Ask HN: Do you feel like you're in a filter bubble? - <AUTHOR> I mainly browse HN & Twitter for news. Lately, while HN is still my best source of new content, I feel like I'm seeing the same ideas over and over again.<p>Can anyone relate? What do you do to break out of it? <comment><USER2> I had exactly that feeling a while ago. I was looking at HN, lobste.rs, reddit, my tech-news-filled RSS reader at least hourly. My Twitter timeline was packed with tech people, and my podcatcher was subscribed to 50 or so tech podcasts.

This way, I always heard about the newest scandals, *-gates, dramas, etc and I spent a lot of energy and time thinking about them, discussing them with people on Twitter. I let every little piece of drama get to me. I felt exhausted. I felt angry most of the time. I was frustrated.

So, I just stopped. No HN, deleted my Twitter account, didn't attend any tech related event. I unsubscribed from most of the podcasts I was listening to, added some about the things that are going on in the world or other topics that interest me. Or simply didn't listen to anything at all. When I was walking home from work, listening to nature and interacting with the people around me helped so much getting out of this "oh my gosh, there's so much going on in the tech world, I cant' miss out on anything..." feeling. I also (re)started some hobbies that involved me getting away from the computer. Started building and flying multicopter/drone (well, ok, this is somewhat tech related, but not sitting in front of the notebook all the time), cycling, taking long walks, geocaching, ...

I started feeling better and I think that I found a good mixture of "both worlds". I usually look at the top page of HN once a day (before I was constantly refreshing the newest-section), have a new Twitter with a good mixture of tech- and non-tech-people. And I usually stay away from the computer in my free-time.

I don't feel like I'm missing anything. The important topics will reach me eventually (maybe through colleagues). So I might not be on the forefront of everything that's going on. But who really needs this? I thought, I did. Now I know, I don't.

edit: Added a sentence about the hobbies that I forgot to put there.

<comment><USER3>
      This way, I always heard about the newest scandals,
      *-gates, dramas, etc and I spent a lot of energy and time
      thinking about them, discussing them with people on
      Twitter. I let every little piece of drama get to me. I
      felt exhausted. I felt angry most of the time. I was
      frustrated.

It's like regular news all over again!

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it's the same about the "real-world-news". I watch the news once a day on TV (in Germany, there's the really good "Tagesschau." 15 minute round-up of what happened during the day on public television), and read a weekly news paper. No breaking-news sites, no news-outlets in my RSS reader. And I still feel well-informed.

<comment><USER4> Related:

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Get off the internet and spend some time outdoors.

It's so easy to sit in a little digital universe that you are in the center of. You have to consciously move yourself out of that comfort zone.

Ride public transportation and strike up conversations with people. Go for a hike. Volunteer at the library. Sign up for a 5K race.

If you are in a filter bubble, it is of your own choosing, and you need to loosen the filter to let more things in.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention that daily exercise will improve your overall happiness / mental health noticeably. Run, bike, find a rock climbing gym and learn how to rock climb, anything. It is important in so many ways for people like software developers who have highly mentally stressful but physically sedentary jobs to do something physically active and not involving a screen, and to do it daily. Your quality of life will improve exponentially.

<comment><USER7> Amusingly, these are some of the ideas that are surely posted constantly as part of OP's filter bubble. Because, of course, they are good suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These were helpful for me and may or may not be helpful for you:

Mix in editorialized content. Read the New York Times or another major, old publication rather than only sites that have user-generated and user-moderated content. There are certain things that will get upvotes all the time on Reddit, etc.

Similarly, read blogs that are outside your normal areas. For example, if you're into tech and work in tech, read the [http://www.scotusblog.com/](http://www.scotusblog.com/)

Read new science fiction from the library, not the same user-generated recommendations from Reddit and HN. Anthologies of short stories are great for rebooting my brain with new ideas. Worms using tunnels in ice to form a sort of neural network over millions of years? Drag racing aliens? Tattoos that administer medicine?

Also with that, just pull random books off your local library's shelf from time to time. A book about the history of Target? A book about socialism and electricity? Why not?

<comment><AUTHOR> The serendipity of book browsing is something I find very underrated. I do exactly that, in real life, but can't find a way to do it properly (and enjoyably) online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 99% of my browsing is gmail (work), HN (shared values, it makes me feel less lonely) and boardgamegeek. Daily news are junk food for your brain: highly addictive and unhealthy.

> _What do you do to break out of it?_

imho the solution is not _more_ news. Take a break from news sources. I don't use facebook anymore, since I realized it was a major source of unhappiness.

You could try to engage your brain with different inputs, like books. After cutting down my browsing habits, I have been reading tons of ebooks, from front to cover.

<comment><USER10> Not to pick on you (too much?) but a combination of coming to HN because of "shared values" and ignoring daily news sites because they're "unhealthy" doesn't sounds great to me.

HN is very much a bubble. Not just that it's tech news based, but it's also very geographically centered around Silicon Valley and economically centered around the affluent.

To pick a topical example, I'd say that every American ought to know what is going on in Baltimore right now - HN is most definitely not the place to get the full view of a topic like that. And daily news sites don't _just_ do daily news - by example, the Baltimore Sun has a great, in-depth piece that is directly relevant to what's going on right now:

[http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police- settlements/](http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police-settlements/)

<comment><USER11> Or US-centric.

A fair proportion of HN-ers are not from the States and we are not interested in local US news. Really, we're not.

<comment><USER10> HN is pretty US-centric, though. I get that a significant number of users are not from the US, but the site is undeniably US-centric - and I say this as a non-American.

(and just so that we're clear: I'm not suggesting that people should be talking about Baltimore on HN. I'm saying that they should broaden their reading sources to include news like Baltimore rather than just relying on HN for all their reading)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes. It's actually one of my major concerns about 21st-century life: the filter bubble effect promotes extremism in all issues and breaks down consensus.

I'm working on a couple of things to attempt to combat it, but more ideas would be very, very, __very __welcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too. That's why I made this post, but I didn't include any details because I just wanted honest opinions.

Since your profile invites pings, I'll ping you. I'm interested to learn about your approach!

<comment><USER12> Very interested to hear from you too! Looking forward to the email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Read books. [1]

Go to pub for conversation.

Don't listen to normative cunts like me.

rm -rf / that shit and get out there.

[1] EVIDENCE IN WHICH I PRESENT THE NOVEL AND FAR FETCHED IDEA THAT BOOKS ARE GOOD (tm): Last night I read some shitty paperback about some traveler following the route of Marco Polo through Afghanistan, written for a 1980's audience. Cool, I get to find out what Iran / Afghanistan / Pakistan was like in the 1980's & what Marco Polo thought about the 3 wise men & the possibility of how this related to a myth in Zoroastrianism & that there was a parallel myth in a small town in Iran, and that Mathew may have been writing for a Zoroastrian audience, which presented the interesting idea that Jesus may have been a prophet of the Zoroastrians in a way that it was said he was for the Jews. I'm not religious or anything, it's just interesting.

<comment><USER14> Sounds great! what's the name of the book?

<comment><USER13> Oh that one was "In Xanadu" \- William Dalrymple.

I should probably revise "some shitty paperback", what I mean is, I picked it up for $2, creased and it's a "travel writing" genre page turner. Time reading it has been time well spent :)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for letting me know :) Yeah he is a good writer. I bought his book "The last Mughal" last year but haven't managed to read it yet. I'll also keep an eye out for "In Xandu"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What does your social life look like? Do you have a truly diverse collection of friends, or just a handful of people who are like you in terms of race, gender, age, profession, income, hobbies, etc?

News sources are just a symptom. If you don't have a diverse social life, friends and peers who live and think differently from you, you won't have a _why_ when encountering new ideas and information. You won't have the perspective of someone who lives what you just encountered. You'll lack perspective. Without perspective, it's easy to reject and ignore things that contradict what's already in your bubble.

</comment><comment><USER16> Make stuff, build stuff. Create a mental disconnection between new stuff you are learning, and stuff you have learned. Avoid making analogies. Consider that the things you must learn now, are challenges that you can only learn about inwardly. What I mean by that is, disconnect from the hive mind. Make an effort to see the difference. When you were in school, you had to put effort in to learn in a specific way. That way to learn may not be correct forever. Also, learn to live with the knowledge that we are always growing up, no matter how old we get. Sometimes it's not your teachers, society, mentors, authorities, or 'stuff' that have the capacity to make you feel different, or like you are learning something new.

The meme of 'self knowledge' has been viral through the centuries, probably for a good reason. I struggle with it myself, obviously, always seeking the correct explanation, never certain whether I've found it, whether others have found it too.

I like to pretend my brain is a machine designed to process information and it auto-optimizes the way it stores that information. This may not help, but maybe what you have to do is feel like you have to fight your mind to gain control over it, and once you have it, you might be able to destroy the auto- pattern construction mechanic, or at least make yourself more skeptical of it, in that it doesn't see the pattern meaning directly, but sees how it is constructed through a process you designed a long time ago.

<comment><USER17> But what do you do if you keep seeing the same "make stuff, build stuff" idea over and over again?

<comment><USER16> Do you understand the difference between choosing to create a connection between the memory and the present observation?

I think you have to examine what you mean by 'ideas'. If you already know the answer, then does that not demonstrate to you why the pattern continues to repeat?

<comment><USER17> That's some good weed huh.

<comment><USER16> Nope, just studying logic, classical philosophy, and math

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You have to aggressively seek out opinions and viewpoints that you disagree with. Even if - especially if - they make you feel uncomfortable and annoyed. Read all of the opinions that people say are garbage, make them sick, get downvoted, etc. Whatever your ideology is, find and read as much content as you can from the other side.

You may feel especially weird if you intentionally spend a month or two in an artificially created filter bubble opposite to the ideology you hold now. Feeling anti-cop after the most recent string of incidents, for example? Try making an effort to ignore anything critical of the police and read only sources from or sympathetic to the police for a month or two - you might be very surprised how much this changes your point of view, and find yourself in a better position to see the full picture of an issue.

Have faith that if an opinion really is nonsense, you will be able to realize that on your own, without taking somebody else's word for it. On the other hand, you might find that yourself and the people you agreed with are wrong, or biased, or missing an important perspective.

</comment><comment><USER19> > _I feel like I 'm seeing the same ideas over and over again._

You are. I run a small MSP, we work with end-users all day long, small and medium-sized businesses and home users alike. The recurring topics on HN are completely irrelevant to them. Very few new services or products on HN -- maybe a couple per year -- are something we can recommend to them. GoDaddy, Dreamhost, Quickbooks, and Microsoft Office still rule their world. The only YC product that has become ubiquitous in their lives is Dropbox. HN tech topics often reflect small pockets of bleeding-edge techies talking to eachother.

Also, a lot of the opinions expressed in software development here are the diametric opposite of what users want. "Move fast and break things" \-- users hate that. "Release early, release often" \-- users _really_ hate that. "Don't optimize" \-- users are sick of that, we hear about that just about every day, usually in the form of, "why should I bother getting a faster computer, it will still feel slow".

Occasionally I try to relay users' opinions back to software developers and usually it doesn't go over very well. My life is a lot easier if I don't communicate with software developers, and instead tell users that software developers aren't an easy group to work with.

> _What do you do to break out of it?_

I use a custom news reader that helps me stay off HN. I focus on building things and working with users. I spend more time out in the world, instead of reading about it. I remind myself that news is actually not very valuable, that most of the things I read about aren't anything I can take any action on or will impact me directly.

I haven't owned a television in years and have never been a cable television subscriber, and when I get a glimpse of TV at the gym or restaurant or someone's house or elsewhere, it doesn't look like something I want. Online news is gradually falling into the same bucket for me.

</comment><comment><USER20> I see a lot of comments saying to go outside. Not a bad idea, but I think you were looking for new ideas. Ways to be innovative. If that's what you meant, I found one new way of thinking is finding a hobby or interest and pursuing it for a while. If it's ideas for software you want to write so you can make money, then you cross the two (your hobby and your job skills) with "hopefully" a fun project as a result. This is one of many routes to finding market niches. If it's no longer interesting to you, move on to your next item. Most people have a bucket list anyways, so I think it's a good practice for the sake of your feeling of life fulfillment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, thanks. That's what I was getting at. Going outside without changing my information environment wouldn't help me escape the filter bubble.

Thanks for the ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yes. Because of reading [1].

1: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate- anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything- except-the-outgroup/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't feel like it's a filter bubble, or if it is, it's a society-wide one. There are certain political questions where I feel like it's unacceptable to express particular views, but that seems to be the case everywhere.

Non-tech hobbies have helped me meet people from a wide variety of classes, which means I have at least some exposure to a variety of viewpoints. It's worth getting out and off the internet every so often.

<comment><USER15> In America, you can express whatever political views you want. Of course, you might wind up with most people thinking you're an asshole for it.

If you express your opinion and almost everyone thinks you're an asshole, then you're either a genius, or an asshole.

<comment><USER22> What about if a small proportion of people think you're an asshole, but they're enough to get you fired?

<comment><USER23> The flip side is that if you only discuss controversial opinions with people who agree, congrats! You're in the bubble again.

Still, whenever I do run across an online or offline community where people are capable of civil debate and discussion without getting all red-faced, it can be incredibly valuable. It's how I've refined or changed many of my opinions as I got more info and perhaps I've informed the opinions of some other people as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find that people associated with things I'm interested in often have terrible things to say about different things I'm interested in. (For example I come across a lot of hostile anti-HN sentiment at conferences and among coworkers, HN pretty much hates John Gruber, etc)

I'm not sure what that's a sign of, exactly, but I feel like if it were a filter bubble there would be less of that.

</comment><comment><USER25> The suggestions here to track down a diversity of sources are good, but I'm increasingly finding that as soon as I've read a source for a while I come to recognize that it is living inside a filter bubble of its own and start discounting a lot of what I'm reading.

The only places I can stick with are the large, old, mainstream media sites: BBC, the Atlantic, the National Post (in Canada). Each of them has biases and a definite editorial policy, but they are all still making some kind of attempt to be objective about the news they choose to report, where by "objective" I mean "they don't ignore obvious facts, flat-out lie about stuff, or deliberately cast stories in terms of abstractions that make them look like something completely different from the way they'd look if you focus on the concretes." They also tend to provide background pieces to major stories that look at multiple perspectives on them.

These organizations all have some notion that what they are doing involves helping their readers understand their world. Most other places see their mission primarily in terms of either entertainment or influence.

Maybe I'm just old, but keeping those sources for news and following a diversity of people--including a number of mainstream media print reporters and several academics, particularly economists--on Twitter to get personal views of events and ideas seems to be working OK.

With regard to "new content", there are only a few new ideas in the world. Every startup story on HN is going to have some similarities. Every science story likewise. Tech stories even moreso. Our ability to communicate has increased by... how much? A million-fold?... in the past thirty years, but our ability to find things to say has stayed the same. It follows from this that most of what we find online is repetition and drivel (including, likely, this comment).

<comment><USER26> A suggestion I have to avoid filter in news is to read news directly from news agencies (Reuters, AP, AFP and the like).

They aren't perfect, but contrarily to newspapers that are incentivised to pander to their readers, news agencies have a business incentive to be neutral: they want to be able to sell the same article to all sides of the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very much so.

To try to avoid it, I'm ignoring anything political or opinion based on my Facebook account. I've added opinion blogs in my RSS reader that are obviously intelligent and thoughtful but completely infuriatingly different from my own opinions. Once in a while I read them and try to force myself to keep an open mind. It's tough.

I'm trying to avoid using Reddit for anything but stuff that relates to hobbies. Unfortunately a lot of them are starting to get depressingly political. I might have to cut Reddit off entirely if it keeps up.

I get my news from news agencies. Their stuff is significantly less biased than newspapers and news blogs.

I'm starting to read more new litterature. Rethreading the same old stuff that's sure to reinforce my opinions is unhealthy in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER27> I recently subscribed to a lot of tech and non-tech subreddits and unsubscribed from all the default subreddits (the old ones). I sometimes browse /r/all for fun, but its working out well for me.

<comment><USER12> Reddit's a huge filter bubble all of its own, though, with a definite bias in its userbase.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's my exact issue with it. It seems very diverse on the surface, but its faults become apparent after spending just a little time on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Growing up we used to wonder as to why our Dad was glued to the Radio or TV... he was used to watching/listening to news at every possible opportunity..

I realised later it ws no different to my constant refreshes of my favourite sites.

My dad was a school dropout and I theorised this was his attempt to remain informed and that gave him a sense of achievement.

I haven't figured out my addiction to the news, maybe I am taking after my Dad.

I have tried to set limits at it and when I am away from the computer, I have no problem missing the news but when I am close, self-discipline is my only answer for now.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nope, go on 8chan and other controversial sites. You don't have to like what they say, but you'll get interesting ideas and points of view that people won't say on mainstream sites like HN and Twitter. Seek out writers and sites you don't agree with and read stuff that makes you uncomfortable.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." \- Aristotle

</comment><comment><USER30> This is all signal to noise ratio, you have to become aware that repetition is just noise that you need to remove.

Factor down your Internet reading, trim news feeds to no more than 3. The cream should rise to the top.

Most of all create something; craft beer, a novel, an App, mow the lawn, fix a squeaking gate. You'll get a clearer head from a menial task and a sense of something more.

</comment><comment><USER31> _What do you do to break out of it?_

Read something else? It's not rocket surgery.

Also, read on paper with your phone in your pocket.

<comment><USER26> It's not that easy. Filtered news is addictive. It's like children's breakfast cereal with just the candy.

It validates your world views, makes you feel smart for agreeing with all the other "smart" people. I wouldn't be surprised to hear it triggers the same positive feedback loops as other psychologically addictive things.

Once you're thoroughly filtered and addicted, opinions that disagree with your bubbled opinions are painful to read. They feel like agressions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Pick up a hobby, grow house-plants, flowers and see how good atmosphere you can create in your place just by playing a botanist.</comment>


Google Translation + Gmail help people communicate - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/google-translation-gmail-help-people.html <comment><USER2> Theres a slight problem, that being when you put "Ano," which means "year" in spanish, into google translation without the tilda over the n, you get it translated into "Anus."

Now imagine what that would do to a professional conversation when someone mentions a year!</comment>


Problem-Solving Techniques That Work for All Types of Challenges (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2017/06/1514/ <comment><USER2> I struggle with lists like this in part because they are all recall and no situational precision, like a cavalcade of "thens" with no "ifs". That said, I'll offer an additional technique, "waiting for the problem to go away", which can work when damped responses are good. I guess lists like this would benefit from "when not" as well as "when".</comment>


Linux Bootable Clone - <AUTHOR> http://looseassociations.com/twiki/bin/view/Looseassociations/LinuxBootableClone <comment><USER2> I may be the odd one out... but usually I prefer to start fresh... yes there is some discomfort in getting a few things configured... but if it weren't for starting from scratch every 18 months or so, I wouldn't know some of the things that have changed, or features added to default configurations in so many things I use.

Though, I use Windows, Mac and Linux daily, there are some things I tend to take for granted in each environment. Even then, starting bare is often more helpful, despite a week or two of pain realizing I'd forgotten to install or configure something.</comment>


Show HN: Neeilang: Minimalist OOP Language That Compiles to LLVM IR - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I've been working on this language for about 4 months now. While not "complete", it does have a number of nice features like virtual functions, type inference, etc.

I reckon it will not be truly useful until GC is added, and that's what I'm currently working on.

Any feedback is welcome and appreciated!

<comment><USER2> I think it's great that more and more people are spending time working on programming languages. I have a few questions for you about the type system / type checking. Does llvm make it easier to implement a statically type language than other backends? For example luajit? And how did you learn to implement the typechecker? Is it algorithm W?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) LLVM IR is strongly typed, which makes it very challenging to implement a dynamically-typed language on top of it. AFAIK, there aren't many (any?) successful such implementations of dynamically-typed languages. I haven't used other backend libraries, but I do think that looser typing at the IR level would make it a lot harder to catch implementation bugs; at least with LLVM, you are likely to hit an assertion if you break typing rules in the IR.

2) The type-checker is fairly ad-hoc, and I admittedly didn't look much into the literature here. The general idea is that since variable/function/class field types are explicitly typed, every expression can be checked for violating it's expected type. Implementation-wise, this is facilitated using the visitor pattern [1]. For certain expressions, some extra flexibility is allowed - for example, assigning an object of a child class to a variable of the parent class is not a type error.

[1] [https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/blob/master/src/type- che...](https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/blob/master/src/type-checker.cc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> c-smile What is the main goal of it?

By feature set it looks close to D lang so asking.

Yet, have you considered to implement TypeScript instead?

Having native compiler of TS (or at least subset of it) would be beneficial.

<comment><AUTHOR> This main goal for me is learning and not developing a production-ready language. When picking the feature set, I wanted something like Java (OOP, GC, no arbitrary pointers) but without a VM.

I think implementing TypeScript natively would be a very interesting project, but the 'all valid JavaScript is valid TypeScript' part of the spec means you're also implementing an AOT JS compiler, which is much more challenging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> also discussed here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/erqm6...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/erqm6s/neeilang_a_small_stronglytyped_language_oop/)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you add `.md` suffix to your doc files, github will render them for you.

<comment><USER5> I noticed the README had a nice ASCII-ART touch, and briefly thought about converting my .md READMEs back to extensionless plaintext files :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there sample code outside of /test?

<comment><USER7> The page [http://www.github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang](http://www.github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang) is linked from the read me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've updated the doc to Markdown as suggested by other commenters, so it is now available at [https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang.md](https://github.com/neeilan/neeilang/tree/master/doc/Lang.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Iwan-Zotow Isn't it a bit too late (maybe 20 years too late) to work on new OO language? Not that I discourage you, but what areas of OO in languages not explored/expressed by now (say, by C#, Java, C++, younameit) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not discouraging at all - that's a very valid point! Funnily enough, I wanted to try implementing an OO language because they are popular... I use them a lot, which makes it important for me to understand how they work.

<comment><USER8> To get an interesting unique feature I recommend implementing generic dispatch a la CLOS or Dylan. That also makes your library writing a real joy, for example you can just write a plus function for each combo of types.

Check out Dylan, a high performance dynamic language that compiles to LLVM. Check out this example:

[https://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/multiple- dis...](https://opendylan.org/documentation/intro-dylan/multiple- dispatch.html)

This is how to do it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C3_linearization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C3_linearization)

Gives the language powerful uniqueness feature that the 'mainstream' languages don't have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting suggestion! I'll definitely check it out. Looks like this, along with generics, will make the library a lot easier to write. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Magic of the Brain Dump - <AUTHOR> http://blog.attendmind.com/2013/05/the-magic-of-brain-dump.html

<comment><USER2> This little hack works.

Until a couple years ago I often had trouble falling asleep at night because I always had to ride the rapid stream of thoughts rushing through my head. One night the stream went meta, and I recognized it needed an outlet.

So as an experiment, I bought a stack of legal pads and put them next to my bed. Then over several weeks, I wrote down every thought that came to mind and followed every path, no matter how long it took.

The first few rounds took hours -- I'd usually fall asleep with the pad in hand, and the pads were piling up so I had to go get more -- but gradually things subsided. After several weeks and a pile of legal pads, the waters quieted down and I was able to sleep at night. The spillway worked.

Right about the time I completed this experiment, someone serendipitously asked on Quora, "How can I sleep without my mind thinking of a million things?". Just now when I went back to reference the URL ([http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-sleep-without-my-mind- thinkin...](http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-sleep-without-my-mind-thinking-of- a-million-things/answer/James-Thornton)) I was reminded of the quote by Charlotte Brontë -- "A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow".

Now I use Evernote as my thought outlet throughout the day, and this magical little hack continues to work - no more racing waters, no more restless pillows.

<comment><USER3> And were any of the stream of thoughts useful, or was it just an exercise to calm an overactive mind?

<comment><USER2> Yes, most were related to my startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to give major props to <http://750words.com/>

Simple enough, write 750 words a day. But what gets me going is the depth of analytics that just gets thrown in as a bonus after you finish each entry. Emotional state, preoccupations, etc. tracked through time.

You'll have an idea of it if you try and write one.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is an excellent piece. I began doing this, rather subconsciously after being overwhelmed by carrying too many things in my head at the same time.

A long time I had the belief that "smart people don't need to jote down things to remember -- they can hold it all in their head - they're smart :)" And hey, I'm smart -- so I'm going to do the same. Needless to say, it was a very foolish things to believe in.

I would say though, reminding myself to take the _little effort_ needed to write something down, _is_ important. Often time I am too lazy to even press Ctrl+Alt and switch to my text editor and write down what thoughts I as having. Reminding myself to do this, and not carry around various TODOs and other such baggage than slows down my general thinking abilities, is crucial.

Now a question to HNers: I've run into trouble organizing the various "brain dumps" (basically, a collection of text files). I sometimes forget about them, and never get back to them. How do you manage this issue? (ie. how do you organize your brain dumps and make sure things are done, etc.?)

<comment><USER6> I am going to be "that guy" but let me quote something from that wired article about Xanadu and Ted Nelson I read every few years:

> [...] Jellinghaus also began to question whether a hypertext revolution > required the perfect preservation of all knowledge. He saw the beauty of the > Xanadu dream - "How do you codify all the information in the world in a way > that is infinitely scalable?" - but he suspected that human society might > not benefit from a perfect technological memory. Thinking is based on > selection and weeding out; remembering everything is strangely similar to > forgetting everything. "Maybe most things that people do shouldn't be > remembered," Jellinghaus says. "Maybe forgetting is good."

Regarding your implementation problem regarding things that must be done: why not simply grep txt files and decide on a simple set of symbol (eg: X,*,1,etc.) to put in front of lines that have to be processed later on ?

Revisit those txt files later for a good read and see what comes out ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had this same problem for years. 18 months ago, I started carrying around a notepad (Field Notes) and clicky pen everywhere to make sure I could get everything down, and it's made a huge difference.

At the end of every day, I process the last day's worth of notes. Appointments/meetings go onto my calendar, tasks go into TeuxDeux, and cash expenses go into YNAB.

</comment><comment><USER8> I often have thoughts that I want to write down, while I am at work. Because I am at work (not at home) I often don't write them down.

Because of that I'm thinking of developing a 'brain dump' service, that you can send an email to. You would host it on your own device. The service will read it's inbox and add messages from authorized senders to a plain-text repository, and offer the most simple things like login, listing and search functionality.

<comment><USER2> You can email into your Evernote account:

[http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2012/04/20/quick-tip-friday- em...](http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2012/04/20/quick-tip-friday-emailing- into-your-evernote-account/)

Or if you don't like Evernote, you could use Zapier (<https://zapier.com/>) to email into almost any other Web service with an API.

<comment><USER8> Ah, thanks, I didn't know that about Evernote. I've not used Evernote myself because I tend to use Linux, but I'm definitely going to try it with Wine.

<comment><USER9> Evernote and Linux user here. Their web app is quite good, and their Android and iOS apps are fantastic. Having also messed around with their native app on Windows, I didn't feel like I was missing too much since the whole point is really the content of the notes.

For what it's worth, there are a couple clones of the native app for Linux including Everpad and Nevernote. Haven't tried them because the web app does everything that seems necessary for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like workflowy. Low friction to use

<comment><AUTHOR> I love it too. I love the design and how simple it is.

Some of my stuff is in workflowy as well. I use it as an intermediary app for select projects.</comment></comment>


Tortoises, Teleporting Turtles, and Iterators - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2013/02/turtles-and-iterators.md#tortoises-teleporting-turtles-and-iterators <comment><USER2> Wow, I actually got a bit of a buzz seeing one of my older items getting mentioned, albeit via a very circuitous route.

Thank you - significantly improved my day.

 _Added in edit_

It's always bugged me that the top comment on the original HN thread about the Teleporting Turtle claims that the pseudo-code has a bug, and then subsequent, under-the-fold discussions realise that the code is correct.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1068715></comment>


Startup logbook - using Clojure, Ruby/Rails, RabbitMQ - <AUTHOR> http://s-expressions.com/2009/01/28/startup-logbook-clojure-in-production-release-v01/

<comment><USER2> We use JRuby on Rails for my main project at work, but I've been doing some Clojure hacking in my personal time, and thinking about using it for some of our asynchronous job-processing needs. Using JRuby + ActiveMQ + Clojure would potentially let us cluster all our core infrastructure in the same JVM, while still getting nice concurrency across all our available cores.</comment>


I don't care why you won't write for iPhone/Android/PHP/Rails/Mac - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/3d2aaf7da4e2a82cd2c3afd0085a9643e7acbe5f/dumping_ground/nobody_cares.md <comment><USER2> _The fact is, everyone already knows what the pertinent issues surrounding platform and tool choice are._

I wholeheartedly disagree. Every day I read a blog post about some nefarious aspect of an api/platform/company that I had never considered.

For example, I'm glad people are exposing the inequalities of the app store. Without true stories from the inside, all we'd have to rely on are the media fluff pieces of "I rolled out of bed, hacked this little app, and became an insta-millionaire"

<comment><USER3> I agree, and while there is a of of redundancy across these blog posts, the count is very useful in gauging how large the problem is.

please carry on telling us why you are/arent using the language / platform / tools you do/dont.

<comment><USER4> > the count is very useful in gauging how large the problem is.

While I upmodded your comment, I disagree with this. There are a _lot_ of problems with using social media as a metric for anything. For one thing, it suffers from information cascades. The presence of articles on a subject encourages others to write articles on the same subject and there is teh appearance of a snowball effect. But there may be absolutely no change in what people are doing, just a change in what people are discussing.

<comment><USER3> is definitely a fuzzy metric, I didnt mean that people should sit and count all the pro vs con posts, but the cascade works on both sides, everyone is talking about the iphone right now, if a bunch of people werent criticizing it I would see one article explaining the cons and 50 talking about how awesome it it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am the author, and this is not one of my posts. It's something I wrote and put in my dumping ground. That's kind of like a trash can on OS X. I never posted it here and it never showed up in the RSS feed.

As the read me for the folder says... _If you're just snooping around, have fun. Nothing in this folder is meant to be a permanent addition, it's just a handy place for me to dump stuff that doesn't have a home yet._

[http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/dumping_g...](http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/dumping_ground#readme)

It reflects how I felt at the time but it doesn't reflect what I wanted to post, so I left it unpublished. I didn't try very hard to hide it or anything. But it is an "unauthorizd" post and should not be construed as overt advice to anyone.

p.s. Even though this is an unauthorized post, I am upmodding anyone who criticizes it. They are my feelings, so it's perfectly valid to disagree publicly.

<comment><USER5> What was the point of putting it online if you didn't mean for anyone to read it?

<comment><USER4> I think you misunderstand. I'm fine with people reading my unfinished, half- baked ideas, but that is not the same thing as publishing them or claiming they are finished.

I have a directory structure on my hard drive. The "dumping ground" is like a folder of drafts. Have a look, there's all kinds of unfinished and half-baked ideas in there. I publish it to git

I have no problem with people reading it. It's just as if you came by my house and looked at my pond while I was building it. It isn't a secret that I was working on it.

However, allowing people to read my half-baked stuff is not the same thing as publishing them. Whoever posted this actively went there and linked to it. This is very different from when I actively publish a post in my RSS feed, or tweet it, or whatever.

The point being, is this my opinion? Yes. Do I have a problem with you reading my opinion? No. Am I forcing my opinion on other people by publishing it? Also no.

FWIW, my opinion is that HN was clogged with posts about iPhone development, and that I didn't want to meta-clog it with posts about posts. So I wrote this to get the idea off my chest and left it alone.

Besides, I was too busy writing code to polish those few paragraphs up and turn them into an essay!

<comment><USER6> I think you should make it way more obvious than this is "unpublished". Even after reading you saying it here, looking back at the page it took me _several seconds_ to notice "homoiconic / dumping_ground / nobody_cares.md", which is the only clue that this isn't meant for general circulation.

You can't expect thousands of potential visitors automagically guessing the context of a post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In general I agree with the "stop opining, and start hacking" mantra. Though, writing and opinion piece about it sort of defeats the purpose :P

<comment><USER8> Exactly, the next post in line is going to be:

"I don't care that you don't care why I don't write software for $HOTPLATFORM"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You may not care, but Apple (and the other platform creators) should.

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree somewhat with the point he's making. While entertaining, these types of blog posts adds little value to the choice of platform. Things like available resources, customer base and running costs are more important than if it's pretty. Start your own company, not an application provider for/with platform X. A lot of companies fail anyway, and many who succeed end up doing something else than they thought they would do.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like your writing style raganwald.

</comment><comment><USER12> Upmodded for _coital conglomeration_.

</comment><comment><USER13> news.yc would not exist if people followed advice from this guy :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> This person seems to be on some kind of.. crusade, insisting that everything you write be relevant for years, be somehow enthralling..

infact, his very post is the kinda of throwaway that he seems to rail against.

</comment><comment><USER15> Better to assume good intent and not open your mouth...what a maniac.</comment>


Never Hire Job Hoppers. Never. They Make Terrible Employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-suster-never-hire-job-hoppers-never-they-make-terrible-employees-2010-4?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Falleyinsider%2Fsilicon_alley_insider+%28Silicon+Alley+Insider%29 <comment><USER2> There was a bunch of discussion of this yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1287110></comment>


My Hacker School experience so far - <AUTHOR> http://foobarmustache.tumblr.com/post/20927915391/my-hacker-school-batch-2-experience-so-far

<comment><USER2> I'm also in the current batch of hacker school. It's been a humongously, life- changingly fantastic experience.

Before I did hacker school, I thought I was a good programmer. But being in a room with 20 incredibly smart people really makes you realize what you don't know. Since joining, I've:

        -Authored a (now-committed) patch to the python core
        -Written a SPDY implementation
        -Contributed to many open source projects
        -Learned C and Rust

I've also made friends that I hope to keep around for a long time.

In short: If you have any interest, even if you've only done a bit of programming before, apply. They select on passion for self improvement, not skill.

<comment><USER3> Could you be more specific about the minimum level of programming? My programming is still in a nascent stage but I am considering applying to HS and wonder what the minimum bar really is. How would you describe the initial coding level of the least experienced attendee for your batch?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't speak for the founders, but it seems that if you can write fizzbuzz, and in your interview genuinely express an interest in programming, you've got a really good shot at admission. There will be an expanding class size, and I'd wager that the admission ratio will be comparable to last batch. Be confident, study up in the interim, and want it!

EDIT: I'm not too comfortable singling out the skillsets I'd qualify as 'least experienced'. Suffice it to say there are people who do not come from professional programming backgrounds who have picked up enough to write up fizzbuzz, and speak intelligently about the things they've used in the past, and would like to work on in the future.

<comment><USER3> Thanks to all of the replies even though I'm only posting under Jconnolly!

You all succeeded in answering my question and making me consider applying more deeply.

I certainly can write FizzBuzz but I was rather intimidated by the projects that attendees were working on.

Thanks a bunch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Damn it. Stop making it sound so cool. I just applied and I don't need any more competition >_<

Seriously though, it sounds awesome. My CS skills are up to scratch but I'm still a pretty young programmer so I hope I can keep up (assuming I get in).

</comment><comment><USER5> I would love to spend 3 months doing this. I just browsed Hacker School's website and the application question 'If you had time to write any software, what would you build' made me salivate.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should consider it, Schultzy ;D. It feels like what I imagine a mini Y-combinator would be. Similar network effects, more emphasis on being a good programmer than a sustainable business. For the programmer's programmer. They're also mid-way through systematizing the placement process a bit more. It's definitely on its way up.

I managed to continue working at diminished capacity for Bug Labs, and it was a LOT of work to manage both, but it's really worth it.

<comment><USER5> I like the description programmer's programmer.

If I had more funds to sustain myself I'd try to do a batch at Hacker School and then a session at Founder Institute and go into full-time entrepreneurship really well prepared.

But I either need a situation where I can work 20 hours a week to pay the bills or I need to start taking out of the pot I'm saving for starting a business. We'll see what happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nick, Dave, and Sonali have set up a really cool program and it seems to be attracting programming talent like YC attracts entrepreneurial talent.

I was accepted for batch[3] in early Feb and planned on quitting my game industry job and moving to NYC this summer, but a month ago I got an offer from an awesome YCS11 company and ended up moving to SF instead. Best wishes to everyone who ends up going, it's a shame I won't be able to hack with you all. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I seriously entertained joining HS before accepting an internship offer for this spring. The Hackruiter people are excellent, and I've heard great things about the program from HS alums. Apply to Hacker School so I can live vicariously through you!

</comment><comment><USER8> Just read this article and visited "Hacker School", I really love this way of learning and sharing. I will join in Hacker School if I'm an American, but I live in China and it's far beyond my life, sigh...

<comment><USER3> I would be interested in meeting up for fun/ programming practice/ etc. depending on where you live here. If you would like, shoot me an email and we can chat :)

 __Edit: ninja

<comment><USER8> I can't find your email address...can you write to me?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Disclaimer: I'm an employee of, and a graduate of DevBootcamp.

To those that feel they don't have enough experience for HackerSchool, or are just starting out in programming, or looking to start out in programming, I could highly recommend <http://devbootcamp.com/>. We're closing applications shortly for the Summer (June 11th onwards) cohort.

I'd be happy to answer any questions here or via email (email@example.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> I really would love to be accepted... It sounds like so many people are applying though.

<comment><USER2> Don't let that stop you from applying, if you haven't already!</comment></comment>


Scalable Internet Architectures - Theo Schlossnagle - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WuT2rdLK5A

<comment><USER2> worth watching. Would up vote more if I could.</comment>


Running ASP.NET 5 on Lego Mindstorms EV3 - <AUTHOR> http://bleedingnedge.com/2015/11/08/asp-net-5-on-lego-mindstorms-ev3-using-ev3dev/ <comment><USER2> I recently started looking at ASP.Net again after a gap of almost 10 years doing non Microsoft stuff.

It's been a surprisingly pleasant experience. I would put it easily on a par with Ruby On Rails for ease in getting a site up and running.

Windows Azure has also been a nice surprise.

<comment><USER3> My biggest hurdle right now with ASP is actually the tooling.

I'm a huge visual studio fan, it's far better than anything else out there for coding, but for ASP it's in a very strange place right now. It's not clear whether dependencies should be managed through nuget, npm, bower, grunt. It's not clear whether unit testing should be done through visual studio or through external test runners especially for javascript tests.

The move to client-heavy libraries has broken down what was a neat model for references and left visual studio looking a bit confused.

I hope what seems to be a move toward npm will help smooth this out.

<comment><USER4> I'm using all of them in my project, as this seems to be the direction Microsoft is taking as well:

\- Nuget for serverside .net (.cs, .dll) and msbuild (.target) dependencies

\- npm for javascript development dependencies (grunt/gulp)

\- bower for clientside dependencies (.less/.scss, .js)

I'm using the new VS online build stuff as well. In git, none of the dependencies are checked in. So the build starts with npm install, bower install and nuget / restore, then it runs gulp and finally msbuild.

I'm pretty happy with it.

<comment><USER5> this is exactly right. It isn't confused as parent says. They are no longer forcing js packages to be bundled into nuget where they tend to grow stale. The nuget angular package was actually maintained by scott hanselman. Why duplicate the effort when angular is published by the angular team on bower?

Instead of reinventing the wheel, they are leaning heavily on existing OSS that already does the job very well. eg: No more bundling in MVC, that is what gulp/grunt tasks do for the non MS world, so use that too.

No more MSTest which is a poor clone of Nunit, XUnit is the default tool and is used for all ASP.NET internal framework tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Site's struggling - [https://archive.is/fudBd](https://archive.is/fudBd) is a recent mirror.</comment>


A Javascript tool for creating carousel like widgets - <AUTHOR> http://zendold.lojcomm.com.br/icarousel/ <comment><USER2> I recently put together something vaguely like this for a client website. You can check out the effect at <http://kanesrestaurant.biz/menu/menureg.html> . The JS and CSS aren't too heavy. I've tested the slide-in-slide-out effect on Safari, Firefox (Mac and Win), IE (Win, v6 and 7, 5.0 should be OK too). There are still a couple of bugs, but at this point they're pretty subtle. There are two things I like best about it: one, that adding another slide to the series is as easy as adding another div to the html and setting its class to "slide", and two, that I spent some time playing with various algorithms for the actual slide effect before settling on a logarithmic scale.

Overall site is (very) incomplete, and I've got a few too many projects at the moment, so be gentle.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you Always Googling? - <AUTHOR>

What kinds of things are you always googling that you wish there was a faster way to find? For example PHP functions, car specs, etc.<p>Your answers are valuable to me, and the more the better. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Everytime I click on stackoverflow the answer is some pompous windbag who chastised the OP for some trivial error in his post, or claiming it was posted to the wrong base, or some other infraction that wastes your time and the question you want answered is locked. I'd like to evac that site and nuke it from orbit.

You should also use startpage.com instead of google. Less spyware, same results

</comment><comment><USER3> Java Docs for particular classes. MongoDB How-Tos and Caveats.

StackOverflow typically gets first-click answers. It's fast enough.

</comment><comment><USER4> Home listings. I always want to use Redfin's results, but no matter how many times I type in an address and select Redfin, Trulia and Zillow out rank Redfin over and over again. I'm forced to search the address + redfin to get my result. I figured Google would have fixed this for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> "business plan" file type:pdf "business plan" file type:doc "security policy" file type:pdf -site:.edu

<comment><USER5> Ack! There should be a new line between each of those search strings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of searches for php and jquery -- and lately the hack attempts that show up in my server logs, just to see what vulnerabilities they're trying to exploit.

</comment><comment><USER7> site:stackoverflow.com _something something_

<comment><USER8> ... I think we are twins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ideas for apps, projects and startups.

</comment><comment><USER10> CSS rules that I should know by now.

</comment><comment><USER11> The MPEP</comment>


Show HN: CurrencyFormatter.js – easily format currencies in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://osrec.github.io/currencyFormatter.js/ <comment><AUTHOR> Having struggled to find a JavaScript library that can format Indian Rupees properly, we created one! Covers pretty much all currencies and locales, and has no dependencies :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks good. Can you add a link to the github repo on your github webpage?

<comment><AUTHOR> Done :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks good. Is not not available on npm?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll be adding it shortly :)</comment></comment>


Locale app for Android "wouldn't even be possible" on iPhone, says MIT $275K winner - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/10/02/locale-app-for-android-phones-wouldnt-even-be-possible-on-the-iphone-says-winner-of-275k-developer-challenge/

<comment><USER2> Background processing is a big win here.

I think I've probably dreamed up about a dozen cool iPhone apps and then smacking against the "dang, that would require background processing" wall.

I understand Apple's reasoning as far as wanting to manage resources carefully. The problem is that they've missed a huge part of the mobile user experience, which is having a device with you 24/7 that can respond without active user cues. (That's what a mobile phone is after all, in essence.)

Who knows, maybe this is the killer feature for Android. At a minimum, I hope it spurs Apple to deal with background processing instead of simply disallowing it.

<comment><USER3> _I hope it spurs Apple to deal with background processing instead of simply disallowing it._

I hope the iPhone just goes away and we can all get on with our lives. I don't understand why people hope that $FOO changes to be like $BAR when $BAR is already $BAR.

<comment><USER4> because someone mike like $FAR better than $FOO or $BAR

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title is misleading because it is technically possible to implement on the iphone. The only problem is Apple's current 3rd party SDK limitations.

Apple, of course, could develop its own version of Locale.

Informative forum post by Carlos in the linked article:

# Carlos 10/2/08 11:28 am

Facts:

\- The iPhone SDK doesn't allow third party developers to modify phone settings.

\- The iPhone SDK doesn't allow third party developers to run background applications.

\- The Android platform allows third party developers to modify phone settings with user permissions.

\- The Android platform allows third party developers to run background tasks.

Conclusion:

\- You can develop an application like Locale for the iPhone if your name is "Apple". Otherwise you can't.

\- Everybody can develop an application like Locale for Android phones.

<comment><USER6> That's interesting that it's not a technical limitation, but a business decision limitation. It will take Apple probably less than 4 months to come up with the same app on the iPhone, but it will take more than 4 months to debate whether they want to play catch up every time another cool app crops up in Android, or to revise their business decisions regarding their SDK. No ones likes to invest in mere "me too" apps, but in technology you either match quickly, innovate or die. This particularly "lame" app is only a proof of concept that there will be more apps and more developers for Android unless they change.

If you think about it that way this is more serious than if the hardware itself doesn't allow this kind of app to be built.

<comment><USER7> "This particularly "lame" app is only a proof of concept that there will be more apps and more developers for Android unless they change."

More apps? Possible, but it's up in the air. More developers? I would doubt it.

What Android offers in flexibility, it lacks in simplicity and availability. Most people on the planet don't know that Android exists. They wouldn't recognize it if they saw it. Compare that to the App Store, which got pushed out to every iTunes on the planet, and the iPhone, which is kind of a big deal news-wise. (I remember seeing it on the front page of the local paper. That's big considering it was just a tech announcement.)

The iPhone has things to offer developers that Android doesn't. For one thing, it offers slickness: the same slickness that Apple offers with most of its stuff. The ability to easily code apps that feel lickable. It's got the "high quality" name behind it. A lot of developers follow things like that. I'm thinking primarily of Instapaper - Marco has said before that he does not look at Android with any sort of eagerness, and that he doesn't think a Google OS is worth it. And I think Instapaper is by far the best and most useful application I've seen.

No, the iPhone can't pull off Locale. I disagree with your thinking that Apple WILL implement it. Locale seems nifty, but it's not a gamechanging app or anything. I personally LIKE that my apps can't run in the background. Obviously, other people are going to disagree. But you can't look at this and say "Oh, look, Android is going to cream Apple," because it's not, because the two attract entirely different sorts of developers, and because I think Google and Apple both REALIZE that they aren't directly competing here.

<comment><USER6> +1 on this point: "the two attract entirely different sorts of developers, and because I think Google and Apple both REALIZE that they aren't directly competing here."

on a semi-related note I really don't like people comparing Android to the iPhone. One of them is a good looking smart phone...the other one isn't even a phone. Apple has birthed a whole and completed creature, beautiful to behold. Google meanwhile has conjured up a spirit, or a virus that can latch onto any form. Google is hoping that android sticks around and reincarnates into various physical form factors which will one day out number or out-slick whatever any one single manufacturer can come up with. (Like the Nokia Morph!?) If successful it can be eventually be embedded to whatever device replaces the cell phone one day.

Not that many people on the planet knows what Symbian is either, but that's okay with Nokia Ericsson et al.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> (1) Doesn't running the GPS all the time kill battery performance?

(2) Isn't this application a bit of a stupid pet trick? Turning the ringer off in theaters?

(3) It's probably worth repeating that Locale isn't possible on the iPhone because they've deliberately chosen to make it impossible.

<comment><USER9>
      > (1) Doesn't running the GPS all the time kill battery performance?

I don't think it would need to run all the time, though. Something like polling once every ten minutes, checking more often if the position is actually changing, throttled down to e.g. once an hour if it's in the same place as the last two polls, might be enough. Perhaps existing data could also help here, such as noticing if the cell phone towers used have changed recently. (I really should learn more about how those things work...)

      (2) Isn't this application a bit of a stupid pet trick? Turning the ringer off in theaters?

Hey, _I'm_ not going to complain if it becomes popular.

<comment><USER10> In addition, I assume Android has the (old) sexy that is accelerometers. So sitting at your desk or only walking a bit might not trigger it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool idea. I wonder how sensitive it is to the location, and how well it deals when it doesn't know its location?

Also, the iPhone bashing is getting rather tedious and the Android phones aren't even out yet!

<comment><USER12> > the iPhone bashing is getting rather tedious

After reading the article twice, I couldn't find a single thing that even approached iPhone "bashing". The only thing that even came close was posted in the title, and even that was just a simple statement of fact with no malice intended as are as I can tell.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. Its as if someone wrote an article about how to do pointer manipulation chicanery and then commented "this wouldn't even be possible in Java." Its a technical "fact" of sorts here.</comment></comment></comment>


Google I/O Registration 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://stancarney.co/2014/04/google-io-registration-2014/

<comment><USER2> Sounds fun on the surface... for people who have nothing better to do than to be looking at the sources of pages or reading over documentation that's rarely viewed, or watching random YouTube videos.

By the time this was made public and people were able to build scrapers, everything was already gone. Person A finds a ticket, tells his closest buddies so they can find them. Before it's made public knowledge that this happened, all of A and his friends and their friends have tickets. I don't see this as a particularly "good" approach. Why not just randomly pick several developers from GitHub/Google Code and say "here are 10 tickets, give them to your friends"?

I'd much rather a scavenger hunt be announced and all-inclusive of the community. I don't see how this is any better than FCFS or lottery. In fact, the lottery might be the worst of all. It's more likely to be diluted by non- technical people and encourages gaming by having as many employees sign up as possible in any given company, since there's no cost to register.

I don't understand what Google's goal is with I/O attendance.

Is this not one of the most technical conferences of the year? Highly technical talks and sessions for developers by developers. Looking over the talks at 2013 ([https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions](https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions), non-versioned link, so this might point at the 2014 sessions if your'e reading this in the future), everything seems to be developer oriented.

Why, then, doesn't participation require the ability to do something like complete a few simple randomized programming challenges to prove you're capable of benefiting from attendance? Google runs Code Jam, they easily have the infrastructure to do this on the scale that is needed for I/O. It's also certainly not necessary that _every_ seat be given out this way, but why not 70-90%?

I'm happy that they put _everything_ on YouTube and live stream the talks, so I (and everyone else who doesn't win the lottery) can still benefit, but if people are trying to get tickets just to get the toys Google gives out to attendees, I feel like there needs to be much more thought put into the selection process, or Google should just sell those outright to any developer who wants them. I really hate trying to saturate conference attendance by giving out exclusive toys, or toys ahead of market. It typically attracts the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

<comment><USER3> > I don't understand what Google's goal is with I/O attendance.

Excitement. Buzz around the Android developer experience.

It is a fun conference. But lets be honest, if they stopped the freebies, would it garner the same interest from non-tech folks?

P.S. my personal opinions. I attended it once and had a fun time.

<comment><USER2> Does it need to? It's developer-oriented, not consumer-oriented. The "freebies" (really ahead of market or exclusive toys that you pay for, or get some kind of discount on) attract consumers, which is the problem.

If the goal is to have a place to show off all the stuff that's new in Android (or the new Google devices), that seems like a separate consumer-oriented conference. Or the big unveiling keynotes followed by the actual I/O, and the two should have separate attendances.

Look at games. There are many consumer-oriented events (BlizzCon, PAX, E3, CES, etc) to a few developer-oriented events (GDC). And the two don't generally overlap too much.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I don't think a programming quiz to get a ticket is a great idea, but definitely agree (and it seems to be the general consensus amongst more technically capable attendees) that it's nice to get free things, but if they got rid of the giveaways it would improve the audience demographics and actually increase my desire to attend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of trying to get access to an old Hotline server. "The login is the eight word after 'summertime' on the last page of this link. Then, register for this service and the final word of the last paragraph of text is the password."

Either way, off-putting.

<comment><USER6> I think it had its intended goal; jabsters is exactly the kind of person I'd want at Google I/O (rather than someone just hoping for a discount on a new Nexus-whatever-they-give-away-this-time)

<comment><USER7> $900 bucks for a $350 phone ? :) I would say stop giving freebies and see if they still need a lottery..

<comment><USER8> I have no idea what they may or may not be giving away at this years Google IO (they seem to be trying to reduce focus on that) but the retail cost of the free hardware often exceeds the registration amount.

2012 was probably the best overall in terms of retail price of giveways relative to registration fee: Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Asus Nexus 7, Nexus Q and Samsung Chromebox.

Last year was Chromebook Pixels which by themselves retail for more than $900.

<comment><USER9> $900 + travel expenses + hotel/quarters expenses

<comment><USER10> or $0 for a trip around the world and a bag full of goodies. Many companies pay for business trips to tech conferences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think it was a fair play again this year. Hiding url for the registration codes in images etc was not a very smart idea (although it was fun for a while), people hacked into it as well and some people got multiple codes while others got none.

Being an Android developer, I was disappointed, at least only registered developers should have been allowed in the lottery fist or better yet confirmed tickets.

Apple was much smarter and it allowed only registered iOS/OSX developers to sign up for the lottery.

<comment><USER12> Why only registered Android developers? There's a lot more to I/O (and Google) than just Android..

What do you mean by "hacked into it"? Do you mean people used wget -r on the developer docs and grep'd out codes to try?

<comment><USER11> "Why only registered Android developers? There's a lot more to I/O (and Google) than just Android.."

\- Ofcourse, I was just eliciting a contrast to Apple's registration system for developers, Android dev was just 1 use case I'm pointing too.

"What do you mean by "hacked into it"? Do you mean people used wget -r on the developer docs and grep'd out codes to try?"

\- Did you read the blog in full before asking this? In the blog, this is what Stan mentioned:

"By this time several HTTP crawlers had been created by individuals looking to secure a ticket to Google I/O ahead of today's lottery. The crawlers used various tools and libraries to download images, web pages, and Youtube video annotations looking for more codes."

<comment><USER13> I think they absolutely wanted people to write crawlers and scrapers for codes.

Google was created by creating web crawlers that indexed the content to rank pages. This exercise was a tribute to those algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google Code Jam has just started and so Google has the infrastructure and experience to handle large online coding contests. They should have just made Google I/O registration a simple programming exercise. Even a 10-minute in- browser exercise would have self-selected the right audience for I/O.

<comment><USER12> How do you get the design folks registered? You're assuming that every session is a developer based session.

<comment><USER2> Most are (easily > 90%), so why aren't a majority of the seats determined this way? With a quick glance of last year's sessions, I don't see anything that's design focused. Maybe technical designers who also do a bit of prototyping and developing would benefit, but that's a developer-centric role, it's a lot more than design anyway, and I'd expect such a person to be able to complete a simple programming challenge.

[https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions](https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shame I didn't have however many hours to waste looking for codes.

Oh well, I guess I will not spend 900 dollars on IO. No big loss either way.</comment>


How Giving Up Refined Sugar Changed My Brain - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3050319/lessons-learned/how-giving-up-refined-sugar-changed-my-brain <comment><USER2> I feel this is... Well, mostly bullshitt.

First, "changed my brain" is a big, big statement and nowhere in the article is being pointed any MRI scan or something.

Going further: I have experienced something similar (the only sugar I take in during the day is that single pack I put in the one daily coffee I take after lunch) yet I did not feel all this troubles. My opinion is that I did not experience all this problems because I was not looking for it.

<comment><USER3> I think it's mostly bullshit if you generalize the experience of the author for everyone. Anecdotally however, I saw the same improvements to the letter when I stopped sugar intake (not just refined but stopped eating fruits, etc.). I can't remember any withdrawal symptoms though. It was rather easy, but then again I stopped because of diabetes scare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've experienced the vegetables taste better thing, just be lowering sugar rather than giving it up. I currently get about 35% of my calories from carbohydrates, with about 6% of my calories from added sugars.

Before, when carbs were probably 60-80% of my calories, and added sugars were a big part of that, I could taste green beans and carrots, but they were very mild. Corn was a bit stronger, and peas were more of an aftertaste than a taste.

These were all foods that I would eat now and then because they were good for me, but I'd never _want_ them.

Now they taste much stronger, and I often have for dinner just a package of frozen "steam in the bag" mixed vegetables (corn, green beans, carrots, peas) [1]. When I do have those with meat they are an equal partner on the plate with the meat now instead of just something there for their nutrition.

[1] [https://www.birdseye.com/vegetable-products/steamfresh- pure-...](https://www.birdseye.com/vegetable-products/steamfresh-pure-simple- blends/mixed-vegetables)

</comment><comment><USER5> People(and incredibly dieticians) still hang on to the "Calories-in calories- out" as we are engine burning food. Sugars(and most carbs convert to sugars) are responsible to 1.Cellular degeneration: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end- product](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-product) 2.Diabetes type 2(key factor) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes#Type_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes#Type_2) 3.Severe, heroin-level addiction [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907) 4.Brain degeneration and cognitive decline [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15082091](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15082091)

<comment><USER6> Aren't those same sugars also responsible for powering our oversized brains?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've mostly given up refined sugar too. I cook a lot for myself, and almost never have a prepared dessert (a handful of dates or figs, more likely, or an apple).

Once or twice a week I'll have a dessert item while I'm out at a coffee shop, and what gets me now is how unbelievably overly sweet those things taste. It's too much some of the time, even for something as mild as a rice crispy square. Sugared soda or a donut with icing? I simply can't take it anymore, it's far, far too sweet.

And my hunger is sooo much more even-keeled these days, less of a consciousness-dominating craving, more of a hint that it's time for food.

</comment><comment><USER8> This would seem to indicate to calories in <> calories out.

"The only thing that I changed about my diet is I eliminated any calories from refined sugars. And I lost 12 pounds in two weeks."

Has anyone else reproduced this experiment?

<comment><USER9> "It worked, and since then I've remained a healthy weight primarily by making sure I count my calories, don't overeat, and get regular exercise."

Losing 12 pounds in 2 weeks is not "healthy" weight loss, especially for someone who is already at a "healthy weight."

Weightloss over a long period of time is "calories in" = "calories out", but that becomes a matter of will and control, over what your body is going to do (which is not want to lose much weight).

<comment><USER8> He already had a relatively healthy diet. He was counting calories. The question is will replacing a couple hundred calories of sugar with something healthy, like nuts for example, cause one to lose weight?

<comment><USER10> The current scientific consensus says no unless there are issues with digestion.

That said, there are other potential benefits and issues. People tend to forget how energy dense sucrose is. Only fats are denser. (incl. nuts which are mainly fat and protein) So whatever you are replacing them with, you will eat much of, unless it is fat or oils. Or you will lose weight.

<comment><USER11> Sugar contains just 25% more calories compared with cereals while oils and animal fats contain over 2 times more calories. So if one just stops to eat sugar without changing the composition of the food, it is trivial to compensate calory loss with eating, for example, bread made without sugar but with extra oil.

But the article is not about just removing the sugar. As the author discovered, just by giving up on sugar one changes the whole diet. He could no longer consume any junk food and had to start cooking himself. So the real benefits could be in that switch, not in avoiding sugar per se.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One "shortcut" isn't equivalent or "the answer" to a series of comprehensive, corrective habit adjustments. Perhaps the issue is that it's "weird" in Western countries, apart from high society, physical trades and cardiologists, to favor unhealthy, convenience foods and unspoken disdain of almost all physical effort.

</comment><comment><USER13> Needs a (2015).</comment>


Probiotics Are Useless, GMOs Are Fine, and Gluten Is Necessary - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/probiotics-are-useless-gmos-are-fine-and-gluten-is-necessary-nutrition-science-fads-debunked?utm_content=buffer6b355&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> I love articles like this, bold statements that are supposed to apply to everyone. Oh look, my beloved one is not directly alergic to gluten but if she eats some she simply gets sick. Also I have seen her on multiple occasions to take probiotics and have such noticable improvement on her health...

Everyone's different and our health is a result of how well do we know our bodies. This is a life time project, you study yourself and improve on daily basis.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. The title is hyperbolic, too.

"Probiotics are useless" is a three-word clickbait summary for a literature review that showed probiotics have no benefits beyond increasing gut flora diversity in _healthy_ adults. Conclusion: healthy people are healthy, probiotics appear to be indifferent to this process at worst. Probiotics are, however, clinically beneficial to those who do not fall into the ever- transient "healthy" moniker, such as those with IDB, Celiac and other autoimmune conditions affecting the digestive system [1].

"Gluten is necessary" is a three-word clickbait summary for an article about how unless you have a wheat allergy, Celiac disease or gluten sensitivity, eliminating wheat from your diet is net negative because the fortification of wheat contains vital nutrients. Goes on to say eating rice could lead to arsenic poisoning. Tell that to Asia. This speaks specifically to people who replace fortified wheat with unfortified rice in their diet, and the reason it is net negative is specifically the fortification issue.

"GMOs are fine" is a summary of an article that demonstrates there is little science to back claims that GMOs are not fine. The article then argues this should preclude GMOs from having to be labelled as such. If people want to avoid GMOs, why would you deliberately hinder that? I am not sure something being "fine" precludes it from labelling. GMO wheat increased the gliadin content of wheat, which is the antigen that people with Celiac react to. So GMO != fine universally speaking.

[1]: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2219330/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2219330/)

<comment><USER4> Just a note, it is mostly American rice that has high levels of arsenic, in particular brown rice grown in the south.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess we now must expect much more like this from Vice after Rupert Murdoch got them.</comment>


VideoFlow: A Flow-Based Generative Model for Video - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.01434 <comment><USER2> The paper references the code for the project which can be found here: [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensor2tensor/blob/master/tens...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensor2tensor/blob/master/tensor2tensor/models/video/next_frame_glow.py)</comment>


Google Data Center - <AUTHOR> http://harpers.org/media/slideshow/annot/2008-03/zoom.html <comment><USER2> God forbid that Google attempt to conduct its US datacenter operations in locations with adequate local cooling sources, with white foam roofs to reduce internal heat buildup, in an underpopulated area with existing hydroelectric power.

Build more of them near Dulles and in downtown Santa Clara, eh? This article is a fucking hit piece, and it discounts the enormous efficiencies that are realized by the death of the printed page, the standing-inventory retailer, the reversal of suburban car culture, and a host of other things that the 'Cloud' is helping to realize.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you. They're having to dig pretty deep to try to trash Google. I'd like to see the corresponding article about the plant where Harper's is printed.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I become a technology consultant/contractor? - <AUTHOR> After having worked at big technology companies for more than 10 years, I am thinking about quitting the full-time job so that I can spend more time with my child. I want to take a consultant/contractor job which allows me to work from home. As a starter, I don't expect to get paid as much as a full-time job or even close. I only hope to cover my family's living expenses. I have lots of software development experiences, familiar with all major programming languages, especially specialized in building large-scale distributed storage system. My question is: is my goal real? How can I get these jobs? Any suggestion is highly appreciated! <comment><USER2> Lots of places have full or part time remote work. I'm dayjobbing at a Fortune 50 bank, and there's almost no point in coming in to the office. The only person I work with face to face ever is my manager. I come in for a 1:1 meeting once a week, and he's there about half the time. All my other colleagues are remote - only one other is even in the same city!

Be mindful, though, that if you're working from home, you're _working_ still. You can't hang out much with your kid. The real win isn't doing stuff at home, imho - it's getting rid of the commute that easily eats an hour or two a day.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in almost the exact same situation. I'm thinking of moving back to a smaller city and starting up a consultancy firm. I'm going to focus on tech consulting for political campaigns. [http://digisec.bigfeastsoftware.com/](http://digisec.bigfeastsoftware.com/)</comment>


SOA and the Tar Pit of Irrelevancy (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://nealford.com/memeagora/2009/04/22/soa_tarpit_irrelevancy.html <comment><USER2> The bits about code vs doodleware hit hard for me. With a certain proprietary database that I did customer support for, the encouraged development path was doodleware. It was genuinely very nice if you were doing some toy project, but it quickly became unmanageable. The vendor was on their 2nd of (currently 3?) iterations of doodleware for this database, so the tooling for it was crap and would never get better as they would soon abandon it.

I have done in-depth analysis and refactors of dozens of these doodleware objects purely with vim macros. Portable gVim was literally the only thing I could get on the customer supplied Windows laptop to do this job. Export (through a semi-manual hack) dozens/hundreds of 10k line XML files, build a vim macro, cry, cross my fingers that the manual hack to replace the doodleware objects would work, cross them again that the objects weren't irreparably damaged.

Now I'm seeing doodleware on the rise in cloud platforms, making business process flows "easy". Connecting different services "effortlessly".

<comment><USER3> Service oriented architecture is alive and well in the form of ESB (enterprise service bus) (camel, mule, spring integration are examples). They're also xml hell imo, that typically hit all the bad parts of xml; xsl, xslt, versioning, the idiotic half support for namespacing. No, no, not bitter at all :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The essential quote is toward the end:

"The term SOA has been so co-opted by vendors trying to sell stuff that I think it will die off as a term."

I think it did! I definitely didn't remember what it stood for. (The author does provide a definition, but it's on the 25th time he uses the acronym :) )

<comment><USER5> The term is now "microservices".

<comment><USER6> "let's refactor these sql statements as a stateless microservice"...

so we can service 500 users with between 10 and 100 requests a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Substitute SOA for Kubernetes et al and it reads perfectly well :)

<comment><USER8> I spent quite a while with SOA, but I find Kubernetes a little different.

To me, SOA is more about the implementation-- especially the old WSDL-driven part.

But Kubernetes is more about infrastructure. The applications are written in different styles and different languages. K8S is more like a platform than anything else, to me.

<comment><USER9> > To me, SOA is more about the implementation-- especially the old WSDL-driven > part.

That was one of the tragedies of SOA. The S was meant to be service as in windows service but it was co-opted to be service as in web service.

Had it been called Daemon Oriented Architecture things may have turned out differently.

The same thing is playing out now with micro services.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The S was meant to be service as in windows service but it was co-opted to > be service as in web service.

That assertion makes no sense as SOA is a software architecture approach and the communication between services has no impact on the system's architecture.

<comment><USER9> Communication between services has a huge impact on system architecture. A web service is an RPC mechanism, whether it's SOAP, REST, CORBA or whatever, it's nothing new and didn't need a new name. SOA was supposed to be message driven, usually through an ESB or something similar, MSMQ was popular at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having pre-dated SOA, been heavily involved in implementing SOA, and then watched SOA die on the vine, the overriding lesson was that technologists too often focus on syntactic coupling and completely forget about semantic coupling (by far, the harder problem).

For all it's highly proscribed, heavyweight, over-engineered approach, SOA could have succeeded if the focus of implementations been on the semantic coupling problem.

Sadly, I see little evidence that the majority of the current crop of technologists have learned this lesson (irrespective of the technology choices).

[http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/SemanticCouplingTheElephantInTh...](http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/SemanticCouplingTheElephantInTheSOARoom.aspx)

</comment><comment> fake-name Somehow they never even define "SOA". What?

As far as I know, SOA means "safe operating area", and I have _no_ idea how the hell this pertains to _anything_ they're discussing.

Google tells me SOA _probably_ means "service oriented architecture" (or the "society of actuaries"), but geez.

<comment><USER11> > Somehow they never even define "SOA". What?

"SOA" means "microservices for Gen X'ers".

"Microservices" means "SOA for millenials".

I don't know what Baby Boomers called it.

<comment><USER12> > I don't know what Baby Boomers called it.

CORBA</comment></comment></comment>


What are the key ingredients to building a successful startup - <AUTHOR>

Hi there, I'm dillon smart. I have recently launched a new project, anonymous photo sharing, however Im finding it difficult to get thing going. Does anybody have any pointers? The site is melonpix.com if you have a look I would really appreciate some feedback. Thanks. <comment><USER2> When I share a photo I want to be recognised as the author. Give a good reason for sharing photos anonymously and use it as a strength of your product when presenting it to the world. If people like it they will share and spread the word (you can provide means/rewards for doing it also)</comment>


Giant snowballs appear on Russian beach in Siberia - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37883003 <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_shove](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_shove)</comment>


Weatherspark's incredible, intuitive, mind-blowing dashboard is gone - <AUTHOR> https://weatherspark.com/#deprecated <comment><USER2> Had Weatherspark bookmarked for a while now. You guys will definitely be missed and I'm bummed to here this.

As a non-paying user, the honest truth is that the weather space is completely saturated, and frankly I could never justify paying a subscription fee for the weather. I can get the basics anywhere for free, and even the basic integrated Android option is often enough.

Just goes to show that beautiful execution often isn't enough, and that is unfortunate because Weatherspark was very polished and super intuitive. I just didn't feel it offered me enough value to justify paying for.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so sad, I visited the dashboard almost every day :(

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you sure you can't repurpose the dashboard code? Seems to me that there are tools that could help you migrate?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd be happy to donate some time or money towards migration.

<comment><USER6> I would donate some money too..</comment></comment>


Ffmpeg vulnerability allows the attacker to get files from your server or PC - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhabrahabr.ru%2Fcompany%2Fmailru%2Fblog%2F274855%2F <comment><AUTHOR> Short English description:

ffmpeg vulnerability allows reading local files and sending them over network using a specially crafted video file. This affects not only file conversion (including thumbnail generation), but also any other operations that involve ffmpeg processing your file — for example, ffprobe is affected. This is not remote code execution, the vulnerability is limited to reading local files and sending them over network, but that is already bad enough.

For example, a specially crafted «video» file uploaded to your server by an attacker could read your website config/private keys/etc and send that to the attacker once you try to generate a thumbnail for it or just probe it with ffmpeg.

On a PC, you don't even need to open a file to get affected, just downloading it would be enough in some cases — video files are processed with ffmpeg for filemanager thumbnails (i.e. KDE Dolphin), for search indexers, etc.

That vulnerability is public, has code samples to reproduce and build a malicious file, and is not fixed atm.

The recommended quick fix is to rebuild ffmpeg without network support (--disable-network configure flag).

Original post: [http://habrahabr.ru/company/mailru/blog/274855/](http://habrahabr.ru/company/mailru/blog/274855/)

The original text is in Russian, use [https://translate.yandex.com](https://translate.yandex.com) or [https://translate.google.com/](https://translate.google.com/) to read it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Previosly posted as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10893301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10893301), but that eneded up in [ask] due to my mistake.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tell me if I should not have double-posted it here, I will delete one of those posts then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> `brew install ffmpeg` does not appear to default build with network support, so mac is unlikely affected. Although I'm sure there are many mac apps that use ffmpeg and may have it compiled with network support.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone running FFmpeg[1] on untrusted input without sandboxing of some kind is being extremely negligent. It's around a million lines of C that does tricky file format parsing and decoding. There will definitely be bugs in any given version, and some of those bugs will be exploitable.

[1] Or any related tool (ffprobe, etc.), or any tool that uses the libav* libraries, or really any non-trivial multimedia processing tool...</comment>