Torrentspy shutdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.torrentspy.com/ Friends of TorrentSpy,
We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.
The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.
Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown.
It was a wild ride,
The TorrentSpy Team
"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like." - Justice William O. Douglas <comment><USER2> Huh. For one that goes down, ten will go up. Say what you want about copyright infringement, but too many people think that either it's OK to download or that they won't get caught. There's too big of a 'market' for illegal downloads.

<comment><USER3> The majority of downloads are things people would not have otherwise bought, for whatever reason. In those cases, no one is being hurt, and someone is being helped. The reason torrent sites keep popping up is the vast amount of good they do.

<comment><USER4> I think the exact same thing about GPL software. When I secretly embed it in my products, I'm using code that nobody was going to make money on anyways. But by putting a shiny UI on top of it, I can! Nobody loses, and I win.

<comment><USER3> i see this is a comparison of some kind, but it's not very clear. in the movie downloading case, who is being hurt when they wouldn't have bought it anyway? or if no one, why is it bad?

<comment><USER4> In the GPL case, who is being hurt, when the (a) the GPL violator wouldn't have contributed to the project anyways, and (b) the GPL provider wouldn't have collected any money?

It's not a vague comparison; it's a cliche, about copyvio apologists tending to want it both ways.

<comment><USER3> maybe the competition who followed the law. maybe no one. i'm not sure.

regardless of my opinion of who is hurt in the GPL case, i do have one in the movie downloading case. you seem to too, but you still won't say who is being hurt.

<comment><USER4> I don't accept your premise that the content downloaded on Torrent networks would otherwise not be paid for. So I'm going to go with, "the producers of content are hurt".

<comment><USER3> i said _when_ it wouldn't be paid for anyway, _then_ it doesn't hurt anyone.

this is obviously common because people download more stuff than they could afford.

<comment><USER4> So your argument is, even though a significant fraction of the market acquires a movie for free (the "vast good" the torrent networks do, in your view), the downloads don't depress the market value of the movie. In other words, when supply goes to "infinite", demand is unaffected.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

<comment><USER3> _Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter._

you still haven't answered the question and now you're sarcastically insulting me. that's called trolling.

<comment><USER4> You haven't asked a question since I answered your last specious one [1], but if you do, you can expect a response in the same tone.

[1] _Specious point: because we cannot pinpoint the parties harmed by our unauthorized use of other people's content, we should assume, until proven otherwise, that any such use is harmless. So, because you can't reason through who is harmed by GPL copyvio (hint: the developer and the community), by your logic, we should stop enforcing the GPL._

<comment><USER3> the question is, quote:

 _In the movie downloading case, who is being hurt when they wouldn't have bought it anyway?_

You haven't answered that.

Note also that I didn't say any of the stuff you are calling a specious point.

<comment><USER4> My answer remains as it was before: the producers of content, who sell to a dwindling number of honest buyers as a result of a growing number of dishonest freeloaders who believe content should be priced at its marginal cost. That's an externality of downloading and using content you would not otherwise pay for.

But I think this argument is a red herring. Fewer people today buy DVDs, now that they can be easily downloaded. Ten years from now --- barring the success of BD+ --- it will be trivial to download DVDs, and fewer people still will buy them. I don't think reasonable people dispute this fact.

The drop in content revenue comes directly out of the hide of the content producers. The issue isn't "the people who wouldn't buy the content anyways". The people who gorge themselves on content they wouldn't otherwise buy _don't buy any content_. It's ironic that they excuse themselves by taking yet more illicit content.

<comment><USER3> You keep bringing up things I haven't said, and not answering the question directly.

The fact is, if I download a movie that I would not have bought or rented if downloading was not available, then the producers do not have a dwindling number of buyers. They have the exact same number of buyers as if I didn't download it. I say this means no one was hurt. You still seem to disagree, but still have not pointed to an actual way anyone would be hurt.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand your argument. You seem to be saying that nobody is "hurt" by your download, because the marginal cost to the copyright owner is zero. But that's true of all downloads, not just yours. By your logic, how are producers ever compensated?

The answer to your question is, everybody is hurt, because every illicit download robs content creators of the incentive to create, and content producers of the incentive to distribute.

It's clear that in your case, when you download a movie you have no intention of buying, the stolen incentive is not great. But it is not zero: your download clearly helps establish the climate that facilitates other downloads (for instance, by drawing ad revenue to torrent search engines, or simply by creating the social proof that enables otherwise honest people to rationalize downloading).

In the end, even insults to the market as small as yours can become overwhelming when multiplied by the tens of millions of actors.

<comment><USER3> Suppose I don't tell anyone I've downloaded. Then it wouldn't create a climate. Let's assume for now, for clarity, that I do nothing to contribute to a climate. I never post to torrent forums, never help people get torrents, I never seed, I never upload, I never encourage anyone else to download, etc... I have not said anything to defend taking actions like those to create a climate that legitimizes downloading.

A download only "robs content creators of the incentive to create" if it prevents a purchase (or chance of a purchase). I am not defending all downloading, but I am saying there is a possible way of downloading that doesn't do this. If the condition I specified holds (would not have been bought either way), then the content creator isn't hurt. He gets just the same benefits an incentives as he would have in a world without that kind of downloading.

He may be hurt for a different reason, but not for lack of a purchase because, by premise, that purchase wasn't going to happen in any case.

What conclusions should be drawn from this is not obvious. Agreeing it is true is an important starting point before drawing conclusions.

<comment><USER4> I concede that you can define an arbitrary set of circumstances where, in a vacuum, you download a file without perturbing the universe in any measurable way. This isn't a starting point for drawing conclusions until you answer the question of "how those circumstances could ever occur".

Furthermore, it's not persuasive. You're avoiding the obvious fact that these innocuous downloads --- those that not only involve people who would not pay for content, but who are also so hygienic in their downloading practices that they do not contribute to the climate --- are a tiny minority of all downloads.

Finally, if we've really arrived at the crux of your argument --- that you can personally define one form of illicit download that imposes no costs on society --- then you've already lost the "debate" (such as it is). We're talking about Torrentspy, a _huge_ contributor to the climate you're meticulously and artificially trying to avoid helping.

<comment><USER3> I didn't say anything about Torrentspy. Do you have any suggestions for what I can do in future discussions so that people listen more to what I actually say?

As for how common this type of downloading is, do you think if torrent sites didn't exist that even half of the downloads they facilitate would have been purchases instead? I don't think most downloaders have enough money to buy that much stuff.

<comment><USER4> Respectfully, you might start by remembering what you originally said, considering the plain meaning of your words, and the context in which you say them. In this case, you begun this thread by referring to the "vast amount of good" that "sites like" Torrentspy do.

Your other argument seems to be that we shouldn't concern ourselves with the costs inflicted by torrent sites, because they are small --- "not even half of the downloads" directly rob producers of revenue. I don't care to chase that argument down. If you believe your argument is persuasive, I have good news for you: you needn't bother paying your taxes, either. The marginal cost to the government of losing Bruce Lewis' tax revenue is very nearly zero. In fact, if everyone _like_ you stopped paying taxes, we'd be no worse off. Under your argument's rubric, I can see no reason for us to trouble ourselves with the task of collecting taxes from Scheme web developers at all.

<comment><USER3> The downloads which hurt someone, and the ones which don't, can be separated.

<comment><USER4> How?

<comment><USER3> An individual user can think about what he would have bought without torrents, or not, and only download things he would not have bought anyway.

<comment><USER4> How do they do that without contributing to other infringements by people who _would_ pay?

<comment><USER3> Contributing how? You can turn off seeding.

<comment><USER4> You ignored the other ways in which one illicit downloader contributes to other downloaders, and ignored the original point, which is that torrent sites like Torrentspy do not obviously do "vast amounts of good", as you originally claimed. Do you feel like your arguments are convincing?

<comment><USER5> >that torrent sites like Torrentspy do not obviously do "vast amounts of good"

Sure they do. They spread information for free, which is vastly good for the people that get it for free.

<comment><USER4> All freeloading is vastly good for the freeloaders, Kevin. Do we need to go through the pointless excercise of demonstrating all the instances of freeloading that you _aren't_ comfortable with?

<comment><USER5> >Do we need to go through the pointless excercise of demonstrating all the instances of freeloading that you aren't comfortable with?

Go for it.

In the end, I am comfortable with the damage done to content producers. Since there appears to be no solution that will maintain the status quo, there's going to be dramatic change in the information industry. Already, smart commercial software developers sell a service rather than a binary executable. I love live music, soon I will be able to see more of it. There will be less uber-produced studio music, but I'm fine with that. I don't care for Hollywood blockbuster movies. They're ok sometimes, but I can handle a future without them. I watch TV with advertisements when it is available online; generally there are far fewer commercials than in the cable/broadcast version.

What do you think the solution to the problem is? Or describe your idealized where content producers are fairly compensated when technology allows for their works to be freely copied.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tenacious and Oblivious - <AUTHOR> http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/09/tenacious-and-oblivious.html <comment><USER2> "He said that he's oblivious to why something can't be done, or why something is difficult, or why someone doesn't want something to happen."

I'm calling BS on this one. I get it. It's about attitude. You can't let someone convince you that just because something is difficult, that it can't be done, but to advise young people to be "oblivious" to these facts is to send them to battle ill-equipped. There's the danger that the listener will walk away thinking that they should ignore anyone who tries to share valuable information with them as soon as the message becomes "this is difficult".

Knowing why something is difficult has another name: experience. Being successful means seeing a way around the difficulty.</comment>


Ask HN: Best daily practices u've come across to design-code faster and better - <AUTHOR> More in the lines of small daily training of IDE, tools, data-structures, design, frameworks. Ranging from fingers warm-up to a drawing relevant architecture/frameworks/pattern-designs. It can vary from project to project and what stage of projects. <comment><USER2> I try to setup a feedback loop as soon as possible. I spend time setting up so i can do some simple action (hit a button, run a command, or automatically watch some files) to see if I'm on target it.

I found this saves immense time and keeps me on task pretty well.

This is from: \- GOOS book [https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Object-Oriented- Software-Guid...](https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Object-Oriented-Software- Guided-Tests/dp/0321503627) \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIonZ6-4nuU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIonZ6-4nuU)

<comment><USER3> Another good feedback loop is just using a REPL.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read%E2%80%93eval%E2%80%93prin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read%E2%80%93eval%E2%80%93print_loop)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> touch typing - some folks don't learn to type quickly without looking

tmux - per project, persistent terminal

shell aliases - stop typing frequently used commands

GTD - some form of productivity process like Getting Things Done, including a prioritized TODO list

hot reload - don't accept slow development cycles

timeboxing - avoid rat holing a day or two away on a low value task

programmer notebook or wiki - document steps or arcane knowledge for the next time

hard coded - unblock yourself for missing data or dependencies

user testing on paper prototypes - save months of throw away code

<comment><USER5> > programmer notebook or wiki - document steps or arcane knowledge for the > next time

Any examples of dedicated notebook software?

<comment><USER6> I've been using Quiver[0] for past month, and I really like it. It feels like ipython notebook only for my notes.

Unfortunately, it works only on Mac.

[0]: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quiver-programmers- notebook/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quiver-programmers- notebook/id866773894?mt=12)

<comment><USER7> I also vouch for Quiver. Works really well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like keeping functions small and writing tests first.

When you are under a lot of pressure to finish something same day, it helps to know all the basics are working by automatically running your tests.

<comment><AUTHOR> very true

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I get to work, I try to get any distractions out of the way before I start actually working; email, rss feeds, project management, etc. This allows me to focus on the important things throughout the day and not worry about if I missed something that happened.

Since I get the distractions out of the way in the morning, I will know what I'm working on throughout the day and not have to change gears unless something urgent comes up.

</comment><comment><USER10> Spend 99% of the time thinking, 1% of the time typing.

<comment><USER11> yes and half of that 1% of typing should be commenting and documenting!

the trick is to remember, you're commenting for _you_ , because you're the one that's going to forget all this stuff in a few months and have to figure it out at the worst possible time.

sounds a little weird but i always liked commenting my code. it felt like i was bragging to myself about how clever i was.

<comment><USER12> When I find myself writing a comment, 9 out of 10 times I pause and think. I can usually clean up the code so I don't need a comment.

Comments in a codebase often lie. Someone makes a statement then code changes, making it a lie. A comment that is a lie adds negative value.

I think more than 1 comment per 100 lines of code means you should think more and refactor more and comment less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1) Spend significant time understanding "why", not just "how and what" things are going on in your local problem, and also do the same at least 2-3 layers above and below you in the stack. You should be able to walk away from any significant piece of work with functional expertise in at least two domains related to your local problem.

2) Carve out the time and space to make 3-5 variations of a unit of work before considering it minimally complete for iterating and building upon.

3) Pay really close attention to feelings of pain and/or drudgery when implementing something. Very often those are signals your design and separation of concerns are wrong, because you're fighting uphill against your problem space.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's not really along the lines of IDE, tools, etc., but one thing that's been helpful for me is to bounce ideas off of someone, even if you're trying to remember something, and the act of explaining or working through my thought processes helps me pieces together "mental puzzles". This is also known as rubber duck debugging.

I've had multiple instances of talking to a coworker about a topic, and halfway through the topic I realize what I was going for and cut it off, saying, "I got it! Thanks for being my rubber duck."

<comment><USER15> Same here, except that I write it down. For each project I have a text file called "TODO" that is always open and if I need to decide on something, I usually write it down as a task. I normally start the task description with a verb and these tasks start with "Think". First I quickly write down the issue I'm facing, then write "Variants:" and list all the different ways of solving this issue. I do not evaluate them as I do this, just get pen them down. And once I'm over with variants, I write the final decision and rationale.

(I once read about problem-solving therapy that is used in cognitive- behavioral approach and this is almost the same pattern. It sounds obvious, but few people really follow the steps in practice. It's also similar to brainstorming.)

In many cases I come up with more variants that I initially had in mind and quite often I end up choosing the variant that didn't appear promising on the first look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like to do exploratory coding in an interactive shell, then when I've accomplished something, save the readline history to a file and refactor it into a reusable module with tests. This works in both Ruby and Python.

Over the years I've developed a pretty good sense for when I've gone too far down a dead end. Some people try and dig their way out, I prefer to just turn around. It helps when you delay the design stage as much as possible. Makes it easier to let bad ideas go.

</comment><comment><USER17> Aside from using TDD for years, a few incredibly helpful tips I remember daily out of the book titled _Test Driven Development: By Example_ , by Kent Beck:

Test lists - plan out a feature/system by listing out its tests. I do this in the form of behaviours and required inputs.

"Start small or not at all" \- begin coding by doing the simplest super basic pieces first. You can then start the harder pieces last with a more informed complete understanding of the problem.

 _Edit: formatting_

</comment><comment><USER18> Walk around and think.

</comment><comment><USER19> Learn your IDE shortcuts.

</comment><comment><USER20> Things that I find helpful:

\- an ability to restore clipboard history (alfred on mac or hain on windows)

\- snippets

\- keyboard shortcuts

\- toast notifications for lifecycle events (test and linter failures, CI build events)

\- having enough monitors (I tend to arrange mine in an way so that the leftmost shows designs, the middle is for my IDE and the right one shows live output)

\- most of the things already mentioned

</comment><comment><USER3> When the code is something tedious, I keep a physical timer on my desk and timebox a working solution to 10–20 minutes, then (as long as it works), I move on after that. No need for perfection with everything.

</comment><comment><USER21> currently I'm into switching all keyboards to same model in work and at home (muscle memory boost)

</comment><comment><USER22> drawing prototypes on paper</comment>


Modelling the gravity of a no-deal Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/why-a-no-deal-brexit-would-be-less-costly-for-the-eu-than-the-uk-110407 <comment><USER2> I love how they are able to calculate the impact on GDP up to two digits: GB -5.86.

It clearly shows that at least on person in the creation of the article was pretty clueless.</comment>


Free Content Strategy for SaaS Companies in Early Phase - <AUTHOR> Hi there! After working in a marketing agency for 6 years and building out a couple of blogs to thousands of monthly readers, I would like to help some founders here who are interested in driving sales through inbound marketing efforts.
This month I want to help 3 Saas startups build out a content strategy for 2020. I am offering this service for free. Here is what we will do:
1. A full content audit of your current site to see what is working and what is not.
2. Full research on keywords to discover low-lying fruit opportunities.
3. A strategy on delivering quick wins for your blog based on current content.
4. Discover current SEO pain points for your industry and product (niche-specific only)
5. Find out what your competitors are doing.
6. Develop an extensive 2020 editorial calendar (work plan) informed by the above research.
7. List available distribution channels and develop a ruthless distribution strategy
8. Find ready-to-go guest posting opportunities for your Saas product - build credibility and incoming links to your Saas (Great for SEO and referrals).
Leave a comment below if you would like this. I am hoping to help out just 3 Saas startups for now due to time. <comment><USER2> Hey there ianto! I'd love to work with you on this. Can we chat? firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Poor Can't Afford Not to Wear Nice Clothes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/story/the-poor-cant-afford-not-to-wear-nice-clothes-b015f6a79561 <comment><USER2> It's easy for people to make assumptions about others -- pattern matching is a survival skill. When people have assumptions made about them, sometimes they become self-fulfilling prophecies.

The author of this essay, a black woman, learned from her family how to run pattern interrupts on people so she doesn't get stuck in the pattern.

      [...] I was miffed, as only an
      only child could be, about
      sharing my mother's time with
      the neighbor girl. I must have
      said something about why we had
      to do this. The Vivian, as I
      called my mother, fixed me with
      a stare as she was slipping on
      her pearl earrings and told me
      that people who can do must do.

"people who can do must do" \- this is a constructive philosophy for getting through life, a local version of 'a rising tide lifts all boats'.

      I learned, watching my mother, that
      there was a price we had to pay to
      signal to gatekeepers that we were
      worthy of engaging. It meant
      dressing well and speaking well. It
      might not work. It likely wouldn't
      work, but on the off chance that it
      would, you had to try.

I'm dealing with gatekeepers at the moment, except the ones I'm trying to convince to do their job are rather inaccessible. Maybe I am learning the value of persistence.</comment>


Peter Thiel, YC, and hard decisions - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/projectinclude/peter-thiel-yc-and-hard-decisions-2b91bab83764#.i5u3cgjst <comment><USER2> The first time it had 270+ upvotes and was flagged off the front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12726970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12726970)

There seems to be some censorship going on...

<comment><USER3> sctb says it is user flags: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12728092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12728092)

<comment><USER4> I'm not surprised. There are a _lot_ of people who don't like discussing this stuff (either because they don't agree with it or they just don't want to deal with any more stuff about politics/social issues).

<comment><USER5> > There are a lot of people who don't like discussing this stuff [... or > because] they just don't want to deal with any more stuff about > politics/social issues

Especially those of a foreign country, in which they don't have right to vote or even visit (because of visas).

<comment><USER6> But you can still have an opinion, correct? It seems this conversation, whether it is productive or not, is relevant to this community.

If I can't here the other sides arguments here, where will I hear them?

<comment><USER5> > But you can still have an opinion, correct?

But do I really _have to_? And do I really _have to see_ this completely irrelevant to me topic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disregarding any issues surrounding the author of this piece, Theil himself, and a cornucopia of issues surrounding the RNC keynote, I must ask one question: Why is political speech only an issue when that speech comes from the political right?

This isn't a modern thing, either. I've never seen anyone claim Brendan Eich didn't have a _right_ to donate to his cause, it's just that he donated to the _wrong_ cause, at least in they eyes of the media and the Twitterverse, of all places. Here, we're seeing it again with Thiel: he has the _right_ to donate to whatever cause he wants, but we criticize him for donating to the wrong causes.

For all the talk of cultural and gender diversity, political diversity is shunned. This is far more pernicious than criticizing a startup because they haven't hired enough women or PoC

<comment><USER8> Wow, I really couldn't disagree with you more.

It's not left vs right, its humanity denying stances.

Denying LGBT are human (which is what the "8" people were about) is a critical issue. Eich tied himself to the wrong side of history, and epically fucked up his CEO response proving he was a bad candidate for that role. He made his own bed and now lies in it.

As for Trump... well, this is a presidential candidate describing HOW exactly he sexually assaults women. It wasn't a theoretical "what I could do" conversation, it was a "this is what I do" bragging talk. Again, dehumanizing 51% of the population.

Maybe basic human rights is just a "cause" for you, but for the 60-70% of humanity you're trashing, it's kind of their lives.

<comment><USER9> No one is trashing rights. No one is denying LGBT people, their humanity. Thiel is literally a homosexual, why do you choose to ignore that. I don't think it is in his self interest to dehumanize himself.

<comment><USER8> It's quite well known that rich people are the least affected by policies like anti-LGBT. Thiel may not personally have much to lose if gay marriage was banned, but for many people it makes a huge difference. For example child rights, tax advantages, end of life decisions.

Anyways, you're actually very wrong - people ARE trashing rights. People in Trump's camp ARE denying LGBT their humanity. Evangelicals for example. How about "kick out every muslim"? The constitution explicitly doesn't call for a religious test to apply.

<comment><USER9> Oh yeah, explain this [https://shop.donaldjtrump.com/products/lgbtq-for-trump- mens-...](https://shop.donaldjtrump.com/products/lgbtq-for-trump-mens-ss-t- shirt-white?variant=26468926918)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sam's post on this was great where he admits it strained his relationship with Peter Theil: [http://blog.samaltman.com/the-2016-election](http://blog.samaltman.com/the-2016-election)

</comment><comment><USER11> Reporting for future record: This post was flagged less than ten minutes after being posted, without any comments.

<comment><USER12> The author is Ellen Pao, so it's a safe bet this is an instance of the messenger getting in the way of the message

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get that this is a big deal and it will keep coming back... But is there anyone other than Ellen Pao who could tell this story? Seriously?

</comment><comment><USER14> The discussion appears live here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12726970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12726970)

</comment><comment><USER15> wow talk about delusional... how does she reconcile this? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY)

</comment><comment><USER14> "Money doesn't talk, it swears."

\-- Some Nobel Prize Dude.</comment>


Why I want to build Lyft in Kazakhstan and why it can fail - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/53aeaad3018f

<comment><AUTHOR> What are other obstacles for smartphone powered peer-to-peer ridesharing in the former Soviet Union republic?</comment>


Ask HN: Would you hire an ex-government intel intern? - <AUTHOR>

I'm considering applying to the grad program for my countries NSA equivalent. My country is a participant in five eyes. Would you have any concerns hiring someone who has worked for one of these agencies, especially post-snowden? I'm not 100% sure I want to work in that sort of environment, and I don't want to restrict my options by working there. <comment><USER2> Yes. Once you decide to go into the secret services area, there's virtually no way of going back.</comment>


Update on Oculus Touch Ship Date - <AUTHOR> https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/update-on-oculus-touch-ship-date/ <comment><USER2> A VR HMD without tracked hand controllers is not the real thing (I know, I have owned the DK1, DK2 and Gear VR). The first thing someone new to VR does after entering VR is raising the hands and looking at them (or not, due to lack of tracking).

Bundling the Oculus Rift with a XBox One controller will encourage developers to support this immersion-breaking controller instead of taking the leap to a virtual reality environment where you manipulate objects by moving your hands to their location in space, something that is completely intuitive.

I understand why Oculus is doing it - they originally stated that if they don't ship by the end of 2015 something has seriously gone wrong - but I don't like it.

It appears that Oculus' biggest competitor, the HTC Vive - which includes tracked controllers - will be available earlier than the Oculus touch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure it's a good idea to separate the 2 product launches. If the Oculus Touch is necessary for a good VR experience, they take the risk of bad reviews while waiting for the control device.

<comment><USER4> I've used the consumer Rift with and without Touch and it really just comes down to the specific applications. There are plenty of applications where it doesn't make sense to use hand controllers (like space sims or car racing games) and plenty where it makes sense (shooters, social communication). In the long run my guess is more and more apps will use hands but we'll go through a skeuomorphic phase in the beginning where there is no clear input standard and we hold onto inputs from previous platforms.

<comment><USER2> Applications with custom controllers such as racing games or flight simulations will work very well, however games that use keyboard+mouse or gamepad represent concepts ported over from pre-VR gaming and in many cases I believe they will be inferior.

<comment><USER5> Some of those concepts never made sense to me. I'm talking about stuff like Quick Time Events. CoD: AW even went as far as "press F to pay respects".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just an opinion, but all the hype around VR seems a little overblown so far as the consumer side goes for me... the rift still looks too big and the applications clunky. I haven't heard of any AAA games coming to the rift (happy to be corrected) - so I wonder whether this is just another hyped industry.

Where I can see it being more useful is things like heavy industry for controlling robots and training for doctors - far more industrially based. Even teaching would be cool - imagine the history lessons.

Will be interesting to see the industry develop...

<comment><USER7> While it's natural to be skeptical, I'd withhold judgement until after you've tried either the Vive or consumer Rift. One of VR's challenges is that it need to be experienced to really understand it. Until you feel presence, the excitement doesn't really make sense. On the flip side, I haven't met a lot of people slag it once they have.

(Note: Prior DKs and mobile VR generally does not induce presence for most people)

<comment><USER8> Or, to put it another way: would "staring a small screen that can display two colors (something and black) and typing slowly on a typewriter-like entry system" have sounded like a compelling experience? How about "maneuvering a block on your desk that corresponds to a dot on a screen, with buttons to initiate actions"?

Surely there's no way those would beat the experience of a time-tested, bona- fide, genuine newspaper!

<comment><USER9> TBH, a newspaper is still a much better way to get my news than the internet, especially with recent bloated design trends. YMMV.

<comment><USER7> Really? Did you realize that the newspaper published only news from the day before at the latest, once a day? (Crazy I know.) Just a few people called "editors" decide what you read. And it doesn't ever get updated, even if it's wrong or something new happened. You can't even find primary sources or citations! God forbid you'd want to ever search for anything by a keyword.

<comment><USER9> I genuinely don't understand your point. You make it sounds like newspaper editorial policy is some gross conspiracy, or that newspapers aren't published _every day_. Or that I somehow even mentioned wanting keyword search anyway - as if that's even relevant to getting a daily news overview.

Seriously, what's your point?

<comment><USER7> Well, since you asked, I was merely noting the ways in which digital delivery of news has more depth, breadth, relevancy, timeliness, and searchability, but yes, those factors don't matter to some people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Subtle hint in that announcement that Rift is good to go this quarter!

<comment><USER11> frankly, i was surprised noone mentions that. are we clear on the exact date and price? for rift.

<comment><USER2> The details will be released at CES for sure...</comment></comment></comment>


Tweetie Extension for Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=http://elweb.tumblr.com/post/625626937/tweetie-extension-for-chrome

<comment><USER2> "It's a super simple extension that puts a button on the browser to share links easily using Tweetie for Mac."

I really wish HN submitters could somehow tag articles mac-only or something. Or maybe just put a bit more consideration into article titles or forgo submitting some things altogether.

I don't have anything against OS specific news, but Chrome (and Chromium) run on a lot more than just OSX. Sort of feel like anything for Chrome also ought to be compatible with those systems.

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't even do anything, its just a icon?

<comment><USER4> No.

From the page itself: "When you click [it] opens a new message in Tweetie with the url and title of the page you are viewing. If you select a piece of text, that text appears in the new message window instead of the title page."</comment></comment>


You're Doing IT Wrong: Tech Recruiters - <AUTHOR> http://sanitycheckfail.com/post/2009-01-18/9/Youre_Doing_IT_Wrong:_Tech_Recruiters

<comment><USER2> I've always been very wary of whatever headhunters/recruiters dream up for me for exactly this reason: they don't add much to the hiring process.

A good way to assess a company during a job interview is to count the number of barriers they put up between prospective employees and the tech people. Too many barriers are a sign of bad tech company culture.

Most of HR is such a barrier, most recruiters are.

</comment><comment><USER3> _In short, tech recruiters are non-technical dolts who use bad metrics to squeeze the highest dollar out of the companies they're contracted to while alienating otherwise prospective talent._

It sounds like you just got burned by one company/person? Not all recruiters are like you described. I've got my biases though, just like you've got yours.</comment>


Top Ubuntu app downloads for June 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://developer.ubuntu.com/2012/07/top-10-ubuntu-app-downloads-for-june-2012/

<comment><USER2> I wish all these app store systems would split games and apps up.

It's especially a problem on the google play store where you have a games section for games and an apps section which you'd assume is for just non-game apps, but no the list is still dominated by games.</comment>


Octopart launches Company Tools, allows part suppliers to easily upload data - <AUTHOR> http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2009/8/company-tools-is-live

<comment><USER2> Hi Octopart guys,

My company buys millions of dollars of electric components per year. Our products go into potentially explosive locations, so our quality and certification standards are very high.

One requirement put on us by the certification bodies is that we maintain full traceability of parts. We need to know that the chip we bought is the exact same make and model as the one the certification body tested when they examined our product.

Now maintaining this paperwork is a nightmare. We buy dozens of critical components per board, many thousands of boards per year, and all from multiple suppliers. Further compounding the issue, we have multiple sub-contractors around the globe also purchasing components to place on boards for us. For ten years after we ship a product we need to be able to look up Fuse 1 on serial number XYZ123 and know the part came from the part manufacturer listed in the certification document.

I really wish that there was a part supplier that would maintain all of this paperwork for me, and all that I had to do 10 years from now was match up my customer sales order with POs made to get the parts in house. I log into your site, type in my real old PO number, and then BAM, my traceability data shows up, RoHS compliance data shows up, SVHC conformity data shows up, etc.

Extra bonus if I can upload my BOMs to your site and just place POs for top level assemblies, and your servers handle ordering the parts online or sending automated emails/faxes on my behalf with my company letterheard to the parts suppliers.

This is probably way out there to what your business model is. Half of this is venting on my part as I struggle to deal with this major supply chain issue. Someone should start this business. I should start this business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dealing with supply chain issues is difficult. Especially when you throw in to the mix the HUGE problem of counterfeit parts in the electronics industry. I know there are some startups working in the PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) space. Feel free to get in touch over email if you want to talk more about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wish there was Octopart UK. Was trying to track down some nice Hall effect sensors to measure wheel speed on a robot I'm working on and bouncing around from vendor to vendor is a mess.

I actually use Octopart as a product catalogue and then find the things it finds in the UK.

<comment><AUTHOR> We list parts from Premier Farnell which is in the UK and we'd like to get part data RS Components. Who else would you like to see? If you let distributors know that you'd like to see them on Octopart when you make purchases, that would help greatly.

<comment><USER3> Hmm. Didn't realize that you had Farnell. I guess if you have the and you could get RS Components that would be a pretty good start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the story of this startup, and it's great to see them succeed :)

<comment><USER5> I like the story as well, because it's a nice example of a startup that has nothing to do with social networking, but rather a nicely defined niche (not to say it's a small industry--I know it's huge, I used to be a part of it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congrats!</comment>


SendHub (YC W12) raises $2M in seed funding - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/26/sendhub-seed-round/

<comment><USER2> I didn't realize you could have more than 1 seed round of investments... I thought a seed round, by definition, was the initial round, and rounds after that were label differently.

Was this simply a continuation of sendhub's initial funding, or am i missing something completely?

<comment><AUTHOR> These rounds can be called anything you wish. Remember when onswipe raised a 'Series Awesome"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, congratulations! That's a big seed round with some great investors, and SMS is probably the best channel for a lot of marketing messages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats to Ash and the team!!

</comment><comment><USER5> Congrats, Ash and Garrett!</comment>


Emergent Ventures's Unconference vs. normal academic conferences - <AUTHOR> https://www.craigpalsson.com/2019/09/16/unconference-more-like-funconference/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for the write-up, Craig!

I'm an EV grantee as well and what was interesting is that all of the grantees were kind of "fringe" in what they were doing, and I think that's on purpose.

It was a great atmosphere, and as Craig described it didn't matter if you were 18 or 50 years old, or if you had a PhD from Harvard or were a college drop- out author.

I imagine that this is what the first couple of YC batches also must have felt like (of course I can't know :-) )

I'm excited to see what this group of people will go on to do, and think that Tyler picked the grantees exteremly well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't like conferences or unconferences. But I find conferences at least bearable whereas unconferences are egregiously unbearable. The scale of political gamesmanship and signalling is just exhausting especially when it is dressed up in so much self-unaware insistence that it's totally not just political networking or signalling. It has the same vibe to me as cultish start-ups.

Conferences are often quite bad too. But I'll take the structured interaction any time. The structure and scheduled topical constraints make it better, not worse. The problems that mainstream conferences have are not things that self- organizing look-how-salt-of-the-earth-we-are-just-having-a-potluck-or-hacking- in-a-garage "enlightenment" attitudes can solve.</comment>


Esports is For Real Now? Large Starcraft 2 League Announced - <AUTHOR> http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=141496

<comment><USER2> eSports has always been for real. In South-Korea that is... And once again I believe this will only be big in South-Korea. The CGS tried to take eSports to the public (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Championship_Gaming_Series>) in the rest of the world but failed. They failed due several reasons but overal it was made clear that people in the world outside of Korea aren't going to watch eSports on television. That's a pity since I own an eSports news website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes but there's a much greater amount of money involved here.

$85,000 first prize per month for a year.

<comment><USER2> True, but wasn't the CPL World Tour 250,000 dollar for first prize or even 500,000? Even that couldn't lift it to the next level.

Don't get me wrong, I love eSports (that's why I have created www.esportspress.com) but I'm just a bit sceptical about reports that pop up every now and then that announce that eSports will finally go mainstream.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Eyeball: Detect and understand changes in a program's output - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/martinpllu/eyeball <comment><USER2> Have you tested your script with files like " this has spaces .out"? I think you are missing some quotes around your variable expansions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, eagle eyes. Thank you. Any tips on how to deal with quotes around variable expansions in general? Should I quote each usage of a variable or does it depend on context?

<comment><USER2> Quoting each usage of a variable is almost always correct.

The only context where it isn't correct is when you _need_ word-splitting to occur, which is almost never.

Even "$@" is special-cased to do the right thing and quote each individual parameter, instead of the whole list.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Anybody Enjoying the Lockdown? - <AUTHOR> I live in NYC and I'm back at my parents' place. No drinking, running a lot, doing well at work. Quiet time to introspect and observe spring around me. Saving a lot of money. I'm enjoying it and questioning if I even want to move back to NYC (if i can just go remote). <comment><USER2> I'm based in Contra Costa County, California and I'm enjoying the lockdown because the air is much fresher with the reduction of cars on the road. There is almost no smog and it's wonderful.</comment>


Great resource for learning Powershell - <AUTHOR> http://www.powershell.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I had looked up several resources to learn Powershell on line, and this site is seldom mentioned. This is unfortunate, as this is the one site that I have found to explain Powershell concepts in a clear and straight-forward manner.

When I visit some other sites, I have to wade through paragraphs of unrelated anecdotes, etc. just to get to an understanding of a concept.

This site, and particularly the free eBook that comes with this site, provides a much more clear explanation to many of the concepts that I had been struggling with. So, just wanted to share.</comment>


Why MasterCard implements OAuth 1.0a instead of OAuth 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mastercard.com/blog/why-mastercard-doesnt-use-oauth-20 <comment><AUTHOR> Do you prefer OAuth 1.0a or OAuth 2.0? Which is more secured?</comment>


The Cheating Cheaters of Moscow - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/12/the_cheating_cheaters_of_moscow.single.html <comment><USER2> As a Muscovite living in EU I have found this article very amusing but having nothing in common with reality.</comment>


Programming languages influence network - <AUTHOR> http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-influence-network/ <comment> loup-vaillant We should resize the balls based not on the languages they directly influenced, but on the transitive closure on the relation.

I was rather shocked to see ISWIM having such a small node, given it influenced basically the whole statically typed functional branch. Miranda got a correspondingly undeserved treatment.

Ideally, for the influence network, the size of the ball should correspond only to the influences that where innovations in the considered language. That may be too much to compute, though.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would expect ML to have been a little bigger. Is the node size calculated by transitive influence or just adjacent influence?

This would be easier to read I think if the graph were directed and indicated it as such.

<comment> loup-vaillant Adjacent, obviously. Look at how small is ISWM

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Never expected to see Dylan that big. Would be nice if this nifty language could get more attention. Has anybody here ever deployed something in Dylan?

<comment><USER4> People have in the past ... I think we're at the point where someone could do so again with our current release. I hope to do so, myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious about the claim that Java influenced C, especially since Java is a much newer language.

<comment><USER6> The last standard for C was 2011, it is entirely possible something from Java slipped in. Though I don't think Java has anything very unique in it. I would find it hard to say that yep that came from Java, and not some other language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This page doesn't display for me. The top bar loads but lower is just a blank off-black page with no images or text. I enabled Javascript and saw no change. Clicking and right clicking anywhere below the address bar does nothing.

Latest chrome on fully-updated win8...

</comment><comment><USER8> This is an interesting data set even though some of the relations are messed up. The biggest one being that it says C is influenced by Java.

</comment><comment><USER9> It'd be even cooler if each relation had a short description/example specifically how one language was influenced by another.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting to note that there are zero edges coming out of the C++ node, but a _lot_ coming in

<comment><USER6> ? Try clicking on the language. It says there were around 30 languages influenced by C++ and around 6 that influenced C++.

<comment><USER10> Ok, I see it now, under the "what not to do" influence category

<comment><USER6> Pretty much. I can think of several languages that have don't be C++ as core design tenets, like D.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a popular thing to do, but probably time consuming (I probably have dozens more URLs but i'd have to search a lot of laptops, delicious, and... remember magnolia?)

[http://blog.fogus.me/2012/05/02/a-functional-programming- inf...](http://blog.fogus.me/2012/05/02/a-functional-programming-influence- graph/)

[http://blog.fogus.me/2012/06/07/an-object-oriented- influence...](http://blog.fogus.me/2012/06/07/an-object-oriented-influence- graph/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3920619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3920619)

[http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/paradigms.html](http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/paradigms.html)

(the Dewey decimal system congeners) [http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/2380000/2371137/ACMCCSTaxono...](http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/2380000/2371137/ACMCCSTaxonomy.html?ip=126.96.36.199&acc=OPEN&key=1B55DF923F77674F55057ED4F3766CA0&CFID=346311616&CFTOKEN=70828105&__acm__=1373473781_10bd00e024e5caa1c72dd84b743d610f)

[http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2010/05/types-la-chart.html](http://james- iry.blogspot.com/2010/05/types-la-chart.html)

[http://blog.ouseful.info/2012/07/03/mapping-how- programming-...](http://blog.ouseful.info/2012/07/03/mapping-how-programming- languages-influenced-each-other-according-to-wikipedia/)

__________

vaguely related: the Right Tools survey

[http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~lmeyerov/projects/socioplt/viz...](http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~lmeyerov/projects/socioplt/viz/index.html)

[http://www.storytotell.org/essays/juxtaposition.html](http://www.storytotell.org/essays/juxtaposition.html)

[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1011/ConceptsPL/](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1011/ConceptsPL/) (they spend a lot of time studying ML and the state of the art language)

[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/exams/pastpapers/t-Concepts...](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/exams/pastpapers/t-ConceptsinProgrammingLanguages.html) (pretty sure i'd flunk)

[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1213/DenotSem/](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1213/DenotSem/)

<comment><USER12> And another in timeline form: [http://www.levenez.com/lang/](http://www.levenez.com/lang/)

This one is my personal favourite. My wife got a print made around a year ago for our anniversary. It's around 3m long so we don't actually have anywhere in the house we can hang it!

<comment><USER11> Oops, there web server just fell over

[http://web.archive.org/web/20130308095859/http://levenez.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130308095859/http://levenez.com/lang/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Love it, allows to explore the relations between language in a different way.

I wonder why ECMAScript and JavaScript are different? Isn't it a different name for the same programming language?

<comment><USER14> JavaScript is an implementation of the standardized ECMAScript language, so technically it is not the same.

Freebase lists JavaScript as a dialect of ECMAScript and draws no influence relation between the two, you can see the data for ECMAScript here [http://www.freebase.com/m/019syg](http://www.freebase.com/m/019syg)

<comment><USER15> Then why isn't JavaScript attributed under "Languages Influenced" for ECMAScript. Seems wrong to me. [http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages- inf...](http://exploringdata.github.io/vis/programming-languages-influence- network/#ECMAScript)

<comment><USER14> Yes, JScript is listed both as a dialect and an influenced language, so this should apply for JavaScript and other languages too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's a bug where if you scroll down in one modal, the scroll will be preserved in the other modals you open.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think this is actually getting data from Wikipedia. How could C have been influenced by Java?!

</comment><comment><USER18> Feel like OBJ-C and Ruby should be closer :)

</comment><comment><USER19> how is CFML (ColdFusion) not linked to Java? CFML runs on top of the JVM.

<comment><USER20> It's because the public Freebase data that this visualization is based on is far from complete. For these programming languages and other things, it is as if most of the Wikipedia articles existed on the subject, but they contained nothing but the summary information. Have to start somewhere though, Freebase is a great start for structured information associations.

You can view the CFML entry here: [http://www.freebase.com/m/03tsq7](http://www.freebase.com/m/03tsq7) and see that the 'Influenced by' and 'Influenced' associations are empty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> CSS is not there.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a cool visualization, but the data it is working from is pretty poor. A lot of the "influenced"s and "influenced by"s are pretty sketchy, and some are just plain nonsense. Also categorizing the languages is pretty iffy. I can't imagine any possible definition of "functional programming language" that includes lua, python and ruby, but does not include perl.

<comment><USER14> You're right the data set contains some questionable relations. Looks like DBpedia would have been a better and more reliable data source than Freebase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How in the world is PHP such a small node?

<comment><USER23> What programming languages are influenced by PHP? It really is a leaf node. This is not intrinsically a criticism. PHP arguably got a lot of _libraries_ created that copies the way it did HTML templating (and I mean the core PHP here, not subsequent template libraries), but that probably wouldn't show here.

The flip side of this, incidentally, would be Haskell. Still pretty unusual to encounter in the wild, but it has influenced a _lot_ of languages, and will continue to do so, possibly without ever being a top-tier success itself.</comment></comment>


Foursquare Predicts Chipotle's Q1 Sales Down Nearly 30% - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-predicts-chipotle-s-q1-sales-down-nearly-30-foot-traffic-reveals-the-start-of-a-mixed-78515b2389af#.nkolf2c0q <comment><USER2> 10-Q filed today says 23.3% decrease in revenue. [https://www.sec.gov/cgi- bin/viewer?action=view&cik=000105809...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi- bin/viewer?action=view&cik=0001058090&accession_number=0001058090-16-000069) Interesting that Foursquare can be a leading indicator, 15 days before the filing.</comment>


Podil - Youtube search app - <AUTHOR> http://podil.heroku.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I built this back in January, and would love some feedback. It used to have lyrics, until MusixMatch yanked me out of their system :). If anyone knows of a good alternative lyrics API, I would be very grateful!

Thanks for the comments.

P.S: My original write up is at: <http://gduplessy.com/2011/01/08/introducing- podil-.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> Its cool. Can you bring out entire discographies of artists? That would be something I'd totally use!

<comment><AUTHOR> On the same page as the video? Sounds doable! :)

Thanks for the comment!</comment></comment>


Facebook shuts down robots after they invent their own language - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/08/01/facebook-shuts-robots-invent-language/ <comment><USER2> Such an extraordinarily clickbait headline. I'm saddened that mainstream media has fallen to such lows. Anyway, the bots started speaking "shorthand English" (gibberish) to each other -- which probably wasn't very useful for training a human-facing chatbot -- so were shut down.</comment>


Is Artificial Intelligence a Threat? - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Artificial-Intelligence-a/148763/ <comment><USER2> I encourage every one to give a close reading to MIRI & Bostrom, and to avoid any merely shallow critique. They deserve a close reading, and likely have given it consideration.

For a different perspective from Bostrom's see Land's

[http://www.xenosystems.net/stupid- monsters/](http://www.xenosystems.net/stupid-monsters/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course it is. Though it could be said the same of natural intelligence too.

</comment><comment><USER4> What Artificial Intelligence?

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes. It is a threat.</comment>


You're Just a Bunch of Actions - <AUTHOR> http://zachobront.com/you-youre-just-a-bunch-of-actions/

<comment><USER2> Amazing piece. As someone who likes to using planning as an excuse to not do, this really hit home for me.</comment>


Ask HN: I can has cofounder? - <AUTHOR>

Hello there, I'm Jesse, http://jessecrockett.com.
I have an idea for #3, "New news." http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html.
I'd love to communicate with the likeminded.
I am out on the range, and I'd rather you be the hacker and I be the developer, though I could move to Chicago or Boston w/o much trouble.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> _I'd rather you be the hacker and I be the developer_

What exactly do you mean by this distinction?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a good question. Would you rather be the CEO or CTO?

<comment><USER3> Which one is "hacker" and which one is "developer"?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are the same. It was meant to draw you out. It seems to be working okay. In reality I need only a great personality for the how-to A/V. It would be great to work beside a quality hacker, especially if this hacker is head-over in love with the world and all its deep flaws. Yeah?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Might help to have some sort of contact info.

<comment><AUTHOR> email@example.com

Aim/Skype: tefflox</comment></comment>


I am building a Slack community for investing discussion - <AUTHOR> http://www.hashtaginvesting.com <comment><USER2> This is a cool idea. Would love to be able to chat with a bunch of people about stock ideas. Signed up.</comment>


Show HN:Check out the first user review of NoBadGift.com - <AUTHOR> http://youtube.com/watch?v=9iz1RvAN3Yw

<comment><AUTHOR> Should we put this video and other reviews like this one on our site? Can videos like this be damaging to a site as some users tend to put their own spin on what they feel a site is good for which may be different from it was actually intended to do?</comment>


Kafka's Last Trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/05/kafka-last-trial-benjamin-balint-review <comment><USER2> Did you click the link thinking its kafka software? I should get some sleep.

<comment><USER3> Apache Kafka never even crossed my mind until I read your comment. Franz Kafka on the other hand is one of those authors everyone should read and know about. Extraordinary mind.

<comment><USER4> Never cross my mind to. I associated with Franz Kafka and his book The Trial .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Were there enough shards?

</comment><comment><USER6> TIL that Kafka was first a real person before a widely used software.

<comment><USER7> For non-solid state drive like HDD, sequencing writes could theoretically maximize the writing performance, while Franz Kafka famous for writing. That's how Apache Kafka gets its name. Apache Cassandra writing optimization is similar, but not having a writer name.

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

"Kreps chose to name the software after the author Franz Kafka because it is "a system optimized for writing", and he liked Kafka's work."

<comment><USER8> Kafka's writings do have some very peculiar themes, though.

I don't know about other countries, but in France calling a process or an organization "Kafkaïan" is a big pejorative. It evokes incapacitating, mind- numbing complexity that you are thrust into.

I thought the name came from LinkedIn's woes of being unable to dispatch data efficiently between the several services and databases. That it was sort of a Kafkaïan mess; and that Kafka -the write-optmized log service- helped decouple this mess; with n writers and m readers you went from m*n to m+n dependencies. Kafka, the tool you need for Kafkaïan problems?

If Kreps named it because of the write optimized facet, other authors could be more suited. Like Asimov, Dumas or Voltaire [1]?

In the end if that's all good though. Franz Kafka is a great author. That's a good name.

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

<comment><USER9> The English term is Kafkaesque</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spdlog: Super fast C++ logging library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gabime/spdlog

<comment><USER2> May I ask what makes the differences between these logging platforms and why do they differ in speed?</comment>


Curiosity landing is in a week - <AUTHOR> http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/

<comment><USER2> The simulated video of the Curiosity landing makes it seem very complicated and prone to failure.

Wondering what full scale prototypes where built and what testing was done.

<comment><USER3> from Wikipedia... "The landing sequence alone requires six vehicle configurations, 76 pyrotechnic devices, the largest supersonic parachute ever built, and more than 500,000 lines of code."

<comment><USER4> They check for a few more error cases than the average project I guess, hehe.

      am looking forward to seeing it land successfully!

Regardless of how it lands though, it should be exciting to watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're in the area, there's an event at Ames: [http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/events/2012/ames- curiosity....](http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/events/2012/ames- curiosity.html)

<comment><USER6> In Chicago, the Adler Planetarium is having a 9pm-2am viewing party as well (<http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/curiosityparty> ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What will they show in the live feed? It makes me sad we can't have a (near) live feed from the delivery case or even the sky crane. Except for the understandable 19 (or so?) minutes or lag due to speed of light, the bandwidth is not nearly enough. It would have been cool of another level to be able to see the rover landing live, 19 light minutes away.

<comment><USER8> I'm more curious about why can't we have a live feed. We had one from the moon 40 years ago, is bandwidth also degraded by the distance to Mars?

<comment><USER7> The moon is relatively (very) close (238,900 miles vs depending on where they are in their respective orbits, mars can be anywhere from 36 million miles to over 250 million miles away from earth), there are good relay satellites for moon and sun never comes in between to disturb incoming signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand why they need the skycrane. Why did Viking land ok without this complexity? Why can't they reuse whatever they did for Viking?

<comment><USER10> One of the reasons for the skycrane is that it minimizes the area of the Martian surface that will be disturbed by the landing rockets. The skycrane approach moves less surface soil around the landing site (decreasing travel distance to pristine subjects for geological study) and deposits less rocket exhaust (which complicates chemical and biological studies).

NASA has an excellent and free ebook, _When Biospheres Collide_ [1], which goes into great detail about the problems posed by biological contamination (both forward and back). The book dedicates a long chapter to the great lengths taken with the Viking landers to avoid contamination problems. Having read it, I'm not at all surprised NASA is giving alternatives a try.

[1]: [http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/when_biospheres_collide_d...](http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/when_biospheres_collide_detail.html)

<comment><USER9> Why didn't Viking worry about disturbing the landing site?

Also If it can drive why does it matter what happens to the landing site?

<comment><USER8> They drive at mm/s speeds. Moving over a few meters because the soil is stirred up is a huge waste of energy and time, not to mention the risk of failure.

<comment><USER11> No, not for curiosity. That robot is expected to drive many kms as part of its planned activities. Its nominal speed is 30 m per hour.

<comment><USER12> Which is 120 mm/sec -- about 4.75 inches, as parent noted.

<comment><USER11> Actually, 30 m/hour is 8 mm/sec. But that's a bad choice of units, because seconds is not a good mission time scale.

The point is that, within a couple of hours, you can drive beyond the contamination radius. And, over the span of the mission, you most certainly will.

<comment><USER12> Correct. Not sure where my math went bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why / where exactly does the sky crane fly away after releasing the lander? Is it just to get it safely out of the way?

<comment><USER14> Yes. You don't want it landing on top of the rover, so it flies a predictable path away and crashes.</comment></comment>


Online collaborative LaTeX editor - <AUTHOR> https://www.writelatex.com/

<comment><USER2> Founder of <http://www.ShareLaTeX.com> here, the guys at writelatex have done a great job of making a new clear home page since last time they were on HackerNews (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4385300>) the example presentation and no sign in required is a really great touch as it helps quickly bring down the bar for those new to LaTeX.

The online LaTeX editor is not an easy problem to solve, compiling massive projects (hundreds of megs) elastically with several different compilers is not something you can crack in a weekend hence why I merge with <http://www.scribtex.com>.

Good luck to writelatex!

<comment><USER3> No sign-in is nice as an option, but the fact that you _can't_ sign in is a negative for me - I'd like to be able to manage multiple documents and projects within an account like on ScribTeX.

Oh, and ShareLaTeX looks really good; thanks for sharing! I'm going to try it out now.

<comment><USER4> And as if by magic - you can now sign up to manage your docs on writelatex.com :-)

<comment><USER5> "Password is too short (minimum is 8 characters)" - this can lose you users. I don't want to invent yet another password just to try this out. So offer feedback on password strength, but let users decide on the secutity/convenience tradeoff. Better yet, use openid.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback - that's a very good point, as it to use openid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The is also <http://www.scribtex.com/> (unfortunately, going down, but was nice, also supporting Git access), <https://www.sharelatex.com/>.

And for short LaTeX text, there is <http://mathb.in/>.

Also, <http://www.scigit.com/> looks promising (not working yet, though).

See also: [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/27549/simultaneous- co...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/27549/simultaneous- collaborative-editing-of-a-latex-file)

<comment><USER2> Don't worry we are working hard to get all the functionality of ScribTeX fully incorporated into ShareLaTeX (git push & pull). We also have no long term plans on turning off scribtex while people still use it, but the focus is sharelatex.

<comment><USER6> It's how I understood things. However, without possibility to invite collaborators (to ScribTeX), there is not much use for me. That said, I used it, liked it a lot, started paying for it... just to discover that I cannot use it (in terms of, well, collaboration) anymore (so I quit paying, but with a bitter "you should have warned me when I wanted to pay, not only in the Sign Up form").

Anyway, I'm looking forward to see git stuff at ShareLaTeX.

Or writeLaTeX.

<comment><USER2> Sorry I don't fully understand, you can invite collaborators on sharelatex into the project via the project settings area. Free accounts are capped to having 1 collaborator (1 person + yourself). Please drop me an email henry.oswald at sharelatex.com

<comment><USER6> The comment was about ScribTeX, where I cannot invite others (unless they already have accounts) but still I can (or at least - could recently) upgrade to paying plan (without any warning that ScribTeX is no longer accepting new users).

ShareLaTeX - sure, I know and understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Founder here...

Great to see this on HN! Feedback much appreciated. Happy to answer questions...

<comment><USER8> Have you considered the popular front-end languages like Markdown, org-mode or any of the plethora of formats that have translators to LaTeX?

<comment><USER4> Hi Beltiras,

Thanks for the question - we've focused initially on creating a low-barrier- to-entry front-end for LaTeX, but which still worked in the native language. Which way we go in future will depend on the feedback we get on writelatex!

<comment><USER9> This would be really easy to implement using pandoc (<http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/>), which converts Markdown with extensions and LaTeX formulas into LaTeX. I think it supports Org-mode too.

Markdown would be excellent for sharing short notes and ideas among mathematicians, as opposed to full-blown papers.

Also, great job! I like how simple and efficient the interface is.

<comment><USER7> Thanks! This is a great idea --- we'll see what we can do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can maybe see myself using this to tweak the last stages of a paper with a coauthor, but otherwise I can't imagine writing LaTeX without emacs keybindings (auctex, reftex, cdlatex, I'm leaving them all lowercase because I can't remember their idiosyncratic capitalization patterns). Case in point: in trying out your editor, I opened several new browser windows accidentally.

So, is there a way to upload latex and bibtex files?

<comment><USER7> My documents are full of :w, ct. and kkkjjkk --- we are working on adding keybindings. :)

Yes, you can upload .tex and .bib files using the file menu.

Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER10> Another thought (as I edit a document that a co-author wrote): if you could mimic tcilatex.tex (which Scientific Workplace throws into any document it touches) in a minimal, nonintrusive way, that would be fantastic. (tcilatex seems to be changing the 'gather' environment so that individual equations can no longer be numbered, for example.)

<comment><USER7> OK, we'll have a look. For now, you can upload tcilatex.tex to writeLaTeX and then \input{tcilatex.tex} after your \documentclass line. (Note: it seems to conflict with the amsmath package, however.)

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, it even works with tikz! If it becomes popular, I bet you'll need some CPUs.

<comment><USER4> tikz is a great package! Re the CPUs - we're working on some neat ways to get round this :-)

<comment><USER12> Can you give us any insight into how you plan on getting around this? It seems that publication quality typesetting and layout requires a certain level of CPU power, especially with complex graphics from TikZ/PGF and/or pstricks. Do you think your solutions will also help desktop users reduce the amount of CPU latex eats?

<comment><USER7> Good question. There's not much we can do at the LaTeX level, but writeLaTeX also has to send images of the pages back to browser, and we can improve that part of the process in quite a few ways.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps it would help to checkpoint the compilation periodically, keyed by hash of input consumed so far, so when adding a word on page 100 you don't have to load all packages and recompile 100 pages.

\- One approach is fork() processes (the tricky part being flushing all I/O and redirecting to separate files). This only works in RAM, which means active users & machine affinity, but I suspect storing checkpoints for long is useless anyway.

\- Another approach is TeX's builtin memory \dump mechanism. This generates a file, so you could reuse flexibly, stuff in memcached etc. And easier to set up. But looking at mylatex.ltx I get the impression you can't \dump from a process that loaded a dump, so you'd have to start from initial tex and re- parse all of latex :-(. Perhaps still a gain, at least keeping one dump after the preamble?

The other half of the problem is getting the page(s) you want quickly without waiting for the whole document to compile. My impression is pdflatex output is not valid PDF until it's done. Less of a problem for writelatex which already does separate images?

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the suggestions! The fork() idea is very interesting --- I hadn't thought of that. Drop me a line at john at writelatex.com if you ever want to chat about tex stuff. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's awesome. I love it!

One feature that would make it much much awesome would be an integration with Github. In our university we're trying to convince professors to release the latex source of the lecture notes on Github in order to receive issues or pull requests from students for typos or improvements. As most teachers don't know git it would be great if they could open files on writelatex from github and commit changes. I know that's quite hard to do but imho it could really improve the project.

p.s.: Is it open source? Will it ever be?

<comment><USER7> That's a great idea! Integration with github is on our TODO list, so hopefully we can help with that.

It's not open source, but we're looking at several ways of taking it forward, and that's one of them.

Thanks for the feedback! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it possible to include class files such as ieee.cls? <http://mocha- java.uccs.edu/ieee/>

<comment><USER7> Yep, you can upload .cls files using the files menu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems to work well -- I imagine I would use it if I were using a temporary computer, an ipad, or some such thing. What would be nice is if I could integrate it with dropbox or similar services, essentially use it to edit and compile files in my dropbox library. Also it would be good to use a standard editor with config files that could be saved to customize the environment.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the comments - glad you liked it! We're working on the offline integration and user customisation features, they're in the pipeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Co-founder of <http://www.SpanDeX.io> here, it's cool to see so much excitement around web-based LaTeX editing. As Henry mentioned, scaling sites like this is quite challenging as LaTeX wasn't really built for performance or scaling, but it's still more pleasant than running on your own machine ;) Best of luck to everyone!

</comment><comment><USER17> Real-time rendering is done pretty fast and nicely by whizzytex (sudo apt-get install whizzytex), if you don't need the collaborative features and are comfortable with emacs.

This being said, doing it in a web client sounds like no small technical achievement!

<comment><USER4> Thanks - whizzytex is a good package for real-time rendering. What we're trying to do with writelatex.com is help users get into LaTeX by removing some of the traditional barriers (needing to install, compile, etc), plus making it easy for existing users to work on the go and from any comp.

Hope you like the site! :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is awesome! Great work. One must have for me is auto complete, I use LaTeXila and its hard to move away from auto complete. Spell checking would also be amazing, I have yet to find a good LaTeX IDE with spell check.

<comment><USER19> I have been using Emacs for quite a while now. It offers (via AucTeX/RefTeX) a brilliant solution for bibtex files, references, writing LaTeX, autocompletion etc. And if you use it in conjunction with either ispell or flyspell (on-the- fly spell-checking), you basically can use both at the same time.[1] However, this _might_ be daunting, especially when this means starting and dealing with Emacs for the first time.

[1]: It might however be necessary to redefine one of the shortcuts for either flyspell or autocompletion, since they both use the same keys by default.

<comment><USER18> I've always been a vim guy myself. I guess it might be time to learn Emacs and give this a try.

<comment><USER20> I write latex in vim using latex-suite and I'm very happy with it. The vim spell checker also works well in latex files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks to all for the feedback - massive spike in traffic, and over 100 users signed up in the couple of hours since we pushed the site update :-)

More to come soon, and you can follow us @writelatex for the latest.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is awesome! I'd also like to share one of my local Wisconsin startups tackling the same problem: <http://spandex.io/>

</comment><comment><USER22> The images in the right pane are blurry for me -- I guess they're getting stretched out on my monitor. Could you use vector graphics instead of JPGs?

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's on our TODO list. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Even works on my iPad. Color me extremely impressed!

</comment><comment><USER7> Founder here... Just pushed an update so you an sign up and manage your docs. Enjoy!

<comment><USER4> This is not the relaxing weekend I had planned! But yes, user accounts now available, plus a short getting started guide to help new users. As ever, all feedback appreciated

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seems very slow.

<comment><USER4> Hi glomph - the other writeLaTeX founder here - we were preparing for an update this weekend, weren't anticipating being posted on HN again! Should be running faster shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How well does this work from a Chromebook?

<comment><USER7> I'm afraid we don't have a Chromebook to test on. We do test on Chrome and Linux, though, so hopefully it works well.

Thanks!</comment></comment>


Best way to connect 2 bluetooth headsets to each other? RasPi as gateway? - <AUTHOR> I have 2 pairs of Bose QC35 bluetooth headsets. I'd like them to be able to talk to each other. In theory, it feels like it should be as simple as getting a RasPi, 2 bluetooth dongles (or use onboard + 1 dongle) so both can pair to the RasPi at once, then with some software making the line-in from one go to the headphones of another, and vice versa.
I've spent a while googling but can't find any reference to anyone having done this. Not with a RasPi, not with anything. There's a few proprietary "bluetooth intercom" systems for motorbikes etc, but I want to do this myself.
Has anyone done anything like this, or have any ideas? Which language/libraries would be best to write an app that "marries" both bluetooth connections? I'm very new to non-web programming so I have no idea where to start. <comment><USER2> QC35 headphones can already talk to each other using the Bose Connect app

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeh sorry I should've been more clear. The idea is for a "gateway" type device that any 2 bluetooth headsets could connect to and talk to each other. The QC35s are just what I own that I can use for testing and getting this working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Streaming bluetooth data through an RPi is at best unreliable.</comment>