Hacker's Guide to Tea - <AUTHOR> http://worldoftea.org/hackers-guide-to-tea/ <comment><USER2> I tried to start a tea shop/hacker space in SF which failed spectacularly a few months ago. Everyone, don't do retail!

Finding decent tea can be a challenge. Here are a few places to start looking for tea online, and in SF:

<http://www.teaspring.com/> \-- Chinese Tea.

<http://www.redblossomtea.com/> \-- Chinese Tea from SF. Fantastic oolong and Dragonwell. Check out their location next time you're in Chinatown.

<http://www.runa.org/> \-- Guayusa, related to Yerba Mate. The kids building this company are true hackers!

<http://www.omshantea.com/> \-- A cool tea house in SF (mission). Learn about Pu-erh and Jiaogulan here.

<http://www.yunnansourcing.com> \-- A place to try your luck and buy Pu-erh.

<http://www.itoen.com/estore/index.cfm> \-- Sencha, Gyokuru, Matcha. A solid selection of Japanese Greens.

These places have great herb selections, and will make you realize how much you're overpaying for mid-grade tea: <http://www.sfherb.com/> <http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/>

I also love Korean tea, but don't have a good recommendation on where to get it.

<comment><USER3> Did you write up a post mortem anywhere? As a tea drinking hacker in SF it would be an interesting read at least.

<comment><USER2> I took over the Aroma Tea Shop on Polk st for 3 months earlier this year. The biggest stumbling block was the landlord (a trust fund) dragged its feet and eventually denied my sublease application at the end of the 3 months. With a couple friends, we had been operating semi-discreetly during this time, but didn't redo the banner outside and didn't do much marketing.

Since we left, it's been taken over by the boutique next door. They kept the paint job and sandwich board sign we made.

That's about all I've got the energy to rehash-- but if you catch me in person I'll tell you all about the folly of Polk Tea.

And here's some pics:

<http://kaimary.tumblr.com/tagged/tea> <http://kaimary.tumblr.com/tagged/tea/page/2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A wonderful place to get high quality greens: <http://www.hibiki-an.com/>

The best hot water kettle w/ temperature control I've found is: [http://www.amazon.com/PINO-ST-8706-Digital-Kettle- Pro/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/PINO-ST-8706-Digital-Kettle- Pro/dp/B001HC54O2)

I've tried every kettle and this one is the best. It's all stainless inside too - water never touches plastic.

<comment><USER5> Hibiki-an is good, but you really have to try Ippodo. Once you've had Ippodo tea, you really can't go back. They target mostly Japanese consumers, but lately, they have been trying to push for more overseas sales. They've been around since 1717 and were the personal tea purveyors to Prince Yamashita. Try the Tenka-ichi, their top Gyokuro. It's difficult to prepare but completely worth it. <https://shop.ippodo-tea.co.jp/shop/en/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you'd like to start drinking tea, I heartily recommend the Adagio IngenuiTEA and sample kit to get started. It's dead simple to use and clean, and their teas are really reasonably priced: [http://www.adagio.com/gifts/holiday_ingenuiTEA.html?SID=094a...](http://www.adagio.com/gifts/holiday_ingenuiTEA.html?SID=094a8e6f6640eda7ad237ce0b678e4f4)

I'm a giant fan of their Spiced Green and Gunpowder green varieties.

Incidentally, if you're anywhere near Chicago they have a retail store in Naperville where they'll brew up any of their teas for you to try. It's fun.

<comment><USER7> I get most of my tea from Adagio, but I recommend Golden Moon Tea's starter set: [http://www.goldenmoontea.com/gifts/tea-taster-s-sampler- with...](http://www.goldenmoontea.com/gifts/tea-taster-s-sampler-with-l- tremain-steeper.html)

It has 31 single-serving sample teas, and a teacup with a strainer. The quality is reasonable, and the variety is spectacular. After finishing it, you'll know which teas you enjoy. I took notes to remind myself which teas I liked and didn't like, but it was worth it. Plus, I still use the teacup and strainer!

<comment><USER8> Another vote for Golden Moon here. I have been using them for about 2 years now. Good tea at reasonable prices. Plus when you buy the bigger sizes (once you find the flavors you like in the starter kit) the leftover tins work for random storage containers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Being in the UK, I typically enjoy a substantial amount of tea during the day. None of that poncy herbal tea though - stricly strong white tea.

The British Armed Forces are supplied with a particular brand of tea from NAAFI (<http://www.ringtons.co.uk/shop/tea/naafi-tea>), which is now available to the public too. I had it described to me by an ex-forces friend that 'it's a tea to clean your gun with', but I actually find it to be one of the heartiest and warming drinks I've had.

<comment><USER10> Supposedly sell it in Spar too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe it's just me, but maybe a "hacker's guide" to tea shouldn't contain wild speculation on the health benefits of matcha.

And since everyone seems to be dropping recommendations for tea shops, then I'll say I get my tea from Marketspice in Seattle, though you have to fight your way through swarms of tourists to get there.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a better guide to tea drinking, at least the British way of tea drinking:

<http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/>

<comment><USER13> Gotta have some milk in your tea. ☺

<comment><USER14> Not in green tea! It really depends on the variety.

Vanilla sugar can be nice, though, as is caramelizing sugar in a pot and then whisking hot milk into it, then mixing that with flavored/spiced black teas (masala chai, etc.).

<comment><USER15> I absent-mindedly put a drop of cream in some green tea once, and found it an interesting variation and not bad at all!

<comment><USER16> yeah, green tea ice cream is great as well and contains lots of milk (and sugar).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >If you are drinking something that did not come from this plant (chamomile, mint, tulsi, rooibos, etc) it is not tea).

I hear this every once in awhile and at best it's pedantic and at worst it's just wrong. What do you call chamomile tea? An infusion? Even if it is technically wrong everybody calls infusions "tea" and I think it's safe to argue that the word has evolved beyond the original meaning.

<comment><USER14> "Tisane" is technically correct, though outside of a tea shop I don't think it matters that much. When it's not clear from context, I just say "herbal tea".

<comment><USER18> I say the same, but technically I'm not sure it's any better as tea is an herbal tea, but not all herbal tea's are teas... Ok, I'll stop.

It's the same as people calling tomatoes vegetables - technically wrong and no one cares.

<comment><USER19> "Vegetable" is a culinary distinction for plant matter eaten at dinner; tomatoes are vegetables. "Fruit" is a biological distinction for plant matter that contains seeds within an edible shell; tomatoes are fruits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're a tea person like me and you've read Lu Yu's Tea Classics (茶經) before, you'll appreciate good tea.

The one that I usually purchase is from Japan--and it is now orderable online, including to overseas addresses. The tea purveyor is IPPODO (一保堂) and their gyokuro (玉露) is some of the best. IPPODO has been around since 1717, so they are likely to have a good idea, especially since they have supplied tea to the Japanese king.

Gyokuro is a pleasant tea because its flavors are so subtle that it's not like any green tea you've had. Theirs is very light yet sweet and full-bodied. IPPODO's gyokuro, in particularly their Below Heaven tea (天下一) or Tenka-ichi, has a savory flavor that almost tastes a bit like nori.

<https://shop.ippodo-tea.co.jp/shop/en/> <http://www.ippodo-tea.co.jp/>

<comment><USER20> Here's what a can of Tenka-ichi looks like: [https://shop.ippodo- tea.co.jp/shop/en/images/goods/g00010217...](https://shop.ippodo- tea.co.jp/shop/en/images/goods/g00010217_a.jpg)

<comment><USER5> Beautiful. And if you have 70,000 yen or $840 US to burn: [https://shop.ippodo- tea.co.jp/shop/en/images/goods/g00010294...](https://shop.ippodo- tea.co.jp/shop/en/images/goods/g00010294_a.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The true principles of tea-drinking were enumerated (there are eleven) and explicated in antiquity (defined as the golden time before my birth) by renowned tea expert George Orwell. I can personally attest to the veracity of Mr. Orwell's first principle; namely, that one ought to drink only Indian or Ceylonese tea, on the grounds that "one does not feel wiser, braver, or more optimistic after drinking" the Chinese variety. (It was after a nice cup of uplifting Indian tea that Orwell bravely and wisely wrote the optimistic _1984_.)

<http://orwell.ru/library/articles/tea/english/e_tea>

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm off the tea habit now, but the best investment I made was getting a variable-temperature water kettle. Just set the temp and let it worry about getting it right. Plus it keeps the water at that temp all day long -- no screwing around with pots and kettles and such for your third cup.

I also took a great liking to white tea: expensive but worth it (in my opinion). At first I really liked the heavier oxidized teas, but I found that my tastes went greener and greener the more I experimented.

Drinking tea is a wonderful habit, and it's good for you too. I had to quit for a while because of the caffeine. While less than coffee, I found it still messed up my system.

<comment><USER23> These kettles that keep water hot all day long seem very wasteful to me.

That said, does anyone know if it takes more electricity to reheat water than to maintain it at a given temperature?

<comment><USER24> Partly anecdotally and partly empirically: I have a Wattvision thingy on my meter, I use an electric kettle, and I cook lots of things sous vide (in water baths held between 130-160f for _very_ long times). It appears to take _drastically_ less energy to have a rice cooker keep 120 ounces of water at 150f for hours on end than it does to bring a kettle of water to a boil.

This makes sense to me. Watch the sous vide PID controller govern the rice cooker; it's only switched on for a fraction of a second every 10 seconds or so.

Water also has a high specific heat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hm, I have to disagree with the steeping chart for green tea (after having been doing it that way for 12 years).

Recently, I got some medium/high quality Sencha at my favorite place Ten Ren down in Chinatown.

Lessons learned from their main man:

0\. Never use boiling water, but instead around 80-85 degree Celsius (okay, that seems to be common sense) 1\. If the quality of the tea is so-so, discharge the first steep after 1-2 seconds. High-grade tea needs no cleaning. This step gets rid of the dust and ensures a clear color. 2\. First steeping for maximum 1 minute 30 seconds. 3\. Second steeping for only about 40 (!) seconds. 4\. Third steeping for about 50 seconds.

<comment><USER26> > my favorite place Ten Ren down in Chinatown.

Ten Ren is awesome - friendly folks who also educated me about how to prepare tea and let me know that you could steep it multiple times (which was news to me at the time since I only steeped once and then threw out the leaves).

Having since moved to Southern CA, I visit their store in Monterrey Park. Good folks still, but I miss the charm of the Chinatown store.

<comment><USER25> Yes, agreed. They're very friendly and humble. The quality of their teas speaks for itself. I didn't know they had one in CA! A good tea dealer is worth so much win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great resource for tea beginners and experts alike: <http://steepster.com>

Discover new teas, get recommendations, and keep a tasting journal.

Disclosure: I'm a co-founder.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you ever go to Japan make sure to try Matcha, it consists of very finely ground green tea leaves.

And seems to be very difficult to prepare! I brought some back to the UK, that I'll have to try out soon :)

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Matcha>

One other thing I found pretty cool, in a Cafe, they would bring a sand timer, to tell you when the tea in the teapot had brewed.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you're interested in the focusing-increasing benefits of L-Theanine, Gyokuro, Matcha, and Silver Needle are all good teas to drink.

I get my Gyokuro & Matcha from <http://hibiki-an.com/>

Silver Needle I had a harder time finding, but I got them from <http://chicagoteagarden.com/>, the tea shop of the OP.

Incidentally, they're both delicious.

</comment><comment><USER30> My group tends to drink yerba maté: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_maté>

<comment><USER31> You might be interested to know that the accent on _maté_ is a hyperforeignism. In Spanish, the drink is just _yerba mate_. The (nonexistent) word _maté_ would be pronounced "mah-TEH", whereas _mate_ is pronounced "MAH- teh"; presumably the erroneous diacritic was added to keep people from rhyming it with _fate_.

<comment><USER31> I just realized that _maté_ does exist in Spanish: it means "I killed"—all the more reason to use _mate_ instead. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been sampling a wide variety of teas over the past few years, and wrote up a page describing flavors and steeping time, which is a little more detailed (but not as broad) as the article: [http://www.physics.ohio- state.edu/~prewett/archive/tea/tea.h...](http://www.physics.ohio- state.edu/~prewett/archive/tea/tea.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Neat article. For those like me that struggle getting 170 degree water for green tea, I found a good trick which is to just put an ice cube on top of the tea, and pour the hot water on top of that. That prevents singeing the leaves that can kill a nice cup of green tea. I find it a lot more reproducible than 'waiting longer than a minute'.

<comment><USER33> A good trick is to listen to the water boiling. At around 180°F the water starts bubbling and dancing, gets a bit agitated and might make a resonant sound in your kettle. I suggest using a thermometer and getting to know how the water sounds at different temperatures.

Best place to buy tea: <http://uptontea.com/> Top notch quality, and they put out a really good paper catalog describing all their hundreds of teas quarterly.

<comment><USER14> When I boil water in an open pot, I can usually recognize the different temperatures by the way the water shimmers, the size of the bubbles, etc. Do that a couple times with a thermometer, and you can probably eyeball it from there.

I've heard the stages of boiling referred to as "dragon eyes", "fish eyes", etc. See e.g. <http://www.veetea.com/site/articles/Water-Temperatures/> .

That said, my wife and I got an electric teakettle with a temperature setting as a wedding gift, and we love it. That's another option. (This one, or a similar model: [http://www.amazon.com/Choice-SmartKettle-Cordless-4-Quart- El...](http://www.amazon.com/Choice-SmartKettle-Cordless-4-Quart- Electric/dp/B001I1BH98/) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Try adding a few crushed cardamom pods to a pot of black tea, they add a fantastic flavor. Milk is of course required.

<comment><USER14> Also: cinnamon and peppercorns. And, heating the spices _in_ the milk (perhaps an even mix of whole milk and water) infuses the flavors better. (Half-and- half or heavy cream, if you're making chai ice cream. :) )

Star anise and licorice root also make good herbal teas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I didn't know about L-theanine; this goes a long way towards explaining why I feel like tea helps me "stay awake" for longer, compared to coffee which seems to fail me after about a half hour, despite it usually having more caffeine.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great article. We love the tea here in Northern Ireland, and our impression is that most off-the-shelf bagged tea here is of very high quality in comparison to the US. We're drinking lots of 'Punjana' these days.

<comment><USER37> The problems I, as an Irishman, have when visiting the US are (1) frequently a kettle isn't available, and instead, in offices, you often have a supply of "hot" water at perhaps 95C, which isn't hot enough for good tea, or you have to jerry-rig something out of a coffeemaker with similar issues only even more tepid; and (2) American tea bags average about 2g of tea leaves each compared with an average of 3.125g in UK / Irish tea bags.

So these days, I bring a travel kettle with me, and usually my own supply of tea. If I must use tea bought locally, I use twice the regular amount to compensate.

<comment><USER38> When I moved to the US from the UK a decade ago, I went to the shops to kit out my apartment and fondly imagined that the country that put men on the moon and invented the internet would have some kind of amazing high-tech laser- powered robot super-kettle. I was disappointed when the only kettle I could get looked like something from the 1970's.

Should have gone to Japan.

<comment><USER36> I could be wrong, but I think part of the reason electric kettles haven't caught on big in the US is the lower voltage. One of the first things that caught my attention over here (Northern Ireland) was that the kettles boil so fast. It's incredibly convient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Not bad, but would be better with temperatures indicated in reasonable units :)

<comment><USER40> A reasonable unit of temperature begins at 0K and makes the numeric value of the Boltzmann constant 1.

<comment><USER41> If I did my math right, that would make the best temperature for steeping a green tea somewhere around 2.63E25 degrees.

<comment><USER40> That'll be 26.3 yotta-degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I like Earl Grey with milk and honey. Does that make me a pragmatic…kettler?

<comment><USER37> I wouldn't drink Earl Grey with milk. Earl Grey has a strong perfumed aroma from the bergamot orange; I might add lemon to it, but not milk. Milk goes best with strongly steeped black tea because it takes an edge off the bitterness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> As if there aren't enough suggestions on where to buy tea, I get all mine through SevenCups (<http://www.sevencups.com/>) and TeaSpring (<http://teaspring.com/>). Both companies are excellent. SevenCups has a few very nice sampler packs.

I've been kind of annoyed how long TeaSpring has been out of Bai Mu Dan, though. It's is incredible. They specialize in Chinese tea. So if that's your thing, check them out.

</comment><comment><USER44> In 1980 the British Standards Group produced a document, _Method for Preparation of a Liquor of Tea_ , setting out the British Standard method of tea brewing. This was BS 6008:1980.

ISO Technical Committee 34 (Food products), Sub-Committee 8 (Tea) later created ISO 3103 from this.

You can see the documented process at Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BS_6008>

It's an interesting read and won the Ig Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's technically true that tea is only made from the camellia sinensis plant, but you can get the same experience from other "hot, tea-like drinks" as well such as Herbal and Rooibos "teas".

Please take a look at <http://www.theteafinder.com>. It's a tea search engine that I made after getting motivated reading HN a few weeks ago! You can search for tea by flavor and health benefit.

Would love feedback from other tea-drinking hackers.

<comment><USER40> > but you can get the same experience from other "hot, tea-like drinks" as > well such as Herbal and Rooibos "teas".

I wouldn't call it the same experience. Herbal teas and Rooibos are fine in their own rights, but not as substitutes for the camellia sinensis plant.

Try stinging nettle. It's awesome.

<comment><USER46> Wonderful! We have a large lush growth of Stinging Nettle behind our barn every summer. I'm looking forward to brewing some up next year.

<comment><USER40> The taste varies quite a lot between dried and fresh nettle. I like dried better, but you should try both.

If you are into nettles, there's also the world nettle eating championships in Dorset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> <http://www.hibiki-an.com> is where I get most of my tea (Japanese green tea only). Shipping from Japan to Europe takes about a week to arrive. <http://www.nbtea.co.uk> in the UK is also a good place for tea (various types from various locations) but I still thingk Hibiki-an's tea better quality.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone know a good UK (or EU) based tea supplier?

<comment><USER49> Have these in my bookmarks, haven't tried them yet <http://jingtea.com/> <http://www.cantonteaco.com>

<comment><USER48> Brilliant, thanks. Jing Tea looks like a winner, I'll give them a try and let you know. :)

<comment><USER50> I'll second both of those UK companies. Jing has great stuff (a little pricier) and I've personally worked with the people behind Canton Tea Co.

BTW I'm also a founder of Steepster

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> <http://www.harney.com/> Harney and Sons is my favorite.

I love their english breakfast and their earl gray.

Their chocolate tea: [http://www.harney.com/Chocolate-Tea-Loose-tea-by-the- pound/p...](http://www.harney.com/Chocolate-Tea-Loose-tea-by-the- pound/productinfo/41613/) Is is delicious, but man does it raise your heart rate!

</comment><comment><USER52> If you're ever in Boulder, the Celestial Seasonings factory tour is worth checking out: <http://www.celestialseasonings.com/visit-us/free-tours.html> The Peppermint Room will clear your sinuses for a week.

Anyone have other tea factory tours they'd recommend?

</comment><comment><USER53> I would recommend The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo. It's a great introduction to eastern culture for westerners taking tea as link and guide. Despite it was published in 1906 it's interestingly both actual and dated.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Tea>

</comment><comment><USER54> If you want to watch a great documentary about tea growing and making check out All in This Tea.

<http://www.netflix.ca/WiMovie/All-in-This-Tea/70095114>

<http://www.lesblank.com/more/TeaFilm.html>

</comment><comment><USER55> 'The more oxidized the tea leaves are, the hotter the water temperature should be when steeping'.

The author assumes his readers do not know that white, green and other teas differ from each other thanks to their processing but assumes they do know the oxidation level of the tea they are about to brew.

</comment><comment><USER56> Caffeine is very soluble. You can quickly decaffenate tea by "rinsing" it, or more accurately, throwing away the first, short, steeping.

In other words, if you want to remove the caffeine, leave your teabag in 1/2 a cup of water for 30-60 seconds, dump out the water and then you are good to go.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is not 100% true: [http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caffeine-and-tea- myth-and...](http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caffeine-and-tea-myth-and- reality.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I mostly buy from Adagio, but have also found some great teas through Harney & Sons (<http://www.harney.com>) and Teas Etc. (<http://www.teasetc.com>).

</comment><comment><USER58> If you're interested in white tea (and you should be from a health benefits perspective), check out the teas at www.shangtea.com - they ship it and it's a family run business with a family farm in the mts in China. All organic and delightful.

</comment><comment><USER59> Here's a good short piece on tea drinking from the _Obsessives_ series by Chow.com: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9zT5VZKHI0>

</comment><comment><USER60> For those interested:

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Theanine>

and there are supplements available if you don't want to give up coffee.

<comment><USER14> L-Theanine is a surprisingly under-appreciated nootropic. If you buy it as a bulk powder, it's quite cheap.

Good Japanese green tea (senchas, matcha, etc.) seem to be particularly high in theanine. It contributes quite a bit of flavor to the tea.

<comment><USER61> I'd agree with theanine being under-appreciated. I used to drink a ton of tea - no problems, nice stimulant. So when I decided to mix & cap all my supplements and drop the whole tea thing (more work than a pill and not especially portable), I simply bought a few hundred grams of caffeine.

What could go wrong? Caffeine was what I was getting from the tea, right? Turns out caffeine alone makes me somewhat twitchy & anxious and is distinctly inferior to tea (caffeine+theanine). If I could cap them again, I'd definitely make sure to add in theanine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> If you're in Canada, you might want to check out <http://www.teaopia.ca/>

I just stumbled on their store in Ottawa, and it seems pretty great!

<comment><USER62> Also, if you're looking for the PINO Digital Pro kettle in Canada, this place has it: <http://www.49thparallelroasters.com/storeAccessories.html>

Amazon.com will ship here, but I'm not sure what kind of import duties that would mean...

</comment></comment><comment> DanI-S Jing tea are great - <http://jingtea.com/>

Their 'tea explorer' set is a nice introduction to various types of tea from around the world.

</comment><comment><USER63> See also: [http://home.fazekas.hu/~nagydani/rth/Russian-tea- HOWTO-v2.ht...](http://home.fazekas.hu/~nagydani/rth/Russian-tea- HOWTO-v2.html)

</comment><comment><USER64> For those in the US Den's Tea offers great Japanese teas. <http://www.denstea.com>

</comment><comment><USER65> I always start my day with a hot cup of pu-erh or jiaogulan. It is said both has cleansing effect for the digestive system.

</comment><comment><USER66> A lot of information packed into a clear post for new to tea drinkers, thanks

</comment><comment><USER67> I loved drinking tea, but I recently stopped when I found out that green and black tea have a large amount of Fluoride, highly toxic to the human body. I drink just hot water, or one tea bag split between a whole tea pot, or coffee.

Edited: Fluoride is NOT a heavy metal. and spelling

<comment><USER68> Citation please. Assuming you meant Fluoride: it's neither heavy nor a metal.

<comment><USER67> Yeah I screwed up, Fluoride (the correct spelling), which is a form of the ELEMENT Fluorine IS NOT a heavy metal like I confusingly thought.

But a simple google search will show you that Fluoride is highly concentrated in black and green tea.</comment></comment></comment>


Closures in Java, Ruby, and Duby - <AUTHOR> http://threebrothers.org/brendan/blog/closures-in-java-ruby-and-duby/

<comment><USER2> I have high hopes for Duby becoming a viable alternative to javac! Since it uses the native typesystem and doesn't require a runtime, it is 'just' a Ruby- like syntax for writing code for the JVM.

<comment><USER3> A lot of people are jumping on board to use Clujure, yet it doesn't use the native typesystem and does require a runtime? (I know little about clojure, I'm just guessing here, please correct me if I'm wrong.) So why would people not jump on board with using a Ruby that sat on top of the JVM with non native typesystem and requires the run time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Clojure solves a whole set of problems at the language level that imperative languages like Ruby can't easily address: Simple concurrent programming (<http://clojure.org/concurrent_programming>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW, Duby is not "done" or "ready" yet, but it's moving along. The promise of a static-typed language with all the expressive power of Ruby (or at least, Ruby's syntax), but the performance of Java and no runtime library is very compelling to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is Duby really ready for production yet? The twitter posts referenced are blocked, but it appears at least someone is using it for production stuff. Anyone else?

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have made it clear that we opted not to use Duby for this project because a) the Java version was almost done and b) it still seems immature. Android development depends on a prerelease version of jRuby, so I wouldn't consider it production ready.</comment></comment>


Hugo 0.16 released - <AUTHOR> http://gohugo.io/meta/release-notes/ <comment><USER2> Fantastic news. If you happen to be in Central Europe you're invited to the next Vienna Go Lang meetup [1] I will present on building static (web)sites with Hugo and the Go Template Language ;-) Free. Everyone Welcome. Cheers. PS: Interesed in all things static site builders / generators. Follow along on the @statictimes news channel.

[1] [http://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Golang- Meetup/events/230458823](http://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Golang- Meetup/events/230458823) [2] [https://twitter.com/statictimes](https://twitter.com/statictimes)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hugo is a fantastic platform! Not only is it a fast, customizable static site generator. It's a means of powerful content delivery using multiple methodologies. This strengthens the ability to formulate brilliant content strategies.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on the release! I love Hugo and I'm really excited to be able to use a lot of the new features in 0.16.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hurray! What a great news to start the week! I have been very much looking forward to this release! Hugo rocks!

</comment><comment><USER6> Exciting! I can't wait to upgrade my site.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thank you hugo team!</comment>


Stanford Faculty Salary Information 2008-2009 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/may20/files/faculty_salary_2009.pdf <comment><USER2> What is interesting about a seemingly random pdf about salary data that is 10 years old?</comment>


Airbnb UX Wins and Losses - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/18135779651/airbnb-ux-wins-and-losses-how-the-airbnb-home-page

<comment><USER2> I love these kinds of articles, they're always reliably interesting. And always kick up decent debate as well, given that people often have different opinions about what works, and no-one has access to the actual data proving anything.

In a previous job (life?) I was put onto a project to (effectively) clone AirBnb, and spent a lot of time staring at the home page. While it's nice to see it again, boy am I glad to have moved on.

An aside: airbnb.com takes 4-5 seconds to load for me, compared to near instantaneous load on other sites. You could spend days tweaking your home page, but if people get frustrated waiting for it to load then you're handicapping yourself.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing that I don't understand about their interface is that if you click on a listing and then "back to search results", it doesn't return you to your search query but rather does a search for everything.

Also, it would be really nice if they would allow saving a search query for a trip being planned (I'm assuming they don't allow this now); it can be annoying to have to find and copy/paste some long address and fill out other parameters every time you want to resume your search.

<comment><USER4> "but rather does a search for everything."

We're fixing this.

<comment><USER3> Thanks; look forward to it.

BTW, there is some other funkiness in the UI, too. If I choose a city and some amenities and some neighborhoods and then add on 'social connections', it says that my search is too specific. But I notice that after I do this, my neighborhood selection is no longer there. Amusingly, this means that if I uncheck 'social connections' and check it again it will be able to show me something since my search is no longer too specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Collaborative consumption sites have unique challenges in earning user trust. Anyone know of successful UX tactics other applications have used?

<comment><USER5> Mailchip has a really nice site and is very easy to use considering email campaigns can get pretty complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > there's no need to outline the box and make it look misaligned with the > "Search" button.

Wrong and poor advice to subvert browser functionality. Alert the user to which input they are currently working with. Eliminates [tiresome] user guesswork and is conventional. Also helps the visually challenged.

> via overlay boxes

I don't even.

> I enter my city and hit 'Enter'. That triggers the search, without giving me > a chance to enter my dates first.

It occurs to me that this is part of the design. They show you the inventory before asking you for your size, even though if you had the patience you can input your desired dates on the homepage. Also, note the date input is also available after form submission. Something tells me that they've done some research on user behavior.

> How else can Airbnb improve?

I'm going to stop now because if anything, this post is novice-level and poorly thought out if one is assuming that they can make better what they don't understand.

<comment><USER7> I didn't want to sandbag the original poster, but this was the line of thought I was heading down also.

Additionally, the ranking of results when you search is processed by Google places autocomplete. The request never actually hits any AirBnB server for ranking. This is done on Google side via their friendly API.

<comment><USER2> This definitely wasn't always the case. Around 8 months ago it was definitely pulling down a custom list in JS, but they do appear to have changed it since.</comment></comment></comment>


Fundamental attribution error - <AUTHOR> https://effectiviology.com/fundamental-attribution-error/ <comment><USER2> I was just thinking about this yesterday, without even knowing what it was called. I do long daily walks, in which I see the same people walking about the same time. I smile and say hi to _everyone_ I walk past, but not everyone says it back, or even acknowledges me for that matter. I was wondering why I still bother to say hi to people that seem grumpy and don't return the greeting. I said to myself that, just because they're grumpy today, doesn't necessarily mean they're grumpy people, and maybe they'll be less grumpy tomorrow, so I'll just keep greeting them as they pass. It was nice reading about this effect today, as it validated my decision to not give up on them by attributing today's grumpiness to their personality in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> Examine any behavior by another that upsets you, including the most vile and reprehensible _, and figure out what differences in your own life and experience would make you do the exact same thing.

Your anger has no legitimacy until you know and accept that you could have been the one to do the exact same thing. And then anger at people melts away to wisdom about things that can and cannot change.

_Specifically the disturbing trend that has caused so much anger and outrage today, Socks and Crocs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personal opinion: this strongly applies to startup (and business in general) success as well, which leads to all kinds of faulty assumptions about what actually makes startups succeed or fail. Environment-based factors (basically luck) play a _much_ larger part than most successful people will actually admit.

<comment><USER5> There's a specific name for that cognitive bias but I can't remember what it is. I recall it being mentioned in the context of a CTO articulating why they believed their business' product was successful. Their answer was, 'we used Ruby on Rails', and the bias was demonstrated in that there's no clear way to distinguish if that fact was an actual true determinant in the product's success, but because looking back it stood out to him/her as something tangible they could reason about, then it must be true by de facto.

edit: Perhaps hindsight bias? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

<comment><USER6> The Drunkard's Walk [0], by Leonard Mlodinow, covers this and related topics brilliantly.

Relevant excerpt: "..economists like W. Brian Arthur argue that a concurrence of minor factors can even lead companies with no particular edge to come to dominate their competitors. "In the real world," he wrote, "if several similar-sized firms entered a market together, small fortuitous events - unexpected orders, chance meetings with buyers, managerial whims - would help determine which ones received early sales and, over time, which came to dominate. Economic activity is... [determined] by individual transactions that are too small to foresee, and these small 'random' events could [ac]cumulate and become magnified by positive feedbacks over time."

[0] [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907183439](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907183439)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And this juicy bit from a reference:

"Does temporary mood influence the occurrence of the fundamental attribution error (FAE)? Based on recent affect–cognition theorizing and research on attributions, 3 experiments predicted and found that negative moods decrease and positive moods increase the FAE, because of the information-processing consequences of these affective states. In Experiment 1, happy mood enhanced and sad mood reduced dispositional attributions based on coerced essays advocating unpopular opinions. " [1]

Wait, so dour cynical people are better at interpreting events? Hmm.

[1] [https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.75.2....](https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-35188.8.131.528)

<comment><USER8> Nitpick, but if you're going to cite a DOI, you might as well use the canonical URL: [https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-35220.127.116.118](https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3522.214.171.1248)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminded me a Fresh Air interview with singer-songwriter Adam Schlesinger where Terry Gross interprets the sentiment in one of his songs as an expression of his self-identity:

> GROSS: That's from the first Fountains of Wayne CD. Do you think Robert > Christgau was onto something? Do you think of yourselves as former shy guys > who didn't get the girl?

> ...

> SCHLESINGER: [...] But at the same time, you know, people, especially in > America - I think more so even than in Europe - assume that any voice that > you have in a song is you confessing, you know, your inner thoughts. And the > idea of writing from, like, the perspective of a character or something is a > little bit confusing to people.

Source: [https://www.npr.org/2020/04/03/826654716/fresh-air- remembers...](https://www.npr.org/2020/04/03/826654716/fresh-air-remembers- fountains-of-wayne-co-founder-adam-schlesinger)

</comment><comment><USER10> Useful article, but I tend to think that the split between external/internal factors is misguided.

It's seeking to explain away decisions based on personality as if a personality based decision is any less prone to being temporary, erroneous, or that it's somehow a decision of the human (and so can just be discounted).

In reality, the human brain is not a perfect machine. We have a sense of what is 'neurotypical', sort of, but realistically everyone exhibits symptoms of some disorder at some point whether they're diagnosed or not.

A disorder also implies some sort of inability to function. Way below that are variations in mental state that still allow people to get by in a world formed for 'neurotypicals' (read: set up for less than 50% of the population, so realistically the 'typical' word there is kind of misleading).

We don't all see the world in the same way. We might see the same colours or the same patterns or whatever, but the extents of our emotions and our reactions to them (trained over decades) differ a lot.

<comment><USER11> Well, people tend to believe that character traits are immutable or very hard to change. So the fundamental attribution error makes us something that the culprit is rotten to the core. That's why they did what they did.

My hypothesis is that the fundamental attribution error exists so that we feel less bad for punishing others for wronging us. We don't spend time weighing all the possible reasons for which they hurt us. We just retaliate because they're bad and they will always be bad.</comment></comment>


Apply HN: Native Web Browser - <AUTHOR> Native apps provide better UX and performance than the web, we all agree on that now. However, I don't see myself installing every other app, as most times, I would use them just once in 6 months. With limited space on mobiles, there are millions like me who have to compromise with the mobile web. Wouldn't it be nice to have a browser which renders native components resulting in an awesome user experience with great performance?
Well, the solution is already out there! Its called React Native, a framework by Facebook which helps you create native apps using JavaScript. But instead of making apps which one installs, our goal is to make them streamable and build a browser which interprets the React Native code and renders it using native components just like Chrome does HTML. React Native already does this but isn't optimised for it. Let's built it and make the web great again!
P.S. - The project is going to be open-source and there are no revenue models as of now. I'm @troysk704 on twitter and happy to answer questions. <comment><USER2> The web could certainly use an alternative to the HTML / CSS / JS stack. The paradigm is just so awkward nowadays for how it's used that we invent new web frameworks almost daily to make working on the web _less_ awkward. So there is certainly a _need_ for an alternative, in my opinion, that can offer better performance, device access and most importantly a less awkward development cycle. Plus local storage sucks.

Having said that, like others mentioned security is a _huge, huge, huge_ hurdle to getting this right. However I don't think that automatically means it _wouldn 't work_. On the contrary many new technologies start out as being very insecure.

I think the real hurdle is adoption. In order to use your technology stack a user would have to install a new type of browser (messaging around this may prove difficult) and a developer would have to dedicate to writing something in your stack. Granted if you're looking at React Native then you're likely thinking JavaScript here so that makes it easier but it's yet another platform for a developer to learn. Most companies need to be present on the web, android, ios and sometimes beyond that onto windows, mac os x and maybe even into IoT devices. Adding your platform to that list is going to be tough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed! Getting users is always a hurdle :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is it any different from ExponentJS ?

<comment><AUTHOR> ExponentJS is a development tool/environment for react native based apps.

<comment><USER3> Exponent mobile app behaves a lot like browser. It allows you to load React Native app and use it over web (required images and fonts will be loaded on demand).

Anyway I think that app streaming is really great idea that's still waiting for its killer app. What's your progress with project ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The comments in your previous thread discuss why this would not work: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11342929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11342929)

<comment><AUTHOR> I had missed the last comment. Thanks for bringing it up! I've replied to it.

Would like to add that the concerns around security can be managed the same way the browsers do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't web assembly going to help address many of these problems?

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't very clear yet.</comment></comment>


Did RIM lose its BlackBerry software boss just ahead of QNX transition? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/26/did-rim-lose-its-blackberry-software-boss-just-ahead-of-qnx-transition/

<comment><USER2> Looking at BGR's reporting with respect to RIM now I am starting to wonder if BGR is paid to do so. Seems like. Now when you lay off 2000 employees obvious some of the top brass is going to grow and the company will generally lay off those who dont matter much for future.</comment>


Set up a production-ready realtime GraphQL backend - <AUTHOR> https://hasura.io/diy-graphql-baas <comment><USER2> I don't like working with ORMs for tons of joins and I don't like denormalizing in tables, so I tend to write CTE-based JSON generating views for apps. (Yes, these are not high traffic apps...)

Hasura has been such a joy to work with against these dbs that I am willing to try and let the query abstraction do more of the output assembly with joins, etc via graphql.

No knock on the Prisma family of tools, and props also to subzerocloud and postgraphile/postgraphql, but I feel like hasura's relationship with pg is more natural than anybody else's. [edit: more compatible with the way I approach pg - YMMV and don't hesitate to try the others they are solid too.]

<comment><USER3> > I don't like working with ORMs for tons of joins and I don't like > denormalizing in tables, so I tend to write CTE-based JSON generating views > for apps.

I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean you use database views that output json? And you prefer basing those views on select...with rather than with explicit joins? Because if they're all views on the postgres side, I'm not sure how orms affect the choice of cte vs joins?

Or are there orms that work more nimbly with ctes than with joins (or views)?

I'm currently fighting with some legacy ruby on rails apps that interface with various more-or-less legacy databases - and I've actually been somewhat pleasantly surprised by how concise some joins might be hammered out even under rails 4.

<comment><USER2> Yes, i am talking about asking pg to output json. This is mostly to make sure I get the structure I want with nested arrays etc, it is unnecessary with a single level query.

ORMs are not evil, but I like doing my queries in sql (and using pg functions). In the past I've seen the separate queries that an ORM would send to the db to build the data objects I wanted at the app level and I found it more comfortable to pound on queries in sql, then make a view so the app only needs to do simple selects. It was easier for me to maintain. I'm not saying it was the ORMs fault, but I liked having the ability to keep tables simple, make joined structures in views, then dump json out from there. With CTEs it is easy to nest arrays within parents etc. Then with PG we can materialize the view for data that doesn't change frequently.

As horrible as that all sounds, hasura is the first layer that makes me want to try app directed queries, schema migrations etc. I got tempted by django way back but missed that train.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I think I see now. So it's not that you strongly prefer ctes to joins when manually writing sql and creating regular (or materialized) views - but that when writing views that output json, ctes are a natural fit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a nice micro-tutorial, but it does _not_ build you a production ready system. You don't seem to get backups, redundancy, automated updates, replicability, or anything else that most people would view as mandatory. It seems just show how to rapidly setup a one-off pet server?

<comment><USER5> If you use DO, Vultr, Heroku, or AWS, each have different ways of accomplishing backups, redundancy, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> GraphQL is really nice for the client. But I have an hard time believing that this flexibility given to the client (over well defined REST endpoints for example) doesn't _hardly_ impact the complexity of the queries to make to the database!

How it is possible for a product like Prisma/Hasura to be able to generate the complex logic of the queries required to handle real world logic _and_ support that extra client flexibility? In my experience even regular SQL ORMs are often a bottleneck in a REST application and you need to fallback to (or only use) plain SQL.

And even if you can fallback to hand written SQL in those GraphQL backends (I hope so!), the extra complexity of the queries to make is still there because of GraphQL.

<comment><USER7> With dataloading, you can turn anything that would need to be a join into two queries, using whereIns. It just takes a little extra work. I wrote a blog post on this exact issue a while back. [https://zach.codes/graphql-query- batching-solutions/](https://zach.codes/graphql-query-batching-solutions/)

<comment><USER8> > With dataloading, you can turn anything that would need to be a join into > two queries

*two queries and a lot of extra memory consumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that GraphQL popped up on the front page today. Spent a good portion yesterday digging through docs and tutorials about getting it setup in place of REST for my new project. Do the client side benefits REALLY outweigh the added complexity on the server side, particularly for light/minimal API calls? REST is certainly easier to whip up on the server side, and it's not like it adds a ton of overhead on the client side.

<comment><USER10> For super small applications, where you have 5-10 endpoints, you can say that GraphQL is an overkill. But imagine having 100s of REST endpoints and the client making numerous round trips to the server fetching loads of unnecessary data; GraphQL certainly wins in this case as you can fetch everything and exactly everything in a single API call.

[Edit] Also, the GraphQL spec being defined, and the way it is defined, reduces unnecessary documentation, unnecessary decision-making, and unnecessary communication between teams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So at this point it seems we are going back to how software was developed before web. Clients interact directly with database through a query language. In this case GraphQL is an equivalent of SQL and "custom GraphQL resolvers" are an equivalent of stored procedures, triggers and other business logic.

I wonder if we will see databases expose GraphQL access layers directly.

<comment><USER12> I think eventually that's where all of this is going. We're going to have to figure out how to bolt access control onto GraphQL in a better way than we currently do today but that's certainly a solvable problem.

<comment><USER10> About access control in context of this article, Hasura gives GraphQL APIs with a role-based-access-control layer that can be integrated with any standard auth system.

[https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/auth/index.html](https://docs.hasura.io/1.0/graphql/manual/auth/index.html)

PS: I work at Hasura

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How would you compare this to Prisma's free tier? I've been working through a tutorial series that uses that and it's pretty nice in dev. I've not skipped ahead to the deployment story for that though.

<comment><USER14> Prisma is used as an ORM for your database, so you would still need to write your own graphql server which sits in front of Prisma.

Hasura is meant to be exposed to the clients directly with declarative access control rules. When you have complex business logic you would write the logic yourselves and expose it alongside Hasura.

Disclosure: I work at Hasura on graphql-engine

<comment><USER13> Gotcha! It might just be my inexperience but that completely flew over me from your landing page. I can see how the auth bit implies it, but that sounds pretty cool and isn't really clear IMO!

Do you have something like Prisma's conversion from a very small datamodel to a very complete GraphQL types + functions file going on in the middle then?

<comment><USER14> > .. completely flew over me

Thanks for the feedback. We thought that the 'BaaS' part would convey it.

> .. small datamodel to a very complete GraphQL types ..

Given any GraphQL server, you can generate the types/functions (using introspection) to access the GraphQL server in a typesafe/idiomatic way for a language. A project which does this: [https://github.com/dotansimha/graphql- code-generator](https://github.com/dotansimha/graphql-code-generator).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am trying to understand the infra around using something like Hasura (or graphQL in general). If I wanted to make a site like HN, do I just use a hosted DB with hasura on top? Do I need to have HaProxy/NGinx for the reverse proxy between the client and Hasura?

What about caching of the results? All 100 viewers to my popular post will see the same page content and comments. Can I serve this from a cache insetad of the db, if I am using graphQL?

How will horizontal scaling work? replication? etc. I know Hasura may not be directly involved in these but I would appreciate any thoughts on these all the same.

<comment><USER14> If you are using Postgres as your database you can use Hasura to add GraphQL APIs on top of all the tables. Hasura can be exposed to the fronted applications with declarative permissions. You can add a reverse proxy if you want to. Hasura scales horizontally but you will have to manage Postgres on your own or use a hosted Postgres service like RDS.

> .. caching .. This is related to GraphQL in general. The support for caching > is nowhere close to what is possible with RESTful APIs but it should > eventually get there.

<comment><USER15> Here is my use case. I want to make a SPA. So i need to use a GraphQL client library like relay which again directly talks with Hasura. I am not sure where does the reverse proxy fits in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are a LOT of technologies in this "automatic graphql schema/server" space now. I'd love to see a comparison article

<comment><USER17> Can anyone provide a small (partial) list of GraphQL servers that automatically map on top of a database?

<comment><USER18> Another example is Neo4j-GraphQL [1] - GraphQL API on top of Neo4j graph database.

[1] [https://grandstack.io/docs/neo4j-graphql.html](https://grandstack.io/docs/neo4j-graphql.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks amazing.

So custom resolvers are node cloud functions, right?

<comment><USER5> It appears that you need a second Node.js server to implement your custom resolvers deployed via docker. This second server merges its schema with the automatically generated schema from PG.

This is a bit disappointing. I was expecting to just "point" parts of the automatic schema to some cloud functions hosted anywhere (Now v2, Lambda, etc) much like what AppSync does. This would bring all the benefits of going serverless and decoupling the schema from implementation. Some cloud functions could be written in Node, but others could be written in Go in a different provider.

<comment><USER19> Hey! Hasura founder here :)

Exactly this, we're working on adding remote schema merging into Hasura itself (kind of like AppSync) so this won't be a problem. This should be out very soon!

<comment><USER5> Awesome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "... With Our Paid Service"</comment>


Hackers ground 1,400 passengers at Warsaw in attack on airline's computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/21/hackers-1400-passengers-warsaw-lot

<comment><USER2> "We regret to inform, that due to IT systems failure LOT had to cancel following flights."

[http://corporate.lot.com/pl/en/press- news?article=772898](http://corporate.lot.com/pl/en/press-news?article=772898)</comment>


An algebraic generalization for graph and tensor-based neural networks [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cibcb2017.org/slides/CIBCB-2017-Ethan-Aug23.pdf <comment><USER2> TL;DR: an early effort to establish a 'standard language' for representing and symbolically manipulating (e.g., transforming) _every_ possible neural net that could ever be constructed with graphs and tensors.

Very cool to see this sort of thing.

<comment><USER3> Two questions:

Does this work also allow cyclic structures such as recurrent neural networks (RNNs)?

Does this work generalize to graphs in general?

<comment><USER2> In principle it should, because these guys are using matrices to represent network structures, and every finite graph (cyclic or acyclic, directed or undirected) can be represented by a matrix.

Examples: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjacency_matrix#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjacency_matrix#Examples)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used a very similar idea to create an indirect coding for neuroevolution that was successful in solving some tasks. It's based on a generalization of K^2 Trees and shares the same ideas of modularity and hierarchy.

<comment><USER5> That sounds really interesting. What tasks did you attempt?

If you have open-sourced this in any sense, would enjoy to check it out and/or contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So what does this let you do other than having a standard notation for both graph and tensor NN?

<comment><USER7> See page 22:

" Modular Neuroevolution

• We are currently working on a neuroevolution framework based on Cartesian genetic programming (CGP) and existing work on CGP-based ANNs.

• The algebraic framework introduced in this work will be the basis for the genetic representation and operators.

• Evolved networks will be a mix of de novo evolved modules and existing modules in the form of ANN layers, relational, and functional programs.

• The representation will be based on a mapping between algebraic expressions and a recursive, modular adjacency structure. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool work, now hopefully we can stop using increasingly arbitrary notation in papers... ;)

<comment><USER9> It seems like "arbitrary" notation is also a problem in other fields of mathematics such as Linear Algebra - perhaps depending on the background of the author in math or CS. In Linear Algebra every text book has their own favorite notation for matrices, row/column vectors (special letter such as c for column vectors, roman letters, roman letters with an arrow on top) and scalars (greek letters or the letter c).

<comment><USER10> Now add the distinction between random and nonrandom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Search the CGP section, that blew my mind and it has become more rare these days. Reminds me of Nexus, a science fiction book.</comment>


Solving Pentagonal Peg Solitaire Puzzle with Picat - <AUTHOR> http://sdymchenko.com/blog/2015/03/18/pentagonal-peg-solitare-picat/

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of the mass market hi-q puzzle although this puzzle probably inspired the hi-q cross design. I was never able to solve it as A kid but later wrote a 6502 program to try to solve it. I toggled char's on the monitor to see if it was running or off in never never land ( relative jmps are murder). After 10, 20 , 40 ?? Minutes it stopped. It hadn't crashed. I dumped the memory. It was the solution! Prolog seemed cool when i saw it but life in IT drudgery took over.</comment>


OpenStreetCam - <AUTHOR> https://www.openstreetcam.org/ <comment><USER2> When I attempt to use this web page on a modern macbook, in firefox, I see massive graphical glitches.

I also find it incredibly difficult to understand what this is. The nav bar desperately needs an "About" page, describing what this project is, what the goals are, and how I can help. Even the blog tab did not have the answers I'm looking for</comment>


Google crackdown catches innocent devs in the crossfire - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/03/indie-dev-google-crackdown <comment><USER2> Once again there is no way to contact a human being.

Once again we hope that getting publicity on blogs will catch the attention of someone at Google who can do something about it.

This time, I'd like someone to tell me why it was impossible for the dev to remedy this through the normal channels and tell us what Google are going to do to stop this happening again.

<comment><USER3> I agree with the poor support channels.

But remember the people generating publicity on blogs, because their Google+ account was deleted? Then it turned out they used a company name as their profile name, posted underage nudity, or otherwise violated the rules.

The blog assumes the developers are innocent and abiding by the developer rules. But can we take this assumption for a fact?

For all we know the developers might have been offering incentives to write reviews. The developers might have send account activation emails from a spammy host.

The email they received from Google isn't published, only described as vague. A tweet mentions "repetitive content".

      Spam and placement in store
      Do not post repetitive content

If you currently search for "RPG" ( [https://play.google.com/store/search?q=rpg&c=apps](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=rpg&c=apps) ) 4 games from the top 9 are by 'Cory Trese'. All have near duplicate descriptions. They have 4 versions of a single game "Star Traders RPG".

I wouldn't look at update frequency or an algo fluke as the culprit, but look how I could remedy this apparent repetition, both in game versions and game descriptions.

<comment><USER4> Star Traders International is the third version. It contains a community translation to six languages done by volunteers. We didn't feel right selling donated work.

Star Traders Mini is a super stripped down low resolution version that is 1/7 the size of RPG. Tiny downloads are appreciated by some users, but can't be combined with full size editions.

The other two are basic freemium Paid/Free.

<comment><USER5> Having actually played these games (particularly Cyber Knights which is an absolutely brilliant CyberPunk/ShadowRun tribute), I support these developers. I was highly skeptical when I first played the Star Traders game because the website wasn't the greatest, but after having played the games, I went and downloaded all their other stuff as well. I can see how it would be easy to dismiss them, but the algorithm is just wrong in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My app ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.houseblend...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.houseblend.instaecho)) got kicked out of the app store a while back with the reason being:

"Violation of the intellectual property and impersonation or deceptive behavior"

Pretty vague so I didn't really know what the issue was. I thought my description fo the app was accurate and it was all my own work. I followed the appeal process listed in the email and waited. After a couple of weeks with no response, I emailed again. After another week, I followed up again. Finally after a total of three weeks off the market, it was re-instated. I still don't know what the problem was, but being off the market hurt. I went from nearly 4000 downloads a day when it was suspended to just a few hundred now.

<comment><USER7> I have similar anecdote, but with facebook: We had an web application get a huge bump in traffic as we approached the date of a massive live event that was being managed by the app. Suddenly, facebook shut off our access. Luckily, we had written the app in such a way that we could quickly disable the facebook features, and still have a functional app. If it had been critical to have facebook, the event would have been ruined, and our clients would have fired us. We contacted facebook, and our conversation went something like this:

FB auto message: our very amazing and awesome malware detector, which uses all this cool machine learning and is amazing, has detected that your site is malware and we are disabling it.

Us: Our site is not malware, it's just suddenly very popular. Please turn it back on.

 _1 week later_

FB rep: You site appears to be on, please refer to the documentation for how to connect to our services, do not violate the terms of use agreement.

Us: Ok, it does appear to be back on now. Why was it shut off?

FB rep: You violated the terms of use agreement.

Us: How did we do that? Could you explain what term we violated, so we can modify our code appropriately?

FB rep: Do not violate the terms of use agreement.

Us: Ok, but which term? Are you sure your automated system didn't just shut the site down because it went viral?

FB rep: _no response, ever again_

We never changed the code, site continued to work fine. As a result, I live in fear that something like this could happen again, in a situation where facebook was a critical component. Did the ability to contact a human help in this situation? Unclear. They definitely did a good job of making us feel worthless and unimportant.

<comment><USER8> With more companies going more and more to a purely online presence, I've found customer service to be rapidly degrading. They provide no phone numbers to contact them and they take an age to reply by email with a standard copy and paste response to everything.

It's annoying as hell, and a lot of people's response if "well it's free, so don't expect customer support". Except it is the customers that make Facebook worth $100bn, for example.

More companies need to learn from Amazon, their customer support is first rate. I can see a lot of people turning their back on Facebook/Google due support issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope he figures this out. I received the same "spam" letter from Google regarding my apps saying I had 7 days to figure it out or possibly have my apps or account shut down.

It turned out I had used the word "dice" too many times in a description of my simple "dice" game because I described all the rules in the description. I had to mutilate my description and remove about 80% of the times I used the word "dice".

I emailed Google telling them what I had done, and that I fixed that problem, and that I really hoped that WAS the problem, and I begged them not to remove my apps because I was diligently trying to figure out what I had done wrong, and that I WOULD fix it - I'm a reputable developer, and I play by the rules.

I did receive 2 real-human emails back from Google in the process saying "thank you" and now months later my apps are all still online, so it appears I found the right problem.

I can certainly understand the frustration however. If there is literally nothing throwing up a red flag and you don't know what you have done wrong, and Google doesn't appear to give specifics, it can be scary.

The way I approached the problem was that Google probably didn't have a live human poking through my apps to find a violation, and it was most likely a "robot" that found the problem. This means it most likely had to come from a textual description or there was a potential IP situation. The email mentioned "spam", so I looked for the former first and found the over-use of the word "dice". Sure enough, that was it. Or at least I assume that was it, because my apps are still online now - months later.

<comment><USER10> how is overusing the word "dice" being spammy?

<comment><USER11> Personally, I would be suprised if it was. He probably tripped over some other heuristic (or was flagged as spam by a user for some reason), and they simply didn't reject him after a review. His email may have helped his case here.

Either that or their algorithm really doesn't like you using the same word over and over again (this seems unlikely).

Spam apps are a real problem, and I personally won't be bothered by this as long as the devs that complain (and presumably trigger a human review in the process) don't have their apps inappropriately removed. So far, I haven't really seen any evidence of a widespread problem with inappropriate removals, just inappropriate warnings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looking at the game link for Templar Assault, it's a pretty clear violation of Games Workshop's IP. The art looks exactly like Space Marine Terminators; the character names are evocative of the same as well, along with a passel of other very close imitation.

I don't have a horse in this race either way, but as a pretty flagrant violation of IP, perhaps this is why they've drawn fire from Google? Games Workshop is usually pretty assiduous in protecting their IP.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tresebroth...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tresebrothers.games.templars&hl=en)

<comment><USER13> The gameplay screens look a lot like Space Hulk.

Though I'm not sure I agree with banning such clones, after all game mechanics can be neither copyrighted nor patented.

<comment><USER14> It's not the gameplay mechanics that raise a flag for me.

It's the art. Compare the screenshots of the various units to this:

[http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/File:Ultramarine_terminat...](http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/File:Ultramarine_terminator.jpg)

<comment><USER15> Have you heard of Starcraft?

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure what you're getting at exactly but it is well known that Blizzard's titles were directly inspired by the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k universes[1].

While the visual similarities haven't causes Games Workshop to complain about infringement from Blizzard (as far as I know) it doesn't mean that Games Workshop isn't complaining about infringement in this or other cases.

[1] <http://kotaku.com/5929157/the-making-of-warcraft-part-1>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And that is Google's achilles' heel; support and customer service. It's across their entire line of software and services. Try getting a-hold of someone if you a Google Apps member. You damn lucky if you get anything other then a automated response.

And isn't Google about to release a tablet soon? Good luck.

<comment><USER18> It's not a bug, it's a feature. As long as they make more by not being human than they lose by pissing people off, they're good.

It's on purpose.

<comment><USER19> Amazon makes money, has cheap prices, and runs many of the web's popular sites, yet still manages to have good customer service.

<comment><USER18> Ah, but now you're talking about the relationship between Amazon and their paying customers. You take care of your paying customers.

An occupant of a blog is, as the saying goes, a product, not a customer.

EDIT: I re-read the article. I thought they were losing their Blogger account. Never mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What strikes me as interesting regarding Google's automated approach to community regulation is the effect of focusing on action rather than intent. Making a perfect intent-detector is difficult: much easier to make an action- detector and penalize actions consistent with malicious behavior. This works as long as those actions are a) necessary for malicious behavior and b) are easy to avoid while making good apps.

The experiment is now: how much developers will adjust their behavior to _signal_ clean behavior versus Google perfecting its algorithm to perfectly judge intent. Once Google has a reasonable policy in place, they can sit and wait for developers to conform, and presumably those that can't conform cannot do so precisely because the behavior they would have to change is the behavior that makes their software malicious or undesirable.

Humans already do this every day in conversation - I adjust my language and tone to signal non-malicious intent when making a statement I fear might be perceived as threatening or rude. But these are relatively easy fixes that do not affect my communication horribly; I suppose it's still an open question as to whether Google's criteria unreasonably hinder the development process.

<comment><USER21> _What strikes me as interesting regarding Google's automated approach to community regulation is the effect of focusing on action rather than intent_

What's interesting about that? We're all guilty of putting action over intent. Look at A-B testing, the metrics we use have nothing to do with our user's intents. Fuck their intents, I'm optimizing to get as many as possible to give me money.

Its the same exact thing, just wearing a different color jacket. This time you just happen to be the subject rather than the administrator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22>
        Software isn't a fire and forget transaction anymore

There's a lot of insight in that soundbite. I wish more of the "enterprise!" crowd (and in this case, Daddy Google) realized that.

<comment><USER23> What's ironic (IMO) is that Google has pushed hard for this with Chrome's background updating, yet here is against it. I'm sure it's an inadvertent consequence, but it still seems strange.

<comment><USER24> Getting flagged because they update too much is a guess. Since they can't get a hold of Google, they can't verify that. I wouldn't make assumptions about what Google likes / doesn't like on updating until we know why they were flagged. Unfortunately, Google has once again made this difficult and reinforced the notion that they are bad at support, right when they want people to buy into Google Fiber. Sigh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We have tried very hard to abid by the rules and produce and support fun Android games. Dealing with tha automated Google juggernaut is difficult but I am the first to admit that they are the reason we are able to make, distribute and support our games.

</comment><comment><USER7> Getting a access to human support is important in general, but absolutely necessary if you are going to mess with people via an automated system. I'm always frustrated when I read articles about a journalist who gets his gmail account hacked or otherwise messed with, and solves it via some back- channel/personal connection.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit > _The notion that update frequency is the trigger for ending up on Google's > hit list is just speculation._

... and so they really don't know anything... o_0

<comment><USER25> That's par for the course when Google bans someone. They intentionally don't tell people what they did wrong because they feel it helps people learn to cheat the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Every time I've had an issue or problem, I've been Apple to correspond with an Apple App Store rep. One tune it was because I needed to expedite and update and another time it was because I was in a copyright dispute with another app. Both times, my emails were answered. My friends who've had App Store rejections have been able to get exact reasons and email actual people at Apple for details.

I have zero experience with the Play store, but I have expected developers to be able to get more information by email, at least. Also, I though the Google store was supposed to be 'open' and all that. I feel bad for those devs whose apps are going to be arbitrarily removed without explanation. Perhaps they'll want to join us on the Apple developer side of the fence for awhile! I'd love to see their games on iPhone!

<comment><USER27> And yet there seem to be countless stories on the web of devs struggling with the Apple App Store and not getting proper information. Your account is merely an anecdote.

<comment><USER28> As are all the other stories. I've yet to see an sort of comprehensive statistics on app store rejections. (Which would be kind of awesome.)

For the time being it's all anecdotes, and we choose to believe based on our personal histories (with apple, the media, the reliabilty of messageboards, etc)

<comment><USER29> Those statistics are probably regarded as proprietary information by Apple. Good luck convincing them it's in their best interest to release them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this just not a risk inherent with developing for "app stores"?

To you, your application may be something you sunk months of your life and perhaps something you are relying on to pay your mortgage.

To the app store owner , your app is simply 1 of hundreds of thousands of apps. Google/Apple etc must receive hundreds of fraudulent or otherwise "dodgy" submissions every day, so it makes sense from their point of view to optimise the process of deleting these.

If they end up accidentally burning a few legit indie devs in process because of false positives then it is simply viewed as collateral damage.

I can only see this becoming more arbitrary over time as the app store owners begin to sink under the crushing weight of application submissions.

<comment><USER31> The good thing about android is there are lots of stores!

<comment><USER30> Doesn't the "play store" cover about 90% of it though?

To be honest , I'm not even sure how I'd set my phone up to use a different store nevermind the average android user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Templar Assaults seems like a massive rip-off of Space Hulk. Even though there is no mention on it on their store page.

</comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like typical Google to me. If you've ever had to wrangle with getting your Adsense account unsuspended you'll know it's near impossible, well in- fact impossible to get a sensible or reasonable person on the phone let alone by email.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is why it's important to be able to switch vendors. If Google isn't responsive, these guys can switch to offering their product on the Amazon app store [1], for example.

Avoiding vendor lock-in is an extremely important part of the business side of technology.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/mobile- apps/b/ref=topnav_storetab_mas?...](http://www.amazon.com/mobile- apps/b/ref=topnav_storetab_mas?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011)

Why <http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/> 404's is incomprehensible.

</comment><comment><USER34> So maybe google is being a little obtuse here, but I think their point is a good one: android developers, please stop updating your apps once a week. It is annoying to open up my app list and have 25 of the 30 apps I've got installed needing to be updated. Roll all your little bug fixes into larger updates and push those out infrequently. Unless you have a real show-stopping security or functionality bug, I don't need the update immediately.

<comment><USER35> Why open the app list at all? Let them auto-update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I play Cyberknights RPG by the Trese brothers as I fall asleep each night. Just left a comment of support on the game's play store page (while it's still there). We need to escalate this is a way that Google will see it. HN is nice, I will link to this from G+ and see if I can find it to upvote on Reddit as well.

Here is the link: <http://goo.gl/1MNYv>

</comment><comment><USER37> A developer could side-step the difficult to contact issue by being a shareholder and contacting Investor Relations. The SEC may get involved if companies ignore IR communications. The IR person would be able to give you a direct contact.

Also, pay attention at conferences when you meet Googlers and stay in contact. They may also be able to help you with direct support.

</comment><comment><USER38> Honestly, this is why I would never, ever consider using something like Google App Engine for anything other than a toy. Google is not a support organization. Except for ads, you can't count on them for anything B2B.

</comment><comment><USER39> " _Google didn't respond to a request for comment from me._ "

And there is Google's major problem in a nutshell.

</comment><comment><USER40> Can they take their game and host it somewhere else?

<comment><USER27> Of course, but then they don't get the exposure of the play store. And only people who explicitly allow "other markets" will be able to install from other sources. I for one have not yet dared to tick that checkbox on my phone.

Actually I think that option in Android should be more fine grained. There are certain markets I would allow, but I don't want to allow ALL markets. At the moment the choice is only "play only" or "all sources".

I wish it would be more like debian, for example, were I could add to a list of enabled sources.

<comment> jack-r-abbit It is not like checking that box allows other markets to just push stuff onto your device. It just gives you the ability to get things from other sources. You still have full control of not getting stuff from sources you are worried about.

<comment><USER27> See my other reply - I still think it significantly lowers the barrier to installing malware.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Did the U.S. Abandon the Gold Standard? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/144863 <comment><USER2> It is worth reminding that adoption of the gold standard is mere possibility of the central point libertarians are trying to make.

The real issue is force. Libertarians do not believe that it is okay for the government to exercise sole monopoly over issuance of currency with force. They want free market system that would allow competing currencies to develop rather jail those who issue their own currency.

<comment><USER3> Yep, this is why the prisoners are full to bursting with Bitcoiners.

Who has been put in jail for their own currency that didn't try to use the names of existing currency?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> tldr; The gold standard won't come back because the government would not be able to print trillions of fictional dollars whenever they want.

<comment><USER5> That's not untrue, but that way of looking at things ignores the fact that constant, wild fluctuations in the value of currency have negative consequences for everyone that depends on the currency.

<comment><USER6> I also don't understand why gold-standard advocates seem to believe that gold is intrinsically the foundation of wealth. Why should the dollar be pegged to gold and not silver, or platinum, or rhodium? How about crude oil, or helium, or drinking water, or land in Manhattan? How about anything else that has value? All wealth is not gold, and I don't see a compelling reason why we should pretend that it is.

All the things we value vary over time relative to each other. Given that, why should we arbitrarily pick one and say that it is the foundation of our currency? Why should the price of bread fluctuate wildly to accommodate gold speculators?

<comment><USER7> Gold was used because it's:

1) relatively hard to counterfeit 2) scarce enough that carrying enough in your pocket to equate to significant value is convenient 3) Durable 4) Fungible 5) The supply generally expanded at a slow and predictable rate (this wasn't always the case -- the Spanish conquests, e.g., set off a devastating round of inflation when all that gold got shipped back home).

Silver and copper were also widely used.

Platinum-group metals would work, but weren't widely known to the ancients.

Crude oil: bulky and volatile. Helium: same as crude oil, but even more so (you'd need to haul around pressure tanks) Land: not portable. Not easily fungible. Drinking water: bulky.

Gold was a pragmatic choice.

In some of James Blish's SF stories, they used semiconductor-grade metals.

<comment><USER6> Maybe my comment was poorly worded. I'm not legitimately asking why we ever used gold. I agree it makes far more sense than helium or land when traded directly. Once we moved to a paper currency, though, very little of that really mattered anymore. No one cares that oil is bulky when they trade it, because at worst they're moving around pieces of paper (more typically just bits in a system).

My real question is why gold should back our currency _now_. How does it make sense in a modern economy? We've divorced our currency from any one commodity, and I think that's a very good thing, because it helps to protect us from changes in the price of commodities.

<comment><USER4> > My real question is why gold should back our currency now. How does it make > sense in a modern economy?

I've always wondered this: Without gold (or something) backing a currency, what stops the printing of trillions and trillions, aggressively devaluing the currency out there?

<comment><USER6> Technically? Nothing. Practically? The inability to sell credit if this kind of policy is pursued. No one is interested in dollars if they have no value.

What stops you from maxing out all the credit you can get and then walking away? Same basic situation. Nothing stops you, but you'll likely end up bankrupt and regardless you'll have a hard time getting credit again.

<comment><USER4> I ask because that's my basic understanding of what happened in the aftermath of the 2008 crash in the US.

It seems trillions of dollars were printed with very little negative impact. How can that be?

<comment><USER6> I don't fully know. To some extent it did have an impact, as some creditor nations stated publicly that our policies were affecting their decisions about buying future American debt. One of the ratings agencies also dropped our rating slightly (though that was a partisan farce).

I think a lot of the impact was reduced by the fact that the money supply is already very large, and also by the fact that much of the new money didn't really enter the public currency supply. e.g. Buying a block of bad mortgages from a bank probably doesn't affect much. The bank was already treating this as a real asset, borrowing against it, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Obviously because the more the $ drops in value the more the Gold in Fort Knox grows...

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think I'd want the gold standard to come back, but I definitely support the idea of much higher transparency in what the Fed is doing and who are they giving money to. Some are saying this might end the Fed's independence, but will it really? I think higher transparency would just lead to them becoming more honest with what they are doing with the money. I don't think other countries have overly secret central banks with nobody knowing where the money are going and how much they are printing, do they? I'm generally of the opinion that higher transparency is always a desirable quality of a democratic Government and its institutions.

I also find it surprising (to say the least) that after 20 or so years of advocating for Fed transparency, Harry Reid is the one who's going to put a stop to the Audit the Fed bill in the Senate, which already passed the House with a big majority.

</comment><comment><USER10> The choice between fiat and gold (or gold/silver) is a false one. On a free market people would trade a wide variety of things, an important class of which are stocks and bonds, which indeed did function as money in the early United States, and would be even more practical today given that we have computers to facilitate conversion. A diverse, free market money system would put an end to global financial crises, which can only happen when everyone is using the same currency (or same small set of tightly coupled currencies) and therefore are all subject to the same general conditions: a centralized currency centralizes the crises as well.

But what's even more important is that a free market money system is the only _moral_ system -- people have a natural right to trade in whatever denominations they please.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it necessarily follows that more independent currencies will decouple our global financial system. It wasn't that long ago that a crash of the Russian ruble caused a global financial crisis. The US dollar and the Russian rouble are about as decoupled as you get -- not very. It's the fact that everybody trades with everybody that makes crises global and widespread, and more currencies isn't going to change that one bit. If bitcoin became a widely used currency, crashes in its value would impact other currencies.

All your proposal does is give the system a few more sources of instability, IMO.

<comment><USER10> It's hard to tell what premise you are arguing for. Are you trying to claim that the system I outlined is not really less coupled? Or are you trying to claim that being less coupled does not really lead to less coupling?

"All your proposal does is give the system a few more sources of instability, IMO."

Actually no, the one with a few guys with their hands on the levers, and that is also politically controlled and influenced, is far less stable than one where you are free to choose what is a best form of hedging for you.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Backdoors everywhere? - <AUTHOR>

Does the innumerable places that backdoors could be hiding scare anyone else? - Compilers[1] - Networking appliance firmware - Operating systems - Security-critical software (I'm looking at YOU, OpenSSL and OpenSSH)
Something else that is rather disturbing is the fact that each and every one of those could lead to the others
Malicious software updates through network appliances and bugged compilers are the less-thought-about two of that list, and they're all the more frightening.
A few have been caught in Sendmail[2], IRC servers[3] (no big surprises there), FTPds[4], the Linux kernel[5], etc.
How many (if any) does HN think slipped through the cracks?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_%28computing%29#Reflections_on_Trusting_Trust [2] http://www.securityfocus.com/news/1113 [3] https://lwn.net/Articles/392201/ [4] http://www.iss.net/security_center/reference/vuln/FTP_ProFTPD_Backdoor.htm [5] http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7388 <comment><USER2> I think that we may discover the same thing humans discovered in Battlestar Galactica, no networked computer is safe.</comment>


Show HN: Online and open source low-code platform with live collaboration - <AUTHOR> http://icodebetter.com <comment><USER2> What makes you different from your competitors? And also I couldn't see GitHub link?

<comment><AUTHOR> First and the biggest difference is (and that's why we posted on hackernews first) it's developer centric. It's not a blackbox low code platform. It's open source low code platform with best practices in the market for frontend and backend. And it's still evolving (the market is still evolving). Second, none of our competitors have created big real world projects on their platform. Electricity Market Platform in Turkey is done with iCodeBetter. All of the electricity producers and suppliers in Turkey are doing their transaction with that platform. It must be fast, secure so that electricity frequency stays stable. None of our competitors have such big success story. Third one (which we are really proud of) is Live Collaboration in Online Development. It's a cool feature that you can check out on youtube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqa7y1J5RY4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqa7y1J5RY4) . Here's github link [https://github.com/icodebetter/icodebetter](https://github.com/icodebetter/icodebetter)</comment></comment>