The planet is on edge of a global plastic calamity - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/05/the-planet-is-on-edge-of-a-global-plastic-calamity <comment><USER2> This really angers me to some extent. Our oceans are not polluted because of use of plastic straws in the Western world. At the very least, they should look for the biggest sources of plastic in the Ocean, and try to reduce the influx there. This is also what software developers learn as a core principle: avoid premature optimization.

Recently there have been announcements that 10% of the plastic in the oceans is abandoned fishing nets: [https://www.worldoceanfest.org/new- blog/2017/6/9/the-impact-...](https://www.worldoceanfest.org/new- blog/2017/6/9/the-impact-of-abandoned-ocean-fishing-nets-on-marine-life)

Another estimate was that 95% of the plastic comes from just 10 rivers: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4970214/95-pl...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4970214/95-plastic- oceans-comes-just-TEN-rivers.html) \- 8 of them in Asia, 2 in Africa.

(those two numbers seem to contradict each other, unless 5% of fishing nets come from the rivers, but still - then they should focus on getting the right numbers, and then act on those numbers).

Even the case against plastic shopping bags is not so clear cut. Energy waste might be much higher for the alternatives. Assumptions that a non-plastic shopping bag can be used hundreds of times are overly optimistic. They get broken or lost much sooner.

Plastic packaging might be a huge boon to food hygiene. I don't think food manufacturers are doing it just for fun.

But no, we have to outlaw drinking straws. I'm sure that will save the planet.

I get it - drinking straws simply seem superfluous. So why not just regulate them away. But there is another fundamental issue here: why, indeed, simply regulate every detail of people's lives? There is a fundamentally anti-freedom attitude at work here.

Lastly, compared to global warming, plastic is not even a real issue. Earth itself probably doesn't care. Eventually, after a few hundred or thousand years, it will find a way to break down the plastic. Then again, maybe nature also doesn't care about global warming.

<comment><USER3> You are angering yourself based on a fallacy. Why do we only need to focus on one area and not others at the same time? It's not like there's only one person doing this and they need to pick and choose where they spend their effort. All of us can and should do what we can, that makes a difference locally. A single person of course cannot clean the rivers in Asia, but they can reduce their own production of waste. A saved straw is a saved straw, no matter where on the planet you are. In case you haven't noticed, we live in a closed ecological system.

Food manufacturers use plastic in packaging because it's cheaper. That's it. It has nothing directly to do with hygiene, though that might also be a benefit. However, many worry that plastics can leach into the food and affect it, so it's not used for altruistic reasons.</comment></comment>


Why do programming languages bike shed syntax - <AUTHOR> why does each language feel the need to swap around the type and variable order, sometime int x other times x int. Switch statement isn't called switch when and case are other alternatives. Method return type at the front at the end with a : or arrow. Why why these are so minor details when designing a language. <Rant aborted> <comment><USER2> Is it purely a matter of taste? or does the languages in question has some specific qualities that, in part, dictate the order?

I think you will find that for each language developed there is a historical reason for the choices made. Different people have different aesthetics about such matters.

Such matters will never be fully decided for one way or the other.

What really matters is how complete the semantics of a language are. I can live with varying syntax, but undefined, unspecified or implementation defined semantics means that one can never know if any program written in a language with these kinds of semantics will run across varying machines and operating systems.</comment>


More Dutch cities may join in 'basic income' experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/08/more-dutch-cities-may-join-in-basic-income-experiment/

<comment><USER2> It will be interesting to see where this experiment goes!

I don't think that the pure basic income track will work out very well, but I'm curious to see the outcomes of a "system of incentives and rewards".

I think you definitely need to have an action -> reward structure. It's often much more satisfying to have accomplished something rather than just been giving it.</comment>


It's Face Time: Google Talk For Android Phones Gets Video Chat Support - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/28/its-face-time-google-talk-for-android-phones-gets-video-chat-support/

<comment><USER2> Is there a technical reason why Google has to push out a new variant of Android (2.3+) instead of making the app/service available as an APK?

</comment><comment><USER3> Yet another reason if you get an Android phone you shouldn't get anything but a Nexus.

<comment><USER4> According to the article, it will shortly be rolling out to all other 2.3 phones. The Nexus S is getting it first, but not exclusively.

<comment><USER5> This will probably come off as snarky, but besides the Nexus series, what other phones are there running 2.3 at this point?

<comment><USER6> Any phone running CyanogenMod 7 and the Xperia Play, at the very least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm just dumb, but I don't really understand why video chat on a phone is a big deal. Most of the time when I'm on the phone, I'm walking around town, or what have you. The rest I'm already sitting at my desk in front of my computer. I'd think if I video chatted and tried to walk around I'd just end up hurting myself, and if I sat down, I'd rather be on my computer with a larger screen...

<comment><USER4> Different use cases for different people. I'd love to have video chat on my phone for when I travel for work. It'd be great to video chat with my kids while I'm away. We could do that with our laptop, but that'd require me to be in my hotel room, with my lap. Then I'd have to call my wife, have her dig out her laptop.. etc. Basically it's enough of a pain that we never do it, we just have plain old fashioned voice calls.

But, if video chat was integrated into our phones (and particularly if it wasn't restricted to wifi only like FaceTime), then video chat would be as easy and frictionless as voice calls. I think I'd probably use it a lot under those conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone know how Google Talk's video chat works compared to Apple's FaceTime? Is there a reason everyone can't agree on a standard?

<comment><USER9> _Anyone know how Google Talk's video chat works compared to Apple's FaceTime?_

Google: Jingle (created at Google), an extension of Jabber/XMPP for signaling, RTP for media, H.264 video, GIPS (acquired by Google) audio

Apple: SIP/STUN/TURN/BuzzwordBingo for signaling/NAT traversal, RTP for media, H.264 video, AAC audio

 _Is there a reason everyone can't agree on a standard?_

a) Google: not-invented-here-syndrome

b) Apple: massive lock-in

c) Skype: see Apple

<comment><USER10> _> Is there a reason everyone can't agree on a standard? a) Google: not- invented-here-syndrome_

To be fair, I'm not aware of _any_ standard that existed when Google first released Google Talk video/voice. It is pretty strongly standards-based, though, and uses appropriate extension points in standard protocols (Jingle on XMPP).

<comment><USER9> Bit of a history here, but SIP had been around for a couple of years when Google Talk was released.

I spoke to Chris Sacca, who was part of the Google Talk team (if I'm not mistaken) at Startup School a couple of years ago, and he told me that the 'SIP gateways' would be coming online shortly. This must have been in 06/07'.

If memory serves well, the reasons why Google didn't go with SIP at the time had to do with federation and trust between different SIP domains. So it was mostly security and anti-SPAM related. They were meaning to do the right thing - i.e. being open - but found that SIP could not serve their needs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Less than a month to go before Google breaks links to Google+ Picasa albums - <AUTHOR> https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/03/07/less-than-a-month-to-go-before-google-breaks-hundreds-of-thousands-of-links-all-over-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> In Google's defense:

1\. This was announced over 3 years ago [0]

2\. Photos/Videos uploaded to Picasa were transferred to Google Photos automatically (comments/tags/captions will be lost though) [1]

3\. Picasa was originally built in 2002! (bought by Google in 2004) -- Perhaps Picasa had a time and place?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa#Discontinuation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasa#Discontinuation)

[1] [https://picasa.google.com/](https://picasa.google.com/)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm often one to criticise Google, but an entirely free cloud-based photo album was never going to be around forever. If you are very concerned with keeping an online record for all time you really shouldn't be depending on free stuff like Picasa.

<comment><USER4> Maybe, but it would also cost Google almost nothing to set up a 301 redirect from Picasa URLs to Google Photos. I wouldn't expect someone like Yahoo or Microsoft to bother, but being a "good web citizen" seems intrinsic to the Google corporate identity, after all.

<comment><USER5> The harder it is to find things via following links, the more you'll resort to search. Google has a perverse incentive to break the links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting that Amazon's approach of building products and killing them off if they don't improve the bottom line earns praise, while Google's similar one endlessly pisses people off.

<comment><USER7> It's probably because by and large Amazon kills physical products and Google kills services.

If someone buys a Fire Phone and it gets discontinued - well, products getting discontinued is part of life and it doesn't (usually) affect the usage of the one you have.

If Google builds a web service, then that service has the chance to grow to 50m / 100m users before deciding that it is not worth supporting. Law of large numbers says of those 50/100m a non-trivial proportion will invest substantial time in it and get pissed off when they have to make alternative plans.

If Amazon killed Prime Video or Audible, I bet you'd see a pretty huge outcry.

<comment><USER8> Wait until Amazon starts killing off some AWS services or features.

<comment><USER9> Which is likely why they have gone out of their way to not kill off AWS services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really miss picasa. I know the world is moving away from tagging your photos with descriptive words, but I still do it.

As with any Picasa related subject: Does anyone have a viable alternative desktop software that allows tagging of photos, some mild editing and allowing photos to be kept in folders that are the albums.

<comment><USER11> Picasa's flow is _still_ the best quick-edit system I've used. I am comfortable with Lightroom & Photoshop, and they're great tools. But Picasa did a stellar job of balancing simple/lightweight/fast/useful in a manner I haven't seen replicated anywhere else.

<comment><USER12> It probably has only gotten more responsive by virtue of being made to run fast on hardware from the early 2000s

<comment><USER11> You're not wrong. I'll be genuinely sad when Windows eventually drops whatever API support allows it to keep running without emulation.

<comment><USER13> Microsoft is famously unwilling to let software stop working. Picasa will probably work forever.

<comment><USER14> Dropping Win16 was a bad sign. [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how- microsoft-lost...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft- lost-the-api-war/) talks about the back compat faction losing power at Microsoft.

<comment><USER13> Interesting read. A _lot_ has changed in the almost 15 years since he published it. Has he done any followups?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google may not be much worse than other FANGs, but the way it pretends to be friendly to open source and free culture communities and co-opts them is nasty.

"Despite illusions in 2008–2009 that it was a fair player, Google is now trashing free culture by making all the Picasa Web images in Creative Commons vanish from the web.

In fact, users and albums are often forced to "migrate" to Google Plus, without telling them that any Creative Commons marking will be irreversibly destroyed in the process. There's no way to mark Creative Commons images on Google Plus. There's also no way to search or browse Picasa Web by license, apparently (the feature used to exist in 2009)."

[https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Picasa](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Picasa)

<comment><USER16> > pretends to be friendly to open source

I quite like go and Kubernetes.

<comment><USER15> That was meant to be parsed out as "open source communities".

When it's in their own self-interest I'm not sure whether they're being friendly or not. Can't really tell.

Also go feels a bit tightly controlled to me and like it's not carrying on the traditions of open source scripting languages (same with Swift). Fortunately, Rust and Elixir are shaping up to be good continuations of the culture of Perl/Python/Ruby/etc.

<comment><USER17> > When it's in their own self-interest I'm not sure whether they're being > friendly or not. Can't really tell.

Does it have to be mutually exclusive. Sure, Google is hoping you're going to go GKE for your Kubernetes/Container needs. But you're completely free to use another cloud, or roll your own.

For all cloud native backend stuff I really love Go (and Rust for that matter).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wouldn't depend on Google for anything.

Maybe self-hosting needs to be made easier for the average person? The web has so much bandwidth now that there's no reason outside of potential security issues that people can't be posting more of their own stuff(like a _web_ ).

<comment><USER19> Self-hosting has become shamefully easy now with Docker Hub and cheap VPSen in the "cloud".

It really is a one-liner to spin up a new service on your server nowadays.

<comment><USER20> Point me at the self-hosted feature-equivalent Picasa clone that my grandmother can use- she still mourns the demise of Picasa- and I will set one up for her.

<comment><USER21> Me too, please!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Add this to the list of reasons why you should not rely on cloud providers for anything you actually care about.

<comment><USER23> Maybe the right way to use Cloud providers is to develop against a "lowest common denominator" of functionality among the big kahunas. Then when of of them breaks, moving your stuff over to one of the others isn't that big a deal.

Be very skeptical of any "differentiating" feature that a Cloud provider tries to sell you.

<comment><USER20> There's no obvious minimal subset of features. Here's a feature Google Photos doesn't have: you cannot automatically sort photos in an album based on the filename. Either you sort by hand, or you sort based on the EXIF data. Picasa could, but Google Photos never got that particular tiny feature.

It means if you organize photos with a program, export them so they sort correctly based on filename, you'll lose your sort as soon as Google Photos gets its ugly hands on them. Google doesn't understand that EXIF times can be _wrong_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> On a slightly related note, what do people use to save local copies of valuable Google+ groups? If I understand correctly we're less than a month from shutdown?

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe someone could maybe a domain like fixedgoogleplus.com (similar to rawgithub.com) and host people's Picasa/Google+ photos while keeping the same link

</comment><comment> laurynas-s When Google will be shutting down Google Photos?

Of course, it is going to happen eventually.

However, I do have a dozen of photos there with no easy way to export hiqh quality photos in one go that worries me.

<comment><USER26> Exporting is easy. On desktop you can select photos and download a zip. You can also download them with Google Backup and Sync if you enable the option to show photos in Google Drive.

<comment> laurynas-s There is a limit thought when I tried to export from web some time ago. It was 500-2000 photos or something.

I probably have over 30000 photos there so it's a long process to download them all.

<comment><USER26> The desktop sync client is probably the way to go then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Picasa was such a great project. Google ruined it.

</comment><comment><USER28> As George Lopez would say, _Why you crying?_ You chose to use someone's free platform to host and display your pictures with virtually no work on your part, and now you don't get the free lunch anymore.

These scenarios are actually useful. They train people to use solutions that are open and portable, which will help them respond to unexpected disasters in the future. Use a self-hosted CMS to build, manage and publish your content so you can re-publish your content somewhere else.

<comment><USER29> > These scenarios are actually useful. They train people to use solutions that > are open and portable, which will help them respond to unexpected disasters > in the future. Use a self-hosted CMS to build, manage and publish your > content so you can re-publish your content somewhere else.

If you're able to point to an open and portable self-hosted CMS that has an equivalent feature set to Picasa (and not a minor subset thereof), you'll be sure to gain a lot of praise from myself, and many others here too I'm sure.</comment></comment>


EOS ICO about to hit 800M USD in ETH - <AUTHOR> https://icomonitor.io/#/0xd0a6E6C54DbC68Db5db3A091B171A77407Ff7ccf <comment><USER2> Not even Elon Musk on meth could write this:

[https://github.com/EOSIO/Documentation/blob/master/Technical...](https://github.com/EOSIO/Documentation/blob/master/TechnicalWhitePaper.md)

"The EOS.IO software introduces a new blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications. This is achieved by creating an operating system-like construct upon which applications can be built. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across hundreds of CPU cores or clusters. The resulting technology is a blockchain architecture that scales to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees, and allows for quick and easy deployment of decentralized applications."

Praise to the horned one! I could spend the rest of the day just listing the number of grotesquely hard problems that spring forth fractal-like from that paragraph. A lot of them are _unsolved problems in computer science and engineering_ , as in "armies of hackers and Ph.D candidates have not done these things."

Let's just start with "blockchain architecture that scales to millions of transactions per second," or that one word horror "database."

The streets are lined with the festering corpses of those who thought they would just go and build a (non-trivial) database.

Grab some popcorn. A lot of dumb money is about to be vaporized.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so crazy. They are moving fast towards 1 billion USD. I can't see how a pre-product company can spend that amount of money in a reasonable way.

<comment><USER2> They are moving toward 1 billion USD in funny illiquid non-money. Try actually moving all that out of ETH and get back to me.

They will however manage to extract something... probably millions. Then you will never hear of EOS again.</comment></comment>


When GOTO makes sense - <AUTHOR> http://www.thibault.org/newhome/thoughts/goto-and-fsms.html

<comment><USER2> I use goto all the time, but only for one coding pattern. It's a very powerful pattern, which allows me to do memory cleanup completely on a per-function basis:

int abc(void *ctx) { int rc = -1;

      if (outcome_of_first() != SUCCESS) {
        my_log(MY_LEVEL, "Log my error");
        goto over;
      }

      if (outcome_of_second() != SUCCESS) {
        my_log(MY_LEVEL, "Log my error");
        goto over;
      }

      ...

      rc = 0;

over: if (something_allocated != NULL) free(something_allocated);

      if (something_else_allocated != NULL)
        free(something_else_allocated);

      return rc;
    }

</comment><comment><USER3> Fair enough that GOGO works elegantly for a hard-coded DFA. But as hard-coded automata get larger, they get harder to read. A general-purpose solution which runs automata defined more concisely elsewhere (e.g., in a DSL) is generally preferable because it will end up being more flexible and maintainable.

Not as performant, no. But the complaint about GOTO is that it tends to be a hallmark of less-maintainable code. This example falls right in with that complaint on account of being a less-maintainable way to write code.

</comment><comment><USER4> Stupid article. Why would you hate goto ? You should learn that goto exists and use it when it is the best choice.

When writing software manually, this is rarely the best choice, but for automatic generation of code, this is very powerful.

Do never listen to the stupidities that are said to sell code quality checking software.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've also seen goto appropriately used to break out of deeply nested for loops. Now, you may ask when it's appropriate to use deeply nested for loops, and that's a whole different story.</comment>


How Stripe has ruined my business - <AUTHOR> Dear HN,
I am only writing this post because Stripe customer support absolutely sucks.
I began using Stripe for my business as I had heard good things about it. However, out of nowhere, I received this email from them:
"Hi Ramario,
Our systems recently identified charges that appear to be unauthorized by the cardholder, meaning that the owner of the credit or debit card did not consent to these payments. This unfortunately means that we will no longer be able to accept payments for ...
Refunds will be issued in 5–7 business days, although they may take longer to appear on the cardholder's statement. Please refer to your dashboard for a list of the charges to be refunded[1]."
This is virtually impossible as all our transactions are legitimate. Which I can prove.
Stripe has refunded all of our customers, customers who have already received our products, putting us at a huge loss.
Stripe support hardly respond to my emails and when they do, I get the same response:
"Thanks for emailing the Stripe Support Team! My name is * and I appreciate you writing in!
I will be looking into this with a colleague. Myself or a colleague will be reaching back out to you shortly with more information. In the meantime, if you have any further questions or feedback please feel free to let me know.
Your patience is truly appreciated! "
I am very disappointed as I thought Stripe was a forward thinking company but, it seems that they care little about customer service. I hope to resolve this issue but, at this point I am very skeptical. <comment><USER2> I'm a manager on Stripe's support team. I'm really sorry this happened. Could you email me at email@example.com and I can dig into this more?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for responding, I have just sent you an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I make all my customers pay by check!!! Digital payments are obviously way more convenient but they take way too much freedom out of the merchant's hands during arbitrary disputes

</comment><comment><USER4> I think you need to add way more context to this if you want anybody to care.

What product are you selling?

Who are your customers?

Have you had issues with payments in the past?

Is it possible that your product could be used in fraudulent ways? (eg stolen credit cards are being used to buy bitcoin through you etc)

Are they refunding literally every single payment you've ever received or just the ones marked as fraudulent?</comment>


Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/svembu/status/1044265646739996673 <comment><USER3> Zoho CEO here.

Our domain was abruptly blocked by our registrar this morning. Our NOC team and myself tried to get in touch with them and they tell us "Contact our legal". Even I could not get in touch with anyone beyond their phone operator. The domain was restored, but as DNS takes time to restore, we are still facing issues. They later claimed there were abuse complaints about Zoho.com emails (which is our personal email service with millions of free and paid users). We received a total of 3 complaints from them and two of them have been acted upon and one is under investigation.

Once we dig our way out of this, we will find ways make sure no one takes down our domain again this way.

<comment><USER4> You should consider using Google Domains. There's literally no company that's more professional in this regard.

<comment><USER5> Google is their direct competitor.

<comment><USER6> This isn't really a problem for companies the size of Google - while they may well refuse service to competitors or prohibit usage via terms of service, if they do allow a competitor on board there's no way they treat them any differently - there will be huge legal ramifications of they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The importance of using a reliable registrar can't be overstated. tierra.net looks like a small company, without 24hr support, and with an abandoned social media presence. Why would a company with 40M users use a tiny registrar to save 2 bucks on a domain name?

<comment><USER8> I've been very happy with MarkMonitor. They have good customer service, a good reputation, and best of all, they auto-renew domains and send an invoice. That means that the failure mode is "domain is renewed, I owe them a check."

If your domains are riding on a credit card, you potentially have a failure mode of "card was declined, my domain did not renew, everything is down."

<comment><USER9> How much does markmonitor cost ? There is no pricing anywhere.

<comment><USER8> My invoices say $20/yr per .com; other TLDs are more expensive. Because we have a ton of domains we spend over $20k a year with them. I'm sure there is a minimum but I don't know what it is these days.

I would not say MarkMonitor is a tool for startups. It's a tool for organizations that would lose a lot if they lost a domain. I bet Zoho wishes they could go back in time and spend $10k to avoid this problem they had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, of course. Look what business Zoho is in.[1]

"Email marketing software that drives sales. Create, send, and track email campaigns that help you build a strong customer base."

They don't have 40 million users. They have 40 million targets.

Of course they don't get many complaints. If you search for "zoho opt out", you get sent to a page with a HTTP 400 error.[2]

[1] [https://www.zoho.com/campaigns](https://www.zoho.com/campaigns) [2] [https://help.zoho.com/portal/kb/articles/what-does-email- opt...](https://help.zoho.com/portal/kb/articles/what-does-email-opt-out- field-mean-while-creating-contact)

<comment><USER11> Hi,

The "email opt out" [2] link is fixed now.

<comment><USER10> No, it's not. Nothing in "help.zoho.com" seems to work.

400 Bad Request in Firefox.

curl:

        curl https://help.zoho.com

        <title>400 Bad Request</title>

400 Bad Request

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a hard lesson for people that no matter how resilient your authoritative DNS infrastructure is, for your own nameservers (plus route53 or similar), your domain _registrar_ is absolutely a single point of failure.

If you have something with 40M customers I'd highly recommend going with the same domain registrars used by some of the Fortune 100 companies.

Seizing a domain at the registrar level, by court order, is also how the US government implements "seizure" of domains, if you've ever seen a torrent index site that has suddenly been replaced with a big scary FBI page (examples: [https://www.google.com/search?q=this+domain+has+been+seized+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=this+domain+has+been+seized+fbi&num=100&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizv5jHutTdAhW8IjQIHaefBf0Q_AUIDigB&biw=1788&bih=1227&dpr=0.9) )

</comment><comment><USER13> Honest question: What exactly does it mean for a registrar to block a domain? I believed so far that for my browser to successfully connect to a web server running on a domain or for a mail server to deliver email to a domain, there should only be valid A, AAAA, MX, and/or CNAME records in the DNS.

Was it really a block at the registrar level or was it a block at the DNS level, i.e., the registrar also ran DNS service and their DNS service refused to return responses for zoho.com domains?

At what layer or at which stage of the protocol can a registrar disrupt this and take a domain offline?

<comment><USER14> I assume the registrar was also the nameserver in this case

<comment><USER15> Am I seeing things or is dig really telling me their NS records pointed to vtitan.com? Who the hell is vtitan? Route53 with AWS would run them what, $100 a month for their level of traffic?

<comment><USER5> Zoho appears to have funded it along with a few other companies. Unfortunately, the Indian news page that reported on the launch is even worse than news sites in the US with popups, pop-ins, pop-overs, pop-rocks, etc, so I can't in good conscience link it here.

<comment><USER16> Archive.org, for next time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I believe DNS/domain name is really a problem that could be better served using a blockchain technology. The registers can't be trusted

<comment><USER18> Namecoin is a good example of this - decentralised domain registrations using the .bit TLD.

<comment><USER17> Namecoin is cool but I think there are still big issues to be fixed, like renewals/pricing to avoid one person getting all the good domain/sane names.

<comment><USER18> Yeah you're right - Namecoin has a massive squatting problem. It costs only pennies to register a name which doesn't help.

One possible solution is a proof of work for name registrations, similar to the Onion Name System [1]. There is a short talk by Jesse Victors that explains it nicely [2].

[1] [https://github.com/Jesse-V/OnioNS-HS](https://github.com/Jesse-V/OnioNS- HS)

[2] [https://youtu.be/zZzOVKPcIMg](https://youtu.be/zZzOVKPcIMg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really hope [https://handshake.org](https://handshake.org) will catch on. It has the potential to solve a few very hard problems (PKI and online identity) without fundamental changes to the way the Internet works.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is why you register your domain with MarkMonitor or Cloudflare. I cannot comprehend why they were so stupid to use a registrar that is not corporate oriented. This is just unreal.

<comment><USER21> The domain was registered in 2004; MarkMonitor was around then, but Cloudflare wasn't. I was involved in moving a domain to MarkMonitor in 2013; at that time, they had a rather steep minimum spend to get on their platform, and they barely wanted to talk to us.

<comment><USER22> You can transfer a domain name to a different registrar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the startup friendly markmonitor alternative here ? I don't see pricing information at a lot of these services ...so I'm guessing they are $$$$$$.

Anything which startups can use and is $$ ?

</comment><comment><USER23> Couple of things about Zoho that I don't understand.

\- Why use the same domain for the free service, which is usually more prone to abuse?

\- Zohocorp.com is hosted on GoDaddy. Why not move all your domains to a single company so that they value your business more and give you a better level of customer service?

I hope once this is all over, Zoho just shares their feedback and some advices that will help small businesses.

<comment><USER24> I'll add another. Why do they use the same domain for both MX records? Why not use mx.zoho.com, mx.zoho.net so that if one domain gets busted at the registry level the backup MX still works?

<comment><USER25> Perhaps a reliable CCTLD for the alternative, so it's not under the US government.

I noticed Amazon use a UK domain for one of the four Route 53 nameservers they specify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Its not like Zoho is known for their high availability anyways, their domain not being reachable is just par for the course.

Also since it said "suspended for abuse complaint", I would almost immediately assume the Zoho just didn't properly handle abuse claims and its their fault.

Needless to say I have a incredibly low opinion about their "service" based on having used their mail product for almost a year (switched to google afterward).

</comment><comment><USER27> So as a domain owner you are completely at the mercy of your registrar?

What is considered a reliable registrar in Europe?

<comment><USER28> For private or business use?

Privately I'm pretty happy with Namecheap, they never failed to provide the support I needed in a friendly and precise manner. For business purposes with high value domains MarkMonitor seems to be the industry leader.

<comment><USER29> I love namecheap - customer for over 10 years - but a recent incident has me rethinking my patronage. We recently received a "lawyer DDOS" \- where a law firm sent multiple letters claiming /alleged/ trademark infringement. Without proof of identity, proof of subpoena, judge's order - whatever - <USER2> rolled over on their WHOIS protection. There was no dialog, no email from legal, nothing.

I was dismayed to see that someone can literally send one email, get your personal info, and impact your company.

Very disappointed in namecheap.

<comment><USER30> I am also on namecheap and this freaks me out. can you provide more info?

<comment><USER31> Read my comments too. Namecheap definitely is just as bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Incredible. Their registrar (TierraNet) has some explaining to do.

</comment><comment><USER33> I hope they move to a proper domain register after this...

The lack of decent options of domain registers for technical people that don't need their hand held and have decent security, while not being $$$$ enterprise options is depressing...

I use Uniregistry which has TOTP support and what seems to be a competent team, and a friend swears by AWS's Route53 domain registration, but more choices with actual good policies and aren't just a reseller would be welcome.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've had similar issues when operating my business. The bottom line is your company is only as strong as your vendors. If you pick weak vendors then your business is harmed as a result. If you find that you have a weak vendor then you must dump that vendor immediately and replace them with someone who is a strong vendor. Period.

</comment><comment><USER5> A whole lot of people are learning about the hazards of centralization in email lately. First Google turns GMail into a slow-loading nightmare for weaker computers like mine, then they announced the closure of Inbox. Now 40 million people are without email because Zoho couldn't keep up with registrar consolidations ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18060013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18060013)).

Zoho is fine as a service, but a domain suspension shouldn't cut tens of millions of people off from email.

<comment><USER35> > A whole lot of people are learning about the hazards of centralization in > email lately.

What is the alternative?

<comment><USER5> I don't know, I'm not an email geek. Lots of smart people run their own email systems and report good delivery rates going by past threads here. Maybe they can work together on something more accessible.

<comment><USER36> [https://mailinabox.email/](https://mailinabox.email/) has worked well for me in the past

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is pretty bad service from Tierra registrar. I am taking this as a cautionary tale for everyone. Domain registrar have way too much power. A back up domain in case things go south, should be a must.

</comment><comment><USER38> I really don't understand why any enterprise service would use these kinds of bargain bin registrars. Is using a reputable registrar with professional, enterprise-grade service not worth it given the scale of someone like Zoho? Optimizing to save a tiny amount on your registrar while you have millions pouring in from customers seems like a really poor decision.

I really believe in running a lean business, but running lean means cutting the fat, not cutting out your muscles and tendons and running with a naked skeleton that is fragile.

</comment><comment><USER39> Reading through the thread, people have similar problems with namecheap, name.com.

So if you cant afford something enterprise like MarkMonitor, and you don't want something super cheap $9.99 per year. What sort of good quality middle ground choices do we have?

</comment><comment><USER40> 40M users doesn't really give a good idea of how significant 3 complaints are. Still it sounds like some additional screening and protection against phishing needs to be implemented on Zoho's side.

</comment><comment><USER41> ZOHO went down and hundreds of thousands of business went down...feel like this should be a bigger warning of how dependent we are to handful of companies?

</comment><comment><USER42> I feel that once you've passed a certain size you should move the domain to a more professional service, no matter the cost. MarkMonitor etc.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wow, Zoho is down a second time today now with a 400 Bad Request...

</comment><comment><USER44> Direct IP?

Got a major sales push today, looking for a bandaid.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is there a blockchain for DNS?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I believe OpenNIC was something like that.

<comment><USER46> Like namecoin? or [https://handshake.org](https://handshake.org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Running their DNS on a 2-bit registrar is exactly the kind of thing I have come to expect from Zoho. I am forced to use this company for a handful of services at my company. If I started to tell you the idiocy I've had to put up with from these guys, I'd never stop ranting. I'll save it for DevRant.

<comment><USER3> The domain was registered over 22 years ago, and it kept moving through registrars who were acquired. We do have a solid record of reliable services, and have kept growing in spite of never taking a dime in outside capital.

<comment><USER48> To me this is even worse than choosing a bad registrar once by mistake. You keep choosing companies who can't stay in business and let your domain float around like it didn't matter. The second or third buy-out of your name registration should have been an alert to switch to a top tier company for stability. On the internet, your domain name is literally the crux of your services.

Thank you for sharing your story. It should serve as a warning to others who may need to audit their infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is terrible.</comment>


When in doubt, turn to _why - <AUTHOR> http://judofyr.net/posts/when-in-doubt.html

<comment><USER2> Code should not look like that. Such code is too difficult to understand - even in C I've rarely seen such a mess.

The style of programming that in any way values a lot of weird unreadable characters is a relic of the past, and it is not in any way related to skill level or intelligence, as a lot of people seem to think.

Code should always be made as clear as possible first, and should only be made more obscure when performance is critical, and there is no clear way of writing the same block.

<comment><USER3> You're entirely right, of course. But I don't think Camping designed to be used for normal applications. Camping is Camping partly because its unusual and hacky. It's a little more like an experiment than a business solution.

<comment><USER4> What?!? The "4k pocket full-of-gags web microframework" isn't the right choice for this financial transaction app I'm writing? I FEEL USED.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you need a blog post explaining line-by-line how it works, it probably won't be very easy to maintain.

 _This was the first time I've ever heard of the merge block. It's not even properly documented! But it's a very simple and very powerful feature..._

...doesn't inspire confidence. :)

<comment><USER4> Totally agreed. Code must always be Enterprise Ready™. How could anyone possibly post about some different/interesting/witty way to do something?

<comment><USER6> That's not what he was saying. He's saying what he said, and nothing more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Some do not understand Camping and lash out with spears reaching 4 to 6 feet in length."

Some context might help: <http://redhanded.hobix.com/bits/campingAMicroframework.html> <http://github.com/why/camping/tree/master>

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know Ruby, but the author's comments suggest that why_'s way is more brittle, longer, and slower.

How is it better then?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not better, it's _awesomer_. I'm so tired of all this scalable, readable, fully tested code (which of course is good), that I find these small, wicked snippets so entertaining for the hacker part of my brain; and after all, this is the true reason I code: for fun.

<comment><USER9> this kind of thing is good to write a blog post on, but when else is it useful? I think it is irresponsible to choose "_awesomer_" over "scalable, readable, fully tested" for anything that is supposed to be production quality (don't know the status of the particular project in question).

You may end up with non-scalable, unreadable, and/or untested code in a production system for a number of reasons. Some I can think of off the top of my head include performance and schedule pressure. Introducing it for fun sounds like bad news bears to me.

<comment><USER4> Most of the time you get non-scalable, unreadable, and/or untested code in a production system because you're not very good and you don't step back and look at interesting/different ways to do things. "Awesomer" isn't a good reason to do things, but it's probably the original source of some of the things we like about Python and Ruby and Lua and IO and Potion . . .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When in doubt, use a real parser instead of regexes (but perhaps i am spoiled by Haskell).

<comment><USER11> I'm actually curious what a haskell version of this would look like.

<comment><USER12> I'd be happy to write you an example if you specified more clearly than the linked website what the problem is.

<comment><USER11> Essentially, you get a hash consisting of key/value pairs, where the keys may have a format such that

        "key[subkey][subsubkey]" => "some_value"

is parsed into

        {"key" => {"subkey" => {"subsubkey" => "some_value"}}}

for any depth of nesting.

Valid keys would be:

        "key"
        "key[subkey]"
        "key[subkey][subsubkey]"
        etc.

I hope I got the spec right. Pretty tired right now, been coding all day. :)

<comment><USER12> <http://paste.lisp.org/display/74007>

        let Right x = paramTree [("a[x]","b"),("a[b]","c"),
        ("a[b][c]","d"),("bc[de]","f")] in putStrLn (drawTree x)

        { "a" => { "b" => <conflict>, "x" => "b" }, "bc" => {
        "de" => "f" } }

<comment><USER13> Interesting. Could you have implemented drawTree with Language.Haskell.Pretty? Also I get the following error with ghc:

yc.hs:35:34: No instance for (Monad (Either String)) arising from a use of `mapM' at yc.hs:35:34-52 Possible fix: add an instance declaration for (Monad (Either String)) In a 'do' expression: keys <\- mapM parseKey names In the expression: do keys <\- mapM parseKey names return (toTree (zip keys values)) In the definition of `paramTree': paramTree nameValues = do keys <\- mapM parseKey names return (toTree (zip keys values)) where (names, values) = unzip nameValues

(Edit: I'm sorry that the error message's whitespace gets messed up here.)

Also your groupings function is only used in conjunction with Data.Map.fromList. Did you consider using something like Data.Map.fromListWith (++) instead? Of course you'd have to wrap your would-be Map values in singleton lists first.

<comment><USER12> What version of GHC (or of the libraries) do you have? (Either String) should be a monad as specified through Control.Monad.Error:

        instance Error e => Monad (Either e) where
            ...

I didn't consider Data.Map.fromListWith; I didn't know about it. (Thanks.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem with this article is that it doesn't immediate demonstrate, in code, what the problem is.

Here's an example of a nested hash: "XXX". Here's what normally happens in Rack: "XX". Here's what we want to happen: "XX". Here's a couple solutions.

Ding, now everyone is clearly on the same page, instead of reading the article twice trying to figure out what's going on.</comment>


There's No Such Thing As A Google Killer - <AUTHOR> http://www.skrenta.com/2009/07/theres_no_such_thing_as_a_goog.html <comment><USER2> Two men woke up in their campsite one morning to radio news that a man-eating tiger was on the prowl. One man promptly started wearing his running shoes, while the second teased him: "surely, you don't think you're going to outrun the tiger in those?!". "I don't have to outrun the tiger", replied the first man. "I only have to outrun you."

They don't have to kill _Google_. Outsurviving Y! Or Bing will do handsomely.

PS: that said, comparing google to coke is an analogy without legs.

Edit: clarified based on reply.

<comment><USER3> So who _do_ they have to kill/outrun/whatever? I'm not sure I understand your analogy.

<comment><USER2> #2: y! & bing

<comment><USER3> Yahoo and Bing are full service search engines. If they execute well, they could eventually become "Google killers".

I think the premise of this article was that just because Blekko is in the search space, doesn't mean it's trying to replace Google (or Yahoo or Bing). They think they can succeed by being Mt. Dew rather than Pepsi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "X Killer" never meant that in my experience. It is phrased as such because it generates clicks and ad revenue. That's it. A lot of headlines are hyperbolic because they are designed to garner attention.

They also serve to introduce concepts to people who aren't familiar with the field. Saying "web search start up" to a layman isn't going to excite much, but "google killer" will, regardless of accuracy.

<comment><USER5> Was there _ever_ a "X killer" that actually killed the X? I cannot think of one example. If something is branded that way, must be a loser already. True "X killers" are like ninjas that come unnoticed and unexpected.

<comment><USER6> _"Was there ever a "X killer" that actually killed the X?"_

I would think Dell, Amazon and Wikipedia would this idea.

That being said, I would define "X killer" as an organisation that completely dominates it's field. In all of the above cases, they managed to beat their competitors in price point and range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Google killer isn't going to be a search engine, just as the Microsoft killer isn't a software company, just as the IBM killer wasn't a computer manufacturer.

<comment><USER8> And, in fact, none of those companies are dead (or close).

<comment><USER7> It all depends on yor definition of dead. <http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> IMO, on search and presentation of results, Google can be beaten.

I just do not believe that what they have there now is the best that can be achieved in this field. It's plain, makes limited use of colour to provide more information about results (is this page for a business, is it a forum, is it a MFA info site, is it a blog, or a mailing list archive?), gets pretty messy once the top and side ad positions are full, may rely too much on the title tag in presenting results, could provide larger targets for paging, etc.

<comment><USER10> Fully agree. And it's also almost impossible for Google to change their presentation, because they would immediately confuse millions of users.

This is a weakness that can be exploited by a new competitor. Cuil did some work in that area, it was promising.

<comment><USER11> all the attempts to provide "richer" results have failed pretty badly though. that should be telling.

I prefer googles "raw" results - it leaves the processing to my brain rather than a computer :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 'Tisn't "product killers" but "category killers". Google isn't the Microsoft killer because they've a better desktop platform, it's that they're making desktop platforms irrelevant. All we can know of the hypothetical/eventual Google killer is that they won't be competing _on_ but _with_ search/advertising.

</comment><comment><USER13> There is no Google killer, but there are thousands of vultures ready to exploit any weakness.

At worst Google will end up as Yahoo/Microsoft, a legacy company that did something important in the past. They just have too much brand equity to fade into the sunset.

</comment><comment><USER14> I label Christine Varney as the most likely Google killer. [http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/27/varney-getting- pushback-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/27/varney-getting-pushback-on- aggressive-antitrust-agenda/)

<comment><USER15> I was going to say the exact thing. Government is the real killer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Technology is not Coke. Google is a huge brand, but brand only matters when it comes to brand loyalty, and in technology _there is no brand loyalty_.

The minute someone comes up with something significantly better (and it will happen), Google will join Yahoo and many others in the "former king of the hill, still important, just not very influential" camp.

</comment><comment><USER17> The only company even remotely in a position to kill google is google itself. If they mess up badly enough in the eyes of their users then there would be a mass exodus, as long as they keep doing what they're doing now they will outlast all of us.

</comment><comment><USER18> It would be interesting to analyse past articles about IBM and Microsoft and check at what point of the cycle, now with Google, we are.

Also, one must realize that there is no such thing as search market, as well as there is no such market as restaurant's market. There is only market of finding answers, or buying food and social status.

Thus, to get a new Google we have to wait for a paradigm shift. Computers enabled IBM; personal computers enabled Microsoft; Internet enabled Google, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> so...any information on blekko's actual product/service?

</comment><comment><USER20> I disagree. There is only one Google Killer.

Google.

<comment><USER3> That's a nice sentiment, but what does it really mean?

Google would only be _completely_ to blame for lost market share if its competitors were _completely_ stagnant, which they are clearly not.</comment></comment>


An Airline Fee That Exists for No Apparent Reason - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-airline-fee-that-exists-for-no-apparent-reason-1530104985 <comment><USER2> While we're at it, might as well complain about hotel "resort fees," which I feel are far more predatory since they are NOT included in the reservation rate you pay online, and are often difficult to find prior to showing up at the hotel. Plus they usually cover things that used to be no-brainers like use of the fitness center and daily newspaper.

I'm surprised the online reservation sites and the host cities haven't fought back against this practice. Booking a $75 room with a $30 resort fee robs the booking site of nearly a third of its commission, and the city of the same proportion of the hotel taxes. (the sales tax charged on the resort fee is not the same as the hotel occupancy taxes charged on the room rate.)

<comment><USER3> My personal gripe is banks' "inactive account fee". Is my account being inactive costing them any money? Well, no, it's not _costing_ them any more money. It might mean that they don't have opportunity to charge _other_ fees, but what it really seems to be is "if you're not paying attention to this account, we'll start charging you this fee because you won't notice".

<comment><USER4> I think it's the banks way of taking some of the money before it's legally taken by the state. In many if not all states, if a bank account is inactive for 3-5 years, the state considers it "lost" and takes the money until it's claimed in the future. So the bank will try to drain as much as possible for themselves before that happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In "turnabout is fair play", there's a neat technique called "fuel dumping" that makes use of this by finding fares that, for various complicated reasons, _don 't_ have the surcharges added, occasionally allowing crazy cheap flights. It's quite complicated though and (surprise!) airlines hate it.

[https://www.secretflying.com/posts/fuel-dumping- basics/](https://www.secretflying.com/posts/fuel-dumping-basics/)

<comment><USER6> Not really secret if it has a public website that is shared publicly.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps it's "secret" in the sense of tricks known to any expert in a subject.

Much like the secret to more-easily peeled hard-boiled eggs is to put the eggs in cold water before you boil it. Or like baking soda is the secret to shrimp with a firm texture.

<comment><USER8> I always thought the secret is to put them in cold water after you boiled them? That's how I've been doing it since forever and it works well.

<comment><USER7> A lot of info I can find contradicts other info, so it's hard to be sure. I can't find good support for the method I gave, though. I was under the impression that chilling them afterward was mainly about stopping the process of cooking, though I can't say it doesn't also help with peeling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In Canada the airlines have to advertise total price. They can show a breakdown of taxes and fees, but the main advertised price must be the total price the customer pays.

<comment><USER10> As the article states, the issues isn't that customers don't see the fares when searching for prices, but that loyalty programs and some corporate discounts exclude fees. So this practice gouges them.

<comment><USER11> Corporate travel managers aren't naive about this stuff. They know what they're getting when they negotiate a discount for employee travel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://outline.com/dWqwhr](https://outline.com/dWqwhr)

<comment><USER13> Is it just me or does outline.com not work at all half the time in any browser besides Chrome because it checks for the nonstandard `window.chrome` property?

<comment><USER14> Works in Firefox 60 for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The surcharges often are used against miles-based travel. You book the ticket one miles, but still get hit by various taxes and surcharges. Often it's a large chunk of the total fare.

Qantas has a "fuel surcharge" for a long period during high oil prices. This surcharge was literally to bill you for a base cost of their service. Arguably pure marketing.

<comment><USER16> Have Qantas removed the "surcharge" yet? I remember hearing about it in the late 80s, and continue to hear about it through the 90s.

<comment><USER17> Still high taxes for Qantas rewards redemptions. Majorly so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unusually for WSJ, I find the title of the article fairly misleading. It seems to imply that there is an extra charge being levied, whereas it's actually talking about a complicated price structure designed to disadvantage frequent fliers and corporate customers.

Still shady, but not obviously implied by the title.

</comment><comment><USER19> I seem to recall that when the government repealed some telecom tax, Verizon added a surcharge of an equal amount, and pocketed more money without changing the total bill for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER20> Slightly off-topic: My "favorite" fee I've encountered is Spirit Airlines' "Unintended Consequences Fee": [https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/01/travel/spirit- fee/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/01/travel/spirit-fee/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> > And it doesn't impact how many frequent-flier miles you collect for a flight > on an airline that pays out miles by price instead of distance.

Not true exactly, at least on American. I fly them almost exclusively and I just went to check this out. To move up to the next tier of status in their frequent flier program, you need to spend a certain amount of "Elite Qualifying Dollars" (or EQD) every year. The EQD are based only on the fare price, exclusive of taxes and fees.

So, this would allow them to control how many people are moving up to the different status levels, by adjusting the fees vs. fares for each ticket.

<comment><USER22> That's not true--this article is about airline fees, not government fees, and AA counts airline fees when they calculate EQD's. From AA.com:

"EQDs are awarded based on ticket price (includes base fare plus carrier- imposed fees, but excludes government-imposed taxes and fees)"

<comment><USER21> When I look at the receipt from my ticket I see:

        FARE-USD 	$ 440. 	93
        TAXES AND CARRIER-IMPOSED FEES 	$ 61.67
        TICKET TOTAL 	$ 502. 	60

Then when I go to the account summary and see the EQD awarded from that trip, it's 440, which is only the amount of the fare. Maybe it was only taxes on that ticket and no carrier fees though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Those carriers give out miles based on total fare.

Sort of. They give out miles based on this, but often not the miles needed to accrue status (which often makes mileage accrual substantially more lucrative, as well unlocking free/reduced upgrade access). On United, for example, you accrue MileagePlus miles based on total price paid, but accrue "Premier Qualifying Miles" and "Premier Qualifying Dollars" based on the "fare", which is always far lower.

<comment><USER24> No, PQD includes carrier surcharges. Here's United:

> You earn PQD for the base fare and carrier-imposed surcharges on eligible > flights.

Same for American, and probably other carriers too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> When I worked for a travel company I saw a lot of fares that had lots of taxes and fees on them. Some flights brought fewer dollars to the airline than everyone else. You pay for both airports, the cities/states/provinces/countries they are in and places you go thru airspace to and anyone else who can put in a claim. The most I ever saw was around 12 on a single segment. The final cost of an airline ticket supports a village.

<comment><USER26> But that's how everything works. When I buy a gallon of milk at the grocery store, the store gets a cut, the delivery truck driver gets a cut, the gas station he uses gets a tiny cut, the farmer gets a cut, the bottler gets some, etc. Despite all that, the price I see is a single number.

The weird thing with airline tickets is that the airlines break the price out into two pieces and call one the fare and the other a processing fee, as if that distinction makes any difference to anybody but them.

<comment><USER27> It isn't just airlines. Other industries have discovered this dark pattern (presumably there is a class in "Dr Evil MBA" where they teach it).

E.g look at your phone bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have a fantasy of getting one of these companies as a client and padding my bill using fees like theirs: "federally mandated taxes" (my income taxes), "infrastructure fee" (my computer etc), "e&o insurance" (my errors and omissions insurance), "PP charge" (pure profit fee), etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> I recently priced up tickets from San Franisco to Sydney, and it was more than double the cost of Sydney to San Francisco. In fact, I priced up dates that included my original itinerary, and it was cheaper to buy two tickets originating in Australia.

<comment><USER30> This isn't related to the carrier-imposed surcharges, however. Airfare is priced according to a system of filed fares with specific rules, for specific city pairs, that require booking into specific "inventory."

Internationally, round-trips and different fares than one-ways. And SFO-SYD is a different fare altogether from SYD-SFO.

A fare might say:

        - Originates in SFO, destination SYD
        - Books into economy class
        - Requires S-code inventory
        - Requires a round-trip
        - Can be combined on a half-round-trip basis with any other fare USA-Australia fare (e.g. you could combine two fares SFO-SYD and NYC-MEL to get a SFO-SYD/NYC-MEL round trip)
        - Can use any flights that have S-code inventory
        - Except no stopovers
        - And only 1 transfers in Area 1 (USA)
        - Can be reissued for 400 USD

With that fare, you can then build an itinerary from segments (flights) that match all requirements of the fare.

<comment><USER29> How is this different to the first example in the article?

> They aren't tied to distance traveled—fees are often the same for flights > from Europe to New York and Los Angeles. They vary wildly by direction of > travel. Business-class tickets on British Airways between New York and > London have a $1,006 carrier-imposed charge if the round-trip begins in New > York, but only $381 if the round trip originates in London.

<comment><USER31> The article was discussing extra fees tacked on to FQTV tickets</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A tool for calculating room modes in 2D - <AUTHOR> http://www.roomresponse.com/ <comment><USER2> I like the ease with which the shape of a space can be modified and the overall functional nature of the design. Unfortunately, the calculations hung before providing me with the results...or maybe I am just too impatient?

Are the calculations run in the browser or server-side?

About how long should a person expect to wait...and I understand that they could take longer than internet expectations?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, my testing has been a bit bad... It should take about 5-30 seconds, depending on your machine.

It uses a web worker to do the calculations, so it shouldn't hang until it starts plotting stuff.

What OS + browser are you using? I noticed that it doesn't work on Opera, for example. But on chrome it works decently even on my phone.

Most of the calculations are done client-side, the server-side calculations only take a few seconds.

<comment><USER2> I'm using Chromium. I suspect that it is the response time that makes me perceive the site as not working...even 1 second is a long time for something that appears to be interactive.

The fast response time of the room editor probably sets an expectation. One strategy that may be used to mitigate long response times is to update the screen so that the user sees progress.

Here, though, the calculation makes the page unresponsive to ordinary events like scrolling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, good point. That must be plotly plotting the room modes. I don't really know how to make that not jam up the browser... I'll look into it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-quantum-knowledge-cools-entropy.html

<comment><USER2> As a lay-person, I am at the intersection of "wow, that's insanely cool" and "are you guys just making this up for more research grants?"</comment>


YC fellowship, whats in it for YC? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hiren/yc-fellowship-and-yc-28191655bdac

<comment><USER2> It's also a way to test new investment strategies as well. Basically, with what amounts to play money for them, they can test out new ways of evaluating teams and startups at an earlier phase and see what works and doesn't. They have a good idea how to evaluate companies that already have users and customers, but no idea when it comes to raw, unproven ideas. The value of that information when applied to their main batches could be pretty big... if it makes them catch one good startup they would have missed otherwise, it will have already proven a nice return.

I doubt many if any VCs see as many applicants as YC, and they're finding every way to leverage that data advantage they can against the competition

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, I like the way they have embedded startup mentality within itself, you dont see this with many other VCs.</comment></comment>


Perl on Rails - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2007/11/perl_on_rails.shtml <comment><USER2> I wonder if they are going to open source it? and if not why not, I pay my TV license so I expect it too ;p

</comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't this be the Perl framework Catalyst?</comment>


Software Engineering Within SpaceX - <AUTHOR> https://yasoob.me/posts/software_engineering_within_spacex_launch/ <comment><USER2> >SpaceX also made use of Chromium and JavaScript for Dragon 2 flight interface. I am not sure how that passed the certification. I assume it was allowed because for every mission-critical input on the display, there was a physical button underneath the display as well

I think that's all the validation we need for HTML/CSS/JS as the best tool for UI development nowadays. I wonder if there was actual shared code from the Dragon UI used in their online docking simulator. How neat.

<comment><USER3> The consensus regarding automobiles and touch interfaces is starting to form that they are just a bad idea.

Physical switches, knobs, toggles, buttons -- these things can be activated using one's hands _without_ needing to coordinate with sight, meaning, our eyes can stay on the road.

There is no road to keep your eyes on in space though, so needing to coordinate hands and eyes is clearly not that big a problem for the Dragon, and might even be better than lots of physical inputs: you can cram more virtual inputs into the same area by using menus and what not, and that might make it easier to navigate one's way around them. Then again, complex menus might make things worse in an emergency. There's not that much for the astronauts to do in Dragon though, so it's probably all OK.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a source about the said "consensus"? It sounds more like resistance to change than an actual rationale.

You have always had the need to look at the buttons, like reaching out to the radio.

From my experience, the majority of people who drive a car with touch interfaces don't want to look back to old fashioned buttons.

<comment><USER5> > From my experience, the majority of people who drive a car with touch > interfaces don't want to look back to old fashioned buttons.

Many automakers that had touch-heavy interfaces are moving back towards physical controls, both because of market demand and evolving industry safety considerations.

e.g. [https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is- pur...](https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging- touchscreens-from-its-vehicles) [https://jalopnik.com/honda-follows-mazda-by- ditching-some-to...](https://jalopnik.com/honda-follows-mazda-by-ditching- some-touchscreen-contro-1842564375) [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/06/17/ford- my...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/06/17/ford-myford-touch- infotainment-sync/2432489/)

I have no problem with touch controls in general, but replacing a volume knob I can find blindly with a relatively small pair of "Vol+" and "Vol-" touch targets is mildly infuriating. It's OK as the driver because there is an actual tactile control on the steering wheel, but downright unpleasant as a passenger.

<comment><USER4> One of the issues with those automakers is that their interfaces are in general unresponsive and slow. The one in my BMW sucked. The Jaguar I-PACE is very slow as well.

Tesla got this right with both the touch screen and the physical buttons on the steering wheel for things like volume control.

<comment><USER6> > One of the issues with those automakers is that their interfaces are in > general unresponsive and slow. The one in my BMW sucked. The Jaguar I-PACE > is very slow as well.

> Tesla got this right with both the touch screen and the physical buttons on > the steering wheel for things like volume control.

Perhaps there's an auto manufacturer or two that got it right. However, I've never driven a car with physical buttons that got it wrong. When I used to shop for cars in those days, I _never_ had to consider if those buttons were compatible with me. Now when I buy for a newer car, it's an added headache to consider, and one that I've not seen add any real value. Going on a test drive really will not tell me enough about whether the interface is good. And worst of all, _whether it is or isn 't affects my safety_.

<comment><USER7> >Perhaps there's an auto manufacturer or two that got it right. However, I've never driven a car with physical buttons that got it wrong.

You gotta give it some time, because modern physical control interfaces in cars had over half a decade to evolve to reach this point. With regard to touchscreen interfaces in cars, it simply feels like those are still stuck somewhere in the pre-iPhone era of touchscreen interfaces for phones in terms of usability compared to physical controls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Years ago, astronaut Chris Hadfield told an audience of software engineers (including me) that the moment the space shuttle was in stable orbit, the crew would pull out laptops and set up an ethernet network for all the scientific work of their expedition, as the space shuttle's own computers, though limited in raw computing power, ran software that was so thoroughly tested that there was every reason not to "upgrade" them in any way to support the scientific work.

<comment><USER9> As a child, a friend's mother was a programmer for the Shuttle (mid-80s to early 90s). Her job sounded _awful_ : a 'science person' (I was a child, remember!) designed a piece of math; an engineer (software?) would take that piece of math and reduce it to an algorithm; my friend's mother would program that algorithm in machine code, in parallel to an assembly listing. Each instruction (and all the data) would be reviewed line-by-line. She had to provide reasoning (roughly a proof) that each instruction correctly implemented the algorithm. My guess is the algorithm went through the same equivalence checking to the 'math'. I don't know how much code she wrote, but it was only a few programs (functions) _per year_.

That was my view of 'programming', and I wasn't disabused of that until very late 90s.

<comment><USER10> Sounds lovely. Now I write code with vague requirements that interfaces with ill-specified functions, on tight deadlines. It surprises me that it doesn't contain a lot more bugs. Maybe we just haven't found them yet.

<comment><USER11> And whatever you wrote And right to the spec, user said it is not what they want. And demo why it is not working or useful ... Of course that is nothing to do with them, that is not what they said or your it guys analysis wrongly. As spec goes ... do not understand it.

To be fair it takes a lot of interaction (and understanding ) to fix it. And you wonder how these operate here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good writeup! In general, the direction in modern aerospace is to use COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) parts with redundancy and failback for radiation hardening.

If you're into this sort of thing, I co-write a weekly newsletter about the space industry and often talk about software. [https://orbitalindex.com](https://orbitalindex.com)

<comment><USER13> Thank you so much for the Orbital Index! I've been subscribed for a while now, and I look forward to it every week. Great content!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When you think about it from a first principals perspective, having multiple touchscreens is better than only having physical switches. When a switch is damaged/fails, you are out of luck. When a touchscreen is damaged/fails, you use the one next to it. On a rocket you do not have the mass or room to have more than 1 of all but the most critical of switches.

There have been quite a few missions that nearly caused death or mission failure directly due to a switch getting broken (Apollo 11, lander return engine-arm switch) or going faulty (Apollo 14 abort switch).

What really matters is that they have no single point of failure (touch screens can do everything switches can, an individual touch screen is not important, and switches can cover abort/return scenarios to protect the crew). For the software, it only matters that its been fully tested, including random bit flips and hardware failure.

From a cost savings perspective, its vastly cheaper to verify that 3 touchscreens are working correctly than the 600 switches they replace.

<comment><USER15> _> When a switch is damaged/fails, you are out of luck. When a touchscreen is damaged/fails, you use the one next to it._

This is a trivial problem to solve on a physical interface. One solution could be what is commonly used on hardware synthesizers. A shift button or switch. You engage it and all controls begin to perform their secondary functions. You get redundancy for the price of one extra control and a secondary set of labels in a different color.

Also, use of displays to virtually label buttonss is common. In such case you can reassign a control if one fails.

In any case Dragon capsule had physical buttons for important functions as a backup.

<comment><USER14> The touchscreen frees you from the complexity that comes with giving switches alternative modes, and gives you the mass to have multiple copies of critical switches. Also multimode switches greatly increase the complexity and failure modes, so they need to be done so that if a switch is triggered in the wrong mode its recoverable (eg: the switch for aux radio power isn't also the undock switch).

When you get to the point of having displays for the switches why not go full touchscreen and eliminate all of that cost and complexity of a bunch of tiny displays?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Note that the data within the post is from an AMA ___7 years ago_ __

<comment><USER17> Tech moved a bit in that timeframe!

> We leverage C#/MVC4/EF/SQL; Javascript/Knockout/Handlebars/LESS/etc and a > super sexy REST API.

Nowadays it would be ".Net Core/SQL; Typescript/React/GraphQL"

<comment><USER18> Webassembly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting read. I've wondered about their use of big touchscreen interfaces having heard a friend's experience with the similar setup in a Model 3.

On multiple occasions they've had to pull off the highway to turn their car off and on again to get the screen working. Not really an option on your way to space.

<comment><USER20> > On multiple occasions they've had to pull off the highway to turn their car > off and on again to get the screen working.

Surely not? The touchscreen is run by the media computer which does not control the car. You can reboot it with the 'two finger salute' while you are driving down the highway. Some things will be unavailable (you cannot, for example, engage autopilot while it is rebooting), but the car still runs & drives.

I hope they just miscommunicated the situation to you, otherwise they are really working too hard just to fix a touchscreen. Turning the entire car off is kind of a pain in the ass. I've never done it. And I have only rebooted the touchscreen a couple times ever. Your friend may want to schedule a service appointment if they really do have to power cycle the whole car, because that is super abnormal.

<comment><USER19> I'm not suggesting it had any function on that automotive functions, but I was also not aware of the media center reboot with steering wheel buttons. From what he described to me I don't think he was either, I'd have to check and will pass that along if not!

I'm a little surprised that the media computer doesn't have a built-in heartbeat check and know to reboot itself if it stops responding. I've heard of other cars and embedded systems doing that.

EDIT - asked him about reboot via steerling wheel:

 _> It's not great because you lose lots of feedback. No speedometer, no sound from turn signals, etc. But it does work._

<comment><USER21> It's called a watchdog. And it's 99% running Android and should have that.

<comment><USER22> Last time I've heard they were using Ruby on Rails.. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17835760&p=2](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17835760&p=2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hi guys! I am the author of this article. Excited to see it on the first page :)

</comment><comment><USER24> I would have expected them to use formal verification tools in the vein of TLA+ and such... or maybe use ADA for mission critical systems?

But they only mention Astree[1] which seems to be a propietary analyzer for C code

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astr%C3%A9e_(static_analysis)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astr%C3%A9e_\(static_analysis\))

<comment><USER25> TLA+ is basically an academic tool. It allows you to verify your specification, but it is useless to detect bugs in your implementation. In my experience, the process of writing your specification in TLA is a buggy enough process to make it all a waste of time.

<comment><USER26> No, not just for academia. Apparently, Amazon uses it to check their designs for correctness.

[https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/formal-methods- amazon....](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/formal-methods-amazon.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Taken from the article: "We leverage C#/MVC4/EF/SQL; Javascript/Knockout/Handlebars/LESS/etc and a super sexy REST API."

Knockout.js, good times.

<comment><USER28> I believe Trello uses Knockout.js

And at least before Atlassian bought it (I haven't used since then), it was a responsive and plasant piece of software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> at the bottom of the article they mention model rockets and the three levels of certification. Each level grants you access to more powerful motors and therefore higher or larger flights. The hobby is self-goverend by NAR and Tripoli who manage level certification.

It's a fun hobby, although large motors get pricey. The largest can be 4-5 figures per launch. However, you can get very advanced and do things you wouldn't typically expect in a hobby.

Here's a two stage ( 4" diameter booster, 3" diameter sustainer ) reaching over 200k feet in altitude. The Karman Line is about 330k feet.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0imcpdLdB8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0imcpdLdB8)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd love to work with physical software (software that interacts with the real world through sensors and actuators), as a C developer, how should I move into this space? Every time I try intro to ARM kits I feel like I'm in over my head.

<comment><USER31> Start out with an Arduino, or ESP32/ESP8266. The ESP boards are probably the best bang for your buck out there if you're just playing around— you can start out with the Arduino environment (C++-ish), or use something like PlatformIO to interface a bit more directly with the hardware. It's not as low level as an ARM board where you have to worry a bunch about setting up clock multipliers and all that jazz, but the power to do so is there when you're ready for it.

The best way to learn is to solve a problem that motivates you. Maybe you want a phone notification when your laundry is done, or when a room in your house exceeds a certain temperature. Work on some little projects like that

If you want to get even lower level, then try out the ARM boards again. Someone else mentioned STM32 boards, which are great in many ways but IMO not very user friendly (Their STMCube software actually makes me mad). You can also try your hand at FPGA development. Verilog and VHDL are both popular languages, and preferences between the two tend to depend on domain. There's compilers that let you program FPGAs in C, but shying away from that.

If you want to look for work, probably the big industries to check out are:

Consumer embedded hardware: companies that make printers, cell phone radios, etc

Medical devices

Aerospace/defense

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> A thread from a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23368109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23368109). The current article quotes from it, in fact.

This article looks like a fine overview but when it comes to follow-up posts, the test is: does the new submission contain enough SNI (significant new information) to support a substantially different discussion? In this case it looks like not, but I can't really tell.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow- up&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment><comment><USER33> No mention of Ada or their methods of writing the important software. I wonder what they use.

"Avionics Test team

...The main objective is to write very comprehensive and robust software to be able to automate finding issues with the hardware at high volume...."

<comment><USER34> The "important" software is the Flight Software that runs on Falcon and Dragon. That is written in C++.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The astronauts show parts of the touchscreen and physical controls here: [https://youtu.be/llbIzbOStt4?t=150](https://youtu.be/llbIzbOStt4?t=150)

</comment><comment><USER35> It would be awesome if some SpaceX engineers would give a few presentations at events like CppCon and talk about their software development process including some code examples and demos.

</comment><comment><USER36> Hearing about the Flight Software and Avionics teams reminds me of this, although they don't seem to be on that level quite yet.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right- stuff](https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how they manage not to have accidental taps on the touch screen during liftoff and or re-entry. As I understand there are a lot of G's and violent vibrations and I would assume it's hard to keep a steady hand?

(Atleast this is my understanding from watching Apollo documentaries/movies etc.)

<comment><USER37> The screen compensates, and they train with vibrations in mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Impressive, especially considering some of the touch targets are pretty small.

<comment><USER37> They probably aren't bothering with using non critical buttons on a launch that is automated anyway

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm so relieved to hear all the redundancy and testing in place. I had heard that the touchscreens were built in Chromium/JS and was rather alarmed. Don't get me wrong – I do a lot of web stuff and I love that environment, but I've never seen a web app I would trust two human lives to. This, however, sounds like they really thought it through and made it safe.

<comment><USER39> A contrary opinion - a tool/framework used and tested by billions of people every day is a lot less prone to crashing when used for its intended purpose than something custom-built. There are tons of developers out there building complex apps by following beginner JavaScript tutorials, but SpaceX is obviously going to enforce better standards. HTML/CSS/JavaScript/V8 are all extremely solid technologies that have stood the test of time, and there is nothing better to build a user interface with today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This was cool!

Thanks for sharing that with us.

I'd be interested in finding out how they iterate. I'm absolutely positive that they do.

<comment><USER41> Off topic but we share the same name. Except I'd be ChrisMarshallCHI.

<comment><USER40> I met another Chris Marshall that worked for Kodak, back in the 1990s. Have you ever worked for Kodak?

<comment><USER41> I have not. Though, I have been eyeballing chrismarshall.com for years, setting calendar reminders on expiration's and such.

Have you been doing the same? Was curious if all the CM's are competing for that domain lol

<comment><USER40> I've had cmarshall.[com|org|net] for a long time. I recently also fetched chrismarshallny.[com|org|net|dev], along with a bunch of various social media handles (see my HN ID). Right now, they point to my LLC site, but I'll probably set up a personal site; sooner or later. I did notice that a squatter had grabbed the Pinterest name. I don't care.

I've decided that ChrisMarshallNY is my "Google Me" name. It's working fairly well.

<comment><USER41> Ahhh nice. Fair enough. I settled on thoughtpalette on everything but I wish whomever owned our namesake domain would do something with it \\_O.o_/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Does this article imply that RTCA/DO-178B is used as a means of demonstrating compliance in some way, or otherwise is used to define lifecycle processes for their development/verification/systems teams? Anyone know where this was mentioned by SpaceX?

</comment><comment><USER43> > The Flight Software team is about 35 people.

I'm shocked the discussion is about UI tech and not that there was only 35 people on the team that built the software to land Falcon 9.

Surely it's changed in the last 7 years. Anyone know the size now?

</comment><comment><USER44> They will be doing an AMA on Reddit again soon according to [https://youtu.be/y4xBFHjkUvw?t=674](https://youtu.be/y4xBFHjkUvw?t=674)

</comment><comment><USER45> > The secondary ports go into the primary ports, which are heavy-duty > actuators that connect to what's called a "summing bar," which is no more > than a massive steel rod.

"In Rod We Trust"

</comment><comment><USER46> This seems like a remarkably small team for the scale of what they're building! For some reason I imagined they'd have legions of engineers.

<comment><USER47> I think we've been conditioned to believe that any application of medium complexity requires hundreds or thousands of developers. Snarkiness aside, they have a very concrete set of functional constraints and total control over the hardware, network, and software environment. Issues like resource management, dependency conflicts, security, scale, etc are taken out of the equation, things that are often the biggest time and resource sinks.

<comment><USER48> IME, more bodies usually always equates to more bugs and slower release cycles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's interesting that the mission control console systems are written in LabView.

<comment><USER50> I can see how it'd be a decent tool for plotting up a bunch of raw telemetry streams, but as someone who had to write a moderately complicate program in LabView once, I'm astonished they've scaled it up that far and very glad it's not me who had to do it. It's a real PITA to work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> doesn't sound like a great idea to involve 10 different technology stacks

</comment><comment><USER52> touch screens are a bad choice to me

I want the buttons and knobs.

Love the old soviet control rooms posted awhile ago: [https://designyoutrust.com/2018/01/vintage-beauty-soviet- con...](https://designyoutrust.com/2018/01/vintage-beauty-soviet-control- rooms/)

Need John Carmack's opinion of SpaceX

<comment><USER53> Oh so beautiful: [https://main-designyoutrust.netdna-ssl.com/wp- content/upload...](https://main-designyoutrust.netdna-ssl.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/18-12.jpg?iv=146)

<comment><USER52> i love the windows xp screen saver ):<</comment></comment></comment>


dot NET Micro Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.netmf.com/ <comment><USER2> Latest release was back in October? What's new that I'm missing here?

<comment><USER3> Nothing it seems, at least I can't see anything more from the site itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When was this open sourced?

The last info I recall us getting about it was when the SPOT watch came out and they said we'd be able to write code for it and that didn't materialize, iirc.

<comment><USER5> It's been open source since 2009: [https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/port25/2009/11/16/micros...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/port25/2009/11/16/microsoft- to-open-source-the-net-micro-framework/)

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

<comment><USER6> It's also been available under Apache 2.0 this whole time, which means you get a patent grant that's less problematic than the one Microsoft is using for .NET Core. So anyone looking to work on a .NET-ish runtime can do so without fear of litigation by starting with the Micro Framework sources. The caveat is that the license only applies to the things that are already in NETMF. The moment you try to start adding things (e.g., by ganking sources from CoreCLR), you're back in the murky territory of coming up with an answer to the question of whether or not the MIT License is enough to keep you from being on the receiving end of patent litigation.

The irony is that fragmentation is exactly what Microsoft is trying to stave off, but the policy they've chosen with their patent promise does its part to sort of force the hand of interested parties in that direction.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Hack Chipotle - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/how-to-hack-chipotle/

<comment><USER2> I've known about all these by simple observation and going to Chipotle a lot.

I'm not sure I feel comfortable using the word 'hacks'. I see it more like 'more bang for your buck'.

However, a lot of people choose Chipotle for the health factor, which these 'hacks' break.

I am a runner and do weight training a few times a week. I am partial to having a 'clean diet'. Each body requires or needs different diets. Thus, I modify his suggestions to the following for myself:

(1) Get the burrito bowl. You don't need the added flour or wheat wrap, as it adds a few hundred calories you don't really need.

(2) Don't get double beans. Portion control. What's more, don't get pinto, they're the equivalent of 'white bread' or 'flour' wraps. Remember they're cooked with bacon.

Easy on the sauces. For a leaner meal, I skip on the cheese, but I get my protein through other means throughout the day, as well. Watch out for the protein-to-fat ratio.

You do well to get the rest (add fajitas, 50/50 meats and guac [good fat]!).

<comment><USER3> Pinto beans are cooked in bacon? Well now I _do_ want them!

<comment><USER2> Actually, their pinto beans _and_ black beans are cooked with 'some' bacon, according to Chipotle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I always feel like I'm getting away with murder when I ask for the onions and peppers after they skip right over them.

<comment><USER4> Same! But apparently it's a thing. I'm totally just asking for "fajitas" now.

Also, tried the Chipotle app but the app doesn't let you choose between white and brown rice :-/

Edit: but you can add special instructions at the end of the order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Haha, I've used all of these "hacks" since 2006 :)

In addition, you can ask for "double wrapped," so they give you two tortillas. You can also ask for them to skew the tortillas a bit, so they are in the shape of a venn diagram rather than on top of each other. I've found that with this "hack," they will give you more food even if you don't ask for it. Well if you do... this happens: [https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ash4/430727_101513405...](https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ash4/430727_10151340510341908_902323667_n.jpg)

You can basically get 2 burritos for the price of one. And don't say burrito bowls are bigger, since as you can see in the picture, the resulting burrito is larger than the basket.

This method + asking for extra everything except guac and meat is probably the highest amount of calories/$ you can get. I think it comes out to less than .4 cents per calorie, for a meal that includes most of the food groups!

</comment><comment><USER6> They don't ask you about fajitas because those come standard on the "Fajita Burrito".

</comment><comment> B-Con I just ask for extra.

After the rice, I ask for more rice. After the beans, I ask for more beans. After the cheese, I ask for more cheese. Those ingredients are pretty cheap, they don't charge extra for them.

I get a bowl and ask for two tortillas. I make two 2/3-sized burritos from the over-loaded bowl and have two meals for the price of one.

I've found timing is important, though. They tend to be more stingy when they're during a meal rush and more generous when it's a slow period. Between 9 and 10 PM is the best time, in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> Of course, if you order online or via the app, you can't make use of some of the other hacks identified: two full bean portions and 3/2 meat combo. In that case, the wait in line might be worth it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Love the hacks - going to definitely use the 50-50 meat next time I'm there. Unfortunately the bean hack does me no good since I don't like beans. Fajitas all the way.

I prefer QDoba to Chipotle but only marginally. Chipotle has the better quacamole, so it's definitely worth the upcharge.

</comment><comment><USER9> You can get double of anything except for guac and meat if you just ask.

Heard it from a Chipotle employee.

<comment><USER10> I often get double meat, too, which in principle costs extra, but that information has to propagate down the line, and I'd say about 1/3 of the time it gets lost. What remains is an ethical dilemma—do I inform them that they're under-charging me and thus pay for the extra meat, or do I keep mum and get the free second serving as a bonus?

N.B. I knew about the fajitas hack—I always get vegetables in my burrito bowl.

<comment><USER11> That's not an ethical dilemma, that's a choice between you being an asshole or not. An ethical dilemma is when two choices have both a moral upside & a downside.

<comment><USER10> I donate any money I save to _Médecins Sans Frontières_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $180 of Chipotle gift cards is worth significantly less than $180. So the gift card ROI is debatable.

<comment><USER12> Huh? Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Honestly, I have moved on from Chipotle and upgraded to Freebirds. Crushes Chipotle.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, in Isla Vista, CA, where Freebirds is separate from the rest of the chain (original location, long story, different owner), they see fit to overcharge starving college students, so Chipotle is still a better option (despite it requiring a bit of a bike ride).

The Habit having moved in across the street is, I think, causing them to feel the cruel sting of the free market, so maybe they'll become competitive with Chipotle once and for all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Or you could learn to cook.</comment>


How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name <comment><USER2> The number of extra, unnecessary clicks spawned by the lack of a back button must be in the trillions. It's the one thing I truly miss about Android. But the back button is really the industrial design side winning over the UI side anyway That's been a theme lately. You could give the iPhone true all-day battery life by making it what, 1mm thicker? Give the MacBook Pro easily replaceable memory and storage for about the same increase. Give much nicer travel on the keys, etc. But they don't want to do that. They want to make something that other companies can't replicate, so they squeeze every last fraction of a millimeter in order to stay ahead.</comment>