How Bill Gross' GoTo.com inspired the AdWords business model - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/business/when_big_businesses_were_small/2013/10/google_s_big_break_how_bill_gross_goto_com_inspired_the_adwords_business.html <comment><USER2> GoTo was just one of a slew of companies that came out of Bill Gross' idealab. Bill was truly a fundamental character in the first dotcom era despite not getting as mainstream coverage as some of his peers did (though don't get me wrong, he got plenty of press).

The nuances in this article that the Googlers claim were fundamental inferiorities of GoTo I think are negligible as they would have just had to tweak their bidding system and it would have been comparable to Google's.

Does anyone know what percentage Yahoo got of Google from the patent licensing deal in 2004?

<comment><USER3> Uncertain about the percentage, here's the relevant quote from the SEC filing:

        As part of the settlement, Overture will dismiss its
        patent lawsuit against us and has granted us a fully-
        paid, perpetual license to the patent that was the
        subject of the lawsuit and several related patent
        applications held by  Overture. The parties also mutually
        released any claims  against each other concerning the
        warrant dispute. In  connection with the settlement of
        these two disputes, we  issued to Yahoo 2,700,000 shares
        of Class A common stock."

From: [http://www.secinfo.com/d14D5a.144az.htm](http://www.secinfo.com/d14D5a.144az.htm) via [http://www.techuser.net/gcoverup.html](http://www.techuser.net/gcoverup.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "In their seminal 1998 academic paper introducing the idea of Google, Page and Brin criticized advertising-funded search engines as "inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.""

\-- The times have changed.

<comment><USER5> The whole idea of why the print yellow pages was good was that it was biased toward people who believed enough in what they were selling to pay for an ad to sell the product or service. [1]

Everyone gets a free listing but if you want (typically) additional headings and (definitely) a big or bigger display ad you pay.

As a result if you are a general contractor that does kitchens and bathrooms and also sells plumbing fixtures as well you would have to spend the money to be listed in ads in all those categories.

Without having to spend money it ends up being confusing for consumers because it's like craigslist and inevitably results in people not being able to find what they want.

The "advertising funded" is actually a benefit not a detriment.

[1] I used the yellow pages to build a business from scratch that I actually sold. At the time I started I had no employees and there were established competitors (that didn't advertise) that did the exact same thing. The advertising is what made the business pretty much (in addition to price, quality service and all of that).

<comment><USER6> > _The whole idea of why the print yellow pages was good was that it was > biased toward people who believed enough in what they were selling to pay > for an ad to sell the product or service._

Note that this benefit disappears online, because of targeting. If you see an ad in print, you know the company had enough money to put that ad in front of thousands of people. If you see an ad online, it might have been targeted precisely to you, so the company might well be a scam. I wonder if there's a business idea in making online advertising into a more costly/believable signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find myself wondering whether it would have been good for GoTo.com to have patented its system. Business method patents were around back then, I think.

I have a lot of respect for Bill Gross and all his various IdeaLab ventures. But it strikes me that how a story is told affects your viewpoint.

I would probably still say the patents would have hurt the public more than they would have helped.

<comment><USER8> Has the patent on pagerank hurt the public?

<comment><USER7> I don't know</comment></comment></comment>


Why Swift for TensorFlow? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/WhySwiftForTensorFlow.md <comment><USER2> It's interesting how it's going to play out. On one hand side, Swift is a pleasant language to work with (despite its infancy). But on the other, having a Tensorflow API doesn't suddenly give it a bunch of libraries for statistics, comp. vision, modeling, visualisation, etc. that Python/R/Julia _cough_ MATLAB _cough_ have.

Nowadays, it's difficult enough to convince people to drop e.g. MATLAB for R or Python for Julia (let's assume that there's some merit to it), despite them having excellent counterparts for almost everything. Swift's success in this domain depends solely on the adoption by developers/researchers/engineers. Unless they're just going to mostly use it internally (as Google is known to).

Which brings me to the last point - why on Earth would they pick Swift (apart from Christ Lattner being involved) when Julia was on the table? It ticks all their boxes and has more mature ecosystem for all things "data". Provided rationale is hardly convincing.

<comment><USER3> Julia doesn't tick the "compile to .o/.h" box. As far as I can tell, the use case for AOT Julia is avoiding package compilation overhead, not delivery of standalone code objects.

_edit_ seems JuliaC does support this sort of thing:

[https://juliacomputing.com/blog/2016/02/09/static- julia.html](https://juliacomputing.com/blog/2016/02/09/static-julia.html)

<comment><USER4> Julia does already support this kind of thing. Moreover with a minuscule fraction of the money that's being poured into making Swift usable for data science and machine learning, truly top notch support for generating standalone binaries from Julia could readily be developed. Which is kind of frustrating but what can you do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I also wonder how much of this coincidentally lines up with Chris Lattner landing at Google. As Chris will admit, and as was left out of this analysis, Swift has also been given the humble goal of achieving world domination. All joking aside I'm very thrilled about this and have enjoyed tremendously watching the Swift language mature since its launch due in large part to the open source community and the Swift team's admirable commitment. Onward!

<comment><USER6> What do you mean?

This was not in process before Chris came, it was a project he suggested and started pushing on?

What is there to be coincidental?

<comment><USER7> I think they mean the exact opposite of "coincidental", in the sense of "hmm... is this a coincidence" (no, it isn't)

<comment><USER6> I get that, but i guess i don't understand what there is to be guessing at at all.

I think it's been pretty straightforward that Chris joined Google and started this project. You don't have to wonder if that's a coincidence, that's what he's happy to say happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fail to see the point of this project.

Swift for Tensorflow might work if the scope is to create a client side model definition loader natively for various TF models.

Nobody use Swift seriously for server side training, there is no point in doing so except to add swift to the list of language that claim to do deep learning but in reality nobody will consider them.

</comment><comment><USER9> Strange to see a requirement for choosing one language over another is supposed ease of adoption and then they choose the one not easily adopted across every platform. That easy to write syntax takes precedence over general easy to write/run is unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well written explanation! I really enjoy Swift but it's not as accessible as some of the other languages mentioned. I have a 2011 Macbook Pro and wanted to use the latest and greatest new Swift features. Unfortunately, my machine is too old to upgrade to Mojave which means I can't download the latest version of xcode, which means no new version of Swift. I'm not mad at Apple in the least bit. I just wish I could use Swift 4 on my machine.

<comment> yoz-y If you don't mind stranding from the 100% stable roads, you can install Mojave on your macbook using this patcher: [http://dosdude1.com/mojave/](http://dosdude1.com/mojave/)

Personally I am running Mojave on a late 2009 macbook pro and it still works amazingly well. Transition from Mojave and especially the new XCode are also way faster than previous iterations. There are caveats though, as the processor in my computer is too old, I had to hack homebrew to compile everything from source.

(Also, using the patcher does not hinder my ability to push updates to the App Store or use iMessage, if that is a concern)

<comment><USER10> I'm gonna try this, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Julia would have been a much better and more cost effective choice in my opinion.

It's a superior platform to on which develop this sort of thing, and further along at that. Also easier to use.

<comment><USER12> Julia doesn't have a debugger... They specifically claimed this is a very important thing.

In my experience, Julia has also inscrutable scoping rules, a slow REPL, and it's only fast if you don't count the "startup time" of having to precompile everything.

<comment><USER11> Re: Debugger, fair enough but it's in the works

Re: Scoping rules, these are being evaled.

Re; startup time, already better in 1.1, and will soon be marginalized from two ends: Better static compilation and better tiered compilation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a "standard" way of running Swift on Ubuntu LTS nowadays? A while back I looked into it, and ran into some hokey and unsatisfying solutions. I used Swift on iOS, and I like it a lot, but if they care about adoption, someone needs to reduce friction of getting up and running to approximately zero. A snap package a-la Go or per-user script based installation a-la Rust would be quite OK, as long as it's just one, easy to discover command.

<comment><USER14> It looks pretty straightforward, see the Linux section of [https://swift.org/download/#using- downloads](https://swift.org/download/#using-downloads)

<comment><USER13> Yeah, going through two screenfuls of text every time I want to upgrade is not "straightforward".

<comment><USER14> Sorry, I just didn't want to give people the impression that it's more difficult than other languages. To upgrade you'd just have to remove the original install directory and untar the new release.

I'm not familiar with Snap, but I did find [https://snapcraft.io/swift](https://snapcraft.io/swift)

Also, upgrading will be less common than Rust since almost everyone uses the latest release/toolchain. There's not really a reason to use the daily builds unless you're contributing to the Swift project.

<comment><USER13> For comparison, for Go, it's "sudo snap refresh go". For Rust it's "rustup update stable". I mean, how hard would it be to properly package this stuff, and why should tens of thousands of users deal with all this manual downloading and unpacking? Assuming, of course, that Swift folks don't deliberately want to make the language unpolular, like Haskell.

<comment><USER15> I'm kinda annoyed there's no PPA for this, but I suspect they won't bother shipping this in the standard repo until there's a stable ABI

<comment><USER13> And that's fine: ship an official snap or use the Rust solution. Not doing this very directly impacts adoption. Most people won't even try to set it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Swift is also now supported in Colab (Google-hosted Jupyter notebooks) and there's a nice tutorial on some of the features of Swift for Tensorflow at [https://colab.research.google.com/github/tensorflow/swift- tu...](https://colab.research.google.com/github/tensorflow/swift- tutorials/blob/master/iris/swift_tensorflow_tutorial.ipynb)

</comment><comment><USER17> I have no idea what TensorFlow is (other than the basics) but I enjoyed reading that entire document because it did such a wonderful job of explaining a complex and potentially contentious decision. It's fascinating to see Swift feature so strongly in a pragmatic analysis that doesn't explicitly favour Apple platform interop.

<comment><USER18> I am a bit ignorant on the topic, but is swift available for Windows/Ubuntu? Most of the deep learning scientists I know and work with use either of the two setups. I know there technically exists CUDA GPU support for Apple, but I have frankly never even attempted to mess with it.

<comment><USER14> Ubuntu is supported (see [https://swift.org/download/](https://swift.org/download/)), but Windows is pretty early I think.

See [https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/Windows.md](https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/Windows.md) and [https://forums.swift.org/t/windows- nightlies/19174](https://forums.swift.org/t/windows-nightlies/19174) for more info.

<comment><USER19> Ubuntu is "supported". The compiler might be available, but there are hardly many libraries available that would compile outside Apple platforms.

<comment><USER20> That's no longer true. The Foundation framework is basically complete on Linux, and the vast majority 3rd party libraries which are not iOS specific will work on Ubuntu. Even many of Apple's own libraries (i.e. SwiftNIO, a low- level, high performance networking library for things like implementing web- servers) are cross-platform.

<comment><USER19> Last time I checked, the "the vast majority 3rd party libraries which are not iOS specific" was actually quite tiny.

<comment><USER20> You'd be surprised. There are a few reasonably well developed server-side frameworks, some of which are already used in production various places.

Also a lot of the libraries which are _mostly_ used in iOS don't have any dependancies on the iOS platform: for instance promise or event emitter implementations etc.

IBM is actually supporting a number of open-source swift projects as well: [https://github.com/IBM-Swift](https://github.com/IBM-Swift).

Between that and painless interop with C/C++, Swift does not feel under- supported on Linux in the least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am surprised Dart is not mentioned at all (maybe implied under the OOP languages?). While Flutter and Tensorflow are very different usecases, I am surprised there is nothing in the document on why Dart specifically would be a good choice. I believe if they used Dart for Tensorflow as well, the community would be able to get behind the idea that will not be an abandoned language.

</comment><comment><USER22> I vaguely know tensor flow as the most(?) popular lib of his kind, but I wonder how is the history of swift on non-apple platforms and its impact of the actual users.

Is TensorFlow "huge" in linux, windows, android? Because I also evaluate swift for my use case ([https://www.reddit.com/r/swift/comments/8zb9y1/state_of_swif...](https://www.reddit.com/r/swift/comments/8zb9y1/state_of_swift_for_androidlinuxwindows_on_2018/)) and decide instead on use rust mainly because the lack of solid support on non-apple platforms. However, after use rust for months now I still consider swift a better contender between performance/ergonomics than rust (rust is damm hard sometimes, and suddenly you could hit a trouble with above-average complications. I don't see how put this burden in a library to be used for more "regular" folks could work)

<comment><USER20> The story of Swift on Linux is now quite good.

Windows is less far along, but recently a contributor got nightly builds started on Azure, and it appears there is serious work on this front.

In any case, it's already possible to run Swift for Tesorflow on Windows using WSL and Docker.

<comment><USER22> Ok, that is for swift...

But is not tensor flow popular on windows? Because then build on top of swift will mean:

\- Put swift on a fast track to be decent on windows, linux, android(?)

\- Ignore the windows users and let them battle a bad dependency?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Setting aside for a moment the appropriateness of Swift for TensorFlow, this is a very impressive example of using an embedded DSL to work with a component that is a full programming system in its own right.

On the one hand, we do want full access to the programming model exposed by the component -- its control structures, abstractions, everything else. One the other hand, these are mostly duplicated by our host programming language: it's going to have variable bindings, operators, iteration, conditionals and everything else. Doing an embedding like this is a way to expose most of the component's facilities without introducing a ton of "new syntax" in the form of combinators or having programs where a lot of the critical code is escaped in strings.

This same problem shows up in programming interfaces to RDBMSes. LINQ is a good example of the same embedding technique.

</comment><comment><USER24> You might agree/disagree with their decision but this is one of the most honest and comprehensive evaluation for using a language I've read.

</comment><comment><USER18> Forgive me for my ignorance, but does swift have any good plotting and interactive "notebook" ability? Specifically the ability to plot images such as matplotlib.

I ask this because the number 1 reason my deep learning research group chose python was because of the extensive and interactive scientific plotting ability that's built into python jupyter notebooks. While our volume of analysis isn't on the scale of say a google/fb (primarily biomedical image analysis), the ability to easily visually debug the results is much more important for developing robust models.

<comment><USER25> Yes! Swift is supported in Google Colab, and as a Jupyter kernel: [https://github.com/google/swift-jupyter](https://github.com/google/swift- jupyter).

<comment><USER18> What is the plotting experience like though? As I previously mentioned, plotting is one of the main reasons our group uses python.

Another reason now that I think about it, is the number of scientific libraries that I can just "pip install" without much thought (such as scipy/opencv).

<comment><USER26> You can call out to matplotlib (or any other python libraries installed on your system), using the python interop feature ([https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/PythonI...](https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/PythonInteroperability.md))!

[https://github.com/google/swift-jupyter#rich- output](https://github.com/google/swift-jupyter#rich-output) has an example with screenshots.

<comment><USER15> Oof

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> why? because i made the language, thats why...no real good reason

<comment><USER28> And here's 3 pages of very vague, half-justifications as to why we didn't choose anything else to head off any complaints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reading the document really gives a feeling the author is not being honest on why they chose Swift.

The lack of windows support is addressed in just two lines. Julia being an already established language in the domain of data science does not seem to be especially important to them.

I think the most honest part of the document is:

> because we were more familiar with its [Swift's] internal implementation > details

</comment><comment><USER30> [https://github.com/malmaud/TensorFlow.jl/blob/master/docs/sr...](https://github.com/malmaud/TensorFlow.jl/blob/master/docs/src/why_julia.md)

</comment><comment><USER31> As as python machine learning practitioner and previous iOS engineer I have for while come to miss using swift and type safety for that matter. I really like the language and wish great success for the TF team with swift.

Side note, does anyone know the effort required to get various python based libraries running on swift? i.e. numpy, scipy, pandas and so on?

<comment><USER32> The Swift for Tensorflow team has added some python interop to Swift. So you'll be able to, for instance, do an "import numpy" in your Swift code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can imagine swift really taking off in this space. It's going to be a battle between Julia and Swift for who does the best automatic differentiation.

<comment><USER19> Google would need to make Swift a first class citzen on Windows, currently Julia is winning.

<comment><USER20> That's one of the outcomes I am hoping for in this. I would love for Swift to be a first-class language.

I believe the Swift for TensorFlow team is currently hiring for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what this means for iOS apps themselves

<comment><USER20> At the moment not much. Swift for TensorFlow is a fork of the language, with language-level support for some features which are useful for data science, for instance automatic differentiation and dynamically-callable objects.

Some of those features are making their way into the main branch, but at the moment you could not import the TensorFlow library into an iOS project and use it. Swift for TensorFlow needs to be built using a separate toolchain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'll wait for the PyTorch version.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there an official release roadmap?

<comment><USER20> Last I heard the goal for "initial adoption" is set for Spring 2019.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Haven't we seen this before?

<comment><USER20> It's been in development for about a year, and I have seen several posts about it here. It's still not quite feature-complete or ready for real use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER33> This can be used as an argument against just about anything.

<comment><USER39> noop, some solution will dominate. Which will make 14 => 1 or 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why not Rust?

Edit: I wonder if Swift could be replaced with Rust for iOS development?

<comment><USER41> From the article:

We believe that Rust supports all the ingredients necessary to implement the techniques in this paper: it has a strong static side, and its traits system supports zero-cost abstractions which can be provably eliminated by the compiler. It has a great pointer aliasing model, a suitable mid-level IR, a vibrant and engaging community, and a great open language evolution process.

A concern with using Rust is that a strong goal of this project is to appeal to the entire TensorFlow community, which is currently pervasively Python based. We love Rust, but it has a steep learning curve that may exclude data scientists and other non-expert programmers who frequently use TensorFlow. The ownership model is really great, but mostly irrelevant to the problems faced by today's machine learning code implemented in Python.

<comment><USER42> As I pointed out in two lengthy comments on day one[1][2], that reasoning is nonsense. If Chris wants to use the language he created in this new endeavor for machine learning simply _because he made it_ , that's totally fine and completely his prerogative, but he should just say so, rather than trying (and failing) to convince people that other languages aren't better suited for this task.

From my point of view, a weak justification is worse than no justification in cases like this.

Rust is much better suited to this task than Swift from a technical point of view. The _far_ superior platform support for Windows and Linux is ample reasoning to say Rust is better suited for this task, since very few data scientists will be training models on macOS. However, that's only one of several areas where Swift has shortcomings for a project like this. Swift is great for iOS and macOS development, of course, since it was designed for _that_. I don't think Swift is a bad language by any means, and with enough effort, it _can_ be reshaped to be good for Tensorflow... the GitHub document just provides zero useful justification for the work required to make it good for Tensorflow.

EDIT: to some of the replies talking about Rust's learning curve, that mostly applies when you start trying to design efficient, interlinked data structures involving ownership. For most applications of machine learning, this simply wouldn't be a problem. The library would provide the data structures, you just have to use them. Rust can provide simple interfaces to complicated things.[3] The compiler's error messages are usually incredibly helpful.

The learning curve of Rust should not be relevant here, compared to Swift, which is also full of idiosyncrasies. Swift and Rust _both_ have a large learning curve for someone coming from Python. This is because they're statically typed languages that are just _different_ from a scripting language. For an application like this, I would say those learning curves are roughly equal at the language level, but as I pointed out in my comments, Swift has an _enormous_ learning curve of requiring many data scientists to either install and learn Linux, or throw out their current computer, buy a Mac, and learn macOS.

My point here is _not_ that Rust is _the most_ suitable language for Tensorflow (although it _could_ be), but rather I'm making the point that Rust is more suitable than Swift for a project like this, and therefore this document is just annoying. It would be better for them to delete this document and just say "we're using Swift because our team has a lot of experience with it and because the creator of Swift is leading this project, so we would lack enthusiasm and momentum if we were using something else, even if it were more suitable."

Julia would be really interesting to see explored further, since it would appeal much better to many existing data scientists who would be transitioning from Python. The times that I've played with Julia, I was amazed at how slow the JIT is for even tiny scripts. LLVM is powerful stuff, but it is painfully slow at _everything_. It would be nice if Julia offered an alternative backend for rapid development.

[1]: [https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/issues/3#issuecomment-38...](https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/issues/3#issuecomment-384823808)

[2]: [https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/issues/3#issuecomment-38...](https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/issues/3#issuecomment-384828003)

[3]: [http://kiss3d.org/](http://kiss3d.org/)

<comment><USER43> I personally find Rust to have quite a learning curve (which I guess is also an opinion shared by others). The language is great though.

I do agree with your criticism of the document here, though. It feels very much like Swift happens to check many boxes, but the lack of Windows support is baffling. It's simply table stakes to be able to run, fully supported, on Windows, macOS, and major Linux distributions. That should be the very first thing anyone considers.

But beyond that, I think even with Rust's macro system it could be difficult to make it work for Tensorflow in a way that feels appropriate for Rust programmers _and_ for TensorFlow. This was explored in F# for Tensorflow research[0] and a completely different approach[1] was taken because making a type system suitable for tensorflow got too unweildy.

[0]: [https://github.com/fsprojects/TensorFlow.FSharp](https://github.com/fsprojects/TensorFlow.FSharp)

[1]: [https://github.com/fsprojects/TensorFlow.FSharp#live- checkin...](https://github.com/fsprojects/TensorFlow.FSharp#live-checking- tooling-for-ai-models)

<comment><USER44> > But beyond that, I think even with Rust's macro system it could be difficult > to make it work for Tensorflow in a way that feels appropriate for Rust > programmers _and_ for TensorFlow.

If you're talking about matrix shape compatibility (matching up rows from one with columns from another) I'm hopeful about const generics here: [https://github.com/rust- lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/2000-cons...](https://github.com/rust- lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/2000-const-generics.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I still don't understand why they would choose Swift over C#?

They complain about C#/Java having "highly dynamic constructs" but correct me if I'm wrong but isn't swift also a GC/OOP like Java and C#?

I don't think Swift has any inherent objective advantages over c#.

I think it would have been a better decision to go with C# over Swift as Microsoft has a clear roadmap with the language and it is already supported on linux/mac/windows.

<comment><USER28> I would rather claw my eyes out than write any ML stuff in C#.

It's a fine enterprise language, but good lord writing data science and machine learning stuff in it would be an right pain. It's also not super high performance, and when you're doing a lot of maths heavy operations, high performance is absolutely crucial. I had great difficulty establishing whether SIMD/vectorisation was even supported, and then even more difficulty getting it to work.

Julia would have been a far, far superior choice than Swift.

<comment><USER19> SIMD is supported already for quite some time on RyuJIT. Quite easy to find out when searching the MSDN .NET Blog.

Its performance is good enough for doing medical digital imagining as presented by Siemens at FOSDEM 2019.

It is a matter to properly use the features that the language gives us.

<comment><USER28> Yeah I found the blog posts, but then had the problem of "what compiler am I using now?" Was it the Roslyn one or RyuJIT? Does RyuJIT support .NetCore or is it in Standard or Framework or one of other seemingly limitless versions of .Net that exists for some reason.

Apparently I could use a library called Vectors, buried deep inside some numerical library, but then the runtime wouldn't recognise the libraries existence despite being a dependency and installed (and linked and every other thing you have to do to get .Net to do anything). After I fixed that issue it wouldn't let me construct any arrays or anything.

Suffice to say, on top of C#/F# being painful to deal with at the best of times, attempting to do anything numerical was an absolute shit fight. I'm sure if you've got a whole team, you can make anything work, but for me it was not at all worth the effort.

When you consider I can get fully guaranteed (not just hoping the compiler chooses to optimise it right) in Julia practically for free along with nicer syntax, 100% less namespacing hell, equal or greater performance, and far more data science and numerical packages and it's hard to see what the draws of C# would be.

<comment><USER19> It appears to me that the issue was not being confortable with the .NET eco- system.

Roslyn and RyuJIT aren't the same thing. Roslyn is the new compiler infrastructure for MSIL generation, where the original C++ compiler got replaced by bootstraped VB.NET and C# compilers.

RyuJIT is the new JIT compiler introduced in .NET 4.6, replacing the former JIT64.

I don't disagree that Julia is better suited for data science given the eco- system, as proven by my other posts in this thread, just that the performace is also there when one wants it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitSub: Sell Access to Private GitHub Repositories - <AUTHOR> http://gitsub.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I built GitSub.

I had the idea about a year ago, tabled it lacking any examples of it in the wild. Hard to tell if it was a chicken or the egg problem.

Fast forward a few months, and Epic Games releases the source code to UE4 on GitHub -- available instantly as in a private GH repo.

I like to think the approach of selling access to source control could be used for a lot of software, but dealing with subscription billing and having the backend set up to integrate it with GitHub is probably enough to stop most small software companies from trying it.</comment>


Show HN: Loriot.io – low-latency network as a service - <AUTHOR> https://www.loriot.io <comment><USER2> too much marketing words, I didn't understand most of it.. what the use of the service?

<comment><AUTHOR> The unique selling proposition of the LoraWAN technology ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRaWAN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRaWAN)) is that you can put together a sensor + arduino + a LoRaWAN sender that transmits data 10km+ without the need to change the batterey of the sensors for five years.

Here is a real-life usecase: [http://blog.telenor.io/iot/2015/08/04/smart- meetingroom.html](http://blog.telenor.io/iot/2015/08/04/smart- meetingroom.html)

<comment><USER3> " ... put together a sensor + arduino + a LoRaWAN sender that transmits data 10km+ without the need to change the batterey of the sensors for five years ... "

This should be the pitch on your landing page, I also could barely understand your product if not for reading this comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your pricing page is ridiculous. You might as well remove it.

</comment><comment><USER5> how do people found cloud or network services which require a huge infrastructure? It's not exactly like creating an app and hitting it big.

</comment><comment><USER6> too much buzzwords 4 me</comment>


Animated Steve Jobs Bio. RIP, Steve - <AUTHOR> https://quartsoft.com/blog/201510/animated-biography-steve-jobs <comment><AUTHOR> Steve Jobs passed away six years ago today. Let's remember him and his achievements with the help of this animated bio.</comment>


Ask HN: How do remote workers deal with taxes? - <AUTHOR> The question is simple - probably the answer is not: How do remote workers deal with taxes when working for a foreign company?
a) Do you pay taxes in your country or in the company's country?
b) Do you pay taxes as freelancer, 'LLC' or as dependent worker? In my country (Portugal) being a freelancer means paying an huge amount of taxes (~50%) when making more than 25K/y.
(updated) <comment><USER2> a) I pay taxes in the country I reside in.

b) I have set up a LLC. Of course I have to pay a lot of tax. If I want to have 100 dollars deposited to my account I have to charge my client 250 dollars. Still there are several benefits to having an LLC. It enables me to optimise how much I pay in tax, usually I can go from 60% tax to somewhere around 50%. I buy everything related to my business via the business. Conference trips, computers, headsets, screens, books. That way I can spend money "pre-tax", before I lose the 50% by paying it from the LLC as salary. Essentially I get those items for 50% off compared to if I had bought them with my own money. I can also get the VAT back.

When you have an LLC the contract between you and the client will actually be between the LLC and the client. That means you are not personally liable for any damages, for example if you get sick and can't deliver the client can't go after you personally. Also should you for some reason go bankrupt you are (typically) not personally liable.

Note that this is how it works in Sweden, but some of it might be applicable in Portugal.

<comment><USER3> 60% tax, how absurd. I cringe at my US based 24% (+ 10% self employment) bracket. By the way, love Sweden (summers) though. Been to Stockholm a few times, the first for nearly 3 months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Scandinavia is known for high benefits supported by high taxes. The real problem is when you have low benefits and high taxes. In my country, an high income freelancer (paying ~50% taxes) will hardly ever get unemployment, sick leave or child care benefits.

<comment><USER4> It's the same in the Netherlands. I pay upwards of 50% taxes, but don't get any unemployment, pension or other benefits/insurance. It's ridiculous in my book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> a) Own country. Generally most countries use residence-based taxation (where you live most of the year is where you pay your taxes), with a few very specific exceptions (the USA, ship crew, diplomats, deployed military, etc).

b) Freelancer because I'm too cheap to set up a company/hire an accountant, and it's really simple to just do my own taxes. Those extra taxes are thinks your employer now doesn't have to pay (healthcare, unemployment insurance, etc) so ask for a raise to match.

</comment><comment><USER6> Where are you based? In the UK you can register for self assessment and file your own. You can complete self assessment yourself quite easily. If you want to contract through an LLC you'll probably want an accountant.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't do any international, all US based. I keep track of all my expenses (credit cards and banks accounts) and tag them using Quickbooks Self Employed. It even estimates federal quarterly taxes and allows me to make quarterly online payments using EFTPS.gov. At tax time it exports everything into TurboTax which saves a ton of time on deducations and reporting my quarterly federal tax payments.

</comment><comment><USER7> a) Generally, you pay the taxes in the country where you reside or the country where you perform the work (if not the same country). Despite popular belief, most major countries tax individuals on their worldwide income (US, China, France, Germany, off the top of my head)...however, most of these countries exempt the first $xxx thousands of income from tax (or from certain types of taxes, like payroll taxes) or certain types of income from tax.

b) Depends on your legal risk profile. If you are a contractor, an entity may shield you legally but will incur greater tax and compliance costs.

If you are a dependent worker (i.e., an "employee"), you shouldn't need to ask these questions because your employer will take care of the tax withholding for you as generally most countries require foreign companies to register for payroll withholding once they hire employees locally.

</comment><comment><USER8> a) Paying in my country of residence.

b) Paying as an 'independent' contractor. We have reeeeeally lax rate of 5% (not including VAT) if you earn less than $190k/year (with average salary around the country being around $4k/year).

<comment><AUTHOR> Can I ask you which country is it? :)

<comment><USER8> Ukraine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're doing work for a foreign company it's best to pay an accountant to sort out the tax for you. I know people who work in UK for foreign companies usually set up and LTD company and then pay themselves through that, through dividends etc, effectively only paying about 20% tax on everything.

<comment><USER6> As someone who contracts in the UK, I'd say it really depends on how much you're making and for what duration. If you're going to make £10,000 on a three month contract you're probably better off just registering for self assessment. I did this for a while when I was making around £28,000/annum because it was the most tax effective and easiest solution in my case. Also accountants are expensive.

If you're making £60,000+ you're probably going to want to set up an LTD company, but at that point you're really best off talking to an accountant and discussing your options.

<comment><USER10> I'm on about £28k per annum as a remote contractor -- I'd second this advice.</comment></comment></comment>


CPU cache-based communication between two co-located virtual machines - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/IAIK/CJAG <comment><USER2> I noticed the paper tested an Xeon E5-2670 on EC2, which is old (Sandy Bridge; eg, m2's) and pre-dates Intel Cache Allocation Technology (IntelCAT):

[https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/introduction-to- ca...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/introduction-to-cache- allocation-technology)

Support for IntelCAT was added to Xen two years ago. Eg:

        [root@vmm-psr vmm]# xl psr-hwinfo --cat
        Cache Allocation Technology (CAT):
        Socket ID       : 0
        L3 Cache        : 12288KB
        Maximum COS     : 15
        CBM length      : 12
        Default CBM     : 0xfff

And to Linux 4.10 a couple of months ago: [https://lwn.net/Articles/694800/](https://lwn.net/Articles/694800/)

While I suspect IntelCAT could disable this side channel, I'd personally hesitate before turning it on for everyone on the cloud. Does it out weigh the performance cost? ... Can customers opt-in to this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it was specifically called out in someone's tweet I'm trying to find but I believe this was mentioned in the paper.

Edit: My mix-up on the paper!

 _Malware Guard Extension: Using SGX to Conceal Cache Attacks (Extended Version)_ | [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.08719.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.08719.pdf) (2017)

 _Recently, Intel introduced an instruction set extension called CAT (cache allocation technology) [51]. With Intel CAT it is possible to restrict CPU cores to one of the slices of the last-level cache and even to pin cache lines. Liu et al. [83] proposed a system that uses CAT to protect general purpose software and cryptographic algorithms. Their approach can be directly applied to protect against a malicious enclave. However, this approach also does not allow to protect enclaves from an outside attacker.

[...]

Instead of using Intel CAT on the operating level it could also be used to protect enclaves on the hardware level. By changing the eenter instruction in a way that it implicitly activates CAT for this core, any cache sharing between SGX enclaves and the outside as well as co-located enclaves could be eliminated. Thus, SGX enclaves would be protected from outside attackers. Furthermore, it would protect co-located enclaves as well as the operating system and user programs against malicious enclaves._

[83] [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yuval_Yarom/publication...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yuval_Yarom/publication/291830462_CATalyst_Defeating_Last- Level_Cache_Side_Channel_Attacks_in_Cloud_Computing/links/56a6b0d408aeded22e3544ff.pdf)

<comment><USER2> this paper? [https://cmaurice.fr/pdf/ndss17_maurice.pdf](https://cmaurice.fr/pdf/ndss17_maurice.pdf) where is IntelCAT mentioned?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One totally practical use case for this is to ensure that none of the virtual machines that you have allocated on your cloud provider are on the same physical hardware. This would be extremely useful for reliability purposes. I wonder how hard it would be to build something like that on top of this library?

<comment><AUTHOR> With virtual machines I control, I don't have to use covert channels?

[https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~hovav/dist/cloudsec.pdf](https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~hovav/dist/cloudsec.pdf) (2009)

Edit: _we describe an empirical mea-surement study focused on understanding VM placement in the EC2 system and achieving co-resident placement for an adversary. To do this, we make use of network probing both to identify public services hosted on EC2 and to provide evidence of co-residence (that two instances share the same physical server). In particular, we utilize nmap, hping, and wget to perform network probes to determine liveness of EC2 instances_

 _The hard disk contention channel was used in Section 6 for establishing co- residence of instances._

<comment><USER4> That assumes the provider will disclose hardware info to you, which is rarely the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> (I apologize in advance if I've missed recognition of your authority on this topic; as an outsider it appears you are wrong.)

Are you speaking generally or specifically addressing a shortcoming of the linked paper which demonstrates a methodology to determine whether or not two AWS VMs are on the same physical host?

After a brief review I still don't see any mention of "hardware info" you mention as assumed being available.

Edit: If something has come up since 2009 with this specific paper, I'd appreciate the heads-up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They also have an Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) paper with a title that brought a smile to my face: [https://cmaurice.fr/pdf/ndss17_maurice.pdf](https://cmaurice.fr/pdf/ndss17_maurice.pdf)

<comment><USER6> I suspect this might also make you smile then ;) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPZmiRi_c-o&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPZmiRi_c-o&feature=youtu.be) , if you haven't seen it already

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me a lot of this DEF CON talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X772EBdvnM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X772EBdvnM)

He managed to stream video across VMs by doing a similar cache timing trick, which brought a round of applause from the crowd. Very cool stuff.

<comment><USER6> I guess you could call it an evolution, because memory deduplication is not always enabled anymore (research like this might have played a role here ;)

he talks about that @35:27 in the video

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8044-what_could_possibly_go_wron...](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8044-what_could_possibly_go_wrong_with_insert_x86_instruction_here)

</comment><comment><USER9> Does this have any practical applications? You might get a perf win, but the likelihood of being collocated is small.

<comment><USER10> I think at this point it's mostly of interest to security researchers and malware writers. It's not hard to imagine malware using this technique to transfer data out of an infected VM in a difficult to detect manner. If you can infect enough VMs it might be worth it. Also, this type of technique could be interesting to government employed malware writers.

<comment><USER11> Another interesting way to exfiltrate data is via DNS. Few networks block DNS, so you can set up a protocol on your own DNS server to transfer data.

The bandwidth is pretty decent, too.

<comment><USER12> I'm still surprised how well this classic attack works. I've seen $100k IDS and firewall packages not detect this.

I use this personally. Works behind captive portals sometimes too: [http://code.kryo.se/iodine/](http://code.kryo.se/iodine/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Explanation anyone?

<comment><USER14> Watch this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT6PFSRrvsU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT6PFSRrvsU)</comment></comment>


Anyone using rails on win? - <AUTHOR> How has it been? Are you running your dB in Linux or Windows? Is dev a lot faster? Is it painful? <comment><USER2> The pain of running Rails on a Windows machine is one of motivations behind Microsoft creating Ubuntu on Windows. It was built to improve developer's experience. For the current state, that's probably a good way to structure a google search. My impression from what I've read is that it's reasonably good. But it's just what I've read.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every time I've dealt with Ruby and/or Rails on Windows I've been annoyed-- typically at events like Rails Girls where we have to try it out but still have problems.

The basic install is not terrible, but the very second you start needing thinks like Image Magick or any gem that might expect a Linux build environment or POSIX tools everything breaks into shambles.

If you want to run Rails on Windows, install Virtualbox on Windows, and then load a Linux VM into it.

<comment><AUTHOR> yup thats what i'm doing now.. would like to get off a vm at some point :/</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Is Startup Ubiquity a Bad Thing? - <AUTHOR>

In the past two weeks I have seen quite a few of these "X Startups in X Days" threads, or some other form of cranking out code, putting it on the web and calling it a 'startup'.
While I'm not immediately aware of how investors handle the rhetoric of 'startup', but personally just putting together a webapp and hosting it does not really make anyone or anything a startup.  This lead me to an even more crucial thought pattern:
The web is indeed becoming the platform Web 2.0 demands it to be.  YCombinator is showing consistency in funding successful startups, but I feel that there is too much ubiquity in redundant startup concepts (ex. remember when a new to-do list application was coming out every 3 days?  notice how the exact same thing is kind of happening with GTD apps?)
Well, while I have no problem with people wanting to do great things, the thought wont leave my mind that while this burst of web activity is great, but what's to become of the other technology sectors?  For that matter, what's to come of other industries?
Is this ubiquity of web activity endangering to itself, and possibly other industries? <comment><USER3> Basic economics states that when many firms enter a market, the market becomes more competitive and the expected returns to those firms go down, which acts a disincentive to others entering the market in the future. The effect isn't immediate (entrepreneurs have imperfect information about the real returns in a market), so that's why you get boom/bust cycles.

Slightly less basic economics states that when a market becomes commoditized, its complements should raise in expected returns. So we ought to be seeing higher returns for web frameworks, scripting languages, open-source databases, scalability services, web hosting, startup boot-camps, and services that help people make sense of the Web 2.0 clutter.

I think we're seeing this, but the problem is that other folks realize this too, and so we're seeing people pile into lifestreaming apps (eg. FriendFeed) and YC clones. I'm not really sure what industry has the best returns now - <USER2> I was, I'd be rich. I suspect it's not Web2.0, but there's something within tech that will be very, very high returns over the next 10 years, but it's not an obvious industry at this point.

<comment><USER4> "Slightly less basic economics states that when a market becomes commoditized, its complements should raise in expected returns."

Good post - I see a big opportunity emerging for those who can figure out better ways to enable sophisticated use for and make sense of multiple databases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it depends on what your real definition of start-up is. Is it only businesses that can scale and create huge amounts of wealth? Or does it refer to anything someone starts with the intention of becoming profitable and supporting themselves? I can imagine that with enough time and hard work some of these apps thrown together can indeed produce returns, and might even give someone some financial success. Sure, they're not likely to be the next Google or YouTube or Amazon, but I don't see a problem with people cranking out code if they so choose.

</comment><comment><USER6> So pick a harder problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> It may be endangering in the short term due to dilution or pollution, depending on how you want to classify it all. Overall, though, the best products will rise to the top. It's impossible to say when this will happen, but my thought is that it will.

As for other industries, there will probably be cross-pollution based on the quick successes that we have seen. Since the appeal of churning out 'companies' is obvious, I have no doubt it will be emulated in other markets.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thats what happens when the barrier to entry gets lowered. We probably have the same amount of Googles coming out each year, but now they are just diluted more since a lot more people are cranking out code now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Am not sure if this is bad. The life of a startup probably begins after that initial launch(that bloggers, media covers). What happens after that is what probably decides if they become successful businesses.

</comment><comment><USER10> No.</comment>


If You're Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/business/06unbox.html?em&ex=1215489600&en=5de5a82f88b8c04a&ei=5087%0A

<comment><USER2> Saul Kripke is an example of this. Terrified of publishing in case he doesn't live up to his immense talent.

<comment><USER3> The Kripke metaphor is very appropriate in this context; it can be argued that he did most of his 'important' work at such an early age that he has yet to do anything to substantially eclipse it. Although, if I'm completely candid, I still don't understand most of his stuff.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love this article. About 7 years ago, I found a friend who was completely focused on becoming a better leader and we both tried to improve together.

It has made a huge difference.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love this article. I have several friends that became frozen because they were bright and afraid to fail.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, this is good news then. Yay!</comment>


Wmutils: write your window manager as a shell script - <AUTHOR> http://wmutils.io/

<comment><USER2> Only getting an empty page with a 'WIP' watermark. The wmutils project on GitHub seems to give some more information - it looks like a nice project! [https://github.com/wmutils/core](https://github.com/wmutils/core).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, was there this morning. [http://blog.z3bra.org/2015/01/you-are-the- wm.html](http://blog.z3bra.org/2015/01/you-are-the-wm.html) has some nice examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The longer I spend working with "full screen mode" applications the more I start to think "do I need X Y or Z" in a desktop.

I'm down to "notification zone/widget" "status zone/widget" and "the omnibar to end all omnibars" An omnibar in this context is one of the multipurpose text input controls like the cmd-space search box in OS X or the Command Palette in Sublime Text and Atom.

The key being that such an omnibar has to have access to EVERYTHING. From "set system volume 25%" and "mute chrome" to "close sublime text" and beyond. The syntax would probably be one of the hardest things to do correctly. Think OS X without the dock and you'll be heading in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER4> asdf</comment>


A Little Deception Helps Push Athletes to the Limit - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/health/nutrition/20best.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I think the discussed implication (some barriers to physical limits are primarily mental) is accurate, and evidenced years ago by the experience of Roger Bannister [1]. The barrier stood for years, but after it was broken it was beaten often, and "is now the standard of all professional middle distance runners" [2].

My broader question, however, is while it's clear how to apply the findings in timed individual sports (running, cycling, swimming), how can this best be applied to team sports like soccer or football?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-minute_mile></comment>


Hilarious XRP Jokes in Rick and Morty Fan Fiction - <AUTHOR> https://decryptmedia.com/5378/eight-hilarious-xrp-jokes-blockchain-morty <comment><USER2> Must be a different definition of "hilarious".

<comment><USER3> To be fair on the clickbait, a more truthful "eight vaguely smile-inducing XRP jokes" wouldn't have driven much traffic.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do the collaboration websites always fail? - <AUTHOR>

I know the topic is a little vague, but I didn't want to make it a super long one.
Everyone has seen those websites that try to connect developers with other developers based on projects they want to work on. There have been many attempts at them. I don't think any have been terribly successful, though. I could be wrong, of course. I'm not really talking about elance.com, or monster.com - those are more freelancers strictly looking to get paid for their services. I'm talking more like openinvo.com, except without the upfront fees.
Why do most of these sites seem to have such a tough time being successful? It's definitely something I feel most developers or web designers, etc, would find useful. I know I always hear people complain about how tough it is to find people to work with on ideas of theirs.
I think most of these types of sites end up becoming just a deadpool of "want ads". It's not very fulfilling to post an ad saying you're looking for a project to join, or post an ad saying you're looking for people to join your current project.
So what do you think? How can these types of services be made better? <comment><USER2> One hypothesis (not sure if it's correct) is that there isn't actually as much of a matching problem as people think, but instead more of a supply problem. When you're a lonely open-source developer who can't find a second or third contributor, if this hypothesis is right, then it's not because they're out there, itching to write code, but unable to find your project in the noise of the web. Rather, it's because they don't exist, or their time is already spoken for. If that's true, a matching marketplace will just result in a bunch of unanswered want ads from lonely open-source developers, because the supply of willing hands is already taken. At best, it'll result in a zero-sum switching of developers from some projects to others.

It seems for that scenario not to be the case, either: 1) there has to be a bunch of unused latent supply due to a real matching problem, i.e. lots of people who _would_ contribute but cannot find anything to contribute to; or 2) the existence of such a site would have to actually increase supply itself, perhaps if it generated a bunch of positive PR and reached previously unengaged people.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think github is a "de facto" collaboration site, but the process is different... You start working on something you find interesting, and if others feel the same way, they might contribute.

<comment><USER4> I agree completely with this. The best way to find other people to collaborate with on a personal programming project is to do something other people want to do. Talk is cheap. Take a look at the number of "projects" on sourceforge that consist of a name and a description and haven't released a single byte of code. I'd be willing to bet they outnumber real projects.

<comment><USER5> Haha, I own one of those. Code's been sitting on my drive for 5 years, but it's far from ready enough to be uploaded. I'm surprised SourceForge doesn't purge the empty projects once in a while to free up project names.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obviously you've got the problem of _people that are good at doing things_ being fewer in number and less likely to need to actively hunt for collaborators than people looking for others to do things for them, which skews the typical site visitor towards those that post ads rather than reply to them.

This could be a problem for StackOverflow etc as well, but the difference is that people are both happier giving free advice to strangers than embarking on large scale projects with them, and more likely to stick around and answer a few questions on a site that might help them on frequent occasions in future with other issues.

 _Even if they work_ , sites catering for people making big one-time decisions like finding a cofounder are always going to end up looking like a ghetto. The people that find what they're looking for don't need to come back.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not all of them fail, its just that people like their collaboration to be 'thin', not 'thick'. Stackoverflow is a nice example of a success story. Casual, 'thin', very effective.

People are pretty set in their ways and by forcing them to completely shift to some new platform the majority of the collaboration platforms misses the point that we don't actually want to do that. Collaboration is more about communication than it is about anything else so whenever a collaboration site is successful it usually is because it leaves people free and solves a communications issue.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the reason is that internet is full of trolls and if you don't put significant effort into making community / collaboration clean and vibrant then the collaboration site is destined to fail.

For example, compare Quora and Yahoo! Answers. I don't thing Quora is successful because they have very good UI (it does not hurt), I think they are successful becasue they are very serious about making they site clean and without trolls. On other hand, Yahoo! Answers is 'troll heaven'.</comment>


Show HN: Brix for Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://brix.io/welcome/ <comment><USER2> I have yet to see one of these Bootstrap-centric editors that is worth a monthly fee. Bootstrap is so well laid out and so well documented that I can't see many instances where this would that much of a time saver or worth the premium. Presumably a shop that is churning out basic site after basic site may benefit from the ease of use but I can't imagine that is a big market.

<comment><USER3> You should try [http://pinegrow.com](http://pinegrow.com) (I'm the author). It's a downloadable desktop app sold for $50 (no monthly fee).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should probably have someone proofread the English on your site.

<comment><USER5> There's something really distinctive about the kind of English that Polish people (especially the ones confident in their language skills) use in writing, it's really easy to tell.

<comment><USER6> It's easy to spot a native "slavic" speaker. There is no concept of definite article, so they tend to skip it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just started the free trial and it seems to be a very promising implementation - certainly not trivial to get something usable like this. My problem is the pricing model. The only option is $29 per month for unlimited users, etc. That's too much for someone like me who just "dabbles" in Bootstrap websites (non commercial). I would happily a smaller single user free, but could not justify that much for something I would use on an ad hoc basis.

<comment><USER8> Read the _fine_ print. ;)

<comment><USER9> Highlight the pricing page to see more hidden pricing.

I guess they at one time wanted 29/month for 1 user...

<comment><AUTHOR> What price you recommend for one user?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hahaha, I love this image: [http://brix.io/welcome/assets/img/lh.png](http://brix.io/welcome/assets/img/lh.png)

It's the most hipster thing I've ever seen. Was that intentional?

<comment><AUTHOR> No it's my normal look :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought this was related to Mozilla's Brick[0] and got more excited than I should have.

Still, looks nice though!

[0] - [http://mozilla.github.io/brick/](http://mozilla.github.io/brick/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Not really quite sure how this: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/c9ksnlob416zloe/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/c9ksnlob416zloe/Screenshot%202014-05-30%2013.46.06.png)

translates to this: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/s48mpnee9imy5qv/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/s48mpnee9imy5qv/Screenshot%202014-05-30%2013.46.27.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Weird, we will check this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some constructive criticism, is very unintuitive, there are no explanation steps or visual tutorial, also the starting template is too simple just a hello text a more advanced starting template would give more info on how it works, I tried dragging some elements but I got lost and I ended up with [http://imgur.com/haRtVXS](http://imgur.com/haRtVXS)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for yor feedback, we will add templates to brix

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> GitHub owned [https://www.easel.io/](https://www.easel.io/) is the best alternative for me now. Your service looks promising, but has strange pricing policy. Do you plan limited free plan?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that Limited free plan is good idea. I need to talk about this with my co-founders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an incredible amount of work, I know Bootstrap well enough (plus I use a 24 col grid with 16px margins for everything) that it wouldn't be much use to me.

Incredibly well executed though :).

<comment><USER16> Can't you modify the number of grid columns in Bootstrap? I use Foundation 5, and there is an option within settings.scss which allows you to change the default 12 column grid, eg:

      $total-columns: 24;

<comment><USER15> I think (maybe) you misunderstood, I do use Bootstrap with a 24 column grid as I compile it myself with less (I also change a bunch of other stuff to improve table appearance etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't login with my credentials after confirming my email (confirmation hash: 160caba46334a76427bbfc0d127542f8), so that's kind of a show stopper.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please send me message with your brix.io login. Our mail firstname.lastname@example.com, we will check what's wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks nice! I'm one of the creators of Jetstrap, and this is definitely really cool. Best of luck, it's an interesting market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jetstrap is awesome tool, maybe we can talk more about this market?

<comment><USER18> Sure, feel free to email me whenever. Email is in my profile!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Perhaps not as nice, but there's also Bootply[0]

[0] [http://www.bootply.com/](http://www.bootply.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes we know bootply it's great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It bothers me when I see statements like '10x faster' ...10x faster than what? Hand coding? Using some other library?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hand coding.

<comment><USER20> Then IMO, it should say that on your site :) and some reasonable explanation on how you landed on that number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> $29/mo is simply outrageous!

</comment><comment><USER22> This is very cool. It's nice to have a tool palette for the set of controls ready to be placed on the page.

Congrat on the great work.

</comment><comment><USER23> Poles...poles everywhere =p

</comment><comment><USER24> What ever happened to software that didn't cost me a monthly fee?

I thought web apps were cheaper to build and easier to maintain, but the savings don't seem to be passed onto the consumer.

<comment><USER3> SaaS model often doesn't make sense for users. Why do you need software in the cloud when working with local files directly would be much better?

That's why we sell Pinegrow Web Designer ([http://pinegrow.com](http://pinegrow.com) \- I'm the author) as a normal desktop app. It has full support for Bootstrap, Foundation and plain HTML.

<comment><USER25> This does actually look pretty cool, and I too am a fan of local app+1 time payment.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Workaway: Hawaii. 18 hackers. 10 days. 1 beach mansion. (4 free slots) - <AUTHOR> http://startupworkaway.com/hawaii

<comment><USER2> Very cool idea!

Unfortunately, doesn't look very easy to get into. I'd imagine quite a few people applying to it. So the odds of someone like me getting accepted is probably near the bottom... i.e. Not connected, not a social-media evangelist, no github account, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't be discouraged by that. :) We haven't gotten many applications yet and we don't care who you know, if you have a bunch of followers, or if you contribute to open source. (Personally I'm a bit bearish on GitHub as a resume - my publicly-visible GitHub is very underwhelming.)

Our selection process is pretty much: have you (or do you aspire to) build cool, interesting things and do you seem like someone we'd enjoy living with for 10 days (we do a 15min phone screen).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the fourth year of Startup Workaway. The first three were in Costa Rica, Thailand and Greece. It's a lot of fun and a great way to take a vacation without the "founder guilt" of not working. I'm happy to answer any questions!

</comment><comment><USER3> I know these folks. Good people and sure to be a good time - (OP helped me get my first Rails app launched to Heroku when I was a noob and ran into problems) Thanks Greg!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm always happy to help, thanks Jesse! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome! Just sent in my application.

Curious how you found a house, is it an Airbnb rental? Thinking about organizing a getaway myself this winter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome :)

We found it through Homeaway. I didn't do the hunting or negotiation, but I believe the process was to first make a short list of awesome places on various vacation rental sites, then contact the owner and attempt to negotiate a better price for a large group.</comment></comment>


Achieving a Perfect SSL Labs Score with Go - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bracelab.com/achieving-perfect-ssl-labs-score-with-go <comment><USER2> The 3rd and 4th step will break a lot of compatibility.

But requiring TLS1.2 works with any browser shipped in 2011 or later. I'm betting way less than 1% of usersgents these days cannot do TLS 1.2.</comment>


Volkswagen Refining Machine Learning on D-Wave System - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/03/14/volkswagen-refining-machine-learning-on-d-wave-system/ <comment><USER2> What a monstrous waste of resources. Years of research, hundreds of millions of dollars, to do something we can already do easily - and with no substantial argument or evidence for greater potential.</comment>


Intel's Powered-Up Core I7 Broadwell Mini PC - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/03/mini-review-intels-powered-up-core-i7-broadwell-mini-pc/ <comment><USER2> Use case: Due to moving countries, I've recently dumped my powerhouse desktop ( [http://blog.codinghorror.com/building-a-pc-part-vii- rebootin...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/building-a-pc-part-vii-rebooting/) ), and am laptoping around various places; a lifestyle I will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

There are few, if any, performant laptops, that could get even close to the sort of performance I've used to using that machine. However, as long as deployment time is <~3 minutes, I don't necessarily need it to be a laptop; but can settle a middle road in some variations of these.

<comment><USER3> If a laptop isn't fast enough, a NUC wouldn't be either. The NUC is an ultrabook in a small desktop form factor - the "Core i7" branding you see means less than the "U" at the end of the CPU part number (which means that the CPU is a low-power part).

If you need a portable powerhouse laptop, you need a 15" MacBook Pro. Mine is a quad-core with 16GB of RAM and it's by far the fastest laptop I've ever seen. It's not a great gaming machine simply because of the lack of games; though more and more games are seeing Mac ports than ever since 4 of the 5 major game development engines support Mac (and it's hard to justify support for SteamOS if you don't support Mac as well). It's not cheap; but between price, portability and power you can only pick two.

<comment><USER4> That's not true.

It depends a lot on the OS and what you're doing. If you're using Ubuntu, the NUC would be faster for most tasks because the intel graphics card has nice drivers and the (integrated) graphics card is faster. So flash videos would run much better. Also, per core, the NUC is roughly just as fast. Maybe a little faster. Most of the time you are not using all cores.

Here's the CPU comparison between this NUC and the fastest Macbook Pro CPU [http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-5557U-vs-Intel- Core-i7...](http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-5557U-vs-Intel- Core-i7-4980HQ)

Finally, both NUC and Macbook Pro are really bad with games. Macbook Pro heats up like crazy even when sitting on an aluminum cooler just watching Netflix. Playing games is another story. Very few are supported and even fewer are optimized for OSX. On the other hand, the NUC just doesn't have the discrete graphics card required.

If you are OK with the form factor and aren't running multicore simulation most of the time, the NUC is a better choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At that price point (~$500), one can get a i7-4XXXT in a fanless barebones setup off Aliexpress, though which CPU you get is entirely dependent on available stock.

[http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Fanless-Mini- Compact...](http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Fanless-Mini-Compact-PC- Computer-Barebone-PC-i7-with-Intel-Quad- Core-i7-4770T-2-5Ghz/800900_2046044868.html)

The case seems to be an Akasa model, or an OEM variant, which rates passive cooling CPUs up to 35W TDP, so 45W cpus offered seems to be pushing it.

I'll probably get one of these, or a Broadwell version when released, once my Novena arrives, to run any x86/Windows only software.

<comment><USER6> I can recommend (no affiliation) HD-Plex passive cases, if that's what you're after. It cools 65W, which is not enough for the most powerful desktop CPU's, but gives you much more power than the Akasa box. It's sold as a barebone to the HTPC crowd but has worked great for me as a general workstation (with no moving parts if you go for an SSD).

<comment><USER7> Hey, thanks for posting this. Very nice.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. I bought the i3 nuc to run my home lab and have been very happy. I really want something with more cores/memory which won't break the bank.

I keep hoping for another nuc in that space, but it looks like I will have to start browsing those chinese sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those haphazardly slapped on stickers push the point home how much we don't need these slapped things on computers and pushed in consumer's faces.

<comment><USER10> ( _That_ is your comment?!)

<comment><USER11> It is a very good point. Although they have equally good or better innards than the Mac mini, these stickers add to the cheap knock-off look in the pictures. People like attention to detail, they want to buy stuff a team was proud of building.

<comment><USER4> I very much prefer the stickers to a huge glowing logo of a brand. These can be easily peeled off if unwanted.

<comment><USER12> I've never met a person that was bothered by the Apple logo. Quite the contrary, people even put stickers of the apple logo on their stuff. There are even studies that show that the presence of the logo in the work area can increase creativity. I'd argue that this is not the case for the ugly Intel stickers.

<comment><USER13> There are people who put stickers on top of the Apple logo (some care must be taken to prevent it from shining through). I guess they're not too happy with it.

<comment><USER14> DNA Lounge has a sticker made for the placement over the Apple Logo. [http://www.dnalounge.com/store/stickers.html](http://www.dnalounge.com/store/stickers.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> According to PassMark, a CPU benchmarking website, the Intel Core i7 5557U isn't that fast:

[https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5557U...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5557U+%40+3.10GHz&id=2502)

Now it only has a single sample, but a rating of ~5000 is a third of the performance rating of a top of the line Core i7 5960, which comes in at 15969:

[https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5960X...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5960X+%40+3.00GHz&id=2332)

This is not what one considers a powerful CPU.

<comment><USER16> It's a U-series CULV CPU. Intel's _mainstream_ chip series have actually been going _down_ in performance, as Intel tries to "recuperate" large gains in power consumption levels against ARM in big gulps with each generation (it can't do that _just_ from new nodes and IPC optimizations, so it also lowers default clock speeds).

Now Intel is pushing even lower-performance chips than the U-series (the Y-series/Core M) for the mainstream, and as we've seen even Apple is going for that in the new Macbook Air.

I wonder if they won't be pushing a 500 MHz (base speed) 3W TDP "Z-series" in a couple of years for most mainstream notebooks (while still charging ~$150-$200 per chip).

<comment><USER17> This trend is incredibly frustrating. I've been looking for a new laptop to replace a ~3 year old ultrabook and I'm actually finding that anything in a similar or smaller form factor actually has _worse_ performance than my current laptop. It's hard to convince yourself to spend $1000 on something which brings no tangible improvement over what you already have (if my current laptop wasn't physically wearing out I'd almost certainly not replace it).

<comment><USER18> Well, the benefit here would be battery life considering the chipset uses less power. Not too long about we were buying ~5-6lbs Dells and HPs that maybe got 90 minutes of heavy use or 120 minutes of light use. Now multi-hour life is the norm on a form factor that weighs almost half that.

Performance, depending on your needs, is probably not CPU bound. My biggest performance upgrade was installing SSDs into all my equipment. Turns out I've been disk-bound this entire time. The CPU just sits there waiting for disk data. Even with super-fast SSDs most people aren't CPU bound. Now they're network bound (why isn't this webpage loading fast enough?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Our company uses two of these as monitor servers in offices - they monitor the local switches, internet connections, and regional availability of our various services. We also cache Debian packages on them, making Vagrant box rebuilds much less painful.

They work great for these purposes, and we rarely have to think about them.

</comment><comment><USER20> Geez, I built an overpowered and heavy desktop for twice the price a few months ago when all I needed was something like this.

</comment><comment><USER7> While the article only mentions them briefly, the Gigabyte Brix is a very nice platform as well. The specs for the Brix Pro did very well too.

I recently installed four (4) BXi5-4200's (w/SSD's and 8GB) into the operatories of a local dental practice and they have been rock solid. 1080p video, crystal clear images, and great audio.

While they seem a little pricey at first, there are few maintenance issues -- mostly software related.

These NUC style devices are the sleepers of 2014-2015.

</comment><comment><USER21> Could wait a bit and build a small and fanless Xeon D (8 cores, 16 threads) server. Don't need a GPU for that, just ssh, for programming.

OTOH fanless i7 NUC is going to be tiny (quarter of the size of fanless mini ITX?). I could take it with me when I travel and that might be worthwhile. Shame it's not quad core.

And I agree the performance isn't too impressive. But tiny fanless PC that's still faster than my laptop might not be a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've looked at these to replace my 5 year old AMD desktop but the 16gb of ram is a dealbreaker for me. I'd like the option of 32 gb of ram do to running multiple virtual machines, does anyone know of a small form factor desktop that will support this?

</comment><comment><USER23> I got the higher end mac mini recently and it's larger than this but I'm very happy with it. Once you add all the necessities into the NUCs, you end up approaching Mac mini prices. I do like that you have more control over the drives inside.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have been looking for a machine to stick under the TV to run Dolphin to replace my Wii, and do stuff I use the PS3 for too. Something with enough CPU and GPU heft to do run the Dolphin emulator at high frame rates. This might do it.

<comment><USER3> The CPU in these things aren't really all that powerful. It's certainly better than a Raspberry Pi, but then it costs 15x as much. I don't know if they're adequate for Dolphin, but when most people talk about gaming on the NUC, they're talking about Steam in-home streaming (which works spectacularly on the NUC, btw).

The NUC makes a great HTPC overall though; you can even VESA mount it so instead of sticking it under the TV, you just stick it behind the TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any idea if there is a NUC that supports triple displays employing displayport mst? Ive been wanting a small form factor pc / motherboard with three displayports ideally.

<comment><USER26> Yes the NUC will do 3 displays through MST

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wish these were steam boxes with a good video card. The size factor is great, I would love to use these as a console replacement. One day, hopefully . . .</comment>


Show HN: Nanobrain.io – 10x smarter than Google - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's a bit slow to have to wait for each individual question/answer to load. At least with Google I can quickly scan for potential hits

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing I put in there seems to do anything? No results, no error messages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea nothing you give nothing you get :)

0 x N == 0

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is a search engine for error messages and their solutions.

</comment><comment><USER4> this is a big claim..

<comment><AUTHOR> Please, see how it works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrsezfswLSI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrsezfswLSI) :D Thanks!!</comment></comment>


Show HN: How to Use the Spread Operator () In JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/livecodestream/how-to-use-the-spread-operator-in-javascript-3aff104adb71 <comment><AUTHOR> Any thoughts on the article? I'm new to writing I'd appreciate any advice.

Thanks</comment>


Analysis vs Algebra predicts eating corn? (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://bentilly.blogspot.com/2010/08/analysis-vs-algebra-predicts-eating.html <comment><USER2> Past discussion with >100 comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4368858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4368858)

</comment><comment><USER3> I start at the base, eat in a row down to the narrow part, then spiral around the narrow part then finish off with more rows.

This is probably the fastest method? First, the big kernels are easiest to start with, hence starting at the base. Going by row is just 1 dimension of movement across. Then clear off the narrow part since that's sort of the "trickiest" part with lots of different sized but ultimately smaller kernels. Then more rows, rotating for each row, 1 dimension of movement across. (But you do have to start back at the beginning of the row where it's already partially cleared to minimize the resistance against biting)

</comment><comment><USER4> What about the modified-typewriter method?

Left-to-right, move down a row but not over, then right-to-left.

The most efficient method of them all.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon)

<comment><USER4> Yes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I heard about this years ago, but just telling friends this last week... of course they were incredulous. So thanks for the incredible link!</comment>


Performance Impact of Removing OOBGC - <AUTHOR> https://githubengineering.com/removing-oobgc/ <comment><USER2> Is this using Unicorn, Puma or something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unicorn, but the idea is the same. Forcing a GC between requests can have consequences on overall request throughput.</comment></comment>


Poland will not accept refugees, they pose a threat to the country's security - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/251850,Poland-will-not-accept-refugees-ruling-party-leader <comment><USER2> So now we have a number of countries that, like the UK, want to have the benefits of being in the EU, but none of the responsibilities. If Poland wanted its "sovereignty" why did it join the EU? Now that it's joined the EU, why does it refuse to play by the rules?

Isn't it too late now to think about sovereignty, especially for the last two batches of countries to join, long after the establishment of the current trend for "ever closer union"?</comment>


BMW will export rice to balance the cars it wants to bring in Argentina - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/10/13/pirelli-to-build-300-million-truck-tire-plant-in-argentina/

<comment><AUTHOR> It appears in the last paragraphs but is the only news in english related to this issue right now.

For a longer and more focused article in spanish: [http://www.ieco.clarin.com/economia/BMW- exportaciones_de_arr...](http://www.ieco.clarin.com/economia/BMW- exportaciones_de_arroz-automotrices-Ministerio_de_Industria_0_571743009.html)</comment>


Converting Garages to Housing - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190617-garages-the-new-affordable-houses <comment><USER2> Oh good, instead of expanding the ways that people can build wealth through ownership, let's find ways of giving existing owners more "income potential" for less! Then we don't have to worry about pesky things like building more infrastructure which benefits everyone.</comment>


Can Developers Really Be Bought Off To Build At Hackathons? - <AUTHOR> http://alexstechthoughts.com/post/23477309234/can-developers-really-be-bought-off-to-build-at

<comment><USER2> I attended a hackathon a little while ago that had an interesting cash arrangement (I'm not naming names as I signed an NDA, and in all honesty I am not sure what I can and cannot say). It was an invite-only event, and each team attending was paid $5,000. The winning team was paid $15,000. The company holding the hackathon owned the rights to any work done.

I think this is a great arrangement. Developers get paid a reasonable sum for a weekend's worth of work, and the company holding the hackathon gets 7 or 8 app concepts pitched to them at the end of 48 hours. It probably costs them a lot less than getting one concept the traditional way. Cutting out the middleman, I suppose.

To answer the post itself: I think it's all about visibility. I have discovered APIs through hackathon sponsors before that I have consequently used later on. Maybe one week later, maybe one year later. But it means they are on my radar.

<comment><USER3> Well, what they were offering here was 10k to win and nothing for everybody else. I told them good luck with that.

<comment><USER4> Didn't everybody get 5k for attending?

<comment><USER5> Asparagui is commenting on the original article, not the parent post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twilio's twice-monthly hackathons were explained to me thusly: how much money would you pay annually for someone to scrounge up 300 good use cases and 100 really excellent use cases for your API product? It turns out $24k is cheap for this kind of data.

It's not about buying developers off and chaining them to your platform (in their case, anyway), it's more about evaluating the boundaries of their product in service of making it better.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Will people continue to use the Mobli API once this hackathon is over? ... Will anyone build anything meaningful on Mobli that lives on for more than a week or two?

I guess the real question is whether developers can be bought off to build at hackathons and if this is a worthwhile route for companies to take or just a waste of money?"

That's a good question, but I feel that there's more ways to measure the value in having a hackathon than just whether developers will continue to use the platform afterwards. Having real people try to make actual applications out of your platform and be creative with it could lead to greater innovation within the company when the powers that be see some of the interesting ways it can be used. Plus, having a hackathon can be great dev karma and raise your profile in the hacker community and the wider community.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe a price can steer devs towards a specific tech but in general I participate in hackathons because it's a relaxed and easy way to learn new coders. You build something together and it's fun, much more fun than having some small talk at the usual networking events.

</comment><comment><USER9> >It's a great thing for both companies and developers.

I disagree. People in the real world look to these events to get an idea of what platforms and frameworks are out there that they should use for their next projects (that's why Mobli is willing to offer this prize). It is _not_ good for developers if that perception gets skewed by which platform has the most cash behind it rather than which platform is actually the best choice.

</comment><comment><USER10> People come to hackathons for many reasons. Prize money for an api at a hackathon is just one way to spend your marketing dollars as a company. On the receiving end, some people try to make a living of winning prizes at hackathons, or at least some serious beer money.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's less buying them off and more of an investment and recruitment activity.</comment>


Can you recommend a solid SMS sending service? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking into implementing SMS sending into a web app.  Can anyone recommend a service with a good history of uptime and delivery?  I don't have to send a lot of messages, but they do have to get there. <comment><USER2> I totally agree Twilio is awesome and I turn to Twilio first whenever this comes up. However, I have found that depending on the Country you are sending messages to you may have to look at other services. e.g. Twilio isn't very reliable in some Countries as well as their pricing can be higher depending on volume.

So just to give you another option I have personally used you can check out, [https://www.nexmo.com/products/sms](https://www.nexmo.com/products/sms). Nexmo did better as far as reliability in messages delivered and costs for a project I did which required a lot of messages overseas. This is a few years back but I'd check them too if you are outside of or are sending SMS outside the U.S.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much for this. I'll need to be sending to a lot of countries outside the US, so I'll have a look at nexmo as well as Twilio. I appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.twilio.com](https://www.twilio.com) until the wheels fall off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Twilio is probably what you're looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Maths book for software engineers who want to learn Machine Learning? - <AUTHOR> Is there a maths book which is aimed at software engineers who don't have much of a maths background, and which is aimed at teaching only the concepts of maths which are needed for machine learning / AI work (e.g calculus, linear algebra, etc)? <comment><USER2> Here is a list of top 16 machine learning books aimed at the data scientist (not what you asked but there is a short description with each book). These books are used by universities like Stanford, Caltech, MIT, Harvard, etc.

And just to make sure that you are aware of it, there are lots of opencourseware with lecture notes and videos.

Caltech/Yaser Abu-Mostafa book info + lecture video at [https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html](https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html)

Stanford/Andrew Ng for course info see [http://cs229.stanford.edu/](http://cs229.stanford.edu/) for video lectures see [https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine- learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning)</comment>


A Dangerous Change To Google Maps - <AUTHOR> http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/07/a-dangerous-change-to-google-maps/ <comment><USER2> I really hope he doesn't actually use Google Maps while driving at 70 MPH. That's a hell of a lot scarier than anything Google has done.

<comment><USER3> Depends on what your definition of "use" is - I, for one, have used navigation software while driving in excess of 70 MPH, in the following manner: the phone is docked in a holder within my angle of vision, display is on, map with directions is displayed, closest direction is read out at an appropriate time (note the absence of user input at this point in the use case, as the route was calculated and plotted before entering the vehicle). How is that scary?

<comment><USER2> Turn-by-turn audio driven GPS is not scary.

But taking your eyes off the road to read a 3.5" screen just sounds risky. I guess if you are on an empty highway in Texas, it would be safe.

<comment><USER3> Shortly glancing at a 3.5" screen - just off the steering wheel - to verify that I am where I think I am doesn't sound risky at all to me; I'm certainly checking several objects of this size (and further out of the road's direction) more often than I check the GPS anyway (rear-view mirrors, the speedometer, and the dashboard combined display, in decreasing order by frequency).

Moreover, if you're doing 70 MPH, you're probably on a motorway - in that case, you should be prety well aware what's in front and behind you, at what relative speed, and how far. If all these are within a safe range, checking a nav unit shouldn't divert your attention for too long for any of these parameters to become unsafe, just like checking the estimated maximum range on the combined display. Of course, abandoning the driver's duties in congested traffic to play with a smartphone would be scary; but that's a different situation altogether.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TorX – Download torrents, watch them online (stream) - <AUTHOR> https://torx.pw/

<comment><AUTHOR> For now you can try torrent files with size NOT more than 1.7 GB</comment>


Amazon to Affordable Housing: Screw You - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/amazon-to-affordable-housing-screw-you-1825734934 <comment><USER2> If you want affordable housing, remove the regulation that blocks people and companies from building high buildings.

Great move from Amazon. Don't take more bullshit from the bloated State.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aside from being obvious clickbait, this headline isn't even accurate. If you want to read an actual news story and opinions from actual residents, start at [https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/8gjdnc/amazon_pa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/8gjdnc/amazon_pauses_seattle_construction_pending_city/)</comment>


Those New Mac Ads - Why We Hate Them - <AUTHOR> http://reviewsindepth.com/2012/08/those-new-mac-ads-why-we-really-hate-them/

<comment><USER2> This analysis is a load of crap.

He's a beta, yet he acts like an alpha. People hate him because he should now he's not an alpha, but doesn't. Huh? Isn't a personality type defined by, I don't know, your personality? He's forward, but indirect. He's servile, but he thinks he knows better. So which is it?

Also, this entire article is seriously bigotted. The beta male should know his place, and we hate him because he doesn't know his place.

Seriously f-ed up.

</comment><comment><USER3> really its cause the old mac guy was in die hard and this new guy wasnt</comment>


Since the UFO footage is mainstream, lets see what our best theories are - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/27/politics/pentagon-ufo-videos/index.html <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858093)

(I know there were more, but can't find them atm.)

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems straight forward to interpret (which means I'm probably wrong.) Since the motions are impossible they didn't happen. Either:

1) The objects were much closer and the high speed motions were apparent motions; or 2) The instruments were being spoofed by: A) DARPA experiments; B) The Chinese; C) The Russians; or D) Some other party (Israelis or ?

<comment><USER4> Nothing impossible about those motions, any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some form of advanced drone or interceptor created by the US, combined with a disinformation campaign.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the general consensus was that the way that the craft was accelerating far outpaced any known tech by a large margin. I was hoping some aeronautics HNers could chime in with their 2 cents.</comment></comment>


Habitable Earth-size planets common, study argues - ~22% of sunlike star systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/23456-habitable-earthlike-alien-planets-common-kepler.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Study abstract, but full thing is paywalled (boo): [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/10/31/1319909110.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/10/31/1319909110.abstract?sid=0f8a93bf-7cef-4973-acad-22ae53f9010e)</comment>