Flash for Android running fairly well on the Nexus One - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y7XJI4NN7k <comment><USER2> Is no-one else impressed by how much computing power is being demonstrated in a handheld device with this?

Or do we all just take it for granted today?

It's not using any server-side assistance like Opera Mini does, is it?

100% processed on the phone - fantastic.

<comment><USER3> I'm _floored_ by what is happening on this front, to be frank.

The amount of computing power we're carrying in our pockets is simply stunning, we're getting to the point where we might be able to put good speech recognition on a device this size. It's not quite here yet (people claim it is, but in practice if you don't get very close to 100% accuracy typing or pushing buttons is quite fast) but who knows, it might be. And I think when that happens coupled with enough NLP to make a good user interface the days of the touch screen will be over. In fact, we might see 'screenless' computers that you can still interact with.

<comment><USER2> Doesn't speech recognition require either massive databases or massively- parallel processing (or both?)

In most cases the speech would be used when connected to another server anyway, so it would be okay then to rely on remote processing. Unless I am missing a concept here.

<comment><USER3> It's funny how natural you take to the remote processing of speech, when I first outlined that as a concept to potential investors about a decade ago I was literally laughed out of the room :)

But yes, that's definitely an option, but 'limited domain' speech recognition on mobiles is a fact today, to do better would require a lot of work but I think that it is possible.

Don't forget that you'd be about as 'personal' with that computer as possible, nobody else would ever use it, so one dimension of the problem can be collapsed to '1'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree, Flash is running pretty well on the Nexus One. This is only one of it's great features. I think I've fallen in love a bit with the Android 2.1 platform. It didn't crush once, in about 3 months.

</comment><comment><USER5> My HTC Incredible runs flash.

Like it or not, flash is part of the web. I'm not a huge fan of flash, but it's _everywhere_, despite what Steve Jobs wants you to believe.

<comment><USER6> The HTC incredible uses Flash Lite. Flash 10.1 (the one demoed here) is supposed to be much better in terms of performance and battery usage (not to mention it has many more features than FL; FL is around Flash 9 sans some features).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the source ([http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/2010/05/examples-of- flash...](http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/2010/05/examples-of-flash- content-running-on-android/)):

 _We'll be releasing a public version of Flash Player 10.1 at Google I/O_

Expected, but wasn't confirmed until now. Nice. So we all should have it in a week or so and be able to run our own tests.

</comment><comment><USER7> The first demo was the most interesting use of Flash. Any demo with video is pointless. The iPad/iPhone are now going to drive sites from Flash video. I'm in the camp where I think together Apple and Google can fix html5 so that Flash isn't necessary. The web is much too important to be built around a plugin, unless Adobe completely open sources their plugin.

<comment><USER6> Pointless? If I'm navigating a website that has video or interactive content and I want to see it, and there's no alternate content, how is that _pointless_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Html5 on iPad: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4>

<comment><USER9> But interestingly, the Nexus One performs better.

<comment><USER6> For some odd reason, the Nexus One browser is a lot more optimized for canvas use. It blows away the iPad and the iPhone in terms of performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only way I'd put Flash Player on my Nexus One is if it had some kind of ClickToFlash-like functionality. One of the best parts of mobile browsing is missing out on horrible Flash banner ads and annoying middle-of-the-screen popups. Yes, mobile Flash video and games might be cool, but it's not worth that downside, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER11> Flash still needs to die or have its runtime open-sourced. I'm glad to see Apple taking a stand on this issue, even if it's for selfish reasons; someone needed to push web developers to put Flash back in its place as a marginal web tech for edge cases, nice to have but not critical. I browse the web with the Flash plugin disabled in Firefox, and it's been great to not have all the excruciating Flash ads. I still run into the occasional Flash video I can't watch while browsing on my iPhone, but they've been getting rare lately. It's well-worth the inconvenience knowing that I'm helping to kill off dependence on Adobe Flash for good by using these iProducts. So great job Adobe, now get off my lawn!

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks kind of awkward but not bad for a beta. I'm curious how they are going to handle the small text problem. The first demo is a good example of that. He locks input to the Flash app so presumably to zoom in and out you have to unlock input, zoom in, and relock it to continue using the app. That could get tedious.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it just me, or was the scrolling incredibly slow? And the hockey video's playback choppy? It's also interesting that the phone was being charged, considering the battery usage the last time flash was demoed...

<comment><USER14> I thought it was pretty impressive. It is a freakin mobile phone.

As for battery usage, is there a reason to assume that Flash sucks more battery than other applications? Why would it (except being interpreted)? I guess 3d apps in general would draw more power than "flat" business apps.

<comment><USER15> In any discussion of Flash performance, usually someone posts a report of their CPU fan spinning up each time a web page with Flash is running, or a performance meter getting pegged, or the computer's performance notably degrading. So there's reason to suspect that mobile Flash will suck more battery than a native app.

It's possible that Flash's movie clip-based object model encourages a "polling" approach to interaction over an event-driven approach, making it harder for the CPU to sleep.

<comment><USER14> I don't want to defend Flash, but most Flash apps contain a loop and animations. So it is logical that they consume more CPU time than a static web site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So I can play Farmville?

<comment><USER14> This could be big (seriously). There are 80 million farmville players, and I think the game requires you to log in at odd times.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, there are so many clever tricks. the Tamagochi concept, the farming as out ancient shared past, the possibility to show up, like people do with real houses and consumer goods, and so on. And remember they use facebook as a market, that no one have done before, and no one will repeat the same success. The wow-factor goes to the first.

But it cannot run on the ARM-based devices, and that is why flash sucks. Just discard all marketing hype and face the reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No mention of how it handles hover events...

<comment><USER18> Really? Are people _still_ " trotting this out?

You know I haven't been able to play a single HTML5 game on my N1. Every single one requires either a physical keyboard or mouse events that I can't simulate.

<comment><USER19> I agree that it's a red herring in the "future of Flash" argument, but it's still a significant hurdle. The value of any existing Flash content that requires keybaord or mouse hover interactions is diminished almost to the point that you might as well not have it.

That's not to say that future Flash content won't be built with touchscreen interfaces in mind.</comment></comment></comment>


Report the temperature with ESP8266 to MQTT - <AUTHOR> https://home-assistant.io/blog/2015/10/11/measure-temperature-with-esp8266-and-report-to-mqtt/ <comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, you can use the little ESP8266 devices for more than just temperature. Any sensor can be connected to these, and then to home-assistant via MQTT. It is a really slick design.</comment>


My approach to guessing a gender from a first name. - <AUTHOR>

Hi! A short time ago, i decided to try and build an API that would try to guess the gender of a first name. I thought this might be useful for segmenting user lists for campaigning, analytics or similar. My first approach was to use a dataset of approved names from a few European countries. This was in the believe that most countries had lists like this (Which they don't) and i planned to add them as i went along. I got wiser and the first feedback i got also told me that the API should be able to do probabilistic guesses and if possible, also offer some sort of localization filter to achieve more accurate guesses. I decided to take an approach of using large, growing datasets of user profiles from social networks. Each entry containing a first name, a gender, a country_id and language_id. At last, i exposed this datamodel through http://genderize.io It responds in JSON. Simple example: http://api.genderize.io?name=robin I am now looking to get some feedback on my new approach. What do you think of this way of doing guesses. What do you think of the API? Any feedback is welcome. The API is completely free by the way. <comment><USER2> > A short time ago, i decided to try and build an API that would try to guess > the gender of a first name.

Obviously you need to run a test that uses a list of real people's names and genders to measure the method's accuracy. But remember the following points:

* People might resent any effort to pin down their gender in a commercial or advertising context.

* The negative outcome for a gender misidentification may be much greater than the positive outcome for a correct one.

* Gender-neutral names are becoming increasingly fashionable among well-educated parents, i.e. people who have money.

On that basis and in my opinion, unless you can get above 90% accuracy, it's not worth doing.

Some popular gender-neutral names:

[http://www.babynames1000.com/gender- neutral/](http://www.babynames1000.com/gender-neutral/)

[http://thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/157282/25_best_genderne...](http://thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/157282/25_best_genderneutral_baby_names)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_name#English](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_name#English)

A quote: "Unisex names have been enjoying a decent amount of popularity in English speaking countries in the past several decades."

<comment><USER3> Also a large number of Sikh names are gender neutral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To anyone who is interested in implementing this in a product: don't.

To be fair: do it if you must. But _don 't let the user see the gender field as it changes_. If someone has a name that's associated with the opposite gender (or they believe themselves to be of another gender), seeing the change to that gender in the gender field will make them sad, annoyed, or irritated. At best, they will chuckle at the failed attempt to predict their gender.

This is one of those things that, when they work as intended, users don't notice it and it doesn't improve their experience that much, but when it fails, they notice and the annoyance hurts your image.

</comment><comment><USER5> I see that you are missing various Swedish names, like Gudrun. I don't know if you can get the full list of names, but you can get the list of names which were given to at least 10 girls in the last decade or so at:

[http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____31028.aspx](http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____31028.aspx)

and for boys at:

[http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____31036.aspx](http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____31036.aspx)

You can also go to [http://www.scb.se/Pages/NameSearch.aspx?id=259432](http://www.scb.se/Pages/NameSearch.aspx?id=259432) and do a search for name. For example, there are 990 people in Sweden with Strömgren as a last name.

It seems that "Gudrun" isn't that popular these days as fewer than 10 girls get that name. A different set of names is available from [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Swedish_given_names](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Swedish_given_names) .

I don't have need for this data and I can't comment about the effectiveness of the API.

You can get top-1000 US names for a given year by going to [http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/#ht=1](http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/#ht=1) , selecting a year, change "Popularity" to "Top 1000" and submitting the form. (For example, your search doesn't have 'Lowell', which was #172 in the US in 1940.)

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot. I'll look into this. Regarding missing names. I'm adding around 10.000 profiles a day to the dataset. So it get's better by the minute :) Not that huge a dataset yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey, nice job! I do a lot of work (both professionally and as a volunteer) coding stuff for genealogical and historical non-profit organizations, and I could totally see an API like this being useful to us. Do you accept donations of name data sets from the 19th century Austro-Hungarian Empire? :-)

Also, I would love to learn more about how the service actually works on the back-end.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey. thanks! The API doesn't actually use name sets like that. Though that was my first approach. I changed it to use lists of profiles from social networks. So when a name is requested it looks up every profile with that name and counts the number of times each gender is represented. If you use any localization parameters it will of course only look up profiles associated with the particular country or language. I quickly realized with the initial approach that my lists would never be sufficient, since most countries allow for almost any name to be given and when combining lists from the whole world, a lot of names would end up as unisex, that's why i went for a probability factor instead. Also i'm hoping that by using social profiles, it might one day be able to tell the gender of Superman or Catwoman and things like that. People can after all call themselves what they want on the internet.

I've actually thought about adding like a baseline of names from different lists though, to backup the names that are not yet represented in the dataset. Do you have a link to the names you are mentioning? Could be interesting.

<comment><USER6> Check out [http://search.geshergalicia.org/](http://search.geshergalicia.org/) .

Many, but not all, of the people mentioned in the 87 data sets (and counting!) that make up this database have a gender explicitly declared. Locale is the former province of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is today eastern Poland and southwestern Ukraine. Time period is mostly 19th century and some early 20th century. Ethnicity is strongly biased towards Ashkenazi Jewish, but we also have some data sets that have representation of all the people in the community at that time, such as tax lists or phonebooks or school lists. I can get you data in JSON or XML, let me know.

I also have access to another large given name database that could be useful to you -- but that one is entirely Ashkenazi Jewish from what used to be northeastern Hungary, from roughly 1850 to 1906.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Now this is interesting, I entered in my name (Dillon) which is gender-neutral and it returned:

{"name":"dillon","gender":"male","probability":"1.00","count":1}

I'm interested is how its decided there was a 100% probability that I'm male (It was correct though).

<comment><USER8> ..Dillon is gender neutral? I understand that this could be said about any name (which makes predicting gender a non-trivial problem), but I am pretty sure I've never met a female Dillon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I searched [http://api.genderize.io/?name=batman](http://api.genderize.io/?name=batman)

and received {"name":"batman","gender":null}</comment>


Optimizing MySQL Performance with ZFS - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/14603831/Optimizing-MySQL-Performance-with-ZFS

<comment><USER2> Sun have been courting us for a while, and about a year ago they managed to get our custom for two fairly sizeable (but still commodity x86_64) pieces of hardware to run our global DB on. Naturally, they were keen to have us running Solaris, so we gave Solaris + ZFS a shot (the DB is Postgres).

Long story short, ZFS didn't perform so well at all, so Sun shipped over a bearded expert to take a look at it for us. After regaling us with anecdotes of how things used to work back in the good old days of 1981, he told us that ZFS wasn't really suited to heavy DB workloads and we'd be much better off using UFS instead.

So we wiped them and put Linux on them. Nice machines, still.</comment>


Credit Cards: Who Wins, Who Loses? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/ppdp/2010/ppdp1003.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand this paper. How does the merchant credit card fee change the price that users pay? I understand that they implicitly markup to make up for their loss, but everyone pays that markup, whether they pay with cash or card. This paper makes it seem like those who purchase with credit cards are paying slightly less than those who purchase with cash, and that's how it's being interpreted in the blogosphere: (links listed by closest-to-the-real- paper)

[http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/07/27/are-credit-cards- regre...](http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/07/27/are-credit-cards-regressive/)

[http://motherjones.com/transition/inter.php?dest=http://moth...](http://motherjones.com/transition/inter.php?dest=http://motherjones.com/kevin- drum/2010/07/great-interchange-fee-scam)

<http://kottke.org/10/08/cash-is-expensive>

I understand how credit card users make some money due to the rewards programs, and that those reward programs are funded by the merchant fee and thus the markup that everyone (including those who pay with cash) pay. But the paper explicitly mentions the rewards programs, and seems to point to the merchant fee as an additional, separate factor. Anyone understand this?

<comment><USER2> I guess the paper is using merchant fees to just refer to the transaction fee and base transaction %. Rewards is an additional % on top of the base transaction % and differs for each reward program. I would price my merchandise to cover all costs so I don't understand why this paper is making a claim about subsidy. It should just make a claim about cash customers being penalized (and maybe even some credit card customers who don't have rewards being penalized).

"... cash buyers must pay higher retail prices to cover merchants' costs associated with the credit cards' merchant fees. Because these fees are used to pay for rewards given to credit card users, and since cash users do not receive rewards, cash users also finance part of the rewards given to credit card users."

This doesn't make sense to me at all. What merchant would gamble on having enough cash customers to subsidize his credit card customers? Merchants make the money. They just make more money on cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If anyone were to do a cost/benefit analysis for the credit card companies, I dare say they should be _paying_ merchants to accept their card, because I strongly suspect that the companies make _far_ more off of interest than they lose on defaulted accounts, and the profits, on interest alone, absolutely dwarf whatever income they receive from merchant fees.

<comment><USER4> Credit card debt is a very US-specific phenomenon, and one that could disappear very quicky. Relying exclusively on interest collected from it would be like time-delayed suicide for the companies.

<comment><USER3> Credit Card debt is in no way different than the supposedly secured debt which precipitated the housing crisis (tell the banks that are sitting on foreclosed properties that they cannot liquidate how "secured" that debt really is).

Both are built upon cash generated out of thin air by banks that, in truth, put up NO assets of their own when they lend money. It is this criminal behavior that is the money-making engine of not only the credit card companies but of all lenders whatsoever.

The entire debt-based banking system is built on time-delayed suicide, and the paltry (in comparison) fees collected from merchants in no way, shape, or form stems the inevitable collapse.

<comment><USER4> I think you missed my point, which was that getting massively indebted to credit card companies at ruinous interest is something that 1) nobody outside the USA does (instead, people get massively indebted to normal banks, usually for somewhat lower interest) and 2) could quickly disappear inside the USA due to competition from banks or changing regulations.

Thus, it would be a very stupid move for credit card companies to rely on debt interest completely and forego merchant fees, even if doing so would raise their income short-term (which I am not at all convinced it would).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A scribd link would be nice for the RSS (it's de facto a PDF warning)</comment>


An Auction That Google Was Content to Lose - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/technology/04auction.html?ex=1364961600&en=394f0b8dd93512fd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Ha, I'll bet Verizon waited them out on purpose, just to make them wimper a bit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good read.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I learn Angular or Ember? - <AUTHOR>

Hi!! After gaining some competence at Django, I've decided to learn one of the frontend frameworks. Seems like Angular vs Ember is the choice.
Angular is more popular, but I don't care about that, I am looking for what is more powerful, elegant, and future-proof. Not for a particular project, but for the sake of learning the core key concepts.
So I want to ask - which one should I learn? <comment><USER2> As a mostly backend Django dev who's only done front end with jQuery, I've been asking myself this same question but looking at other options as well. So far my conclusions have been

Angular: Hesitant because of the recent 2.0 announcement. It also doesn't doesn't seem to play as nice with other libs like jQuery. Also just don't like the feel of using it (this is a personal pref though)

Ember: Looks great, but rather complex and heavy handed. Between working for multiple clients concurrently, I don't feel like I have the time and mental capacity to really dig in at the moment. May consider in the future.

Backbone: Seems like a nice framework to organize your code + routing. Am wanting two-way bindings though.

React: One look at JSX and my brain goes 'yuck'

Knockout: I'm heavily leaning towards this at the moment. Seems like the perfect balance between shallow learning curve, playing well with other libs, and offering way more than what jQuery does.

<comment><USER3> Having done a couple Angular projects now (and not really loving it), I started learning Knockout on the strength of this thread:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2kl88s/angular_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2kl88s/angular_20_drastically_different/)

So far I'm really impressed! I appreciate how focused it is, how it is "more library than framework," and how nicely it plays with other Javascript libraries. And unlike Angular, you can really get up to speed in an evening, so trying it out is an easy investment.

I'm curious what you're combining with it? I think I will use:

\- sammy.js for routing

\- knockout.mapping for making API calls

\- Bootstrap

\- jQuery+Underscore for general utilities

\- Maybe this for d3 graphs: [https://github.com/hoonzis/KoExtensions](https://github.com/hoonzis/KoExtensions)

Anything else?

<comment><USER2> It's been awhile since I've done any greenfield projects. As such, I'm usually stuck with some ancient/crappy libs. I'm definitely a fan of Bootstrap and jQuery though. I've also been looking into sammy and ko mapping as well, but I haven't had to do a SPA recently (but one is on the horizon)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently went through the same process, took a look at both… and ended up falling in love with React ([https://facebook.github.io/react/](https://facebook.github.io/react/)), in case you wanted another option to throw in the mix. :P

I agree with un3n, though: learn the basics of each and decide for yourself. Both projects have really great tutorials and beginner resources. Everyone learns differently, everyone has different values and opinions. Despite this being the Internet, there doesn't have to be one true end-all, be-all answer.

</comment><comment><USER5> Angular scales up fairly smoothly from a small widget on a site to a full SPA. It has two major downsides.

\- you're on your own for a lot of app structure

\- it expects you to know javascript quirks about object references, prototypical inheritance and how to read JS stack traces

So Ruby on Rails developers find it quite unfriendly -- few conventions, very different rules about passing data around.

Ember.js has more structure, but it's difficult for a new user to use without something like EmberCLI ([http://www.ember-cli.com/](http://www.ember- cli.com/)) to generate the basic app. It's incredibly frustrating without it since nothing will work until everything is named correctly.

Personally I find it's much easier to get things done in Angular.

However because you can learn Angular by muddling through the docs the community isn't very deep. Ember developers need to keep in touch with each other to understand the ideas behind the framework and changes to it.

So Ember meetups are much more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER6> EmberJS hands down and the reason is quite simple for me.

There are many ways to write an 'angular app' but really only one correct way to write an 'ember app'.

When you begin work on an existing Ember App do you want there to be conventions, or just some gun-ho cowboy stuff? It was a non-decision for me, and I went with Ember.

Remember: Rails caught on like wild-fire because of it's mantra convention over configuration.

<comment><USER7> >Remember: Rails caught on like wild-fire because of it's mantra convention over configuration.

And Ember didn't... well, not compared to Angular anyways. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not both? At least enough to understand what each framework does well and why someone would want to use one over the other. I'm not a web dev, but from what I've seen angular seems to be more widely used so if you're heading down that path I guess you will be more likely to see angular at some point.

</comment><comment><USER9> > powerful, elegant, and future-proof

ReactJS. It's totally unlike Angular and Ember in a good way. You will not regret it.</comment>


Facebook v. Power Ventures - <AUTHOR> http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/01/facebook-vs-power-ventures.html <comment><USER2> Interesting to see the author siding with Facebook on this one.

What if someone wrote a grease monkey script that let me scrape my data from Facebook's servers? In other words, what if I automated a process I could do manually without accessing any information I had no rights to in the first place or affecting the service in any way whatsoever.

Facebook would still be sending take-down notices: <http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/facebook-scavenger/>

In the UK the data protection act states that individuals have a right of access to the information held about them. If a user is blind and can only access their information using this script, wouldn't Facebook be violating their rights by preventing them from using it?

</comment><comment><USER3> This may spell the downfall of facebook. It's the users data, not facebooks.

<comment><USER2> From Facebook's T&Cs:

"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."

So, one would think that if you were to delete your FB account, all your (their?) content is removed. Doesn't look like that's the case: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7196803.stm>

I'm surprised the media hasn't paid more attention to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem here seems to be, from how I see it, that the author doesn't like the fact that someone can take the data that they can access and port it somewhere else.

All the whole thing with facebook scavenger is just disturbing. What if I didn't use a plugin and just saved things locally? Would that be just as bad? Why?

<comment><USER2> A quote from the author: "I hope other sites violated by Power.com such as Google, Microsoft, MySpace, and Hi5 put a stop to websites like Power harvesting user data."

However, Facebook uses exactly the same method for harvesting contact details from other sites: <http://www.facebook.com/findfriends.php>

Should Facebook sue itself?

<comment><USER5> i wonder if everyone takes a revenge on facebook, will it survive?</comment></comment></comment>


Apple topped 53% U.S. smartphone market share in Q4 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/04/old-phones-and-new-users-are-key-reasons-apple-topped-50-u-s-smartphone-market-share/

<comment><USER2> Well, that's...surprisingly different to the ComScore numbers released today(/yesterday). [http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market- share...](http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market- share-35-percent/)

Is Kantar actually tracking sales share, rather than ownership? That seems to be the only way these two sets of numbers reconcile, and is plausible from the wording of the article.

<comment><USER3> I love the fact that the article you linked, which is about how Google have gained 1.1% marketshare, and Apple gained 0.7% marketshare, is called "Apple's U.S. Smartphone Market Share Rises" with a massive picture of an iPhone.

<comment><USER4> Of that 1.1% I wounded how much is Samsung? I'm picking they had a bigger growth than android.

<comment><USER3> From the article, Samsung grew 1.2% of all phones (including feature phones). So I'd say they almost certainly did grow faster than Android as a whole. I wouldn't be that surprised if Android minus Samsung contracted slightly in the quarter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It will be very interesting to see how much of this bump they can hold in Q1 2012.

Also, the article downplays how much RIM got _slaughtered_. Not just "down 6%" but from 7.0 to 1.4% marketshare. Ouch.

<comment><USER5> It's not so much a "bump" as a cycle. They release a phone every year, this was that quarter. Clearly they won't sell the same number of units next quarter. Their competitors ship far more (and more varied) products and don't really show that kind of behavior. So next quarter we'll be treated to "iOS is shrinking!" posts which are equally silly. And next fall the circle of life will repeat.

As you correctly point out, the real news in this data is that Blackberry sales dropped by 80%, which is so shocking that I wonder if a digit got slipped somewhere.

<comment><USER6> "so shocking that I wonder if a digit got slipped somewhere."

Sounds like Verizon flipped a certain digit at RIM. Possibly a good amount of August 2012 iPhone syndrome as well, "don't buy a Blackberry now, the new ones are coming in January"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The 53% number is for a very narrow period of time: the 12 weeks ending on Nov 25, 2012, which just coincides with the release of iPhone 5...

IOW: nothing to see here, move along. Like jacalata pointed out, the average market share of iOS, measured on a longer period of time, is closer to 35%: [http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market- share...](http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market- share-35-percent/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This dance is now familiar. Apple does better than 50% in their release quarter and then slowly sinks to something like 15%-20% in the months prior to the next phone's release.

The interesting thing is that this time Apple launched the iPhone 5 to more or less the whole world in the first 3 months and change and so most people think they're moving to a semi-annual release schedule.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm always entertained when these numbers are so drastically different. These guys are getting their numbers from interviews. Think about that.

Wikipedia used to keep a meta-table of a bunch of different sources and market share numbers, sadly that's gone.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm getting confused with all these stats but it's just sloppy reporting by the tech press.

This writer didn't even mention that this is just new smartphone sales instead of overall shares.

I thought VentureBeat is one of the better ones. I guess not.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's a tendency in the "tech" press to focus on a very narrow idea of "share". When they say "market share" they are almost always talking about new unit sales. This is because it's a lot cheaper to just take reports from companies that issue them (as press releases) and then write up a story from that... and these companies are analyzing only the most recent sales (for the most party.)

Actual market share is something quite different, as it includes all of the previously sold, but still operating devices.

The share relevant to developers is still another matter, as it must take into account the operating system the developer is targetting and how many devices still in use are using that operating system.

So, if you're a developer for high end mobile games, you might require Android Jelly Bean and iOS 6. Thus the question of where to direct your resources would best be answered by "What is the addressable market size for these two operating systems?"

I don't know the answer to that, but too often the torrent of shallow media news talking about "Share" that only talks about the current sales is taken as some sort of relevant long term value.

It's like saying Las Vegas is cold because you took the temperature one day in January. Worse you took that temperature in a freezer, rather than out in the open air. (Eg you're not even measuring the same thing the conclusion is about.)

<comment><USER3> The share of phones sold in the quarter is of most interest to investors. The share of installed base is more interesting to developers.

One major difference between the two that is often overlooked is that if someone upgrades their old phone and stops using the old one, it counts toward the former, but not toward the latter. Developers only really care about new users, and users who are switching platforms.

<comment><USER11> I'd like to know from some developers if their apps are monetizing better on Android with the larger install base than it is on iOS.

<comment><USER3> From what I've heard it's about even now, because iOS users tend to buy a larger number of apps at a higher average cost.

<comment><USER12> But probably not for long, since Android is growing at 5x the pace of the iPhone globally, and about 3x the pace of iOS in total.

<comment><USER13> Global growth probably doesn't matter as much if your app isn't hasn't been localized to all of those places. For example, growth of Android in a country where most people don't speak English isn't going to do much for an app written for an English audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At what point does the DOJ declare that they have a dominant share of the smartphone market, and that there should be increased oversight of anti- competitive behavior?</comment>


Working Hours - <AUTHOR> https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours <comment><USER2> This is my favourite subject of late. I hope this trend will continue. My gut filling is that if in developed world, starting next Monday, everybody (with few exceptions) starts working 3 days a week (retaining pay) everything will be just fine.</comment>


Sued for billions, Facebook is accused of killing crypto businesses - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/8089/sued-for-billions-facebook-is-accused-of-killing-crypto-startups <comment><USER2> Seems like if you ban product A from your platform, then come out with product B and that is permissible, while still disallowing any competition from other products and using your own size/reach to squash any competition seems like it may have an interesting outcome.

</comment><comment><USER3> OK, but $500 BILLION? Come on. Maybe that's Aussie dollars.</comment>


The Evidence Supports Artificial Sweeteners Over Sugar - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/upshot/the-evidence-supports-artificial-sweeteners-over-sugar.html <comment><USER2>
      But what about sugar? We should acknowledge that when I,
      and many others, address sugar in contexts like these, we
      are talking about added sugars, not the naturally occurring
      sugars or carbohydrates you find in things like fruit.
      Those are, for the most part, not the problem. *Added*
      sugars are.

In a world where extremely sugary products such as fruit juice and even _sugar cane_ juice can claim "no sugar added" prominently on the label, I find this statement to be problematic.

It seems a little bit akin to implying that you can drink all the applejack you want without worrying about intoxication because it has "no alcohol added" \- instead, water was removed. I can guarantee your liver is not playing pedantic word games around the process by which that beverage got to 40% ABV, all it cares about is whether you're drinking too much alcohol or not.

<comment><USER3> In fairness, this is really down to where you live. If you live in the EU you will see exactly how much sugar is in the drink by looking at the label because that's what the law says.

It's up to regulators to hold companies to account. They certainly aren't going to print things that could possibly harm sales on their labels by themselves.

<comment><USER4> In the USA it's on the label (though on the back, usually) too. They're just allowed to say that no additional sugar was added. The real push is moving from something that people in the US can't readily parse (like grams of sugar) to something they can (like teaspoons of sugar).

<comment><USER5> For a second I thought you got these backwards. Having it in grams is so much clearer. I get really annoyed when recipes tell me to add X teaspons/tablespoons/cups of something - these are not units of measure!

<comment><USER6> Yes they are. Just because you're not familiar with them doesn't mean they're not units of measure.

<comment><USER5> Are they defined anywhere officially? Like is there a standard which says how much volume or weight is held by one teaspoon or one cup? Because I have teaspoons which vary widely in sizes, the same with cups. And even if you use a teaspoon to measure - is it with the contents flat? Or in a little pile? It's too ambiguous, and therefore - not a unit of measure.

<comment><USER4> It's obvious this is some kind of pet peeve, but a little googling would answer your own questions. It seems like the NIST is the regulatory body in the US presiding over official measurements, and they provide a brief overview here: [http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/cooking.cfm](http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/cooking.cfm)

Wikipedia has more information on exact conversions and the domestic and international agreements that set the sizes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units)

You're welcome to do more research to confirm Wikipedia's assertions. As for whether it's flat or a little pile, 1 tsp is flat (5ml). What you're thinking of is the commonly used cooking instruction "heaping tablespoon", because yes, when cooking you don't have to have everything down to the exact ml.

EDIT: And again, more research done for you: [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/59711/rounded- he...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/59711/rounded-heaping-and- other-types-of-teaspoonfuls)

<comment><USER5> Alright, I stand corrected. My apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _My wife and I limit our children's consumption of soda to around four to five times a week._

That's limited?

Once a week, that's limited. Once every weeknight isn't limited, it's a habit.

Given the choice, I'll take a naturally sweetened beverage weekly over an artificially sweetened beverage daily, if only because of the awful taste of artificial sweeteners...

<comment><USER8> Why do people think that it's OK to allow kids to drink soda? In fact, why do people think that drinking soda is something that anyone must do?

I used to drink soda. Gave it up many years ago. Have not missed it. Have much less of a sweet tooth now; don't eat desserts very often, and when I do, a very small portion is plenty. I think giving up soda helped with that.

If I want a caffeinated beverage, I drink coffee, black or with cream but no sugar. If I want a cool, carbonated beverage, I drink beer (which has most of its sugar fermented out; still has some calories, but not nearly so sweet). If I just need to be rehydrated, I drink water.

It seems to me that so many people have this idea that sugary drinks, whether in the form of soda, sweet juices, sports drinks, and so on, but drinking those on a regular basis is a fairly new thing that I don't thin our bodies are well adapted for.

Cutting out sugars via drinks are some of the easiest empty carbs to cut out of your diet.

<comment><USER9> Why do people think that it's OK to allow kids to drink coffee? In fact, why do people think that drinking coffee is something that anyone must do?

I used to drink coffee. Gave it up many years ago. Have not missed it. Have much less of a caffeine addiction now; don't drink caffeinated drinks very often, and when I do, a very small portion is plenty. I think giving up coffee helped with that.

If I want a sweetened beverage, I drink soda, sugarless or with sugar but no caffeine.

Etc.

<comment><USER10> I appreciate what you're pointing out how, but it doesn't strictly work since sugar arguably has a far larger affect on overall health and metabolism than caffeine. At least in the context of this story.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but the GP is arguing against soda, when there's a perfectly good alternative: sugarless soda. He doesn't provide any argument as to why one should cut soda completely, he just says "sugar is bad, therefore you need to cut soda".

I don't even think he's saying that, actually, he seems to be saying "I don't drink soda so neither should you".

<comment><USER8> What I'm saying is that culturally, we need to shift away from thinking that sweets are something that should be consumed on a daily basis. Based on my personal experience, avoiding having sweet drinks on a daily basis can help you lose your sweet tooth; and thus be less compelled to consume more of other sweet things.

Having cut out soda, I find I have a lower tolerance for sweet food in general. I'm less likely to order sweet and sour chicken, or foods that are glazed, or things with barbecue sauce, or honey-mustard dressings or dips. I have desserts less often, and when I do, split them more ways.

As others have pointed out in this thread, most people have a sense that feeding caffeine or alcohol to kids is a bad idea; and even as adults, that they are things that should be consumed in moderation. They don't have coffee available in the school cafeteria. However, most people have no such sense about sugar, giving kids juice boxes, chocolate milks, and putting soda machines in schools for them to buy whenever they have a little extra allowance left over.

While sugar-free soda is probably an improvement over soda with sugar in it, it still leaves you with that sweet tooth, and you're more likely to subconsciously keep consuming sugars in other forms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought the primary argument against artificial sweeteners these days was that they cause the body to expect a large inflow of sugar without actually delivering on that promise. This, in turn, leads to the consumer craving sugar even more, in many cases leading to higher total calorie consumption that if we just ate the sugar in the first place.

It seems to me that by far the best option would be to limit consumption of both added sugars and artificial sweeteners.

<comment><USER12> Is there strong evidence backing that up?

Personally, I've done low-carb diets where things with sugar are almost entirely off-limits, minus a small amount of fruit, and whatever small quantities of sugar are present in non-starchy vegetable. During these diets, I've tried them with and without artificial sugars. Those artificial sugars would be consumed in either diet drinks/sodas, or with coffee. I had the occasional desire to consume something with lots of carbs/sugar, but I can't say it was any strong with artificial sugars than without.

If anything, for me, the artificial sugars worked to satiate the desire for something sweet.

<comment><USER13> Here is how I fall off the atkins diet.

First I was on strict diet, less than 10 grams a day sugar first two weeks, then restrict to less than 20 grams and gradually increase... Then one day I had craving for chocolate, got one with malittol - first a little chunk, then a bit more, a bit more... Then I had troubles in the loo, more troubles, more troubles, and... switched back to normal chocolate.

It did not worked for me. But it could the next time...

<comment><USER14> [https://www.reddit.com/r/keto](https://www.reddit.com/r/keto)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's disappointing this article only addressed cancer risk but avoided artificial sweeteners' possible impact on gut bacteria.[1][2] I quit Diet Coke cold turkey after reading several of these studies. I won't extrapolate from my personal experiences -- I really do wish there were more studies about gut bacteria's impact on our health -- but I've felt better after avoiding artificial sweeteners and adding probiotic foods to my diet like greek yogurt and kombucha.

[1] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature13793.html)

[2] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial- sweeten...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial-sweeteners- may-change-our-gut-bacteria-in-dangerous-ways/)

<comment><USER16> I don't know that there is a way to reliably measure some of the positive benefits of avoiding artificial sweeteners. I briefly tried switching to diet drinks before giving up semi regular soda drinking. Even after I got used to the taste, I seemed to get headaches and/or a general feeling of malaise or bad feeling. I don't know if it is your body thinking it ate something sweet and sending out too much insulin or what. It could totally be a psychosomatic response, but I just feel better when I stick to water, black coffee, or drinks with real sugar(on the occasion I have something like that) I cant really see that being easily quantified though.

<comment><USER17> Do you know if you get that with other sweeteners like sucralose or stevia? Because if not, you might just be sensitive to the phenylalanine in aspartame. It can have psychoactive effects in large enough quantities, and can cause adverse reactions in certain people that are consistent with the symptoms you're describing.

Personally, I prefer aspertame drinks for this reason; they feel more stimulating to me, and I suspect it's due to the phenylalanine since it can potentially get converted into dopamine/norepinephrine/epinephrine, which is useful for me cause I have adhd. Though the effects from that are minuscule compared to the effect of the caffeine that aspartame is usually paired with.

For the record (for people downvoting), there's nothing wrong with phenylalanine, most of the anti-aspartame propaganda labels it as a "neurotoxin"/"excitotoxin"/whatever, which is just FUD. It's just a psychoactive amino acid and half of what makes up aspartame (aspartic acid being the other half). And _a few_ people do have allergic reactions to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The author has a very good youtube channel if you like getting advice like this that can be trusted.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage](https://www.youtube.com/user/thehealthcaretriage)

I'd also recommend using [http://examine.com/](http://examine.com/) to validate studios on what you are going to eat by yourself.

<comment><USER3> studies _

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The arguments against artificial sweeteners seem a little like the arguments against e-cigarettes. Yes, there are plausible mechanisms by which the substitutes may cause harm. Yes, further research is needed. Yes, cutting out both the original and the substitute would be better.

But people really like (or "like") sugar and cigarettes, so the most likely outcome of loudly proclaiming the dangers of substitutes is that more people stay with the originals, which are almost certainly worse.

</comment><comment><USER19> Do artificial sweeteners have any of sugar's other effects beside providing calories? Do they trigger the sweetness taste receptors in the digestive system or trigger an increase in insulin? Or do they simply become inert past the tongue?

<comment><USER20> All artificial sweeteners are not created equal.

Check out erythritol, it's superior to most of the others:

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

<comment><USER21> My only problem with it is that it's super hard to combine it with other ingredients (baking for example). It stays in the granulated form no matter how much liquid you add or how long you stir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _> In the last few years, I've watched a continuing battle among my friends about which is worse for you: artificial sweeteners or sugar._

And now we are going to watch the same thing on this thread. Why are these diet fad bits so popular on HN?

<comment><USER23> Can you really call a discussion about ingredients which have been studied/discussed for decades a 'fad'?

I think the main point is that there is A LOT of misinformation out there, and people have made up their minds on things without adequate evidence. Anti- vaxxers are (rightly) lambasted for this... IMO, anyone who makes public statements about nutrition without doing adequate research deserves the same.

Articles like this one are important. Even though it still has some opinion sprinkled in, it has a lot of links to evidence, and that is what people really need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is a lot of evidence that even the sugars naturally present in fruit are not good for you in large amounts either, e.g. in fruit juices. Oranges are best consumed as oranges, not as orange juice, which contains all of the sugar and none of the good stuff like fiber. Also drinking a single glass of orange juice equates to eating a whole bunch of oranges at once, which just doesn't sound healthy.

<comment><USER25> Actually freshly squeezed orange juice is not completely void of fiber, even if you try to sieve it out. Not sure why are you so certain that fiber is such good stuff anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Problems with sweeteners? "none can be detected with artificial sweeteners" concludes the author. Plenty of peer-reviewed papers suggest that this is either not true or the issue is not adequately resolved. Sugar consumed in the quantities used by many people is certainly dangerous but there is another option which is that of abandoning sweeteners altogether. Food stripped of habitual sweetness as in say, tea and coffee, is so much more interesting.

<comment><USER27> Is your argument that people should change their tastes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Generally agreed with the article, but I'm surprised when I see parents still giving their kids soda these days, diet or not.

We generally drink water and it's just fine, when we want something "fancy" we get the sparkling water at Trader Joe's that has the orange or berry essence. They are available at other stores as well, no sugar or artificial sweeteners, and kids still love them.

It may seem like we need everything to be sweetened from habit, but you can easily start a new habit. Once you get used to something, it becomes the new normal.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't care which of them is least bad for you, my problem is that all artificial sweeteners taste terrible!

If I consume something that contains aspartame or sucralose, I can taste it, and I don't like it. Even Stevia tastes awful.

And what I really hate is that sucralose is now being used in lots of non-diet beverages that also contain sugar or corn syrup! The Arizona Beverage Company does this with some of their drinks, for example.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, isn't it weird that nobody in America can sell bottled tea without trying to make it ridiculously sweet?

Here, try this: [http://www.amazon.com/Teas-Tea-Unsweetened-Green- Ounce/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Teas-Tea-Unsweetened-Green- Ounce/dp/B0017T6S0Y/ref=sr_1_6?rps=1&ie=UTF8&qid=1438026388&sr=8-6&keywords=oi+ocha)

Also available at Costco or any Asian grocery store (at least on the west coast).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting that this article didn't mention sucralose (Splenda).

<comment><USER32> >> Interesting that this article didn't mention sucralose (Splenda).

I know someone whose baby was very active in womb to the point that she worried about it. And then she read that sucralose was shown to cause miscarriage in animals so she stopped eating it (it was in something she ate regularly) and the baby calmed right down. But that's just one datum.

<comment><USER33> Sorry, but anecdotal evidence like that is not a valid counterargument. To the contrary, anecdotal evidence is oftentimes damaging. It spreads misinformation and fear, and is a common tool used by those with perverse agendas (I'm not imply this is the case here).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I feel like people are actively trying to worsen their diets, despite vocalizations to the contrary. (I'll be speaking from an American perspective here). I mean, people say they want to eat healthy, but all the actions I see are in the opposite direction.

First, there was the anti-fat movement. Everyone ran from fat like it was the plague, believing it to be responsible for heart disease and obesity. Turns out, neither is true, quite the opposite in fact, and fat is generally good for you (excepting, e.g. trans fat). What happened, though, was that fat was replaced by sugar in our diets. Leading to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease...

Alongside the anti-fat movement came olestra, the fat substitute that solved the problem that people created with the fat witchhunt. This was their fat savior, and what was the general response? Everyone was afraid of this scary chemical, worried that it would cause anal leakage (hint: it doesn't); they burned it alive and went about their merry lives with a jug of soda in their hands.

So, now we're knee deep in the consequences of that previous diet, and people say they want to be healthy again. Science creates artificial sweeteners, so as to sate the new desire for sugary food and drink. The response is again one of unfounded and irrational fear.

So people turn to what they view as their last bastion of hope: vegetables. But no, we couldn't just eat vegetables. We could only eat them if they were organic. The general thinking being that organic vegetables must be healthier, and avoid dangerous, scary pesticides (hint: the pesticides on organic food are worse). Problem is, vegetables were expensive and difficult to use in the first place (they spoil quickly, requiring frequent market trips). Organics only made it worse, for both organic and non-organic sources. And to top it off, people are wailing against GMO, which would have presented a solution to the insane desire for "organic" foodstuff.

I just don't get it. The average person bemoans their health and cries for a better diet, but every step they take is towards something worse. A great example I've found is bacon. I tell people that bacon is good for them; a healthy choice. Every time I receive puzzled looks and they think I'm joking. Usually while they stuff their faces with hamburgers. But guess what? That hamburger comes with a calorie loaded, glucose spiking bun, and sugary sauce. The beef it's made from has perhaps the worst impact on the global environment of any animal based food. And people will scarf down their entire 1000+ calorie burger, only to feel hungry enough to eat some fries to top it off. My bacon? It's a measly 43 calories per slice, with me maxing out at 4 slices on my best days. I feel full and sated afterwards, with none of that hamburger bloat. Pork is significantly better for the environment compared to beef. And I didn't have to put sugary sauce or carb heavy buns on my meal. And all that fat? Bacon has the same fat content as a hamburger.

<comment><USER34> > trans fat

Saturated fats are not good either.

<comment><USER33> For lack of time, I'll just cite examine.com rather than doing my own meta- analysis: [http://examine.com/faq/is-saturated-fat-bad-for- me/](http://examine.com/faq/is-saturated-fat-bad-for-me/)

Not that I particularly trust examine.com, but they do cite their sources, so it's better than nothing, and better than me spouting off unfounded nonsense. Anyway, here's the relevant bits:

> Looking at reviews and meta-analysis' of controlled trials, there does not > seem to be much evidence that saturated fat increases risk for > Cardiovascular Diseases. However, replacing some saturated fat with > polyunsaturated may reduce risk.

> Saturated fats do increase cholesterol levels relative to polyunsaturated > fats.[2][8] It should be noted that in any study done on macronutrients > (fat, carbs, or protein) removal of a macronutrient must be met with > inclusion of another in order to balance calories out. Many studies replace > saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats, which tend to reduce cholesterol > and triglyceride levels.[9][10][11][12] This may lead to the conclusion that > saturated fats raise them, when the possibility that they are inert is > viable.

In my opinion, as research stands today, worrying about anything except trans fat is not worth the effort. Maybe, just maybe saturated fats are worse than unsaturated fats. But in terms of your healthy it's probably in that 1%. People need to worry about the 99%. That 99% comes from eating less sugar, moderating carb consumption (I don't mean Atkins here, I mean replace some starches like french fries with vegetables and meats, but bread on your sandwich is fine), and general calorie tracking. Anything more than that will begin to fall into areas of research that aren't well covered, and, again, likely only contribute trivially to your long-term health.

<comment><USER35> Why don't you trust Examine.com?

<comment><USER33> I haven't spent the time to go through and verify their summaries, so I really have no personal reason to trust them. They also seemed to have a lot of advertising for their products on their site, at least it seemed that way, which would be an indication of a conflict of interest. But I've seen the site mentioned on /r/fitness, and on the surface the site seemed to contain more sources and information than Wikipedia. That's why I quoted it here.

<comment><USER35> Crazy that they advertise their own stuff. They should start growing money trees in their backyard like the rest of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My biggest gripe about artificial sweeteners or anything with 'no sugar' is that it feels _empty_. Yes it is sweet, yes it is delicious but it just doesn't seem to have that fullness I get from consuming sugar. I know sugar is harmful so I prefer artificial sweeteners but I can still detect some something-is-off-this-might-be-chemical-taste feeling. I might be oversensitive here but splenda is a definite step up from aspartame.

<comment><USER20> It's surprising you're getting a fullness response from consuming sugar, given how poor and short lived of an energy source it is. Typically sugar leaves people feeling a lot less full, which leads to craving more, and comes with an energy crash shortly thereafter.

Maybe try using artificial sweeteners and supplementing your diet with more fiber and or protein at the point you consume the artificial sweetener, both of which will fill you up (or should) drastically more than sugar. That might compensate for the sensation you're getting regarding removing sugar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It seems that this article also somehow missed entirely the potential link between some artificial sweeteners and diabetes[1][2]

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26095119](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26095119) [2] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature13793.html)

<comment><USER18> The link between real sugar and diabetes is very strong and well-studied, so any effect of artificial sweeteners on the incidence of diabetes would have to be a lot more definite before "replace sugar with artificial substitutes" would be bad advice. (Even if "eliminate sugar and don't replace it" might be better from a purely health-oriented standpoint.)</comment></comment>


Tell HN: iPhone odd behavior while reading Wired article about NSA - <AUTHOR> I was reading this article on Safari/iOS 13.4.1 on a late model iPhone: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-nsas-secret-tool-for-mapping-your-social-network/
While reading the article, my screen went blank, displayed a spinner, then went to the lock screen.  I cannot recall experiencing this behavior anytime recently.
Does anyone know why this might have occurred? Is this just a random fluke, or was something served from the wired website to cause this? <comment><USER2> I have heard news about recent security breaches with ios Mail app and push notifications. Apple managed to patch it earlier this month. Could be related to that but it was not for browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> Word is that iOS is still overflowing with bugs and vulnerabilities. I should factory restore this phone now..</comment></comment>


Why you should Archive your emails when you're done with them - <AUTHOR> http://philfreo.com/blog/archive-your-emails/ <comment><USER2> in his zeal to repeat his unproven tautology over and over again, the author completely contradicts himself in the fifth paragraph ("I have made my case..."):

" I believe there is really no downside to becoming a Type #2 person and only upside."

Um, _what_ ?

I'm guessing that sentence should say "#1" instead of "#2"... but given that the whole entry leads into an ad, I guess it doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> This should read, 'Why you should delete your emails immediately after reading.'</comment>


When, if ever, is "number of lines of code" a useful metric? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/184071/when-if-ever-is-number-of-lines-of-code-a-useful-metric

<comment><USER2> "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." \--Bill Gates

</comment><comment><USER3> when looking at svg graphics and 3d models.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do in case of GPL license break? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
What can I do when requesting the source code for a device I own that runs Linux, but the manufacturer is playing dumb and stating they will make the source available when it suits then and later?
Doesnt the GPL and other free licenses state it has to be available together with the binaries?
Where can I take this issue?
Huawei - never buy something from them again. <comment><USER2> The GPL Violations project works on cases similar to this. You could post to one of their mailing lists for advice/assistance: [http://gpl- violations.org/mailinglists.html](http://gpl-violations.org/mailinglists.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I looked up a couple Huawei phone manuals on their site, and they all had a written offer to provide the GPL-covered source if you mailed them and paid up to 20 Euros for a CD to be sent to you. Have you contacted them at that address and offered to buy your CD?

If they refuse for whatever reason, all you can do is make noise or wait. Only the copyright holder has the right to take any action against a licensee violating the terms of their license.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I have contacted them at that address - this is some parts of the email

first response

"Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Huawei device.

Would you please kindly click the to download online directly.

[http://www.huaweidevice.com/worldwide/downloadCenter.do?meth...](http://www.huaweidevice.com/worldwide/downloadCenter.do?method=toDownloadFile&flay=document&softid=NDcxNzc=)

Once again thank you for contacting Huawei device.

Best Regards.

Huawei Device Customer Care Team."

They reply by sending me the link to the PDF Written offer.

Second email does the same, this time with a screenshot of the download button for the PDF. I tell them again, "Please kindly provide the source code not the pdf." They reply with this "Please kindly note that the package download just the source code, it the exactly one, which is not one code. Please kindly check as per the file according. Once again thank you for contacting Huawei device.". Wtf?

Again I insist and this time with google translate to chinese, give me the source code as stated in the written offer. And this seems to be their final answer

"The open source is under our technical department to make.

Since the procedure is a little more complex, so please kindly be a little patient.

We will keep you informed once available."

It wouldnt suprise me at all if the source they would put on a CD is tarballs of the vanilla kernel and others, and none of their modifications to it.

 _Basically, whats the point of free software and GPL when I the end user cant anyway do more with this router than if it was proprietary? This is in practice now real life._

<comment><USER4> The PDF written offer seems to request that you send e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.com. Have you tried sending a request to that e-mail?

Note that the GPL does not require that the source code be made available on- line. If the binaries were distributed to you, the entity which distributed the binaries is obligated to send you the sources on request, but they can come on a CD, DVD, or potentially even 9-track tape.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes the quoted replies are from that email.

Seems to be that the source codes can come on a CD 2.9 years later after I receive the binaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry, I'll stop posting now. You should also get in the queue with the busybox lawyers - "BusyBox handles enforcement of our license via our fiscal sponsor, Software Freedom Conservancy instead. Please email <email@example.com> if you believe you've found a violation of BusyBox's license, the GPLv2."

</comment><comment> a-nom-a-ly > Doesnt the GPL and other free licenses state it has to be available together > with the binaries?

Have you read them? No.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a consumer, you have a few options available to you depending on where you live.

If the manufacturer given you a written offer for source code and then do not follow through, contract law and false advertisement laws is yours to use. This also include if they use wordings like "open source" or "linux" on their website. I would contact nearest consumer protection agency and seek their advice.

</comment><comment><USER5> Which Huawei device? Often their tarballs match several devices but you may need to be psychic to work out which.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also, if you can post the FCC or CE ID it may be helpful in looking up more information about the components in the router, the firmware for which may be under the GPL separately.

<comment><AUTHOR> I cant find the FCC or CE ID but this is whats written on the note under it,

IMEI: 868555010238909, S/N: K8U5TB9372301411 Its an Huawei LTE CPE E5172s 22

<comment><USER5> Sorry! You should redact some of the digits of the IMEI.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why? Is it a secret number? What can somebody do with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> gpl-violations.org has a mailing list, perhaps you could ask there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I did.

Seems Im not alone, a lot of Chinese manufacturers just dont give a shit about copyright in any way shape or form.

<comment><USER8> They don't have to, Chinese law generally does not respect copyright.

<comment><USER9> Chinese law as written (!) probably does respect copyright. What you get out of the courts as a foreigner is a horse of a different colour.

<comment><USER10> Not just as a foreigner from what I've been told. Apparently it is a problem for Chinese nationals too and it often comes down to "ingratiating" yourself with the court and you'll probably find the copier already has them in pocket from last time. Corruption is endemic in some parts of the Chinese political/legal framework, much more so that what we complain about from our systems over here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Think Like a mathematician? - <AUTHOR> what are some recommended good books or videos to learn this subject of beautiful math? I think Khanacademy is actually amazing which is the only thing I been using so far but any amazing book or mooc or anything else out there would be great too?
I did math a few years ago in college but I forgot most of it and now I have to relearn it to get into this program I'm starting in a few months.
I want to learn everything from the basics all the way up to the Calculus basically but nothing too advanced just very useful everyday math I can use to better my life.
I just really love learning stuff and math is so fun to me just being able to figure out algebra problems makes me happy. <comment><USER2> Honestly it is expensive but a life-time brilliant.org subscription is $599.99 US Dollars.

It's a super great service I bought it myself and find it fun to go through some of the courses on my free time. The logic courses are fun. The basic math courses do some cool explanations of divisibility rules. It's quite a bit different than Khan Academy as it's a lot less plug and chug, but instead it focuses on teaching small lessons and letting you use intuition and problem solving skills which to me are the fun parts of math. Besides Math it also has Computer Science, Physics, Probability, and other Sciences. I would recommend maybe trying it for one month maybe if they have a free trial or something and then decide if you want to sink the $599.99 into it. The month by month subscriptions are quite a bit cheaper, but if you want to use it long term it may be worth it to buy the lifetime subscription.

</comment><comment><USER3> Spivak's Calculus & Calculus on Manifolds are both fantastic books to start with (they're named calculus but they're really more analysis)

There's a Youtube channel 3Blue1Brown which is fantastic [1] as well. In fact, his videos are among the best if not the best for visually illustrating beautiful concepts in mathematics. The concepts covered are almost always widely applicable in problem solving and useful to know.

He's got a wide variety, but the series on Calculus and Linear Algebra are good refreshers for the two main subjects applicable to real engineering.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw)

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazing books that are a joy to read:

Polya's _How To Solve It_ is great for 'how to think like a mathematician'.

I love Knuth et al's _Concrete Mathematics_. Discrete maths plus jokes in the margins.

Stillwell's _Mathematics and its History_ \- meet the main strands of mathematics, their origins, and the great mathematicians.

Needham's _Visual Complex Analysis_ \- complex functions, differentiation & integration, Möbius transformations, hyperbolic geometry, vector fields etc - explained with a _lot_ of pictures.

</comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, beautiful maths mostly starts "after Calculus": Analysis, Abstract Algebra, and beauty is in proofs.

Although, you can check Combinatorics, Geometry, and Number Theory up to some point.

A good book I could recommend is Concrete Mathematics: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics)

</comment><comment><USER6> Book of Proof by Hammack is a very good free resource.

[https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/](https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Numberphile on YouTube is good</comment>


Darknet Messenger Briar Releases Beta, Passes Security Audit - <AUTHOR> https://briarproject.org/news/2017-beta-released-security-audit.html <comment><USER3> I love the fact that the "build from source" section is for everyone, not just developers. It's illustrated with screenshots

[https://briarproject.org/building.html](https://briarproject.org/building.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's ironic that this update plays up how Briar "hides metadata" when the audit found that the application deanonymizes its users by exposing DNS lookups during RSS updates.

<comment><USER5> The article says: "All the issues found by the audit have been addressed in this beta release."

<comment><USER6> so the current version isn't audited?

if they changed the code and design after the audit, then much worse bugs might be hiding now, until that version is audited.

<comment><USER7> wtf :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who does professional security audits, I would just like to say that there is no such thing as "passing" a security audit. In fact, most pen testing shops will carefully dance around actually making that claim in writing for a customer, because they know they are going to look bad when a bug is inevitably found in code they reviewed (and it's probably a dumb idea for liability reasons too).

There are certain certifications with falsifiable conditions that can be marked pass/fail. But, as I'm sure many folks here are aware, these are incomplete and often completely dubious. They don't purport to be "security audits".

What a real security audit tells you is that of the (probably 2-4) consultants that looked at a product for a few weeks (probably 2-6), these were the security bugs they found.

That alone contains little information, because the skill level and domain expertise varies greatly among consultants and companies. I can guarantee that if these results were withheld, and they gave the same codebase to another reputable outfit, the set of findings would be very different. There would likely be some overlap, particularly in the most obvious types of bugs, but bug hunting is way closer to art than science.

I know nothing about this project, and my intent is not to create doubt, but users of secure messaging apps should understand what an audit is and what it isn't.

Like other commenters, I was surprised to see 3 days of looking at crypto. It could be that the crypto is extremely simple and uses a few well understood APIs in a straightforward way, so this isn't a guaranteed red flag by any means, but it's a bit unusual.

And like any software, this is a 1 line patch away from being blown wide open. With every commit, an audit becomes increasingly meaningless. Just ask cperciva!

And perhaps I'm being cynical, but I always felt like the "conclusions" section of the audit report has an unspoken purpose of walking back from calling their baby ugly and keeping a decent rapport to ensure the possibility of future business. Not that I think what Cure53 wrote was not genuine, but there are natural incentives to be a little generous there. Again, I'm speaking from experience writing those sections as well.

Edit: Basically what tptacek said.

<comment><USER9> I was not aware of the tarsnap issue, but for anyone else wondering, I think it's this: [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap- critical-...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-critical- security-bug.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As for the audit[1], how would HTML sanitization on sender side protect the reader? On page 12 they suggest adding "HTML sanitization" in onSendClick function. It is as lame as protecting against XSS with JavaScript. Attacker will simply remove this code and recompile app.

[1] [https://briarproject.org/raw/BRP-01-report.pdf](https://briarproject.org/raw/BRP-01-report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks interesting, but I wonder how safe it is in the stated use case of journalists, activists in an authoritarian country. It can use Tor, which hides whom you are communicating with, but the fact that you are using Tor sticks out like a red thumb.

The authorities probably just have to flip a switch to put you under closer surveillance if they see you use Tor. Or they'll just send someone to your registered address and see whats going on.

What I really think would be cool would be a protocol based on massive steganography and obfuscation. You would have kernels which tell it how to wrap data in an innocent looking container (HTTPS traffic, SMT, IRC, Cat pictures and recipies over plain HTTP, DNS, ICMP pings, ...). Ideally, you would have dozens. And they would be shareable between nodes. You could define them in a DSL, and make them sandboxed and provable (that they round-trip, i.e. can decode what they encode, and terminate properly - that restricts what you can do in them though). You could even autogenerate the kernels. The last two points would require a bit of R&D of course.

The goal would be to be able to create new "protocols" faster than authorities can learn to detect them. Then wrap a regular encrypted protocol in this obfuscation layer.

<comment><USER12> Maybe I'm missing something, but if the protocol were well defined and open source, it would be trivial to detect, no?

<comment><USER11> Not really, the idea would be to hide data by using different amounts of spaces in text files, in the least significant bits of pixels in images, or in the access pattern to a certain service. The data looks like legitimate traffic. You could run the tool on absolutely all traffic, but that would be computationally intensive. And the data you get out is still encrypted, so ideally you can't tell if it is random (from extracting data where none is hidden) or real encrypted data.

Also, you would have dozens or hundreds of kernels, and you could generate them by analyzing innocent traffic, or hiring a bunch of students to write them quickly. My idea is that the kernels are not part of the source code per se, but rather distributed by the protocol. To contact somebody you need to speak a common kernel, but then they can send you new kernels automatically. You could come up with a measure of how well kernels survive censorship and use that to decide which to pass on.

It's a bit like auto updating malware, but for good :-). My only novel idea is to make a DSL or bytecode for the kernels, so that you can prove that they are benign and correct, and autogenerate them or use kernels from strangers. I don't know at all if this is feasible or not, but I have a couple of ideas how to make it work. No where near a POC yet so this is all still wishful thinking though.

<comment><USER13> "the idea would be to hide data by using different amounts of spaces in text files, in the least significant bits of pixels in images, or in the access pattern to a certain service" is not appropriate for the claimed use case, i.e. activists in totalitarian regimes.

In such an environment, the traffic of suspected activists _will_ be analyzed.

Assuming the kernels are open, it's possible to see in analysis of certain data that "amounts of spaces in text files, in the least significant bits of pixels in images, or in the access pattern to a certain service" have encoded information, even if the extracted information looks like random/encrypted data. At this point you don't have plausible deniability and rubber hose cryptoanalysis can be used.

Switching to new kernels happens too late since you don't know when they've identified a kernel until they start arresting people - it's not like they're simply going to block it immediately.

i.e., the described service is resistant to _mass censorship_ and automated filtering, but these use cases actually need to be able to resist attribution and retaliation, which are quite different problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I downloaded the beta and installed it, but I guess I need to physically find a friend who also installed it. I'm not in Silicon Valley, so I doubt that will happen soon....

<comment><USER15> Same problem here. Despite this being the best MITM-prevention strategy, it will be hard to assemble a group of people.

Maybe allow copying/pasting keys but with a Signal-style post-validation or something like a PGP wordlist to allow voice-based confirmation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I see that one of the requirements for privacy-preserving software is to have been in the same physical location as the person I need to connect with, _while running said software_ , I immediately stop reading and move on to other things.

I've done this for roughly five years.

Assuming I've never wanted to become a Debian developer, is there any important piece of privacy-preserving software I've missed out on? Is there likely to be any important privacy-preserving software I will miss out on in the next five years?

Edit: clarification

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Short of web of trust, which has other issues, how else would you propose to bootstrap?

<comment><USER16> Using PKI, "winging it", etc.

Bitcoin - used PKI to download it. Now Bitcoin is reproducibly buildable, so you can read the forum to see if any zealots notice different hashes (which they certainly would unless you are personally being targeted in testing out the software). Make some small transactions to see if it works.

Bitmessage - downloaded it a few days after the initial release. Sent a message over Bitmessage to the Bitmessage author. Got one back from the author.

Tor - trust that the directory servers are doing their jobs.

Signal - haven't used it but if I did I'll piggy-back on phone numbers to message people I already know.

git - used PKI to initially grab the code, trust my own dev machine as I've made commits, occasionally posted commit hashes over various secure/insecure mediums for various reasons (may have done this in person wrt a bug, can't remember).

Notice that in all these cases, trying out the software (at least in the U.S.) does not at all imply that you trust it. You could practice installing Tor 20 different times, on 20 different untrustworthy Windows machines and simply use it to search for cat pictures. Then, the 21st time, you could take all kinds of precautions and build a special box just for running Tor, armed with all the first-hand knowledge about how it works and what its trade-offs are.

I can also completely fuck up something in git and get so frustrated I just clone it again from the repo I don't have to trust because I just check the hashes and go on working.

Requiring physical proximity and a formal key exchange _before I can even use the software_ simply cannot work IMO. It a) requires special planning, coincidence, or proselytization to try out a working version of the app, b) it balloons the length of the engineering cycles and makes it hard to just start over, c) the reliance on in-person meeting implies a level of trust between you, your keys, and your smartphones that neither party should take for granted.

Also, it doesn't scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As far as the audit, I feel like 13 days is surprisingly short. I base this on my experience getting new jobs and familiarizing myself with new code bases. Maybe I'm slow.

<comment><USER18> 13 days (let's call it two weeks, assuming full person/weeks of time) is not atypical for an assessment. If you have multiple people working simultaneously on a two week assessment, you can "comfortably" assess fairly complex applications.

What _is_ surprising to me is that so little of that time was devoted to cryptography. For a secure messenger that time should be ratcheted up a bit (though the security infrastructure and general software implementation stuff is also very important).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Darknet" is a brainwashing propaganda term. Please do not use it, thanks.

<comment><USER20> What is the right term then?

<comment><USER21> Difficult to know in this context - what meaning do you think they weed trying to convey, assuming that "designed for illegal use" wasn't it.

<comment><USER22> How about "secure against spying by governments and criminals".

<comment><USER21> So 'highly secure' would be better than darknet

<comment><USER23> Not quite, because that leaves out the important fact that it doesn't operate over typical networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, i had never heard of this project. I'm very much a fan of matrix protocol, and associated riot app...but - besides differences in protocol - <USER2> really like the addition of blog posting and rss feed reading. I mean, this could sort of take off, and become the new basis for social interaction - besides just "texting" securely with your contacts. I wish somehow both makers of briar and matrix combined superpowers to combine the perfect, unified stack!

Side note: Is there a way to export (basically archive offline) the content; to be clear only one's content, not someone else's? I'd hate to have some important messages lost if I were to lose my phone. Not saying i want a central server...simply some method to archive my own stuff for safe keeping - encrypted of course.

Otherwise, briar seems really awesome!

</comment><comment><USER25> It's not yet available via F-Droid… is it planned?

<comment><USER26> Yes. Briar will have its own F-Droid repo for the beta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> More "Darknet". I almost passed this by.

I'm glad I took a peek. This is actually interesting to me.

 _...Briar is a secure messaging app for Android.

Unlike other popular apps, Briar does not require servers to work. It connects users directly using a peer-to-peer network. This makes it resistant to censorship and allows it to work even without internet access.

The app encrypts all data end-to-end and also hides metadata about who is communicating. This is the next step in the evolution of secure messaging. No communication ever enters the public internet. Everything is sent via the Tor anonymity network or local networks._

</comment><comment><USER28> Where is the crypto primitives higher level comparison to say axolotl, noise, omemo, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER29> I love the fact that this is a "darknet" messenger service called Briar: "Black Briar". Now where have I heard that before?

</comment><comment><USER30> Why not develop tox instead, which is open source, end to end encrypted, on more platforms, and seemingly further along in general?

<comment><USER31> Briar is also e2e and open source. It also has a ton of mesh networking features that Tox doesn't have.

<comment><USER32> Can you say a bit ore about the mesh network features of Briar?

I've looked through a lot of the documentation and can't find anything other than references to bluetooth and wi-fi, which is opaque to me.

I'm kind of wondering about something like briar, but that can connect over a cjdns network if available... is that what it's doing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can someone explain how it deals with routers and NAT ? Does it use UDP hole punching ?

<comment><USER34> The app hosts a Tor hidden service which other peers can connect to. No NAT punch through required as Tor will relay messages instead of a direct P2P connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> _sigh_ another one p2p e2e crypted messenger of the week released

</comment><comment><USER36> How does this compare with the competition? Like Signal, for example?

<comment><USER37> I wonder how it compares to Threema. Signal's servers are located in the US, and the service requires you to provide a phone number, which is a deal breaker for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "passes security audit". Is security audit an exam? What does passing mean?

<comment><USER39> Purely naively I would guess that it means during whatever audit they ran, no signs of insecurity were observed. Maybe it would be better to say that it didn't "fail" the audit?

<comment><USER40> You can't really fail an audit though. The point of an audit is to make your application more secure. Using terms like pass/fail just reinforces a sense of fear where there shouldn't be any.

A pentest consists of an analysis period, typically about a week. Then any flaws in your app are communicated to you, along with steps to reproduce them. When you feel you've fixed the issues, a retest is scheduled and the pentesters verify that each flaw has been fixed.

A healthy application is one that's pentested on a regular basis. Ideally after every release, though only big companies can afford that.

<comment><USER39> >You can't really fail an audit though. The point of an audit is to make your application more secure. Using terms like pass/fail just reinforces a sense of fear where there shouldn't be any.

I see, that's a good point I hadn't considered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Feedback: darknet has come to mean places where you go buy drugs online, not p2p applications generally.

<comment><USER42> Does it? I know it has that meaning on the evening news, but even on network television it means something like "the secret internet where crazy stuff is".

I mostly hear it used to mean what it is supposed to mean, but that is rarely from non-technical people.

<comment><USER43> The problem is that as long as the name has that association at all, it's going to be a way to attack Briar.

Darknet now: Anonymous place drugs sometimes happen

Darknet if it becomes bigger: That place where terrorists and criminals hide, the FBI and NSA say it's a risk to national security and we have to stop it at all costs! What do you mean it's just a secure messaging app? I'm not a terrorist, I don't need anything like that!

<comment><USER44> You could also see it the other way around, your application is not secure enough if terrorists, dissidents, drug dealers, whistleblowers and child pornographers don't feel confident to use it.

Look at Tor.

<comment><USER45> From an ethical point of view building this software must be difficult. On one hand you are building something that advances technology and could be used to help free people from an oppressive government, on the other hand you are also building something that could be used (and if it works most likely will be used) to aid acts that we all agree are morally wrong.

<comment><USER46> Ah, the essential ethical dilemma of building encryption software, polaroid cameras, and kitchen knives.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Anatomy of a JavaScript Pretty Printer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vjeux.com/2017/javascript/anatomy-of-a-javascript-pretty-printer.html <comment><AUTHOR> I've been switching everything I touch over to prettier, both side projects and at work. Its the first formatter I've come across that isn't annoying.

And, with the ESLint plugin, its _easy:_ `eslint . --fix` and I'm done.</comment>


Smart Quotes for Smart People - <AUTHOR> http://smartquotesforsmartpeople.com/ <comment><USER2> you're obsessing again. get over it.

-bowerbird</comment>


Dev Degree – A Big Bet on Software Education - barry-cotter https://engineering.shopify.com/blogs/engineering/dev-degree-a-big-bet-on-software-education <comment> barry-cotter > The core of the Dev Degree model is building tighter feedback loops between > theory and practice while layering programming and personal growth skills > early on. Each semester students take 3 courses at University and spend 25 > hours a week at Shopify.

> But there's also a strong link to validating that competencies are acquired. > The partner university allocates at least 20% of the degrees credits for > their work done with Shopify development teams. Students write a practicum > report at the end of every term (every four months) and submit the practicum > report to the university. In the practicum, the student describes how they > have achieved specific learning outcomes. The learning outcomes used in the > Dev Degree program were influenced by standards from the Association for > Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society.</comment>


Unicode Fractions - <AUTHOR> http://unicodefractions.com <comment><USER2> There's another way to make fractions in Unicode, using the fraction slash (U+2044) and/or superscript and subscript numerals. That way you can get arbitrary fractions that don't have their own vulgar fraction character.

<comment><USER3> Nice! FYI, that's the hex value so in HTML write it like so:

Fraction four sevenths: 4⁄7

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So happy they discussed the use of the word "vulgar" in the symbol names, that was interesting.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's little touches like using fractions instead of decimals where appropriate that really improves the usability of software, its something I've made an effort to do over the years, and I certainly think it pays off.

</comment><comment><USER6> A lot of these (maybe all?) have alt codes in Windows well. Example: Alt+171 = ½

<comment><USER7> If your system supports a "compose" key (X, Mac OS), you can also do them by entering a sequence. For example: "compose 5 8" → ⅝ (the arrow is actually "compose ->")

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can these parsed from a string to a double though?

<comment><USER9> Sure. Many languages already have Unicode op support, where the fraction slash binds tighter than the normal division slash. I'll add the generic fraction slash soon, and already have fractions, powers and more.</comment></comment>


VulcanJS: The full-stack React+GraphQL framework - <AUTHOR> http://vulcanjs.org <comment><USER2> In the second half of this podcast ([https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/08/09/state-of- jav...](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/08/09/state-of-javascript- with-sacha-greif/)), the creator, Sacha Greif, gives a good overview of the project.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess at some point we will have WebVulkcan, a graphics API. Either it will be confusing or VulcanJS will have died by then.

</comment><comment><USER4> So this is Meteor?

<comment><USER5> I'm quite confused too... its precursor is [http://www.telescopeapp.org/](http://www.telescopeapp.org/), which says "react+meteor platform".

And I remember meteor members having discussions on using React...

<comment><USER4> Anyway I like the project as I was a fan of telescope</comment></comment></comment>


When working with other people, you will deal with battles - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@GedRap/when-working-with-other-people-you-will-have-battles-d03b04bb6705 <comment><USER2> _" We invest significant time into some features or products, we feel proud of them. Some of us have ideas and beliefs, deeply ingrained into their core, that may no longer be true or relevant but due to the emotional investment, are hard to get rid of. In general, people form a very strong connection with the ideas which is hard to break."_

There's a problem right there. Individuals in a the team are meant to be focused on the end-result and forward improvement, rather than their own personal agenda?</comment>


Finally The Farce That Is Fin Reg Reform Passes ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.zerohedge.com/article/finally-farce-fin-reg-reform-passes-and-wall-street-can-resume-its-rapid-march-armageddon

<comment><USER2> Strikes me as garbage:

A) As far as I could tell the financial instruments and entities (e.g. hedge funds) that he's got such a hate for were not what caused the recent crisis.

B) He seems to have forgotten or never learned about how the politically motivated ban on banks holding junk bonds needlessly trashed that market (for a while) and a bunch of banks, making the recovery from the S&L crash that much more difficult. Forcing banks to sell a lot of politically disfavored assets right now would probably be nothing short of disastrous.

C) Unless I read it incorrectly (very possible) there's a lot more focus on banks making profits (can't have that, now, can we? Even when they desperately need to recapitalize) instead of whatever risks they might be taking by holding these assets or engaging in these businesses.

Bottom line: revenge makes poor economic policy.</comment>