Ask HN: East bay vs SF vs Palo Alto - <AUTHOR>

So I'm moving to the bay area in July.. I'd like to live in a hacker friendly area where it'd be convenient/easy for me to network with other hackers.
Does it really matter? Or are there certain areas in the bay that are much more convenient for networking/startup related events than others..
I've been leaning towards the east bay but only because it looks like it offers the best combination of afford-ability and city living with good proximity to the city.
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> SF has great places like SOMA, but if you stick around Mountain View and Palo Alto you will be in the heart of Silicon Valley. You'll find a lot of meetups in those three places. East Bay is where I live. It also has meetups, but not nearly as many. However, It takes me 15 minutes to get into Palo Alto and it is a lot cheaper to live over here than in those other places. When I go to SF I would rather take Bart in than drive. Parking can be such a huge bitch if there is a game going on. So, I am close to Bart and it takes me 40min to get into SF when I need to, which is a couple times a week. It's around $80 for a monthly pass on Bart.

</comment><comment><USER3> Web type jobs are in SF. The Peninsula has web jobs and non-web jobs but still cutting edge. The East Bay much less so. I would NOT recommend commuting from Berkeley to Palo Alto. I've lived in all 3 places and much prefer the Palo Alto area. My son OTOH prefers SF.

</comment><comment><USER4> Id definitely focus on San Francisco & Peninsula(area between SF & Palo Alto). Most of the jobs will be in these two areas(sorry east bay,but emphasis is on most).

While living in San francisco is convenient, the areas with nice climate are generally more expensive(SOMA, Portrero Hill). But youre in the middle of startup hustle and bustle...

If you get a place in the Peninsula near a Caltrain or a Bart Station, you can get to South of Market/Downtown in no more than 25 minutes(Baby bullet express from San Mateo to SF).

</comment><comment><USER5> I've lived in Berkeley, SOMA, Mountain View, now in san jose.

I'd recommend you live at the tail end of bart in the peninsula. Technical networking tends to be better in sbay but the most interesting events are in sf. East bay doesn't compare unless you're somehow involved with ucb.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sf is slightly more hipster than PA. More networking events are in SF. Pa has more of a stanford feel.

Both are very strong, for starting a company.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't have any suggestions as I was going to ask the same thing (looking at July as well).

</comment><comment><USER8> I live within walking distance of downtown Palo Alto and really enjoy it. It's cheaper than San Francisco in most instances and you still have a high concentration of startup people. You can't go more than a few blocks without seeing a YC-er.

Of course, you don't have the massive social scene of San Francisco, but you're a quick ~30 minute CalTrain ride away.</comment>


Weaning yourself off jQuery (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://substack.net/weaning_yourself_off_jquery

<comment><USER2> > As programmers build up applications up from lots of tiny components, if > every component included a vendored jquery version, the total javascript > size quickly baloons into multi-megabytes. When the jquery version gets > pegged, version incompatibilities arise that likewise create redundancy > issues. When the jquery version is left to float or its use is demanded > externally in the documentation, this also does not scale well and makes it > cumbersome and error-prone to use tiny pieces.

jQuery has a stable API, a clear migration path and a working compatibility layer. jQuery is well documented and well known, if you have an issue you can get help easily.

I don't think the above are true for most small NPM modules.

The author blames jQuery for a deficiency of the NPM: If you have module A and B, which include the same version of module C, then C gets loaded twice. Not all useful modules can fit into a few kilobytes.

People are pretty quick to jump on the jQuery-hate bandwagon, the reality is: it's still a great tool for building amazing applications.

<comment><USER3> this post gives a nice overview on native DOM functions. not every app needs JQuery otherwise we would not have Zepto, SnapSVG, RaphaelJS, ...</comment></comment>


Set up your private Git hosting with Gogs - <AUTHOR> http://obahua.com/setup-your-private-git-hosting-with-gogs/

<comment><USER2> Noticed the release notes mention a forced password reset for all users because of a hash change.

Couldn't that be avoided by storing the hash type/version, and silently upgrade on the next successful login (when the password is available briefly in plaintext in the login request)?

<comment><USER3> This is what Django does. Works very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Besides the ease of installation, the thing that most impresses me is the very low resource usage and amazing responsiveness on even a tiny VPS.

        PID USER      PRI  NI  VIRT   RES   SHR S CPU% MEM% TIME+  Command
      31378 smw        20   0  262M 11516  5712 S  0.0  0.6 0:00.00 ./gogs web

11 MB of RSS? Quoting user 'pas' in an earlier comment, Gitlab wants about 2GB.

I have no idea how well it scales to a large user base, but I feel like this is going to become the go to option for side projects where you just want to share some private code with a friend or two.

<comment><USER5> How many repos do you have ? I don't expect gogs to come even close to what gitlab requires but I'd love to see some numbers.

<comment><AUTHOR>
      PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND

15300 git 20 0 898m 36m 5280 S 0.0 3.7 3:48.61 gogs

Data from try.gogits.org, Gogs database has 78 users, 41 repositories

<comment><USER6> If you insert three or more spaces at the left column of your submitted text, the columns will line up when the post is displayed in the HN interface, and you can have rows directly beneath each other with no intervening linefeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm probably an awful person, but I laughed out loud when I saw this config key: DISENABLE_REGISTERATION

<comment><USER8> You can become a slightly better person by changing the line and making a pull request.

It's obvious that he is not a native speaker. Neither am I of course :-)

<comment><USER7> Right you are, pull request complete!

[https://github.com/gogits/gogs/pull/87](https://github.com/gogits/gogs/pull/87)

<comment><USER9> Great to see this quick conversion from simple criticism to actual contribution!

Congrats on the positive influence and the step forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gitlab is an option as well.

I found the README in their Github repo has additional info: [https://github.com/gogits/gogs](https://github.com/gogits/gogs)

It seems like they intend to manipulate git entirely from Go. Interesting stuff!

<comment><USER11> Serious question about Gitlab and something that has always scared me away: How does it perform on a resource-constrained system? A lot of the hardware requirements[1] are presented in terms of <x> users, but the "minimum" RAM requirement seems really high. If I wanted to use this with a small team (~20 users) in a resource constrained environment it seems like it'd be way overkill.

[1]: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/inst...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/install/requirements.md)

<comment><USER12> Good point, I've just changed the RAM requirement since it was a bit outdated, see [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/commit/01799721dc6cb...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/commit/01799721dc6cbc1dbfbd72b2b0d5fc128ac03da9) for the change and new version on [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/inst...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/install/requirements.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Given the code churn for this project, it looks like they are working on this full-time.

Weekly Churn

[http://screenshots.gitsense.com/gogits-weekly- churn.html](http://screenshots.gitsense.com/gogits-weekly-churn.html)

Monthly Churn

[http://screenshots.gitsense.com/gogits-monthly- churn.html](http://screenshots.gitsense.com/gogits-monthly-churn.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> GitBlit is also a good option: [http://gitblit.com/](http://gitblit.com/)

<comment><USER15> Second this. I use GitBlit with my team. It is a very good fit for Java teams new to git who can't let code out if the firewall especially if most of the admins are strong in Windows; specifically I mean it is good for small teams in big corps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Somewhat off-topic, but I notice they are using xorm as their golang ORM. Anyone have experience with this? I use gorm, and I wonder how xorm compares.

</comment><comment><USER17> Complicate deployment is one of the major reason for me to stay away from using Self-hosted Git Server for my small team.

This one looks really interesting and promising. Being open source project is another major bonus.

<comment><USER15> Take a look @ GitBlit ([http://www.gitblit.com/](http://www.gitblit.com/)) It can run with only a dependency on JRE 1.6 or better.

<comment><USER18> And Gogs will run with no dependencies... [https://github.com/gogits/gogs#purpose](https://github.com/gogits/gogs#purpose)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks much easier to deploy than Gitlab.

<comment><USER20> I was actually just thinking about how this clone would make a good blog post pointing out the pain that hovers around many substantial ruby/rails projects versus other tool sets. To be able to download the binary and just run a web app ... amazing. Considering the last time I tried to run Gitlab all kinds of libraries didn't install properly and workers wouldn't come up when they were supposed to.

<comment><USER12> Rails apps are indeed a pain to install, that is why we made packages [https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/](https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/) with Omnibus, we don't have a blog post about it but there is a video discussion [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTmpKudd- Oo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTmpKudd-Oo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket](https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket) is an option, too

</comment><comment><USER22> I've recently installed cgit. I'm really happy with it's simplicity and easy of use.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like it, but the blatant copy of the Github design makes me wonder: could one run a public Gogs instance ?

Anyway, that's a really slick work. Once again Go shines and make that project super easy to install.

<comment><USER23> To be honest, I would say that Gitlab is more of a copy of Github than this project, and so far I haven't seen any problem with Gitlab.</comment></comment>


A History of Individually Wrapped Cheese Slices (1979) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www56.homepage.villanova.edu/david.nawrocki/Arnold%20Nawrocki%20IWS%20Paper.pdf <comment><USER2> This topic brings up the issue of wrapping in Japan. Japan is notorious for having excessive wrapping. Individually wrapped cookies in a box with a plastic tray to hold each cookie. The bottom half of the box is sealed with a plastic tear off cover. The top of the box slides over. Then the entire box is wrapped in paper. If you purchase if they will then put it in a branded paper bag. If it's raining they will then put that paper bag in a plastic bag to protect it from the rain. That's 6 levels of wrapping.

It's a cultural thing AFAICT. Sure people speak out once in while but it seems unlikely to change without some major major concerted national PR effort against it, getting celebrities, politicians, etc all on board pushing for months or years and possibly even organizing boycotts until things change. But, if someone wants to do their part of make a small dent here well, here's a project you can try to take on.

<comment><USER3> > some major major concerted national PR effort against it, getting > celebrities, politicians, etc all on board pushing for months or years

Why do you need PR when the parties responsible for all this wrapping are _corporations_? It's not the dagashi down the street giving you six layers of wrapping.

When big corporations are doing something you don't like, you don't use PR to fix it. We've had plenty of PR about recycling in the US and it's affected _consumers_ plenty and _corporations_ not—at—all (except where the responsibility ends up in the hands of individual consumers, like office managers.)

No, the way to make _corporations_ change their behaviour, is to just make a law about it. For example, a "consumer waste reduction corporate tax incentive." It's the bottom line that says that extra wrapping is good (for some reason); so it's the bottom line that needs to be convinced otherwise.

<comment><USER4> > When big corporations are doing something you don't like, you don't use PR > to fix it.

> No, the way to make corporations change their behaviour, is to just make a > law about it.

But for example society in the UK and US (not sure where else) has basically just decided that plastic straws are not acceptable, and major corporations have made huge changes in a matter of months to remove them. That's much faster than implementing a law.

<comment><USER5> It's not altruism, they're just getting ahead of changes in the law.

The EU announced[1] they were looking at banning single use plastics. It was after that announcement that lots of companies annoucned they were making changes. By getting ahead of the law they can brand it as doing something they didn't need to do. (Much like how UK phone companies announced they were "abolishing roaming charges" because they did it a few months before it was an enforced law.

They get to advertise their 'green' credentials while not moving themselves to an uncompetitive position in the long term.

[1] [https://www.ft.com/content/e1168020-627a-11e8-90c2-9563a0613...](https://www.ft.com/content/e1168020-627a-11e8-90c2-9563a0613e56)

<comment><USER4> All of what you're describing sounds like PR to me. The fact of the matter is Starbucks are reducing plastic straws and there is no law telling them to do so.

<comment><USER6> It's partly PR, and partly the ability to do things on your own terms. You do not want regulations forced on you, that is bad for the bottom line. You need to be in control. This is the story with self-regulation across industries.

<comment><USER7> _> You do not want regulations forced on you, that is bad for the bottom line._

Also, self regulation can be safer in terms of come-back.

Where under an external regulatory pressure a misstep might result in some form of fine or at least a public outing. With self regulation many things can be more easily wrapped up with "oops, butter fingers! sorry, won't happen again" and all that might be more readily kept internal rather that having some form of issue reporting requirement enforced by the regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > a small 5# process cheese cooker.

Things like this make me wish I had a more rural lifestyle and had the space for stuff like this. Cooking is great and all, you can do an _awful_ lot with just tools you can store in a kitchen. But experimenting with _ingredients_ , and man, _tools_ is a whole 'nother level.

YouTube channels like Alex French Guy Cooking where he makes his own mozzarella, worked with other YouTube makers to create the best pasta roller ever made, a massive, amazing meat tenderizing mallet, and just the YouTube makers in general almost have me wanting to rent my one bedroom condo out so I can go live out in the sticks and buy cheap tools like a small 5# process cheese cooker, tear off my shirt and Hulk-transform into a mad scientist.

<comment><USER9> The post scarcity economy is going to be so cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If plastic waste on cheese slices bothers you from environmental perspective, please do not google Japanese candy / sweets as those come individually wrapped, packaged in more plastic, inside a box, wrapped by plastic. When I was first introduced to Japanese sweets I could not wrap, tehee, my head around the reasons for why this is happening.

<comment><USER11> AFAIK the individual wrapping is for sharing the snacks. In east asia you get chastised if you buy a snack for yourself ("are you gonna eat it alone?"). That explains the little plastic trays under the cookies too. Just open the paper box and slide off the tray in front of your friends. But then, isn't it ironic that this group-centered practice leads to a selfish, polluting outcome?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't comment on cheese slices, but as somebody who lives alone and has an appetite resembling a small rodent, I very much appreciate individually wrapped perishables, especially when said wrapping is recyclable/compostable.

I throw out a lot less when I can buy large quantities of smaller "perishable units" at once, vesus shopping little and often.

</comment><comment><USER13> Given the problems with plastic waste how can anyone justify individually wrapped cheese slices? (Constructive answers only please. I am genuinely interested in seeing if there are any arguments in favour.)

<comment><USER14> Individually wrapped cheese slices could lead to less spoilage.

<comment><USER15> Except in practice individual slices all go bad at (roughly) the same time. If a block of cheese goes moldy you can just slice off the mold and keep going. Cheese goes bad outside-in, pre-sliced cheese has way more surface area.

<comment><USER16> Processed cheese dries out _very_ rapidly when exposed to the dry air inside a refrigerator.

<comment><USER15> So does nonprocessed cheese. You'll want to store it in something nonpermeable like modern cheese paper, or a small plastic bag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a fascinating history. The trial and process of innovation here is one any engineer can appreciate. Unfortunately individually wrapped cheese goes against two things I've removed or reduced in my life: 1. Processed foods 2. Plastics.</comment>


Wildlife Services, a US agency planting 'cyanide bombs' to kill predators - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/26/cyanide-bombs-wildfire-services-idaho <comment><USER2> A few years ago I read Coyote America, by Dan Flores. A large portion of this book is dedicated to Wildlife Services efforts to cull the Coyote. They've been fantastically unsuccessful in this effort, most likely due to behavioral quirk of the species. Coyotes can identify specific individuals by voice, and if one of those voices disappears from the nightly call it causes the females to enter estrus and breed. So if you kill a Coyote multiple more Coyotes literally spring up in their place.

<comment><USER3> That's intriguing, could you provide a link? If all females can just reproduce more, I would expect one would break ranks and increase her own fitness by maxing out regardless.

<comment><USER4> I was also intriqued and put ~10min looking into it. This study[1] seems to suggest that although reproduction rates might increase modestly when the population is reduced, high immigration rates are the bigger factor. If anyone finds anything on the (voices disappearing)->(estrus) mechanism described above I'd like to see it, sounds really interesting.

[1] [https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwm...](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.21329)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They shouldn't be allowed to place them without notifying people beforehand, preferably by getting those people's signatures.

According to the article, they're nowhere near that level of notification. They certainly didn't notify the local emergency response personnel, which is just negligent.

These things have the same failure mode as landmines: If forgotten, they might kill some random person years later, and at that point, locating and removing them costs orders of magnitude more than placing them.

At the very least, there needs to be a public map of where these things are, and an 5-10' ring of signs at eye level around each one.

The tiny sign they place at ground level on top of the trap could easily be lost or overlooked, and it won't inform people with pets to stay out of the area until it's too late.

<comment><USER6> > They shouldn't be allowed to place them without notifying people beforehand

They shouldn't be allowed to use them, period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article seems like a hell of a reach. I have a master's in Fisheries Science that was funded in part by FWS, though I no longer work in that field, so I may not be entirely objective.

That said, the simple reality is that managing native species and how they interact with society has to be done. Whether it's suburban coyotes killing off family pets (a big problem in my suburb at the moment) or rural clashes between ranchers and wolves, you cannot just let the situation unfurl without official intervention. Allowing civilians to handle it results in endangerment and extinction, and refusing to handle it results in ecological damage and risk to both people and livestock.

Now, if the only point is that better training and communication protocols for these Federal employees is in order, sure I buy that for basically every Federal department. Making out like FWS is some pet-assassinating Kremlin is pretty low-effort clickbait. The reason nobody's heard of them is because nobody much cares about what does or doesn't happen to coyotes and deer until it impacts them.

<comment><USER8> Simple solution: let ranchers shoot problematic species.

<comment><USER9> In Colorado you can shoot anything you want if it is harassing your cattle, even family dogs. An example from my hometown:

[https://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/da-will-not-press- charge...](https://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/da-will-not-press-charges- after-kremmling-rancher-shoots-kills-neighbors-husky-puppy/)

<comment><USER10> Seems like an overreaction but some dogs behave very aggressively around cattle and other animals due to instinct. Its entirely possible that the dog was not responsive to commands, and was going after the cattle in a serious way. A 4 month old husky is not a tiny puppy. There's more to this story than meets the eye. I highly doubt the neighbor shot the dog without trying anything else first.

<comment><USER11> Where my parents live in the countryside, some people -- like kids visiting their parents for the month -- will bring their dogs and let them roam around. Dogs will form up in a pack of 2 or more and kill things on your property, like chickens. Or they'll instigate larger animals like the emus and end up biting/breaking the animal's ankle.

You can scare them away easily (dogs are generally skittish) but they'll come back.

I've also learned that some people are completely unreasonable when it comes to their pets, basically believing that "it's just a dog" and you're the asshole if you can't handle it being on your property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's a description of the m44 device: [https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m...](https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m44-device.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Interestingly, the picture in the AP article above and the one in the manual do not match. The one in your link has a danger sign, but the one in the article has no such sign.

I wonder if the one that killed that dog had a sign.

<comment><USER14> Even a danger sign won't stop a dog or say a small child.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember reading about these years ago and I'm surprised that they're still in use. There's definitely a need to control wildlife populations, but doing it with devices that are akin to cyanide landmines seems like a bad idea.

The people in the article were unaware that one of these devices was placed a few hundred feet from their property. The signage on these devices also seem to be very small. I'm wondering if medical services are given any training or a heads up when these devices are placed. Cyanide poisoning is not the most common thing and I'm wondering how quickly medical services would recognize it.

These devices also seem to contain a large amount of sodium cyanide (880 mg). This is definitely enough cyanide to kill a child and even some adults. Though it seems like the release mechanism would make it difficult for a person to actually ingest all of the cyanide.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow,

This seems like a really bad idea. I would be furious if anyone put that thing 350ft from my house.

</comment><comment><USER17> Are these devices surrounded by warning signs to ward off individuals that may be getting too close? I've not heard of these devices before and as someone who lives on the edge of a large wooded area with young kids this alarms me. I'd presume they would at least nail some signs to nearby trees supporting bright colors to inform an uneducated passerby that danger lies ahead.

EDIT - After doing a bit more research on these mechanisms I feel a bit better knowing they are triggered by animals biting and pulling on the cloth portion to release the poison (I still don't like these devices). I was concerned it was more proximity based. They do appear to be tagged with a bright colored warning label on the device itself.

</comment><comment><USER18> A relative used to work for them. It's fair to say that the organization isn't widely known, but you could say the same for the National Geodetic Survey.

<comment><USER19> I really like happening upon USGS/NGS survey markers on mountain summits. Oldest I've seen is from the 1890s (under a different agency name).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The USDA is infamous for being especially cozy with the industry it's supposed to look after. Department of the Interior should probably do anything to do with wildlife.

</comment><comment><USER21> > "The American Sheep Industry Association has called the M-44 a 'critical > tool' that has a 'proven track record of protecting livestock and the > environment'"

I don't see how a cyanide bomb intended to kill wild animals protects the environment. Those wolves are native species and part of the environment. Killing them is hurting the environment, definitionally. And given that these bombs don't strategically kill invasive species and are just as if not more likely to kill native species, then I don't see any reasonable claim that these are protecting the environment.

This is simply another case of regulatory capture where the government is helping the special interests that are farmers.

<comment><USER22> Right? This wouldn't be a problem if we didn't have livestock. Animal agriculture is an unnecessary barbaric practice that has no business in our modern world when we have better options accessible to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I want to know what happened to the jackasses that thought it was a good idea to lay mines with poison gas on public lands

<comment><USER24> They use poison powder, not poison gas, which has at least somewhat reduced potential for collateral damage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Headline-crafting has gotten out of control; headlines like this really play off people's anxiety/insecurity, just to get a view.

<comment><USER5> I'd call it a "cyanide mine" not "bomb". How is it legal to place one 350ft from a house without notifying anyone?!?

Do they maintain a map of these things so they can be properly disposed of?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > The secretive government agency planting 'cyanide bombs' across the US

There's some sort of secret organisation putting arsenic packages around cities as well.

Might be attempts from the illuminati to kill off the homeless or your pet dogs or something, it's hard to know.

Any old kid could pick one up and eat them, nothing is registered on any web sites of locations.

</comment><comment><USER27> Previous discussions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=cyanide](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=cyanide)

</comment><comment><USER28> Has the Guardian gotten worse or were they never that good to start with?

Wildlife services is hardly a secret branch, they are also the folks who airdrop rabies vaccine in remote areas. Yes they do take game from helicopter as part of their population management. Hogs in particular are frequently managed by helicopter since they like to hang out on private property.

The M44 device does have it's issues but calling it a bomb is a gross misise of words - it's a spring loaded aerosol. It's typically used for pack management especially with hogs. Most of the concern with them is downstream of the food chain - a nontargeted animal eats a poisoned carcass, dies, and then something eats those remains.

<comment><USER29> Perhaps they should be better at informing nearby citizens of the presence of these devices so that kids do not get injured.

<comment><USER28> They do, with signs, weekly in-place checks, and usually knocking the property owners front door first.

[PDF WARNING] [https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m...](https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m44-device.pdf)

<comment><USER5> That sign is 6 inches tall, and it is neither OSHA nor ANSI style:

[https://www.safetysign.com/help/h55/osha- format](https://www.safetysign.com/help/h55/osha-format)

Also, the text explaining what it does is so small you'd have to put your head near the device to read it.

<comment><USER24> > Also, the text explaining what it does is so small you'd have to put your > head near the device to read it.

So? It's not a proximity trigger. It won't activate unless you pull on the bait.

<comment><USER30> How close to cyanide do you want to be when you read it's cyanide?

These things sound quite deadly, and the regulations around them sound very lax / practically not enforced.

<comment><USER24> Ethylene glycol is a deadly poison too, and people get close to it on a regular basis.

<comment><USER31> False Equivalence to the white courtesy phone...False Equivalence...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Scary!

</comment><comment><USER33> I remember reading about this stuff years ago, it's public knowledge. You could call this government agency obscure, but I wouldn't say it's secretive.

<comment><USER34> I consider myself somewhat well-read, and I hadn't heard of these.

<comment><USER33> As I said, it's fair to call it obscure. But calling it secretive is just sensationalist.</comment></comment></comment>


Distributed web not ready for Runet cutoff from the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/dweb-readiness-runet <comment><USER2> One of them that will, or at least should be able to continue, is scuttlebutt. Scuttlebutt clients on an isolated LAN can share messages with each other. To go beyond the LAN, you point at a "pub server", which anyone can host anywhere. Yes, only russian-based pub servers will be available, and that assumes they are using russian based DNS to point to them (or have a known static IP). However, for the test of communicating within your region, scuttlebutt will hold up.

The protocol, clients, and pub servers (which are really just automated clients) are designed with an offline-first approach, then local, then regional, then global. Messages are copied between clients as they come into contact with each other. One way to visualize it is by picturing islands of people gossiping locally, and then having ships carry that scuttlebutt from island to island.

[https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/)

<comment><USER3> Isn't the design motivated in part because one (or more) of the key contributors actually are/were sailors?

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/meet-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/meet- the-counterantidisintermediationists/527553/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, and that's why it's called "scuttlebutt".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The sad reality of modern "decentralized" software is that organizations, people behind it don't even have any intentions to make it decentralized, to give up control, like BitTorrent did. Nobody cares about the main thing that decentralization is all about - making rule/law enforcement on others practically impossible.

There was a great series of posts about decentralization from BitTorrent people recently:

[https://medium.com/@simonhmorris/why-bittorrent-mattered- bit...](https://medium.com/@simonhmorris/why-bittorrent-mattered-bittorrent- lessons-for-crypto-1-of-4-fa3c6fcef488)

[https://medium.com/@simonhmorris/if-youre-not-breaking- rules...](https://medium.com/@simonhmorris/if-youre-not-breaking-rules-you-re- doing-it-wrong-bittorrent-lessons-for-crypto-2-of-4-72c68227fe69)

[https://medium.com/@simonhmorris/intent-complexity-and- the-g...](https://medium.com/@simonhmorris/intent-complexity-and-the- governance-paradox-bittorrent-lessons-for-crypto-3-of-4-1d14ac390f3f)

[https://medium.com/@simonhmorris/decentralized-disruption- wh...](https://medium.com/@simonhmorris/decentralized-disruption-who-dares- wins-bittorrent-lessons-for-crypto-4-of-4-f022e8641c1a)

<comment><USER6> Bitcoin?

<comment><USER7> While in theory Bitcoin is decentralized, in practice roughly half of the coins in existence are from a single mining company and 74% of global mining power currently resides in China, belonging to a handful of owners.

[https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/report- links-74-bitcoin...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/report- links-74-bitcoin-mining-china-sees-threat-network/)

<comment><USER6> Yet no one can prevent you from using Bitcoin or take away your coins. Seems the protocol design has been highly successful at keeping the functionality itself decentralized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can attest that the blog post is accurate, at least for the Dat protocol. We used the BitTorrent mainnet DHT for a while, but results were so bad that we retired it and fell back to our tracker. We're working on the Hyperswarm DHT now to get things more resilient. We're taking up Daniel's other action points as well.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious, what's wrong with the BitTorrent DHT that you can improve in your own?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hm, I had thought that go-ipfs saved some swarm peers between sessions, but reading over the docs now I see no evidence of this.

<comment><USER11> There is no implementation of this in their code either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh lord, what's this going to do to the blockchains?

<comment><USER13> At least bitcoin will be mostly unaffected since you can receive blocks via satellite [1] and if even one satellite connected node is inside Runet then you can at least keep up with the blockchain. Sending transactions can be done via sms [2]. The main problem would be mining in Russia, but if miners know about the shutdown in advance and it's economically feasible then they can get satellite internet to upload found blocks.

[1] [https://blockstream.com/satellite/](https://blockstream.com/satellite/)

[2] [https://twitter.com/SamouraiWallet/status/954271930365947904](https://twitter.com/SamouraiWallet/status/954271930365947904)

<comment><USER14> is _anyone_ actually using this?

<comment><USER15> One person is enough. If one person inside Runet receives blocks from the wider internet (via satellite or other means), their client will automatically forward the blocks to all clients they are connected to, quickly spreading them accross Russia. And because Bitcoin follows the chain of blocks that took the most work to create, latency isn't an issue.

Mining (and making a profit while doing so) is more latency sensitive, but should be able to tollerate a satelite uplink. And again, one person having a satelite uplink is enough to give all Russian miners a chance.

<comment><USER14> Is there even much mining in Russia? My understanding is the overwhelming majority of bitcoin mining is in China.

<comment><USER15> Mining is mostly a game of getting cheap electricity, and it's hard to beat China (where infrastructure construction is often about creating jobs and projecting power instead of classic profitability).

It seems like electricity prices in Russia are similar to the US. The legal position of bitcoin seems to be worse in Russia though, so you would expect less mining than in the US, and a lot less than in China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Putting on my conspiracy hat, blocking the global web from within Russia would also make it easier to have huge sweeping "purges" toward targeted groups, without Western interference.

</comment><comment><USER17> The last time I checked IPFS is a joke. There are only two implementations of IPFS protocol and both come from the same group of developers.

On the other hand, there are so many BitTorrent protocol implementations from totally independent group of developers.

Also, the namespace system of IPFS is just beyond stupid. They openly recommend relying the traditional central DNS to resolve the human readable name to hash.

I didn't bother to examine the Dat, but it looks like worse than IPFS.

<comment><USER18> There is a version of libp2p written in rust, developed by parity.io: [https://github.com/libp2p/rust-libp2p](https://github.com/libp2p/rust-libp2p) .

IPFS is much younger than bittorrent, so it is not surprising that there are not as many implementations. I am not sure why that makes it "a joke".

All that is needed for IPFS to function in a russia-only internet are a few russian bootstrap nodes. Bootstrap nodes are not in any way special, so any node can serve as a bootstrap node.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Russia is preparing a nation-wide experiment where the whole country > temporarily disconnects from the global Internet to see if the country can > rely on Runet alone

I think this is lie, fake news and misinformation. I tried to find the source of it. Lots of site quote RBC website (more or less respectful news agency in Russia). The closest article on this subject is this:

[https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/08/02/2019/5c5c51069...](https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/08/02/2019/5c5c51069a7947bef4503927)

It discusses this topic but doesn't mention experiments or temporary disconnect. Could be redacted though.

<comment><USER11> There is a source for this from Newsweek at the bottom of the original article. It's been reported by the BBC as well.

<comment><USER19> [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47198426](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47198426)

This BBC article. It makes that statement I the first paragraph in bold and then in the second paragraph they explain that they meant the opposite. But who reads past the second paragraph, rights?

I'm so disappointed at BBC. They spread lie and misinformation.

Russia is an authoritarian state, but it doesn't automatically make all the junk they write about Russia true.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: C++ CHIP8-Emulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Raafas/CHIP8-Emulator <comment><USER2> There are very interesting FPGA implementations of CHIP-8 out there!</comment>


Ask HN: Any interest in learning how startups actually work? - <AUTHOR>

I've been throwing around this idea of interviewing startups to learn how the actual systems and processes work behind the scenes. (ie, what do you use to handle billing and how does it tie into everything else? how about customer support?)
I put up the second interview today (http://www.resultsjunkies.com/blog/back-office-exposed-zippykid) and was hoping I could get some feedback from other HN readers.
Is this interesting? Any areas you want me to dive particularly deep on? <comment><USER2> I am _incredibly_ interested in well-documented business or technical processes, particularly at startups that run at a smaller scale than the Google / Facebook / etc tier who usually publish that sort of thing.

What's interesting? Oh, where to start, where to start. Dashboards. Metrics. Customer service processes. Architectural decisions. Rationales and priorities, most particularly "We intentionally avoid doing X, because..."

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly what I needed to know - thank you, thank you, thank you. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting. I'm interested in hearing about working with open source projects, selling data, and customer support; I'm especially interested in how startups handle bugs in newer open source projects. Do you spend time identifying the cause and submitting a patch, switch technologies, or work on something else and punt the decision?

This is a specific system design question, but I'd also like to hear about choosing between job queues (e.g., Beanstalk) and batch systems (e.g., Hadoop) for soft real-time data processing.

Interesting startups to interview:

\- FlightCaster and BackType (lots of data, users get product for free, discuss process of finding and selling to customers interested in associated data; both also deal with real-time data)

\- Shopify (supporting users that use your product to sell their product)

\- banksimple (regulated industry)

\- DuckDuckGo (building a system to compete with a wealthy behemoth)

\- WakeMate and Square (designing and manufacturing hardware)

</comment><comment><USER4> Clickable: [http://www.resultsjunkies.com/blog/back-office-exposed- zippy...](http://www.resultsjunkies.com/blog/back-office-exposed-zippykid/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd be interested to see how processes work at a bootstrapped vs. funded start up. A comparison table would be awesome!

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes this is useful. In terms of the "infrastructure" I would drill deeper around surprises for people, what pieces they see as critical, etc.; just knowing the infrastructure is much less valuable than its relative importance and key lessons around its use... Good luck

<comment><USER7> I would second this and look out for things that break from "traditional" startup advice, or things that they didn't expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome, but way too short. To be really interesting, make it 5 times longer and more detailed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback. What sort details would be interesting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an engineer I want to request you to devote more questions to the infrastructure and the architecture in place. I would want to know the big architecture picture, alternatives that they researched, why they chose certain technologies , the human resource devoted to delivering the technical product, the ratio of technical-nontechnical in a team etc. Thank you for the initiative.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey Guys, I'm Vid Luther, the founder of Zippy Kid, any engineers etc that have any specific questions/comments I'll try to answer them here.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm definitely interested in this idea. I was really impressed with your Mixergy interview, so I have high hopes for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe you can share some approaches which didn't work? And, of course, their working replacements.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sort of like a startup postmortem without necessarily the mortem part? I like it! Would be good specifically for those of use just venturing in to Startup Land :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Probing for as much 'open-ness' as possible is the #1 thing I'd like to see. Things like 'share your financial model spreadsheet' and other documents like this would be essential. I'm doing something similar with salon owners at the moment as I'm launching a small salon software kit in the next few weeks.

Will definitely check back every once in a while!

</comment><comment><USER14> I like it.

The only thing I'd say is, get interesting startups -- and the rest will take care of itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are there any in specific that you'd be really interested in? I'm the master of cold-calling (if I don't have some warmer way of getting my foot in the door)! :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: A simple Go web server with logging, tracing, health check - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/enricofoltran/10b4a980cd07cb02836f70a4ab3e72d7 <comment><USER2> Can someone add letsencrypt.org ACME cert generation? [https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/crypto/acme/autocert](https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/crypto/acme/autocert)

Edit: found this [https://gist.github.com/kennwhite/f9ea1afff776049974678fb21a...](https://gist.github.com/kennwhite/f9ea1afff776049974678fb21a6f3846)

<comment><USER2> I went ahead and started fleshing out a combination of both of these along with an example of using golang templates: [https://github.com/Xeoncross/vanilla-go- server](https://github.com/Xeoncross/vanilla-go-server)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of an ongoing discussion I was having with friends about Golang web frameworks -- one side of the argument is that you can achieve so much with the standard library that frameworks are "unnecessary", but folk like me want an ORM(ish) layer and some kind of back-office scaffolding.

[https://beego.me](https://beego.me) and [https://iris-go.com](https://iris- go.com) are nice, but we (all) have (as yet) to find a Django-like framework that comes with an extensible back-office.

So... Any pointers on the latter? I can do an Ask HN, but this seems like a good context to ask in.

(Edited to add: why the downvotes? Is this not a legitimate question?)

<comment><USER4> I regularly go down this road with go. My conclusion is that it's never going to suit that use case. I'm not even sure it's not technically doable (i think introspection and interface{} can go quite far), but it's just culturally opposed to this kind of project.

People like go for its minimalist approach. Not in the sense that you don't have a lot of code to write, but more in the sense that you are in control of everything that happens, and that you can read an understand every part of your codebase.

ORMs , code gen, magic wrappers, etc is something that people in that community just hate.

<comment><USER5> I'm the same way - I have lots of side project ideas I'd love to use Go for but get that early Rails like productivity. I maintain a few Rails apps and now view many of the things I've done as hacks to work around the lack of concurrency (though that was just Rails' reality in late 2000s).

Elixir is close to my ideal though I like static types and a better community around libs would be nice.

<comment><USER6> You might be interested to check out [https://gobuffalo.io/](https://gobuffalo.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a quick attempt at the same thing in Java (although note that the command line format is different):

[https://gist.github.com/tomwhoiscontrary/b4888b86057c74a636c...](https://gist.github.com/tomwhoiscontrary/b4888b86057c74a636c455235c756354)

The main takeaway is that the JDK's built-in web server is poor:

* There is no way to configure timeouts

* Filters have to be added to each handler separately, by mucking with its filter list

* Filters have to extend an abstract class with two methods (one totally pointless), so you can't use lambdas for them

* Handlers use a simple string prefix match, so a request for "/healthzone" will hit the health handler

* The stop method always blocks for the specified timeout, and never returns early as the docs promise (IME)

Other minor irritations:

* There is no method to parse an InetSocketAddress from a string

* Java's support for handling clean process shutdown is not great; i think there's some sort of race between the shutdown hook and the logging system getting shut down, so you never see the "Server stopped" message

<comment><USER8> Nice. Does anyone have a server like this but with the addition of

* serving of files and directories

* LetsEncrypt certificates and SSL

<comment><USER9> The builtin golang.org/x/crypto/acme/autocert [0] package manages SSL for you easily through Lets Encrypt.

[0]: [https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/crypto/acme/autocert](https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/crypto/acme/autocert)

<comment><USER10> golang.org/x/ packages are _not_ builtin. You still must download them and use them just as you do any other dependencies, they just share some contribution process and developers with golang's stdlib.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's a nice reference program to show you what's going on.

I build stuff like this for a living. I'd recommend not re-inventing the wheel yourself and using a nice web framework, like Echo ([https://github.com/labstack/echo](https://github.com/labstack/echo)) or Gin ([https://github.com/gin-gonic/gin](https://github.com/gin-gonic/gin)). I prefer Echo due to a cleaner, mockable design, but they're equivalent.

You can throw up that web server in 1/10 the code to do the same thing, and using built-in middleware is less work than writing your own.

<comment><USER12> I tend to agree and I'd throw Chi in the mix. I like Chi quite a bit. Or, use the Gorilla components and middleware.

<comment><USER13> I also use Chi a lot and Chi and this example are actually complimentary: you can take the Chi router and pass it to an http.Server in the handler attribute to make it work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Golang is self sufficient for a small scale web app.

It has HTML templates library, decent error handling, rpc, logging, built-in http server. Many people choose golang for that reason.

<comment><USER15> What do you mean by small scale? I think requests per second. Our Go-backed API has handled 90k rps without batting an eye. Or do you mean small scale as in team size? It is my understanding that Go was specifically designed to work for large organizations ( _cough_ Google _cough_ ).

Or do you mean single page JavaScript web sites? At which point Go would be the backing API? I don't see what qualifies Go for "small scale" vs "large scale."

Thanks for any clarification. Cheers!

<comment><USER16> I would say "small scale" would refer to project size in Go.

<comment><USER15> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for this. I have been writing toy golang servers for a while to try out various ideas and this really helps clarify some useful techniques and best practices.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is likely better posted as a Show HN if it meets the guidelines:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi grzm, you are probably right. Can I do this myself? editing the title with a "Show HN" prefix is sufficient?

<comment><USER18> The ability to edit submissions is time-limited, IIRC. If you no longer see an edit link, you're likely outside of it. You can get in touch with the mods via the Contact link in the footer and they can update it for you. In my experience they're quite responsive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So a hundred lines of pure boilerplate hooking up Go standard libraries, assumedly exactly how they were intended to be used. How is this news worthy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Ultimatt, this is just a reminder for me on how to do those things when I start a new app in Go, instead of always google for them. Didn't expect to hit the homepage!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yea lets ditch everything we learned about modularization in the past 20 years and put everything in one single binary

<comment><USER21> Having to rebuild thousands of binaries every time a vulnerability is found in a popular library is seriously hurting Linux distributions.

That, and having to handle vendorized dependencies.

<comment><USER22> > Having to rebuild thousands of binaries every time a vulnerability is found > in a popular library is seriously hurting Linux distributions.

Do you have a source for this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't Caddy written in Go? How is this different?

<comment><USER24> When you're writing a Go application and want just a few things out of a web server, something like this is a nice demonstration on how to do that with a few lines in your Go program. Yes, you could use Caddy, or you could even import it and use it as a library; but if you prefer something like this, there you have it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I do not quite see the point of this (other than being an exercise).

We already have web server that do "logging, tracing, health check, graceful shutdown." I do not care about zero deps, because I only install them once and the deps are taken care of by the package manager.

In my opinion, the Go web server only makes sense as part of a Go application as a whole. But a standalone Go web server does not make much sense to me.

<comment><USER26> I disagree, I will always prefer projects with the least dependencies given two options with the same feature set.

We should always try to strive to lower dependencies when it makes sense.

<comment><USER27> > We should always try to strive to lower dependencies when it makes sense.

Maybe, but I think 'when it makes sense', might be 'rarely'. There a 2 ways to avoid dependencies: 1. lean on a batteries-included standard lib as this gist does or 2. write it yourself.

Problem with 1. is standard lib libraries aren't always great, see 'where modules go to die' [1], (examples: httplib/urllib in Python, or the string libraries in PHP). This can stifle innovation and alternatives, unless an alternative with a strong marketing push can arise ('requests' for Python). Sadly, often because the situation isn't 'that bad' (as in the case of PHP) people continue to use poor APIs.

Problem with 2. is you're probably getting an order-of-magnitude fewer brain cycles on code you wrote yourself -- unless you can spend the extra effort to open-source it, and get lucky with popularity/contributors, it's likely to be inferior than a well-maintained 3rd party alternative.

[1] [http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/04/where-modules-go- to...](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/04/where-modules-go-to-die/)

<comment><USER28> You spend brain cycles trying to navigate and integrate third party libraries, learning their APIs, keeping the dependencies updated.

I'd encourage developers, especially Nodejs devs, to look at their list of dependencies and ask the following two questions about each of them:

1\. How long would it take me to replicate this functionality?

2\. How often does this functionality need updating?

There is a threshold balanced between both of those questions where, once the numbers pass, it makes sense to bring in dependencies. But I truly believe the "instant gratification" primate part of our brains tends to overestimate the benefit of dependencies and underestimate the long term negatives of them.

Here's a common Nodejs example: Request. Request is used all over many projects. Did anyone who imports it even try to use http.request in the nodejs stdlib? Its actually pretty great. Now, you introduced a new dependency. You made your build process longer. You made your deploy artifact bigger. You've got to keep it up to date. You've got to make sure there aren't security breaches. You've got to learn a new API that, unlike the Nodejs stdlib, is just made by "some guy somewhere" and is horribly documented inside a Github README.

How long would it take me to replicate the functionality of request just using http.request? It depends what parts of request I'm using, but probably very little time. How often does this functionality change? Literally never. __Literally never __. HTTP /1.1 was finalized decades ago. Request, right now, has 48 open PRs, 560 open issues, was last "released" a couple months ago, and was fixing security issues which were definitely already fixed in stdlib.

But the primate part of your brain says "Eh fuck all that, I'll let future self deal with the negatives of a new dependency, what I want _today_ is an API interface that's, like, 20% easier to use."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dominant Colors for Lazy-Loading Images - <AUTHOR> https://manu.ninja/dominant-colors-for-lazy-loading-images <comment><USER2> I really like this dominant color placeholder idea. I think I first noticed it in use on Designspiration, but it seems to be gaining popularity and will probably be standard operating procedure soon.

The difference between using a single color and a resized 3x3-pixel image is subtle. I'd like to see 5x5 and 7x7 examples as well, assuming the file size remains small enough. I wouldn't expect _too_ great an increase in bits, but the amount of extra detail available might be worth it.

<comment><USER3> I've just ran your sizes through Node.js and a 5x5 GIF is just a bit larger than a 3x3 GIF, but the 7x7 is already quite large as a data URI:

3x3 data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAwACAPIFADEPDF0pEmouEW41JYhFNIhJMgAAAAAAACH5BAAAAAAAIf4dQ29tcHJlc3NlZCBieSBqcGVnLXJlY29tcHJlc3MALAAAAAADAAIAAAMECBRTkgA7

5x5 data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhBQADAPMOABwEADsRDjwaG0ccClolDF4pEEwkIlo1NGguHGswF3g6H4Q6ELteLJxSQKFfTwAAACH5BAAAAAAAIf4dQ29tcHJlc3NlZCBieSBqcGVnLXJlY29tcHJlc3MALAAAAAAFAAMAAAQLEISWhkBOEcPOKhEAOw==

7x7 data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhBwAFAPUiAB4FASEGAyIGAi8OCDgXCz4aGS8XICwbKDwdI08dCFEfC1kdEE0hEVYmD18jCFMkEFIhI1UrLmwvEWswEG8xFXEvEnUzE3g3IGJCT5RADZBEGYlLMpJOMaVPIrxbI6dWQqdhUaxpYMFpPwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAAAAAAAIf4dQ29tcHJlc3NlZCBieSBqcGVnLXJlY29tcHJlc3MALAAAAAAHAAUAAAYhwEBg8bEkCIABBLRxPBCRCoijmCAuHoxm8jB0RAdL5hEEADs=</comment></comment>


The Brain Computer Interface Future: Time for a Strategy (2013) [pdf] - T-A http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cst/bh_2013_moore.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> "Within the past decade the ability to bypass muscles and speech between a brain and a computer has become a reality."

bypassing speech? i haven't heard about that one?

the phrase for "bypassing muscles" is "neural coding of movement intention." it's important to realize that the neural coding stuff is mostly about statistical correlation, like, "oh, here are some patterns that happen in the cortex when someone wants to move their arm in such-and-such fashion." really, really cool stuff. still, not clear how deep these results are. i guess the usual analogy to make is that hooking up an oscilloscope to some particular resistor in a radio and developing an algorithm to transform the signal across that resistor into the sounds coming out of the speaker is not the same as knowing how the radio works.

uuh, maybe that's not not the point of the article, buut, good for discussion nonetheless?

<comment><USER2> I assume the author is referencing the subvocal recognition work from the Army and NASA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "The ability to penetrate human brains through BCI will add a new dimension to physical and cyber security."

Brain infosec needs development desperately, and there's plenty of testing ground for it in figuring out how to repeatably train people _today_ to resist the more simple, high-latency, advertising/propaganda/religious hacking attempts.</comment>


50% of the top 10,000 sites use Google Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/04/08/40-still-use-old-google-analytics-script/

<comment><USER2> This doesn't surprise me. (The fact in the headline not the urchin/ga split the article discusses.) Google Analytics is incredibly robust and reliable considering that it's free.

I always hear arguments against using it, but one has yet to win me over. My agency subscribed to LyrisHQ Clicktracks service for a year before canceling it in favor of just using Google Analytics and passing the savings on to clients. (Customer service was great with Lyris, but the interface was unintuitive and slow. It also costs an arm and a leg.)

</comment><comment><USER3> _The question is, are the owners of these sites aware that urchin.js won't be around forever? Are they aware that they are using a legacy script that is no longer being maintained?_

No, I had no idea. Google doesn't seem to have notified me of the change, and there is nothing in the UI of Analytics that warns that our code is the old version. A simple "Warning: you are using the old script on your site" banner would have caused me to upgrade immediately. I'm glad I read this article.

</comment><comment><USER4> That means google has 50% of chances to have a good advantage in the negociation process when/if buying one of the top 10'000 websites. :)

<comment><USER5> Awesome point, although I would hope that their privacy policies would exclude them from that very possibility. Just because Google provides analytics does not mean they should have access to the specific data being collected.

<comment><USER6> I do believe unless you turn off the option of sharing your data with Google, they do have the ability. I am not a 100% sure, but I think so.</comment></comment></comment>


Tempinbox – Free Temporary Email Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.tempinbox.xyz <comment><USER2> I think email alias is a better choice for privacy. Take a look at SimpleLogin.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please let me know what can be better :) I am the founder of Tempinbox

<comment><USER3> There needs to be some guarantee of the longevity of the service's domain name, since someone could claim the domain as their own when you mistakenly refuse to renew it in advance.

The bad actor sets up a catchall, and then would do password resets for all the accounts registered with that domain name. That's why I treat these email relay/proxy services cautiously as if the domain will change hands sometime in the near future.</comment></comment>


Video interview with Jason Calacanis of Mahalo.com - the human powered search engine - <AUTHOR> http://new.intruders.tv/intruders_en/Startup-profile-Jason-Calacanis-of-Mahalo_a85.html <comment><USER2> wow very cool video</comment>


Apple apologizes for listening to Siri recordings, promises changes - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/28/tech/apple-siri-apology/index.html <comment><USER2> > "In a blog post Wednesday, Apple said it will require users to opt in to > having their recordings listened to by human reviewers, rather than having > this be the default. And only Apple employees will be allowed to listen to > audio samples of the Siri interactions, rather than contract workers."

This opt-in is most likely going to be packaged with the "Send data to apple" during first setup. Most people still wont know that it's sending voice unless they actually read through it.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "If you ask Siri to read your unread messages, Siri simply instructs your > device to read aloud your unread messages."

Great excuse because iMessage servers are already recording.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally I think this makes many of the things that Tim Cook claimed differentiated Apple from Facebook and Google much less convincing.

<comment><USER5> Did you read about the changes they are proposing?

Has any other company responded with anything like this level of responsibility?

I think this shows how much more seriously they take this than their competitors.

<comment><USER4> Yes, they're dropping retention and switching to opt-in. Because they got caught. Is that really responding with responsibility?

<comment><USER6> Yes. There was no issue. Then people raised an issue. They responded as requested to the issue.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Windows Phone is outselling the iPhone in 24 countries - <AUTHOR> http://ontechies.com/2014/01/26/windows-phone-is-outselling-the-iphone-in-24-countries/

<comment><USER2> Link to the actual article, to bypass the blogspam:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/01/21/here- are-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/01/21/here- are-24-countries-where-windows-phone-outsells-the-iphone-and-why-it-does/)

<comment><AUTHOR> blogspam? I personally curate articles that I think are interesting and add some commentary sometimes. If providing a summary and a link to the original article is blogspam then I guess hackernews also qualifies as one - based on your poor point of view.

<comment><USER3> This is blogspam, you're trying to pull people to your personal blog, where you've written a paragraph (least amount of effort) with a copy and paste of a few paragraphs from the original article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. So most online blogs that "recap" news do the same correct? Would you agree then that Marco and Daring Fireball are spam as well? if not, please tell what is different?

<comment><USER3> (disclaimer, I work for a news agency) I would agree that anything that recaps a news article/press release without adding significant analysis would just be blogspam. By all means link to your blog if you're adding more than a paragraph of thought on the original subject, if not, link to the original article. But hey, HN is a democratic site, so y'know, whatevs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Though it is important to note that the iPhone is generally in a different category of more expensive smartphones than many Android/Windows Phone devices. In terms of just devices in that price range, the iPhone tends to do very well basically everywhere that it is sold and has good carrier support.

</comment><comment><USER5> And there are over 170 countries... Also, when it comes to smartphones it's the western world and particularly US mkt. is what counts. If your product rocks in this mkt. then you have a chance. Look at Samsung how badly they need US mkt.

<comment><USER6> Only people in the US think the US is the market that counts. You need to open your eyes and realize there is a world full of people making money in and outside the US.

Think how your argument would apply to Xiaomi. They are absolutely killing it in China (I'm assuming they aren't in the US market), but one day they are going to turn their attention to the US and quite possibly dominate, like they have in China.

Also, don't forget, there was a time when Android was the 2nd platform to Apple in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note that this is a battle for distant second place. Places where Windows Phone is getting 5% and iPhone is getting 4% and Android is getting 85%.

<comment><USER8> And yet samsung profits just took a dive and every other android maker is in the red.</comment></comment>


Rainworks – Rain-Activated Positive Messages and Art - <AUTHOR> https://rain.works/ <comment><USER2> Apparently I belong to a small minority that does not get down and depressed when it rains.

It is all about mindset. Ok, if you go to a meeting and your nice suit gets soaked, then it is less fun. But on the way back home, just catch those raindrops. Look around. Look at other people hastily walking by with frowned faces. Relax. It's nature. Things are moving. Clouds roil above you. Enjoy it.

While I like some of the artwork, seeing sentences like "You are amazing" appear everywhere, would spoil the beauty of a nice, honest rainshower for me, to be honest :)

<comment><USER3> Rain is my favorite. Certainly the biggest thing I miss since moving out of Seattle. Rain is so peaceful and refreshing. Also, watching it rain through a window in a dark room, wrapped in a blanket, is possibly coziest thing in the world :)

<comment><USER4> I've been living in Seattle for several years and I miss _actual_ rain. Rain you need an umbrella for. Rain that makes you pause under shelter. Rain that has thunder and lightning now and then.

Seattle, clouds just come sit on the city and you have to go about your business inside them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the MSDS sheet:

> _6.2 Environmental precautions_

> _Seal leaks when possible without risk. Impound spoiled product as much as > possible with inert materials. Do not allow substance to flow into water > ways, sewerage systems, basements or confined areas._

I'm sure that's referring to the liquid substance; however there's no information on the site as to how the fluoropolymers biodegrade as the sprays wear with foot traffic and end up in the environment. Hopefully someone with chemistry background has more details about this process.

[https://rain.works/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Rainworks- Invi...](https://rain.works/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Rainworks-Invisible- Spray-MSDS.pdf)

<comment><USER6> I'm skeptical, too. On their site [1] they claim it's "Eco-Friendly & Biodegradable" and that "Once a rainwork is dry, it is non-toxic to the environment!" A different page [2] says: "The spray is a solvent-based formula. Because of the solvent, it is not safe to drink the liquid or inhale the vapor. ... Once the Invisible Spray is sprayed on the ground, the solvent evaporates, leaving only the biodegradable water-repelling ingredients locked to the surface, making it superhydrophobic, creating the rainwork!"

Not a chemist, but I don't think fluoropolymers are generally biodegradable. In fact, isn't non-biodegradability (and non-bioavailability) part of the point?

[1] [https://rain.works/invisiblespray/](https://rain.works/invisiblespray/)

[2] [https://rain.works/product/invisiblespray/](https://rain.works/product/invisiblespray/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So they're promoting the contamination of everything with hydrophobic paint?

If this catches on, walking around on a rainy day, which I find pleasant, will instead be depressing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting, I met Peregrine (one of the rainworks founders) a few years ago at a meetup when he was starting to experiment with this. Really enjoyed his enthusiasm for making art.

From my memory he tested out a few different paints and found something that was supposedly biodegradeable - my best guess is he may be using one of the neverwet variants - [http://www.neverwet.com/](http://www.neverwet.com/) , he mentions it here: [https://twitter.com/icreatenovelty/status/445228159248506880](https://twitter.com/icreatenovelty/status/445228159248506880)

edit: I'm wrong, he's using Belgium-based Nanex from the msds sheet.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've always found it too expensive to just buy some and experiment, but I swear it's cheaper now. I'll buy some when I get home.

</comment><comment><USER10> Neat. How does it prevent negative messages and ugly graffiti?

<comment><USER8> from the faq [https://rain.works/faqs/](https://rain.works/faqs/) : "On average, a rainwork lasts 2 to 4 months. We have had them last up to a year under the right conditions."

"According to a representative at the Seattle Department of Transportation, rainworks are legal on public sidewalks because they are temporary, don't harm the property, and we don't use them to advertise anything."

I think the intent was to find something more like a neat alternative to sidewalk chalk than to be a graffiti.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry, I can't spray paint my sidewalk but you can spray neverwet on it? This stuff is not good for the watershed.

</comment><comment><USER12> $130 for 16oz, lasts 3-4 months. Amazing.</comment>


Ask HN: Best books on various CS related topics? - <AUTHOR> I am looking to collect a list that encompasses the best books out there to learn a specific field of computer science. As such I can think of the following things, but you can answer with any CS related <domain, book> pair you feel is relevant. It can be ANYTHING CS - programming languages, design patterns etc.<p>1. Machine Learning - ? 2. Neural Networks - ? 3. Algorithms/Data Structures - (Knuth, CLRS, Skienna) 4. Interview preparation - Cracking the coding interview 5. Computer Vision/Image Processing - ? 6. Javascript, Python, Java, Ruby, Perl, C++, NodeJS, Go - ? 7. Design Patterns - ? 8. Distributed Systems - ? 9. Operating Systems - (Unix Internals by Bach, ?) 10. Networking - ? 11. Website Development/Scalability - ? 12. Fonts/Typography - ? 13. Database Systems - ? 14. AWS - ? 15. Build Systems - ? 16. Website design - ? 17. Photoshop, Indesign - (Not CS related but still)? <comment><AUTHOR> Shitty formatting hits me. Here is a neat one.

1\. Machine Learning - ?

2\. Neural Networks - ?

3\. Algorithms/Data Structures - (Knuth, CLRS, Skienna)

4\. Interview preparation - Cracking the coding interview

5\. Computer Vision/Image Processing - ?

6\. Javascript, Python, Java, Ruby, Perl, C++, NodeJS, Go - ?

7\. Design Patterns - ?

8\. Distributed Systems - ?

9\. Operating Systems - (Unix Internals by Bach, ?)

10\. Networking - ?

11\. Website Development/Scalability - ?

12\. Fonts/Typography - ?

13\. Database Systems - ?

14\. AWS - ?

15\. Build Systems - ?

16\. Website design - ?

17\. Photoshop, Indesign - (Not CS related but still)?

18\. Android/iPhone App development - ?

<comment><USER2> 12: Knuth - Digital Typography.</comment></comment>


Driving from New York to LA in 32 Hours or Less - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/15-11/ff_cannonballrun?currentPage=all

<comment><USER2> >>>> ""I'm calling it," Roy sighs, "that's it." And so, at 4:20 in the morning, some 70 miles shy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Roy puts his turn signal on like some average commuter and once again stops, 2,160 miles short of his dream."<<<<

I found it interesting that they decided to call it quits so soon; in Indiana, of all places, for rationalizing the lack of ability to catch up on average speed. (On this particular attempt) Indiana isn't very far at all from the border of NY state.

The Northeast has extreme population density, slower posted speed limits, etc. It seems to me that after completing that initial leg of the journey, they could easily catch up for lost time going across the more-or-less desolate midwest, even given their slower than desired avg MPH start.

So they technically completed only 635 miles of the trip (2795-2160). . . a mere 22.7 percent of the total miles to be traveled. I think if it were me, I'd wait until at least the halfway point before calculating averages and deciding whether or not to throw in the towel of defeat.

I definitely think that if there were anywhere to make up for lost time, it would definitely be across parts of the midwest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thats some gear list:

Randolph highway patrol sunglasses, 20-gallon reserve fuel tank, Tasco 8 x 40 binoculars fitted with a Kenyon KS-2 gyro stabilizer, military spec Steiner 7 x 50 binoculars, Hummer H1-style bumper-mounted L-3 Raytheon NightDriver thermal camera and LCD dashboard screens, front-and-rear-mounted sensors for a Valentine One radar/laser detector, flush bumper-mount Blinder M40 laser jammers, redundant Garmin StreetPilot 2650 GPS units, preprogrammed Uniden police radio scanners, ceiling-mount Uniden CB radio with high-gain whip antenna. Check. Check. Check.

<comment><USER4> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxRLyiBs3XA>

I'm surprised the stock M5 alternator can supply enough current to drive all of those electronics. That is just totally ridiculous..

<comment><USER5> I was thinking the same thing.. he must have left out some power modifications/extra batteries

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a fun article; I love living vicariously through articles about reckless disregard for the law.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, articles like this are almost enough by themselves to justify the concept of a statute of limitations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> But they're only going 90MPH on average! I used to have a manager who claimed to drive from the Netherlands to the south of France at 120MPH all the way. With his wife and 3 children...

Seriously, "For occasional spurts, 90MPH is not uncommon on the highway," I mean, that's below the average speed on French or German highways!

Why the enormous difference? Deer?

PS: I realize that their biggest challenge by far is to evade law enforcement.

<comment><USER8> In the US, most motorists are going 55-65, swerving across lanes in tractors with tinted windows, and have never heard of leaving the left lane to faster moving traffic. Also, the way most of America is laid out, every trip, even 'local' ones, has a freeway leg, so there is constant merging on or off. Without blinking, of course. In Continental Europe, freeway traffic is much more predictable.

Another thing is, Amsterdam to Nice can be driven overnight, on mostly empty freeways.

And last, your manager was likely exaggerating grossly. Amsterdam to Nice at 120 avg., would take only about 7hrs 30 minutes door to door (Or Sea to Shining Sea). With 3 kids, that's more like the time spent at rest stops along the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These guys are seriously crazy.</comment>


The Oculus Buyout Rage Machine - <AUTHOR> http://dereksmart3000ad.tumblr.com/post/81282079994/the-oculus-buyout-rage-machine <comment><USER2> Blogspam, but... Wow, Derek Smart. There's a name I haven't heard in a while. And talk about knowing the rage machine...

EDIT - nice long, recent piece on Derek Smart [http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/14/3553620/the-redemption- of-...](http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/14/3553620/the-redemption-of-derek- smart)

<comment><USER3> I was pretty surprised to see him too.

Derek Smart's Desktop Commander!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIn1_9YvGds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIn1_9YvGds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The linked article was more important than the actual piece [1].

Although it was interesting, I still disagree with the final conclusion. FB taking over OVR doesn't mean they will "own" the entirety of whatever common VR-accessible space emerges. They're just another player in what will most likely be a hotly contested market.

[1] [http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces- rea...](http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-real- data.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's the scoop on Facebook's VR plan [http://www.virtfriends.com/blog/2014/04/01/facebook- virtual-...](http://www.virtfriends.com/blog/2014/04/01/facebook-virtual- reality/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've seen similar outpouring of unconditional love for companies like Comcast, Bank of America, and Monsanto. I keep wondering why Facebook has so many users. It doesn't look good in the long term.

<comment><USER7> All of those companies are massively successful. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _"FB doesn't make games and there's not a single game related acquisition in > the company's history. More importantly, FB doesn't acquire outside of a > very specific set of focus supporting categories. They have zero > professional experience with the market, and at best the kind of games FB > hosts that other people make are pretty exploitive and dismal."_

This whole paragraph can be dismissed by the optimists with the phrase: _"...Until now_".

Why should the past be the same as the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> The past probably shouldn't be. After all Nintendo used to make playing cards.

But the past does inform the future and provide it with likely vectors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm sorry a lot of game devs feel this way. As a gamer, I feel some sympathy for this.

However, this is a case where the game devs are lacking in vision.

(1) My very first impression of the news last week was: Wow, I did not know that Zuckerberg had the guts and vision. I did not respect Zuckerberg at all. After the news, I see it as not only a big move for Facebook, I also explicitly acknowledge Zuckerberg as a visionary. Where this can go will disrupt what we think of as social networking, and being able to throw away the work which you have a vested interest in in order to bring in something greater, that takes courage.

(2) Discussing this with friends and then looking at what is emerging, it is pretty clear to me that this is not a vanity buy, and that the scope of Oculus has now been expanded to something much _much_ greater than gaming. We're no longer talking about the next evolutionary stage of gaming; we're talking about the next fundamental shift in how the _mainstream_ will interact on the internet. Gamers have this unconscious, perhaps implicit, understanding of what it means to interact with the virtual world; many folks in the mainstream do not. When this pans out in the mainstream (months? years?), it will create a shift in the psychology of individuals, something we have only seen discussed in sci-fi and cyberpunk stories. Or at least, that is the potential. Execution remains to be seen :-)

(3) Game devs in general have great imagination. Like artists, filmmakers, game devs bring their vision out into the world for others to experience. They tend to have a better feel for the future, for what the world can be, than your average person. However, I find it ironic that the game devs are so fixated on Oculus Rift = Gaming Device, that this is one of the rare times game devs failed to see the greater vision.

(4) Based on what Caramack, Palmer, and Abrash were talking about in the articles that have emerged ... until Zuckerberg showed up, they too also framed the Oculus tech as a _gaming_ technology. That was what they sold it as in the Kickstarter, and many people were on board with it. So I understand how many gamers and game devs are up in arms about this. It's also kind of sad to me: these same folks who are so imaginative are failing to see the much grander vision.

<comment><USER10> Okay, I will freely admit to also lacking vision. What part of Zuckerberg's genius am I not seeing?

Put another way: VR goggles have come and gone in gaming several times, failing each time due to a combination of price, poor experience, and general dorkiness (see also: Google Glass). The Oculus may be different, but the question remains: if VR goggles have failed in the past in the one area they were most likely to succeed, what is the magic sauce that will make them finally succeed in the mainstream?

What is the path you see to VR becoming a widely accepted computer interaction method (which I'm not sure I see happening in general), how do you see that adoption happening without first being strongly established in gaming (the most likely early adopter market), and how do you see Facebook helping on that path?

<comment><USER9> The Times article was interesting ([http://time.com/39577/facebook-oculus-vr- inside-story/](http://time.com/39577/facebook-oculus-vr-inside-story/) I know, I know, paywall), and I observed some pretty nifty psychological dynamic. It was written by someone who wasn't much of a gamer, so I got a chance to see his epiphany through his writing.

His mind was totally blown away. He kept talking about the aversion to wear something so ridiculous on there. He had never experienced what it felt like to step into another reality.

He said that there "is no edge". The screens wrapped around the peripheral vision. The lag is below the threshold that many would get that sense of "this is not quite real". It goes with the "VR-induced existential crisis" that has been reported with the Rift, and not with any previous technology. You start to forget you're wearing something.

I had not experienced that existential crisis when I used the Rift back in Oct, since my astigmatism distorted the viewscreens enough that I can see the edge. But more importantly, I have had a lot of psychedelic experiences and dream experiences where, now, shifting from one seemingly reality to another is not a big deal. The way these folks describe that existential crisis, about how there is no edge reminds me of what everyone says after coming down on their first trip.

From my perspective, this technology has the potential to bring to the mainstream what meditators and psychonauts have known about for a long, long time. I've seen an interpretation of the Matrix movie, about how the movie was about a virtual reality that is real; but it misses the main point, that this reality that you are in right now is not as real as you think it is. You're making an interpretation based on sensory data. It is no wonder that this tech induces existential crises :-) And it is in that experience of the existential crisis that something wakes up in the experiencer.

You ask some good, specific questions about adoption, and how Facebook will help with that. But that is also looking at it without a sense of how groundbreaking this tech is. It's the kind of tech that someone in the mainstream -- and not gamers who have these expectations in their head -- puts it on, tries it for the first time, and will get it. The game mechanics and the interactions are completely secondary to that experience of the existential crisis, and that alone, I think, will mean _some form_ of the Rift technology, whether it is by FB or not, will emerge. It solves a problem people did not know they have, did not even realize they needed. The demand will be too great for there to be a vacuum.

<comment><USER10> I guess what I'm really missing is what is the killer app that will make VR deliver on that promise (if it's not games). I understand that it's a unique experience, but the mainstream will love it for what it lets them do, not for what it is. I can't realistically see some sort of next-gen Second Life hitting mainstream any time soon. I can't see it being used for work. So what's left? Movies? Interactive experiences? Games? None of these have much to do with Facebook.

It's a cool display tech, it's not an experience in itself - that comes from the software. To me it feels the same as if Microsoft invested billions to buy a CRT monitor company back in the day - why would they?

Edit: it is, of course, possible that I'm completely wrong on one or more of the above assumptions. That's why this is such an interesting discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Could it be that VR has wider applications than just video games?

<comment><USER6> Advertisement remains Real in Virtual Reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lol Derek Smart... nothing more to be said....</comment>


Patents considered evil - <AUTHOR> http://www.ipocracy.org/article:1

<comment><USER2> It's interesting to note that one of the first points this article makes is that the term "intellectual property" spreads confusion and makes it sound like patents are something like copyrights or something like ship hull design rights.

We've heard this before from His GNUliness:

        http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty

<comment><USER3> Yes, we've heard it before and it's still silly. The term serves only to distinguish intangibles from physical objects. It does not imply that all of those intangibles are equivalent any more than "physical property" implies that boats are the same thing as staplers. This is a non-issue. It's a useful term.

<comment><USER4> It's useful in some contexts but overly broad in others. The differences between a boat and a stapler are readily apparent; the differences between a copyright and a patent, much less so. Imprecise language takes advantage of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "It typically costs from 25,000 Euro (in the cheapest courts in Europe) to $250,000 (in the UK or USA) to defend or enforce a patent in court." Try $3 million per side through trial in US court. <http://www.patentinsurance.com/iprisk/aipla-survey/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone in the startup world can tell you an idea is not worth that much, what matters is execution. Patents are supposed to reward the lazy dreamers over the hard working entrepreneurs, though in reality they reward the giant corp with the best legal strategy.

<comment><USER7> Patents (at least as understood by the US founding fathers who put them in the Constitution, YMMV in other countries) are _supposed_ to be a means by which we all benefit from knowledge that would otherwise be kept a trade secret by their inventors. The nearly two decade long protection is the price we pay for that knowledge.

Of course, looking at it this way, it is absolutely insane that things like "bounce scrolling" are patent protected. Even in situations where some piece of software functionality is 100% new (which basically never happens anyway), if I can watch a video on YouTube of someone interacting with the product and then write a 20 line function that simulates the behavior I saw without ever having seen the original code, nor even having touched the original product myself and that 20 line function can be a patent violation, the patent system is already 100% completely fucked up relative to what it was designed to do originally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love this quote:

"We do not generally ask the State to intervene to ensure that artists will paint, musicians play, chefs prepare meals, fashion designers create the new seasons. The vast bulk of our economy innovates well without 20-year monopolies. By contrast, the areas that are heavily patented, such as telecoms and pharmaceutics, resist change, are run by cartels, and extort consumers with grossly inflated prices."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's also a discussion about this on Reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/z2lp2/patents_con...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/z2lp2/patents_considered_evil/)

</comment><comment><USER9> _The term "intellectual property" was coined to replace "exclusive privilege", which became politically incorrect during the French revolution_

<comment><USER10> Interesting to note! Although I find "intellectual property" to be an oxymoron.

<comment><USER11> how so?

<comment><USER12> This letter from Thomas Jefferson explains the problem. [http://press- pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....](http://press- pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html) (Note a "taper" is a candle.)

<comment><USER13> _"It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance."_

Sadly few people understand this these days. Libertarians rightly defend social liberty, but they actually betray this liberty by wrong-headedly believing that everything should be treated as private property. They are correct that one's own person or the fruits of one's own labor should not be claimable by anyone or any government (this is tantamount to slavery), but they falsely believe that land or even ideas can be the fruit of their labor and their labor only.

I hope that this will be the next revolution in political economy, that Georgism/Geolibertarianism makes a comeback.

<comment><USER12> If you clear land for farming, don't you think you have a natural right to the use of that land? If a neighbor dumps toxic waste there, haven't they violated your property rights?

<comment><USER9> More subtle Question: If you clear the land, can I cross it? (for navigation)

<comment><USER14> If he lets you.

<comment><USER9> How will _he_ get on or off the land ever again? Are their _natural_ 'rights of way'?

Edited: for clarity

<comment><USER13> 001sky is not making a frivolous point. If all land were private, most of population of the planet wouldn't even have a place to stand, much less to cross. Most populist libertarians are for privatizing almost all public land.

<comment><USER15> Putting things another way, some people seem to be under the odd misapprehension that "privately owning a piece of land" is tantamount to sovereignty over it. When in actual, complicated reality what one really buys when one "buys land" is a more limited set of rights to possession, use, development, etc. of the land that have been wrapped up in a title. And thus there exist limitations to what one can do with "private property" as exemplified by the fact that other people can get an easement to use one's land for access to their own or might own the minerals under your house.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The web site hosting the Harper's article "Secrets by the Thousands" linked in "Patents considered evil" posts questionable ideas if you look at their root site. Also, linked from their version of "Secrets" is another article titled "The Great Patents Heist" that comes from The Barnes Review, a Holocaust- denying publication. While "Secrets" is behind a pay wall on the Harper's website (<http://www.harpers.org/archive/1946/10/0032777>), I'd suggest using a direct link to Harper's (or get permission from Harper's to post "Secrets" yourself) rather than use that site as a citation.</comment>


Using Python to Code by Voice (2013) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI <comment><USER2> I was really excited by this when I saw it 4 years back, but the promised open source release never happened.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Demo starts about 9min into the talk

</comment><comment><USER3> I purchased voicecode.io for 300 bucks. A few years later and no Windows or Linux release, too bad!

</comment><comment><USER4> In order to code with your voice it is helpful to have a syntax which is voice friendly. Now ported to python: [https://github.com/pannous/angle](https://github.com/pannous/angle)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool, but he never released his code ([https://github.com/tavisrudd](https://github.com/tavisrudd)). However there are others: [https://github.com/simianhacker/code-by- voice](https://github.com/simianhacker/code-by-voice) [https://github.com/calmofthestorm/aenea](https://github.com/calmofthestorm/aenea) [https://github.com/dictation-toolbox](https://github.com/dictation-toolbox)

<comment><USER3> He kind of did. I asked him and he sent me a copy, I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to send it along however.

<comment><USER5> Literally his response on Youtube:

For those who are interested in trying something like this, please see [https://github.com/dictation-toolbox](https://github.com/dictation-toolbox) or google for 'github voice code'. I've been releasing tarballs of my code privately to those who already have natlink/dragonfly working but it is so custom to my setup that you wouldn't be able to use it directly. Others, who appear to have much more time than I, have taken up the banner on this.

\----

That's not really "released" in most peoples understanding. I don't fault him for not starting a project that he doesn't have time to maintain but he kinda started something and left people hanging. I think the better way to handle this would have been to just release his code and label it as abandoned. Even if it is custom, other (literally hurting people) would have the time and motivation to make it reusable.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Quote: Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/7150038948

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to show an improved product rather than just talk about things we might do.

\- Mark Zuckerberg

<http://startupquote.com/post/7150038948></comment>


Announcing the launch of the Open Education Alliance - <AUTHOR> http://blog.udacity.com/2013/09/announcing-launch-of-open-education.html

<comment> barry-cotter This is legitimately a big deal. They have big industry partners like Google, Cloudera and at&t and a very highly respected university in Georgia Tech. If any of them show real signs of taking Udacity qualifications seriously MOOCs will be well on their way to going mainstream.

The next step will be cram camps with lots of students in one place to provide a collegiate atmosphere, for some, particularly if some of the courses go always open enrolment. An immersive environment like Hacker School or AppReactor can teach a lot if people are committed and surrounded by people who are.

</comment><comment><USER2> I am curious which one of the large players hasn't joined, Coursera? Is there a counter-alliance to this?</comment>


Ask HN: please review my iPhone app, Cube Paint, or What I am doing wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://www.swoolt.com/cubepaint/hackernews.html

<comment><USER2> Maybe before someone tries to leave your app, you 'pop up' a survey asking how they liked it. Get them to add their own answers so you can hear more how they feel about your app and see what's bothering them.

There are plenty of people on youtube that review products, one comes to mind is iJustine. I know she accepts requests and she has a very large following. Send her a request and maybe she can do your app some justice.

Post videos to youtube as well to promote the app from twitter. Is it on facebook? Vimeo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't think that survey might help. This person is leaving the app, so he just wants the developers to stop bugging him.

Video (and YouTube reviews) sounds like a huge missed opportunity, thanks.

<comment><USER2> I disagree. Users aren't necessarily leaving your app because they don't like it. You can always offer them an option to opt out of the survey, but a 2 question survey is very valuable to you as a developer. "Please rate your experience, 1-5" "Would you suggest this to a friend? Why"

Also, did you blog about it? Try getting other bloggers to review your product and offer then an incentive for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Aside from the popup on first launch, there's no help screen, so I can't figure out how to arrange things properly. I tried visiting the gallery and it's not sized for an iPhone screen, so I have to scroll around to see the entire picture.

I think in the process of developing this, you may have used it too much to see any usability problems. I'd suggest finding someone who's never used your app before and physically watch them use it for the first time. Most importantly: don't say a word to help them! You want to see what it's like for first-time users of your application. After they're done, get their feedback on whether they'd use it again or not. This should only take a couple minutes. If you do this with 2-3 people, you'll realize a few things you could do to make the first use more compelling.</comment>