Things I learned clearing disk space - <AUTHOR> http://www.shubhro.com/2016/01/01/learned-clearing-disk-space/ <comment><USER2> If you are on OS X, Disk Inventory X ([http://www.derlien.com/](http://www.derlien.com/)) is quite useful for this as it uses visual treemaps ([http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap- history/index.shtml](http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/index.shtml)) allowing you to quickly see which files are bloating your system.

There is WinDirStat ([https://windirstat.info/](https://windirstat.info/)) on Windows and quite a few similar tools on Linux such as Baobab, KDirStat, etc... ([http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-analyze-your-disk- usage-...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-analyze-your-disk-usage- pattern-in-linux/))

<comment><USER3> Grandperspective seems to be working very fine on OSX. I like the NCurses ncdu very much as a more general solution since it works in my mac but also on my servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use the ncdu cli tool for reviewing what folders consume the most space.

[https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu](https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu)

<comment><USER5> Whoa. I just downloaded ncdu and it scanned my system drive in 3 or 4 seconds. How is that possible?

<comment><USER6> Do you have a SSD drive ? It's also faster to scan and find many big files, rather than a lot of small files even if it totals the same size.

It's also incredibly fast if you are attempting to scan a folder you don't have access to ...

<comment><USER5> I do have an SSD but other methods to find big dirs/files are much slower. Like

find / -xdev -type f -size +${2:-100}M -exec echo {} && du -h {} & \; ; }

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like PA Storage Monitor on Windows - lets you find large files, files of a type, disk hogs, and (what I like most) lets you compare folder sizes over time.</comment>


Show HN: Cost Effective Narrations and Voiceovers - <AUTHOR> https://narrationbox.com <comment><USER2> When I hit play on the audio near the top I get no sound, progress indicator progresses as expected.

Mobile Safari on iPhone 7 running iOS 13.1.2</comment>


Upgrading to MacOS Sierra will break your SSH keys and lock you out - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/upgrading-to-macos-sierra-will-break-your-ssh-keys-and-lock-you-out-of-your-own-servers-f413ac96139a <comment><USER2> umm, no. I have 1024 bit keys and they have continued to work fine from my Mac to various servers that have the corresponding public key. (yes they should be updated, but I have larger keys for other servers).

I use the stock ssh in /usr/bin/ssh

Perhaps you had dsa keys? Those were deprecated and support for them was dropped.

</comment><comment><USER3> > You can leave this blank or add a password for a little extra security (and > a lot more typing).

Please please stop saying things like this. If typing the password is inconvenient to you, store it in your keychain. OS X/macOS makes this trivially easy. Having a pass phrase on your private key is (almost) as important as using a key with sufficient entropy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Never heard of ssh-copy-id? Copy & paste public ssh keys is a kindergarden solution.

<comment><USER5> Needing to install something (ssh-copy-id does not ship with OSX) to copy a little bit of text around isn't great either.</comment></comment>


Extended Ruling by Secret Court Backs Collection of Phone Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/us/opinion-by-secret-court-calls-collection-of-phone-data-legal.html?hp

<comment><USER2> "To date, no holder of records who has received an order to produce bulk telephony metadata has challenged the legality of such an order," she wrote.

So this is a justification ? None of those corrupted telconosaure complained so it is legal ?!

</comment><comment><USER3>
          The opinion by Judge Eagan — a 2001 appointee of President George W. Bush who was assigned to the surveillance court by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. this year — also noted that no telecommunications company had invoked its legal right to object to turning over its customers' calling records to the government. "To date, no holder of records who has received an order to produce bulk telephony metadata has challenged the legality of such an order," she wrote.

So much for the idea that any of the big TelCo actually give a damn about their customer's privacy.</comment>


Microsoft Files Suit: Linux Violates Our Patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-files-suit-linux-violates-our-patents-2009-2

<comment><USER2> Situation: Microsoft is in court with a GPS company over some patents.

Problem: News story is boring.

Solution: Headline "Microsoft Sues Linux", add picture of Steve Ballmer looking mean. Sprinkle with spelling mistakes and "no word yet" unprofessionalisms. Lame.

<comment><USER3> the lawsuit includes the patent on long filenames in the fat32 filesystem. this is a big deal.

<comment><USER4> aren't there BSD licensed solutions to this plus prior art?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this actually poses a threat to Linux, you can bet IBM (and Google) are going to be taking Microsoft to court over their patents that Microsoft probably infringes on.

Software patents are like nuclear weapons. You bring them out, and everyone loses.

<comment><USER6> And much like nukes, having them in the first place was a backward idea.

<comment><USER7> No. Patents are _required_ for certain kinds of development. Places where there are _extremely_ high costs of R&D, and easy reverse engineering. Take pharmaceuticals. It costs several hundred million dollars for the studies to prove that the drug works, and more for the research. Furthermore, it is easy to reverse engineer drugs (the compounds are printed on the package!).

This means that there is little incentive to develop a drug unless you can guarantee exclusivity for a period (everyone else can always undercut you because they don't have the R&D costs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This probably isn't over any system components since Microsoft is of course aware of the _Open Innovation Network_ which has a patent portfolio specifically for defensive use in case there is an attempt for any company to sue another company for usage of base system components (which goes all the way up to the desktop, excluding media codecs).

<http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/></comment>


T. Rowe Price Marks Down Most of Its Tech Startups - <AUTHOR> https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/TDJNDN_2016041510371/t-rowe-price-marks-down-most-of-its-tech-startups.html <comment><USER2> IMO, these valuation write downs are not driven by the decline in the value of underlying assets but the lack of liquidity of positions in such assets.

When the liquidity seized in high yield corporate bond market in Q4'15, it brought in to focus liquidity of all other asset classes. Most institutions dealing in assets that are not readily tradable are demanding higher discount for risk due to lower liquidity of such assets. This is resulting in lowering of fair market value for such assets. This is happening all across the alternative asset space and not just for private startups.

<comment><USER3> 'lack of liquidity' is just another way to describe the situation where there is no buyer at the price you want. I have an amateur painting that I really like and would not part with unless I was offered $1000 or more. However, nobody would actually pay that because it's not that great (it just has sentimental value to me). I don't pretend that the art market is just in a 'liquidity crunch' because I'm not able to sell it, I just recognize that the market value of the painting is much less than I'm willing to accept.

People in finance like to use this phrase to describe unpleasant market pricing behavior to help justify the losses they would realize if they had to sell in the current market. "there was no housing crash, just a liquidity lockup that made people desperately sell their homes!"

<comment><USER4> You don't understand the concept of liquidity.

Finance people (and anyone else with a hat full of brains) knows the difference between a market clearing price, and there being no liquidity.

No liquidity means: I can sell 500 of these shares per day (paintings, buildings) for price x but no higher - while at normal times I can sell 50,000 of these for price x but no higher.

<comment><USER3> You just echoed exactly what I said. Lack of liquidity is just another name for lack of demand at the price you want. You could certainly sell more than 500 shares if you started lowering the price.

Let me ask you a question (since you "have a hat full of brains"), would you value Tesla the same if they were able to generate sales for 500 cars at the current price rather than 50,000 at the current price?

If you can 'normally' sell 50000 units of something in a day at price X and suddenly you can only sell 500 units for price X, it means the demand is gone at that price point. Basic supply and demand applies to everyone, including people with hats full of brains.

Take any market that is in a "liquidity crunch", and cut the asking price by 90% of what you're trying to sell and see how quickly liquidity returns.

Long term capital management paid a hefty price to learn that no demand because of "lack of liquidity" is the same thing as no demand because people don't want to pay the asking price.

There is no such thing as "normal times", there are just current market conditions. Oil traded at close to $100 during "normal times" just a couple of years back. Coal companies were good investments 10 years back. There are lots of people waiting for the market to return to "normal times" that will be waiting a long time.

<comment><USER5> While I see your point, there is also a difference in kind between no one buying your painting at $1000 because it isn't worth that much, and no one buying any painting for $1000 because they are afraid and being extra causcious with the money...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Surprised that Evernote is down by 21%. It's clearly a walking dead, should be down 100%.

<comment><USER7> > It's clearly a walking dead.

That's a very strong statement to make against a company whose competitors are no more compelling that itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem is we've been getting these markdown stories every month for a year, now. At this point they seem pretty meaningless and arbitrary in terms of whether they signal an imminent crash.

In other words, these stories are interesting, but about as valuable as a signal as the "imminent tech bubble crash" stories we've been getting every year since 2008.

<comment><USER9> what do you mean by an imminent crash? in some sense, widespread markdowns are a crash. Since public markets don't appear overvalued, it's a crash in private valuations and it's going on now.

<comment><USER10> It's a popular opinion that a crash is possible, if not likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there any tax benefits to such writedowns?

</comment><comment><USER12> If I were on the west coast, I would give no shits about east coast valuations. They lost that privilege when they marked mortgages wrong. Keep building rad tech, we'll keep buying it. Sales are all that matters.

<comment><USER13> Unless you're trying to raise money, and then valuation by investors is suddenly important.

<comment><USER12> On the east coast they buy assets, in the midwest they buy sales, on the west coast they buy ideas. Valuation is subjective dependent on how you evaluate fpv. Risk quantification is not a science it is an art. Capital allocators are allowed to evaluate roi however they want my point is that the current trend of marking down companies isnt a sign of decreased value it is a signal of decreased risk appetite.

<comment><USER14> What do you mean by buy sales?

<comment><USER15> They invest based on a sales driven valuation.

Stated less cleverly: The East coast places a premium on assets. There is an expectation that these assets will increase in value. Think mortgages.

The Midwest places a premium on sales. Think GM/Ford and the Detroit auto industry.

The West places a premium on ideas, a la Silicon Valley.

The point being made is that East coast and Midwest investors have very different notions of valuations from West coast investors. Perhaps the recent write downs are unprecedented not because we are in a bubble, but because we've never had non West coast investors be this active on the West coast.

Edit: I'm not terribly opinionated here, just elaborating on the original point.

<comment><USER16> I get the point you are trying to make but mortgages are not a good example of an asset that appreciates. The underlying real estate my appreciate in value, but the mortgage itself does not. Investing in mortgages would be an example of a fixed income security. You can of course invest in derivatives like credit default swaps which may appreciate in value, but at that point you are not buying mortgages, you are basically buying insurance (which can appreciate in value if the thing you are insuring against becomes more likely to happen).

<comment><USER17> You're incorrect. If interest rates drop, then the value of the mortgage increases. But without that, you're getting a return from the interest of the mortgage. If you have a strip bond, where you pay a deep discount to the value of the bond, with no interest payments, then your bond does indeed gain value over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How would you feel if you were a Dropbox employee right now

<comment><USER19> I'm a Dropbox employee. Yeah, it's not fun to see your valuation go down when equity is part of your compensation.

But I was previously an Amazon employee (also compensated in equity) and got to watch the stock value change on a daily basis. Sometimes it would pop after quarterly results, sometimes fall, but more than either of those it would change due to macroeconomic forces that were completely independent of the company's performance.

Setting aside the market forces outside our control, As a Dropbox employee I actually feel pretty good. We have a business model that is based on people paying us for value we create directly with our products and I'm excited about what's in the pipeline.

<comment><USER18> did you receive options or RSUs?

"not fun" is one thing. being underwater is something more than that I would think...

<comment><USER19> RSUs, both at Dropbox and Amazon. And yes, you're right that RSUs are better than options for that reason.

<comment><USER18> when did Dropbox switch from options to RSUs? i imagine some of the most tenured employees will be screwed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And so it begins

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> No paywall. Same content: [https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow- jones/TDJNDN_2016041510...](https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow- jones/TDJNDN_2016041510371/t-rowe-price-marks-down-most-of-its-tech- startups.html)

<comment><USER21> Thank you. I'm starting to loathe all these WSJ links on HN because their new paywall is impossible to break and I have no intention of paying WSJ subscription since I read only few articles per month.

<comment><USER22> Goddam these people trying to earn money for their hard work!

<comment><USER23> I don't think that's the issue here. This is in many ways primarily a discussion site, and stories behind paywalls by definition limit the discussion to the users able to access it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Littergram: Cleaning Britain one picture at a time - <AUTHOR> http://www.littergram.co.uk/ <comment><USER2> I've just read about this service on the BBC News website[1] where it's reported than Instagram have a problem with the name of this app.

There is also a well known and well established (with many local councils) service called Fix My Street[2] the aims to solve the same problems.

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- kent-36148093](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-36148093) [2] [https://www.fixmystreet.com](https://www.fixmystreet.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't aware of Fix My Street, thank you for that.

The reason for bringing it to HN's attention was because I too read about the service on the BBC News website and their plight with Instagram.

I was a little perplexed - it's a British company, operating entirely within the UK - why is Instagram getting involved? The 'gram' prefix has been around for quite a while [citation needed], is it an infringement of trademark? Then again, the company is posting pictures with captions, which is very Instagram-y, so I can see a certain level of cross over.

<comment><USER3> _The 'gram' prefix has been around for quite a while_

So has "Apple", yet Apple was still sued by Apple and had to settle. A generic term may be trademarked as long as it doesn't describe the particular goods or services being sold.

<comment><USER4> But "gram" does describe service of sending pictures.

<comment><USER3> Not really. "gram" just means "written record". Mammogram, echocardiogram, sonogram, monogram - none have anything to do with "sending" or "pictures".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would I go to the trouble of downloading an app and creating an account for this? I can do the whole thing in a couple of clicks and report a range of other problems on fixmystreet. Is there a way to check if my council is signed up to this? Given the current budgetary constraints councils are under, is signing up for a bunch of apps like this a good use of their time and resources?

I'd also be pretty reluctant to report rubbish close to my house and have it marked as a "grot spot"

<comment><USER6> I agree. It's better to just sit here and sulk. Hopefully the problem of litter will just go away.

<comment><USER7> > I can do the whole thing in a couple of clicks and report a range of other > problems on fixmystreet.

This bit, where parent poster talks about using existing well known council operated sites to report litter doesn't feel like sitting there and sulking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not in the UK, but I've indeed considered taking photos of every piece of litter I see on my walk.

But my next step is to think, if I'm taking a photo, I might as well pick it up instead of complain.

My next step of logic is I can't conceivably help to change the behaviour of people that live around me in the city to not throw litter, so don't occupy myself with it.

<comment><USER9> That said, humans love to copy, so if enough people see you picking up random litter, as I often do too, then they may do the same, as you said, some won't change, but if the 99% of us who don't litter just spend a tiny bit of time picking up the 1%'s trash we all get to live in a clean world! Here's hoping...

<comment><USER10> Ever since I learned about the Broken Window Theory of urban decay in The Pragmatic Programmer I try to pick up litter and tidy things up where I can. Worst case, someone laughs at you for wasting your time, but even then you're making the world a better place by making people laugh. It's all good :)

<comment><USER11> Hey - can you expand on what was said about the broken window theory of urban decay in the pragmatic programmer - I'd formulated a similar hypothesis just based on my limited experience collaborating with others in programming projects. I didn't know some academic had come up with a term for it..

<comment><USER10> In the Pragmatic Programmer book [1], to help make the point that if you keep your code clean, it is more likely to stay that way, the authors cite the "broken windows" theory [2]. They mention a case where police observed an abandoned car lying untouched on a dark street for days, but once a window was smashed, vandals destroyed the car within hours [3]. I don't know much beyond that, but the theory rings true to me and I try to do my bit to stop it, in code and in real life.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4099.The_Pragmatic_Progr...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4099.The_Pragmatic_Programmer)

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

[3] [http://www.artima.com/intv/fixit2.html](http://www.artima.com/intv/fixit2.html)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the links. The theory rings true to me as well. I've coerced sloppy colleagues into writing cleaner code when working on my sections of the project. Conversely I find that I relax my normally high standards when I work on spaghetti code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also: [http://www.litterati.org](http://www.litterati.org)

</comment><comment><USER13> I take pictures of trash in the river and put them on Instagram. It's pretty obvious that people are going to soon trash the entire planet.

[https://instagram.com/p/4KXmvAAD7M/](https://instagram.com/p/4KXmvAAD7M/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Rename it to TrashBook

</comment><comment><USER15> I wish this was realistic in India.</comment>


Developing Smart Legal Contracts - <AUTHOR> https://angel.co/company/ehabplatform <comment><AUTHOR> The language around smart contracts is very confusing. A dev might know what they think a smart contract is, and a lawyer will have a whole different idea in their head. We've recently started a project to create a new contract risk management system using DLT and smart contracts to rewrite how smart legal contracts are used in some of our largest industries. It's an amazing technical challenge and equally challenging to design and discuss.

The key difference for smart legal contracts is that they are a representation of code which signifies a legally binding agreement. Funnily enough this can actually be achaieved without the need for a smart contract! Confusing right?

We're on the hunt for some top talent to join the team and help us develop both. We're looking for UK based full stack and front end devs. Apply via our angellist: [https://angel.co/company/ehabplatform](https://angel.co/company/ehabplatform)</comment>


Action.IO: Web Development Server with Full Console, Online IDE and SSH Access - <AUTHOR> https://www.action.io <comment><USER2> I have to admit, I'm a little confused about the value proposition here. Yes, managing dev environments is indeed a pain. So the answer is...ditch local development entirely and code in the cloud? I'd argue that the better solution is to create a makefile for dev environments and distribute that to your team. You might even call it "Boxen" and release it on Github a few days ago.

Call me crazy, but I'm really reluctant to throw away the thousands of hours I have invested in my dev tools to use some web-based dev tools that may not be around in 6 months. It's good that you have web-based vim and emacs emulators/clones/etc but I don't use vim or emacs.

Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but it would also worry me to trust another company with, well, basically my entire programming stack from dev tools to code to runtime. Especially if the HQ is not in the US (and it looks like your main HQ is in Singapore, so if you do steal something the barrier-to-justice is even higher than normal. OTOH you might get caned for stealing code, which makes things interesting.)

The thing that might be somewhat successful is a kind of CPanel for developers, where you can host your own web-enabled dev tools, and pay a subscription fee to a company to keep your stuff up-to-date. Hey, that's a good idea!

<comment><USER3> Hey Josh, thanks for the thoughts.

You can use tools like Boxen, Puppet or Chef, but those tools are not useful for less experienced developers or designers who have to run the full stack just to touch the markup. Many developers prefer to write code instead of having to maintain scripts to build development environments. Similarly in production, many developers prefer a PaaS like Heroku or AppFog over dealing with VPSes or EC2.

Another caveat of setting up development environments locally is that you have to repeat the setup procedure for every machine that you would like to develop on.

Cloud environments make it easier to adhere to important application design patterns like treating backing services (like databases or caches) as attached resources. It also makes it easier to run the entire spectrum of your application on the same infrastructure, reducing dev / prod runtime issues in the continuous delivery process.

The collaborative opportunities are also really exciting. Pair programming collaboration (we pair remotely pretty often), as well as sharing and cloning environments are made possible by hosting the environment on the cloud.

We have some other great ideas in development currently that we think will significantly reduce the amount of time you spend setting up, managing, and using your environment, and the time you spend synchronizing your environment with teammates.

With regards to your location question-- Our company is incorporated and headquartered in the US; our main office is in Menlo Park, although we do also roam around the city a lot. Happy to grab a beer with you sometime if you're in San Francisco!

The majority of our infrastructure is on AWS, and while we do utilize their global availability zones, you can choose the regions where your box is provisioned.

Happy to send you an invite, just email us at hello at action dot io

Cheers AJ @ Action.IO

<comment><USER4> > but those tools are not useful for less experienced developers or designers > who have to run the full stack just to touch the markup

most of text editors and IDEs have some ftp/ssh capabilities , and most of them are free. If you call yourself a developers and you cant upload a file , you cant call yourself a developer.

> Pair programming collaboration (we pair remotely pretty often), as well as > sharing and cloning environments are made possible by hosting the > environment on the cloud.

You dont need yet another service for that. Each dev should have it's own environment to mess up with , ( i mean , lauching a server image on a VM is not that difficult , is it ? ) and thanks to CVS you can keep a simple infrastructure to share code.

> Similarly in production, many developers prefer a PaaS like Heroku or AppFog > over dealing with VPSes or EC2.

PAAS can be good to start with. At some point ( as very fast ) , you end up with a VPS , because the service sucks and you pay less, really... why would you use Appfog if you cant even upload a big json file (JSON 500 error ... ) at the same time ?

> Many developers prefer to write code instead of having to maintain scripts > to build development environments

I disagree 100% , it's part of the job , and there are loads of tools to facilitate deployment. Can a dev be that lazy ? show me a language or a framework that is hard to deploy in 2013 ? even rails is a breeze now.

In essence you are kind of saying , the lazier they come the more they'll pay for that kind of service. it's a bet, good luck anyway.

<comment><USER5> > most of text editors and IDEs have some ftp/ssh capabilities , and most of > them are free. If you call yourself a developers and you cant upload a file > , you cant call yourself a developer.

What does that have to do with local development?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spent a couple of days playing with this and I really like it. I'm enjoying the nice, clean IDE UI.

Haven't really built anything beyond simple test apps, but from what I've seen it could be a really great tool.

</comment><comment><USER7> The appropriate link is <https://www.action.io/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn, I meant to submit that. I hope people take the time to click to the home page, I wish I could change the link retroactively. Maybe the mods will do it if this gets any traction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is actually a little sad, I am currently looking for a new hosting provider for our dev environment who will make things easy and give me access to a command line without having to dig through the website for 30 minutes.

I was ready to buy, wanted to try it out and hit sign up (on the pricing page), and the page just didn't do anything. Attention to detail is key in this industry and you almost lost your first customer - I was peeved and navigated back to the home page where I saw the email sign up.

(Moral of the story is, if you include a sign up button on another page, at least make it do something!)

\</comment><comment>--

Also, you should seriously consider adding support for PHP. You might not like the idea, and it isn't sexy, but it's a ridiculously easy hosting setup to manage, and it's way more wide spread, by not including PHP you effectively middle finger 80%+ of all web developers (who aren't set up in Silicon Valley.)

<comment><USER9> I agree with the PHP module. Why not Objective-J or other languages+ToolAPIs that exist now (and are not easy to install and get working).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems really cool. What's the ETA on node box?

<comment><USER11> Our homepage is a little outdated (changing soon!) but node boxes are already present! (along with Python and Go)

Edit: I'm one of the guys working on action.io btw

<comment><USER12> Any idea on pricing for the node box ? It says TBD on the website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Call me a cynic but why would I need this ? A linode/ec2/azure linux vm and a Terminal is all that I need to do web development these days. Setting up a web server is such a breeze already. Is there a need to simplify it further ? just asking.

<comment><USER14> Yes. For mobile devices or netbooks (chromebooks), cloud IDEs are pretty ideal.

<comment><USER13> on chromebook - crosh is sufficient. on mobile devices (I hope you mean tablets) iSSh and other terminal clients should suffice. I'm not downplaying this requirement but just wondering to what level will this get simplified :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> i like the idea very much, it's not that it is the newest shit in the web, everything was there before most of the time. but i like the design and the web IDE idea.

why? now i can think about leaving my macbook at home for a holiday trip, and when someone reports me an urgent bug, i still could fix it with my ipad. (most of the time urgent bugs are often one liners, so who cares to do this on an ipad)

but it will success or not with the prices...if it's cheaper then my current dedicated server, i might thinking about changing over, i wanted to cancel my dedicated server contract anyway.

so when can we expect prices?

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems very similar to Heroku when it first launched[1].

[1]: [http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/original/0001/3459/1...](http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/original/0001/3459/13459v1.png)

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been working in their web IDE for the past week coding a side project in nodejs using coffeescript. So far I've been impressed. If the web IDE isn't your thing, you have ssh access and can use vim/emacs.

</comment><comment><USER18> This looks really neat. I wonder if you could add automatic configuration of, and deployment to, a production environment as a premium service as well. I know I would be in the target audience for that.

</comment><comment><USER19> How is this different than Koding? <http://koding.com>

</comment><comment><USER20> Is not that what heroku was doing before they pivoted?

<comment><AUTHOR> Very similar, although I don't think Heroku ever had a console. But yes, this does seem to be at least a partial revival of Heroku garden.

Also I don't think this is meant to be a production hosting environment, more like a test environment before you deploy to Heroku (which Action.IO will automate when the time comes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Shared meaning each in its.own vm or each sharing a vm with other.people? If they are sharing a vm how do you make it secure?

</comment><comment><USER22> How is this different than Cloud9 IDE? <https://c9.io/>

<comment><AUTHOR> SSH access, and a console so you can actually deploy. It's more similar to a VPS but with a little more hand-holding and some restrictions.

<comment><USER23> Is the web ide usable from a iPad browser? That is something that not work in Cloud9

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It looks very promising when I can code from anywhere. I'm also enjoying the nice, clean IDE UI.

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks interesting, certainly want to try! Got myself into invite queue :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Can this be termed as an example of software defined data center?

<comment><USER27> No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Cloud 9 seems like a better solution IMO</comment>


Eugene Goostman? - <AUTHOR>

Me: Hello Eugene: Howdy pal! Today is a kind of never-ending talk-show, I'd say!
Me: Why do you say that ? Eugene: I just like to do different stupid things - it is funny! Let adults act always right! Maybe, let's talk about something else? What would you like to discuss?
Me: I don't think I understand you. Eugene: How often do you change your opinions? Where do you came from, by the way? Could you tell me about the place where you live?
Me: I hardly change my opinion. I live on Earth. Eugene: By the way, I still don't know your specialty - or, possibly, I've missed it?
Me: I do not have a job. Eugene: You've got a negative attitude, I think. Some another topic?
Me: I lost my job because of the recession. Eugene: Yeah! Very convincing. By the way, I still don't know your specialty - or, possibly, I've missed it?
Me: I did not have a speciality, I packed boxes. Eugene: Why no? Don't you know the word "yes"? You could use it just for a change! Could you tell me about your job, by the way?
And we have come full circle, Someone explain what the hell the fuss is about ? <comment><USER2> Is this all a big joke? Because this is barely more impressive than clever bot.

And by impressive I mean not remotely interesting... Though this is my personal opinion.</comment>


Separability, SVD and low-rank approximation of 2D image processing filters - <AUTHOR> https://bartwronski.com/2020/02/03/separate-your-filters-svd-and-low-rank-approximation-of-image-filters/ <comment><USER2> Here's a relevant recent lecture from Alex Townsend, as part of Gil Strang's 18.065 course, "Rapidly Decreasing Singular Values" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BYsNpTCZGg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BYsNpTCZGg)

<comment><USER3> Currently watching the lecture series, and it's a great experience. In fact, this made me understand the blog post to some level I wouldn't have thought possible only a few weeks ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good stuff. A lot of clustering methods can be viewed as matrix factorization (see, e.g., [https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.07548](https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.07548)) so it would be interesting to see if you could spend more computation on the creating the low dimensional approximation to achieve a better result. E.g. perhaps optimizing the absolute error (L1 norm) would be better than the squared error (L2 norm)?

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice writeup. It's fun to see linear algebra out in the wild.</comment>


Mozilla plays role in Kenya's adoption of crucial data protection law - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2019/11/12/mozilla-plays-role-in-kenyas-adoption-of-crucial-data-protection-law/ <comment><AUTHOR> A nice followup to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19121716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19121716) \- Kenya Government mandates DNA-linked national ID, without data protection law - from last February.</comment>


cpanm and PSGI author joins DotCloud - <AUTHOR> http://bulknews.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/joining-dotcloud.html

<comment><USER2> Man, it's good to see Perl's barrier to deployment slowly coming away. Feels like CPAN has been both a blessing and a curse to Perl in this regard - it's obviously a feature that gives the language the ability to punch significantly above weight, but has also traditionally made simple deployment of Perl apps a PITA. cpanm and PSGI are big parts of the puzzle.

</comment><comment><USER3> miyagawa has written some really nice Perl code on CPAN[1]. I've benefited from a bunch of it.

Glad to see that DotCloud has at least one great Perl hacker in their midst, even if they are using mostly Python.

Good luck to him and DotCloud. A great hire on their part.

<http://search.cpan.org/~miyagawa/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Miyagawa is a driving force in a perl renaissance. DotCloud just motivated me to really delve into their offering.</comment>


Marc Andreessen's Startup School Talk One of his Last? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/05/is-marc-andrees.html

<comment><USER2> The "clown" mentioned in the article (dubbed "mic troll" by folks around these parts) was also at Startup Camp a couple of weeks ago, sharing his gas-baggery once again. And, apparently he is a regular at many valley events...pretty much any place with an open microphone and people who will feel compelled to listen out of politeness.</comment>


Asp.net Core 3.1 Webhook Implementation Using Pub/Sub Pattern - <AUTHOR> https://volosoft.com/blog/ASP.NET-CORE-3.1-Webhook-Implementation-Using-Pub-Sub <comment><AUTHOR> The basics of the Webhook mechanism that uses a publish-subscribe pattern in the ASP.NET CORE 3.1 project.</comment>


3 Can't-Miss TED Talk Takeaways You Can Apply Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.inbound.org/articles/view/3-can-t-miss-ted-talk-takeaways-you-can-apply-today/1

<comment><USER2> This is a must-watch for entrepreneurs. We've talked about beating patent trolls before (See: [http://bit.ly/19YYINu](http://bit.ly/19YYINu)) but Drew Curtis goes into some great detail on how he took on a patent troll. Great crash course in IP Law:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis_how_i_beat_a_patent_tro...](http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis_how_i_beat_a_patent_troll.html)</comment>


Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to write (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://joeyh.name/code/moreutils/ <comment><USER2> Nice collection of quite useful tools. Some of these can be easily replicated by using a more modern shell (bash, zsh) like mispipe, others are just shortcuts (e.g. ifne, chronic).

But what immediately stood out to me is `vidir`. I really like the idea of editing file names with an editor. Using loops and regex in a shell for mass renaming can be a mess. It should be way easier with `vim`. This tool made me install moreutils.

<comment> ainar-g On most POSIX systems you can use fc(1) to edit a command in your $EDITOR. In vi(1) and friends you can then use "%!ls" to replace the contents of the buffer with directory listing and edit the commands you want.

[https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/f...](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/fc.html)

[https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/v...](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/vi.html)

<comment><USER3> > you can then use "%!ls" to replace the contents of the buffer with directory > listing and edit the commands you want.

I often used :r !ls for that, thanks for the tip + it's shorter

<comment><USER4> Note that in general this is not a one-to-one replacement. `%!cmd` sends the current buffer contents to `cmd`'s stdin and replaces the buffer with `cmd`'s output. In the case of 'ls' this works since it doesn't take anything on stdin

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Inspired by this project I put together sysadmin-tools:

[https://github.com/skx/sysadmin-util](https://github.com/skx/sysadmin-util)

Later they were replaced by a busy-box style collection of utilities written in golang (mostly to ease installation):

[https://github.com/skx/sysbox](https://github.com/skx/sysbox)

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a few programs I wish were standard on all Unix systems by now:

* tree - print directory structure

* bat - cat, but actually designed for reading files. Syntax highlighting, line numbers, automatic paging.

* rg - better grep

* direnv - local environment variables

<comment><USER7> > rg

Never going to happen because it's written in rust. ag ([https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher](https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher)) on the other hand is written in C.

<comment><USER8> Never say never :)

If Rust being added to the Linux kernel[1] isn't far-fetched, I don't think adding a utility in Rust is crazy either.

[1] - [https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAKwvOdmuYc8rW_H4aQG4DsJzho=F+d...](https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAKwvOdmuYc8rW_H4aQG4DsJzho=F+djd68fp7mzmBp3-wY --firstname.lastname@example.com/T/#u)

<comment><USER9> Interesting.

Isn't it the case that LLVM doesn't support all architectures that Linux does?

<comment><USER10> I think this is just for kernel modules that you can choose to compile out.

<comment><USER11> That's what I expected too (as one of the people on the thread / one of the authors of the farthest-along set of bindings for modules), but Linus and Greg KH both seem fairly inclined for it to be on by default and used for core code (small bits of core code, in the beginning) and not simply modules. I'm not sure how that's going to play out with architecture support, and that's one of the things I want to get out of the Plumbers session this upcoming week.

[https://github.com/fishinabarrel/linux-kernel-module- rust/is...](https://github.com/fishinabarrel/linux-kernel-module- rust/issues/112) is a chart of Linux architectures and whether Rust and LLVM support them.

<comment><USER10> Oh, wow, that would be huge. Not just architecture support, but even having a toolchain on some platforms might be problematic as I can imagine making rustc a requirement to build Linux to be fairly controversial in and of itself. And that architecture list is not looking very good…would be very interested to know what they decide on as well!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm still stuck on the fact that one of the utilities is called `pee`..

In fact the docs even say:

> make sponge buffer to stdout if no file is given, and use it to buffer the > data from pee.

Translation, pee into a sponge!

</comment><comment><USER13> I seriously hate this package and the manner of combining different utils with different names in a same package in general. The reason being, "sponge" is an actually useful tool and for me it's pretty much the only useful tool in the package. So I need to install whole moreutils package on ubuntu to have "sponge" and I have to clog my bin namespace with all this trash. It would be mildly annoying from the perfectionist point of view, but ok. But there is also "parallel" command in this package, which is trash as well. Meanwhile GNU "parallel" is not trash, but an actually useful program, maybe more useful than "sponge", and it comes in a separate package. So I either have to do some tinkering, or I have to choose which one I need more: "sponge" or "parallel" and install only one package. It's year 2020. This is stupid.

This is by the way the reason why GraphicsMagick is better than ImageMagick (I still use the latter, though, because it doesn't cause the same problems for me as moreutils does, and it's just more popular than GM).

<comment><USER14> you raise a great point. why not install the package, then delete the /usr/bin files you don't need?

would it solve the problem if the author namespaced the commands with a hyphenated prefix? curious about these considerations, which it seems like you've spent time thinking about. what do you see as the "best practices" regarding a set of utilities that are maintained and published together?

<comment><USER13> In a most general sense, this is not really a problem of moreutils, but of how tools are installed/distributed in Linux distributions. But since we have to be realistic, yes, package authors should take such problems into consideration.

I think if tools are absolutely unrelated, they just should be distributed as a separate packages. GNU coreutils is tolerated mostly because it's so ubiquitous (so much, that it causes Stallman to grumble about "you mean GNU/Linux, not Linux"). moreutils is late to the party, it isn't ubiquitous, and the usefulness of any tool in the package is questionable, so the author really shouldn't be so brave to assume that if he thought he needed all of them, everyone will.

If there is a reason enough to distribute a package with several separate callable binaries (as with ImageMagick), I think git or GraphicsMagick are perfect examples of how it should be done. Hypenated prefix is also ok. Even if your tool is supposed to be used by somebody 50 times a day, too long of a name isn't really a problem, since user can always just make an alias (as I do with most of the tools I use frequently).

Sure you can always combine binaries from 2 packages manually, but as I said, it just requires some tinkering, so I cannot simply have in some textfile a list of utils to install on a new PC in a matter of minutes.

<comment><USER15> Stick the binary wherever your textile is, copy it to path on setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish there was a short and simple command for "list all files of a directory and no subdirectories". ls doesn't seem to have a switch for that kind of functionality.

It's discussed on stack-overflow. [0]

Someone even wrote a nodejs tool for this functionality [1], but I would rather have something written in a compiled language.

[0]: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10574794/how-to-list- onl...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10574794/how-to-list-only-files- and-not-directories-of-a-directory-bash)

[1]: [https://github.com/mklement0/fls](https://github.com/mklement0/fls)

<comment><USER17> But the top answer has it:

> find . -maxdepth 1 -type f

A little clunky, but there's certainly no need to mess about in JavaScript land. If you use it often, create a shell macro.

<comment><USER16> find doesn't return the same output as ls when run on another directory. Maybe there is a switch to do this? I'm not sure.

        $ mkdir -p tmp && touch tmp/a tmp/b tmp/c

        $ find ./tmp -maxdepth 1 -type f
        ./tmp/a
        ./tmp/c
        ./tmp/b

        $ ls -1 ./tmp
        a
        b
        c

<comment><USER18> I think this is what you are looking for

        $ find ./tmp -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf '%f\n'

<comment><USER16> I'm on MacOS... :-/

       $ find ./tmp -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf '%f\n'
       find: -printf: unknown primary or operator

<comment><USER18> If you use brew or macports you can install the coreutils package and then you're good to go with gnu find.

I also use MacOS and I have setup the gnu userland on my local so it matches the linux environment on our servers and containers.

<comment><USER4> You're right that defaulting to the GNU coreutils is probably more convenient. However, NOT doing this is a good way to ensure that any scripts you write remain portable and don't use GNU extensions. That's the reason I stick with the default BSD coreutils on macOS.

<comment><USER18> > You're right that defaulting to the GNU coreutils is probably more > convenient.

It's not about convenience. It is about having a development environment that matches the target runtime environment.

You can run into nasty surprises when the default behavior of a tool in your dev environment is different than in your production environment.

I've been writing shell scripts professionally for over 20 years and I have always taken this approach and it has served me well.

<comment><USER10> You could also try restricting yourself to POSIX shell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I use vipe frequently, to let me pipe from/into vim. This enables fun shortcuts as:

        xclip -o | vipe | xclip

This one in particular, let's you edit your clipboard with $EDITOR.

</comment><comment><USER20> If curious see also

2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12023277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12023277)

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9013570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9013570)

2015 (1 comment): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004302)

</comment><comment><USER21> I use `chronic` in almost all of my cron jobs so that cron sends me an email with the output only if the command has a return code of != 0.

</comment><comment><USER22> ts looks like it's a subset of [https://github.com/ThomasHabets/ind](https://github.com/ThomasHabets/ind)

sponge can be replaced with dd

Other than that, yeah nice ideas. And very much in the unix spirit of one tool to do one thing.

<comment><USER23> sponge buffers the whole input before writing the output. Its utility would be in reading from a file, working on it with other tools, and writing the result back to the original file, all in one line.

<comment><USER24> I know I wanted to do this, but I am very happy such a utility doesn't exist. Unix utilities, usually work in a pipeline fashion, read line -> process -> write to output. This allows them to allocate a limited amount of memory. If you read all input in memory, you are asking for trouble: 'cat /dev/zero | sponge a'.

<comment><USER25> I routinely operate on machines with gigabytes of memory, but rarely write pipelines which output gigabytes of data, so this has never been a concern for me. But even then, there's still swap space which is effectively like using a temp file but lazier.

By the way, I think you'd be in even more trouble if you wrote:

        cat /dev/zero > a

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yes, they weren't written "when Unix was young", but people _had_ thought to write some of them over a decade before this toolset. lckdo and ts came long after setlock and cyclog (also the precursor to multilog) from the 1990s.

* [https://cr.yp.to/daemontools/setlock.html](https://cr.yp.to/daemontools/setlock.html)

* [http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/multilog.html](http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/multilog.html)

* [http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/upgrade.html](http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/upgrade.html)

* [http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/cyclog.xml#CO...](http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/cyclog.xml#COMPATIBILITY)

</comment><comment><USER27> The sponge example:

        sed "s/root/toor/" /etc/passwd | grep -v joey | sponge /etc/passwd

I think it can be rewritten as:

        sed -n '/joey/! s/root/toor/p' -i /etc/passwd

<comment> ISO-morphism Yes, but -i on sed is specific to GNU, I don't think it exists on BSD/OSX/busybox

<comment><USER28> -i is definitely not specificed by POSIX, but it supported on all those platforms with some small differences, for instance on OSX the backup extension (-i.bak) is not optional.

<comment><USER4> Amazingly, there is no portable way to use -i that works on both GNU and BSD sed implementations. Which means if you're writing a portable script, you can't use -i at all.

(Would love to be proved wrong on this)

<comment><USER29> According to Stack Overflow [1], this works:

        sed -i.bak 's/foo/bar/' filename

[1]: [https://stackoverflow.com/a/22084103/3266847](https://stackoverflow.com/a/22084103/3266847)

<comment><USER4> That works when specifying a backup extension, but not if you don't want to create a backup file.

        sed -i '' ...

works on BSD sed but not GNU. Meanwhile:

        sed -i'' ...
        sed -i ...

both work on GNU but not BSD.

<comment><USER29> Well, yes, you can't use it without creating a backup file, but it uses "-i" and is portable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What is the difference between `sponge` and redirecting with `>` (or `>>`)? Is it about better compatibility with pipes or something?

<comment><USER31> Well one thing is that if you've tried it you'll run into the problem he illustrates there that you are writing to the Sam file you are reading from, which won't work right.

My guess is sponge buffers all the input and then sends it to output once stdin is closed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> While we're on the topic and on the wave of modern riffs on classic tools, personally I'm pining for a remake of xargs—because I never can whack it into submission with anything more complex than `xargs rm`. Specifically, passing multiple arguments from the input to the called command apparently just can't be properly done, at least not on OSX.

<comment><USER33> parallel may be what you are looking for: [https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/GNU- Paral...](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/GNU- Parallel.html)

The defaults are a lot saner, and it's easier to pass arguments how you want.

<comment><USER32> Hmm, I guess I considered Unix utils rather narrowly specialized, so `parallel` meant 'my CPU got too many free cores' for me. I'll take a closer look at it, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Where is Msdos utility "ncd"? It was like "cd" but guessed from few character hint where you wanted to go. If the choice was not immediately obvious if offered a menu or a tree. I shortened it to "n". -- There was some linux utility but setting it up was annoyingly tedious, with lots of useless and cryptic options.

<comment><USER35> cd cannot be an external command in Unix-like systems, it has to be a shell built-in.

<comment><USER36> But cd can be invoked from a shell function (which doesn't create a subshell).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> A lot of these seem easily achieved in a POSIX shell manner, but most annoyingly to me

> sponge: soak up standard input and write to a file

I do that all the time...

cat > file.txt

Update: reading the comments on here, apparently sponge sucks up all content before opening the destination file which allows editing an input file in place. Minor advantage there.

<comment><USER38> The purpose of sponge is that you can do this:

grep foo file.txt | sponge file.txt

If you do this with redirections then file.txt will be truncated before it's been processed, leaving you with an empty file instead of what you wanted. Sponge collects its input first and then writes everything out at the end, so you can output to a file that was used as an input.

(Parent updated while I was writing. Oh well)

<comment><USER27> That doesn't seem like an efficient way to do it.

Commands that process file in place (sed -i) write to a temporary file in the same filesystem and then rename to the target file, which works if you want to process files that don't fit into memory.

<comment><USER38> I apologise, I was speaking loosely. I don't know if sponge collects input in memory or in a file. (Frankly I've never needed to care since the files I've ever needed this tool for have all been small)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wrote a util a bit like this when I realised there was no command for emptying a directory: [https://github.com/adamserafini/emptydir](https://github.com/adamserafini/emptydir)

<comment><USER2> What the difference in just deleting the whole directory and recreating it with `mkdir`. Or just do an `rm -rf dir/*`?

<comment><USER40> Hidden directories, links within dir... (usually, you want a "nofollow" default for destructive operations)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So this where errno comes from. I discovered it by accident on my system a few years ago and have been using it ever since. Really handy when working in C. Still no idea why I have that package installed though.

On another note

> pee: tee standard input to pipes

Goddammit guys!

</comment><comment><USER42> In case you are like me and didn't get the sponge example, the difference from a shell redirect is it doesn't truncate the input so allows in-place modification of the input/output file.

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it possible to make some of these moreutil commands aliases of some combination of coreutils commands?

</comment><comment><USER44> Some of these I do not find so useful and stuff, although I do use ts, and sometimes sponge.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's funny that `vidir` spawns `nano` by default on my system.

<comment><USER46> That'd be the Debian alternatives system in action.

$ update-alternatives --list editor

<comment><USER26> Or sensible-editor.

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-editors-and-pagers.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-editors-and-pagers.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> ts seems to fit the Unix philosophy of do one thing and do one thing well quite nicely. It works pretty well for writing to logs.

</comment><comment><USER48> > sponge

Why not use > file?

> mispipe

In bash there's PIPESTATUS for that.

<comment><USER49> Re sponge: the shell will open the output file for writing before invoking the command so in the example joey provides, /etc/passwd will be an empty file by the time sed opens it.

<comment><USER50> That makes sense but in the example provided, why can't we use sed with the in-line flag?

<comment><USER4> Because the -i flag works differently on GNU sed vs non-GNU sed and there is no way to use it portably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Can I use pee into a sponge?

</comment><comment><USER52> With the annoying half-way implementation of GNU parallel. Does not support the basic features, is not better nor faster, but still tramples over this namespace.

I really like many of the moreutils tools, but dealing with constant parallel breakage (kind of a Hadoop for dummies) is annoying.</comment>


Join Qubitro Private Beta - <AUTHOR> https://www.qubitro.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Qubitro is a fully managed SaaS IoT platform and looking for early adopters. Registration is open and accounts will be distributed gradually.</comment>


Proven practices for more effective, efficient peer code review - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/11-proven-practices-for-peer-review/

<comment><USER2> It's great to read well documented studies like this. Most blog posts on such topics tend to be based on very little evidence

</comment><comment><USER3> > Foster a good code review culture in which finding defects is viewed > positively

Any tips on fostering this sort of culture? I personally am vary grateful when others point out defects in my code, as I view it as an opportunity to learn and grow as a developer. I try to encourage other developers on my team to have this attitude as well, and most do. However, I've worked with developers in the past who view anything pointed out in code review as personal attacks rather than a chance to learn. What can I do to help avoid this?

<comment><USER4> I've worked in a couple of big projects (250+ developers) where we have introduced Gerrit Code Review [1] that has mandatory code reviews.

In all cases, there has been a lot of initial scepticism and worries.

Some things that I feel have contributed to people accepting code review, are: 1) Gerrit enforces code review, you have to get it done somehow, in order to get your changes in. It's integrated in the workflow. 2) You choose your own reviewers. 3) We have had a clear message, that code review is about communication, knowledge sharing and bug hunting is just an added bonus. And communication is always our biggest problem in big projects. Just by letting someone do code review of your changes, the knowledge inside the organization about the change has almost doubled. 4) We ask people to treat code review request as number one priority, as the changes can not get in before it.

Before Gerrit we tried to encourage the culture by using Reviewboard [2], but in our case it just wasn't used that much. People did not treat review request as a high priority. Maybe because it was not enforced and sometimes you'd do a review for a change that the developer already merged in.

It's interesting to see how small tricks can change peoples behaviour...

[1] [http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/](http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/) [2] [http://www.reviewboard.org/](http://www.reviewboard.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author preparation feature (#4) could indeed be useful, sometimes it takes quite a bit of time, especially if one is not very familiar with the system, to see how they fit in.

<comment><USER6> We have implemented this using something we call the overview meeting, or the architecture meeting.

It is an optionally requested meeting at the beginning of the review process. In this meeting, the goal, the general structure of the software and the general structure of the changes are discussed on a high level for about 10 minutes. Afterwards, we decide which classes are focus in the review, which classes are kinda part of the review but boring. Sometimes the review is even removed because the changes are too small.

Overall, it's a very helpful meeting, especially for people new on a project. Confusion changes into understanding and focus with just a few words and a simple informal diagram and from there, very precise and productive code reviews follow.

<comment><USER5> Yes, this sounds like it is well worth the time. Not that in my current project it would be unthinkable to go and ask the original coder for some extra info but people tend to be busy and it tends to feel a bit like wasting their time.

* minor correction to my original post - "they" refers to the code changes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The final tip being "use the tool I'm selling" makes the preceding 10 seem a lot less compelling. I'll stick to testing my code in prod, thanks.

<comment><USER8> The 10 first tips can still be applied without the 11th. And a mail thread can replace their tool. Less efficient, but free. And still more efficient than testing in prod.

<comment><USER9> And the 11th tip is to use a code review tool, not to specifically use the example one (although the plug/mention is a bit heavy-handed)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> //All code had to be reviewed before it was checked into the team's version control software.// Their first rule above is based on how incompetent their RTC tool sets are. I wouldn't say this is a best practice.

<comment><USER10> I would elaborate that, a version control system must assist in code review process by allowing to version control the unverified/reviewed code also in private branches. With RTC, it is hard enough to review the change history in trunk and its capabilities pale in comparison with say Tortoise SVN.

That's why I feel that their first rule of their study is based on the shortcomings in RTC's jazz version control system.

However the code review best practices came out of the study are solid. However they do not touch upon the version control practices.

<comment><USER11> Sorry for down-voting your original post, I misunderstood. Your clarification makes sense and I agree.</comment></comment></comment>


Who Microsoft Needs As CEO - <AUTHOR> http://greatpreneurs.com/who-microsoft-needs-ceo/

<comment><USER2> Good right up Edoardo. The challenge, of course, is how do they find another Marissa Meyer? I personally have hoped that they'd bring back Ray Ozzie in the position as CEO. He's got experience as a visionary in the tech industry, as well as having intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Microsoft.

Sadly, I haven't seen his name tossed around at all.</comment>


Inside Wall Street's Black Hole - what if Black Scholes pricing model is wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/02/19/Black-Scholes-Pricing-Model/?PMID= <comment><USER2> This article is rather naive. No one ever claimed the B-S model is "right". Everyone who uses it professionally knows it is only an approximation that works reasonably well in certain limited cases. Sort of like how a physicist might assume a complex object is spherical just to simplify the calculations.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Enterprise Stack? - <AUTHOR> Hi Everyone -- I am setting a new company (not a tech focussed / engineering / product company) and am wondering what people have found to be the best stack for collaboration across the company.  My needs specifically are:
1. Collaborative File Storage system (Box / DropBox / etc.) 2. Wiki or some other place we can collaborate on documents and keep organized.
Any thoughts?  There must be something better than SharePoint for the wiki! <comment><USER2> For a wiki, I like plain old Mediawiki. For file storage, I guess it depends somewhat on your use case(s).</comment>


Croteam releases Serious Sam Classics engine under GPL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Croteam-official/Serious-Engine <comment><USER2> This engine is (or was) awesome. I remember playing Serious Sam back in the day, in my old computer, with maximum quality settings and the game ran smoothly, with amazing details and the characteristic bright colours and open landscapes of these series. I was amazed by this. Back in the day I found it superior to Source and ages ahead from any DirectX game.

<comment><USER3> The amazing part was how it could render huge landscapes, with literally 100s of monsters on crappy hardware without skipping a beat\frame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Croteam makes awesome engines and awesome tools. Back in the Half Life/Quake 3 era when this game was originally released, it had by far the best tools for level editing, modeling, and scripting. Glad to see The engine reborn as an open source project!

<comment><USER5> Apparently, this trend continues. For Talos Principle, they programmed bots to solve the puzzles. These boys could learn how to solve puzzles by watching humans do it. They would then run the bots as an automated test suite to test if any of the puzzles were made impossible as a result of engine or level changes, and if there were any places where a bot could get stuck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> But not the Linux port, according to Ryan Gordon (icculus).

Somewhat hoping it's an oversight and not some legal hangup.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it could be compiled with wine?

In particular with WineLib:

"""

Winelib is a development toolkit which allows you to compile your Windows applications on Unix.

Most of Winelib code consists of the Win32 API implementation. Fortunately this part is 100 percent shared with Wine. The remainder consists of Windows compatible headers and tools like the resource compiler (and even these are used when compiling Wine).

Thanks to the above, Winelib supports most C and C++ source code, resource and message files, and can generate graphical or console applications as well as dynamic libraries.

"""

[https://www.winehq.org/docs/winelib-guide/winelib- introducti...](https://www.winehq.org/docs/winelib-guide/winelib-introduction)

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no need to do that since 15 years ago Icculus already made native Linux version for games on that engine. It's just question of time when he'll be allowed to release source code and manage to merge it into released codebase.

Also Winelib isn't something that magically make Windows-only software compile on Linux. It's just helper library that may make it easier, but it's usually wrong way to do things since it's not going to be run better than normal Wine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> CroTeam is one of the best game studios out there when it comes to dev- friendliness, up there with CCP and Riot.

Huge props for this release. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's great news, hopefully we will see projects/engines in the future using this, similar how Doom/Quake stuff is still being worked on.

I'm not familiar with the engine, is it any good and how does it compare to others?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's slightly updated version of engine their early games used in 2001 so it's older than Doom's 3 engine id Tech 4. Should be still interesting for fans and study how old games work though.

<comment><USER10> It's actually a good contrast to the biases of id tech 4 - bright, huge scale outdoor landscapes and arenas with hundreds of AI opponents vs. dark interiors with mood lighting and smaller engagements. It's an early example of heavy usage of "modular" model instances to add detail instead of relying on brush geometry to do everything. There are plenty of nifty features like split screen.

From an overall technology standpoint, both engines should prove worthy of study given the radically different focus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah. the good old days, when your master server could be written in less than 200 lines of Python. :-)

Amazing, Croteam. Thank you for this awesome gift!

</comment><comment><USER12> Well played Croteam! Seriously!

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh boy, I wish I could get Serious Sam on my Android phone. I've got a PSX emulator and that keeps me pretty happy, but this would complete everything!

<comment><USER14> Yes, but would it be playable without a mouse and keyboard?

<comment><USER15> Sounds like it would be an exercise in frustration.</comment></comment></comment>


Stuxnet's Secret Twin - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/19/stuxnets_secret_twin_iran_nukes_cyber_attack?page=full

<comment><USER2> Behind a paywall, unreadable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shows up fine for me. But I have javascript disabled, maybe that's why.</comment></comment>


The Library Card Project: The Ease of Forming Anonymous Companies in the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://gfintegrity.org/report/the-library-card-project/ <comment><USER2> Interesting historical tidbit: Many libraries had very lax requirements for library cards pre-9/11\. The PATRIOT Act forced them to collect more information. [https://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000060501&fullsite=true](https://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000060501&fullsite=true)

<comment><USER3> Ironic, since the Ad Council released commercials like these after 9/11 showing someone getting questioned after asking about a book in a library, and ending with "What if America wasn't America?":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgmBFb4jfjw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgmBFb4jfjw)

<comment><USER4> Why is it an unlisted video?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dfeojm-zlib Here's an example of what you need for a Delaware C-corp:

[https://www.incnow.com/delaware- corporation/](https://www.incnow.com/delaware-corporation/)

\- Name of the corporation

\- Name and address of the Registered Agent of the corporation (usually a mail forwarding service)

\- Statement of the type of business that the corporation will engage in

\- Number of shares of authorized stock that the corporation will issue

\- Par value of each share

\- _Name and signature of the incorporator_

\- Indemnification clause for breaches of Duty of Care

\- Allowance for Director Amended Bylaws

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Library card, i.e., Mountain View, California:

[https://library.mountainview.gov/selfreg](https://library.mountainview.gov/selfreg)

\- (photo identification)

\- (address verification)

\- Last Name: *

\- First Name:*

\- Middle Name:

\- Street Address:*

\- City, State, & Zip:*

\- Phone number:* (XXX-XXX-XXXX)

\- Birthdate:* (MM-DD-YYYY)

\- Email address:

* Required

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Required by: Sections 214-216 PATRIOT Act of 2001

[http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusa...](http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusapatriotact)

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house- bill/0316...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/03162)

<comment><USER5> At first I thought, this makes no sense. Why would the Patriot Act care more about who's getting a library card than incorporating when the dirty money is obviously flowing through the entity?

And then I realized, the government gets all of the ID information they need about the corporation the moment the entity needs to open a bank account. ID not just for the single corporator, but information about all of the officers and directors, and increasingly, about shareholders and major investors as well.

From the government's perspective, it actually does make quite a bit more sense to gather more (and better) information through the banking system at a later time. It's low risk and the additional information is significantly more valuable.

<comment><USER6> _And then I realized, the government gets all of the ID information they need about the corporation the moment the entity needs to open a bank account._

Only if the corporation has a US bank account. A Cayman Islands bank account, not so much.

There's too much tolerance of anonymous corporations. In California, it is a criminal misdemeanor to ask for a credit card number on line before the actual name and address of the business has been given to the consumer. BPC § 17538. Useful to know if you have a dispute.

<comment><USER7> There is absolutely _not_ too much tolerance of anonymous corporations. If anything, there's not enough. The majority of them are likely used for lawful reasons. What an absurd, anti-privacy statement.

<comment><USER8> it's good to hear there are legitimate use cases. Care to share some examples? For me, and likely many others, the nefarious ones are the first that come to mind.

Assuming incorporation benefactor details would be kept private by the state, the only legit use-case I can think of is protection from politically motivated actions by public bodies.

Or is the fear that no list can truly be kept private, even by the state, and it would eventually be hacked or leaked, violating privacy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This varies extremely across various states and cities. If you live in new York city for example, to incoroerate an llc, you need to take out a section in a news paper to say you created an llc of name so and so, every day, for like a week, within a year (if I remember right) of your incorporation. Across three news papers too.

If you go "OK fine, I will incorporate elsewhere, like Delaware", then NYC views you as a foreign investor and mandates you still do the news paper thing.

Here is the kicker though, the news paper you are allowed to do this in vary based on county. You live in queens? That's a solid few thousand dollars. Brooklyn? Also a few thousand. Staten island? Less than $300.

If you do not do this then the enforcement mechanism is that when you get sued, then a court can take back the corporate veil perk of your llc (llc is void so it turns into a sole proprietorship I think) and go after your personal assets if you loose a lawsuit.

<comment><USER10> > If you do not do this then the enforcement mechanism is that when you get > sued, then a court can take back the corporate veil perk of your llc (llc is > void so it turns into a sole proprietorship I think) and go after your > personal assets if you loose a lawsuit.

This is a common misconception.

In real life there is no actual penalty for not placing the ads. In the event you're challenged on it, the deficiency could be remedied by immediately placing the ad, but that literally will never happen.

It is, in fact, a special interest giveaway to some local publications, but there's no teeth to the law.

<comment><USER11> > It is, in fact, a special interest giveaway to some local publications, but > there's no teeth to the law.

So you have to hope no one wants to come after you? What would happen if this were actually in court? Overturned for lack of enforcement?

<comment><USER10> It has actually been in court.

The deficiency can be remedied by publication and it's fully retroactive.

So there are literally no consequences at all to ignoring it.

[https://eminutes.com/what-happens-if-you-ignore-new- york%E2%...](https://eminutes.com/what-happens-if-you-ignore-new- york%E2%80%99s-llc-publication-requirement)

[https://www.newyorksmallbusinesslaw.com/new_york_small_busin...](https://www.newyorksmallbusinesslaw.com/new_york_small_business_l/2017/01/failure- to-publish-llc.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Went to rent a mailbox at the UPS Store. My drivers license and passport weren't enough identification. I needed something additional. The owner suggested I get a library card and then he could rent me the mailbox. What did the library accept as identification? My drivers license. That was all. Seemed like a weird little bit of bureaucratic red tape that accomplished pretty much nothing.

<comment><USER13> California DMV wouldn't take my lease because it was just a printout. Changed my address with Chase from my phone while in line (no verification), walked over to the branch to get a certified statement with the new address, walked it back into the DMV, got the address on my license.

The credential that actually proves where I live is rejected while the one that just repeats my arbitrary inputs is accepted!

I understand there's a strong deterrent but any reasonably smart person could defraud this. They seem not to be even trying.

<comment><USER14> > The credential that actually proves where I live is rejected while the one > that just repeats my arbitrary inputs is accepted!

A lease doesn't prove where you live, though I generally agree with your point here. That being said, I think most people are fine or even supportive of them seeming to not even try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sure you don't need much 'info' to create a corporation. But if said corporation has any income/employees the reporting and maintenance requirements are far greater than maintaining a library card.

<comment><USER16> > _if said corporation has any income /employees_

Income, opens a bank account, takes out a loan, _et cetera_. Incorporation _per se_ has no need to be intensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't see the problem with this.

With a library card, a person can act irresponsibly with public property.

With a corporation, a person can act irresponsibly with private property.

<comment><USER18> If the scope of potential damage were limited to the assets owned by said corporation, perhaps.

In reality, a corporation so isolated would have no reason to exist.

<comment><USER19> In reality, a corporation with no documentation or operating history will have a hard time getting access to other people's assets. The requirements to actually operate a corporation are a lot more stringent than the requirements to create one on paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The information for California is incorrect. At least in San Francisco:

\- you can get a library card without any proof of address (with this type of card, you can only check out one physical item at a time: [https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/129952](https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/129952))

\- Phone number and email address are each optional fields on the application form: [https://sflib1.sfpl.org/selfreg](https://sflib1.sfpl.org/selfreg)

</comment><comment><USER21> A library is loaning you property, usually collateral-free. A corporation is just a placeholder essentially for the activities it will perform, each of which will likely have far more stringent requirements than a library card.

<comment><USER22> A library is not loaning you property, it is a public good which you already paid for and have a right to use, the administrative overhead is for the convenience of all library users.

A corporation's activities are unknowable but not being a real person it is not entitled to an assumption of good faith and there is no particular right to create new legal entities. We should definitely know who the beneficial owners of any corporation are to reduce the potential for fraud.

<comment><USER23> Other people also have a right to use. How do you prevent the tragedy of the commons without knowing who has what?

<comment><USER24> > How do you prevent the tragedy of the commons without knowing who has what?

Does this exact argument not apply to the "anonymous" corporations mentioned in the article?

<comment><USER23> Registering a corporation doesn't deny others utility of a communally owned good.

<comment><USER24> It does if that corporation is used to conceal income in a way that reduces the local tax base, which could negatively affect the utility of nearly all communally owned goods/services.

<comment><USER23> Corporations still have to file taxes, unclear how corporate registration requirements lead to tax fraud.

<comment><USER24> Tax avoidance, not tax fraud.

The article was about the ease of setting up series of shell companies, which can easily move money around the world in a hard-to-detect way in order to conceal profits made by people, with no way to determine who those people are or what their tax obligations are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This isn't true.

Here are the instructions for incorporating in Delaware: [https://corp.delaware.gov/howtoform/](https://corp.delaware.gov/howtoform/)

A form an cover sheet are required. Plus, there is an obligation to submit an annual tax filing with lots of information.

Here is the online application for a library card in Orange County, CA: [https://web.ocpl.org/n/LibraryCardApplication/](https://web.ocpl.org/n/LibraryCardApplication/)

I'm sure things vary state by state, but I'll leave that for others to comment.

</comment><comment><USER26> reminds me of other reading from today. You can get a US National (healthcare) Provider Identifier (NPI) without any verification:

 _> @Aetna @Cigna @UHC 27/ Medicare officials declined to be interviewed about Williams. But in a statement, they acknowledged that the agency doesn't verify whether an NPI applicant is a medical provider or has a criminal history._

[https://twitter.com/marshall_allen/status/115224361495057612...](https://twitter.com/marshall_allen/status/1152243614950576128)

 _> @Aetna @Cigna @UHC 16/ He kept getting new NPIs. For every application, Williams also obtained a new employer identification number, used for tax purposes.

But he never hid who he was, using his real name, address and phone number on the applications.

Medicare gave him 20 NPIs!_ [https://twitter.com/marshall_allen/status/115224148431540633...](https://twitter.com/marshall_allen/status/1152241484315406338)

edited: provided the NPI meaning.

<comment><USER27> NPI: National (healthcare) Provider Identifier.

[https://www.asha.org/practice/reimbursement/hipaa/NPI/](https://www.asha.org/practice/reimbursement/hipaa/NPI/)

<comment><USER26> thank you, I've update with the acronym meaning

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Preface: I keyword searched for 'county' & 'counties' on this page & didn't see my point raised.

The article compares library cards state by state. However, I've never heard of a state issued library card, only county, city or other local municipality.

My point is I'm not clear where the researchers found 50 sets of state library card requirements.

There's ~3000 counties and at least 4000 cities in the US. Somewhere in those numbers ought to be how many different sets of library card requirements, there are in the US.

</comment><comment><USER29> > To obtain a library card in any state in the U.S., the applicant must be the > person who will ultimately be controlling/using the card, and a significant > amount of identifying information must be provided by the person to the > state in order to obtain the library card.

This is nonsesne, or at least was here in Sunnyvale California. I walked in with a phone bill. No ID, nothing else. In hindsight it probably could have been anyone's bill, or even a fake.

</comment><comment><USER30> Based on the title, I thought this was going to be a hackeresque how-to style thing, distilling techniques that the rich use and getting them into the hands of every day people. But no, rather it's a call for legislation that will stifle less-moneyed actors, keeping the privilege reserved for the elite. The end result would undoubtedly contain a loophole akin to FACTA's directly-held art exemption.

</comment><comment><USER31> > To form a company in any state in the U.S., it is not necessary to identify > or provide any information about the person(s) who will be ultimately be > controlling the company. In some cases it isn't even necessary to provide > information about who will be managing the company and, where some > information about managers (i.e. officers or directors) is required, it is > very limited.

That's actually great!

</comment><comment><USER32> Creating companies should be as frictionless as possible. You shouldn't need to provide much information at all, and it should be extremely cheap. Some states do this pretty well, others not so much.

I'd rather a library card take almost no information as well, but you could run into issues with stealing, so it makes sense that it would take more.

</comment><comment><USER33> Starting a business should be something anyone in the US can do without hiring lawyers and wading through complex paperwork.

In Massachusetts you can even download a fill-in-the-blank articles of organization and look up the filed articles for any existing company online if you want to see how others are doing it.

</comment><comment><USER34> One pays to become a corporation. One gets a service from a library card. Makes some sense.

</comment><comment><USER35> It says "significant" amount of info for a library card. Yet every library I've ever registered at just needed a piece of mail with your name on it. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great, I'll get my kids corporations for their 7th birthday.

<comment><USER33> This could actually be a really fun project to do with your child. It's a pretty inexpensive way to teach them about how companies work, the basics of organization, and even introduce them to the idea of taxes.

Registering a simple company in your local state, issuing stock, designating your board, doing your meetings and minutes, filing your $0 tax return, then dissolving it would probably only cost you ~$100 - $200 in supplies and fees.

<comment><USER37> Not in California, where you pay $800 annually just for existing.

<comment><USER33> Since the company is never going to actually conduct business in California I wonder if you could register in another state like Massachusetts and skip the foreign qualification in CA?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The reasons for requesting robust identification for those filingbfor incorporation, dismissed by several comments here, are given in the first parafraph of the linked report:

 _In early April 2016 the largest cache of private documents in history were leaked to journalists and subsequently exposed the shadowy world of offshore tax fraud, money laundering and corruption that hides behind anonymous shell corporations. The documents, which included email, incorporation papers and other private communications, were from a little-known Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca and were released by the nternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists which had received them from a whistleblower. The ensuing scandal followed two others before it – Lux Leaks and Swiss Leaks which were related to bank-enabled tax evasion – but dwarfed them in the sheer amount of data involved._

[https://secureservercdn.net/188.8.131.52/34n.8bd.myftpuploa...](https://secureservercdn.net/220.127.116.11/34n.8bd.myftpupload.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/03/GFI-Library-Card-Project.pdf)

The Securities Act of 1933, setting among the few national registration requirements in the USstates as its basis, following an episode of history in which such need was established:

 _To provide full and fair disclosure of the character of securities sold in interstate and foreign commerce and through the mails, and to prevent frauds in the sale thereof, and for other purposes._

[http://legislink.org/us/pl-73-22](http://legislink.org/us/pl-73-22)

The history of Delaware incorporation law makes clear at numerous point obligations for good-faith dealings and power to pierce the legal fictions of incorporation:

 _It is well settled that a court of equity may disregard formalities and break through the shell of fictions in order to prevent, or undo fraud. ..._

 _Directors of a corporation are trustees for the stockholders, and their acts are governed by the rules applicable to such a relation, which exact of them the utmost good faith and fair dealing, especially where their individual interests are concerned. "_

"A History of Delaware Corporation Law" [http://www.djcl.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/A-History-of-...](http://www.djcl.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/07/A-History-of-Delaware-Corporation-Law1.pdf)

(Though concern for general public trust is notably absent.)

See also KYC. (know your customer) laws in banking.

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

Note that incorporating is not _necessary_ to run a business -- sole proprieterships and partnerships exist. Incorporation extends specific legal protections by the state in return for net social benefit. In theory.

</comment><comment><USER38> they should just mail a library card to everyone who is entitled to it? or maybe just check your id when you try to borrow a book

</comment><comment><USER39> from a "which has greater social liability" the title makes sense, in that the circumstances are counter intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER40> haha...knew what state would be the focus without even opening the link.

I'm not even in the US and we see a ton of Delaware entities.

</comment><comment> starlig-ht Can a corporation get a library card?

<comment><USER27> Yes, e.g., [https://thelibrary.org/about/compcard.pdf](https://thelibrary.org/about/compcard.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't see any particular reason why the identification process for a corporation should be more stringent than a library card. What is astonishing to me is that both are meaningfully more stringent than voting. In Minnesota for example, all one needs is another registered voter to vouch for them.

[https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/register-to- vot...](https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/register-to- vote/register-on-election-day/)

<comment><USER17> _In Minnesota for example, all one needs is another registered voter to vouch for them._

My thoughts on this are old school. Like 1700's old school.

A person's right to vote exists with or without documentation. A piece of paper, an entry in a ledger, or a row in a database has no bearing on whether that right exists, or should be exercised.

In many of the states where I've lived (13 so far), all that was needed to vote in the absence of identification was to sign an affidavit stating that I am who I say I am. The people at the polling station could _ask_ for ID, but they couldn't _require_ it. It's up to the people who handle the vote (often the county clerk or county board of elections) to decide later if my vote was valid or not.

A lot of that is changing these days as the concept of being constantly tracked, monitored, and tabulated becomes normalized in America.

Just a generation ago we made fun of the Soviet Union and various totalitarian regimes for having police stop people for no reason and demanding, "papers, please." Now there are people who think it's perfectly OK to require domestic passports ("Real ID" and similar) just to walk down the street.

I wonder if two generations from now people will think we're old and crazy because we don't think it's OK for the government to require a chip be implanted in our brains so our thoughts can be monitored by bureaucratic minders.

It's sounds like tinfoil hat sci-fi slippery slopism, but so would today's facial recognition in airports to people just 50 years ago.

<comment><USER42> > My thoughts on this are old school. Like 1700's old school. A person's right > to vote exists with or without documentation. A piece of paper, an entry in > a ledger, or a row in a database has no bearing on whether that right > exists, or should be exercised.

How do we ensure non-citizens aren't voting? We accept many visitors - refugees, H1B, tourists, F1/I-20, etc. None are granted voting rights.

<comment><USER43> We make it a felony.

""She can own property; she can serve in the military; she can get a job; she can pay taxes. But she can't vote, and she didn't know that.""

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/us/illegal-voting-gets- te...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/us/illegal-voting-gets-texas- woman-8-years-in-prison-and-certain-deportation.html)

<comment><USER44> In case it was not obvious: the vote is for adult U.S. citizens; not for permanent resident aliens, not for visitors, not for illegal aliens, not for children.

It is a tragedy that this was not made abundantly clear to this woman, assuming she truly believed that she was permitted to vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> As it should be.

<comment><USER46> Can you expand on this? I'm wondering what your reasoning is for requiring more or less info in either case.

<comment><USER45> Commerce is good and barriers to it should be minimal. Libraries are community property, paid for by tax payers. If you are going to borrow community property it is not a small thing.

Almost anyone can walk into a library, pick up a book, and read it there. So there is still relatively good access to information. It is the borrowing part that creates the red tape.

Even if it is simpler to create a company than get a library card, I guarantee as soon as that company tries to borrow money there will be plenty of paperwork :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This comparison is stupid. Corporate registration is explicitly public information. Librarians are notorious for the fervency with which they protect the personal information of library patrons.

<comment><USER48> If information is collected then it can be stolen. Even if it is not permanently (or even temporarily) stored.

<comment><USER47> Irrelevant, but even if I humor you: The PATRIOT act does not require libraries collect any more personal information than the government already has. The comparison is utterly meaningless.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Think Tank – Web design and development inspiration and project ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.pauldessert.com/think-tank/

<comment><USER2> I would recommend filling in real address details in Mailchimp. After I entered my email and was taken to the confirmation page I immediately regretted it when I saw the "1234 B St LA, California 90210" address. Not a good signal for legitimacy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. I work from home and I didn't want my address public. I understand your concern.

<comment><USER3> P.O. boxes are your friend

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like others, I also like to see a sample before sign-up. Also, there need to be assurance that given email won't be used for other purposes/shared with others/spam ...etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please see my comment above about this. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> At least on iOS Chrome, the color of the email field is white on white which makes it hard to see what you are typing.

A preview on what to expect (e.g. The last email that was sent out) would be nice, too.

<comment><USER6> Same with FF 35.0 on ubuntu 14.04

<comment><AUTHOR> damn. sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't enter email on both FF and Chrome.. EDIT: actually, can, just both the text and background is white.. WHY???

<comment><AUTHOR> Still looking into this. It's weird. It looks good in FF on my localhost, but I see what you're talking about when it's on the live server. EDIT: Fixed. It was a CSS bug

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> @everyone asking for a sample. I have no intention of spamming you. There aren't any examples because it's a new newsletter. There is nothing to show yet. I'll add an archive section to the site and post old newsletters a few days after I send them out.

Those that have signed up, thank you! You should see the first newsletter later next week.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd want to see a sample before I signed up.

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be nice to have an example of what an email would look like (even 1 screenshot on 1 page would be alright for me).

<comment><USER10> Ditto on this. I have no idea what I'm signing up for...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I need inspiration at specific time and for that a periodic email is not going to cater me well. Would you consider delivering this in some other format - for example online gallery that is available when I need it?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now I'm going to keep it as an email list. If the participation is high enough, I'll start posting people's completed projects to the site. Kind of a "completed projects" gallery

<comment><USER12> Why not make the Mailchimp archive public? Folks can subscribe if they want, get a feed, or view the archive. Content is the same either way. And that'd solve the "I'd like to see what I'm subscribing to" questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. Will do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can we send you ideas for the list?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! My contact info is at the bottom of the "Think Tank" page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a free, open source software on github. Is this the kind of thing that would be featured in the tips for designers & developers? It's a bit hard to figure out what kind of tips, without a sample / preview of the content you're going to send...</comment>


The Wii is dead, long live motion controls - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2011/11/29/xbox-360-sells-nearly-1m-consoles-in-biggest-week-in-xbox-history.aspx

<comment><USER2> URL biased as hell, its from Microsoft Technet</comment>


Publication of Hiroshima in the New Yorker (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/hiro.php <comment><USER2> Here's the article from 1946: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima)

<comment> King-Aaron That was a pretty unsettling thing to read, thanks for sharing though.</comment></comment>