Ask HN: Is value subjective? - <AUTHOR> I just want to get an idea of what the HN community thinks about this.  Personally I think value <i>is</i> subjective.  I would also add that I believe reality is also subjective due to the personal nature and perspective of the individual. <comment><USER2> Imagine that you have two people with the exact same amount of money. One hasn't had any water in 3 days, the other just drank a gallon of water.

Do you think they'd place different values on a glass of water? Do you think they'd interpret the glass of water differently?

<comment><USER3> If the second person knew of the existence of the first, he could buy the glass of water and sell it to the first, pocketing any difference. Their perceived values should be similar.

<comment><USER4> No, there should be an equilibrium market price in dollars thst they both pay if they are participants in a shared market. That doesn't mean the _value_ to each is the same.

Of course, the fact that they have access to that shared market also changes the value to each of them from that in the original hypothetical.

<comment><USER3> I think we have a difference in vocabulary. I would say value and equilibrium market price refer to the same thing, but you are saying it is the particular use it has to the individual which is of course not quantifiable. Assuming the person who's had no water has access to a functioning market they will only pay market price. Arguing about them perceiving it to have a higher value seems like a pointless philosophical argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > reality is also subjective

This is a big leap. While I agree that value is subjective, that doesn't make reality subjective. Reality is the medium through which our subjective experiences are negotiated. We are all more or less seeing and hearing the same events. Of course our interpretation of them can vary drastically, but that doesn't mean that what "actually" happened is different.

Can a human fully get at the "objective" truth? Probably not, but we can negotiate pretty close to it, and the more we all hammer away at the same thing to perceive what is going on with it, the more likely it is that our generalized observations are pretty close to what is "actually" happening.

Edit:

You can view our perceptions of reality as an evolutionary process. Those of us who have interpretations of reality that most closely align with "what is really happening" will probably survive more over the long run. There are, of course, exceptions, it seems like humans have defense mechanisms in memory that help survival, so a perfectly clear picture of reality can, sometimes, be detrimental to human health (especially mental health).

</comment><comment><USER4> Value is sort of the _defining example_ of subjectivity.

</comment><comment><USER6> No. Breathing is not "subjective". Shelter and food are not subjective values. Freedom is a necessity of living as a proper human being. It all relates to your standard of value. For humans, life under the guidance of reason, or range-of-the-moment emotionalism? for grass, growing with sun, water, and nutrients; or death in darkness, drought, or lack of CO2? etc.

As for reality being subjective -- do you look before crossing the road? when was the last time you jumped naked from the top of a skyscraper? would you enjoy a plate of plutonium for breakfast?

<comment><USER7> Just because you believe you can not, does not mean you can not. "Reality" is processed in our head, everything is/can be subjective if you so choose. If you choose to believe something else then its your choice again.

<comment><USER8> So do you believe that you can do some of mkempe's examples? Do you believe it strongly enough to try to give us a demo?

If you really believe that you can, and you try, you're going to get a very painful demonstration that reality does not match your beliefs. And if you don't believe it enough to try, you're just shooting your mouth off.

<comment><USER7> You are way off topic, I never said I believed in random nonsense and that magic fairies exist. I said we interpret reality in our head and everything is subjective to our own reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reality is objective. You can't pray cancer away and denying global warming doesn't make it disappear. Reality goes on with or without your consent. To some extent, physical actions can affect your environment.

The millenial narrative tells you that, eventually, reality will align with our best wishes. False. We must be ready to accept and deal with truths of any kind, no matter how ugly they are.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure how you're addressing the question. I don't think anyone would disagree with you that reality is "objective". Our perception of it is far from objective though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think value is totally subjective. Mises had this brilliant way to think about value in his book Human Action. Where you can use ranking or ordering of things to measure value.

On reality, I tend to think of it as some form of state machine, but this could very well be a leaky abstraction. We all start with a different set of inputs and experiences. How we view what we each call reality is largely shaped by these.

</comment><comment><USER7> Value is generally subjective, especially when dealing with bartering or trading, but things such as currency, have agreed upon values.

<comment><USER7> And after you edited your question, if you want to bring reality into the mix, then yes, everything is created by yourself. You assign value or purpose or meaning to everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're thinking about accounting value, then no, value is not subjective. On the other hand, in marketing, value is something perceived by the customers, thus subjective.

Read more: [http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/value.html](http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/value.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> The dictionary definition of value is that it is subjective, isn't it? I believe it is. Worth, on the other hand, is objective. Value happens to be of Latin origin and worth of Germanic.</comment>


And if only 1% of those people... - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/1pct

<comment><USER3> the problem is that the media only reports on successes, so people have much higher expectations built up in their heads.

You read techcrunch, and you'd think that all you need is to throw out there a crappy iPhone app, and you'll make 2 million overnight.

The dirty little secret, is that success is rare as hell. And people tend to be very selective in what they remember. For every successful startup, there are dozens of stories of ones that failed. But even those failures have managed to achieve quite a lot, simply by being featured, for every one of those, there are THOUSANDS of startups that you haven't even heard about.

<comment><USER4> > The dirty little secret, is that success is rare as hell.

That's why I have serious respect for anybody that makes it work more than once, those are the real entrepreneurs. For the rest it really is mostly luck.

I've scored pretty good with my first 'real venture' and I can testify to how unbelievably hard it is to do it again. So far no success :) But that won't stop me from trying very hard.

One thing definitely has changed in the last 10 years, back in '95-'99 most things you put out on the web were operating in an almost competition free arena, some of the stuff we got away with back then we certainly wouldn't be able to do today. Users expectations are a lot higher than they used to be and there are a lot of parties on the lookout for good ideas so if you 'launch early' with an incomplete product you just might give someone the last bit of the puzzle they were still missing.

It's a tricky situation and there are no easy solutions to any of this.

<comment><USER5> _That's why I have serious respect for anybody that makes it work more than once, those are the real entrepreneurs. For the rest it really is mostly luck._

I agree with your suspicion that luck is often involved. But twice- or even thrice-successful entrepreneurs might also be lucky as well as good. I think an anecdote about the great physicist Enrico Fermi is in order:

 _My [Carl Sagan's] favorite example [of the non sequitur fallacy] is this story, told about the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, newly arrived on American shores, enlisted in the Manhattan nuclear weapons Project, and brought face-to-face in the middle of World War II with U.S. flag officers: So-and-so is a great general, he was told. What is the definition of a great general? Fermi characteristically asked. I guess it's a general who's won many consecutive battles. How many? After some back and forth, they settled on five. What fraction of American generals are great? After some more back and forth, they settled on a few percent. But imagine, Fermi rejoined, that there is no such thing as a great general, that all armies are equally matched, and that winning battles is purely a matter of chance. Then the chance of winning one battle of one out of two, or 1/2; two battles 1/4, three, 1/8, four 1/16, and five consecutive battles 1/32 -- which is about 3 percent. You would expect a few percent of American generals to win five consecutive battles --- purely by chance. Now, has any of them won ten consecutive battles...?_

(From _The Demon-Haunted World_ by Carl Sagan; <http://tinyurl.com/yeprpx4>)

<comment><USER4> The problem here is not that you can measure 'success' by looking at consecutive endeavours, you can.

The trouble is that it may not be an indicator of future success, in other words it may not be a good 'predictor'.

But it also doesn't mean that there is no qualitative difference between entrepreneurs. It's just very hard to put your finger on what makes the difference, to explain that difference in terms of things to do or not to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reverse of this is vapourware, marketing without a product behind it.

Kudos to the guy for trying, but sometimes it is better to anticipate a less than stellar showing and to plan accordingly.

What will strike consumers fancy is a very difficult and sometimes impossible to answer question. Some stuff that you see and think can't possibly sell will make someone a millionaire, another has a great and well thought out product but nobody needs it.

Most products end somewhere in the middle. Even the largest companies still struggle with this, occasionally their 'focus groups' get it so wrong it isn't even funny.

If you're in the 'brick & mortar' side of things then you will have learned the hard way that too little inventory is just as lethal as too much, to hit that sweet spot is quite hard.

A buddy of mine trades goods that he buys in bulk at bankruptcy auctions, the diversity of the goods is huge, as is the pricing. Every time he bids on a lot he has to make a gut call on how fast he'll be able to turn that stuff over, if he misjudges several times in a row it can seriously hurt his business. He has one golden rule that came out of doing this for a while: It's better to have money in your pocket than stuff you bought that you can't sell.

So he errs well on the side of caution, is prepared to let others get away with 'great deals' simply because he builds in a level of cushioning that he needs to maintain his balance. If he can't get it at the right price, he's better off without it.

It's hard, even with hindsight to tell the musician from the example how he could have done better, I've had some contact with a 'name' artist that produces his own CDs, his method is to go for the long term relationship with his customers, including samples, mailing lists and so on.

By the time his CDs are pressed he knows exactly how many he will sell short term and how many will take up space for some time to come.

Selling music of an unknown artist through a newspaper ad seems to be a mismatch of medium, chances are that through a better medium he'd have been able to move much more of his inventory.

</comment><comment><USER6> That didn't stop you when you were suggesting bands make sure everyone at a live show get a CD, even if that means giving some of them away. <http://sivers.org/livecd>

You were confident there that telling the audience how much the CD mattered to the band would increase sales and future popularity, to the point that in the comment section you repeatedly waved aside people's worries about the short- term financial risk for the band. Now here's a blog post less than a week later saying 'investing money in putting yourself out there and planning for success? what a maroon.'

I can believe that maybe the guy's ad sucked, and he'd have been far better off booking more gigs and passing the hat around, but c'mon Mr Sivers, you promote optimistic marketing strategies as much as anybody out there.

<comment><USER7> I don't think this story and the post you're referencing contradict each other. The difference between the magazine's audience and a band's audience at a show is _relevance_. At a live show, you're selling to a group of potential buyers (whether they will pay or not) who have qualified themselves just by being there. As an obscure musician advertising in a magazine, you're just trying to scream as loud as you can in a crowded channel where there's no reason for anyone to pay attention to you (you definitely don't want to prematurely optimize for this case).

<comment><USER6> I entirely agree with that. It was just that the concert-CD idea also caries the implication '...and if just 1% of those people play the CD to a friend or come to the next gig...'. As someone else pointed out, we really don't know anything about the ad or the magazine it was published in, which might have seemed very well targeted to the artist (eg the ad was near a positive review/feature of the new album). It's very hard to judge the situation without more context, which is the problem with FOAF stories in general.

<comment><USER8> The huge difference, though, is in how those people are approached.

If you've got a good product and you go and talk to the right people about it, some percentage (hopefully much larger than 1%) will end up buying it. If you just send spam to a billion people, however, chances are hardly anyone will buy it.

Advertising is spam. Sales is not spam. Giving out CDs as a promotion at an event where you're present, where people can see you, is not a faceless marketing attempt to get that "1%" effect.

Finally, the advice in the previous article was intended to make an immediate difference to the band's receipts and, iirc, it did. The fact that some percentage of those who bought the donationware CDs also brought more friends along the next time the band visited was only a nice side-effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a lot of information that's missing here. There are many steps involved in making a sale, and we are only presented with numbers for the first and last ones.

How many hits did the website get? Did he have free samples of his music? Was there an annoying login process to get through? Did the user have to enter their credit card information into a sketchy-looking form? What was the CD priced at? There are so many places where he could have screwed up and failed to make a conversion. It is entirely possible that 1% of the audience did _intend_ to buy his CD, but he made it not worth their effort. Based on the post, we have no way to tell.

Similar concerns were raised by commenters on previous posts by Sivers, and I believe his response was that he heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend and so he didn't have the details. Sivers: since you're probably reading this, your posts are certainly thought-provoking as they are, but they would be a _lot_ more useful if you included the details.

<comment><USER10> But the point was not to give details about a specific case and analyze it, it was to show the fallacy that some people seem to consider 1% to be "conservative estimate" no matter what. Guy Kawasaki says something similar and I think it is because he has heard that a lot, being a VC..

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of how venture capitalists will sometimes ask founders about their TAM, or "total addressable market". The TAM is basically the amount of money you would make if every single eligible human being on Earth purchased/consumed your product.

I will never forget one night I was with a friend and he calculated his TAM to be something like 940 billion dollars. For his web startup.

After calculating this number, he said "Wow, if only 1%..."

<comment><USER12> A VC (or anyone else) who cares more about the number than how you calculated it is a moron.

<comment><USER13> You calculate it to make sure it's not a small number. Anything above "small" doesn't matter, but you want to make sure you don't work a year to sell a $19.99 app to a maximum of 500 companies.

Happened to me once... after half a year of development we realized the total grand market for the app, in the form we built it, was 5 (five) companies. Wasn't as stupid as you't think, we found over 100 companies listed when we first did research. Only when we started actually selling we realized how many were big enough, still in business and close enough to actually make use of what we offered. We got 60% of the market, btw.

<comment><USER14> _We got 60% of the market, btw._

That's how you represent this accomplishment on a resume :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This story is about a guy who was too optimistic about his business prospects. Fair enough; it's not good to be unrealistically optimistic.

But it's (often) far worse to underestimate your chances of success than to overestimate them. The worst thing that happens if you overestimate your chances of success are that you blow some money unnecessarily chasing an opportunity that won't work. That's bad; wasting money isn't smart. But the worst thing that happens if you underestimate your chances of success are that you never seize an opportunity that could have changed your life. That's much worse.

In fact, we often have a very imprecise understanding of our chances for success in a venture. Buying tens of thousands of envelopes with no understanding of how many copies of your CD you might sell is, of course, pretty dumb. But how about depleting your savings trying to get a startup off the ground? That's a more measured risk, sure, and one that might or might not pay off. For a lot of people, it changed their lives. Did some of them get through the hard days by relying on the at-best-misleading "if only 1%" doctrine? I bet so.

To the extent this article is a wry observation about the innumeracy of a lot of people (treating 1% as the smallest possible chance of success), then of course, it's well taken. But people use "if only 1%" type thinking to convince themselves to take worthwhile risks, too. If you think, as I do, that we have fewer entrepreneurs than our economy might support, then query whether the real problem is too much risk-taking or too little.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yet-another-post-about-chinese-math: [http://www.businesspundit.com/please- stop-with-your-chinese-...](http://www.businesspundit.com/please-stop-with- your-chinese-math/)

Sigh. If only 1% of bloggers stopped re-hashing old ideas, then we'd have something actually good to read on HN.

<comment><USER17> Considering how much people are still falling into this trap, it definitely needs to be rehashed more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obviously the 1% argument is completely invalid. However, knowing the size of your market is always important, and looking at the percentage of that market you need for success, can be a good checkpoint.

For example, imagine that you need to bring in 100K to break even with your product. Say you look at the market you're trying to enter, and find that selling 100K worth of your product means that you need to sell to 5%, 10%, or say 20% of the market, then maybe you should reevaluate the product.

On the other hand, if your break even point is selling to "only" 1%, or .5%, or .1%, then at least you're aiming for a realistic market.

By no means is anything guaranteed, but it can give you an idea if you've got a shot.

<comment><USER19> I completely agree with this. It then leads to what you charge for your product - if 1% at $10 per month breaks even you'd need $20 at .5% and so on.

But it's not even that simple - because demand and supply kicks in - if you charge more you'll be reducing the size of the market willing to pay the higher price - so you'd need >.5% of the original market to get your original break even point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's often hard to predict just how much a niche of a niche of a niche you are in. It's easy to think of one million. But where there's a million, there can be a millionth.

</comment><comment><USER21> Fantastic article.

Back in the day when I was working for a search engine company (not a big one), my superiors would use this sort of reasoning ALL THE TIME.

At one point they were trying to buy out 10 different bittorrent sites and the reasoning used was pretty much the same ("If only 1% of the people were to convert to legitimate paying customers, they will be worth $12 each!", etc..)

Suffice to say, that company isn't around anymore.

</comment><comment><USER22> He'd have gotten better results by paying someone to give him a good review. Marketing an audio product with a print ad? Who'd fall for that approach nowadays?

The number of people trying to sell music these days is incomprehensible. It's probably the toughest market that's ever existed - it almost has to be _very personal_

</comment><comment><USER23> 1% is very high for a lot of things.

I've seen links go out on twitter where the click through rate is around 1%. If you get 1% click on an ad on a webpage that's good.

Then if you are talking about actually selling something your really talking about 1% of that 1% i.e. 0.01%

The guy in the article made got to 0.04%

</comment><comment><USER24> It's not really the point of this article but magazine advertising is by far the least effective type of marketing we've ever tried.

The prices are high and the circulation numbers you're quoted are rarely the actual number of people who will see your ad.

<comment><USER4> Circulation numbers without returns are meaningless anyway, especially if the item is sold exclusively through news stands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of Steve Blank's sayings on the customer and product development cycle. His mistake was he ramped up before properly understanding his customers (and how to best sell to them).

<comment><USER26> I was thinking the same thing. He could have saved himself a lot of trouble by seeing how effective or not the ad was in getting orders before printing up a bunch of CDs then he could have adjusted his marketing approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> For an "unknown" artist, the hardest thing is to sell a CD. Nobody cares until they are emotionally attached to your music. And even if they are attached to it, they won't buy it in a store... they will buy it at your show! But even then, don't expect to respect the 1% rule...

</comment><comment><USER28> Orthogonally, if he really wanted people to buy the CD, why place an ad in some magazine and expect people to place orders? Aren't there other ways to advertise?

(yes, I get that the point of this post is about success, and how the 1% argument is flawed, but still..)

</comment><comment><USER29> Users are not there just for their single-unit purchases; on the net, users are also part of your marketing team. Sivers' friend would have been better off mailing 500 CDs for free to influential bloggers, online socialites, media critics and other influential people.

</comment><comment><USER30> ask yourself: 99 people in a row have just said 'no thanks' to my foobar thing - who's taking the bet the next random person is saying yes?

<comment><USER31> If you believe that 1% of people want your foobar, odds are good that you'd have a sale within your first 70 offers (0.99 __70 = approx. 0.495) .

A Bayesian would say that if your prior expectation of sale was 1%, 99 consecutive nos would suggest you update your future expectation of sale to around 0.36%.

<comment><USER32> Might need a better specifed prior for that Bayesian calculation - <USER2> expectation of 1% gets you the mean of the prior distribution of the success probability of each Bernoulli trial, but you also need a variance or other measure of the uncertainty of your belief.

Otherwise, if you have a degenerate prior based on a belief that the prob of sale is 1% - you just stay at that probability no matter how many successes and failures you observe.

Presumably you'd want a Beta distribution prior for the computational convenience of the conjugate property - unless you have reason to prefer something else. Then you take the mean and variance of the prior for p, or two ends of a confidence interval for p, and use them to find the alpha and beta parameters for the Beta distribution. Then you update those parameters for the 99 failure events, and read off the new expectation - that's the probability of the 100'th sale being a success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If only 1% of all the HN users will upvote this comment.

<comment><USER34> you didn't take into account the downvoters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yea you could put a pile of shit on the road and 1 million people will pass it before someone eats it.

<comment><USER35> Hey it's A crude but valid analogy right?</comment></comment>


The best version of OneNote on Windows - <AUTHOR> https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/The-best-version-of-OneNote-on-Windows/ba-p/183974 <comment><USER2> On my windows 10 laptop which is up to date, i could get to Google Keep on Google Chrome much faster than the Sticky Notes of Windows.

Much worse i clicked on the sticky notes on the windows first and then it took longer to open and so i opened chrome and then opened keep and started taking my notes and after some more time sticky notes showed up in a hanged n unusable mode.

I cannot believe some one who can build something like windows is incapable of optimizing and make things faster and usable.</comment>


Crypto Won't Save You Either [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://regmedia.co.uk/2014/05/16/0955_peter_gutmann.pdf

<comment><USER2> So, in the end, exchanging a key over a wire inevitably turns out to be a bad idea. What tools are out there for physical key exchange?</comment>


NY State's Cat Declawing Ban Is Now Officially Law - <AUTHOR> https://gothamist.com/2019/07/22/ny_state_cat_declawing_ban.php <comment><USER2> Any takers on how long it will be before illicit declawing facilities start to pop up in storage units and abandoned warehouses?</comment>


Will Wright's City in a Box (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.filfre.net/2016/06/simcity-part-1-will-wrights-city-in-a-box/ <comment><USER2> Sim Earth is the one game I've wanted to see a sequel to for years but unfortunately everyone seems to love city sims instead.</comment>


Show HN: Enhanced, Open-Source Google Search for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://search.spince.com <comment><AUTHOR> Two weeks ago my clickbait blocker was posted on Hacker News and people were kind and thought it was okay. So now I'm posting an enhancement to google and bing searches that I just built. It allows you to do things like sort your results by fewest ads or to see what frameworks the website behind the result uses, etc. The code is open source so if you have any issues or feature requests, you can submit them on my github repo.

</comment><comment><USER2> FYI - 5-8 second load times on 50mbit fibre in Australia is unacceptable when google or ddg load in less than a second.</comment>


Ask HN: How hard are beginning college CS classes? - <AUTHOR>

<comment> T-R Depends a lot on the school, and how much prior experience you have. As far as rigor and workload, that really depends on the professor. That said, intro courses are usually designed to be at least survivable by someone with no background at all.

Strictly talking about the difficulty of concepts, a curriculum based off of SICP (or something with a similar emphasis on functional programming or math) will probably be full of new concepts even for those who've had some experience programming. I'd say this is a good thing for everyone involved, because it both levels the playing field for those without experience, and ensures that those who have some still get something out of the course.

Most schools, though, start with imperative concepts (as does AP Comp Sci), which isn't a bad thing either, but someone with experience won't get as much out of it until later in the course.

If you're applying to schools or about to start a class, it wouldn't be a bad idea to dig through the department website and see if you can find the site for the class to see what it entails.

</comment><comment><USER2> * What school? They can be very different. Some curricula are highly theoretical, some practical, some hybrid, but most still are termed "Computer Science."

* What is your background? Have you been exposed to mathematical proofs, logic, discrete math, or computer programming?

* What is your purpose? Are you worried about filling a single freshman requirement, or are you planning on studying computer science?

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience, CS 101 was easy to get into and seemed to be designed to get students excited about computer science. Heck, one of the final projects was to implement an Asteroids game. We even used a beginner Java IDE developed by one of the professors -- <http://sourceforge.net/projects/jigsaw-ide/>

</comment><comment><USER4> not very hard at all, at least in my experience.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you delegate? When? Without micromanaging? - <AUTHOR> I'm writing a white paper tentatively titled "Learning How to Delegate" – and once again I'd like your input. I want this to be real-world useful!
For any startup – or even software development team lead – a difficult-but-necessary transition is when its founder/visionary must recognize when it's time to let go of the day-to-day hands-on tasks.
You start out with your finger in every pie. You know every line of code. You have a clear understanding of the target customer, and the messages she needs to hear in order to buy the product.
And in the beginning, that holistic view is exactly what's necessary. But it doesn't scale. At some point you need to hire people to do the work, and who know each piece better than you do (an e-commerce expert, or a chief marketing officer). And then YOU HAVE TO LET GO.
What I hope to write about is the process people go through during this transition… and how they succeed and fail. Ideally I can turn this into a Dos-and-don'ts document that really does work as a guideline for growing a company and creating a healthy team.
So I hope you'll help me (and lurkers) by answering these questions:
* How do you know when it's time to bring in another person? What's the point at which you say, "I can't do this anymore; I need to hire someone!"?
* How do you choose the right person to whom to delegate a task?
* How do you respond when the individual doesn't do it the way you think she should? Or as fast as you would have gotten it done?
* How do keep yourself from micromanaging? Are you aware when you're doing it?
* What do you have trouble with? What have the consequences been?
For worker-bees: Have you ever dealt with a manager who was reluctant to delegate or did a lousy job? How did you handle it? Were you satisfied with the result?
(Give me some idea of your background – lead programmer in a Fortune 500 financial company, startup founder with 25 employees, etc. – so we all have some context.) <comment><USER2> Take a look at "Turn the Ship Around!" for a real world example of delegation that worked.

As for me, it's about finding people who hold themselves accountable, then giving them a clear goal but with broad discretion in how to achieve it.

The problem is when you have people who fail to hold themselves accountable. Then they usually blame the process or the org or such. This usually requires transitioning those people out of the organization or into roles in which they have a micromanager to keep them responsible.</comment>


Ask HN: How many repositories/projects your team handle? - <AUTHOR> Hello folks, I'm working in a startup with ~50 repositores, we usually touch around 15 in a year, we maintain softwares for: Issue Tracking, ERP, LIMS, 3 visualization softwares, including a CAD system and a few more...<p>In a bottom line: we are a team of 7 managing around 15 projects ranging from small to medium-to-big applications. I think we are obnoxiously overloaded, I would like to know how many projects your team manage and how big is your team? Also, feel free to share your feelings about your situation :D <comment><USER2> Number of repositories/files/lines is a poor indication of complexity [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code#Disadvant...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code#Disadvantages)</comment>


Ask HN: What are your recommended books from 2015 - <AUTHOR> What books have you read in 2015 that you'd recommend to others, fiction and nonfiction both welcome.<p>I'll start with a fiction book of "A Fine Balance"- Rohinton Mistry and a nonfiction book of "The Psychopath Test"-Ron Jonson <comment><USER2> Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler -- a solid, thought provoking, yet quick easy read > [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609444-bold](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609444-bold)

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big : Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams -- I love anyone who asserts "passion is bullshit", this a surprisingly enjoyable read on many levels.> [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail- at-a...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-almost- everything-and-still-win-big?from_search=true&search_version=service)

</comment><comment><USER3> \- Our Mathematical Universe ([http://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical- Universe-Ultimate-Rea...](http://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-Universe- Ultimate-Reality/dp/0307599809))

\- The Martian ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir- ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir- ebook/dp/B00EMXBDMA))

\- Zero to One ([http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups- Future/dp/0804...](http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups- Future/dp/0804139296))

\- The Hard Thing About Hard Things ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Hard-Thing- About-Things/dp/0062273...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Hard-Thing-About- Things/dp/0062273205))

</comment><comment><USER4> 2nd edition was dec/14\. [http://eloquentjavascript.net/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/)

amazing book about programming and js

</comment><comment><USER5> Founders at Work from Jessica Livingston Start with Why from Simon Sinek Both are awesome books if you are starting a startup!

</comment><comment><USER6> _Salt Dreams_ \-- about the history of water usage in Southern California.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've read:

Elixir in Action by Sasa Jurić

Programming Elixir by Dave Thomas

Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good! by Fred Hebert

All recommended.

</comment><comment><USER8> Published in 2015: _Amnesia_ by Peter Carey</comment>


A Backup Solution?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/backup2009 <comment><USER2> FWIW, Time Machine can actually be set up to do remote backups. You can even (p)re-configure the disk image if you want to limit the size, in case you don't want to partition your disk. I'll grant that it's a bit of a pain over the 3-click built-in solution, but it's what I'm using these days.

Enabling network backups: [http://rajeev.name/blog/2007/11/03/time-machine- with-smb-and...](http://rajeev.name/blog/2007/11/03/time-machine-with-smb-and- nfs-shares/)

Limiting backup sizes: [http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200711080201215...](http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071108020121567)

</comment><comment><USER3> I just bought a TimeMachine here since my whole house is now Mac and it finally seemed worth it. The initial set-up was a bit hairy: my wife's machine got caught in some sort of bad loop and every time we tried to restart her initial backup, it grew. First it was going to be 45 GB. When that failed and died, the next try was 90GB. We killed that, messed with a few things, tried again, and sure enough it was now going to be 135. Ugly.

Having said that, after wiping the TimeMachine and starting from scratch, everything has been perfect. And obviously all the backups after the initial one are very small and quite fast. So I suppose I would give it a B-.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.tarsnap.com/>

<comment><USER3> The blog post specifically mentions tarsnap in a list of applications that he then dismisses (they don't "just work").

You might disagree, but if you do, please say why.

<comment><USER5> I'd probably agree that it doesn't "just work" (in the sense that e.g. dropbox just works), but if you're reasonably comfortable with a command line and have used tar before, it's pretty straightforward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with these sorts of services is that they require finicky clientside software.

The problem with real "storage" services (S3, Rackspace, etc.) is that they're ridiculously expensive--on the order of "buy a new backup drive every few months" expensive. Plus there's no way to ship drives to them or have them ship drives to you in an emergency.

I'd love to colocate a Backblaze pod in a datacenter and just rsync a few TB up to it. That way I can handle my own xattrs, my own bare metal, and not worry about finicky client software. Problem: $8k or so is way outside my backup budget...

Yeah, I know I could just colocate a $500 NAS, but it seems to wasteful to have so much CPU, power, etc., just for one backup.

If only we could round up a few hundred HNers to split a Backblaze pod...

<comment><USER7> FYI, you can mail drives to S3: <http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/>

<comment><USER6> Device Handling $80.00 per storage device handled.

Data Loading Time $2.49 per data-loading-hour. Partial data-loading-hours are billed as full hours.

Yes, on the order of cost-of-drive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For my servers (linux), I use tarsnap. For my workstations (OS X) I use SuperDuper.app to image my hard drive.

</comment><comment><USER9> We've spent many hours evaluating different backup services -- we're specifically looking for one with a partner program that's appropriate for our business.

The good news is, most services now (claim to) offer encryption as part of their basic package.

For Mac users, Carbonite does seem to be the best service available. For Windows users, I'd recommend SpiderOak, who are cheaper in most cases than other services, and they seem to offer a reasonably good client program.

For potential resellers, in our opinion there just isn't a good one available yet. We hadn't found CrashPlan though, and so far it looks promising.

<comment><USER10> The problem IMHO is that the encryption is just that -- a "claim". You can't access your data on their servers, so you can't verify it. You can use your own password, but there's no way to verify it's being used. Backblaze's blog <http://tr.im/BPfR> for instance says that "IT" has access to my data without knowing my password.

<comment><USER9> One of the advantages (and disadvantages) to CrashPlan, for service providers, is that it allows you to run their server software on your own infrastructure.

But yes, I agree with you otherwise. I'd much rather trust cperciva with data, but unfortunately his system lacks some critical features for our uses.

<comment><USER11> _I'd much rather trust cperciva with data, but unfortunately his system lacks some critical features for our uses._

If you haven't already done so, please send me an email listing the lacking features which you find critical. I can't guarantee that I'll add them, but it's always useful to know how many people need what features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/> would seem to fit his needs for all but the bare-metal restore.

But it's unclear whether he requires an online (offsite) solution or not. For local backup, Time Machine works fine for all but restoring hard links, fifos and devices, which may not matter in his case. You just have to remember to plug in your USB drive, or be near your Time Capsule pretty often.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have been using <http://www.jungledisk.com> (acquired by Rackspace over a year back). You pay only for the storage you need (I prefer that over unlimited backup services), you can choose Amazon s3 or Rackspace cloudfiles for storage, client software available on all three platforms works fine and you can encrypt the data with your own passphrase.

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://www.hybir.com>

full online backup

bare metal restore

windows only for now.

Interesting performance advantages can be seen in the screen casts here:

<http://www.hybir.com/Action/HybirBackupAction.html>

(blatent self promotion)

</comment><comment><USER14> The main problem with Time Machine is how badly it "works" with File Vault... backing up the encrypted stripes only, and only when you aren't logged in to your Mac, which in my case is approx 0% of the time.

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't call that working badly - it seems to be about the only reasonable way to handle the situation. I just started working a logout at the end of the day into my schedule and never really thought about it since.

I'm curious what you would rather have it do… backup the content unencrypted, or force a logout every hour to do the backup?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Back in time + sshfs + cron job is working pretty well for me.

</comment><comment><USER17> Try Tonido Backup. <http://www.tonido.com/app_backup_home.html>.

Works on Windows, Mac and Linux. It is free too.</comment>


'Ghost plane' crashes with no sign of pilot - <AUTHOR> http://jalopnik.com/this-ghost-plane-crash-is-one-of-the-weirdest-mysteri-1793462770 <comment><USER2> I think this plane was intended to go down in Lake Huron, but the pilot blew his gas calculation. It's a very common wheeze, for those who want to disappear and start a new life, to "drown at sea," with their boat being found but their body never being found (because they're now in Mexico on the beach.) This usually allows the "widow" to declare death and eventually get the life insurance payout (or just mask the escape.) It's at least mildly clever to substitute a light plane for the boat, but not more than mildly clever.

There's a whole book out there about people who arrange their own disappearance, that I read long ago; the boat trick was cited as being a ridiculously common method.

Here's hoping the pilot doesn't meet the pilot of Malaysian flight MH370 on that Mexican beach.</comment>


10 Morning Rituals For The Healthy Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-morning-rituals-for-the-healthy-entrepreneur.html

<comment><USER2> For me, these invite sarcasm:

"Make yourself a blend of fruits that excite you. I love a carrot-apple-ginger juice and drink it in the morning"

I like a blend of various fermented grapes, but am not yet to the point where i drink it in the morning.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I've also never found journaling "exhilarating."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 2,000 subscribers in 90 days?

Big deal.

We launched HeavyInk.com less than 90 days ago, and we're on track to beat that.

...and those are <i>paying</i> customers.

...and we haven't advertised at all.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternatives to Google One? - <AUTHOR> I just got an email from Google that I'm going to be over my storage limit for Google One (Comprises gmail, google drive, google photos, etc) and wants me to now start paying.<p>For anyone whos been in this situation where did you move your files? Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone in this predicament - i used pcloud.com and left google's grasp</comment>


New Google Uber Search -- I like it - <AUTHOR> http://slashdot.org/articles/07/05/17/0342256.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> It's easy to get to your Docs and Calendar from almost any page, so I envision more non-technical people using those features and recommending them to their friends.</comment>


YC's Patent Pledge Asks Tech Companies To Grant Startups Patent Immunity - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/ycs-patent-pledge-asks-tech-companies-to-grant-startups-patent-immunity/2011/08/31/gIQAiHvfsJ_story.html

<comment> dav-id The only people I can see agreeing to this are those who do not have patents.</comment>


Game of Hacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.gameofhacks.com/ <comment><USER8> After you answer a question, there should be an explanation of the right answer. I was able to guess through some that I had no idea what they actually were, and an explanation of why I did/didn't get it right will help a lot and actually help me identify vulnerable code.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. I have no CS background so I was hoping to learn something here. Nope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The best part of this game is the leaderboard:

7e+177 - <USER2>

1e+73 - Game itself was harder than to hack it

1.3999999999999998e+26 - I learned at least one thing...

1.555555682012021e+24 - Tries to teach security, fails at security.

1.4e+22 - <USER3>

1e+22 - <USER4>

123456789212345710000 - Ironically it's easy to hack a game about finding security bugs!

100100000000000000000 - did i do

70000000000000130000 - <USER5>

2800000000000251000 - <USER6>

<comment><USER11> Maybe that was the meta game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Play it on an iPhone. You can pause the timer by holding your finger on the iPhone's screen.

Yeah, it's cheating, but isn't that what it's all about?

<comment><USER13> Hacking the hack!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A little coloration and indentation would be great. Going through a chunk of 20 lines of unknown language in a couple seconds is already enough of a challenge especially for beginners, no need to add unreadability to it :P.

<comment><USER15> Fixing the indentation would also make the Python code readable. (For those who aren't aware, whitespace is significant in Python.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You should aways have the answer "Non-exploitable code" for every question. For some questions, the lack of this answer makes it clear that there is a vulnerability, and the structure of the question makes it obvious which one of the answers is most likely (e.g., no SQL or methods dealing with SQL exclude all SQL based answers, a question with "sleep" is highly likely to be a DOS by Sleep, etc.)

I'm not a CS guy, but I was able to deduce a lot of the answers just from how the question was structured.

EDIT: The actual response in the app is "Non-exploitable code". Updated my comment to reflect this

<comment><USER17> Just ran through 4 of the "beginner" tests and almost none of the answers I ran across was "none exist." Not trying to prove or disprove your point but did find it odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I liked the one that was a C program that used argv[0] (or argv[1] - <USER7> remember) as the connection string for an SQL database. Then the answer was SQL injection. I mean, sure, you can argue that's a flaw with the program, but it's also THE ONLY POSSIBLE USE for the program.

I got 5/5 on advanced, but I don't think that proves anything. For most of the questions my response would be "decomp your code better and use comments."

</comment><comment><USER19> Timer really put me off. I can solve these, I just need more time, having not used some of these languages in a while.

I'd rather the time counted up, losing points, instead of counting down until I'm told I fail.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool, but why doesn't it tell you what the correct answer is when you get it wrong?

<comment><USER21> I was wondering that too... With some sort of insight into the correct response, one might be able to learn rather than just be tested. A lot of fun regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is good as a game, not so good as a learning tool. There should be an option to go back and analyze things with time for some research

</comment><comment><USER23> I like the idea. I feel like a few seconds are spent trying to figure out what language it's in, but maybe I'm just a dummy.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's how to hack the hacking game. Pretty simple (in your console):

app.sendAnswer({answer: 1,time: -999999999999})

(I added the instructions on the leaderboard itself)

<comment><USER25> Crashing != hacking

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a big difference between having to select between four different kinds of vulnerabilities when given a piece of that you're told is insecure, and identifying them in the wild. This is more putting the square peg in the square hole than it is measuring the angles and being able to accurately identify the shape.

<comment><USER8> One of the questions that I got had an option that said "No vulnerabilities". I think having that option for every question with some solid code will let you find vulnerabilities more accurately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> 1\. This is a vocabulary and syntax quiz, mostly.

2\. The code is unreadable (formatting) on a phone after 1.5 Manhattans.

3\. Anybody else read the title in Robert Pollard's voice?

<comment><USER28> > _The code is unreadable (formatting) on a phone after 1.5 Manhattans._

I presume you mean [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_(cocktail)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_\(cocktail\)) ?

</comment></comment><comment> slipstream- Like the idea (and infact I've submitted some code loosely based on an example I actually found in an application!), but yeah, the comments about needing more time because of having not used some of the languages applies here also. And yeah, an explanation of the right answer would help - especially if you haven't used the language (at all, or in a while).

</comment><comment><USER29> This was mostly an exercise in ready grey on grey unindented code. It's a nice idea, but you need to make sure you're measuring the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Somewhat ironic that the high scores have already been hacked, though a little inevitable since the game is client side I guess.

</comment><comment><USER31> Pretty easy, you can ace without knowing all the languages/APIs used, just follow the usual code smells.

</comment><comment><USER32> How can I see the correct answers?

</comment><comment><USER33> When you beat the advanced levels, and are looking for a real challenge, give [http://escape.alf.nu](http://escape.alf.nu) a try. I didn't make it but it's the most difficult but still educational hacking challenge I've seen. Also, since it validates answers server-side these days, it isn't, itself, hackable.

</comment><comment><USER34> Cool game. Would be great if it gave a quick summary of why it was a right answer and maybe some additional resources to learn more.

</comment><comment><USER35> Very cool. would be better if it says the correct answer when i get it wrong?

</comment><comment><USER36> On a related note, anyone else remembers [http://try2hack.nl/](http://try2hack.nl/)? It was one of the first sites that got me into programming/hacking.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is similar to www.codebashing.com/sql_demo

<comment><USER37> [http://www.codebashing.com/sql_demo](http://www.codebashing.com/sql_demo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Heh, the ticking clock makes it feel like that scene from the movie "Swordfish".

(Also I found the advanced questions much easier than the beginner ones.)

</comment><comment><USER38> On beginner difficulty single player, I got the same question again and again. After the game ended, new game, still the same question.

IE11 FWIW.

</comment><comment><USER39> I dare anyone to respond faster than my -1.7976931348623157e+308.

(Or is it -9007199254740991?)

</comment><comment><USER40> Nice idea, but I don't like the timer. Actually, I should hack the page to disable it...

</comment><comment><USER41> Cool game ! Are there any beginner friendly resources out there to learn more about this?

<comment><USER42> Selfish plug: www.hackthis.co.uk

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Had to wonder if the "root" guy on the leaderboard actually hacked the game :)

</comment><comment><USER44> Reminds me a little of CloudAcademy.com and their tests.

</comment><comment><USER45> I wish they wouldn't have called it Game of _Hacks_.

</comment><comment><USER46> The funny stuff was the totally hacked leader board :)

</comment><comment><USER47> Hmm, I saw duplicate questions in a single session.

</comment><comment><USER48> explanation and correct answers needed for most questions and there was one such a lengthy question ...toooo long , dint read !!!

</comment><comment><USER49> The leaderboards are the best.

</comment><comment><USER50> why is this not called game of pwns?</comment>


Most vulnerable operating systems and applications in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.gfi.com/blog/most-vulnerable-operating-systems-and-applications-in-2014/

<comment><USER2> It's easy to think of a few "not all bugs are created equal" reasons this might be misleading.

Weighted averages of CVSS by OS might have been more useful, for example, and dis-aggregating Microsoft OS versions but not the various OSX or Linux distros/kernels (and lack of Android) also paints a potentially misleading picture.

With any exercise of this type, the conclusions one draws are typically encoded _a priori_ in the way the analysis is framed and defined.

<comment><USER3> I haven't checked, but looking at the highly similar counts for Windows 7, 8, 8.1, I expect that the total count for all Windows versions combined wouldn't be much higher.

On the other hand this overview doesn't show vipulnerabilities for Safari while IE had 242. I guess Safari vulnerabilities are included in the Mac OS X count.

Finally, is Apple TV an application?

<comment><USER4> > I haven't checked, but looking at the highly similar counts for Windows 7, > 8, 8.1, I expect that the total count for all Windows versions combined > wouldn't be much higher.

But the individual numbers for OSX and Linux versions are much lower, because the vulnerabilities affect much smaller version ranges typically.

<comment><USER5> It seems an error on the construction on the table though. The windows server versions have the same number. The same apply for the desktop version. It seems like there are only three different numbers: WinRT, Win desktop (7-8-8.1) and Server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Compare OS X to Windows. Embarrassing. :(</comment>


Web bloat isn't a knowledge problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.christianheilmann.com/2017/01/02/web-bloat-isnt-a-knowledge-problem/ <comment><USER2> > We have a 1–2 year average retention span of developers in companies. This > is not sustainable.

This, and the twisted incentives around targeting advertisements, seem to be at the heart of the problem. I think we need an industry of people with more 10-year problems, so one-month solutions aren't given so much weight.</comment>


Define a startup - <AUTHOR> https://justruky.xyz/2016/define-statup/?=1 <comment><USER2> In popular culture every new business is often called a "startup". Yet to me, the key feature defining a startup in the "Silicon Valley sense" is a capital structure optimized for:

1\. growth of equity value as the primary "payday" for the founders

2\. receiving investment in exchange for equity based on a similar "payday" for the investors

3\. non-linear growth of equity value.

Technology tends to facilitate this organizational optimization, but it can also facilitate business optimized for the generation of regular cash returns to investors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, I wonder what people like @pg consider as a startup.

<comment><USER2> I suspect it has the features I mentioned since I developed my definition by using Hacker News.</comment></comment></comment>


YourAM: Schedule Appointments In A Smart Way - <AUTHOR> http://www.exproz.com/youram-schedule-appointments-in-a-smart-way/

<comment><USER2> I think a good feature for such an app is to notify me via phone app or the web or my alarm clock and let my response take effect in everywhere. I shouldn't have to dismiss a reminder or snooze it on the web and then dismiss it on my phone, etc.

I want redundancy of reminders for safety but not for hassle factor, if that makes sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't really understand what you mean because YourAM does automatically notify via both email and SMS. You can configure notification and reminder as you desire or send it through all available channels for redundancy purposes as you pointed out.

However, there times when some of your contacts might not want to receive any reminders and that is why YourAM provide the option to turn off reminders and notifications.

<comment><USER2> I mean when you respond to one notification over the web, the one on your phone should be cancelled too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see what you mean. That does make sense if a response is required for each notification. But in YourAM the notifications are send out together by different channels (eg. email and/or SMS) and no response is required. However, they have the option to respond, if they want to, to confirm the appointment or cancel it via email or SMS. Thanks for your suggestion, I'll see to it that the team keep your suggestion in mind for future developments.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ok, I want to create a site this weekend, which framework/platform/tech? - <AUTHOR> Ok, I want to create a working site this weekend. A minimum viable product. I have a few ideas, but they could all be done as a simple web app in front of a mongo database. No need for comet or exotic stuff. I want to write the least amount of code, deployment headache, etc.
which tech/platform/framework should I use?
It should have the concept of users and authentication already built-in
 (facebook connect) It should have an admin interface to the persistent objects in the system
I'll start with two extremes: Is node.js ready yet? Should I just install wordpress? <comment><USER2> Whatever you already know.

</comment><comment><USER3> rhizome's correct. It will take more than a weekend with any tech platform to get to the point that you know enough to deploy an app in a week.

That said, with those rather sketchy specs, and no specification of what you already know, Django's on the short list, thanks to its rather nice and integrated admin interface.

For the MVP, if you're serious about the weekend timeframe, I'd suggest _considering_ just sticking with Django's default SQL DB integration and where you see fit, slam some JSON blobs into the database and call it a day. I do mean "considering", it could go either way, but on that timeframe the extra several hours it could take to get something else running starts becoming significant percentages.

If you're willing to loosen up on the time frame a lot of other stuff becomes viable, but in terms of slamming it out now it's going to be difficult to _beat_ Django... tie it, perhaps, but not beat it.

You should probably help us out by telling us what you already know at least a little, in terms of languages at the very least.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Yeah, you are right. I thought I would ask since I'm always on the lookout for a fresh magic bullet :-)

I know Ruby/Rails, PHP, Python, Javascript, Java, Scala, Clojure, C, and C++. All languages require an investment in some kind of framework in order to pull off a real site.

As bad as it sounds, I'll probably just go with PHP and mongo for now because I already have an easy setup for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about App Engine + JavaScript with ApeJS: <https://github.com/lmatteis/apejs/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Bottle + MongoDB + Google App Engine works for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> how do you run mongodb on GAE?

<comment><USER6> Maybe he uses a third party ?</comment></comment></comment>


Web Application Form Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.uie.com/articles/web_forms/

<comment><USER2> here's a link to a portfolio of nice application interfaces from the author of this article: <http://www.lukew.com/portfolio/web_applications.asp></comment>


Complete List of 2007 Web/Technology Acquisitions - <AUTHOR> http://startup.partnerup.com/2008/01/02/2007-acquisitions-web-internet-technology/

<comment><USER2> Very motivating! It helps to know that media companies are buying early stage startups.</comment>


META II: Digital Vellum in the Digital Scriptorium - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2724586 <comment><USER2> Nice paper about an old friend, the Meta II paper. This is another one of those papers everyone who is interested in programming and languages should read and understand.</comment>


Tiny Jumping Spiders Can See the Moon - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/jumping-spiders-can-see-the-moon/529329/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Upvoting for the title alone. Beautiful!</comment>


Gobby: A Collaborative Text Editor - <AUTHOR> https://gobby.github.io/ <comment><USER2> I would have loved to see at least one screenshot. Without one, there is no incentive for me to further look into the project.

<comment><USER3> I came here to say the same thing. This project is quite old (over 5 years old according to some of the commits). I would expect a little more polish for something that has been around for so long.

<comment><USER4> It's actually older. I remember using this in 2007 to write lecture notes in LaTeX in collaboration with a friend (our notebooks being connected by Ethernet since the university did not have WiFi back in the days).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm always interested to find out how people decide upon names for their projects.

In New Zealand "gobby" is slang for a blow job, not sure if that makes me want to try it more or less though.

<comment><USER6> Wasn't gobby (the software project) originally named as a play on another collaborative editor named Lobby? That's what my memory is telling me.

<comment><USER7> The author's previous iteration of a library for multi-user text editing was called libobby, so that it'd be manually linked with -lobby. It might have been named some time after reading about libiberty and the like. Naturally, the Gtk GUI app had to have a G prepended to that, and the name was kept even though libobby was dropped in favor of a new, C-based library implementing a more complete algorithm with a slightly less gimmicky name.

Maybe globby would have been a better call...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Ubuntu Developers Summit used to use Gobby for collaborative notes and it served it reasonably well with hundreds of concurrent connections.. but it did crash on occasion. However, it did later move to Etherpad (Java based).. and then Etherpad Lite (nodejs based).

</comment><comment><USER9> > Collaborative Text Editor

[http://bash.org/?85514](http://bash.org/?85514)

        <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.

<comment><USER10> This kept me thinking... nowadays you'd describe IRC as Realtime Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> gobby may not be the best editor out there, but as far as I know it's goal was to be a testbed/implementation of the obby (now infinote [1]) collaborative editing protocol. The underlying library is quite easy to use and integrate into existing editors, for example I once implemented a gedit plugin [2] which used libinfinity to add collaborative editing to gedit although it has since gone stale.

[1]: [http://infinote.org/](http://infinote.org/) [2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXzI2dInXKI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXzI2dInXKI)

</comment><comment><USER12> I have used EtherPad and found it a decent tool that looks a little nicer. [http://etherpad.org/](http://etherpad.org/)

<comment><USER13> Gobby is better than Etherpad if you're editing code though.

<comment><USER14> How so? (genuine question, the site shows no examples so without installing the thing I can't see how it works)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has anyone tried to do serious collaborative editing in emacs or vim? Any success there? I'd rather not learn another editor just for collaboration.

<comment><USER16> I teach programming long-distance using tmux on a remote server. That works pretty well: [http://akkartik.name/post/mu](http://akkartik.name/post/mu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've used this for writing term papers back then. Very useful little tool.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish someone would write a web frontend to the protocol, so we could use that instead of websites like etherpad.org/titanpad.org.

</comment><comment><USER19> This was great back in college, but I haven't used it since collaborative web editors came on the scene

</comment><comment><USER20> What's the point of a multiplayer notepad when we have editor-independent version control?

<comment><USER21> The use case is _synchronous_ editing. I've used gobby e.g. for writing minutes during a meeting. Everyone was logged in and could see/edit the current state. Very useful when dealing with dense/complex topics because this way misunderstandings etc. get corrected instantaneously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wonder how well the Dedicated server part would run on a raspberry pi :)

<comment><USER23> I have a pi2 with smb, etherpad lite, prosody and sshd and it uses 170 MB after two weeks uptime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Weird (interesting) choice of name... 'gobby'...

</comment><comment><USER25> gobby pls</comment>


Common Tech Myths That Cost You Money - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5972780/6-common-tech-myths-that-cost-you-money

<comment><USER2> I'd assume the readership of Hacker News would already know this, but you know what they say about assumptions...</comment>


Who's to Blame for Mass Incarceration? - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/donna-murch-michael-javen-fortner-black-silent-majority <comment><USER2> David Brooks recently did a column on incarceration rates. It's a useful column because it cites facts.

He reports that the clear cause of increased incarceration is this: prosecutors now bring charges against two out of every three people arrested. That's double the charge rate from 20 years ago.

Brooks states that he doesn't know why the change has occurred, and reports some of the theories he has heard.

One of the facts he cites is that just 20% of incarcerations are from drug charges. He dismisses that as not the cause, which is plainly correct. I would nitpick and say that it is a potential contributing factor worth examining more closely to see how much of that 20% is due to less-serious charges.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/opinion/david-brooks- the-p...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/opinion/david-brooks-the-prison- problem.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER3> Also note that in both absolute numbers and relative to total population, the number of people incarcerated in the US has been going down for the last several years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually don't understand prison sentence lengths at all.

1\. Why is prison time measured in _years_?!? I can't even list all the things I've done in the last year. I can't imagine being confined to a few square blocks for ten or twenty or thirty times that length of time, especially when it does not _only_ cause loss of freedom (which was supposedly the only intent) but a _greatly_ reduced quality of _life_ (e.g. endangerment, and even small things like having worse meals all the time).

2\. Why is prison even _considered_ for young people? People do stupid things when they're young; they don't always know better. You can't tell me that someone who's 20, who's barely had a chance to live alone for "years", should suddenly be told to spend "years" living with strangers for (most likely) some petty crime. Great recipe for development there.

3\. Why do we have bail? Oh, you're rich? Great, leave; otherwise, stay in jail until your trial. And since the system is so damned efficient, who knows how long that will be. Oh, and those in charge occasionally forget about people[1] after they're detained.

4\. Why isn't community service the _number one penalty_ for most crimes, especially minor offenses? And, why isn't the bar being significantly lowered for what constitutes a minor offense?

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/05/us/california-forgotten- prison...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/05/us/california-forgotten-prisoner/)

<comment><USER5> " _Why is prison even considered for young people?_ "

Here are some crimes I've seen in the news:

* A man was shot and killed during a robbery while he was getting robbed. He begged for them to not shoot him and they put one more bullet in his chest. The perps were 15. [http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Arrest-Questioned-...](http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Arrest-Questioned-Killing-Dad-Stuhlman-Walking-Dog-Overbrook-296849631.html)

* A kid at a local school was gang beaten by other students, had teeth knocked out, and was concussed. He was beaten because of a "mistaken identity" Here is a video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjC7yd1OaAk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjC7yd1OaAk)

So what should be done in the case of these offenders? If not jail, then what? Clearly these perpetrators are too dangerous to coexist in civilized society. So there has to be some form of punishment, and some form of separation. I would be ok with sending them to work on a farm instead of prison, but I'm pretty sure that others would describe that as being "forced labor camps" and would rail against that too.

<comment><USER4> Well my first question would be (and this doesn't seem to be the first question that "justice" systems ask), what situations are these kids in?

I'm not saying that the situation completely excuses a severe punishment but when you looked at stories like these, did you even _wonder_ :

\- Maybe this kind of robbery has happened to _them_ , or to their friends, family or neighbors. It's not hard to imagine someone turning cold after seeing bad things happen to loved ones.

\- Maybe they know something that the store owner did and it was a kind of "mob justice". (I'm not justifying them shooting the guy. Yet, based _solely_ on the knowledge that the owner was begging for his life, you don't know enough about the situation to understand why the kids shot him.)

\- Are these things happening because of other factors? Economics are frequently a reason. I can imagine giving a lot less of a crap about society if I was dirt poor and I couldn't see any way to make it better.

I think the _first_ solution they should consider is if they can make the perpetrator's life _better_. Prison makes it undeniably worse; ironically, if being poor got them into prison, they'll probably be even worse off after prison (what with people refusing to hire convicts and such).

<comment><USER5> Honest question: how familiar are you with the actual history of these problems, and the actual situation on the ground? Have you read anything beyond standard zeitgeist sources (sociology classes, NYTimes, Economist), etc?

The dominant social policy of the last 65 years has been that crime and disorder can be cured by addressing "root causes" which means material deprivation, lack of school funding, lack of housing, a school curriculum that was not culturally attuned, etc.

So first in the 50s, 60s and 70s they built public housing, upped welfare spending, eliminated corporal punishment in the schools, and greatly reduced punishment and police enforcement. Here is a poster from the time: [http://www.newyork.com/articles/wp- content/uploads/2015/09/a...](http://www.newyork.com/articles/wp- content/uploads/2015/09/affordable-new-york-mcny_250.jpg)

This was a disaster. The welfare spending incentivized women to not get married and to stay on the dole, because you would lose benefits if you got married or got a job. The public housing was not policed at all and was destroyed by the rougher element in the population. Crime skyrocketed. Youths would commit muggings at gun point and end up back on the streets with nothing more than probation.

Then there was a ham-fisted backlash starting in the mid-1970s but really coming into effect in the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, rather than emphasis consistent discipline and enforcement from the get go, the backlash was more about "three strikes" and using drug offenses as proxy crimes. Even in schools, getting tough meant suspensions, which is not much of a punishment to a roguish street urchin.

So if you look at the situation now, you have kids growing up in homes which are violent and where they don't get punished if they roam the streets and bully other kids. Then you have those kids go to schools that are full of disorder, and where if they cause trouble they just sent to the principals office and then go right back into the classroom. Or maybe they get suspended for a few days. Big whoop, that is only a punishment if you care about school. Gangs are allowed to openly sell drugs on the street. So by age 15 your role models are gang members, you have never been subject to real discipline, you have been fighting others or being assaulted your whole life. And then they commit some heinous crime. At that point, the 15-year-old cannot be permitted to coexist in normal society. Giving them money or something is not going to magically make them civilized when they have spent their live growing up in a barbarous environment. It's not the 15-year-old-murderers fault in the cosmic sense that he was born into such a wild environment. But the fact remains that he his too dangerous to be permitted to roam the streets freely.

But of course I absolutely agree that the problem needs to be addressed earlier. We need to figure out a way that these kids are an environment with order, that is with safety, security, and discipline from the day they are born.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> \- Puritanism, with its emphasis on revenge and guilt and Old Testament morals (the zero tolerance thing, death penalty etc).

\- Slavery and racism (and it's consequences over several generations starting out as uneducated, dead-poor, suspect below second-rate citizens when freed, and held down with several tactics, from Jim Crow laws and plain old segregation until the 70s, to lack of finance options, poorly funded school districts, employee discrimination, etc.

\- Profit, from mass incarceration, the private prison complex, and the whole thing.

\- Crappy laws (three strikes, drug laws, etc).

\- An increasingly touchy and litigation happy society (from right wing "tough on crime" people, to P.C. advocates pushing against though crimes, etc).

\- A state increasingly intervening and regulating all previously free aspects of life, down to collecting rain water in your own yard...

</comment><comment><USER7> Crime rates have plummeted since we have started being "tough on crime". We are all much safer than we were decades ago. Isn't our incarceration system working? What's the issue here?

[http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/figure_...](http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/figure_3.jpg)

<comment><USER8> You'd need to show a causal relationship to make that argument.

<comment><USER9> More criminals behind bars, lower crime. It may not fit your narrative but it should not be hard to understand.

<comment><USER8> I'm not arguing for any particular "narrative" although you seem to be.

You seem to be suggesting that more criminals behind bars leads to lower crime. Is there any evidence that this is true? Could this be a coincidence, or could there be some other factor lowering crime? Are you jumping to conclusions based on your own favorite narrative?

The OP similarly lists two facts and then jumps to the same conclusion: Crime rates have plummeted, and we are all much safer than we were decades ago. (Therefore) our incarceration system working?

I think to make that claim one must "show one's work".

<comment><USER9> >Could this be a coincidence

It could be aliens, but Occams razor. Criminals cannot commit crimes if they are in prison. It is quite revealing that people willfully deny that and the narrative is the cop is the perp and the perp is the victim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> TLDR, this is a very critical review of a book that argues that the draconian Rockefeller anti-drug laws passed in NY State in the 1970's were not only strongly supported by the African-American community, but would likely not have passed without said community's support.

The author's response to the review is equally long and detailed [0]. I recommend reading both if you have the time.

[0]: [http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/response-michael- javen-f...](http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/response-michael-javen- fortner-donna-murch-black-silent-majority)

<comment><USER11> Congratulations on being the first commenter in three hours and 60-odd replies to have apparently read the actual article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The answer is "everyone."

* The people who elected "tough on crime" DAs and politicians.

* The DAs who got every conviction they could and the harshest sentencing possible to show how they're "cleaning up the streets."

* The politicians who voted for mandatory minimum sentencing.

* The judges for being punitive rather than rehabilitative.

* The media for painting a very distorted picture of modern America.

The US is never going to fix itself as long as it continues to be a culture of fear, blame, hate, and ignorance.

<comment><USER13> Pretty much, yes, everyone. But the years of just say no and imprisonment favored over treatment for drugs use, surely did not help. Some exacerbating reasons is that politicians and the people they represent get to regulate sentencing rather than social scientists and criminologists, so you get people scared by drug addiction wanting to keep it from getting to their kids driving the general sentiment.

I understand people in a democracy want control of their social fate, but, in many cases level headed reason based on studies and good policy would be better.

I'm glad were having a moment of sanity when it comes to drugs, addiction, and law.

And lest it not be clear, most people of all ethnicities who saw drugs as a plague saw jailing of offenders as the primary solution to the problem. That's to say people of few means but able to avoid the drugs issue also saw this as a law and order get them off the streets issue --in some ways because it was the only answer available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The criminals committing the crimes.

<comment><USER15> Well, this one's settled. Evidently, people are just evil and there's nothing that can be done about it.

Or, ya know, perhaps there's a reason why some culture have insanely higher incarceration rates than others?

<comment><USER16> There is a reason for higher incarceration rates: they commit more crimes proportionally.

It is easy to put the blame on "evil racist cops" and whatnot, it is much harder to stop ignoring the issue that a small part of the population represents a vast amount of the criminals and start thinking about real solutions. What are the causes of the violence? There is welfare to those who need it, there are opportunities for those who work for it. Is it an economical issue, a social/cultural one? Perhaps prison life is "comfortable" compared to working your ass off, perhaps education is lacking, perhaps a bit of everything, and so forth...

<comment><USER17> > There is a reason for higher incarceration rates: they commit more crimes > proportionally.

That's not true. At least not when it comes to drug use, blacks and white use drugs at similar rates [0]. Asymmetric enforcement is another explanation.

[0] [http://c1.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/pic_corner_07101...](http://c1.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/pic_corner_071014_samhsa.jpg)

<comment><USER18> I don't think drug _usage_ is the right metric, though.

I believe that the law enforcement strategy is a concentration on drug dealers; prosecution of _users_ is pretty much incidental, used to enhance sentences for other crimes as much as anything else.

If prosecution of _dealers_ is the policy, then you'd need to show that blacks and whites _sell_ drugs at similar rates. I have no idea whether or not that's true...

<comment><USER19> And the other thing is the related factors that make them more or less likely to be caught or noticed by the law. There's counter examples I'm sure, but dealers who service more upper crust types (who in the US are more likely to be white) are frankly less likely to show up on the radar and less likely to have a dime dropped on them by a client who's bag was a little light. It's like streetwalkers vs escorts listed on TER vs companions that you'd need a gold clad personal introduction to even know they exist. The higher up the ladder you go, the more discrete all parties tend to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As an outsider, here is my view: The government builds certain services with the intent that hopefully as few people need them as possible. Such as Prisons, Hospitals, etc. The government is motivated to make an effort to ensure people don't end up there.

When prisons are privatized and profit-driven, what motivation does one have to keep people away from them? This is not a co-incidence that the US has a high rate of incarceration and the prisons are privatized. From what I see and hear, there is little effort in rehabilitating prisoners, they're just being punished.

Does anyone know the rate of US prisoners re-offending? I'd wager that it's quite high compared to other countries where rehabilitation is the prime purpose of prisons.

<comment><USER21> [https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/181249.pdf](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/181249.pdf). In 1987, there were only 3,100 prisoners in for-profit prisons _world wide_. Between 1960 and 1987, the U.S. incarceration rate doubled, while the violent crime rate almost quadrupled. The chronology makes clear that the increase in incarceration was, up until the late 1990's, driven by dramatically higher crime, and that prison privatization was a follow-on effect from companies taking advantage of the government's need to house increasing numbers of prisoners.

Sometime in the late 1990's, the incarceration rate caught up to the violent crime rate. Crime rate started going down in the late 1990's, while incarceration rate started to go down only in the last few years. It's reasonable to argue that the for-profit prison industry has played a role in keeping incarceration from decreasing in step with crime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Always follow the money (for-profit prisons): [https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how- for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/)

<comment><USER23> How many prisons are for profit? How many prisoners are in for profit prisons?

<comment><USER24> How many prisons, while not for profit, are largely staffed and have services met by for profit entities?

<comment><USER23> Why would that distort the prisoner population in the US but not anywhere else that has private interest invesment in prisons?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Who's to Blame for Mass Incarceration?" is a review of the book Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment about New York state drug laws and their impact on the black community.

Are drugs laws the cause of "mass incarceration" of blacks in the United States?

The review article does not offer any statistics. Here are some from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (a federal agency belonging to the DOJ) about state prisoners with sentences over one year (state sentences of less than a year are general served in county jails).

Only 4% of black state prisoners are sentenced for cases where the most serious offense is drug possession.

Only a further 11.9% of black state prisoners are sentenced for cases where the most serious offense is other drug crimes including trafficking.

58.3% of black state prisoners are sentenced for cases where the most serious offense is violent crime (including 12% for murder)... 16% for property crimes... 9.5% for public order crimes.

States account for over 92% of prisoners. Though over 50% of federal prisoners are sentence for cases where the most serious offense is drug crimes.

If no one was sentenced for cases where drugs crimes were the most serious offense, then 85% of black state prisoners would still be imprisoned. So, that wouldn't solve the problem of black "mass incarceration" in US state prisons.

Source: Bureau of Justice Statics [http://imgur.com/sE1D137](http://imgur.com/sE1D137) [http://felonvoting.procon.org/sourcefiles/USBJS%20-Prisoners...](http://felonvoting.procon.org/sourcefiles/USBJS%20-Prisoners%20in%202013.pdf)

<comment><USER26> "If no one was sentenced for cases where drugs crimes were the most serious offense, then 85% of black state prisoners would still be imprisoned. So, that wouldn't solve the problem of black "mass incarceration" in US state prisons."

This is a gross misunderstanding of the war on drugs that only takes into account the percentage of people who are in prison simply for drug charges. There is a lot more drug-related crime that would not exist if no one was imprisoned for drug crimes anymore so the statistic is simply useless.

<comment><USER27> What drug-related crime would not exist? I seriously doubt the legalization of anything is going to change this (unless you get rid of our law system entirely).

The illegal drug market will always exist, regardless of legalization. Why? Anything legalized will be regulated and taxed and many people will still find it easier to go around both.

<comment><USER26> A lot of theft, burglary, robbery, assault, murder, etc. would simply not exist or be marginalized just like they are currently for alcohol. It's been awhile since I heard of a shootout over booze distribution. Yes, there is still a black market for alcohol, but the crime surrounding it is a tiny fraction of what it was during prohibition. No one denies that violence related to alcohol dropped dramatically after prohibition and obviously, the same thing will happen to other drugs as they're not special.

<comment><USER27> The crime dropped after prohibition because the FBI became a bigger part of preventing crime and rooted out all of the police corruption. Violence in Mexico will continue, unless the government can prevent any cop, judge, or agent from being bought.

Drugs arent special as you say, but they also arent the cause of the violence. Gangs will still be violent and kill each other. It will just be over something new. So yes, we might see a decrease in drug-related violence (im still not convinced of this though), but we will see an increase in violence related to something else being traded on the black market.

I also have a hard time seeing crack or meth being legalized when many people still sue the cigarette companies for giving them cancer. I think tort reform is also needed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I dropped 95% of my Firebase bundle size using this one weird trick - <AUTHOR> https://davidea.st/articles/firebase-bundle-size <comment><USER2> For reference, the "weird trick" is adding code splitting and putting most of the logic into a web worker.</comment>


Eight C++ programming mistakes the compiler won't catch - <AUTHOR> http://pixelstech.net/article/index.php?id=1333893320

<comment><USER2> Three notes:

1\. The SafeInt class helps detecting integer overflows:

<http://safeint.codeplex.com/>

Also, most SafeInt binary operators do not allow for mixing of SafeInts for different integer types.

2\. Valgrind helps with detecting use of uninitialized memory.

3\. A (rather ugly) solution to prevent accidental use of = rather than == when a constant expression is used, is to make the constant expression the first operand. E.g.:

        if (0 = x) // fail!

<comment><USER3> 3: I've rarely seen "Yoda conditions" [1] in the wild. I think it's because most compilers will output a warning when doing an assignment inside an if statement.

[1] [http://www.dodgycoder.net/2011/11/yoda-conditions-pokemon- ex...](http://www.dodgycoder.net/2011/11/yoda-conditions-pokemon- exception.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This depends entirely on which compiler you're using. Saying that these are mistakes "the compiler" won't catch is disingenuous. While VSC++2005 didn't catch these, I know that xlC on AIX will catch all of these except the integer divide "bug" at the default warning level.

</comment><comment><USER5> Every language has its quirks... You get used to it; learn to avoid beginners mistakes; and eventually can use the language in production.

C++ is not different - it can even provide you with even more interesting and unexpected ways to shoot yourself in the foot:

        C++ (from: http://m5p.com/~pravn/foot.html)

        You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself
        and shoot them all in the foot.
        Providing emergency medical care is impossible since
        you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are
        just pointing at others and saying, "That's me over there."

</comment><comment><USER6> For find such errors, and many others, I recommend using static code analyzer tools. I suggest to try PVS-Studio :-) <http://www.viva64.com/en/pvs-studio/></comment>


How I learned to write music in real time - <AUTHOR> https://omnisplore.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/how-i-learned-to-write-music-in-real-time/ <comment><USER2> Perfect/absolute pitch fascinates me. I have fairly solid relative pitch and knowledge of music theory, so I can pretty quickly work out most popular western music by ear and play along on the piano or guitar, but only in rare circumstances can I hear a pitch and recognize it as being the same absolute pitch as some other known pitch that I haven't heard recently. When it happens, it's usually when I hear the beginning of a song and immediately recognize that it's in the same key as some other song that I have heard many times. The recognition seems to be stronger if both pitches are played with the same timbre (i.e. the same instrument with similar tone and effects).

This leads me to believe that absolute pitch is probably nothing more than excellent pitch memory, which further leads me to believe that it is probably learnable and not genetic (beyond any genetic predisposition for general musical skill). That said, I suspect it Is vastly easier to learn at a young age, just as are human languages.

<comment><USER3> I've been fascinated by perfect pitch. I studied theatre before a bizarre turn of events eventually settling into software engineering, so I got to meet a lot of extremely musically talented individuals, and out of those I've met only one with perfect pitch.

I peppered them with questions- I asked how long they've had it and they explained that they learned music (piano) at a very young age. They can recognize a single note, even chords. They can also be given a note to sing. I asked if they needed to hear other notes in order to distinguish it and they said no, they can hear a single note and know exactly what it is. I have always been fascinated by this.

Not related to perfect pitch, but I've trained myself to somewhat replicate this through _relative pitch_. I quitely hum to myself the lowest note I can (which just happens to be a C natural), and from there I can mentally step up and down the scale chromatically to find whatever note I need. I'm accurate to about a half step but no more than that, sad to say.

<comment><USER4> You can train yourself to have perfect pitch too, it's a lot like relative pitch but you use music you know well as the starting tone. "This note sounds like the opening chord in x song, so it must be A major".

<comment><USER5> I can attest to this being true. That is how it started for me. But it isn't like relative pitch (all practicing musicians have well developed relative pitch) -- it is more like seeing colors or feeling textures. I have noticed that most of my colleagues with perfect pitch are pianists. I think it helps to have that same pitch always be reluably the same. Few string or horn players have perfect pitch on all instruments, but many do have it for their own instrument only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the OP's definition of "cheesy". Spot on and well said! Still, the article didn't really talk about how to write music in real time. Anyone at all can do this. It is simply improvising a collection of sounds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) Can you elaborate on what you mean by improvising a collection of sounds? Do you mean building a library of musical building blocks and putting them together ad hoc?

<comment><USER5> I guess I'm wanting people to realize that they already have a library of building blocks in their own imaginations. "writing music" is a vast thing to say. Writing music in the manner of Mozart or LMFAO or Bruno Mars is narrower. But you have to study those exact folks to do that and then immitate their vocabulary of chords, rhythms, forms, orchestrations, styles... even to say "writing jazz in real time" isn't narrow enough. Jazz is too vast. I think people limit themselves when they get vast unknowingly like this. Better to improvise as one's self than to immitate someone else. If you want someone else to play it back as you wrote it... record yourself.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Bicycle hacks? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a software engineer, but also a committed recreational cyclist. I'm sure there are others out there like me, and I'm wondering what kind of cycling related hacks members of the community have performed. Whether it's to increase performance, augment carrying capacity, find better (ie, safer, less-trafficked) routes to your destination,  a total redesign of the bicycle as we know it, or just a cool modification, what have you seen or done? <comment><USER2> i have not done it, but just seeing this as a product makes me want to try and replicate it:

<http://www.nightbrighttyre.com/about/></comment>


Mark Pilgrim on clickjacking browser vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html-5-episode-7

<comment><AUTHOR> The best part:

Ironically, the best example of "clickjacking" is the download page for the NoScript extension, which uses it for good rather than evil. Thanks to some fancy JavaScript (search for "installer"), Giorgio embeds the addons.mozilla.org download page for NoScript in an IFRAME on his own page on noscript.net, sets the IFRAME to "opacity:0" (an attack vector that Robert O'Callahan specifically warned about), scrolls the embedded addons.mozilla.org page to the top corner of its "Add to Firefox" button, and sets the z-index of the IFRAME to 100. Thus, the IFRAME is floating (due to "z-index:100") invisibly (due to "opacity:0") over Giorgio's own "Install Now" button (due to the positioning of the IFRAME element itself). When you think you're clicking the button on noscript.net you are actually clicking the button on addons.mozilla.org. What's the difference? By default, Firefox treats addons.mozilla.org as a trusted download site, so it immediately pops up the extension installation dialog instead of blocking the installation with an infobar saying "Firefox prevented this site (noscript.net) from installing software on your computer." From a user experience standpoint, this is great -- one less click to download and install an extension. From a security standpoint, this is incredibly scary -- the end user has no idea they're interacting with a third-party site.</comment>


What Worries Me About iOS 7 - <AUTHOR> http://disconnected.craig.is/what-worries-me-about-ios7

<comment><USER2> > I don't even know where to start

But then the article is very short with very little substantial problems. The galaxy S series has been using a lock-screen like this for ages and they seem to be doing just fine. Of all the things that could be said about iOS 7, I think the lockscreen is one of the least likely to cause problems. People unlock their phones dozens of times a day, my guess is that people will learn it after 2 times. The thousands of times after that it won't be a problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would bet that changing the from the bars to the dots is a marketing maneuver, remember the "More bars in more places" ad campaign, the bars icon was specifically used, by using dots, Apple is diverging it's identity away from AT&T. It's minute, but a detail none the less.

</comment><comment><USER4> Slide to unlock is a problem? Running an old beta?</comment>


The Feds Can Now (Probably) Unlock Every iPhone Model in Existence - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/02/26/government-can-access-any-apple-iphone-cellebrite <comment><USER2> "Cellebrite, a Petah Tikva, Israel-based vendor that's become the U.S. government's company of choice when it comes to unlocking mobile devices, is this month telling customers its engineers currently have the ability to get around the security of devices running iOS 11."

The USA is using tax dollars from Americans to pay someone in another country to unlock American's phones.

<comment><USER3> So what? Israel buys planes from the USA. The Americans getting their phones unlocked are, except if they're doing it at the border, criminal suspects with a warrant required for search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hope some white hats are able to figure out what vulnerabilities they're using and have them patched.</comment>