100 Days as a Black Man in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://verysmartbrothas.com/100-days-ablackman-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER3> Interestingly I see a lot of comments saying we need more women in tech, but none saying we need more black people in tech. I have worked with a number of women, and only ever seen one consultant come in who was black. Are we more racist than sexist? (I see plenty of Indians however, maybe a disproportionate amount compared to the general population?).

I am based in Europe, and I do think there is less of a cultural division amongst races here. People appear to pigeonhole themselves into categories more in the US in my opinion, be it on race, job, music tastes or whatever.

<comment><USER4> We don't need more women, black, latino, white, red, green people in tech, we need talented people, regardless of how they look like. We need less bullshit, people who produce sane code and go home early to work on what matters about us, our communities, our families, our education!

I'm full stack dev living in London, I'm black, huge afro, piercings, english is not my first language, skateboarder, into punk music, etc.

<comment><USER5> I think you're both right and wrong. You're right in the sense that we do need to bring in the most talented people, but I suspect you're wrong in the definition of what the talents we need are. When people say "we need talented people" they usually mean that we need people who are best at doing what we do now. And that's not the solution, that's the _problem_.

In order to improve society/business/whatever we have to change it, and we can only change it by bringing in ideas that are different to what we have now. That is best done by people who offer different perspectives on what we're doing at the moment. In the case of tech, that's women, ethnic minorities, LGBQT+, non-tech, etc.

The thing that really must change in order to get society making the best tech possible that really impacts lives in a positive way is that we need to break the 'privileged white male' echo chamber that keeps coming up with the same dull ideas. That can only happen by filling the chamber with more people who aren't privileged white males. And I say that _as a privileged white male_.

<comment><USER6> Lets be concrete. I'm streaming realtime events and then running statistical models on the datastream in order to manipulate user behavior. What "different perspectives" are offered by women, non-Asian minorities or LGBQT+? Is there a secret prediction method that whites/asians don't know about? A special LGBQT+ streaming architecture?

On several occasions I've joined a company and been the only diversity carrier. I can't think of a single advantage beyond PR (I make group photos look more diverse, yay!) that my race has given the company. Any such advantage is miniscule in comparison to the advantages gained by my knowledge of statistical significance, multiple comparisons, regression and the like.

Realistically, if you wanted to add diversity of thought, you'd be far better off hiring a Frequentist of the majority race than a Bayesian of a different one. And if you wanted real (harmful) diversity of thought, you'd hire a magical thinker rather than someone persuaded by evidence.

<comment><USER5> _I 'm streaming realtime events and then running statistical models on the datastream in order to manipulate user behavior._

Having a more diverse team that includes someone with a more emotionally- driven perspective could lead to someone asking the question "Is the way we're manipulating user behavior actually ethical?"

This isn't about finding different technical solutions to problems; it's about finding different problems.

<comment><USER7> "Having a more diverse team that includes someone _with a more emotionally- driven perspective_ could lead to someone asking the question "Is the way we're manipulating user behavior actually ethical?" [Emphasis added]

Geez, I really hope that that was just an unfortunate turn of phrase. You can't possibly mean that non-(white-males) have a quote "more emotionally- driven perspective", do you?

<comment><USER8> I read the post to suggest that the existing team was obviously not very emotionally sensitive since they are explicitly working to "manipulate behavior" which sounds sinister. Perhaps hiring more folks who are both rational AND emotionally sensitive to their users is the diversity they need.

<comment><USER6> What's sinister about it? If you ever make a design change to increase conversions, you are working to manipulate user behavior. Are landing pages, a/b tests, pretty designs, and pictures of human faces now "sinister"?

<comment><USER8> Making a nicer product that increases user engagement is manipulating the product to match what the user likes, not manipulating the user. Changing the order and quality of ranked news articles, bending the truth, using behavioral science to promote addictive dependence,advertising products you don't actually make are all manipulating the user.

There is a big difference and yes, "manipulating the user" is sinister.

<comment><USER6> I specifically discussed putting human faces on the landing page to get more conversions and other design changes (e.g., button color, button copy). These don't change the product, only the landing page.

That's not a lie or bending the truth. It is manipulating the user.

<comment><USER8> I would suggest you stay away from describing your business practices as "manipulation", though. Almost all connotations of that word in psychology, law, and business imply deceit.

It sounds like you are decorating the showroom to boost sales... I hope it works out well for you. I was thown by the initial desciption that sure didnt sound like faces and buttons: "I'm streaming realtime events and then running statistical models on the datastream in order to manipulate user behavior."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The comment about bias against going to school in the South really resonates. I mean, in one sense it's hilarious to think that there are people who don't realize that schools like UNC-CH, Georgia Tech, Clemson, NCSU, Campbell, Wake Forest, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Virginia Tech, William & Mary, etc. are great schools. But in another sense it's very, very sad. And I almost find it weirder to hear that about people from the West Coast, where the stereotype about people has them being so much more open minded and accepting, vs. people from the Northeast who are stereotyped as being more elitist and dismissive of Southerners.

Oh well... at the end of the day, all you can really do is, as they say, "Be so damn good they can't ignore you".

<comment><USER10> Is there really a bias against schools south of the Mason-Dixon? I feel like most of NYC went to Duke. Tim Cook also seems to be doing alright.

<comment><USER11> People from the west coast don't necessarily have a nuanced understanding of the south.

<comment><USER11> To be clear, I say that as a west coast person who has visited the south.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "why pay all that money for college when you can go to coding school for a fraction of the price, make over six figures, and get equity in a company?"

You realize that most engineers do have a college degree right? You realize that most engineers are not dumb script kiddies who went through 10 PHP tutorials to learn how to code?

"I definitely feel like my high school guidance counselor dropped the ball on that one."

Yeah, cause please don't take any responsibility for not doing the work of thinking and planning your own future.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >You realize that most engineers do have a college degree right? You realize that most engineers are not dumb script kiddies who went through 10 PHP tutorials to learn how to code?

This doesn't match the dialogue I see here and other places about college graduates and/or job candidates who can't fizzbuzz or have no other skills required in the industry. Although I think it would be nice if we simultaneously had a steady supply of skilled engineers, constantly increasing salaries, and constantly increasing demand.

<comment><USER12> Not sure I see your point. Most "non-fizzbuzzers" are college graduates who got a liberal arts degree and are trying to pivot to a more lucrative field.

Just to be clear: I don't think all developers need a degree, but I think there is much more than just attending a 4 week codecamp required to become a good developer. The author makes it sound so trivial and easy.

<comment><USER13> > Most "non-fizzbuzzers" are college graduates who got a liberal arts degree > and are trying to pivot to a more lucrative field.

Prove it. That has not been my experience in hiring at all.

<comment><USER12> It has been mine. I have been interviewing and hiring developers for the past 6 years, this was my empirical observation. I am glad you had a different experience.

<comment><USER13> I think the important thing to remember in any discussion about hiring qualification is that our empirical evidence largely fails us. Even those of us who have spent lots of time, effort and experience on the subject are largely dealing with small sample sizes. These small sample sizes inform our biases which is a negative feedback loop, especially in the case that the confirm our existing biases.

So for instance, in my empirical observations, candidates from top tier engineering schools largely perform more poorly on fizzbuzz than candidates with no college experience what so ever. This observation was so largely opposed to my existing bias that it caused me question fizzbuzz as a qualification tool.

My investigations into this found lots of things that made me think that fizzbuzz is a bad tool (even though I had very high biases towards it in the beginning).

The lesson I took from that, was not "don't use fizzbuzz" even though I don't anymore, or "people with no college degree are better candidates than those from top tier universities". It was "small sample sizes make nearly all statements about hiring trends dubious." So "prove it". Is my default answer to that sort of statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really enjoyed this article because I also came to the Bay Area from the South. I don't know if you went into detail on this, but I feel like the interview process on the West Coast is very different from that on the East Coast ( far more technically rigorous ).

I feel like if you took all the positive statements out of your article, and put them together, you'd make one hell of a first impression in a conversation:

"I'm a Tesla-driving lawyer from an elite boutique law firm! I just moved here to pursue my dream of working in tech! I love SF and I'm here to stay!"

If I heard that from an interview candidate I'd be really impressed.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd have thought that the easier path would have been to join a law firm in the SF area first. Maybe just for a year or so.

That might give more perspective on the startup scene, and help to establish credentials. A law firm would understand the quality of his education and experience better than some small startup.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would be overjoyed if people would stop capitalizing "black", "white", etc. It feels like I'm reading something from Stormfront. Do we want body attributes and tribes to be less important in the future, or more?

<comment><USER17> Do you seriously propose that ignoring tribes will help anything?

<comment><USER16> I don't think I'm proposing to ignore tribes. I'm calling tribes out as harmful. If people promote the old idea of declaring themselves distinct from the rest of the human family because of various body attributes, I'm going to oppose it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very good article, but I really didn't like the "if only I could quickly get coding skills and be an engineer" part.

I'm really the last one to call for mandatory lengthy education, but there's a reason I'd usually agree that people having studied Computer Science _and_ worked in the field for few years tend to know certain things people that "learnt to code" don't.

But yeah, maybe the valley _is_ different and there's a huge market for people learning stuff for a few months and rightfully making a lot more money than I do in Europe :)

</comment><comment><USER19> "You know this is a tech event, right?" ... haha... that's tolerant, liberal Silicon Valley for you!

</comment><comment><USER20> I recently watched American Experience's Silicon Valley. I was a bit shocked by the lack of diversity in the those early companies (Fairchild Seminconductor, AMD, Intel, etc.). Andy Grove, a Hungarian, seemed to be the most diverse of the bunch.

There wasn't even a token Black, Asian, or Indian in the company photos I saw.

</comment><comment><USER21> The average IQ of African-Americans is a standard deviation below that of whites, which in turn is a bit below that of Asians and Ashkenazi Jews [1].

Under the assumption that the tech industry has a higher average IQ than the population as a whole, then in a world free of any sort of discrimination, one would expect to see blacks underrepresented and Asians overrepresented.

This isn't a fun fact to discuss; I don't intend any sort of disrespect towards people like the author who are most likely smarter than me. But it's one that needs to be accounted for in discussions about race.

1\. [http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton- Jensen3...](http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton- Jensen30years.pdf)

<comment><USER22> I would certainly discount info from a researcher who amongst other things: consistently ignored evidence disproving his assertions over time, was funded and endorsed by racist/white supremacist organization specifically to produce literature suggesting racial hierarchy in intelligence[1][2].

More importantly, the concept of IQ is a myth: there is no single measure of intelligence, different neural networks coordinate verbal vs reasoning vs short-term memory abilities, etc[3][4]. That _one_ test (based on solving certain classes of problems at most) is still being extrapolated to assessment of overall intelligence and used to somehow differentiate people is ludicrous.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Jensen#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Jensen#Criticism)

[2] [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174.265&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

[3][http://www.thestar.com/life/2012/12/19/iq_a_myth_study_says....](http://www.thestar.com/life/2012/12/19/iq_a_myth_study_says.html)

[4] [http://www.owenlab.uwo.ca/pdf/2012%20-%20Hampshire%20-%20Neu...](http://www.owenlab.uwo.ca/pdf/2012%20-%20Hampshire%20-%20Neuron.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A shame he left. We need more smart techies staying here in Atlanta.

<comment><USER24> It says that he's still in San Francisco in his bio.

Which is good because:

a) he's on the front page of HN

b) he's available for tech legal roles

c) he seems like a pretty capable guy

<comment><USER11> He left atlanta is I think the point.

<comment><USER24> Oh you're right! I was reading off a tiny screen and evidently misread - <USER2> rjbwork!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash The author is doing good work and I commend him. It's a million more times easy to complain about a problem or prescribe a solution than it is to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work. We need more people like him.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Blacks in Oakland frequently question why I would live in SF with people who don't look like me"

This is the most racist thing I read whole day.

<comment><USER26> I am a white guy living in the rural Japan. I can tell you lots of stories of other expat white people accusing me of being a "Japan-o-phile" (apparently a bad thing) because I adopted a Japanese way of life. People have often warned me that "they [the Japanese people] will never accept you" and "you know you will never be Japanese". I get _far_ more racism from these expats who feel betrayed that I have happily integrated into Japanese society than I ever have from Japanese people.

Racism exists everywhere. Living in Japan has been the first place where I've lived as a visible minority and it has been an eye opener. Being obviously different is hard in many ways. There are people who stare at you, or people who wonder if/how you are different from them. There are people who are afraid of you for no reason other than you are different. Very occasionally there are people who are abusive and rude, but most of the time it is mostly a mixture of ignorance and curiosity (and maybe a little bit of fear of the unknown thrown in).

It can be quite a problem for some people. Many people take offence at practically anything and can't let anything slide. They feel it is morally wrong not to take a stand about being treated differently. They feel _you_ are morally wrong if you happily agree to be treated differently.

For me, probably like a lot of people who read HN, I have always been different. I have never fit in anywhere. Even though I was visibly the same as everyone, my way of thinking, my religious beliefs, my values have always been different from the norm. I suffered greatly in countries where everyone assumed that I was the same as them. As a visible minority, I am free to be different. It makes me happy even if sometimes it causes problems.

"Expats in Japan frequently question why I would live in rural Japan with people who don't look [and by extension, think] like me", would be a true statement for me. In my opinion this is likely true of any visible minority population anywhere. It definitely hurts me and I suspect it hurts the author as well, which is probably why he wrote about it in that way.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for one of the best expositions on fundamental xenophobia I've read in a while.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: How software projects and companies got their name - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amitmerchant1990/how-products-got-their-name <comment><USER2> A small addition to Git from its README file[1]:

      The name "git" was given by Linus Torvalds when he wrote the very first version. He described the tool as "the stupid content tracker" and the name as (depending on your mood):

      * random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a mispronunciation of "get" may or may not be relevant.

      * stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the dictionary of slang.

      * "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.

      * "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaks

[1] [https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add this reference to the list. Or you can raise a pull request as well if you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice.

I think you need to add somewhere that C# is called C Sharp, and the idea - besides the connection to musical notation is that the character # ("sharp", though improperly as in ASCII it is "Number sign") is made out of four +'s, increasing from the two in C++, your sentence:

>C# as the '#' symbol looks like two '++' stacked on one another, indicating that C# is an increment of C++. though at the end of the day means the same, is IMHO less clear than the original from the source you cited:

[https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/261958/a-z_programm...](https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/261958/a-z_programming_languages_c_/?pp=2)

>So the naming committee had to get to work and we sort of liked the notion of having an inherent reference to C in there, and a little word play on C++, as you can sort of view the sharp sign as four pluses, so it's C++++. And the musical aspect was interesting too. So C# it was, and I've actually been really happy with that name. It's served us well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really interesting to read about the birth of names. Gives some names a certain charm and some a certain triviality, e.g. Debian (Debra + Ian).

</comment><comment><USER5> When Java switched hands to the Eclipse foundation last year, I learned that the foundation wasn't named after their goal of "eclipse the Sun Microsystems". That would have been awesome if true.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)#Name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_\(software\)#Name)

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like this. Especially because I'm bad at finding names for my projects, but I can see I'm not the only one. (Python and Laravel is my favorites)

</comment><comment><USER7> > one of his daughter's name is My(after whom MySQL was named).

Mind blown

<comment><USER8> You didn't honestly think it was your sql, right?

<comment><USER5> I thought it was a tutorial on steroids. You know programming tutorials that prefix almost every variable with "my"? MyFoo, MyBar, MyNumber, MyString, MyDatabase, MySQL...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In browser circles, 'chrome' refers to the bits of the browser UI that aren't the renderer.

It's hard for me to believe that Chrome's name didn't just originate from Google talking about taking WebKit and building their own chrome around it.

<comment><USER10> The use of "chrome" in this context isn't limited only to browsers[0].

My recollection is that Google Chrome was so-named because one of their design goals was to _minimize_ the amount of GUI chrome, so that the maximum amount of screen space was available for displaying web page content.

[0] [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/browser-and-gui- chrome/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/browser-and-gui-chrome/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://wiki.debian.org/WhyTheName](https://wiki.debian.org/WhyTheName)</comment>


What is a Hacker? (1985) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html

<comment><USER2> I like Stallman's idea of it more.

> Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of > playful cleverness.

It seems to me more appropriate, More effective, better descriptive, less limiting.

Not that being a hacker means one also has to be good at writing what an hacker is, but Stallman is showing some true hacker spirit here I think.

<comment><USER3> How does the posted article contradict that in any way? The description you post is purely aesthetical (as defined in the article).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The ambiguity in blackhat hacker vs. traditional MIT hacker is up for discussion but there is a third kind of hacker that I cannot comprehend.

Why do we call people who develop user apps hackers. I mean if a person is developing a web software with JavaScript, Rails and MySQL then it is not really hacking. Those tools are designed for that purpose so they are not used in a particularly clever/unexpected way to achieve a result. I mean if you are emulating an old OS purely in JavaScript, then that's a neat hack because that's certainly not what the language is designed for but a "location based social network" does not really qualify, does it?

<comment><USER5> > _Why do we call people who develop user apps hackers_

Because a/ "hacker" was (is) a title that commanded respect, hackers were seen as something special, and b/ business got wind of it. Once a term like that enters business-speak, and then finds media attention, it's game over, the term becomes meaningless.

So here we are, if you know how to tweak Rails or Android examples found on- line and have above-room-temperature IQ, you're a "passionate rockstar web hacker".

<comment><USER6> i'm still waiting for the browser plugin that replaces "hacker" with "rockstar", but i dont think it will ever happen :(

<comment><USER5> Right there with that famous cloud-to-butt extension someone keeps mentioning on HN all the time. I could use both.

<comment><USER7> Is there a soup-to-nuts extension too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article isn't really about the word "hacker". It's about using ideas from moral philosophy to explain _the reasoning and actions_ of people who tend to self-identify as hackers. It's about the people and their reasons, not about the dictionary.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice read but this turned me off:

> A tale of passionate love between 40-year-olds is more likely to be comic.

A bit ageist coming from someone who was 35 at the time. It seemed a bit like he was romanticizing Hackers as only being young people that somehow need to grow up later.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think we can ever salvage the old meaning of the word. Hacker mostly means "computer criminal" now. That is literally what official dictionaries define it as: "a person who hacks into a computer system" [1].

But that's just the mainstream. We know what hackers really are, because we are hackers. It's like a password. If you know what hacker really means, you probably are one.

[1] [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/hacker)

<comment><USER10> I know it is a bit silly but I feel compelled at times to respond to and correct news headlines like "Hackers Steal Bank Passwords". Conflating hacking with criminal activity is another example of the depressing Prohibitionism which is such a drain on the American psyche and which props up organized crime and the militarization of everyday life.

There was a PBS kids show my kids watched a few years back: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberchase](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberchase)

Stupid as hell and despite the fact that it received science education grants - had nothing to do with science. There was a character called the Hacker who was like a Gargamel-ish character.

My boys eventually asked me why I didn't like the show and I had a parenting moment where I explained to them what a hacker was - I used examples like Leonardo da Vinci who did things that were considered illegal to advance science (human disection, etc).

More recently we had the opportunity to go tot HOPE X in NYC. They learned lockpicking and soldering and checked out the exhibits and books. And we had the 'lockpicking is ok if the lock is yours' talk...

It is not that hard to make the distinction - I wish it were more prevalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The term 'Hacker' is a lot like the n-word. It's okay when we call each other hacker, but when someone outside our community does it, we get offended.

It's time to let the word go. The meaning changes depending on who you speak to. It's an exclusive word that needs to be marked obsolete.

<comment><USER12> The n-word is the modern legacy of a history of 400 years of racism and enslavement. Its modern usage originates from using the word to reinforce the same economic and social oppression. That context exists for the n-word beyond your 'baseline' racial epithet.

'Hacker' is different because it's a term that originated with a somewhat positive connotation within and by a community, and got misinterpreted negatively later by the outside.

Yes, the duality in assigning meaning to 'hacker' internally/externally does share some similarity with a group/race-based slur that has been 're-claimed', but obviously not entirely. The n-word seems like a particularly bad choice of example, though.

<comment><USER11> I was making a parallel between using a word within a community when that word has a different meaning from outside the community. The exclusion that comes from using the word is the only point I was trying to make. I was hoping that the history and origin of the word would not create some kind of epithet of racism.

The discussion of something related to race is not racism in and of itself just the same as the discussion of feminism is not misogynistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like what is said until the paragraph on Steven Levy's work (the antepenultimate one). This paragraph draws a conclusion that I don't agree with, and more than that I'm not sure it can be drawn from what is said before.

I see the aesthetic aspect of the hacker culture. Without being as explicit, it is what RMS talks about in his similar essay (the one with the chopsticks story) in my opinion.

However, denying the ethical aspect entirely is wrong. I see it as an equally important part, and I fear that rejecting it entirely is a symptom of a rejection of anything political, which is a behavior I can't understand, and that I even find somewhat dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER14> We need a Change.

Hacker should never mean a Cracker.

Cracking is illegal and brings a Negative Connotation. The Media still uses & refers Hackers for Crackers too. Why so?

Hacker word should bring a Positive Connotation. Hackers are the change makers: Working on Good & Great things.

There was a Change.org Petition: Asking media Companies NOT to use 'Hacker' when they mean 'Cracker' [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7838663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7838663)

What can we do to bring a change? Please share you Ideas. Let's do something.

<comment><USER15> 'Cracker' is an invented term.

Like most invented linguistics, it didn't catch on, and it never will.

By contrast 'phreaker' fits the bill in many aspects.

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

Of course a lot of the time we're just referring to common criminals who know how to download software off of some 'warez' BBS and use it for bank and credit fraud.

I don't know what to call those people, but even 'cracker' gives them too much credit.

<comment><USER16> >I don't know what to call those people, but even 'cracker' gives them too much credit.

Script kiddie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgPIqOh9uTU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgPIqOh9uTU)

</comment><comment><USER17> I am so so sick of this stupid hacker word. To me, hacker means immature loser who would rather piss around breaking some cheap commercial software to impress his naive peers than create something truly great with contemporary technology. Its a word to describe the feeble minded. Don't think so ? Go to a hacker convention. Fat kids in black tshirts smoking pot. Small minded people. The mcdonalds of innovation. Of course they try to rubber stamp every tech icon in the forehead with their tag. Fuck off, pretty please.

<comment><USER18> Is there something inherently wrong with fat people in black t-shirts that makes you think they're feeble minded?

<comment><USER3> A bit sad really, he would've had a pretty good point if he hadn't included that line.</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin will become the world's single currency, Jack Dorsey says - <AUTHOR> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bitcoin-will-become-the-worlds-single-currency-tech-chief-says-66slm0p6b <comment><USER2> Lightning is now running in Beta and will later in 2018 fix the high transaction cost problem.

But I wonder how Jack comes to this very strong conclusion?

It took two world wars first to _slowly_ dethrone the British Pound Sterling and than to push the USA Dollar down everyone's throat, with the help of the Marshall plan and the Saudi oil deal (we protect you, and you sell oil only in $ denominated contracts).

What similar strong reasons are there to think Bitcoin is going to grow this strong?

</comment><comment><USER3> Twitter stops advertising for cryptocurrencies but Twitter CEO doesn't

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/18/17136556/twitter- cryptocu...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/18/17136556/twitter- cryptocurrency-ads-bitcoin-ban-report)

</comment><comment><USER4> Yea, and buying a bread would cost my daily salary. Bread will be cheap, the daily salary will go to pay the transaction cost.

<comment><USER5> Did you hear about the lightning network?

<comment><USER6> Did you hear about crypto currencies with instant transactions?

<comment><USER7> Every single one of them lacks critically useful properties of bitcoin, and arguably don't fall under the definition of "cryptocurrencies" at all. Usually the way you get instant transactions is giving up decentralization/trustlessness or giving up guarantees about transaction permanence. You might as well just use a bank.

<comment><USER8> Sorry but even the lightning network leads to more centralization. You still have to open and close each end and not every individual can do that because that's already 2 on chain transactions.

<comment><USER7> Network topology centralization is not even remotely the same as concensus centralization. Having a highly centralized topology is mildly bad (but probably avoidable) whereas centralized concensus completely eliminates the usefulness of cryptocurrencies over various trustful payment systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bitcoin is a store of value. Someone has yet to create to create an effective medium of exchange out of a crypto-currency.

<comment><USER10> It's not a store of value. It's a speculation asset. A store of value is something that is good at preserving the value that went into acquiring it. A store of value is not volatile, runs no chance of losing all its value overnight, can be insured against value loss at low margins, and has a long history of being used as a store of value. Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is none of these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> No it won't.

</comment><comment><USER12> It will probably replace gold, but not so much more than that.

<comment><USER13> Mmm... If you had a kilo of gold, would you really exchange it for bitcoins?

The only people who push for that is those who have bitcoins--possibly acquired when it was worth nothing. If I had gold I would keep the gold, not replace it with something that might be worth absolutely nothing overnight.

<comment><USER14> What makes you so sure that you won't wake up one day and find out that someone managed to synthesize gold, or found a gigantic cache of it somewhere? I wouldn't be so sure about the chances of that happening being lower than that of sha256 being broken.

<comment><USER15> Gold can alredy be synthethised, but either all synthetic gold isotopes are radioactive or you have to use very rare metals (like Pt or Hg196) to obtain stable Au197. To do that you need a particle accelerator or a nuclear reactor, both of which are very expensive.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#G...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Gold)

The solid gold asteroid crashing onto Eatrh theory is even less plausible. So I'd venture to say gold is a quite safe store of value for the time being. A lot better than Bitcoin or any other crypto currency that could be easily wiped out in the event of a nuclear blast or rendered useless in the absence of electricity.

<comment><USER13> Forget it, there are "Bitcoin fanboys" that have abandoned all logic.

I'm not saying it isn't a cool technology an idea and one can't try, but a little common sense would still help IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A deflationary currency cannot become mainstream without causing a huge amount of instability.

Deflation at some point causes people, businesses and banks to build stashes of tokens instead of investing in real businesses with real production capacity.

When this trend becomes widespread enough, it causes global production capacity to drop. That's right, when enough people do it, token hoarding displaces investment in businesses and factories and lowers global production capacity. This means token hoarding causes a future drop in things available to buy with these very tokens.

Eventually when token stashes become too big and seemingly valuable, there will be people who want to buy real things with their stock of tokens. These tokens will be chasing fewer goods which will mean prices for stuff will rise (tokens will lose value). This may happen suddenly when people with large stockpiles of tokens notice that value is dropping and see that there are tons of other tokens waiting on the sideline ready to make it drop even further.

Hoarders are likely to rush to get rid of their stockpile all at the same time before they're worthless which will cause their fall to worthlessness. This kind of drop brings the tokens closer to their natural intrinsic value of zero and resets the cycle, which can then start again, such is aggregate economics.

The 1920s and 1930s suffered from this type of production drop but with gold tied currencies instead of cryptocoins. It happened to a lesser extent in 2007 when western world central banks failed to keep inflation rates high enough.

It's important for the world's sake to not let deflationary currencies become too popular. When savings or financial promises are insufficiently tied to future production or to accumulation of real goods, there will be disappointment when many people try to exchange them for real stuff. That is true for crypto currencies as well as government currencies (that is why the system is designed to make banks invest people's money in real businesses and minimize the proportion of money that is stockpiled idly).

It's true that crypto currencies are currently not widely held enough to significantly affect the aggregate economy but speculation already keeps them volatile and the knowledge that as they get more popular, there will be more macroeconomic pressures towards volatility will keep the speculation wild and cryptocoins unstable.

Currencies that are not designed to lose value over time can not be stable. Intrinsically worthless tokens engineered to have better than market real returns (risk adjusted, liquidity adjusted,) compared to real productive investment will always fluctuate increasingly wildly as they get more popular.

</comment><comment><USER17> While I think "digital money" will replace existing currencies eventually, I don't think there's any reason to believe our first popular cryptocurrency is necessarily the ideal solution. There'll be better currencies that come along and replace Bitcoin (faster, more secure, more anonymous, more energy efficient, etc), and the world will coalesce around one of those.

However, before any universal replacement of money with a cryptocurrency can happen there are some _huge_ problems to solve, like the fact that fewer than half the people on Earth have access to the internet right now. We can't possibly have a global electronic currency if half the people can't use it.

<comment><USER18> I think any payment system that is dependent on a working network connection to a 3rd party being concurrent to the transaction, is unsuitable as a primary underlying monetary system. The chaos caused in a restaurant when the card machines break is insane and that is while there is still cash to fall back on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Paywall. Also, Dorsey has a significant investment in blockchain, so he would say so. Since the article is behind a paywall, I can't see his actual justification for this, other then "I hope so", but on the face of things, I don't think so. Crypto currencies are too much of a threat to the established interests, and if you think that particular cabal of sharks is just going to let this happen, you are wrong. They have the power, and will quietly fight this tooth+nail.

</comment><comment><USER20> USD transacted electronically using your bank is also a technically "digital currency". So, I don't understand why do people not think along the lines of better solutions to transact USD faster and cheaper but in terms of how cryptocurrency can improve.

<comment><USER21> No it is not. That is debt, absolutely no doubt about it. That is emphatically not even USD. It is contracts to pay USD to a named person at some future date that are "changing hands", not USD.

There is a very big difference, especially in case of liquidity problems. But there are more huge differences : for instance, exchanging money is not free (someone's paying 2% or so). Thirdly, those transaction are legally required to be reversible (just browse some online forums), and are reversed in apparently 1-2% of cases.

If bitcoin has proven anything, it's that there is a huge need for a currency that you can actually exchange over the network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Also Twitter will be the world's single social network. /s

</comment><comment><USER23> Jack Dorsey the person invested in the lightning network that doesn't actually work and runs on top of the a crippled 1.6KB/s chain?

<comment><USER24> How/where did he invest? I've been out of the loop for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> He's heavily invested in it--so I'm sure he does believe that, but I doubt banks will let that happen.

Banks are known to do some really nasty stuff to make money: deceively deprive the US of government-controlled money and removing the gold standard, pretty much sentencing Greece to never come out of their depression, etc. etc.

They have pretty good contractual power too: they have everyone's money. That's pretty important in most societies.

<comment><USER25> even if your conspiracies were true, banks are still better, along most any dimension, than any of the players in the crypto universe.

<comment><USER13> If by conspiracies you mean conspiracies yes, otherwise I don't think those events are disputed by anyone.

I don't think banks are bad. I have all my money at a bank, not a Bitcoin exchange. I'm just saying that ethics are not their forte, and that's just a fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think he referred to Bitcoin as a generic name for crypto currencies.

There will always be more than one crypto coin and new ones will keep appearing. And that in itself will solve the deflationary issue.

People will choose to buy and use them based on their name, their logo, their ease of use, based on what their peers use maybe even on what it's promised in their white papers. Almost all of the above enumerated properties look better on crypto currency at the very present moment than those of USD, EUR, Yuan and other fiat money.

</comment><comment><USER27> Jack Dorsey is mostly correct here. While I still doubt that it will be used for coffee (however lightning network payments certainly do make this possible), it is difficult to escape the reality of deflationary currencies -- It is foolish to spend today what you could save until tomorrow.

Unlike a certain CSW who believes HODL'ing is evil ([https://www.pscp.tv/w/bYHNVjFheWpWSkpOTW9HanB8MXZBeFJWenZnVm...](https://www.pscp.tv/w/bYHNVjFheWpWSkpOTW9HanB8MXZBeFJWenZnVmF4bCq8nwrwmU5VaphIg6ZCUd7YAtj3MzvtVooh3BYnik4L)), I believe that cryptocurrencies provides the ultimate reward to savers.

Save some coin today for your life tomorrow.

<comment><USER28> If this is true, then everyone will spend electricity mining instead of on actual people's needs because it will make them a lot more. Get ready for blackouts.

<comment><USER29> And then the most common minimum-wage job would be spinning the wheels on a bitcoin-mining bicycle, kind of like in one of those Black Mirror episodes.

<comment><USER27> which is the reality for most minimum-wage jobs. its purpose is to keep that wheel spinning.

Is the wheel of the cryptocurrency miner, or the wheel of the landlord or business owner really that different?

<comment><USER10> No, very much the opposite. Most minimum-wage jobs are actually the one that specifically create or add value. When you work as a fruit picker, for every fruit you pick you just added value into the economy. With every figurative swing of the pickaxe a miner creates value from where was previously a rock wall. Every carefully-timed cycle of 43 seconds a Chinese factory worker turns a box of components into its much more valuable sum of those parts.

Minimum wage jobs are exactly the class of jobs where we can be certain that value was created. Much of the higher-level jobs is just making sure that that value doesn't spoil, that it doesn't go lost, that it can make its way around the economy to enable further value creation (at the hand of another minimum wage job) as soon as possible. Some higher-level jobs like engineer can amplify the value creation by designing new tools for the job, but the value itself still stems from the actions of those manual labourers.

<comment><USER30> [Slightly off-topic]

> _Some higher-level jobs like engineer can amplify the value creation by > designing new tools for the job, but the value itself still stems from the > actions of those manual labourers._

This is a nice variation of the Chinese Room argument [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room)

Who is creating the value, the one that is writing the instruction or the one that is following blindly the instructions? [In real life it's more complicated because the designers have feedback from the operators and also because usually the instructions are underspecified.]</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GammaThingy: Changes screen gamma on iOS, no jailbreak required - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thomasfinch/GammaThingy <comment><AUTHOR> You'll need a Mac and Xcode to install (but you don't need to be a developer).

Instructions video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_01P4-ubdA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_01P4-ubdA)

If you get weird blue and yellow circles,

=> turn OFF _' Reduce White Point'_ in _Settings / General / Accessibility / Increase Contrast_

Note: it works because you don't need to be a developer to load apps to your iPhone via Xcode anymore

Note2: it uses "private" APIs so it won't be accepted into the App Store (just like _f.lux_ ).</comment>


Learn Computer Graphics from Scratch - <AUTHOR> http://www.scratchapixel.com/ <comment><USER2> I wrote an "online textbook" called "Computer Graphics from scratch" before knowing of Scratchapixel (and their tagline!).

Mine is based on the lectures I gave back in the day when I was teaching CG as a third-year university subject, so it follows a very pragmatic approach because I had to find the "path of least resistance" from zero knowledge to writing a rasteriser and a raytracer, so I had to condense all the material in 16 weeks or so... and that's roughly the number of chapters in the book :) It's also why every chapter builds on top of the previous one, and why there's a _visible result_ at the end of each.

[http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from- scratc...](http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch)

</comment><comment><USER3> Scratchapixel is a really comprehensive resource. I referred to it frequently while working on a 2-day workshop on writing a raytracer.

What I've always found missing are resources that cover both the foundational theory and the implementation details, in a way that connects the two ends. That's why, when developing that workshop, I created a resource that goes over the theory of raytracing--including the relevant math--and walks you through a series of practical projects.

I put up the resource online: [https://avik-das.github.io/build-your-own- raytracer](https://avik-das.github.io/build-your-own-raytracer)

The page also links to two reference implementations in Java and Javascript, so learners can follow along.</comment>


The best way to download YouTube playlist – Tubepick.com - <AUTHOR> https://www.tubepick.com/ <comment><USER2> YouTube-dL can download playlists and it can strip audio too</comment>


Show HN - <AUTHOR> https://farhanf.github.io/smoovelanding/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone I'm a solo founder on his second journey. I built an inspiration discovery engine.

Check it out.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Building this in the open @fspacef on Twitter.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1st project out of 0ex.dev.</comment>


Ask HN: What do female HN members feel about sexism in the community? - <AUTHOR>

The recent events regarding Adria Richards brings to light an issue that many members of the tech industry and I have noticed. There is a significant amount of institutional sexism in the industry, and I wanted to find out what women in the industry thought about it and what their experiences have been. I think it's a good time for us to take an introspective look and discuss problems and potential solutions. <comment><USER3> Ask later - we all need a break.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I think that the issue should be discussed while there's attention and interest focused on it. Much like I thought the gun control debate should have happened when it was on everyone's minds, I think that an issue as important as sexism should be addressed when it is in front of the whole community.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. That said, it's a sad irony that this debate will probably resurface with the next incident within a month, much like the frequency of mass-shootings in the USA.

<comment><USER3> There _has_ been tons of debate - loads of comment here and on Reddit - <USER2> you're starting another thread for karma, shame on you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This line of questioning is sometimes useful. However, the first rule of being a good ally is that it is not the responsibility of any member of a marginalized group to educate you. There is no shortage of writing on this topic, including in the most recent threads.</comment>


Show HN: MadBlocker — iOS 8 Ad and Tracking Script Blocker - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/madblocker/id1024886686?ls=1&mt=12

<comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. Happy to answer any questions!

I created this as a proof-of-concept to show that we don't have to wait for iOS 9 to block ads on iOS. MadBlocker uses a hack of the VPN subsystem to block ads, by redirecting requests for ad domains to a bogus local DNS address. Unlike some of the current iOS ad blockers, it doesn't use an external proxy, so no data leaves the device. I also included block lists for tracking scripts, since they're a problem too. Since it works at the OS level, and not via Safari it also blocks ads in (most) apps. It should continue to work fine in iOS 9 as well!

I have some promo codes I can give out too if you'd like to give it a try. If you want one, please just email me at the address listed in my HN profile.

<comment><USER3> Can you explain a little more how this works? Can specific requests be routed to a specific connection in iOS, at the device level?

If it's a "hack", won't the possibility be blocked by Apple eventually?

Also, you say on the App Store page that using a big list can slow down browsing, as (I'm paraphrasing) the app has to scan each page against the list; why is that the case? Shouldn't request be redirected the moment they are made, and not before?

Great idea in any case! Will probably try it, as many sites are already almost unusable because of ads (and when using Chrome on iOS the problem gets worse; Safari must block more by default).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's only a hack in the sense that is using the VPN system in a way that it was not originally intended. It is only using documented public iOS APIs.

To answer your request in more detail: it makes use of a feature that has been around since iOS 7: VPN On Demand[1]. The idea behind VPN On Demand is that requests can be routed to different VPNs (or accessed normally) based on the hostname of a request. This is useful if you get an email from work that has an intranet-only accessible website. Clicking on the link could load a connection to the company VPN for only that work domain without also sending all of your personal traffic through the company VPN. In the case of MadBlocker, I just direct requests for ad hostnames to a bogus local IP, and the ads never load.

That said, while it works in Safari and in most apps, it may not work in apps that implement their own networking or DNS retrieval, which Chrome seems to do.

> Shouldn't request be redirected the moment they are made, and not before?

Yeah, that is what happens, but since _every_ request is checked against the list (since we don't know _a priori_ which request is for an ad), it can take noticeable time on sites that include assets from many external domains (if using the "mega" list or depressingly-long privacy protection list).

1\. [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203743](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT203743)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Larger question, not just confined to the world of iOS ad blocking; as the creator of ad-blocking code, are you at all concerned that you're hurting the only revenue stream for sites that rely on ad revenue to pay the bills?

We're not just talking the big boys here, a bunch of indie content producers publish online and I don't begrudge them a few ad dollars for producing content that's worth reading, or is it that we're making the call that content should be free or is inherently value-less?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely a concern, especially since I run a side project for STEM education that has ads[1]. My site doesn't break even at all from ads, but they help offset the running cost (revenue is in the single-digit dollars-per- month range). Ad revenue has fallen greatly though for sites displaying ads, I believe owing to the fact that online ads have been found to be much less effective at driving sales than they were once thought to be (though they may still buy mindshare). Current ads are more flashy, more annoying, and are a greater source of frustration. On desktops that's one thing, were the cost of viewing the ad is largely paid with your attention. On mobile though, they take up even more attention but they also use expensive mobile data and drain precious energy from the battery.

I'm not sure of how things will look in the future, but it will probably be a more heterogeneous mix of funding sources. We'll see more subscription-based sites, we'll see more sites run as cashflow-negative hobby projects, and we'll still see ads. We will also certainly see another category: sites the sell your info for money. We'll see sites that combine all of these. I suspect we'll also see more content distributed solely in app form, with in-app purchases buying more content. Since operational costs have fallen and continue to fall, the world won't look so different for a while. I think the best model for consumers is one where ads are the default, and a cheap subscription can be paid to remove them. Microtransactions are an alluring solution, but no one has really made them work yet. There is also a growing trend of sponsoring content before it is created, via sites like Patreon.

1\. [https://www.takeitapart.com/](https://www.takeitapart.com/)

<comment><USER5> Does your app whitelist your websites?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you want a whitelist in the sense that you want to see ads on certain websites, or that you want to see specific ads?

In the case of the latter, a whitelist is planned (mostly to correct for false positives). In the case of the former, it's not possible technically since I'm not proxying anything, and the whitelist acts on the request domains ads are coming from not the domains in which they are embedded.

<comment><USER5> No no, I simply ment to ask whether your new app does also block ads on your mentioned side project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, it does indeed block them (they're Adsense ads)! (Good for testing, since I know how the ads will load)

<comment><USER5> Bonus points in this case, thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't seem to work in iOS9 (at least for me).

Enabled ad blocking - went to mashable.com got ads as per [https://www.dropbox.com/s/gqnf2mebzi74151/photo%20aug%2015%2...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/gqnf2mebzi74151/photo%20aug%2015%2C%205%2026%2027%20pm.png?dl=0) turned on mega list, refreshed, same thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Did you restart Safari before trying it in iOS9?

I haven't tested it yet in iOS9 yet because the VPN system doesn't work in the simulator, and I haven't installed the beta on my personal phone yet since I value stability. Once iOS 9 is out to the public I'll do some testing and make any updates necessary.

<comment><USER6> I hadn't, but just tried restarting safari, restarting device, and clearing safari history/data - and still having the same output.

* I'm completely fine with this being the case. Before installing I was completely unsure if it would work for iOS9 before trying (not expectant with it still being beta, but simply curious as it's an interesting approach).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a bummer, sorry about it! I'll work to have it running after the iOS9 launch!

<comment><USER6> No problem at all. As I say, wasn't expectant. Good luck with it - <USER2> approach is unique, and on working beyond Safari would be awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think there's been an App in the AppStore (since a long time) that uses the same technique: "Disconnect Kids By Disconnect" [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disconnect- kids/id671080655?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disconnect- kids/id671080655?mt=8)

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't seen that; thanks. I like their comic book explanation.

It looks like their VPN profile is not included with the app though, and is instead sourced from their website[1]. That means that a) Apple has not inspected the block list (they specifically asked me via the resolution center to list which domains were blocked), b) that the VPN profile is subject to interception or changes of control since it is sourced from a website, c) that updates to the block list require a new download of the block list from their website, d) that an uninstall of their blocklist requires the installation of a new (presumably blank?) blocklist, and e) when you uninstall their app, the VPN profile remains on the device (it is removed upon uninstall of MadBlocker).

1\. [http://kids.disconnect.me/profile?block_ids=0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,...](http://kids.disconnect.me/profile?block_ids=0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really clever! Hope this sticks around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, me too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thank you - this is a wonderful thing to have on mobile. I hate going from my home wifi, where I use squid guard + blacklists, onto LTE. This seems to catch most of the crud and the performance hit is acceptable.

Well worth the price.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks interesting. I agree that I am concerned regarding the future of the app and how it affects Apple's API /ToS.

To everyone wanting to check validity it should be pretty easy to verify the network traffic.

Will definitely hit you up for a promo code. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER11> How can a user confirm that their traffic isn't set to be sent over the vpn?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a valid question, and it is always the challenge of closed-source software; it's a black box. So you either have to trust me, or you could have your iPhone connect to a wi-fi access point on a network you are monitoring and check for requests to anomalous domains. You could also probably install it on a managed iOS device and then inspect the VPN profile with Apple Configurator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised Apple allowed this through the App Store.

I suspect you'll get rejected later this year when iOS 9 is released for duplicating a system feature.

<comment><USER13> Ad blocking isn't a system feature in iOS 9. The publicity is about an API that makes it easier for developers to write ad blockers.

There are also plenty of apps that duplicate system features.

<comment><USER12> Do you think Apple will see it that way? They've been very vague in the past about what defines duplicating the features.

In addition, the dev said he was using the VPN as a workaround for this, Apple can very well reject this for a different reason.

<comment><USER7> Disconnect Kids which uses the same technique has been in the App Store for a long time...: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disconnect- kids/id671080655?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/disconnect- kids/id671080655?mt=8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> @tomkinstinch What kind of performance hit can we expect with this? (Innovative solution until iOS 9!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Minimal with the regular block list, noticeable with the "mega" or Privacy Protection lists. See my comment here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066131)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems to only let me enable either ad blocking or privacy blocking. How can I do both?

<comment><AUTHOR> That may be an early bug, my apologies. You should be able to enable both. Please message me at the email listed in my HN profile and we can troubleshoot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> using a dummy proxy is another approach to this problem. This is how Weblock works, which I'm pretty happy with. It seems to have almost no overhead on the device, though it only works for wifi connections.

<comment><AUTHOR> The nice thing about MadBlocker using the VPN is that it works for cellular connections as well.

I wonder why proxies would be wi-fi only. Do you know?

<comment><USER16> I guess it has to do with mobile carriers wanting more control over your connection. The same way that you can't change your DNS when on a mobile data connection, you can't specify a proxy server (except through a VPN profile).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How come no free trial?

</comment><comment><USER18> ...and it's gone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. It's up for me on the US App Store. It just went live though, so it's possible it hasn't made it out of all of Apple's CDN just yet.</comment></comment>


Espressif Releases ESP8285 - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2016/06/21/espressif-releases-esp8266-killer/ <comment><USER2> To anybody interested in ESP8266 and micopython: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micropython-o...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micropython- on-the-esp8266-beautifully-easy-iot)

This resulted recently in this: [https://github.com/micropython/micropython/releases/tag/v1.8...](https://github.com/micropython/micropython/releases/tag/v1.8.1)

From a humble yet proud backer :)

<comment><USER3> This is pretty interesting! Do you know if it supports SSL on the ESP8266?

<comment><USER4> Yes, it should:

[https://github.com/micropython/micropython/issues/952#issuec...](https://github.com/micropython/micropython/issues/952#issuecomment-150911800)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To anybody interested in ESP8266 and JavaScript, shameless plug: [https://github.com/cesanta/mongoose-iot](https://github.com/cesanta/mongoose- iot)

It can also be used as a replacement SDK for C development. In addition to the stock ESP8266 SDK it offers a filesystem, configuration infrastructure, async networking library (using the github.com/cesanta/mongoose networking library), OTA update support, coredumps, easy to use toolchain based on docker, improved (faster) flashing tool. And you can also enable the JavaScript scripting engine and script your firmware.

We're also supporting other platforms such as the cc3200 so it will enable you to easily change the target; some platforms are good for prototyping, some are better for production; often it's impossible to choose wisely at the beginning so it's nice to not require a full rewrite of your logic.

<comment><USER6> As someone who uses the CC3200, is your firmware a replacement for the SimpleLink stack?

<comment><USER5> It uses SimpleLink for lower level protocols (TCP, SSL) but replaces the higher level functionality (HTTP, DNS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was an exceptional talk at Thotcon this year on the ESP8266. Amazing work, and clearly a great deal of it, at one point the speaker casually noted that a table of information was not publicly available leaving unsaid what had obviously been months of tedious reversing. Its a shame there are no videos of the talk.

<comment><USER8> The speaker talked about an exploitable vulnerability in the bootrom, correct? Thus all ESP8266s are permanently vulnerable and only a new die rev could fix it. The CPU architecture is also interesting.

<comment><USER9> The talk description for "The Complete ESP8266 Psionics Handbook":

"But few realize that beneath the veneer of accessibility lurks a Pandora's box of perils straight out of the 90s... This talk will focus on exploiting memory corruption vulnerabilities for platforms hosted on the ESP8266. This talk will focus on exploiting memory corruption vulnerabilities for platforms hosted on the ESP8266."

The deck is here:

[https://speakerdeck.com/jsandin/the-complete- esp8266-psionic...](https://speakerdeck.com/jsandin/the-complete- esp8266-psionics-handbook)

<comment><USER8> Thank you for the slide deck! I arrived about halfway into the talk and hadn't seen the published slide deck until you pointed it out to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had thought that this might be an announcement about the availability of the ESP32. It is not. It's clickbait about an ESP8266-like chip with some onboard flash memory.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, probably not an ESP8288 killer. I doubt there are many applications where the size of existing ESP8266 modules is an obstacle but its power consumption is not; the power source it requires is going to be much bigger than the module itself.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Side note: PlatformIO ([http://platformio.org/](http://platformio.org/)) is awesome and is how I program these chips.

</comment><comment><USER12> I see the datasheet mentions WiFi Direct and WPS which I remember at some point wasn't possible with the ESP8266. Does this mean that it can be controlled directly by an Android phone with WiFi P2P?</comment>


Show HN: Scam – A Soundcloud Account Manager - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nihilist/scam <comment><USER2> The name certainly looks intentional. Nevertheless, I think all search engines have unanimously found the winner for the worst open-source project name ever.</comment>


Normalization of deviance in software: broken practices become standard (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://danluu.com/wat/ <comment><USER4> How would you feel if:

\- you were a chef. you went to culinary school and know about cooking and best practices.

\- you are asked to forget everything you learned in school and flip burgers with overly reused oil and unwashed equipment.

\- you are told that there's no time to clean the kitchen, or wash your hands. just flip as many burgers as possible to maximize profit.

\- the ones that cook the most burgers are rewarded, treated well, promoted. as soon as cooks realize this, they start making half-cooked burgers that make people sick.

\- the customers get sick all the time from the lack of hygiene. you talk about it, and you are told to keep doing what you are doing, or that you don't understand what being a chef is, or what the business is.

\- in the end the only source of gratification is getting a paycheck, or doing something in your spare time. you are not cooking real food, just part of a machine that makes money for a self-serving company while ripping off the customer.

This is what it feels to be an engineer in many companies.

(disclaimer: repost)

</comment><comment><USER5> I take some issue with statement "Workers are afraid to speak up".

Workers that don't own their own means of some kind of production are working for someone else. So its reasonable to be afraid when your livelihood, people have families to support. The point about cultures of "meaness" and "niceness" misses the mark. People are afraid of being out-grouped or becoming a social pariah for reasonable reasons such losing a job, getting blacklists, being undermined secretly, and etc.

In the current climate of extreme witchhunts, it is wiser to be quiet rather than risk the wrath of fickle masses.

EDIT: The speaking up context is in reference to project/organization feedback (office politics not government politics).

<comment><USER6> Some say "extreme witchhunts", some say "persistent offenders who have relied on their privilege for years are finding their Get Out Of Jail Free card doesn't work any more".

<comment><USER7> These aren't mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Knowledge is imperfect and uneven. People don't automatically know what should be normal_

This has been a big one in my experience. Because our industry is growing fast, at any point in time, most people have not had very much experience. I worked a company which had hired a load of bright young things straight out of university and trained them up. They were great people. They also had no idea that a lot of what they were doing was really bizarre and unproductive. Or, if you hire people who have had a few jobs, they're often not very varied: for all values of 'Rails', someone with five years of moving around doing Rails will know a lot about Rails, but won't be in a position to appreciate just how screwed up a lot of things in the Rails world are.

It's hard to escape from this trap, because even when you look outside your office, there's so much duff information available. You read an enthusiastic article about CORBA/XML/model-driven architecture/SOA/MongoDB/microservices/lambdas/blockchain/etc; as someone with a few years' experience, in which time you've never touched any of these things, how on earth are you supposed to be able to work out that it is in fact terrible advice?

<comment><USER9> Less ageism? Less pop culture? Fundamentally, less fun and more seriousness?

Because it's so much fun to create new things in our industry, so much new stuff gets created. Often it's only marginally better than what came before, or more frequently, it's only better in one dimension, and significantly worse in other dimensions. But it gets adopted because it has social currency, recency, buzz, etc. and all the deficiencies slowly get filled in. And by the time it's mature, something else new comes along.

As long as we keep hiring cheap kids to build our stuff, they'll keep reinventing the wheel, and the workforce available to hire will only understand, and more importantly only want to work with, the latest popular fads.

<comment><USER10> A big reason for the bias towards new things is that greenfield development is easier and more fun, especially in organisations that aren't capable of producing good software. Learning a new framework every couple of years makes sense if it means you get to avoid having to work on confusing spaghetti code from a decade ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Perfect is the enemy of good" is another common argument I've heard used as an excuse to avoid implementing process improvements. Or the 'ol catch 22 of, we just don't have the time to invest in processes that will save us all time!

<comment><USER12> That fucking phrase was the motto of one of our devs. Fast-forward one year and we still don't deliver the product to client.

<comment><USER13> That was hung on the door to the office of the DBA at my last job.

One day, we had a catastrophic loss of data due to a junior developer running a destructive script against the production server instead of the test server. We went to restore the database only to discover the hourly snapshots had been failing for months and he hadn't noticed

<comment><USER14> Almost all system failures are due to open loop processes. To evolve you need to rely on feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Two interesting quotes from the linked paper:

> It is very important that after the meeting, the offending employee receive > an official, written summary of the meeting which outlines the next steps in > the remediation. The employee should be required to acknowledge that the > summary is accurate. Interveners might have to repeat this last step, > because the rule offender can find it distressing to acknowledge the > meeting's having taken place

> Richard Cook (1998) has pointed out that complex systems such as healthcare > are intrinsically hazardous in that they invariably contain changing > mixtures of failures, weaknesses, and expertise, and always run in a > "degraded" mode.

By always running in degraded mode, it's not meant that degraded is the normal state, but that even in a degraded mode everything continues to run. You don't realize the extent of the degradation as long as the gears keep turning.

</comment><comment><USER16> Self-sabotage is remarkably common. Peter Drucker wrote about this in his book "Innovation And Entrepreneurship". His book is full of anecdotes similar to this article. It is surprising how many managers do things that clearly hurt the business they work for.

Drucker told a story from 1956, about an executive at Macy's who was angry that so many customers were coming in to buy washing and drying machines for clothing. Drucker was confused, and asked if the machines had a lower margin than other products. No, said the manager, they had a higher margin. Then why, asked Drucker, was it bad that customers wanted to buy the machines? The executive explained that Macys was all about selling clothes, not machines, and the customers were going to damage Macys reputation. The executive had previously worked in the clothing department, for decades, and he felt the clothing department was the "real Macys" and everything else was a sideshow.

Drucker has more stories like that. It is very common that managers have some initial bias, that establishes some odd habits in a company, and which over time become normalized. I recently wrote about a similar incident, at a startup where things were a bit odd from the beginning. Despite economic theory, managers are rarely rational.

I consult with many clients in New York City, and I can not begin to tell you how often this is true:

" _Anyone who comes into one of these companies from Google, Amazon, or another place with solid ops practices is shocked. Often, they try to fix things, and then leave when they can't make a dent._ "

In the last several years, I was at two companies that got rid of all their previous code, and did radical re-writes of everything:

[http://shermanstravel.com/](http://shermanstravel.com/)

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

but I worked at a dozen other companies where people knew that fundamental systems were broken, and there was no effort to fix things.

About the politics of fixing broken companies, this is exactly true:

" _Google didn't go from adding z to the end of names to having the world's best security because someone gave a rousing speech or wrote a convincing essay. They did it after getting embarrassed a few times, which gave people who wanted to do things "right" the leverage to fix fundamental process issues. It's the same story at almost every company I know of that has good practices._ "

<comment><USER17> > In the last several years, I was at two companies that got rid of all their > previous code, and did radical re-writes of everything:

Over the last few years the best work I've done has been to take what existed and slowly refactor it into something better.

Well, I say slowly, but the refactors themselves were often quick. I try to identify the most common pain points - for both users and developers - <USER2> eliminate those as quickly as possible. The overall codebase might not get better at a crazy rate that way, but the developer experience goes up, meaning fewer bugs, meaning quicker iteration times and more confidence making changes that _should_ be easy but so often are not.

And the end result of that two or three years on is a significant improvement in the quality of the code, the number of bugs - breaking or otherwise - <USER3> users encounter, and often times a manyfold decrease in the total LOC that need to be maintained.

I've tried rewriting some things as well: but even when it's a literal requirement in order to switch underlying platforms, it still causes a lot more friction than refactoring does. I've got three projects right now where the deadlines have massively slipped, and I'm now at the point where I'm looking to try to take some of the rewrites and backport them to the original platform just so that migration goes a little easier when the rest of the pieces fall into place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In defense of Flaky, the most common use case is for functional tests, since the browser can just run out of resources and crash for reasons that have nothing to do with your code.

If you own tests aren't idempotent then that's obviously a problem, but as test suites get better that's becoming less of an issue.

</comment><comment><USER19> >> The data are clear that humans are really bad at taking the time to do things that are well understood to incontrovertibly reduce the risk of rare but catastrophic events.

The big problem with the "normalisation of deviance" is that humans are both very smart and also get bored, or irriated, very easily. The example of the anesthesiologist who turned off the anoxia warning is indicative.

But if that's how humans _work_ , then that's something that needs to be taken into account when designing, essentially, security systems. We can't ignore the propensity of people to look for shortcuts to repetitive or boring tasks any more than we can ignore the fact that we tend to have our hands at the top of our body, or that we can't withstand extremes of temperature.

We wouldn't design a machine that had all its controls placed near the ground, too low to be manipulated easily by the average human; we wouldn't send unprotected humans to work in environments where temperatures could reach 1000 °C. Why would we give people tasks that would bore them to death or make them so mad that they would risk harm to themselves or others to avoid performing them?

The (IAEA) [1] has a bunch of papers on radiological accidents on its website and they are full of situations where people have literally hacked through security measures to stop them from blasting themselves with lethal doses of radiation- and fried themselves to death as a result.

For instance, see [2], [3] and [4]. These are three cases, one in El Salvador, one in Israel and one in Belarus, where an experienced operator of an irradiation facility overrode security mechanisms to enter the irradiation chamber and unblock a mechanism transporting packages over a radioactive source [5]. In [3], the chamber was designed like a D&D dungeon, complete with a concrete maze to absorb radiation, and actual traps: motion and pressure sensors that, when triggered, would immediately place the source at a safe position inside a dry pit and even a retractable section of floor near the maze entrance that created a pit too long to be jumped over. They never found out exactly how the operator crossed that pit. But- he did and paid for his ingenuity with his life.

We are smart little monkeys, we get bored easily and we always find a way to cause untold carnage. Those are factors that no design can ever afford to ignore.

__________________

[1] International Atomic Energy Agency.

[2] [http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEABooks/3798/The- Radiologica...](http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEABooks/3798/The-Radiological- Accident-in-Soreq)

[3] [http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub847_web.pdf](http://www- pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub847_web.pdf)

[4] [http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEABooks/4712/The- Radiologica...](http://www-pub.iaea.org/books/IAEABooks/4712/The-Radiological- Accident-at-the-Irradiation-Facility-in-Nesvizh)

[5] To sterilise the contents.

</comment><comment><USER15> (2015)

<comment><USER20> Might as well have written (evergreen)</comment></comment>


Rure-Python: Python API for RUst's REgex Engine - man-and-laptop <comment> man-and-laptop > rure is the Python binding Rust's regex library, which guarantees linear > time searching using finite automata.

This is the most feature-complete linear-time regex lib for Python as far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I assume you meant to submit a link? please try again?

<comment><USER2> Seems to be [https://pypi.org/project/rure/](https://pypi.org/project/rure/)</comment></comment>