Purify the Air in Your House with These Indoor Plants - <AUTHOR> https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/world-environment-day-2020-purify-the-air-in-your-house-with-these-indoor-plants-2241055 <comment><USER2> I'm very skeptical that these plants can significantly change the indoor environment, unless you turn your house into a greenhouse. Does anyone have a source pointing to the contrary?

<comment><USER3> You are right to be skeptical.

"A Popular Benefit of Houseplants Is a Myth: The science is clear: Indoor vegetation doesn't significantly remove pollutants from the air."

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/indoor-p...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/indoor- plants-clean-air-best-none-them/584509/)

"Recently, Waring and his colleagues reanalyzed all 195 studies that have examined whether houseplants can filter the air. They found that some types of plants can remove higher amounts of VOCs than others. But once you factor in the effects of working in a large room, none of the plants are able to do much."</comment></comment>


Top Holiday Gifts 2018?? - <AUTHOR> Getting Killed looking for interesting gifts for friends and family this year. Any suggestions??? <comment><USER2> Don't buy any consumables like chocolate or toiletries as they disappear too quickly. If you want the present remembered, get them something that won't disappear soon, and something that when they look at it, will remind them of the time you bought it for them. This excludes clothes as they are ephemeral in nature also.

<comment><AUTHOR> good call on the consumables... didn't even think about that</comment></comment>


Best Y Combinator Startups - <AUTHOR> http://raunk.com/list/2297

<comment><USER2> What are the features and parameters based upon which a score is being calculated(out of 10)? AirBnb is at 37, surely this cannot be based on consumer popularity. It could be a weighted mean of maturity + valuation + revenue projections + million uniques but even in that case its hard to believe that workflowy is at number 2.

</comment><comment><USER3> based on what metrics?

I couldn't actually see it specified anywhere?

</comment><comment><USER4> What is the criteria of these rankings? Heroku is # 8 but WorkFlowy is # 2</comment>


Ask HN: How can I help towards Covid-19? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
What can a software/tech person do to contribute/help towards Covid-19?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> stay at home</comment>


How Law Enforcement Can Use Google Timeline to Track Your Every Move - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2015/11/06/how-law-enforcement-can-use-google-timeline-to-track-your-every-move/ <comment><USER2> How Google responds to U.S. search warrants: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKKHxcJfh0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKKHxcJfh0)</comment>


Ask HN: How to Improve Linux Bluetooth / BlueZ? - <AUTHOR> Bluetooth in Linux is one of the few things that doesn't work well enough for day to day usage. Wifi used to be this way but it got better.
I don't have the time or expertise to help code this but can I donate?
I'm sure the people working on BlueZ are a competent group and I don't want say anything to discourage them. In fact thank you so much for all the work you have put in. But it seems like it still needs work, how can we help you out?
I can't find a link to donate at http://www.bluez.org. <comment><USER2> Have you tried contacting the developers themselves? [http://www.bluez.org/contact/](http://www.bluez.org/contact/)

That page links to a sponsors page ([http://www.bluez.org/development/sponsors/](http://www.bluez.org/development/sponsors/)) so they seem to accept donations of hardware and money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Now you've pointed me to it I can see the donate link clear as day.</comment></comment>


I'm not Toto, this isn't Kansas - <AUTHOR> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=91462&cid=7876768 <comment><USER2> I don't understand, how could the wedding guests wander into the adjacent room and not remember how to get back?

<comment><USER3> "We had one small section of the country club building (basically a large room) and the edges of the property leading down into the river valley."

If this story is true, my guess is they were either wandering the grounds or wandered through the role-playing room into "the edges of the property"

Then they started running into people dressed as wizards and elves all telling the portal story and they were so thoroughly convinced that they figured a better chance to getting back to the wedding was to find a wizard than to try walking back to the clubhouse or the grounds closer to it.

If I were in the Olive Garden, and suddenly I noticed that all the waiters and patrons were androids, and all of them claimed I was a computer simulation of a 2009 Homo Sapien running for their entertainment, I don't think my first thought would be "If I just leave the Olive Garden, all of this will go away" To these folks, a dozen people in scale mail would probably be nearly as convincing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments>

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe the sudden appearance of this link here owes a hattip to James Andrix:

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/cn/instrumental_vs_epistemic_a_bardi...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/cn/instrumental_vs_epistemic_a_bardic_perspective/9o9)

(note that the times on LW are advanced ahead of Bay Area times, so yes, this was posted more than 4 hours ago)

</comment><comment><USER6> Just so you all know, The Landmarkforum is based on est. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training> The people at The Landmarkforum bought the "technology" from the people who ran/own(ed?) est.

</comment><comment><USER7> The basic premise of the article is that there is a reality external to ourselves that can be known outside of our particular systems of language and culture. If there isn't a transcendent "Truth out there" that can be grasped by a particular value system (science, religion, etc) then it is perfectly understandable that two people were convinced they were living in a different world. In other words, all worlds are "fantasy worlds," or if you like, "all worlds are real within the context of their particular systems of language."

</comment><comment><USER8> Fiction? Non-fiction?

I can't tell.

<comment><USER9> $2 bill doesn't give it away?

<comment><USER10> Those really exist.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_two-dollar_bill>

<comment><USER11> Two dollar bills were also common currency in Canada in the 90s, until we replaced them with two-dollar coins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sorry to be a pedant, but shouldn't it be one of either: * I am Toto, this isn't Kansas * I'm not Toto, this is Kansas

Dorothy does after call say "Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas any more..."</comment>


Google Walks Away From Digg Deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/26/google-walks-away-from-digg-deal/

<comment><USER2> My personal opinion is that given that they have roughly the same traffic levels with 60+ people that they had with 10 people, and are somewhat close to breakeven, is that it's time for layoffs, not another round of financing.

<comment><USER3> Owen, you built it - don't you have some pull still. You have the right idea, layoff the excess to get cash flow positive.

My 2 cents - quit trying to be something to everyone - because those of us who visited in the early years left long ago.

btw it's Merrick - had lunch with you at Pubcon in '06

<comment><USER2> Very little pull. Reason #400 why I left - basically because I felt that whenever I suggested a good idea, it was shot down just because I was the source.

<comment><USER4> Did you get any equity?

<comment><USER2> Obviously, or I wouldn't be so eager to see them sell, but equity without liquidity is useless. Digg management has already demonstrated their willingness to treat my shares differently from the other founder's shares (see my comment above about Kevin cashing in shares).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > We're hearing they'll just push through with a new round of financing.

I may be a bit clueless about the whole web-entrepreneurship thing, but I'm amazed that after three and a half year and zillions of users, Digg is still not making money. How would such a thing be worth 200 million dollars, anyway?

<comment><USER6> With "zillions" of users they will find a way to make money eventually.

It is a pattern used by many others (both online and offline) and it is easier to create leverage once you have a large established userbase (especially if you are able to determine their demographics), though often it may seem a lot like gambling.

Many of the other big social sites have also yet to make money/profit.

<comment><USER7> >With "zillions" of users they will find a way to make money eventually

Either that or the next thing comes along and they move on. See Slashdot before and after Digg.

<comment><USER8> An uptick in quality?

(Seriously, what digg did was to pull all the people stupid enough to install Alexa.)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, maybe there's two periods when a site like Slashdot or Digg is good - before the masses arrive and after they leave.. It's the bell curve upside down :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the main reason google walked away from this deal was that $200 million is simply too much money to spend on a acquisition that dosn't have a net positive effect throughout the company and the web. The fact that they walked away at the time they did shows you that there was were red flags that were raised somewhere and a serious reconsideration was in order. Theres also the issue of digg's technology...

</comment><comment><USER10> i find suspicious that they backed away when doing due diligence.

just recently, techcrunch reported about google trying to introduce digg-like features in its user interface. seems to me that either google wanted to either buy or have a close look at digg's algorithm.

(this is just speculation by the way)

<comment><USER7> I'd bet Google's Ph.D collection could could come up with an algorithm that performs as well as Digg's (that is, not very) on their own... The UI is of course no problem either.

The whole deal seems pointless. Some would claim it's for the userbase, but Digg/Reddit by now have self-selected themselves down to a notoriously bad userbase. Would you pay $200m for those guys?

<comment><USER11> Bad user base from what perspective? From the eyes of someone who likes the conversations on Hacker News, sure. From the perspective of a company that makes their business selling ads, probably not so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another angle: <http://valleywag.com/5029423/google-nixing-digg-deal>

</comment><comment><USER13> Man, I really wish Jay Adelson gets his big pay day soon. [And Sean Parker too].

<comment><USER14> Jay Adelson founded Equinix: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinix>. It doesn't seem like he'd be hurting for cash.

<comment><USER13> Equinix went through a 32:1 reverse stock split. The founders pretty much got wiped out of its stock.

[http://sec.edgar- online.com/2003/05/15/0001012870-03-002591/...](http://sec.edgar- online.com/2003/05/15/0001012870-03-002591/Section15.asp)

In his own words:

"Well, to clarify, I still provide consulting to Equinix. As for the money I made from that venture, suffice to say the reverse split nuked my founder's wealth for morbid. There was enough to secure my kids' college education (if they need money from me, who knows), and enough to buy me a new minivan. Anything left is for my parents who deserve every penny. I never said I had a desire to be a VC..."

<http://blog.adelson.org/2006/09/im_going_to_try.html>

<comment><USER14> Ah, well that's unfortunate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My personal opinion is that Arrington just made up this 'acquisition'...

</comment><comment><USER16> Another angle: [http://thenextweb.org/2008/07/26/google-does-not-digg-it- wal...](http://thenextweb.org/2008/07/26/google-does-not-digg-it-walks-away- from-the-deal/)</comment>


Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer? (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer

<comment><USER2> TL;DR Programmer gets sent down for stealing proprietary code.

Gets released on appeal due to, what appears to be, a procedural issue (it doesn't go into much detail).

From my point of view, the chap blatantly stole the code. The whole premise of this article is that that's ok 'cos it probably wasn't very important code. Right.

My only take away is that the US has some seriously out of kilter sentences for these types of offences. 8 years is absurd.

<comment><USER3> > From my point of view, the chap blatantly stole the code.

It was open source code he slightly modified. The piece says that some parts where directly related to the Goldman Sachs high-frequency trading code base, but utterly useless when taken out of context.

What makes you believe that he "blatantly stole the code"?

<comment><USER2> Because he worked for a major investment bank.

It's irrelevant that it was modified open source code. Wouldn't make any difference.

As a dev employee he simply doesn't get to choose what is and is not proprietary to GS. That decision cannot be made without the involvement of compliance and legal.

And he would have known that. No question.

So, even if he didn't attempt to cover his tracks (which it sounds like he did) he performed an illegal act.

Obviously, without actually knowing what code was taken it's impossible to vet his assertion that it was useless code. It could well be (it's entirely plausible that he just wanted to give back extensions to FOSS code). But, unless GS had explicitly licensed that code otherwise (clearly they hadn't) or he had an agreement with GS that he owned the code (clearly he hadn't) he stole the code belonging to his employer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fuck, now I'm angry. Is the story continued somewhere?</comment>


Fuck it, ship it - <AUTHOR>

I am sitting at my local watering hole with my wife and friends discussing my job hunt and the thought struck me: What haven't I launched my web app yet?
I constantly remind myself of the quote: "If you aren't first, you're last."
Crowd tilt. Kudos. To all those considering starting a company or have what you perceive to be a great idea - you have nothing to lose. Start building. I don't care if you don't know how to create a paragraph tag in HTML. Man up and fucking do it. I got laid off last month and trust me when I say it makes me feel disallusioned (is that the correct use of that word?) with a tidy corporate job. Now more than ever I want to create what I believe will be a highly sustainable business with a real market and that "cool" factor that is highly desirable.
I implore you. What have you got to lose? You don't want to have any regrets so just FUCKING DO IT.
Fuck NDA's. Fuck a Technical Co-founder. You got this. It's a great idea, quit doubting yourself you idiot.
Quit reading articles. Just build. Excuses. Everyone has them. Don't be "that" guy.
I'm 28 years old and I wanted to be on the Forbes list by now. Damnit.
Seriously, get off your ass guys. (And gals)
The best way to get ahead is getting started. <comment><USER2> Seriously? You're implying you're disappointed in yourself for not being on the Forbes list by 28?

Build something awesome for the sake of building something awesome. Fuck being on a list of manipulative assholes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Imagine waking up with hangover after a Friday night at the bar and finding your drunken ramblings at the top of Hacker News.

Nice message though OP. Follow through on it in the morning!

</comment><comment><USER4> Quit reading articles. Fuck it, quit reading. Fuck a Technical Co-founder. Hell, fuck anything that moves… <vomits twice then passes out>

</comment><comment><USER5> So did you ship it?

Also, remember that the punch line to your quote was that the dad was high and it didn't mean shit :P

</comment><comment><USER6> I say find a way to do it. I'm a single mother of 2 teen boys, and my co- founder and I have WORKED and not let any perceived walls stop us. We are single-mindedly determined. If you really want to do it, go for it! Man up or in my case WOMAN up!

</comment><comment><USER7> Taking risks and shit is nice, but never under-estimate consequences (debts, family and friends). Thanks for the motivation ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Guys, I was drunk and trying to motivate you.

I'm going back to sleep now.

</comment><comment><USER8> I gotta quit reading hacker news and start shipping!

</comment><comment><USER9> WOW! Hit home pretty close! Start building.. JUST FUCKING DO IT .. Quit reading articles, just build. AND YES I wanted ot be on the forbes list before 30 as well! Didn't realize</comment>


Apple's four great strengths are also vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> http://theorangeview.net/2011/05/apples-four-great-strengths-are-also-vulnerabilities/ <comment><USER2> 1 seems like it won't be a problem as long as Apple keeps disrupting/inventing markets a la iPhone and iPad. (This might be contingent on 4, though, I guess.)

2 does seem like an issue to a degree. I imagine the subsidized pricing of high end phones in the US only helps Apple, but I think their PC marketshare/profitshare shows that they can sustain a great position just in the high end.

4 is just weird logic. The fact that a strength isn't a strength when it's not there anymore is a weakness? I mean, I understand that some part of Apple's success probably depends on Steve Jobs, but the characterization just seems weird to me, if only because it's obvious to the point of not worth mentioning.

The whole thing reminds me of John Siracusa's excellent take on Apple's strategy tax, though, which seems like a more important and interesting to think about problem to me. [http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2011/03/the- apple-strat...](http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2011/03/the-apple- strategy-tax.ars)</comment>


How Giant Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures Does Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/revealed-how-giant-patent-troll-intellectual-ventures-does-business-2012-3

<comment><USER2> Myhrvold is basically an arms dealer, more than happy to kill both sides. The guy couldn't create anything useful by himself, so he put his intellect to use as a merchant of destruction.</comment>


I Bought an Elephant to Find Out How to Save Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.outsideonline.com/2405236/asian-elephant-trafficking-captivity-laos <comment><USER2> My friends family owns a family of elephants.

I grew up in Sri Lanka, and apart from the lack of coconuts in a house disqualifies it as a house, owning an elephant signaled how prestigious the house was.

Even nowadays, there are still families, temples, and governor houses that own elephants. They are brought together to a big festival we have in my former city, Kandy. More than a 100 of them, easily. They are well treated; they are fed, and many vets take care of their health as well. At the same.time, it's not unheard of the elephants attacking humans when panicked. They live their entire life alongside humans, and in a heartbeat, they get panicked and attack everyone around them.

I have come to my personal belief that leaving enough distance with them is the best way to help out. They are smart animal beings that can manage to live in the wilderness, and pretty much every elephant death we hear in Sri Lanka involves either a train hitting one, some asshole shooting one, or some asshole owning one and not taking care of them.

It's not possible to put a price on their lives of course, but if anyone is interested in how much it would have cost them, a small 5-6 year old elephant is about $15K.

<comment><USER3> >a small 5-6 year old elephant is about $15K.

What's the correlation with elephant age and price? Are younger elephants more expensive because they're easier to train, or are older elephants more expensive because they can get to work quickly?

<comment><USER2> Younger ones tend to be more expensive.

I think there are more strict laws against "owning" younger elephants as they need to grow up with their mother. Most people tend to get younger elephants because of the life span. They will be easier to train, and you have a few more years to get to know them with your own "mahout" (term they use for the one person who takes care, tame, and train the elephant throughout the elephants life).

For mature elephants, the owner will be paying the Mahout as well (monthly or so) because the elephant is already used to him.

When elephants get older, they are sometimes donated to Buddhist temples to keep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The main problem is habitat loss, along with a related phenomenon, human- > elephant conflict. In India, such conflict annually causes 400 human > fatalities and 100 elephant deaths.

Damn, if the humans didn't breed like rabbits the elephants would be winning!

<comment><USER5> Only in poorer countries. When countries become wealthier the birth rate declines. We should make more of an effort to bring countries out of poverty.

<comment><USER6> Birth rate declines maybe but land use stays the same. When you look at Europe for example they don't allow much room for wildlife.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Human beings. What a bunch of assholes. I applaud the people tying to help, but there's just too many people and too little caring and long term thinking.

<comment><USER8> Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. Especially not the low-information/high-indignation kind.</comment></comment>


RethinkDB 1.14: binary data, seamless migration, and Python 3 support - <AUTHOR> http://www.rethinkdb.com/blog/1.14-release/ <comment><USER2> Reading through some of their docs, I like their honesty about where RethinkDB is and isn't. Reading the vs Mongodb they have:

"RethinkDB's performance has degraded significantly after the addition of the clustering layer, but we hope we'll be able to restore it over the next several releases."

They could have tried to gloss over that. I like that they weren't afraid to put that out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Just FYI, this statement is now seriously out of date. We've done an enormous amount of performance work since the comparison document was written, and performance is now back to normal. Once we get some scientific graphs to back up anecdotal evidence, we'll update this part of the doc.

<comment><USER2> I knew that when I read it pretty much. I just posted it as an example of the transparency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been using RethinkDB in production with clustering.

One thing I would really love to see more time put into is integration of a real consensus protocol like Paxos or Raft for properly recovering from failure.

Currently tables will become unwritable after a single machine fails and you need to update the blueprint/semilattice to use a new master manually. This is error prone (due to race conditions in replication of blueprint updates that can cause vector clock conflicts if you update it from more than one place) and generally not all that fun.

Error handling in these cases could also be better, the initscript it ships with doesn't make this much better (would be nicer if it used a symlink hack or something similar to have different initscripts for each db instance). Currently it's hard to tell without manual inspection why a RethinkDB server crashed or didn't start without manual intervention.

That being said, I love using RethinkDB, ReQL is great - infact it's so good that it's generally justification enough for me to use it for new projects.

If clustering could be given more love it would be my #1 datastore for all projects probably. (See the Jepsen by aphyr series for an idea of what I am looking for here)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy you brought up clustering. Internally we've been quite frustrated with this part of the product, but until a few months ago we held off the development on it for two reasons: we wanted to collect more information from users on real use cases and behavior, and there were more immediate bottlenecks in the product.

We restarted heavy development on the clustering infrastructure two months ago, and just yesterday I played with the prototype of the first upcoming upgrade. It's a WIP but is absolutely delightful (you can see my tongue in cheek review of it at [https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/2957](https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/2957)).

Here are the parts that are already done and will be shipped soon:

      - Vector clocks conflicts are now resolved automatically, no
        more manual conflict resolution
      - There is now a ReQL API for clustering that's dramatically
        better than the current `rethinkdb admin` tool
      - Much love has been put into presenting the abstractions to
        users. Everything is cleaned up and simplified, it's easier
        to understand and change, and even in advanced cases you
        won't have to know anything about blueprints/semilattices.
      - Really, this is about to get dramatically better. I can't
        summarize it in a bullet point, we put an enormous amount of
        effort into this in a thousand different places.

Here's what's coming immediately after that:

      - Automatic failover
      - Always-on resharding (no more resharding downtime)

(The reason why these latter updates are coming after the API overhaul is because they require a lot of simplification/refactoring/redesign internally as well as externally, and we wanted to do it piecemeal).

Thanks for writing up your feedback and sticking with RethinkDB despite the limitations of clustering 1.x. Multiple people are currently working very hard on this, and things are about to get _a lot_ better.

<comment><USER4> This makes me very happy to hear. I've been using RethinkDB for a few months now and I love it, but the manual failover has made me a bit uneasy.

Any chance of a clue as to the kind of timeframe for this? Even a very rough idea would be fine as I can appreciate you might not want to (or be able to) commit to anything yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we'll be able to ship the new clustering API in ~two months (note, it's a huge and a massively delightful change). I'm hoping we'll be able to get failover out two months after that, but it's hard to give precise estimates looking that far out.

<comment><USER4> Fantastic, thank you.

 _it 's hard to give precise estimates looking that far out_

Absolutely! I just wanted some kind of ballpark idea, which you've given me - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Been using RethinkDB in "light" production since February. It's a joy to use, and it has been running rock solid since that time.

Even though it's suggested to use RethinkDB on a 2GB+ machine ([http://rethinkdb.com/faq/#what-are-the-system- requirements](http://rethinkdb.com/faq/#what-are-the-system-requirements)) it's run just fine on a machine with 1GB of memory.

Looking forward to all the new changes. I'm especially happy about the binary support with r.http, going to make life easy!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey all. Slava here @ RethinkDB.

If you have any questions about the release, product roadmap, or anything RethinkDB-related, please ask! I'll be around all day to answer questions and incorporate your comments into the development roadmap.

<comment><USER6> Hi and thanks for this!

What are the plans for supporting java/clojure/scala and go-lang?

<comment><USER7> O don't forget the scala one [https://github.com/kclay/rethink- scala](https://github.com/kclay/rethink-scala) :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Arghh, sorry. I haven't used Java in years, so all JVM-related languages/drivers are kind of mashed together in a single bucket in my mind. I really ought to play with scala/clojure to unmash them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hearty congratulations to all. I'm using RethinkDB in production, and it's a joy.

The only annoyance so far has been data migration between versions; the elimination of this is excellent news.

If you're considering taking Rethink for a spin, now is a better time than any before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for being a user! If you run into any issues or have feature requests, please post on [https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues](https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues) (we're planning 1.15 now and can still reshuffle priorities!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even with Docker, the upgrade process wasn't that painful. I just used the Dockerfile from here [1] to create a new xxx/rethinkdb:1.14 image, then booted it up and everything worked automagically. I did have to rebuild secondary indexes, but no biggie, it was a simple `rethinkdb index-rebuild -c host:port -r db.table` away (after I upgraded the brew rethinkdb package). Hopefully it will get even better in the future.

1: [https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/dockerfile/rethinkdb/docke...](https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/dockerfile/rethinkdb/dockerfile/)

<comment><AUTHOR> FYI, you don't _need_ to rebuild the indexes. You can continue running your app and the old index protocol will work seamlessly. It helps to rebuild when you upgrade in case you start using new functionality (so the indexes get computed correctly), but running an old system would work fine.

EDIT: note that you won't necessarily be able to run with indexes from multiple versions back. We'll almost certainly prune the backwards compatibility code to only a few releases to keep the codebase clean and nimble, and to keep difficult to diagnose bugs to a minimum. But it's still a very convenient feature release-to-release, as you can upgrade, and then rebuild indexes at your convenience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love rethink and ReQL and especially the intuitive Python bindings - but I can't wait for geospatial indexing. It's the last thing preventing me from using RethinkDB in prod.

<comment><USER11> Good news on that front: geospatial support has already passed code review and been merged into the codebase (check out this issue to learn about the implementation and progress: [https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/2571](https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/2571)).

There are a few limitations we'd like to work out (e.g. right now the implementation doesn't support compound geo indexes), but we're well on track to shipping 1.15.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want to come and learn more about RethinkDB, there is a meetup early next month in San Francisco - [http://www.meetup.com/RethinkDB-SF-Meetup- Group/events/20080...](http://www.meetup.com/RethinkDB-SF-Meetup- Group/events/200802562/)

<comment><USER13> I'm very interested in looking into the code as a sample of real-world distributed system implementation, much more informative than our university's distributed systems course, I guess. Are there any guide available for the source code, besides src/README ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, there isn't a good guide yet (but hopefully there will be one soon).

Studying RethinkDB source code may not be the best way to study distributed systems, though. There is an enormous gap between a working system and a production quality product, and most of the code in that gap has to do with relatively mundane issues like error checking/error reporting, monitoring tools/APIs, lots of polish, edge case handling, etc.

It's a lot of fun to get into the guts of the system, but it's fairly large, so it's a non-trivial undertaking. If you do decide to do it, we'd love to help you out on IRC (#rethinkdb on freenode), and would appreciate if you documented your experience so we could make the process easier for others in the community!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really exited about binary data support. The timing is amazingly convenient. It's exactly what I needed right now.

Coming from CouchDB, support for attachments (=binary data) was the only thing I was missing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow - people have so much positivity in sharing their experience with RethinkDB. Congrats to the team for building something great, that others find utility in and enjoy working with.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seamlessly migrating dev db as we speak!

Eh, update. After looking back in my terminal window when I wrote that sentence, it seems this is already done. All I can say is: :o

Advancing through versions from the early days back in 1.2 this has of course been one annoyance. Just want to say to the team: awesome job!

Thanks again

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats! Using Rethink in production, solid so far.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great work guys! So glad to see seamless migration added!

Congratulations to the team

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a fan of RethinkDB, however I didn't had a chance to use early releases. I'm glad to see so much positivity. Can you share your thoughts and production workload?

</comment><comment><USER19> The one thing I really came to appreciate is the polished UI that ships with rethink, especially the query editor.

</comment><comment><USER20> Congrats guys. It's been fun following your progress. Love the technical updates and overall direction :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats on the update

</comment><comment><USER21> Be nice to hear about large clusters using Rethink DB in production. Are there any startups using it for large cross-data-centre databases?

</comment><comment><USER22> Is RethinkDB shifting focus? I remember at the beginning it was focusing on streaming data but now it does also light analytics?

<comment><AUTHOR> There isn't much of shifting of focus. The query language can do both analytics and realtime queries. We optimize for realtime, but with most of the performance work, optimizations tend to apply to both use cases. Everything is getting better, but the focus is still on realtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> python 3 forever!</comment>


LulzSec brings down CIA website - denial of service attack - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/06/15/cia-website-down-hackers-lulzsec/

<comment><USER2> Another HN thread with lot more discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2659326></comment>


Ask HN: How does an early stage startup measure productivity of employees? - <AUTHOR>

Number of code commits, lines of code might be one measure. Putting in lots of hours might be another. Responsiveness to completing minor tasks vs. big/fun stuff another.<p>Lean startups measure the progess of the product through customer validation. Maybe then, by proxy, success of the product is the only measure of employee productivity that matters, one could suppose. But is there a more direct way to measure employee productivity?<p>(This may be a managerial question, but also a way for technical employees to reflect on how they spend their time.) <comment><USER2> Set short iterative milestones. Call them whatever you like to suit the dev style you want, whether it's user stories or feature milestones or anything else. But define what progress looks like as far as making the product better goes and tell people to go knock it dead.

Ideally divide to the point that people can knock a few of these off in a normal day and let your hotshots compete to see who can score highest. Give away starbucks gift cards or cases of Bawls or the like.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Cross posted on Quora: [http://www.quora.com/How-does-an-early-stage-startup- measure...](http://www.quora.com/How-does-an-early-stage-startup-measure- productivity-of-technical-employees)</comment>


DHH: Un-Manage Your Employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.nfib.com/mybusiness-magazine/operational-insight

<comment><USER2> To the commenters here who notice there may be an upper limit on the number of employees David's approach is valid for, keep in mind that the subtitle of the article identifies "small business" as the scope. Thus the counterexample of Google seems unfair. That said, the legal definition of "small" in the U.S. for most nonmanufacturing businesses is that the business must have less than $7 million in annual receipts (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_business#Size_definitions>). It would be interesting to know if David feels there exists an upper limit on the number of employees in order for a flat structure to work, and if so, what that number might be. Since large organizations, if they are designed well, are just a latticework of small organizations maybe it's possible there is no upper limit.

Regarding David's larger point I would add that having a boss tends to make people feel slavish and subservient to a certain extent. This creates an unhealthy work environment compared to the ideal in which all employees are truly on equal footing as regards power. One of the tragedies of working for a manager is that nervous feeling you get when you ponder how much control this one person wields over your career. A superior organizational design is one that takes care to hire people who are great at managing themselves and entrusts them with the power to do so.

<comment><USER3> Sure I agree. But on the other hand, the Joel Spolsky article I posted noted that he started having problems once he got to _17_ people, which is smaller than 37signals. I was simply using Google as an extreme to illustrate my point.

> Since large organizations, if they are designed well, are just a latticework > of small organizations maybe it's possible there is no upper limit.

How do you make a smaller organization though? By giving someone authority over it who can really take control of it.

> Regarding David's larger point I would add that having a boss tends to make > people feel slavish and subservient to a certain extent.

Tough. That's just the way it is. You're always going to have a boss. Whether it's a manager, a C-suite executive, a board of directors, or the customer. You're never going to be completely free from someone having authority over you. It's just a matter of how they use that authority over you.

Now, I _will_ agree that bad bosses (which are unfortunately too common) make you feel slavish. If you have a good boss (and let's give DHH credit, he sounds like he is a good boss), then they make you feel powerful. A boss's primary job is to enable you to do things either with encouragement or by taking care of the administrative details for you. Someone once said that a boss is a "secretary who can fire you."

<comment><USER4> FWIW, I've heard that Google once had no managers. The person I heard it from started around 2002, when Google was already an order of magnitude bigger than 37signals. So while it obviously doesn't work for all size companies, it seems that you can get fairly big and still do okay without managers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My only issue with that approach is that of holiday days.

I can see so many ways that that can go wrong. To me, the reason it works seems more like peer pressure than enjoyment of work.

I love what I do, I love coding, and I also know that I love taking a week out to not care about everything I do at work. If I was in a system like that, I'd feel kinda pressured to keep up with my colleagues and not let the team down. Not by my friends and officemates, but by the knowledge that if I take a week off, that's a week they've got to handle the work I'd do. There's rarely a 'good' time to take holidays, especially in smaller teams.

It could work, it is certainly possible, but it seems an unnecessary area where pressure can occur when a team is under stress. To be honest, I think it could work better with the caveat that everyone has to take a certain minimum level of holiday.

Sick days however make perfect sense.

<comment><USER6> But remember, they are already working a 4 day week, so the chance of being burnt out and forcing themselves to work is lower than normal.

<comment><USER7> IIRC, they don't do that anymore. Something about the weather in Chicago. No, really.

<comment><USER8> We do four day work weeks from May - October. Five day work weeks the rest of the year. We've found that's the right balance.

<comment><USER6> Sounds good to me. I would like a workplace where it is accepted culture to work 4 days, or equivalent on average, since I'd probably rather work a few of weeks and take a long weekend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As much as I like the idea of not having middle managers, I think it's impossible at a certain point. I mean, Google would love nothing better than to do away with middle managers altogether, and they have them. I think the best counter-point comes from Joel Spolsky: [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/how-hard-could-it-be- ho...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/how-hard-could-it-be-how-i- learned-to-love-middle-managers.html)

<comment><USER9> Thank you for sharing that article, Jason. :) Paraphrasing Joel Spolsky in response to DHH:

 _A final thought: You have to be careful when it comes to embracing the latest business idea. A single anecdote filtered through the eyes of a founder about a new cool philosophy for running a company has to be considered in the light of other evidence, such as the way thousands of other companies are set up and operate._

I sometimes wonder why DHH and Spolsky are so different. DHH speaks as if what he says is law, will work for everyone, Spolsky seems to constantly pad his advice with warnings about context.

<comment><USER10> In this case, DHH seems to have provided the appropriate hedge:

> _You might be thinking, "This is crazy -- it would never work at my > company." And you may be right. But I think there's a greater chance that it > would work. If you're apprehensive, try experimenting with one team or > division._

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't consider that a hedge, I would consider it lip-service to the idea of "I might be wrong here." It seems almost completely disconnected from reality.

What do you think would happen at Acme Inc., a company with more than 1000 employees, if one division suddenly demoted/relieved the manager, gave each teammate a gratuitous sick/vacation policy, and rotated frontline employees through the management roles?

I work at a company of over 300 employees, where we implement many of these kinds of ideas: we don't count sick or vacation days, our management hierarchy is extremely flat, and we have no policy about what time people come in to work. Despite that, I think this method of management-via-non-management is not something that every company can try on. It has to be built into the culture from day one. DHH is really only describing the trappings of a fun company culture, not the core of it.

You can't take the outward symbols of that culture and pin them on a company which doesn't approach employee trust and management in the same way.

<comment><USER3> What's ironic is that you're doing the same thing. You pay lip service (using phrases like "I wouldn't consider" and "It seems") to the fact that you might be wrong about DHH paying lip service to the fact that he might be wrong. And then when you actually change over to the main topic, you do the same thing. The majority of this comment explains how DHH is undeniably and completely missing the point.

If you want to criticize DHH, be my guest. I might agree with what you're saying. Just don't criticize him and then turn around and do the exact same thing as you accuse him of doing.

<comment><USER11> Not really. The implied point is that DHH has an obligation to explain not only why a company should consider his radical changes. But _also_ , because of the magnitude of the changes he proposes, he has an obligation to explain seriously why a company shouldn't. Otherwise, it's just cheerleading.

I was calling out that he failed to do the latter, and my obligation is to explain why a company might not want to, or be able to, implement those changes.

The fact is that I'm _not_ wrong about him glancing over an important part of his proposal. If you write an article advocating companies undergo radical shifts in their organizational structures, then as someone who is regarded as an informed commenter, you have an obligation to tell people the pitfalls of such a large change. Again, when you don't do that, it's called cheerleading.

He didn't include any discussion of the downsides, or the upsides of hierarchical organization, so I'm not wrong. I should have used a more tactful phrase than "lip-service," however: it's more loaded -- perhaps even derogatory -- than I intended.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't trying to say that you were being disrespectful. I was just saying that the way I interpreted it was logically inconsistent. It came off that you were saying "DHH isn't admitting that there might be a downside to his plan. He needs to provide a balanced argument. Oh, and by the way he's completely wrong about everything too."

Whereas after reading this post (and rereading the last one), it sounds like you might have meant to say "DHH isn't admitting that there might be a downside to his plan. He needs to provide a balanced argument. For example, here's one potential hole that I see" which is a reasonable thing to say. Remember, we humans are dumb animals who are prone to completely misinterpreting your argument. Sometimes you have to beat a dead horse to make your point. :-)

<comment><USER11> It's all good; I'm glad we came to an understanding. Thanks for the feedback and perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At twenty employees with several partners, a flat model works. Typically however, that approach only scales so far. As an organization starts hitting 30-40 people it starts to become hard to maintain informality and avoid territoriality. At 150 or so, you hit Dunbar's number.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number>

Don't get me wrong, it sounds like a great place to work and an admirable way of managing people.

<comment><USER13> If the company does start to become bigger, and groups in charge of certain aspects of the products start to form, is it possible to still apply this model on the smaller formed groups? Then the weekly leader of each group meet and therefore encourages employees to maintain the "bigger picture" of the product.

Is this doomed to fail? what do you guys think?

<comment><USER14> Yes, that's what the "Scrum of Scrums" idea is meant to solve, in exactly that way:

[http://www.xqa.com.ar/visualmanagement/2009/08/scrum-of- scru...](http://www.xqa.com.ar/visualmanagement/2009/08/scrum-of-scrums- making-it-visual/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are tons of bad managers, but there are also a few excellent managers. I think it mostly depends on their focus.

Most middle managers (and most people in general) are focused on what they need to get done--the reports that need to be filed or the next status meeting to be scheduled. What good managers realize is that their work contributes absolutely nothing to the company (directly.) They are overhead in the purest sense of the word. All those i's to dot and t's to cross don't add a single cent to revenue. The only way they can make any contribution to the company is by making their people more effective. A great manager should be a hacker focused on her people's time rather than on code. She should be anticipating problems and annoyances and dealing with them before they blow up. If there's a fire hose of distractions, she should be the valve that slows the flow down to a trickle and routes the real issues to the appropriate people. Her goal should always be, "How can I make my people 1% more efficient?"

Too bad that most managers appear to be little more than a secretary with a checklist. (Actually, most secretaries I know are more useful than most managers.)

<comment><USER16> I agree, good managers are supposed to manage people, not tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is possible to keep this model working at a scale with a lot more employees. That being said it requires not only the right culture within the company, but the right people. Keep only the creme of the crop employees; stop 'fiscalizing' sick days, time sheets, and clocking hours; get the developers to get together at the start of an iteration (say every two weeks for example) and together come to a definition of priorities and tasks; measure results, not time in front of a computer. You as a business owner have - of course - the last word on any issue or priority; however empowering your employees, while keeping a friendly, social, and liberal company culture, will most probably have a positive effect on your workforce's drive and productivity. Hell everyone wants to the see the company grow when you really feel a part of it, as opposed to just another employee.

As a counterpoint though, I feel this approach only works with IT, Development and Design Departments. Lot's of other departments (Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Implementation) require a certain structure and hierarchy to function correctly. In my experience, the more specialized the skill set, the more are liberty and culture important to further the drive of the team/teams.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's what I got out of this: employees are extremely obedient when you don't tell them the rules. Because they have to guess what's expected of them, they come up even more restrictive rules just to be on the safe side. Example: if you don't count vacation days, people take less time off. That's your employees putting money in your pocket!

Bonus: you can tell them you're giving them "autonomy", and also fire some managers.</comment>


Images of modern buildings must remain on Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SaveFoP

<comment><USER2> I honestly think that all images should stay on Wikipedia. In my opinion, there will be less and less copyright infringement about pictures. Websites use the more and more the fact that they use images as "fair use". This is not really restricted and almost any picture could be used under this term.

<comment><USER3> You can think what you want. The problem is, you're thinking that the laws of the US apply to the world. They don't.

The concept of "fair use" is a US principle, though a few other countries have something similar. The "Freedom of Panoroma" issue here concerns the EU, which doesn't have fair use. As the link says:

> The reason Wikipedia can freely depict public spaces in most of the > countries in the European Union is that we enjoy full Freedom of Panorama. > This is an exception to copyright that allows people to make and use > photographs of public spaces without restriction, while at the same time > protecting the architect's or visual artist's rights.

You also seem to misapprehend what "fair use" means legally, vs. the generally incorrect folk understanding. Plus, Wikipedia's own guidelines say that they are more restrictive on the use of non-free media than what is allows by US copyright law. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non- free_content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-free_content) .</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs' ex reveals their explosive relationship - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2013/10/15/steve-jobs-ex-reveals-their-explosive-relationship/

<comment><USER2> > _I now understand that Steve was learning how to gain power by insinuating > negative self-images onto others._

That is a very powerful statement.</comment>


New Google Play Music All Access subscription service - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/05/15/google-play-music/ <comment><USER2> Two complaints: what is with Google's naming these days? "Google Play Music All Access"? If Gmail was launched today it would have been called Google+ Mail Unlimited. What's wrong with "Google Music"?

Secondly- why would I use this over a specialist like Spotify or Rdio? I know why Google want me to, but as of right now I don't see the benefits from switching to a specialist provider that is dedicated to music to a generalist company that has a passing interest in the area.

<comment> k-mcgrady The product is Google Music. All Access is a feature of the product. In the same way Google + is a product and Hangouts (Google + Hangouts) is a feature of that product. (Although I'm not sure why they through Play in the name. Take that out and the name is fine).

<comment><USER3> The product name is actually "Google Play Music". It had been "Google Music" during the beta and before the change from the Android Market to Google Play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Honest question, why does google want to get into every damn online market? They are freaking awesome at launching moonshots like Self-driving cars, maps/streetview, Glass etc. why they even care about 'smaller problems' (comparitively) like online music that is fraught with licensing problems and lawyers?

There are so many problems in the world that Google could solve with it's resources and can turn into billion dollar markets. They are pretty much becoming MSFT rather than AAPL in doing so.

<comment><USER5> You can't index all of the world's data unless you have all of the world's data...

<comment><USER6> Plus supposedly smaller problems can become in time much bigger ones. Basic for Atari was a small problem.

<comment><USER4> Well, online music is not particularly new or smaller problem.

The problem is online music is fraught with litigation challenges. Of course, only GOOG or any other tech giant could fight them off with their resources. But at the end of the day, will it really lead to multi-billion dollars in returns?

<comment><USER6> I'm not defending their choice per se, but I can see how they see this move as potentially worth the trouble. It could for example give them an edge when it comes to the adoption of Android devices. Directly it might not generate enough revenue, but it can be an important piece within an all-encompassing ecosystem they are trying to create, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No word on number of songs in the catalog? More than Spotify? Less? What about vs. xbox music?

<comment><USER8> Probably less as they didn't talk about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pricing is $9.99/month or $7.99/month if you sign up soon (I think he said in the first 30 days).

<comment><USER10> I don't see where you can sign up at all.

<comment><USER11> <http://play.google.com/music/listen>

This gave me an option to sign up. I can play music through the web, but there's no update to the phone app yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They should've released this since Google Music. I was surprised they released a service with such an "obsolete" business model of actually selling songs, like iTunes, last year, when they should be looking forward. But I guess there are still a lot of people who'd rather buy each song for $1 than pay $10 a month. Still, they should've launched both.

Now, where's the Netflix competitor? That should've arrived a long time ago, too. And what about a books subscription service? Are they still serious enough about Google Books to do that?

I don't know, it's just surprising to me that an "innovative" company like Google chooses to _replicate_ decade old business models with their ever so slight take on it, instead of trying to come up with their own _disruptive_ business models. They can't just enter in a market 5-10 years later with marginal improvements and expect to beat the leaders just because they are "big".

<comment><USER13> The Netflix competitor is paid Youtube channels, except it only works in a few countries and it's not as good as Netflix.

Google has bet everything on social and are creating these satellite services to fuel G+ usage and adoption. You won't see anything revolutionary coming out of GOOG for a while.

I currently use Spotify and there is no way I'll be switching to a Google product. In fact I'm trying to reduce my dependence on Google products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The lack of integration (and overall terrible UI) of Spotify is actually one of the key things to drive me from Android to Windows Phone for a subscription music service.

It's not perfect, but this makes me a little bit curious about Android again, maybe in 2 years I'll jump ship again but Microsoft has a pretty solid offering at this point and a sizable lead in the subscription music market.

<comment><USER2> What's bad about the Spotify app on Android? It's one of the best designed out there, as far as I can see.

<comment><USER15> Doesn't auto rotate, widget doesn't really work, playlist resume didn't work for a long time etc.

<comment><USER16> Add to that the inability to sort playlists. Finding songs in your "Starred Tracks" is an epic pain in the ass.

<comment><USER17> They finally fixed that in the most recent update (as of about a week ago?) They also added filtering, so you no longer have to just blindly scroll around to find a song.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Happy with Rdio. Sticking with them.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady US only whereas all their main competitors are available in more markets and have more features (from what I've seen through the I/O demo of the service). Definitely starting on the back foot.

<comment><USER19> Wasn't Spotify UK-only when it first started?

Music licensing is a difficult and likely very expensive thing. It's reasonable to assume they're launching US-only and building revenue first, then tackling worldwide as they are able.

<comment> k-mcgrady It was started in Sweden so I presume they launched there. The UK was one of the early markets though but they were in several European countries very quickly.

I know that licensing is difficult and takes time but Google has plenty of money. They don't need to build revenue in one country before they can launch in another. They need to launch everywhere to get uptake on this, especially when the market is so competitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> simba-hiiipower > _The service will combine music from your locker with 'millions' of songs on > the service itself seamlessly, says Yerga._

any details around the locker component; namely storage size?

<comment><USER20> I believe it's the current 20,000 song upload limit they have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm trying to enable my trial and am getting "Server error. Try again later"

I'm working in Ireland right now trying to use my US account. Perhaps they don't have an out of country error?

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems odd that it's more expensive to stream music than it is movies. At least you get the latest content, I suppose, rather than movie streamings' limited content.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder what the pricing will be like for this. I'm excited to see how it competes with Spotify and similar.

<comment><USER11> $9.99/month, per the keynote announcement.

<comment><USER23> Sign me up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So basically radio? Not at all as attractive as Spotify, where you create your own playlists (that, and off-line mode on my phone are the two killer features of Spotify for me).

<comment><USER25> No, it also includes playlists and albums in addition to radio.

<comment><USER24> OK, I mis-read the post (I guess "full access to streaming library" implies playlists).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Microsoft is already doing this with XBox Pass (I'm a subscriber) and its a great value unless you're a hater of music.

Its cool because you can experiment all you want with new music and not run up huge bills. Its okay to get into music again.</comment>


FAA Admits Names and Home Addresses in Drone Registry Will Be Publicly Available - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoglia/2015/12/18/faa-finally-admits-names-and-home-addresses-in-drone-registry-will-be-publicly-available/ <comment><USER2> FAA has always been rather backward on privacy. All licensed pilots' home addresses are already publicly available and are being scraped by SEO bots and displayed on the front page of google if you search for said pilot's name.

e.g.

Angelina Jolie: [http://aviation-business-gazette.com/A39/B58/Pilot- Angelina-...](http://aviation-business-gazette.com/A39/B58/Pilot-Angelina- Jolie-Los-Angeles-CA.html)

Harrison Ford: [http://aviation-business-gazette.com/A3/B63/Pilot- Harrison-F...](http://aviation-business-gazette.com/A3/B63/Pilot-Harrison- Ford-Santa-Monica-CA.html)

I've already had a couple of scammers using my address information from here and pretending as bill collectors try to scam me. Not sure how we can get the FAA to see reason in this regard.

<comment><USER3> Nobody is compelled to be a pilot.

Public records that aren't public aren't public records. Holding a pilot's license means having responsibility to the public, with responsibility comes accountability. Celebrities are not entitled to special privilege in the US. We don't have royalty or an aristocracy.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you about the idea of public records. At the same time, it is not clear to me why someone would need the physical address of someone with a pilot's license. Why is "where this person lives" part of "public record" once you are licensed to fly a plane?

<comment><USER3> The address is where official communications are sent, e.g. the license itself or a subpoena or FAA investigators.

<comment><USER5> Which is why the FAA needs the data, not a reason to disclose it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the first time I've ever had a "real" website block me for using an ad blocker. The "continue to site" button loops back to this screen until you turn ABP off.

[http://imgur.com/qacLPmC.png](http://imgur.com/qacLPmC.png)

<comment><USER7> Not happening to me with AdBlock and Ghostery under Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A common workaround for private and corporate aircraft owners is to register the aircraft under a Delaware company. That results in the registering agent's address ( usually a law firm's office ) appearing in the database.

There is even Delawareing-as-a-service! Just one example from Googling:

[http://www.global-inter.net/services/asset-protection- aircra...](http://www.global-inter.net/services/asset-protection-aircraft- yacht/airplane-registration)

Of course this does impose annual requirements for company returns etc but many owners consider that a reasonable cost for the privacy it provides.

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. However it is an arrangement I frequently encounter when researching corporate jet ownership._

</comment><comment><USER9> If you are a licensed amateur radio operator your name, callsign and address is listed in the open FCC database, so looks like this kind of thing is nothing really new.

<comment><USER10> True. They are talking about including this new information in the same database that is used to register N-numbers for full sized aircraft. It's not really a new thing, and doesn't bother me too much.

However, their FAQ is very misleading. If the info will be public, fine, just be up front about it. At the moment, there is plain language that says the info will be kept private, but legal language that says it will be made publicly searchable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This just prevented me from having any interest in buying a drone. Obviously your name can end up on an endless variety of lists, from advertising to spam calls, but the notion of this and going into it willingly - it's an instant turn-off. I had been increasingly looking forward to purchasing my first drone, despite the registry. What an incredibly stupid thing for the FAA to do. Where's a drone lobby when you need one.

<comment><USER10> Check with the AMA (Academy of Model Aeronautics) if you are a hobbyist. [http://www.modelaircraft.org/](http://www.modelaircraft.org/)

And check with AUVSI (Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International) if you're a professional. [http://www.auvsi.org/home](http://www.auvsi.org/home)

Those are the two main organizations lobbying for sane laws regarding drones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow. Blocking me for using adblock ensures I won't ever view Forbes again. Either way they get zero ad views.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you are into amateur radio, it's the same problem for years. The only workaround is having a PO box.</comment>


Show HN: BitGym brings kinect-style gaming to iPad / Android - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/49255066

<comment><USER2> I've been watching this company practically since its inception. They started out developing games intended to make exercise fun, but in the process they built an amazing platform for motion detection on the major mobile devices.

This seems like the logical extension of that work, allowing developers an opportunity to leverage all of the hard work done done by Active Theory in order to build compelling games without having to worry about the nitty-gritty details of motion detection.

This video is an interesting supplement to the submission, if it interests you: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdo9ka1vh8Y>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been on HN nearly 6 years and this definitely the project I'm most proud to show off. While we're not quite at kinect levels of tracking, we think we'll get pretty close pretty soon.

Happy to answer any questions in my currently sleep-deprived state :)</comment>


Zyan Disassembler Engine – Fast, lightweight x86/x86-64 disassembler library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zyantific/zyan-disassembler-engine#zyan-disassembler-engine-zydis- <comment><USER2> Why would I use this instead of Capstone [1]?

[1] - [http://www.capstone-engine.org/](http://www.capstone-engine.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> _Zydis builds cleanly on most platforms without any external dependencies. You can use CMake to generate project files for your favorite C++14 compiler._

I don't want to be mean here, but I think CMake + C++14 already ruled out many platforms as well as binding solutions. In which case the pure C-based Capstone might be better.

<comment><USER4> It is targeted to x86/x64 processors.

At OSes that matter for those processors have C++14 and CMake available.

Also from my point of view, brownie points for being written in C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious why performance is a big factor for a disassembler?

<comment><USER6> Automated analysis of malware is where speed matters to me. You have hundreds of thousands of samples per day and you want to do some automated analysis on them for categorization. No wonder all the AV companies just check the hash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The given quick example is uselessly dependent on tchar.h, which is Microsoft- specific. This is not going to work with "my favourite C++14 compiler".

By the way, if we're going to require a C++14 compiler, why still implement empty destructors when we can use "= default"?

</comment><comment><USER8> I found it interesting the project was previously called "Verteron". What prompted the change to Zyan/Zydis?

</comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty awesome. I've been using the LLVM disassembler. How much faster is this one?</comment>


Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance on a $199 AMD Ryzen Laptop - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen3-windows-linux&num=1 <comment><USER2> One thing we found that severely impacted performance on Windows was the built-in anti-virus software (Windows Defender).

This came to our attention when we found one of our programs ran dramatically better on Windows 7 than 10 and we traced it back to the 7 machine not having Defender installed. We ended up optimizing our IO behavior to avoid triggering Defender and it made a huge difference.

This leads me to wonder how many of these benchmarks suffer on Windows from similar problems or if Defender was disabled how much of a difference it would make.

<comment><USER3> Defender does the scanning on CloseHandle() calls in untrusted code which can block the thread for even up to ~10ms (including other NTFS filter drivers) which is significant if you do open() close() pairs a lot.

More info about the similar issue and solution is apparently to sign the application [1]

[1] [https://github.com/rust- lang/rustup/issues/1540#issuecomment...](https://github.com/rust- lang/rustup/issues/1540#issuecomment-491721670)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if my former Windows using coworkers knew about that! They were quite good though so if there was something to know at the time, they probably did.

Common knowledge in the office was that Windows small file I/O performance is about 1/10th of Linux, probably due to NTFS and ACLs being expensive to evaluate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I picked up the M142 (Ryzen 5 3500U variant) a couple weeks ago for $329.

I'm super happy with it for the money — there really aren't any competitors at this price point that are in the same size/weight class. It's even better that the RAM, NVME (2x) and wireless cards are all socketed — that's something that most current high end ultrabooks don't offer these days.

So far I've added a Samsung 970 Evo Plus and installed Fedora 31.

FYI there was a Motile subreddit (/r/motile) for anyone interested in discussing these further.

</comment><comment><USER6> The headline is that it's a $199 laptop but the link in the article is to a $280 laptop. Is this a mistake or did the price go up?

<comment><USER7> I did a search on Walmart's site for the name of the laptop, "Motile M141", and the price came up $280, so I think it has gone up.

I'd love an inexpensive AMD laptop, but I'll probably go with a Pinebook Pro. It lists at $200, and that price seems to be firm.

<comment> Brave-Steak An AMD laptop for 200-250 would be a steal, IMO. The performance is far better (for comparison [https://openbenchmarking.org/result/1912177-HU- MANJAROPO12](https://openbenchmarking.org/result/1912177-HU-MANJAROPO12)) and x86 support is something I wouldn't want to pass on if I didn't have to. Unfortunately, even the cheapest ones in Germany go for at least 330 Euros.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any other tips to similiar deals?

<comment><USER9> watch the website: [https://www.dealnews.com/Motile-AMD-Ryzen-3-14-Laptop- for-19...](https://www.dealnews.com/Motile-AMD-Ryzen-3-14-Laptop-for-199-free- shipping/18256591.html)

Or Ebay has them for ~$220+

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Better for Microsoft to skin the linux kernel with a Windows like UI. Run classic windows programs in a VM similar to the old DOS box.

Problems with Windows stem from legacy code and its antiquated file system.

<comment><USER11> Even better would be for Microsoft to contribute to Wine, or to perhaps develop a proprietary Windows-source-code-derived alternative that they could sell.

It's highly unlikely that Microsoft would take either approach, but they'd be better options than putting Windows in a VM.</comment></comment>


SpaceX Iridium 4 Launch from Alhambra, CA - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE5C3O71Xqo <comment><USER2> Why didnt the rocket land on a barge? Not enough fuel?</comment>