provides.

The essence of Docker, as I get it, is mostly about the image/layer-based dirt-cheap packaging, playing well on the deficiences of most commonly used packaging systems (dpkg, rpm, pacman), like inability to have multiple versions of the same package set up at the same time.

<comment><USER9> I even use docker in hobby-projects, because it makes (once you have figured it out) deployment so easy. Its easy to ship, update and ships fully configured (especially if you the debug and production docker-compose share a common root).

It still sometimes happens that i am amazed how easy it is. A few weeks ago i switched servers for a small project and docker-compose up was all i needed to do.

<comment><USER8> How do you manage secrets (e.g. passwords or keys)?

I was puzzled by this and came to the conclusion Configuration Management [CM] is best left to the actual CM tools, and Docker just isn't one.

That was in the days docker-compose wasn't even a choice for me, because docs explicitly said that it's not for the production - but even now I don't see a sane way to automatically (re)configure 2-3 hosts[1] in with a single CLI command (and keep the secrets defined in one single "master" place that's outside of version control) with the Docker-provided toolset. Which is dead easy with Salt or Ansible (+bare Docker, of course, since it's Docker containers that are deployed)

(Haven't looked into recently-introduced Docker Swarm, though, maybe they have something there.)

<comment><USER9> yeah, thats still not easy (or trivial, its not hard) for larger projects.

I use environment variables for smaller projects, i have predefined environment variables for the images that get substituted for the real thing by docker compose, which in turn uses environment variables (here is an example: [https://github.com/intellimate/Server/blob/master/image/comp...](https://github.com/intellimate/Server/blob/master/image/compose/production.yml)).

For larger projects i would use docker-swarm or kubernets, they have their own solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The best part of this is that buddy spent first 15 seconds of the video explaining the system improvements they made before getting to what was essentially "by the way we had 70% unrecoverable data loss". haha!

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the point of using Hitler?

<comment><USER12> It's a long-running meme to use this movie clip and subtitle it in different ways. Some do a better job than others. My personal favorite is Hitler uses Git[1].

[1]: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CDeG4S-mJts](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CDeG4S-mJts)

<comment><USER13> I can never enjoy these clips since I speak German. So I can't read subtitles that say other stuff than what the people in the clips say.

<comment><USER14> I guess it is something one has to learn.

I do speak German and can still follow, because in Portugal we always subtitle except for children movies, so we learn to selectively pay attention to either subtitles or audio depending on the movie and our language skills.

As far as I am aware this happens in all countries that have a subtitles culture, instead of dubbing like in Germany.

However I am also not a big fan of these clips, given the historical relationship. Not sure how much one should actually it for jokes.

<comment><USER15> "However I am also not a big fan of these clips, given the historical relationship. Not sure how much one should actually it for jokes."

Grey area for me. It's a fictional work, AFAIK, based on some evil shit in history I generally don't joke about. The scene is nearly perfect for remixes to the point many great ones have been made with it. SO, on other hand, maybe remixing his downfall in educational and entertaining ways isn't so bad after all. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I get it is 'funny meme', but it is getting a bit old.

</comment><comment><USER17> Meh.

1) Take any trending tech, write a cynical piece about it. 2) Post to Hacker News 3) Repost to Hacker News 4) Rake in the internet points.

Improved experience? No. Suggested alternatives? No. Made the world a better place? No. Helped original OSS authors out? No.

Had Fun? Maybe.

<comment><USER18> Docker is a well funded enterprise, they can stand a little ridicule - especially when it points out existing, as of yet unsolved issues. You may dislike the form in which the message was delivered but a farce can be quite educational while still being funny.

<comment><USER19> This isn't even a critique/ridicule of Docker. It's an explanation of the technologies and names used in the satirical video.

The author, Ian, actually does a great job of explaining Docker and it's use in this post.</comment></comment></comment>


Edward Snowden unpopular at home, a hero abroad, poll finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/edward-snowden-unpopular-at-home-a-hero-abroad-poll-finds/ar-AAbtAPK

<comment><USER2> The post is based upon an ACLU Poll but does not link to the primary source-- bad journalism IMHO.

The details of how the question was posed can have a huge impact on the result. To evaluate the reliability of the poll you have to know the questions asked and the methodology. Even then it is a difficult task.

Likewise, the method of choosing the sample to poll needs to be described in detail. Self-selected sample don't ever produce reliable results. Biased samples reflect their biases.

Given the prevalence of weasel words about the Snowden awareness of the sample (a paean to journalistic accuracy), I suspect that none of those polled had any deep knowledge of what Snowden revealed and that the results reflect media evaluation rather than a reasoned opinion.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's what happens when a country is mostly populated with people who are apathetic about their rights.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's what state-influenced media propaganda can buy you.</comment>


Most Popular YouTuber in Every Country - <AUTHOR> https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-most-popular-youtubers/ <comment><USER2> As a parent, I hate what I've created.</comment>


California Court: Even Checking Maps on Phone While Driving Not Okay - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130407/california-court-even-checking-maps-on-phone-while-driving-not-ok/

<comment><USER2> Sounds like paper maps will make a comeback :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to have hidden call recording app on Nokia S40? - <AUTHOR> I have a phone who's owner suspects wiretapping and asked me to check. There are apps that claim this possibility but the platform doesn't look advanced enough for this. Also this app should be hidden as there's nothing suspicious in app list now (or maybe it's some kind of self-destructible). I highly doubt it's possible at all as platform should support hidden apps and heavy background tasks at the same time but I'm not mobile developer so this is just a guess. So is this theoretically possible and, if so, is there a way I can check to be sure phone is (not) clean?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> It depends on what your 'adversaries' are. A jealous spouse (usually ;-) doesn't have access to the same things than a nation state actor.

Frankly you'll never know, I'd throw (or resell) the phone and get a new one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, possible adversary is not so smart but did have access to the phone for some time. So could only perform this if having clear instruction and some link to open.</comment></comment>


Vertical SaaS is getting substantially higher valuations - <AUTHOR> http://blossomstreetventures.com/blog_details.php?bcat_id=126&utm_campaign=Mattermark%20Daily%20Weekend%20Edition&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=50252298&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9w0_uQPIR8WdqWlMHfC_x6SLpQkDUIFzCDHAHrj1LJ10w1wXoRwoL8x96xT77Zh7bittze9SUnlT1JfWHu5hq23dbNYQ&_hsmi=50252298 <comment><USER2> Interesting. I have a horizontal SaaS and I've been seeking out motivations to _verticalize_ it. The data in this article is telling.</comment>


Sheriff threatened to jail teen's family for posts about coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2020/04/16/coronavirus-wisconsin-sheriff-threatened-jail-over-instagram-post/5145087002/ <comment><USER2> There has never been a time when I've expressed an opinion in my name and not regretted it later. Stay offline or anonymous. More importantly, stay clean

<comment><USER3> If you, as you, never exercise free speech, then how do you know whether or not you have it?

<comment><USER2> Why do people care about free speech so much?

When things get really bad, smart people simply pack their bags and leave.

Politics is unpredictable and there's no time to waste arguing for free speech.

People have no idea why free speech is useful.

They just want free speech.

<comment><USER3> Free speech is required for people in a democracy to question their government, hold it accountable, and redirect it.

It's required for the free practice of science, religion and commerce, and anything else citizens might put their mind to.

If a government can suppress free speech and punish people for it, then we can't control our government.

That's the democratic argument. But more generally, unless I'm speaking to the government or committing an _actual_ crime, it's none of their fucking business what I say or who I say it to. Governments are, or should be, formed to serve people, not the other way around.

If smart people pack their bags and leave, where are they going to go? To another country that may fall into despotism? At some point people have to make a stand. Free speech makes that stand less bloody.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What clothing brands do you wear? - <AUTHOR> I run an apparel manufacturing company and I'm looking to develop amazing t-shirts and sweaters and work-wearable sweatpants for the start-up community. Let me know what you guys look for in purchasing clothes~ <comment><USER2> I mostly don't even think about brands. But I'm totally non-fashion-conscious. I think the jeans I'm wearing right now are Wrangler, and the shirt is the Target house-brand. _shrug_

<comment><AUTHOR> so not much thought / care in terms of apparel.

<comment><USER2> No, so I may not be your target market. The only thought I usually put into something like a shirt, is I'll buy a t-shirt of a band I like, or one that has a cool logo/slogan on it, or whatever. That's about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't recall ever seeing workplace fashion and sweatpants mentioned in the same sentence.

</comment><comment><USER4> Costco. Blue jeans and white t-shirt and a hoodie.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that where you usually shop?

<comment><USER4> Either that or Aliexpress. Not into clothing brands. My brother who works for a startup always wear t-shirts that are given by his company.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Digital Knitting Machine - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kniterate/kniterate-the-digital-knitting-machine <comment><USER2> Absolutely love the project. The world needs to see this!

</comment><comment><USER3> Really cool solution! All the best to the team, hope this goes well

</comment><comment><USER4> Hope they do well on kickstarter! Love the idea</comment>


Ask HN: Seen my stolen truck in the Bay Area? - <AUTHOR> Sorry to post something like this on here, but we're getting desperate. My wife's truck was stolen out of our apartment complex garage in Santa Clara on Sunday. We think it's been dumped somewhere in the Bay Area by now. We're offering a $500 cash reward to anyone who finds it. I know it's a longshot, but like I said, we're desperate.
Here are the details:
2003 Ford F-250, tan color (looks like gold), 4 door with extended bed used for hauling (photo here: http://hire.gs/f250.jpg), 5th wheel hitch installed in bed
License Plate: 7D88687 (California)
Last 5 digits of VIN: 16985
If you see this truck parked anywhere, please call or text 818-233-0707.
Thank you for your help!
Gabe <comment><USER2> I hope you'll find your truck. My brother's friend had his car stolen. For a little more than a year, he still had the fob (key) on him and whenever he saw a vehicle similar to his, he would just press the button. His friends used to make fun of him. It's not as big as New York, but at 5 million people in the city, the car being one of the most popular models and the fact it could be anywhere, the odds are very slim.

One day, he got out of a mall, looked at a car similar to his but of a different color. He pressed the button and the car unlocked. He called the cops, they arrested the guy and more than a dozen people involved in a car stealing/smuggling network. And he got his car back. He was happy.

You never know. Hope you'll find it.

<comment><USER3> I was expecting the punchline to be

"Turned out the key only has 9999 combinations, so he found the 1/10000 car that shared his same combo, and the guy got made the cops were called on him"

<comment><USER4> As did I, especially when it was a different colour. I guess that's Occam's razor vs. a criminal getting the car painted.

<comment><USER2> All the more reason to choose the latter: painting the car you steal should be the more obvious choice. Reprogramming a new key, too. He's learned that lesson the hard way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just received a call that the truck has been recovered in central California. We're super relieved. Thank you all for your support!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to photo: [http://hire.gs/f250.jpg](http://hire.gs/f250.jpg)</comment>


Show HN: Define – A command-line dictionary app written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Rican7/define <comment><USER2> It's very pretty, but unfortunately it looks like just a wrapper for a few dictionary HTTP APIs.

It won't be replacing Dictionary.app, but it does look like a a good subject for learning Go.

<comment><USER3> What do you want from it beyond this?

<comment><USER2> Obviously local dictionary support, I'd prefer to retain the privacy of the words I use and look up.

<comment><USER4> which dictionary datasource do you suggest? The OED costs money, and i'm not sure i've heard anything either way about the quality of 'free' versions, though there is the 1913 Websters...

<comment><USER5> Wordnet is free, and used by many offline dict apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Browsing through the source, this strikes me as very over-engineered to just hit a few APIs, parse the responses and print text to the command line.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, that's such a classic HN comment.

I appreciate you taking the time to look at the source. I used this, like I do most of my side projects, as an opportunity to learn a few things.

I wanted a generic abstraction so that multiple sources could be used. Originally I didn't want or think of the need to support multiple sources, but it quickly became apparent how necessary that was when looking at the quality of free vs paid vs personal-key-required sources.

In any case, thanks for checking it out!

<comment><USER7> I actually thought the PanicWriter was very clever. It's a clean solution to a very commonly ignored error return value - operations on stdout/stderr.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks great!, would you accept PRa for adding other languages than English ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely I would! Any contributions would be greatly appreciated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like your thinking :) [https://github.com/patrickmn/define](https://github.com/patrickmn/define)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. Nice!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to self study management, especially supply chain management? - <AUTHOR> I recently saw [an HN thread about the bullwhip effect] (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663332) where [one user discussed](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22664178) their experience in management school with that simulation.
I was curious about investigating more, but I realized that unlike topics like mathematics and computer science, I was having a lot of trouble even finding the search terms to use to find textbooks and syllabi, as I didn't even really know what they teach in management school. Could HN help me find a course of self study on management school? Knowledge of what they teach, or what different specializations train you in would be helpful as well, thank you! <comment><USER2> I graduated in international business and logistics 14 years ago, worked at a freight forwarder, customs broker, ocean carrier, and a manufacturer. Broadly, this topic can be broken up into 3 overlapping concerns: \- Operations (product, plant, human/physical resources) \- Supply Chain (production, network inflows/outflows) \- Logistics (warehousing, transportation)

All care about having reliable partners, quality, efficiency, and timing (procurement, production, and fulfillment). I recommend you do a combination of lightweight textbooks for a high level overview, (like Wiley "for dummies") and a few case study style books that provide history and deep context (like "The Goal" and "Lean Thinking" by James Womack). These last two books are classics dealing with physical production. However, don't overlook service operations like healthcare and military which are good examples where the end customers primary concern is strategic procurement and distribution. I don't have any recommendations for these industries but maybe someone else.

<comment><USER3> > _(like "The Goal"_... _These last two books are classics dealing with > physical production._

The Phoenix Project is a 2013 IT/DevOps version of The Goal [0]. It's an easy read that would be a complementary follow up to The Goal. It would help in understanding principles from The Goal outside of physical production.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix- pro...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-project)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Play rimworld or factoria ..

Only half joking. I think the basic principles of efficient managing can be taught very good through such a game.

It is really fun and challenging, to build up a beautiful flowing process. And then have it all a mess, because a accident happened and a key structure broke down and half your production ran out of storage and the other can't produce. So you adjust and assign and rebuild processes and then a key ressource runs out. So you need to find a new source of supply... So it is all about basic managing and supply chain. How to use the limit resources in the most efficient way and focus grow in a fine tuned manner. And how to keep track of all that in your head.

A different thing is then of course to apply this knowledge in the real world.

And this means mostly choosing, learning and understanding the right software. SAP is (sadly) used a lot. And millions of custom made software ..

I actually believe there is a very big market for someone to come with a better software of managing this. All the solutions I have seen so far, I did not really like. But you have to use what is there and works now.

<comment><USER5> MIT's beer game is a classic one in supply chain: [http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/SDG/beergame.html](http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/SDG/beergame.html)

<comment><USER6> Having had the beer game at MIT, I'd say it's the only action learning experience that is worth something. Fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a masters in supply chain - a large portion of that degree as well as a topic that overlaps math and computer science is operations research [0].

Google has some pretty cool open-source libraries [1] for working with OR type problems as well. Their guide explains some common problems from a high level and should give you some more keywords and topics to dive into as well.

I'd also recommend MIT's SCM course [2], it has a solid curriculum

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research) [1] [https://developers.google.com/optimization/introduction/over...](https://developers.google.com/optimization/introduction/overview) [2] [https://micromasters.mit.edu/scm/](https://micromasters.mit.edu/scm/)

<comment><USER8> I like what you said in the first line.

Personally, I'm less interested in the 'management' aspect of this topic, and more interested in the "process" or the idea, so to speak.

I think supply chain is a big idea and a big topic in itself, and how you manage it, when put in charge of human labor, in only one part of it.

And I think there is some relation between 'supply chain' and 'concurrency' in CS.

<comment><USER9> There is a certain tendency I see, especially in recent grads in the SCM, of learning a lot of operations research. Which totally valid, these gals and guys are running circles around me as gar as big data and data science is concerned.

One should not forget so, that supply chains and logistics are still running on a _huge_ amount of physical paper. Process is still king. The basic principles don't change simply because thing become digital. Take a classic Kanban system. That still runs on a piece of cardboard. Using fax to sent Kanban cards around is probably all the amount of digitalization that needs. And Kanbans are still one of the most robust solutions around.

From what I learned about CS so far, both fields are very logical. So go ahead and learn about the idea. Interesting field, and one that can only benefit from innovative solutions!

<comment><USER10> I recently presented my master's thesis exactly on a process involving kanbans. I implemented a discrete event simulator that compares different dynamic scheduling agent policies of which one is a MIP optimization model. All very cool, but the company still uses paper kanbans and the whole process is far from the so called "industry 4.0". All in all, change costs and the change needs to give enough fruits to justify it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> MIT has a fantastic online SCM micro-masters program: [https://micromasters.mit.edu/scm/](https://micromasters.mit.edu/scm/)

<comment> barry-cotter If you want to learn about business more generally, the kind of generalist stuff that's in an MBA Josh Kaufman's _Personal MBA_ is a fantastic place to start, and has a recommended book to follow up on each topic it covers if you need more depth.

[https://personalmba.com/](https://personalmba.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that's great, the reviews from Kevin Kelly, David Allen, and Ali Safavi really sealed the deal, I'll read this thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The first go-to book would be this one, if you ask me:

[https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Managing-Supply-Chain- Stude...](https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Managing-Supply-Chain- Student/dp/0073341525)

Maybe you can get access to an e-book version of it. I have a more than decade old ediion at home, and while the some case studies and technologies maybe a little but dated, the overall principles haven't changed. And the book itelf is top-notch content. Older editions of eBay or Amazon should be fine, and also a ot cheaper I assume. I brought mine back from a vacation to India.

<comment><USER6> Reading Goldratt (recommended in other threads here) is a lot more fun than Simchi's book, though.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I wouldn't call Simchi fun to read neither. Still a good book covering the basics. I still enjoyed reading it, but I am a strange guy when it comes to SCM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Whatever you do, Do Not start playing Factorio.

<comment><USER13> Suggest disagreeing and committing.

Though committing is not optional once you start.

They call it Cracktorio for a reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN1845...](https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN18450_ADP%204-0%20FINAL%20WEB.pdf)

That link is the Army Sustainment doctrine. It is a high level generic description on the philosophy of logistics and support for a diversity of operating requirements across a variety of environments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow this looks fascinating, the U.S. Army is probably one of the biggest organizations with very direct consequences for failure in these logistics aspects.

Every once in a while I see HN users post these types of military publications, and a lot of them seem useful. How do you find these in the first place?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Read 'The Goal' by Eli Goldratt - one of the best supply chain books ever written.

<comment><USER16> This book and "Critical Chain" by the same author are incredible. If you do or interact with any sort of release engineering it's great knowledge to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You could go look up the syllabus for several top programs. Tennessee and Penn State come to mind. Get comfortable with big enterprise software like SAP or Oracle or at the very least NetSuite. You'll need to understand some finance alongside operational jargon so things like microeconomics would be valuable (Kahn academy has a class). Some topics that you could google just off the top of my head would be sourcing, transportation, manufacturing, inventory management, distribution, sales.... actually maybe you could find some self directed six sigma courses?

edit: here's a coursera course that looks like it covers all the basics: [https://www.coursera.org/specializations/supply-chain- manage...](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/supply-chain-management)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that Rutgers SCM MOOC, I'll try it out along with the MITx one.

I'll also look up the syllabi for those programs, good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're interested in a good entry point, undergraduate business business programs often call that first class "Production and Operations Management" or a close variant.

I haven't been a business student in a very long time, but back then ambitious students would often do a six course semester where they would do a full load at my school and grab POM via distance learning. That school and their POM class still exist.

[https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/mgsc/mgsc368.php](https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/mgsc/mgsc368.php)

You'll be able to get some terms to search for there, find a textbook and I'd bet anything that if you started plugging chapter titles into YouTube, you could find lectures.

I was too busy starting businesses in business school to have been a very good business student so I can't claim any expertise on subfields within POM. As far as what they teach, it depends a lot on the exact part of POM you get into. Some is pure mathematical analysis but there is a lot of overlap with cost accounting, human resources and marketing. The projection side is part math, part marketing and part guesswork. The costing side gets really deep into accounting and Human Resources. Some subfields focus heavily on union and industrial relations. You'll find subfields that delve into OH&S for reasons you don't want to think too deeply about.

<comment><AUTHOR> > If you're interested in a good entry point, undergraduate business business > programs often call that first class "Production and Operations Management" > or a close variant.

I'll try that search term

> You'll be able to get some terms to search for there, find a textbook and > I'd bet anything that if you started plugging chapter titles into YouTube, > you could find lectures.

I'll take a look at the syllabus for that Atahabascau course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd recommend starting with the Wikipedia page on Operations Research: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research)

It's a great summary of the major domains involved in operations research/management science/decision science. It definitely helps with the "what do I even search for" part of your question.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like that the Wikipedia article has the history included before going into links to more specific topics.

This'll help give me one of those broader level overviews, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment> SCM-Enthusiast I work on the supply chain, capital expenditure team at an electric car company and I can tell you none of the books listed below will help you. Get an internship or offer to work for someone for free. Supply Chain Management is one of those things that is best learned on the job. You need to 'learn' your supply base/ vendors who do good work, you need to learn how to negotiate things like payment terms instead of just price, how to effectively track you 100+ things you need to buy that day. All the books listed below are great if you are a factory production manager, but will never help you in an entry level supply chain job.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose whether or not these books apply depends a lot on where my life takes me. But you are right about the concrete practice, just like with learning a new programming language, the only way to internalize it is to do a project with it that preferably has a real pressure and deadline, i.e. a job.

I'll have to see if I can try and apply the concepts no matter what industry I'm in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Look up some Harvard Business Review Case Studies [1] to get some real world examples. Studying high level thoery out of books is pretty worthless IMO. Industries are very specialized and specific. This is really a field that is very difficult to learn without real world experience in it.

1\. [https://store.hbr.org/case-studies/](https://store.hbr.org/case-studies/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow there are lot of these, I wonder how to sift between all of them.

This one [1] looks interesting just as a story

[1] = [https://store.hbr.org/product/do-you-really-think-we-are- so-...](https://store.hbr.org/product/do-you-really-think-we-are-so-stupid-a- letter-to-the-ceo-of-deutsche-telekom-a/ES1001)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Check out this demo (Radish34) of a supply chain management scenario brought up by EY and other enterprises involved:

[https://docs.baseline- protocol.org/radish34/radish34-explain...](https://docs.baseline- protocol.org/radish34/radish34-explained)

</comment><comment><USER22> You can find some curated resources on supply chain here: [https://learnawesome.org/topics/e0ca877f-7dd4-467a-83b2-efa1...](https://learnawesome.org/topics/e0ca877f-7dd4-467a-83b2-efa177bce1ea- supply-chain)

</comment><comment><USER23> Echoing recommendations for The Goal & The Phoenix Project. Beyond The Goal is also a great resource. More of a lecture by Goldratt that covers TOC and Critical Chain. He was a very entertaining speaker.

</comment><comment><USER24> My background is SCM. Still passionate about it although I've shifted tangentially over time. If you just want an overview of the topic, I'd recommend these two books:

[https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Materials-Management- Ste...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Materials-Management-Steve- Chapman/dp/0134156323)

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1260084841/ref=dp_ob_neva_mob...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1260084841/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile)

If you're highly technical and would like to learn how to abstract and solve some of the hardest problems in supply chain management, I would actually look into the field of Operations Research. It is basically mathematical modeling and optimization of real world operational and logistics problems. It's so mathematically oriented that it typically is in the mathematics or science departments in universities, as opposed to management. But it is very much an applied specialization of math, directly applicable to supply chain management and other business/logistics areas.

Interestingly, the bullwhip effect is extremely similar to another problem that a lot of people here have a casual interest in: the traveling wave phenomenon of traffic. The requisite similarities are the same. In order for the pattern to appear, there have to be independent actors with cascading delays in the aquisition of information about the future, and a mismatch in the ability to stop production (decelerate) and start production (accelerate). The severity of those traveling waves may change with changes in the severity of the required conditions, but as long as those conditions exist, the traveling waves will always occur.

Interesting consequences also apply. It is mathematically provable that autonomously controlled vehicles cannot get rid of traveling traffic waves. There will always be a delay in information about what lies ahead, whether it is via the limitations of line of sight, or the latency of radio-based communication. And production cars will always stop faster than they accelerate, because stopping has a safety necessity that doesn't exist for acceleration.

Autonomous cars may have faster reaction times than humans, but at highway speeds reaction times are typically 20% or less of stopping times. Therefore they can slightly mitigate the problem. However, notice how everybody talks about how autonomous cars can travel closer together. What this effectively means is that cars can travel closer to the extent that their reaction times are better. This improves unperterbed throughput slightly, but it would actually make the shock-induced traveling waves worse. All it takes is for a stray plastic bag to wander into the roadway and a car to think it's a dog and brake for it. The cars closest to it stop extremely fast but then accelerate slower than they decelerated. Cascading information delays ensure that the wave continues to travel and increases in severity until it reaches some location where buffer spaces are large enough to absorb the wave (due to lower traffic density).

The supply chain parallel problem emphasizes the importance of inventory. Running super lean on inventory can mean lower costs and higher throughput, but it exacerbates the bullwhip effect substantially.

<comment><AUTHOR> > [https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Materials-Management- > Ste...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Materials-Management-Steve- > Chapman/dp/0134156323)

Thank you I'll check that out in addition to the Simchi book

> If you're highly technical and would like to learn how to abstract and solve > some of the hardest problems in supply chain management, I would actually > look into the field of Operations Research. It is basically mathematical > modeling and optimization of real world operational and logistics problems.

I recently took the SIAM Math Modeling Works Challenge [1] and actually found that quite enjoyable, so Operations Research sounds great.

[1] = [https://m3challenge.siam.org/](https://m3challenge.siam.org/)

> In order for the pattern to appear, there have to be independent actors with > cascading delays in the aquisition of information about the future, and a > mismatch in the ability to stop production (decelerate) and start production > (accelerate).

That makes sense, that's a cool connection between this bullwhip effect and the traffic wave.

> The cars closest to it stop extremely fast but then accelerate slower than > they decelerated.

Aaah, so if I understand correctly, since it takes more time for them to get back up to their previous speed, each group of cars receives information to stay stopped for longer than they do to start moving again, and thus the traveling wave effect grows between each group of cars. I'm assuming however, this is the case for each group of cars acting as one unit, and there is no all seeing central coordination of all the car groups on the highway.

> The supply chain parallel problem emphasizes the importance of inventory. > Running super lean on inventory can mean lower costs and higher throughput, > but it exacerbates the bullwhip effect substantially.

I guess if you don't have that buffer for absorbing shock the bullwhip effect is stronger? I haven't read about what the lean production model is, so I'm probably just talking out my ass here, I'll keep this in mind when I'm reading that Womack 'Lean Thinking' book then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For a textbook approach, both nigel slack (Operations Management) and Jacobs/Chase (SCM) are worth a look.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll check those out

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Start by reading this [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035GTHKA](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035GTHKA)

<comment><USER27> Please don't hide stuff behind links.

It's the spinoff to _The Goal_ :

Eliyahu M. Goldratt and 2 more

 _Isn't It Obvious?: A Business Novel on Retailing Using the Theory of Constraints_

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> same here, trying to understand stockpile management for coal</comment>


Twitter / World Cup 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/worldcup/worldcup <comment><USER2> It's probably best not to look if you're Austrailian...</comment>


How to Enjoy the End of the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8 <comment><AUTHOR> A talk about how the collapse of industrial civilization is a physical inevitability at this point.</comment>


Ginseng: Keeping secrets in registers when you distrust the operating system - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/04/05/ginseng:-keeping-secrets-in-registers-when-you-distrust-the-operating-system/ <comment><USER2> This seems completely nonsensical! The data in registers hits memory at context switch time and they do nothing to stop that. So this provides no protection at all...

<comment><USER3> It's running in a TEE/SGX/TrustZone enclave, so this is inherently firewalled from routine OS code already.

Whether this is worthwhile, or even works without holes, is sort of an open question. I agree it's sounds a little heavy on the serpent fat, but the technical promise is definitely achievable.

<comment><USER2> No. The code they claim to protect runs in userspace not in TEE

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems far more complicated than necessary. This design assumes that a trusted execution environment is available, and it _also_ assumes that a trusted hypervisor is available. If you have both of those, then why can't you just run your software in an enclave directly protected by the trusted hypervisor?

<comment><USER4> I read it more carefully. Egads! They invented their own hypervisor that essentially poorly imitates Xen's PV mode. I wouldn't trust this thing at all.

Here are some likely holes:

They prevent the kernel from mapping "sensitive" code into its own address space, but they don't seem to prevent the kernel from mapping it into a user address space with write permission, which is just as bad. (Also, the kernel already maps most memory writably in the direct map, and they don't mention what they do about this, so I would guess that they have a bug.)

They don't mention protecting sensitive code from DMA.

The kernel can corrupt use code execution in many ways, such as corrupting non-"sensitive" registers. They don't seem to have a rigorous model to defend against this.

They protect the IDT, but I don't see anything about protecting the SYSCALL MSRs. The kernel could redirect SYSCALL to skip the magic hook. This might not matter if there are no syscalls in sensitive regions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think that every design that relies on trusted hardware needs to be much more up front about it (e.g., put it in the title) so the paper can be less disappointing.

I don't understand academia's obsession with these security theater devices -- it would make sense to see it in industry as a hyped buzzword, but I think it makes for weak scholarship.

edit: as some note below, it is a TEE not a TPM or a SE. I don't think the distinction should distract from the point, so I have amended above.

<comment><USER6> What makes TPM's security theater?

Also where does it say TPM? The paper references Intel SGX and ARM TrustZone, which to my knowledge are both on-CPU, whereas TPM's generally sit separately on the motherboard.

<comment><USER5> I don't think the distinction matters that much in this context, so I amended above.

I think they're theater because they do something complicated with ambiguous security benefits. And even if they are used correctly, flaws in the designs like spectre/meltdown/foreshadow/rowhammer/etc etc compromise these use cases.

<comment><USER7> Because the secret is never in memory, wouldn't it exactly be safe against all the attacks you mention?

<comment><USER5> Not quite -- for example, the way that registers are implemented in modern processors is super complex.

Here's a sketch of an attack against this:

the registers don't actually get overwritten they get renamed in modern CPUs. That means the old data is still there, just not logically accessible by non- pipelined instructions. It's possible the data is still sitting in the registers, with an old epoch name. The predictors will be predicting branches and other things based on those registers. So by issuing the right instruction and measuring delay, you might be able to create an oracle to see if you guess a byte correctly from the stale data.

I also don't think the secrets are actually out of memory, they are out of _your_ memory, where your is the kernel and the user space but not necessarily the TEE Secure World memory. This is, of course, the same RAM but protected by a page table.

""" To ensure code integrity the kernel page table is made read-only at boot time. The kernel is modified to send a request to GService whenever it needs to modify the page table, GService honours this request only when doing so would not result in mapping the code pages of a sensitive function. The kernel is also prevented from overwriting its page table base register so that it can't swap the table with a compromised one. """

Of course, this sounds like the perfect kind of attack for rowhammer to break. Just overwrite the page table by doing reads and then overwrite a sensitive function after it's been invoked once and approved, and now you can leak secrets out that way.

etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRESOR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRESOR)

<comment><USER9> The approach is rather closer to Zircon.

[https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So assuming you don't even trust the OS. How can you be sure you aren't running in a virtual machine or something.

You have to trust the OS to set everything up, do IO etc. I don't see how its tenable to not trust the OS.

<comment><USER11> Very true, though this seems to plug at least one potential data leak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't you need, in addition to patching the interrupt vector, to make sure there is no existing code running in the kernel when you restore the sensitive registers? This makes the nginx use case seem kind of unrealistic.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of the Overshadow paper which VMware published during my time there. We never ended up shipping it but it was a neat proof of concept:

[https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/courses/cs380s/overshadow.p...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/courses/cs380s/overshadow.pdf)

EDIT: I see Overshadow[14] was indeed one of the cited references.

Also, direct link to the actual paper is here: [https://www.ndss- symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/nd...](https://www.ndss- symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ndss2019_01A-2_Yun_paper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> > we miminize the unsafe part of GService to a small amount of assembly code

Good.

If you want as much security as you can get in an unsafe environment, you're going to need to write the entire routine yourself, sometimes on a level down to the bare metal if you have to.

<comment><USER15> I have not worked in C in a long while. Would you mark the assembly section as volatile to avoid the compiler & assembler doing anything to it? Is there any guarantee that the assembler will not aggressively re-optimize assembly- within-C?

<comment><USER16> Most C compilers vary from fairly to completely hands-off when it comes to inline assembly.

You can also just write it in a separate assembler file and then the C compiler does not see it.

That leaves just the linker, and most optimizing linkers will treat code outside of the purview of the compiler as a "black-box" otherwise you wouldn't be able to link with code that makes system-calls.

<comment><USER17> How does link time optimization affect separate assembler file?

<comment><USER18> In general, in the implementations I've seen, "link-time optimization" is a bit of a misnomer. It's more like a glorified version of `gcc -combine`. The "compiler" binary stuffs its half-finished results (IR) into fake object files, and the "linker" binary calls back into the compiler (built as a library) and sends it the IR from all the fake objects, which the compiler combines and builds into one giant, real object file. That object file is sent back to the linker, which goes on to do its normal job. (LLVM ThinLTO is a bit more advanced than that in terms of scalability and incrementality, but it maintains the same "hands-off" approach from the linker's perspective.) On the other hand, if the linker sees an object file passed to it is a real object, it doesn't send it to the compiler and handles it during the normal linking phase instead. And if you build a .s file, you always get a real object file, even if you passed -flto.

TL;DR: It doesn't affect it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Props to the blog post for being quite well written: easy to understand, yet also thorough enough to explain exactly what Ginseng is and how it works. By "easy to understand" I don't just mean the introduction, which goes over the motivation at a high level, but also the lower-level explanation, with a handy C and assembly comparison that helps explain what the transformation actually does.

...On the other hand, the design itself seems like a pretty massive hack. The goal is to turn parts of a userland process into the equivalent of a TEE component, without having to manually separate the codebase into two pieces and set up IPC between them. But although that kind of "automagic" approach is easier to use, it also makes it really easy to write security flaws.

For instance, in the example code:

        void hmac_sha1(sensitive long key_top,
                       sensitive long key_bottom,
                       const uint8_t *data,
                       uint8_t *result) {
            sensitive long tmp_key_top, tmp_key_bottom;
            /* all other variables are insensitive */

            /* HMAC_SHA1 implementation */
        }

It's quite dangerous to say that all other variables are insensitive! It's hard to say for sure without seeing the actual implementation, but SHA-1 requires first expanding the message into a state of 80 32-bit words, before performing 80 rounds of hashing on them. If the state is treated as insensitive, another core could read it out before it actually goes through hashing, in which case the key could be easily recovered. This design _might_ be secure if the SHA-1 function is separate and itself marks all state as sensitive, as long as the key never leaks into memory in between, but that's not how SHA-1 implementations usually work, so I'm pretty suspicious.

I tried to find the actual code to determine whether it's actually vulnerable, but failed: it's supposed to be released as open source [1], but the instructions involve downloading from a GitHub repo [2] which is currently marked as private, I guess by mistake.

...I don't really understand why Ginseng doesn't just mark all variables in a sensitive function as sensitive; it's not like memory for the secure stack is particularly scarce. That still leaves other attack vectors, though.

[1] [http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~mobile/ginseng.html](http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~mobile/ginseng.html)

[2] [https://github.com/susienme/ndss2019_ginseng_arm-trusted- fir...](https://github.com/susienme/ndss2019_ginseng_arm-trusted-firmware.git)

</comment><comment><USER19> Modern chips have over a hundred registers per logical core, but either 16 or 32 you can explicitly access.

<comment><USER20> Do you think in the future more registers will be accessible, increasing performance?

<comment><USER21> Back when AMD designed x86_64 asked that question: they concluded that it was better only show a few registers because that was all compilers really needed (compilers writers had learned a lot of tricks from the mess that x86 was), and so they could better deal with a small instruction set that fewer registers offers for greater performance.

<comment><USER20> > from the mess that x86 was

Is ARM seen as a mess? Are x86's days numbered as ARM catches up and becomes more widespread for personal computing devices?

<comment><USER21> ARM is much better as an instruction set, but it isn't clear if that will ever matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The upcoming MKTME support in future Intel processors will hopefully make this problem simpler to solve.

<comment><USER23> AMD calls this SEV and has shipped it for some time. It doesn't help much. Here's one of the latest attack papers also with a summary of previous work: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01759.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01759.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What trust do we need the OS to have?

Encryption, keystrokes?

Web has made the need for desktop applications often unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER25> It seems like this kinda' just pushes the issue around. For example, how do we know that the Ginseng compiler is trustworthy? Of course, there could be a trusted authority for it but I don't see how this is different from a trusted authority for an OS.

<comment><USER16> Sufficiently complex operating systems will never be trustworthy not because of maliciousness, but because of bugs.

Pick any old version of Linux and browse the local privilege escalation attacks. It seems likely that recent versions of linux have as-yet undiscovered attacks. The existence of even one means that the OS is not trustworthy in the presence of non-trustworthy applications.

As long as Ginseng is more amenable to verification than the Linux kernel, this isn't just pushing the issue around, but rather reducing the work needed.</comment></comment>


Ongoing IFrame attack proving difficult to kill - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080318-ongoing-iframe-attack-proving-difficult-to-kill.html

<comment><USER2> #1 rule of web app development (as far as i'm concerned): sanitize inputs. if you don't know if inputs are already/automatically sanitized, sanitize them again anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's easy to kill if you only employ competent developers who don't trust any user input :/

</comment><comment><USER4> The article explains the issue very poorly (seriously, I'm disappointed how badly this was written, considering it's ARS and all). If you read the user comments, they manage to explain it much more clearly, except for one issue... the article mentions how these cached search results are "forwarded" to Google/Yahoo etc. I don't know what the hell they're talking about, I know of no way to forward local site search results to search engines.

I think that what really happens is the people who create these "attacks" just post the links on some page that spiders will find and then the links will show up in Google/Yahoo results, and probably quite high since they're from domains with high page rank.</comment>


In a Tight Job Market, Tech Cos Scramble to Rehire Former Employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/im-back-surprising-reasons-why-career-boomerangs-rise-george-anders/ <comment><USER2> I get a loginwall when I click on the link. Does LinkedIn do that routinely now?</comment>


We are Collage: Dada, Instagram, and the future of AI - <AUTHOR> https://theartofresearch.org/we-are-collage-dada-instagram-and-the-future-of-ai/ <comment><USER2> There's not that much insight here.

It's not wrong. It's just not meaningful. High level abstractions are often the worst trap for endless thought exercises because it's difficult to introduce a wrong statement.

This article is art.</comment>


Can Android be stopped?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Can-Android-be-stopped/1301872030 <comment><USER2> FTA: "Have you noticed that Apple has started to aggressively advertise iPhone 4 on television again?"

I must have not noticed they weren't?

</comment><comment><USER3> Can hyperbole be stopped?</comment>


Satire: Facebook at work pics - <AUTHOR> http://m.fakingnews.firstpost.com/2015/01/pics-if-facebook-was-the-official-communication-platform-in-offices/

<comment><USER2> Non-mobile version with proper photos:

[http://fakingnews.firstpost.com/2015/01/pics-if-facebook- was...](http://fakingnews.firstpost.com/2015/01/pics-if-facebook-was-the- official-communication-platform-in-offices/)</comment>


Show HN: Abstract Visual Debugger [video] - <AUTHOR> http://symbolflux.com/projects/avd <comment><USER3> This would be great for some domains, not only debugging but also teaching.

" _unless I can fund it somehow [...], it 's going to move slowly. _"

That's one way to see it. There's also a good chance it would gain traction if it was open source, especially considering how it targets programmers. The same could apply to the other project that you say is sadly semi-dead - <USER2> it wouldn't be if others were given a chance to use it and contribute. To be sure, one needs to make a living. But being the creator of such impressive _open-source_ projects can certainly help in that regard. If you really want to retain the possibility of commercializing them, just stick a dual license on them. This is, of course, only an idea and my personal way of approaching this kind of thing. To each his own.

TL;DR: If this was on Github, I would probably contribute!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey pierrec! I'm definitely thinking along those lines. Partly I haven't so far because I don't get how collaboration/organizing works on open source projects—any suggestions for something I could read on those lines?

And then the other part of it is, unsurprisingly, that I have retained some hope of commercializing one of them. While I love programming, I have found that I really do not enjoy being employed as a programmer and see these projects as nearly my only chance of getting to work on my own things. Also looking into getting an A+ certification and moving into IT...

 _shrug_ —it's getting to the point now, however, that I just have too many partially completed projects piled up, and I think open source is probably a good way of going forward with 'em. Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great.

A little bit like CodeCity ([http://www.inf.usi.ch/phd/wettel/codecity.html](http://www.inf.usi.ch/phd/wettel/codecity.html)).

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of the coding visualization from the movie The Zero Theorem. There doesn't seem to be any clips of it online, but here's a screencap from it [1].

[1] [http://cdni.wired.co.uk/1920x1280/a_c/08_2.jpg](http://cdni.wired.co.uk/1920x1280/a_c/08_2.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, awesome! I'm gonna have to watch that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the author is reading, this would be nice to see as a submission to the future of programming workshop ([http://www.future- programming.org/call.html](http://www.future-programming.org/call.html)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here! That sounds cool. I've never done anything like that, but I'll look into it and see if it's feasible for me to participate...

I've been working on something else in this domain recently too, in case anyone wants more :) [http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/why-programming- languag...](http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/why-programming-languages- dont-have.html)

<comment><USER7> I'm interested in what you're interested in, I made a blog post a long time ago (my only blog post) that was about this exactly. It's kinda bad, but if you want to read it it's available right here: [http://blog.martijnbrekelmans.com/the-road-to-automatic- code...](http://blog.martijnbrekelmans.com/the-road-to-automatic-code- visualization/)

I'm building up a collection of related articles, videos, demos, experiments etc which I will compile into a readable format and release at some point.

Definitely check out [https://github.com/cdglabs/moonchild.git](https://github.com/cdglabs/moonchild.git)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool--I'll check it out.

<comment><USER7> I've sent you an email about the compilation I've made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've made something somewhat similar in JavaScript. It's a framework that synchronises objects (and arrays) over multiple web pages, maintaining a two- way binding between all webpages.

This framework allows you to build visualizations like the one in the OP. Right now, I have a visualization that shows all your objects as cards, and you can change values inside the cards while your program is running.

[https://github.com/Azeirah/Object.remote](https://github.com/Azeirah/Object.remote)

All you have to do in your source is replace any

var a = {val: 10}

with

var a = client.createRemoteObject({val: 10});</comment>


Functional Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://osteele.com/sources/javascript/functional/ <comment><USER2> > map('x*x', [1,2,3,4])

Although it's longer, I think I prefer:

map([1,2,3,4], function (num){

return num + 1;

});

.. which is how our in-house functional javascript library does it.</comment>