Verizon ships its iPhone 5 unlocked - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/verizon-ships-its-iphone-5-unlocked/

<comment><USER2> The article suggests that buying a Verizon iPhone will give you LTE service on AT&T. This is not the case, as the two phones support mutually exclusive LTE bands. The AT&T iPhone 5 supports LTE bands 4 and 17, while the Verizon iPhone 5 supports LTE bands 1, 3, 5, 13 and 25.

<comment><USER3> A very salient point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know whether Verizon has confirmed this will not happen with the iPhone5, but as one report I read described, they have in the past shipped unlocked handsets that were subsequently locked down by an update. (Sorry, I don't recall the details and don't have the URL at hand.)

So... I'd confirm that the unlocked GSM setting will persist, before committing my money on the basis of its being present.</comment>


Experimenting with creatine - <AUTHOR> http://careyryan.com/creatine/

<comment><USER2> I don't know much about the tests you took, but isn't it possible that you got better at taking the test, rather than the improvements being from Creatine itself?

Would it make sense to continue testing without using Creatine and see if your test results dropped?</comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't Hacker News have an auto filter? - <AUTHOR>

I love Hacker News' rule against clickbait titles. We have a rule again starting a post with a number.
"5 ways to..."
But I see posts like these in the new queue all of the time.
Why not just auto remove the number from the article titles? <comment><USER2> Though it would be easy to code a filter to remove numbers from titles, there are always exceptions when the numbers are meaningful. The bad titles like "$X Ways to ..." are also a form of useful signaling; it tells you that the submitter either doesn't care about the quality of their submission or they have never bothered to read the HN guidelines.

Lastly, the guidelines also ask people to not supposed to create a text submission to ask HN/YC questions. The preferred way to handle it is to send them an email (firstname.lastname@example.com).

<comment><AUTHOR> ha. I'm a hypocrite. Thanks for helping.</comment></comment>


Saving server costs with Javascript
 - <AUTHOR> http://markmaunder.com/2007/saving-server-costs-with-javascript/ ...because most of the execution happens inside the browser and uses our visitors CPU and memory, I don't have to worry about my servers having to provide that CPU and memory... <comment><USER2> It's less of a benefit than you might think, because most websites are not CPU-bound. The bottleneck tends to be disk seeks, particularly if you use a database. You can't move I/O to your visitor's machines because you don't have access to their disks.

Perhaps it'd be more useful for sites like Mailinator or news.YC that keep everything in memory, but sites like that usually don't have performance problems anyway. And bandwidth typically becomes a bottleneck if you try to use a distributed memory cache over consumer Internet connections.

It'd be really useful for websites with heavy algorithmics, but how many websites like that do you know? I work in the financial sector, and even there this isn't feasible, because the data needed totals about 50 GB/day and there's no way in hell you can transfer that over a dialup modem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, massive distributed processing is a stretch. But as a general guideline for app architecture, this is IMHO a pretty good one. :)</comment></comment>


Introducing the new SourceForge - <AUTHOR> https://sourceforge.net/blog/introducing-the-new-sourceforge/ <comment><USER2> Logan, I just went through the process to create an account. The signup page has a few employment related fields that are required to create an account. They probably shouldn't be.

EDIT: There's also this[1] alignment issue in the settings wrt to "City of residence" where the text field is off by ~1 pixel.

EDIT2: On the page where I uploaded my SSH key[2], it says updates occur after a small delay. The linked page in the docs says that this delay is ~30 minutes. In any case, I was able to begin using SSH immediately. If that info is no longer fresh, I suggest removing it, especially since it's probably a turnoff for a lot of users.

EDIT3: When I run sf-help --web at the shell, it prints an error:

        [colbyrussell@shell-22009 ~]$ sf-help --web
        Use of uninitialized value $user in concatenation (.) or string at /usr/bin/sf-help line 96

1\. [https://imgur.com/a/2d0lr](https://imgur.com/a/2d0lr)

2\. [https://sourceforge.net/auth/shell_services](https://sourceforge.net/auth/shell_services)

<comment><USER3> Great thanks for the feedback. Looking into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been on SourceForge a while, and I really like it. It always looked a little outdated, and there was the whole malware incident, but for hosting code with discussion boards and ticket systems, it does the job nicely.

Obviously the malware thing was really bad, but in general I think it gets a bad rap because it wasn't the trendy new thing. I personally liked the old UI, but I'm happy for the new change because it's good for the future of the platform.

<comment><USER5> May I ask why you don't use any of the alternatives? GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, etc.?

<comment><USER4> I use sourceforge for games, github for other projects, and bitbucket for work. It just happened that I had sourceforge first. For the features I use, they're all pretty much the same... The only "advanced" feature I use is Travis CI integration on github.

Edit: now that I think of it, ive used a githook in bitbucket too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The UI menu really annoys me, the top level reads the following:

      |Browse|Blog|Deals|Help|Create|Join|Login|

Deals? Separate Join and Login? ... Confusing

Then when you scroll down, the top menu changes to:

      | Articles | Internet Speed Test | Menu |
      |                                       |
      |  BIG AD BANNER                        |
      |                                       |

Articles? This is a hosting site, and they have a Blog item already! INTERNET SPEED TEST??!

I appreciated Sourceforge and it was a big part of my gateway experience into opensource, but now it just looks like an amateur startup :(

</comment><comment><USER7> If anyone from Gitlab is listening: github sync is a really important feature for FOSS projects. Glad that SourceForge implemented it.

(In a large-ish FOSS project, we are trying to move to self-hosted Gitlab, but the lack of sync means that people have to fully buy-in or manually sync their extensions/modules, which is causing major friction)

<comment><USER8> We have repository mirroring available in GitLab Enterprise Edition Starter, and there exists an issue to move this to CE[0] but it was closed with some explanation as to why[1]. I assume with GitHub Sync you're asking for syncing of more than just the repository, but also issues and merge/pull requests?

The SourceForge sync tool appears to only include release syncing as far as I can tell (the wording is ambiguous and the docs only mention import, not active sync, so I'm not sure what they provide?).

For what it's worth, GitLab does have import tools in CE[2]. You can also use repository mirroring (along with any other Enterprise Edition features) if you're an open source project on GitLab.com.

[0]: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/18732](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18732) [1]: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/18732#note_47...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/18732#note_47932513) [2]: [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/import/github.html](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/import/github.html)

<comment><USER7> I would be happy with something that does a regular plain pull of all branches and tags. As a first step, it would make it easier to declare our Gitlab instance as the canonical source for all official contrib code (a bit like Drupal.org and WordPress do).

We could duct tape a solution, or coerce people to do it manually, but we manage a lot of custom scripts already, which we hope to deprecate thanks to Gitlab. It also affects negatively the perception that we are using the right tool for the job. Our community is divided between those who want to use only Github, and those who want to avoid depending on it.

We currently have around 300 active users, and we are projecting around 500 users next year (as we move more and more projects into it). At USD$40/user/year, that would be between $12k to $20k/year? Our project is oriented at non-profits, and everything runs on small margins, lots of volunteers. We can afford some financial support, but not $12k/year. I wrote to Gitlab sales but never received a response.

(apologies for the off-topic)

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry to hear that sales didn't follow up and will mention this to our Chief Revenue Officer. Right now we don't have a non-profit program. BTW For open source projects GitLab.com Gold is free.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for your response and followup. I really appreciate Gitlab.com, I participate in some smaller projects that use it. For the main project I work on (CiviCRM.org), however, self-hosting is an important factor.

It's not so much about being a non-profit, but being an open source project. It's difficult to budget with a per-person fee (considering 70% of people might post on our gitlab only once or twice per year). How would it work if Debian or Gnome adopted Gitlab EE?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice work, I really didn't expect anything despite Logan promising improvements time and time again via twitter. Excited for the GitHub sync (not import).

Also, the awesome SF hosting (SSL and a SQL DB included), much better than GH Pages IMO.

<comment><USER11> I'm glad you say that, because I have always viewed sourceforge as slightly sketchy, but without any real justification. I just knew that I was supposed to have mixed feelings about it.

<comment><USER3> Glad to hear it too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kudos! Keep improving. The source hosting "business" isn't a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from choice and competition.

</comment><comment><USER13> Good job. Github sync means you can host binaries on sourceforge and keep the source on github as usual?

<comment><USER3> Yes that is correct. It syncs (copies) binaries from GH to SF, doesn't touch code.

<comment><USER14> So you're stealing binaries from GH and calling it your own? Sort of like what every download site already does. "Every day, SourceForge sees over a million visitors and serves 4.5 million software downloads." So everyday a user on average downloads 4.5 software packages? I highly doubt your numbers. Personally, I've downloaded perhaps 5 within the last year and I am an rabid consumer of OSS. I am not impressed with your performance.

<comment><USER15> The binaries in question aren't GH's _or_ SF's, they're the project's, and since this synching is under the project's control, I don't see the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has nobody in the design team ever tested this on a screen at less than 4K? At 1366×768 the title is jammed right up against the left edge of the screen.

</comment><comment><USER17> I applaud the initiative but when I look at what happened to Slashdot, I'm not enthusiastic about Sourceforge succeeding any better under the same ownership (I have no idea whether Slashdot makes money but it's a horrible community these days, and nothing seems to be done about it.)

<comment><USER18> I share the same feelings.

I used Slashdot for many years, starting when Rob Malda ran the site. The past year or so has been the worst, in my opinion, even when considering the Beta era of discontent.

The stories used to be primarily about tech (or related subjects), with a minor focus on politics. But lately I think it has been the opposite. There is much more emphasis on general politics, with tech being a minor focus, in my opinion.

While I'm not very interested in politics to begin with, what bothers me the most is how partisan I think things have gotten. The stories have what I consider a rather left-wing bias. The same goes for the modding, where I think it's common to see centrist and right-wing comments often downmodded, even when they express a very reasonable and relevant set of ideas.

I feel that Slashdot has moved from perhaps being an open, varied, quasi- libertarian environment to one that's much less open, much less diverse, and much less enjoyable.

So I stopped visiting it about a month ago, and I don't miss it at all.

<comment><USER19> > The stories used to be primarily about tech (or related subjects), with a > minor focus on politics. But lately I think it has been the opposite. There > is much more emphasis on general politics, with tech being a minor focus, in > my opinion.

I left for basically the same reason, but quite a while ago. I forget which of the editors it was, but he would interject politics into everything. And even after people asked for a politics section (which could then be turned off), to keep politics out of the tech stuff, he would still put political stuff all over the place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sad state of affairs that something like ScourceForge cannot operate as a paid-for service, but only as a "tech-influencer" ad site. quote from here: [https://slashdotmedia.com/about-slashdot- media/](https://slashdotmedia.com/about-slashdot-media/)

Not attacking the Abbotts and their SlashDotMedia and BizX web media influencer conglomerate, 100% legitimate way of doing business, but an overall observation on services that can't be operated as standalone businesses.

Also an illustration how big the tech dependency on advertising is, from Google to this. Remove ads from the web and a shitload of stuff disappears.

<comment><USER3> It's something we're trying to come up with solutions for, so that we can reduce or eliminate ads on SourceForge. But for now, any user or developer who creates an account on SourceForge will never see ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks like a good list of features, except for the HTML5 Speedtest. Why was that needed?

<comment><USER3> We had built it for another internal project before we acquired SourceForge, so we decided to release it on SourceForge since people seemed to like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice. A large improvement. Have been waiting for this for a while since it was announced that it was sold.

No idea if anyone working on sourceforge is likely to be here or not but I would love to know if I could get an API of the projects there or even just a list. I would like to add more of souceforge into searchcode.com and would prefer to not scrape the site.

</comment><comment><USER23> Probably far too late to mention, but I have a bunch of projects on SF, and now I can't scroll through them on the me drop down menu.

It feels.. strange, and more responsive than the old stuff. I guess that's just change.

I never was a fan of github, I always preferred the geodistribution of SF, and of course it was so easy to make binary packages for end users. It's a shame the other people had to ruin a great place with selling the adware space, and Im so glad it's all gone.

I just fear in this environment of hipster flash with no substance, that a well rounded site like SF will never get the hipster VC financing that github does.

I hope you guys don't shutter any time soon, I love SF!

</comment><comment><USER24> They should hire a new lead designer.

</comment><comment><USER10> Any plans on expanding:

\- the ticket system (connectors to external systems, boards, etc.)

\- CI connectors

\- integrations for team systems (Slack, MS Teams, ...)

<comment><USER3> Yes definitely. Second half of 2018.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> To loganabbott--

The new design looks pretty good, or at least more modern. Also I just wanted to emphasize with you that you had to field the same "do you still bundle malware" question...eight times by my count.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I am aware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I notice that there is no automatic spell checking in edit boxes, for example when someone creates a bug ticket. Github has this.

Any plans to add this feature? Or is there a control to enable it that I'm missing?

<comment><USER27> Isn't that handled by your browser rather than GitHub?

<comment><USER26> Apparently it's a bug with the markdown editor they are using:

[https://forge-allura.apache.org/p/allura/tickets/7954/](https://forge- allura.apache.org/p/allura/tickets/7954/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I got into SVC / code repositories after the whole sourceforge serves malware debacle, so I'm not familiar with SF from a developer perspective.

Is it a got repo? Mercurial? Something else completely?

</comment><comment><USER29> I for one am excited about this. I used to have stuff on sourceforge, and to me it feels like they're on track to become relevant again.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anecdotal. I find Sourceforge has more end-user applications. By this I mean applications you can download, install and have a user interface. A good example is Squirrel SQL[1]. Github seems to be a coders repository. Filled with libraries to incorporate into other programs.

[1][https://sourceforge.net/projects/squirrel- sql/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/squirrel-sql/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, at least it's not as mind-punchingly slow as it used to be. Progress?

</comment><comment><USER32> Wasn't it sourceforge that injected malware into downloaded programs? At least that's what pops into my head every time I see a sourceforge link, and why I avoid anything that's hosted on there.

<comment><USER3> It was, but we ended that practice immediately after acquiring SourceForge in 2016. More info in the OP or in an AMA I did here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/)

<comment><USER33> From that link:

> My company acquired SourceForge

It's interesting how often you mention they were acquired by someone else but not by whom. It cannot be a secret, but you don't seem to want the parent company known either.

I just spent an hour going down the rabbit hole. Every time I click the "owned by" link, another "owned by" reference appears.

<comment><USER34> They were acquired by "Dice.com".

[https://web.archive.org/web/20131208023450/http://www.h-onli...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131208023450/http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Dice- Holdings-acquires-Slashdot-and-SourceForge-1711181.html)

<comment><USER3> Dice.com is who acquired SourceForge a handful of years ago. My company (BIZX) acquired SourceForge from DICE.

<comment><USER35> > Dice.com is who acquired SourceForge a handful of years ago.

And you could say their ethics were rather... _dicey_.

(Forgive me.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36>
      position: sticky; /* Frames are back, baby! */

</comment><comment><USER37> Atrocious. They lock a pointless navigation bar to the top and changed the theme. Can someone explain why I would ever want to use this product. They bundled adware with their software ffs. Inexcusable. They need to just die.

<comment><USER38> In the announcement: "Removed bundled adware from projects". At least it's a step forward.

<comment><USER37> The fact that they were okay with doing that to begin with is what concerns me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Whoa there: fixed top banner with an actual banner at the top, covering a whopping 20% of my screen height and 80% of width. Didn't see something like this in a long time.

I'm never going to interact through that as a developer on daily basis. Not even considering the poor UI for just every feature in SF.

The only thing SF has for it, currently, is a mailing list for each project. GitHub and GitLab should have this. Interaction and discussion though "issues" is horrible.

<comment><USER40> > GitHub and GitLab should have this. Interaction and discussion though > "issues" is horrible.

Agreed. It would be a huge win for GitHub or GitLab to provide this service. There really are no great alternatives beyond hosting a mailman server yourself.

<comment><USER41> Google Groups works well for this. I use it for my open source projects. You can interact with it via the web, if you want, but it also has a full mailman style interface, which is how I use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Brought to you by Google AdSense

What exactly is "new" besides the brutally awful design and color scheming? I see the same malware laden downloads that can be found anywhere else on the internet, surrounded by ads as was there before. Over 600 separate HTTP requests and counting on a project page? Really? You seriously expect developers to use this?

<comment><USER43> For what it's worth, they've been bought out since the malware thing happened, and one of the first things they did was cut that shit out.

But holy crap this is terrible. 101 requests while using an adblocker, 116 without. Of those requests I count 62 of them being to download Javascript. More than half?!

Out of curiosity, retried using pingdom's tools: [https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/z7f8e/https://sourceforge.net/p...](https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/z7f8e/https://sourceforge.net/projects/moodle/?source=directory)

It gets a solid D, unsurprisingly. They saw over 200 requests, 43% were javascript calls, and javascript made up more than 52% of the final page content loaded. That's just nuts, considering what the site actually is.

I don't like to pick on websites and developers that much, but holy crap what were they thinking? Did they even consider what the experience is like outside of their dev laptop or using a fast network?

<comment><USER44> I am logged in.

I got 7 ad-warnings on "uBlock Origin" and the page is lean.

<comment><USER43> Open up the network debugger (Tools -> Web Developer -> Network in Firefox, View->Developer->Developer Tools -> Network in Chrome), do a forced reload and see what you get.

Even logged in I still get a ridiculous number of things loaded. The biggest culprits look to be the foundation javascript stuff (I'm assuming that's a javascript framework) being loaded from fsdn.com. Every request made, hurts, unless you're lucky to be using HTTP/2.0 (they don't support 2.0), and even then you've got to think about interpreter starting/loading/parsing/executing time. For every script.

They're also passing parameters in the javascript urls (e.g. handlebars.js?1515608140) which really meddles with caching etc.

The latency situation gets even worse if you're anywhere but on a fast connection (so lots of end users in their global target market).

I like the overall look of the new site, but it's a performance nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> surprised SourceForge is still alive

</comment><comment><USER14> A case of too little and WAY too late. Sourceforge is like the Myspace, long dead. It's not even a good try.

</comment><comment><USER46> SourceForge uses very invasive ads.

</comment><comment><USER47> I hope they got rid of the guy who suggested bundling installers

<comment><USER3> They're no longer at SourceForge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Glad to see they are removing their adware from packages. I believe the damage is already done though and nobody will trust a binary from that place ever again.

<comment><USER3> Just focused on doing right by the 1 million daily users that come to SourceForge to download one of 430,000 projects hosted there.</comment></comment>


Google's Gmail verboten in Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/24/no_access_to_gmail_in_germany/

<comment><USER2> The title is misleading, they cannot use the _gmail_ brand because it was previously owned by another company, so now they've to use Google Mail as their brand. No surprise. I can not call my company Coca-Cola. Can I?

</comment><comment><USER3> Only a fair deal. It's however sneaky from Google that they tried to take cancel his trademark, even though his service existed 4 years before google entered the mail market.

<comment><USER4> Prior existence is only one of the tests for trademark validity, although I certainly can't claim any special knowledge of this case or German trademark law. It's fairly common in a dispute like this for both sides to make various arguments about the other sides claims. It's certainly not "sneaky".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How many German employees does Google have? It would be amusing to just close their German office and call it gmail again.

<comment><USER6> How would closing their German office solve anything?

Google says: "We can't provide service under the Gmail name in Germany"

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure German laws only apply if Google has an office there. If they closed their office, they could call the service whatever they wanted.

<comment><USER7> If they charge a German company to advertise on a German user's email account and they are trading a GMail then it could be a trademark infringement. It doesn't matter where they have offices and it doesn't matter that they don't have control of gmail.de

Tags: [google] [googlemail] [gmail] [mail] [webmail] [german] [germany] [trademarks] [advertising]</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons for software developers from 1970s mainframe programming - <AUTHOR> https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/4-lessons-for-modern-software-developers-from-1970s-mainframe-programming-1709.html?jumpid=_TWITTER_ <comment><USER2> Interesting article but the author seems trapped in an antiquated "compute time is more expensive than developer time" mindset. For most startups today the EC2 budget is negligible compared to the dev team budget. If you're successful enough that the compute cost matters that's a good thing and you can deal with it then.

Optimizing for problems you don't yet have just keeps you from launching and getting successful enough to actually care about your compute costs.

<comment><USER3> software development != web software development.

Processing efficiency is still extremely important in the embedded world. Don't think that the embedded market is small, practically every product you buy has s/w in it.

When you make for example a million units of a product, every single byte and every cycle counts as there is a large multiplier to take account of.

Efficiency counts, just not in the web world.

<comment><USER4> > _Efficiency counts, just not in the web world._

Which regrettably by now even end-users are painfully aware of!

<comment><USER5> _cough_ javascript _cough_

<comment><USER6> You can program efficiently in js. Just maybe drop the fat framework that dynamically checks each and every of your assigned variables to update other hidden functions (and maybe the dom) and avoid dragging things through N functions for "encapsulation" reasons and other inefficient OOP principle application.

what I want to say is: _cough_ javascript developers _cough_

(for reference: I am a js "fullstack" dev)

<comment><USER7> It's not that simple. My impression - I'm not very knowledgeable about this - is that JS and others started getting around as fast (in best conditions and a lot of voodoo) as unmanaged C code, but they are still behind in terms of memory footprint. For embedded applications, where you may be forced to count every KB of memory and every CPU cycle, the JITted systems are simply not a good fit right now.

You certainly can write a JavaScript implementation which would work in an embedded environment (just found one: [http://www.espruino.com/](http://www.espruino.com/) \- it actually looks pretty nice! I wonder how it compares with Arduino?), but, when coughing JavaScript, it most often means "JavaScript as currently implemented in the four most popular implementations" or similar.

So, while it's true that you can write JS code that's 1000s of times more efficient than some _bad_ JavaScript, it's also true that even the _good_ JS is not going to be fast enough for some domains.

This (among others) is where AOT-compiled, GC-less (or with special implementations of those) come in. And even then, there are applications where even the cheap, mostly-compile-time abstractions of such languages prove to be too clunky and you need to drop down to assembly (bootloaders, demos, parts of OSes or language implementations).

So, while you can write efficient JS code, it's not going to be efficient enough for many cases.

<comment><USER6> Your assessment is definitely sufficiently true, although I would argue that, looking at how v8 essentially increases speed down to just twice the time of a comparable C program (as opposed to a magnitude or two) it is worth the convenience it brings to the table for devs (though c++ 11 and later catch up quite a bit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unfortunately, the "best practice" of today says it's better to import a 2 Gb library than write a function, given the choice.

<comment><USER2> Yes, because the primary cost to the company is the cost of developer time, not the download bandwidth cost or the power cost for increased utilization level of the user's CPU.

The craftsman cares they can accomplish the task without needing a large library. The business cares that it can get to market quickly and profitably at minimal cost. "I prefer your competitor because their code was lovingly hand crafted instead of being shipped quickly with the features I need" said no customer, ever (witness that we all use compilers rather than hand-coding the machine code in an assembler... all the same arguments were made against compiled code back in the day, and compiled code was the right answer, then and now).

<comment><USER8> > The business cares that it can get to market quickly and profitably at > minimal cost.

And then the successful business, in contrast, actually looks at total cost of ownership.

<comment> 549362-30499 The point is that cloud computing costs are small compared to labor costs, so it's a waste of time to make a 0.005% cost optimization that takes a week of work.

I would also love to see some examples of a 2G (!) library that people are casually importing. Where have you had this problem?

<comment><USER8> Labor costs are capital expenses; computing cost is an ongoing operational expense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 549362-30499 I really like the point about considering cloud computation costs. It would be great if individual developers could get feedback like, "This patch caused X% CPU cost per request, resulting in Y% monthly cost increase to keep projected usage below alert trigger levels." I also like the note about the headless abstraction, although I think it could gain some strength by talking about AWS Lambda or the actor model.

But, I think the dedication to writing perfect code without executing it is misguided. It's 2018 - we have interactive debuggers, excellent profiling tools, and unit tests. Most developers have a computer with 4+ cores and 8G+ of memory. It would be foolish not to take advantage of that.

<comment><USER9> One thing I hate about the modern disregard for resource consumption is that I can't tell whether a given app or program is merely sloppily inefficient, or if it's ma!ware-laden. (Too often, it's probably _both_.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      Unlike the stand-alone, isolated mainframe era, our applications today are interconnected.

In an _academic_ environment, perhaps the author didn't experience intersystem dependencies. In _production_ environments, however, there was arguably _more_ interdependency with (and, therefore, risk to) other systems and users.

Take a manufacturing environment. Shop orders take in inventory information, labor detail, assembly progress, facilities and supplies usage, etc., any or all of which can involve independent systems. In turn, each production step can create information that needs to go back to each system.

Any error or change in those inputs and outputs could force a rerun of all systems downstream of the first error. This is especially noteworthy to the guy/gal being called in at 3AM to unravel such hairballs.

I'd daresay that most interconnection with external systems in the modern mobile environment is primarily used for social media, tracking and other privacy suckage. ( _Ghostery_ output can be quite surprising, for example.)

<comment><USER10> > I'd daresay that most interconnection with external systems in the modern > mobile environment is primarily used for social media, tracking and other > privacy suckage. (Ghostery output can be quite surprising, for example.)

The web has become a very frequent path for machine-to-machine communications through APIs, besides other, more direct pathways for internet traffic on ports other than 80/443.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Absolutely, 100%, should you optimise for your resources. In a lot of scenarios those resources aren't CPU, HD, memory and bandwidth, instead they are developers time. But certainly if computer hardware becomes more of a bottleneck (cost, time, etc) than man power, then optimising for hardware makes sense. Like most things in life, it isn't binary, and I believe most developers already embrace this, making compromises in order to meet deadlines, create maintainable and debugable code, writing code to help with tomorrows tasks, learn new techniques but attempting to apply new coding ideas that may help in future tasks, make code run optimally enough for the given scenario, etc.

<comment><USER12> I don't see user time being mentioned. If your app is user facing then optimize for user time.

</comment></comment><comment> photon-torpedo This website fully pegs one CPU core on my laptop (Firefox 57.0.4 on Ubuntu 17.10, with uBlock and Ghostery enabled). Apparently these lessons haven't reached their web design team.

Edit: investigating closer, this even happens with JS disabled, and also in Chrome (with less load though).

<comment><USER13> I'm not seeing anything like that, but you got my interest.

The page is only using 14mb of memory, which is a bit higher than some pages, but it's about 4mb of JS source, and another 4mb of objects held in memory. It isn't desirable, but shouldn't be causing any issues.

And though the page does load fairly quickly for me, a glance over what it does during that load makes me suspect I know your issue: Styles were recalculated more than 75 times, with the repaint happening more than 35 times.

There's also a huge peak in the middle of the JS being executed. The culprit [0] has a tightly packed for-each loop. Three nested for-each, with each one contained a lambda, which contains two or three more lambdas. It's not performant code. That particular script is also 500kb of more of the same kind of code. (Might also point out that the form-handler on that page is an even bigger script.)

So: I'd think it's the repaint from too many styles coming in overriding each other, but it might just be a reliance on a large library, which doesn't seem to be well thought out.

[0] [https://www.hpe.com/etc/clientlibs/hpeweb/js/hpe.dll.libs.js](https://www.hpe.com/etc/clientlibs/hpeweb/js/hpe.dll.libs.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Experientally, learning to code in constrained systems and with constrained tools does (ren)force a lot more pre-checks before execution, because the cost of failure is higher on your process.

A lot of the language around "why functional programming" goes to the same space. Strongly typed, functional solutions expose problems during code development which avoid runtime problems from sloppy thinking.

I also think simpler is good. So, coding discipline which favour simple techniques (within limits, this is not one dimensional) are good. If you have to exploit a very complex mechanism, the old world old school method was to look in the NAG library for a well written solution (presuming numeric problems, which predominated then) -and now, we do much the same: look for a solution in your language compatible runtime library space, which is a well trodden path.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not sure that basing this on experience of "hem hem" university usage of mainframes (and presumably the previous gen at that) is actually that relevant to real world usage at the time.

Even back then it would be impossible for a serious mainframe program to be written and expected to work first time.

</comment><comment><USER16> There actually are people who worked on 1970's mainframes who understand modern software tech. This author isn't one of them.

</comment><comment><USER17> No.

I disagree with most of this article, and I have ~25 years experience. No, I didn't program mainframes, but I'm tired, as are younger programmers, of even older programmers trying to say that the way they did programming is still "better".

The writer isn't entirely wrong, but the simple fact is that software isn't written the same way anymore. Stop trying to force antiquated methods down younger people's throats. The way I wrote programs 20 years ago is inherently different from the way that I wrote programs 10 years ago is inherently different from the way I write programs today.

15-20 years ago, we didn't write tests. We had QA that wrote our tests for us. We tested the code as well as we could (I became pretty damn good at testing my own code) and then we threw it over a wall to QA. Today, we have zero QA and I write tests for my own code.

10-15 years ago, you aimed for 0 defects, especially for enterprise code, because your enterprise customers couldn't afford downtime. Today, in a SAAS environment, you care about defects but your have a global set of customers, and you roll your code out slowly and watch metrics.

I have a friend in growth at Facebook and his manager got mad at him because he was focusing too much time on testing his own code. Apparently he's supposed to leave that to external QA, and you can always fix the code later. On some growth teams, code quality and maintainability don't matter, all that matters is getting customer growth with new features as quickly as possible. Is that inherently wrong? No, it's a different way of doing business. 10 years ago there was no such thing as a growth team.

The way software is used is different, and the way software is developed is different. Mainframe methodologies, while interesting to read, is not relevant. Things like Optimize Upfront is nonsense to me, especially in a global context. You iterate on your features quickly, including optimization. You couldn't do that in mainframe computing, but these days I deploy to production 10 times a day, and depending on how I deploy, I can see problems fairly quickly and iterate without affecting most of my users. That's definitely not a paradigm that you would see back then, when you would have to schedule time, etc.

<comment><USER18> I _did_ do mainframe programming and I do webapps and phone apps these days, so I've kept up.

It's gotta be both approaches (yours and the articles) but the real problem is the demand for programmers is so high and the barrier to entry is so low that the quality has suffered; the quality of the libraries, build systems, documentation, designs, interfaces, all of it.

You can't magically drag all modern programmers through the mud using line editors and 16 bit processors for 2 years to learn everything the painful way.

I honestly don't see a way out. We're in the eternal September of software development and it's all down hill from here unless we make some commitment to raising the barrier to entry and decreasing the incentives, making it hard again.

<comment><USER19> "the real problem is the demand for programmers is so high and the barrier to entry is so low that the quality has suffered"

Interestingly I see a whole world of difference in quality between Python and Perl libraries compared to JavaScript libraries. OK not all Python libraries are perfect and not all JS libraries are shit, but in _general_ the backend stuff seems of a far higher quality.

<comment><USER18> There's always a "first" language - the first programming language that's learned and taught. It was qbasic in the 90s for instance, then vbasic, java, php for a bit, then ruby - it's certainly javascript now.

The first languages, during their reign as first languages are always derided. When something snatches the crown from JavaScript (it'll happen however inconceivable this is), I'm sure things will settle and it won't be so bad any more.

It's like how at the end of its life, most of the people still using AOL instant messenger were respectable computer experts. Same idea.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Private Methods are a Code Smell - <AUTHOR> http://kent.spillner.org/blog/work/2009/11/12/private-methods-stink.html <comment><USER2> I think this is possibly the most dangerous sweeping generalisation that I've ever read here.

I've found throughout my career that the opposite is true. The more encapsulation the more solid the system. Making the world public encourages unnecessary dependencies.

<comment><USER3> Encapsulation doesn't make this problem go away at all -- it just replaces interface proliferation with secretive state.

I don't like having state spread everwhere, but I _hate_ being lied to about it.

<comment><USER4> Encapsulation _can_ an excellent step in making a problem go away.

First a mistake is made all over your code. Then it's made only in the private method. Then it can be changed easily -- and reverted easily if the change doesn't work.

Of course, this isn't always a good idea. But there are many times that it can be a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree, I'm a big fan of encapsulation/information hiding. I'd rather have this stuff hidden 20-30 classes than have 200 new classes cluttering my intellisense

<comment><USER4> Now, I think he is talking about increasing the encapsulation through collaborator classes so he's not against encapsulation.

I still agree that there aren't any inherent problems with the several- private-methods-level of data abstraction. Rather, a program's level of data abstraction should follow the needs of the application as a whole.

<comment><USER6> Wait a minute. How would using a collaborator class as a "functor" for your formerly private methods _improve_ encapsulation? At worst, if the collaborator were public, now other people with no use for your methods would be able to use them; at best, if it were a "friend" class or the equivalent, you would be exactly where you started, and only the caller would be using the method.

<comment><USER4> I think the approach the author is talking about is creating an _internal class_ (either private or public).

It's common approach for large libraries. Each STL container has a public iterator class contained in it and rails is filled with internal, private classes that implement the public functionality.

That said, I don't think such constructs necessarily make code more understandable. Unless your project is really large scale, they're more like an exercise in showing the language and design constructs you've learned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In fact, we can take this a step further, and remove classes altogether, and just have everything be stand-alone global functions! Then anyone can use or reuse them and before you know it, programs will all be amazing!

<comment><USER8> This is essentially the approach taken by functional languages (they also include ways to collect functions into logical units). Object-oriented programming is all about mutating the state of an object with private methods, though, so I think the author is trying to make his OO programming style look / feel more functional.

If you're still convinced that OO and mutable state are a good idea, read this essay by the author of Clojure, it might change your mind: <http://clojure.org/state>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This approach would seem to be asking for an explosion in classes...it might be useful if there were repetition among your private methods in different classes but as a blanket code smell statement--that may be taking it a little far.

</comment><comment><USER4> _Taking small steps to improve design leads to flashes of brilliant design inspiration._

I would take issue with this statement. I've found that making small changes can clutter a design. Instead of just changing a bunch of small things, working out a crisp, simple overall architecture seems to work best.

Indeed, lately I'm worrying that having a good test suite lets me write code that works but which I don't understand as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> _Private helper methods indicate classes are doing too many things._

Absolutely wrong. Sometimes you do want to hide details. I can imagine many domains where you'd need a priority heap, and where the rest of the object model would _care not one bit_ what goes on inside such a beast. Exposing such details is not useful. Paying for the instantiation of another cluster of little objects to do so wouldn't be helping matters one bit.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Often, such private methods have gnarly dependencies because they directly access or modify internal state. Moving these methods to appropriate collaborators (again, creating new classes as necessary) exposes such dependencies."

This is usually why I create private methods in the first place. The methods modify internal state and they're too specific to the problem in question to move them into a separate class. Making them public just doesn't make sense and seems to break the principle of encapsulation.

Also, wouldn't moving these methods into a new class affect performance? For example if you have a private method that does some complex operations on a private/local collection, instead of performing the operations directly on the collection you have to pass the it back and forth to the public method in another class.

</comment><comment><USER12> I used to be very much against private methods and though I have eased up a little, I still prefer classes with only a small number of public methods and no private methods.

It's true that you have a lot more classes, but these classes can be separated into packages. The encapsulation is still there (private members vs. private methods), and the encapsulated code has a greater ability to be reused or unit tested (if you're into that.)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is interesting, but I'm not sure how practical it is. Has anyone ever tried this approach successfully?

<comment><USER14> Bear something in mind: a code smell isn't something that's bad. It's something that indicates that something _may_ be bad. Therefore, don't run out and refactor all your classes with private methods.

However, if there is a class that has a lot of methods that you're not comfortable exposing to the outside world, then there's a good chance that there's a way to split that class and make your code easier to maintain.

Either that or you're being too picky with what methods the outside world can access.

<comment><USER15> I feel that the connotation of "code smell" is a little stronger than what you state, but mostly I take umbrage to this statement:

"Moving these methods to collaborators and making them public creates opportunities for future reuse without reducing the clarity of the original code."

This is the crux of the argument. After all, if you aren't planning for reuse, there's very little motivation to create a collaborating class unless the main class really is getting excessively large. But if you're guessing at future refactorings, especially when dealing with the types of specialized methods being discussed, you're probably optimizing prematurely.

I do strongly agree that private methods often have unnecessary dependencies. But this is a different design issue.

<comment><USER10> "Moving these methods to collaborators and making them public creates opportunities for future reuse without reducing the clarity of the original code."

That's not even always true. Sometimes, the best way to express an algorithm may be with a recursive function. Making those separate objects might even _slightly reduce_ the code's clarity. The code smell here should not be the private methods. It should be such private methods with similar functions repeated in several objects. Let "a need for reuse" become self evident, _then_ refactor for reuse. Otherwise, you are just pre-optimizing. YAGNI!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The bash guide - <AUTHOR> https://guide.bash.academy/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately the author has not finished writing it yet. I will keep an eye on it.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you love about programming? What is your favorite field? - <AUTHOR>

I have been reading a lot of comments here about how happy people are to be a programmer and how much they enjoy doing what they do.
So I want to ask - what do you love about programming? What field are you working in, and what do you like about it?
What makes you excited, what do you enjoy doing? <comment><USER2> Problem solving & creativity. Making something new out of nothing.

The practical / mental challenge & then reward of building something useful, expanding my understanding of the world, how things work.

Other practical hobbies such as woodwork, have similar satisfaction in there being an end result to look at and use, but although I enjoy them a lot, there's less mental learning, and so less mental satisfaction at the end (for me).

Other artistic hobbies such as creative writing have often as much mental effort, in trying to figure out how to explain a concept in exciting language, so that it ends up being interesting to read, but then doesn't usually result in a practical 'thing' that I can then use frequently. You write, you publish, it's done. With code, I often get to then use the result for (hopefully) years afterwards. And can improve upon it later.

I love seeing the whole structure of a project, made up of small parts and all fitting together.

I work full time in a non-profit org. as a programmer and A/V engineer. So a lot of my code is specifically related to our video production, events management, etc. So I get to see the rest of my team (and people at events) using my products. That's very satisfying.

I love learning. and so learning haskell, c, lisp, go, rust, etc. as well as improving my main working languages (Python & javascript) is fascinating. The ability to read one blog post, suddenly 'get' a concept, and feel as if my whole mind is bigger and my ability to think is clearer and mental model of things I can do is exponentially bigger is so exciting.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. That perfectly describes how I feel about programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The 2 reasons I love coding:

1\. Making stuff. Maybe obvious, but there are very few other fields where you create stuff so freely and easily. And it's not just about being creative, it's also adding value in the stuff you make.

2\. Problem solving. The same reason puzzles and riddles are fun. There's something satisfying about wrestling with a problem for some time and creating a correct solution.

As a result I don't really have a favourite field, as long as I can do the above points, I'm happy.

<comment><USER5> I second this, I was actually recently being asked about industries, and the quick answer in retrospect is the above. New Challenges all the time, even if you have a pattern that solves a problem there's always the minor details to figure out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm just doing programming as a hobby right now, though slowly making my way towards getting some education in it...

I love being able to solve a problem. Figuring out how to do something, and then building it, fixing it as you figure out what's wrong with it is great.

</comment><comment><USER7> That you can turn the regular investments you do in yourself: food + water + time, into a million dollar product, something that's impossible to do in almost every industry I can think of.

</comment><comment><USER8> The ability to create whatever my heart desires.</comment>


Free Google TV Device for Google Code Community Members - <AUTHOR> https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googletvdevseed/

<comment><USER2> If it's only available in the U.S. , then why am i still able to choose my country?

edit: Terms and conditions: "Offer extended only to authorized holder of the email address this message was sent to and may not be sold or transferred"</comment>


San Francisco is a 'train wreck' of inequality - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/san-francisco-apos-train-wreck-110300091.html <comment><USER2> I was recently in SF for the first time to attend QCon. Beautiful city with a lot of character and culture IMO.

I made the mistake of taking an Uber from my hotel, about 1 mile away from the convention center. Traffic is horrendously bad and it took about 40 minutes to go one mile. It did give me a great opportunity to sit back and just sight see some buildings and what not for 40 min.

For the week I was there, I walked a lot after the conference each day to see the city. The thing that really stuck out was there was no new construction and certainly no high rises. Well of course, why wouldn't prices go up then?

The roads were also pretty atrocious. I understand taxes are high. What exactly do they spend tax dollars on? Serious question.

I'd certainly would like to visit again but honestly it's not a place I'd want to live in.

<comment><USER3> The city government is bloated, pension plans are unsustainably generous, there is corruption of course, there is a homeless industrial complex that sucks up funds and does little, there are costly building codes that were written to benefit various trades, even though fire prevention has improved greatly, the SFFD spews FUD everytime a good government type suggests a few firehouses could be closed, Police refuse to do their jobs and blames the City Attorney, and it is true the City Attorney doesn't do their job bit its no excuse for the SFPD, MUNI has the highest cost per mile in the US, and on and on.

<comment><USER4> As one SF Chronicle article put it in describing CA Governor Newsom, SF politics are a lion's den that produces strong candidates for the national stage.

Which in perspective says not that SF functions well, but rather that it functions so poorly that you have to have immense skill to survive.

And like other established cities with some history, there is a vein of the upper crust - people whose parents owned property, went to the local prep schools and now own some property themselves. That's a thing that contributes to the quagmire, since it creates more complex entanglements than the basic economics would suggest. A lot of the tech billionaires have made moves to muscle in on this scene, which has perhaps helped it from getting too stagnant, but contributes to its overall incoherence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> SF is a sign of a bigger problem, not the cause. The world is becoming a winner-take-all economy. The best and brightest get bestier and brightier because they get to work on the latest and greatest and know the latest and greatest. If you "miss the train", you have to grovel with the masses for the scraps.

The Internet has made it both easier to find who and what you are looking for, and to filter out the rest. Inefficiency of info sharing used to act as a kind of socialism, giving average people & shops sales and opportunities. Now it's winner take all, the rest be damned.

Same with countries also; it's why the 3rd world is finding it hard to keep up with the big powers.

Let's face it, some of Karl Marx's predictions about "owners" growing ever larger like a snowball rolling downhill are coming true. (Whether his "solutions" work are another matter.)

<comment><USER6> I agree with sentiments of parts of what you say. However, the 3rd world countries have had the largest gains in the last 30 years. Global extreme poverty, child mortality, lifespan in 3rd world countries have had the most improvements BY FAR.

<comment><USER5> In many cases they went from super-poor to just poor. While an improvement, they still lag way behind the so-called industrialized countries.

Put another way, if we divide a family's economic condition into very poor, poor, middle class, and wealthy; the world system(s) appears to be bunching everybody into "poor" (and perhaps a few more into "rich") while the other categories are shrinking. The ideal would be to have most of the population in the middle-class.

<comment><USER7> It may well be the case that the steady state is '~everyone is poor'.

Can the world function if everyone lives the life of a 50-100K/year income American?

<comment><USER5> Since machines can do a lot of the "real work", yes. Our methods of income distribution may need to change if robots become the "new slaves". We can maybe learn something from ancient Greek society. Our current problem is that the wealth is not trickling down from the machine owners to regular folks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reading that article, they basically just say the same thing over and over each paragraph. Like echo echo echo. No real substance.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is this way by design and it will remain this way by design. I'm fine with it.</comment>


Show HN: Role Playing Game for Self Improvement (weekend project) - <AUTHOR> http://habitrpg.com Hey HN, been working on a project & could use all you lovelies' feedback :) I was inspired by habit-tracker apps like Joe's Goals, but I wanted something more robust and personally motivating. So I built a habit-tracker which plays like an RPG. As you accomplish goals, you level up. If you fail your goals, you lose hit points. You can buy weapons and armor, etc. Open source (https://github.com/lefnire/habitrpg), built on DerbyJS (http://derbyjs.com/), and uses BrowserQuest's icon sets. Integration with productivity tools primary on the roadmap (https://github.com/lefnire/habitrpg#roadmap).<p>I stress-tested some, but Derby is a work in progress - so bear with me if it goes down. <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, been working on a project & could use all you lovelies' feedback :) I was inspired by habit-tracker apps like Joe's Goals, but I wanted something more robust and personally motivating. So I built a habit-tracker which plays like an RPG. As you accomplish goals, you level up. If you fail your goals, you lose hit points. You can buy weapons and armor, etc. Open source (<https://github.com/lefnire/habitrpg>), built on DerbyJS (<http://derbyjs.com/>), and uses BrowserQuest's icon sets. Integration with productivity tools primary on the roadmap (<https://github.com/lefnire/habitrpg#roadmap>).

I stress-tested some, but Derby is a work in progress - so bear with me, I'll restart if it goes down.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks like a good start buddy. Looks like this life game I shamefully only made use of for a few days; <http://www.rexbox.co.uk/epicwin/>

How are you going to stop people from just deleting tasks they couldn't do?

Keep it up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow, don't know how I missed EpicWin... searched high and low before deciding to make it myself. Looks like an incredible app - I'll have to borrow an iPhone & try it out.

As far as deleting tasks they can't do - it's an honor system because you're only cheating yourself. It's like ticking ever day on Joe's Goals to pretend you have a habit streak, or entering broccoli for every meal in MyFitnessPal - defeats the purpose. However, let's say someone is level 10 with good weapons/armor, and they're struggling under a few goals. They could just delete those goals and recreate them for a clean slate. The downside here is that they lose all their historical data on those goals (it keeps a history graph of your progress), so there's some incentive to use Re-roll instead (or to just be accountable).

Now, once I get some 3rd-party productivity app integration (Pivotal Tracker, MyFitnessPal, RescueTime, etc) - those goals will be static (they can't edit them), and will be updated automatically. So that will lock them down a bit more. I'm planning on Pivotal & Pomodoro very soon.

Thanks for checking it out DevAccount!</comment></comment>


Valuable Lessons Learned After Sending 1,000+ Cold Emails - <AUTHOR> http://blog.helpdocs.io/how-to-shape-your-product-roadmap-with-warren-buffetts-framework/ <comment><USER2> Wrong URL.

Reading the correct article, it's important to distinguish that you send 1000+ customized emails, not 1000+ stupid copies of the same spam message.</comment>


Ask HN: Homogeneity of HN readers in terms of political views? - <AUTHOR> Are most of the hackers leftist/anticapitalist/cryptoanarchists? Most founders in SV capitalists? Do you need to be like that to get VC funding? Do these groups get along fine together? <comment><USER2> I'd say HN is actually very mixed. See this discussion as an example where the only three comments are downvoted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7831778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7831778)

There seem to be anarcho-capitalist, social-green-leftist, pro-state surveillance, anti-state surveillance, pro-(progressive-)tax people, voluntarists, etc.

I am sometimes offended or even horrified by some of the views expressed (like the surveillance apologists, or drone-war fascists), but overall I think HN diversity is a good thing. Only group bias is towards tech.

<comment><USER3> That last bit is the unusual thing. In real life you meet a lot of people who think Snowden should go to hell, but in Hacker News you are beyond the pale if you think that NSA surveillance is less important than say, homelessness, global warming, the drug war, etc.

<comment><USER4> People seem to get really angry if you suggest that NSA surveillance is less important than Facebook/Google/etc privacy violation, even though very many people have experienced negative consequences of Facebook/Google/etc privacy violations.

<comment><USER5> I think that there's a widespread sense (which I intuitively share) that Facebook/Google/etc only get information about us because we or someone we know freely give it to them. NSA surveillance is different in at least two ways: first, we don't voluntarily give them the information, which makes their use of that information inherently antagonistic towards us (hence the fourth amendment to the US Constitution); and second (for Americans), there's an understanding that the NSA was specifically instructed by Congress to _not_ spy domestically (presumably due to that fourth amendment thing, again).

<comment><USER4> I agree that spying on your citizens should be illegal and any organisations doing it should stop.

But then GCHQ has a big bunch of data that they rarely access under (we're told) strict controls. So, I'm less bothered by the gathering of that data than other people. I would be angry if GCHQ started grepping it for stuff that isn't nationally important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of subcultures have a certain amount of perceived homogeneity but it doesn't necessarily mean that internally their views are homogenous.

Since there are particular talking points that we are biased to signalling on in a technology/startup culture, we're more likely to being perceived on political axises linked to these talking points: surveillance, regulation, capitalism, freedom, anarchism, etc.

However, this doesn't mean that we don't also belong to our respective local communities and have views which we do not disclose to each other (for reasons of lack of interest and not just self-censorship - though yes, some groups have membership rules which involve affording others the perception of seeing members hold particular political positions.)

A completely subjective point that I'd like to make is that for various reasons those of us that identify with hacker culture are prone to disliking social/organisational structures and norms we perceive to be stupid, and also many of us enjoy intellectual exercises/displays. This probably gives us some deconstructive and fringe tendencies with the kinds of politics we associate ourselves with.

I personally find a few of the views expoused in the neoreactionary movement insightful/useful/evil/good and I enjoy reading their deconstructions. I think this is a reaction to my previous leftism. It's not something I necessarily agree with, it's just my need to deconstruct and elevate myself over everything I once believed in. I'm not trying to denigrate myself here, I see something similar in everybody and as I write this don't really feel the need to seek a holier posture.

Outside of my own signalling subcultures, my politics is actually one of diplomacy. I have a couple of principles relating to empathy, sociology/economics, long-term thinking and the acceptance and good treatment of others positions, emotions, characters, and roles. I will side strongly on the side of anybody that I believe is towing the line on these principles, but otherwise prefer to acquiesce to whatever configuration social reality is enacting.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm an IT pro and avid reader of HN and would consider myself a conservative libertarian (basically an Orthodox Christian whose views are more dictated by that than any political party). I'm pro-2nd amendment (actually pro all amendments), anti-abortion (will qualify here in almost all cases), both of which are considered right-wing, but I am also anti-capital punishment (again to qualify in almost all cases), and support the legalization of all drugs (even though I don't personally believe in inebriation as a moral standpoint), both of which are considered left-wing. I think we should lesssen the size of government, the mass of laws we've accumulated, and generally keep the government out of our daily lives. I think our tax code needs reforming and may even be in favor of a flat tax (although I'm not sure on this one). I believe in capitalism over socialism, but still recognize that it's flawed and am keenly interested in learning/exploring other economic systems, just so long as their underpinnings are based in freedom. Hope that helps to shed light of at least one reader's politics!

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, don't know about homogeneity - as we're not 'mass market', and it's a semi-specialised field, people on HN seem to be above the average 'smart' (not going to say IQ)

1 - Smart people tend to have differing views, and be capable of expressing them.

2 - Really smart people tend to continually learn, so expect those views to change.

3 - Smart types generally counter an argument without too many obvious logical fallacies, so more gets said here than elsewhere (generally)

I doubt there'll ever be a mass consensus here, and that suits me fine. I've learnt a LOT from you guys!

I will say that I'm more comfortable expressing my true opinions here, than on a site like 'Reddit'.

Emotionally: Reddit feels mass market now, HN feels more genuine and soulful in a sense.

EDIT: I really hang out here for the community, not interested in VC related stuff - perhaps quite a few of us are here for that.

<comment><USER9> _Well, don 't know about homogeneity - as we're not 'mass market'_

HN seems to be the thick root of the long tail. Over time, it's less about intellectualism and more about group conformity. People just take comfort in belonging to an ostensibly intellectually elite group and use that as a proxy for real intellectualism. This is why there's a new norm of down voting to disagree. Now there's flagging to disagree. Also, there's now so much posting, new headlines that lack an up voting cabal have to be hand-promoted by mods to have a hope of being seen.

HN has been overrun by many who don't understand intellectual integrity and operate on the premise that it's allowed if the mechanisms allow it. Pretty much, it's now reddit as of a few years ago.

<comment><USER8> I hope you're wrong. But the 'rot' you describe does eventually overwhelm most of these communities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Meta: Hmmm. Wonder how this discussion will go?

HN readers skew young, so a fair guess would be that HN mostly has the politics of the young demographic. I know a lot of the SV-types are of the same U.S. political party. Whether or not that skews their decision-making is beyond me. Since funding in general is just herd activity, I'd bet it did.

Having said that, I've always heard that there was a strong strain of libertarianism in the hacker community. The Thiel fellowship comes to mind. As a libertarian myself, I'm too close to the subject to judge. I suspect, however, there are a lot of Ayn Rand fans who are either out in the open or too clever to make their opinions known. Just a guess, though. (And I count those guys as separate from just the libertarian folks)

As for myself, out of the statist/capitalist debate, I like both sharing and trading, and I don't see why we can't have both. I think the sharing folks tend to be mushy-headed at times, and I think the trading folks tend to be hard-asses. In my mind, most of the huge improvements in our species, including language, society, government, and the rest, are based on freely trading things. Having said that, most of the things I hold dear -- family, friends, goodwill, living a decent life -- are based on sharing. I don't see a conflict here. Many do. [insert long discussion about how MSM and the net makes money by splitting us up into little groups and having us fight each other]

</comment><comment><USER11> I've concluded that life is an absurd circus; we're all clowns trying to amuse ourselves in the face of inevitable death and meaninglessness. So politics strikes me as just another sideshow in the larger circus.

So I have no political affiliations. We're all clowns, regardless of the colours we wear. I have views and opinions and biases on certain issues, but I don't really care to choose a team.

The circus is absurd as it is without me choosing to wear a funny hat.

<comment><USER12> "life is an absurd circus; we're all clowns trying to amuse ourselves in the face of inevitable death and meaninglessness"

This is full of win. I will soon annoy everyone I know with this new mantra. Thanks!

<comment><USER11> It works remarkably well in almost all conditions except in cases of human tragedy. Then it's usually more tasteful/appropriate to be sensitive. (But if you're willing to go there, you could say that seeking pleasure, seeking love, seeking glory, etc are all variations of self-amusement/utility-seeking.)

(Of course, anything that explains everything explains nothing, but fundamentally the point is that life is absurd, and we'll have to acknowledge that- I think it was Albert Camus who wrote extensively about it in The Myth Of Sisyphus.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think HN is a little homogeneous in terms of political views, but not completely so, so there will always be dissenting opinions on any issue. But it also doesn't mean most are "libertarian" or "liberal". I think most of the HN community thinks beyond those labels, and instead support policies that "just make sense", regardless of where they are on the political spectrum.

So that means generally anti-surveillance (right-wing libertarian? progressive liberal?), pro-green energy (I guess that's left-wing?), pro-some social programs, but also against other wasteful ones.

The HN community is generally pretty smart, and thinks in terms that aren't as black and white like "right-wing" or "left-wing". And since it's a heavily Internet-involved community, it does tend to be a little more pro-freedom than pro-regulations (which is how the Internet has worked for the most part).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As a side note I didn't put a poll cause it only serves to divide. I hope we can have an interesting conversation here.

<comment><USER14> Many "hackers" fall on the conservative right-wing side of the political spectrum, but this sort of personality doesn't tend to self-identify one's self as a "hacker" even if they share similar technical interests.

For years, Slashdot has tended to attract the more straight-laced conformist breed of hacker, and (at the risk of stereotyping) they tend to have steady, reliable engineering jobs at large established companies that do a steady business. This is not to say that Slashdot doesn't attract a broad readership, just that, in particular, that subset of hacker does seem to be present there and missing here. Mostly, because you'll find stories there, that they can comment on, with first-hand experience, which, for whatever reason, don't seem to catch on here on HN.

A good example might be a story about nuclear engineering, and you'll see comments from experienced nuclear engineers with military backgrounds and security clearances comment on nuclear engineering articles on Slashdot, that you wouldn't see here on HN, because in many ways that field has absolutely nothing to do with the startup scene. I'd still regard those people as "hackers" though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If there's a common political strain here, it's a misplaced faith in technology and data analysis to solve the worlds problems. I often read comments like "we could solve education if we only tracked teacher performance better," or "we could fix the labor market by giving kids computers and teaching them to code." HN people have watched one to many TED talks.

The other strain I see: A belief that "disruption" is always good, and every industry is in need of it. Dangerous if you ask me.

<comment><USER16> Startup Effectiveness Arrogance.

SEA is a niche condition which health professionals believe originated in the second and third generation of SoCal entrepreneurs.

No problem in the world exists which a STEM graduate in possession of seed funding and a desire to change the world cannot solve.

Hell, it is his or her destiny no less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some of the most experienced members of Hacker News are very homogeneous in discouraging political discussions here. Many political discussions here are decried by many of the highest-karma users not because they are uninterested in politics (a lot of people here are passionately interested in politics) but because they think Hacker News isn't the place for political discussion. Those users have won me over to their way of thinking. They think, with warrant, that Hacker News has never developed a culture of careful fact-checking and truth-seeking in political discussion as it (partially) has in discussion of other issues. I fully agree that one of the main systemic biases here is a pro-computer-technology bias, and I will add that most thoughtful young people who have gone into programming and related careers have missed out on educational experiences that would prepare them for a deep understanding of politics, so it is not surprising that the political discussions here, when they occur, are often very shallow. That's why I'd rather discuss politics elsewhere than here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that this is a subject that is difficult to handle properly, but I also think that having a sense of what the rest of the community is about is important in communities that self-define. Note that my intention was to get a general feeling of the waters I am swimming in and what fellow fish look like, rather than discussing if a specific policy or view is superior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Lets deconstruct this...

The leftist/anticapitalist/crypto thing sound like an amalgamation of HN rather than spotting the diversity of opinion that tends to mash together to form a 'superorganism'. HN by user is probably left/crypto via comments, however, it would be a good idea to look at the highly upvoted posts from the leaderboard to find the 'silent majority' who support the top ranked posters via votes rather than comments.

(I may be misreading your question as it was not worded clearly, what does 'like that' mean, I assume )

Being a founder virtually requires one to be a capitalist... Yes, you need to be a 'capitalist' to receive Venture 'Capital', if you weren't a capitalist then you wouldn't own the venture, and would hence not be in a position to be funded.

The use of money to fund non-private / profit ventures is generally known as charity. Yes, many VCs fund charities... however it would be inappropriate to call a charitable donation venture capital.

Most economies are mixed economies and not purely capitalist or socialist. A great example is Tesla/SpaceX which would both be dead with out government funding AND venture capital.

It's also important to note the narratives in the culture, which fall far more along party lines rather than a left/right or capitalist/socialist analysis, and obviously try to paint things in a light that will be receptive to the audience.

(eg. GM can't survive with out government 'bailouts', but Tesla is an innovative private company receiving government 'loans' for it's work.)

Fundamentally people like the things they like and then come up with reasons to justify it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, "like that" referred to a leftist getting VC funding from huge corporations/funds, there should be some problems there for both sides I guess.

Is being a founder of a startup make you automatically a capitalist?

<comment><USER19> I think you can be just a pragmatic capitalist, without embracing it as an ideology. I guess you're still "being a capitalist".

Similarly, I'm pretty sure that there were plenty of powerful members of the communist party in the Soviet Union that simply saw it as the best opportunity they had.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I can only speak for myself in that I don't care. I don't vote, don't watch the news, don't keep up with issues, don't care what laws get passed (I respect and observe the laws unless I was able to do something such as save a life by breaking the law than I'd break some, ie something very important morally), I don't discuss politics, don't get riled up over certain issues, don't care about gay's or abortion or oil or any of that.

I just...don't care. I have my own day to day life to live. What do I call myself? I don't know. I'm more curious how many young people feel the way I do, and what evolution it will have on politics as we age. (For reference, I personally am only 24).

</comment><comment><USER21> The set of shared interests of HN members is largely orthogonal to political orientation or affiliation. Discussions organized around those interests tend to produce insights from experience and productive discussion including productive disagreement.

On the other hand, threads about politics tend to produce shit discussions by inviting trolling and encouraging the 'I am this kind of snowflake' which facilitate it at one end of the spectrum and constitute it at the 'I don't give a fuck what you think' end.

This thread is no exception to the political threads produce low quality heuristic.

</comment><comment><USER22> My view?

Voluntaryist, Libertarian, Panarchist, Polycrat, Anarcho-capitalist and Liber- agorist.

In that order.

Everything should be voluntary even taxes, liberty is the highest political end, all kinds of voluntary government are allowed, and as many rulers as people so voluntarily choose.

I personally prefer no rulers and private means of production in free markets, but that's my very own personal opinion. I respect everybody's opinion on the subject as long as they don't try to impose it on me.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am wary of anyone who describes themselves primarily by words that end in -ist or -ism. Often those who do find themselves in a "finger pointing to the moon" scenario: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1GFaw09hk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1GFaw09hk)

</comment><comment><USER24> On HN we definitely have a large crowd of leftists/anticapitalists which I find surprising since most hackers I know are libertarians.

<comment><USER25> What's a set of completely worthless generalized labels.

Should the government intervene in a market? Any market? What about security? That's a market too.

Should it intervene in natural monopolies and monopolist behavior?

Should it make commerce easier? That requires intervening on banks.

Should it act against information asymmetry? That's intervention too, and required for capitalism to work.

Should it provide social nets so people can take risks? Without those power slowly consolidates, and capitalism slowly goes away.

<comment><USER26> _Should it act against information asymmetry? That 's intervention too, and required for capitalism to work._

Is it required? Why?

<comment><USER25> Information asymmetry creates the market for lemons[1] problem, and can at the extremes literally kill the entire market.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons)

<comment><USER26> Yes, but why is State intervention required? There are market mechanisms to correct that; in the fifth criteria itself mentions some (reputation and warranties), for example.

I don't see how that papers shows that State intervention is "required for capitalism to work".

<comment><USER25> Well, warranties are enforced by the State.

I don't think company reputation works very well, but your experience may vary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> No. Classic Hayekian liberal here. Used to wear a little l libertarian hat, until I realised that Abilene and Kafka rule the planet.

<comment><USER28> What distinction do you make between "classic Hayekian liberal" and "libertarian"?

<comment><USER29> Libertarians can fall on a left-right spectrum the same as anybody. Hayekian liberals are generally monetarists (Austrian) that fall on the "right libertarian" spectrum. They tend to favor a state of a similar size and purpose as many Objectivists. Enforce rule of law, property rights, national defense - little else.

Some fans of Austrian economics will go further, sometimes all the way into anarcho-capitalism.

Other sorts of libertarians might be left-libertarian, anarchists, marxists, distributist, geo-libertarian, all sorts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> just being a bit more controversial, is open source software a bit socialist in nature?

<comment><USER30> Not at all, because there is no coercion.

<comment><USER31> So libertarian socialist, then. GPL in particular has strong socialist tendencies: you can build on it, but you've got to share your changes too.

<comment><USER30> It's not socialist at all unless people are being forced against their will (or perhaps 'regardless of their will' would be more accurate) to contribute to some common project. Nobody in the open source world is being forced to do anything.

<comment><USER31> That is not really what socialism is about. It's about equality, not about forcing people. The big question is how to get that equality, and _state socialism_ says some degree of forcing will be necessary. _Libertarian socialism_ (also known as social anarchism or left-libertarianism) says you need freedom just as much as you need equality, or you end up with oppression. Open Source strikes that balance in a very natural way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Also some people don't vote

<comment> k-mcgrady That doesn't mean you don't have political opinions.

<comment><USER33> It might help to provide links of explanation.

Rozeff has my favorite overall explanation

[http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff224.html](http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff224.html)

The next is typical zerohedge, ZH is more or less the 4chan of finance and politics so you get 10 kilolines of idiocy mixed with a couple excellent lines that make it all worth it, like "Your role, by voting, is to legitimise this corruption." (and edited to add "Democracy has become a religion and anyone who criticises it is labelled a heretic.")

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-02/guest-post-why-i- do...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-02/guest-post-why-i-dont-vote)

A minority opinion by a self described "educated, politically conscious Black woman" (edited to quote "My ancestors who died attempting to register to vote, didn't die because they wanted to vote, they died because they wanted our community to have the power and self-determination to live a quality life." and my commentary is if the latter has been intentionally systemically removed as a national policy for members of my community, then the former is obviously meaningless)

[http://www.stanford.edu/~arnetha/expowrite/activities/voteno...](http://www.stanford.edu/~arnetha/expowrite/activities/voteno.html)

Democracy is an effective PR campaign for an oligarchy to control the citizenry. A non-religious opiate of the masses. It makes money for the right people, and fools the fools into thinking their opinion matters or will even be considered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm fully pro-abortion, pro regulated market capitalism, pro welfare and state healthcare (I'm English and I think the NHS is the greatest thing the UK ever did).

I have a complex stance on government/capitalism, I think certain industries (particularly natural monopolies like utilities, transport (trains) etc) should be state owned/run or possibly state owned/privately run (with sufficient safe guards) as those industries enrich the whole of society and shouldn't necessarily need to make a profit (shortfall covered from taxation).

I'm not American but if I where I'd be anti-second amendment (it's largely a settled issue in the UK, privately held guns are rare).

I'm against an interventionist unilateral/bilateral (usually us and the US) foreign policy, while it's nice to think we can help play world police when you actually look at it we only intervene where we have a vested interest (even if tangentially through the US) and quite frankly spending that kind of money when we have major problems at home is idiotic.

I'm in favour of much stricter regulation of personal data (quite frankly the law simply has not kept up with the progress of technology) including government use.

I'm in favour of prison reform towards a more Scandinavian model, whatever your views on punishment vs rehabilitation the re offence rate here is so high punishment is clearly not working.

I support the reform of our political system including the introduction of proportional voting, reforming the house of lords (it should be elected).

I'm undecided on the monarchy, one side of me leads towards been a republic, the other half values the history plus there are advantages to your head of state not been the head of government.

I'm undecided on immigration, I lean towards a point style system similar to what the US and New Zealand use.

I'm undecided on the EU, it's been very difficult to find clear evidence on way or the other for whether it's a benefit for us as a country.

I'm undecided on Scottish independence (and quite frankly it's the job of the Scots to choose anyway) however I do think if they vote for independence it should _full_ independence and they should be unable to rejoin the Union without a full referendum (including Wales, England and Northern Ireland).

I'm pro-nuclear and pro-renewable's (Nuclear is the only realistic technology we have for massive baseload generation at present that doesn't produce huge amounts of CO2, it's the least worst option) with renewable's on housing stock providing a useful input.

I'm anti-Trident (it will never get used) and think we should reduce military spending hugely (We are currently spending far too much on defence), reducing the defence budget by 20 billion (about 40% reduction) a year and putting that into upgrading the civil infrastructure makes more sense.

Essentially I believe in things that each of the major parties in the UK both love and hate (which is one reason why I like proportional representation, I can express complex political beliefs in a more reflective way).

<comment><USER35> I'm a limey myself, I was just thinking...

If you really want to find differences in political opinion, bring up a really volatile subject. I would be interested to hear the views of HN readers on the Falkland Islands.

<comment><USER16> What other _views_ are there?

The Falkland Islands existed before the state of Argentina. The islanders voted for self-determination and wished to remain as part of the United Kingdom for defence matters.

There is no other view that is compatible with logic.

<comment><USER35> > _There is no other view that is compatible with logic._

Exactly, the Obama Administration took the bait (then let go). Occasionally you have to remind other people and yourself that sometimes your opinion is not your opinion, but someone else's. Forget this important fact, and you risk forgetting how to think independently.

Did anyone remind Argentina about all the mines the Junta buried on the beaches 32 years ago?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Injecting a Chess Engine into Amazon Redshift - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelburge.us/2017/09/10/injecting-shellcode-to-speed-up-amazon-redshift.html <comment><USER2> If I'm understanding how this works, the idea is to compile a program locally for x64, extract out the .text, convert it to hex, and have a Python UDF[1] shim in Redshift execute it.

Pretty nifty! The surprising thing for me isn't getting it to play chess though. It's that Amazon let's you run arbitrary binaries from within Redshift. I would have figured that the Python UDFs would be locked down to prevent this type of thing.

[1]: User defined function

<comment><USER3> It's not Redshift-specific. A similar function should work in Postgres, though it might be slightly more dangerous since it wouldn't be wrapped in a container like Redshift's is.

But this technique isn't useful for Postgres, because you'd just write an ordinary C extension at that point. That's why I focus on Redshift in the article.

> As of PostgreSQL 7.4, PL/Python is only available as an "untrusted" > language, meaning it does not offer any way of restricting what users can do > in it. It has therefore been renamed to plpythonu. The trusted variant > plpython might become available again in future, if a new secure execution > mechanism is developed in Python. The writer of a function in untrusted > PL/Python must take care that the function cannot be used to do anything > unwanted, since it will be able to do anything that could be done by a user > logged in as the database administrator. Only superusers can create > functions in untrusted languages such as plpythonu.

[https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/plpython.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/plpython.html)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for writing this post. Learned a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow this is somewhat surprising that you got this to work. I didn't really know Redshift was capable of this. It will take me some time to fully digest your post, but it is quite an interesting find none the less.

</comment><comment><USER6> Quite neat.. but I kind of long back to the time where computing hacks didn't use relatively expensive pay-per-usage cloud services run by Jeff Bezos.

<comment><USER7> Depends on how you value your time.

The nickels I pay to spin up Redshift are nothing compared to the time it'd take for me to provision, install, configure, and host all the various components.

<comment><USER6> Obviously it is not about the actual few dollars, but the principle.</comment></comment></comment>


Working Memory (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://andrewcerniglia.com/phd/workflow/example/working%20memory.html <comment><USER2> For readability: [https://outline.com/UAcT6s](https://outline.com/UAcT6s)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. What are all the vodoo:// links?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A great way to increase working memory is dual n-back tasks. I personally do dual n-back every day while using a tdcs device and have noticed a significant increase in working memory and many cognitive tasks (mental math, symbolic math, and programming).

<comment><USER5> Which montage do you use and for how long?

<comment><USER4> Anode on FP1 (above left eye) and cathode on right shoulder. I also some times play video games using the Darpa accelerated learning montage: anode F10 (left temple) and cathode on right shoulder.

In my experience the Darpa montage isn't as generalized as people think: it mainly works for tasks that requite quick reaction times and processing of visual information. Basically anything related to video games. The difference between my performance with CSGO and Overwatch with and without tdcs is pretty astonishing. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 3-5 years it will become standard training for esports professionals.</comment></comment></comment>


The iPad Is Unbeatable - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/03/10/manjoo-ipad

<comment><USER2> Just one big quote lifted from here: [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/new_ipad_how_apple_s_tablet_strategy_parallels_its_unbeatable_ipod_success_.html)

\+ 2 words of agreement

<comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, this was an experiment.

I'm not a fan of DF because I'm no Apple fanboy ( _ZOMG have you seen the iPad3???!!!111_ ), and I'm certainly no fan of the hyperbole and linkbait purveyed by Manjoo.

I often submit interesting technical stuff that never gets a single vote. However, I notice that _any_ Daring Fireball submission will get upvotes on HN. Like you said, this is one linkbaity quote-- and I got four upvotes, enough to put it on the front page briefly. What does that tell you about HN?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We covered this yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3684624></comment>


Ask HN: what would you like to see in Windows 7 to be happy? - <AUTHOR>

- new kernel?<p>- unix base?<p>- compatibility?<p>- Stability?<p>- GUI ?<p>etc. <comment><USER2> I've done very little Windows programming, but I am amazed how few tools it has "out of the box". If they want me to push my customers to use a new OS, they could ensure it comes with a good set of primitives: preferably the GNU tool set, as well as perl/python/tclsh/ruby/sh in predictable locations. They should also have networking tools of the caliber of PuTTY (or maybe just make a deal to have PuTTY available).

Thankfully, at work, we at least ship a build of Perl to our internal customers; otherwise I'd lose my mind trying to get anything done on Windows! Yes, there is CygWin, but there's definitely value if people can Just Work without downloading a bunch of stuff to their PCs first.</comment>


Buttercup- Cross-platform, free and open-source password manager based on Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://buttercup.pw/ <comment><USER2> This one seems to be desktop only? Non-starter for me in that case. Screenshot looks nice though.</comment>


Bitcoin ATMs May Be Used to Launder Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-bitcoin-atm-money-laundering/ <comment><USER2> "Cash may be used to launder money."</comment>


The Diceware Passphrase FAQ - <AUTHOR> http://world.std.com/~reinhold/dicewarefaq.html <comment><USER2> Wow. Software Tool and Die.

Talk about a blast from the past — like decades ago!</comment>


We built cloud HSM; EnigmaLink to show it off – give us hard feedback Please - <AUTHOR> https://enigmalink.io/d#u=fw&c=FWhyyHNOMuF9TkhVe8BIbA&f=0B8RUMrk78PeINnJTcVB2WEFYVUU&n=YC4WWaE5NNRHgLtV2P4krA <comment><AUTHOR> We are trying to figure out if there are people out there who need cloud HSMs. Do you have a project, looked at Amazon CloudHsM but can afford about 1/100th of the cost or less? We are geeks in a startup and need help!</comment>