Fast Nearest Neighbor Queries in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://izbicki.me/blog/fast-nearest-neighbor-queries-in-haskell.html

<comment><USER2> Some great posts on that site. [https://izbicki.me/blog/turning-an-ak-47-into- a-serving-ladl...](https://izbicki.me/blog/turning-an-ak-47-into-a-serving- ladle.html) is good from the non Haskell perspective.

<comment><USER3> Mike's one of the more fascinating people around. One of the only people ever to receive a discharge from the navy as a conscientious objector after he became a pacifist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since you're using the auto-tuned index for FLANN it's going to build a large number of indexes to try and find the best performing one, which can take a _long_ time. Properly tuned I would expect FLANN to be much faster (though that's expected since it doesn't do exact searches). Also benchmarking the index build time together with query times doesn't make sense to me since depending on the application you may not care how long it takes to build the index.

</comment><comment><USER5> "I'd guess that it took about 10 times as much work to create my Haskell-based cover tree than it would have taken to create a similar C-based implementation. (I'm roughly as proficient in each language.)"

Interesting since I would imagine implementing something in C to take much longer than doing the same in something like Python or Java. On the other hand, I suppose getting something to work is not the same as getting it to run fast.

<comment><USER6> He says "Because Haskell code is so high level, it requires aggressive compiler optimizations to perform well."

I think you are basically right. It is easier to make something correct in Haskell, it is easier to make something reasonably fast in Haskell too (generally) but in specific circumstances when you want max performance and care about the assembly or intermediate code output then it becomes easier in a low level language like C to do the performance optimization.

Having said that the 10* effort is an investment if you get a reusable library and will pay off because the rest of your code is in Haskell not C!

<comment><USER7> Great point. His concluding statement aligns with your observation:

"So then why did I use Haskell? To make cover trees 10 times easier for programmers to use."

Default Haskell is certainly not geared toward numeric performance even though it certainly can be with the right libraries.

<comment><USER8> You might be interested in this if you are interested in high performance numerical Haskell:

[https://github.com/wellposed/numerical](https://github.com/wellposed/numerical)

Carter claims he can perform optimizations that aren't possible in other languages, though I can't personally speak to them since I'm not well versed in numerical code.

<comment><USER9> It's not yet in shape for general use, nor for being advocated. There is some tech there that's unique in terms of handing matrix computation on rich formats nicely.

I'd prefer if we reserve advocacy for when i get it to the point where there's public documentation, or at least examples :)

<comment><USER8> > I'd prefer if we reserve advocacy for when i get it to the point where > there's public documentation, or at least examples :)

Very sorry, I'll keep quiet about it until you announce it is ready! :)

<comment><USER9> thanks, i hope that happens relatively soon, though i've been a bit buried with getting life in order, though thats finally moving along nicely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This algorithm operates on trees. But I've always wondered how one can create efficient algorithms operating on general graphs in a functional language such as Haskell?

For example, how would one write a fast version of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm in Haskell?

<comment><USER11> Using mutability.

It's not a sin, just something to avoid when not strictly necessary.

[http://jspha.com/posts/mutable_algorithms_in_immutable_langu...](http://jspha.com/posts/mutable_algorithms_in_immutable_languges_part_1/)

[http://jspha.com/posts/mutable_algorithms_in_immutable_langu...](http://jspha.com/posts/mutable_algorithms_in_immutable_languages_part_2/)

[http://jspha.com/posts/mutable_algorithms_in_immutable_langu...](http://jspha.com/posts/mutable_algorithms_in_immutable_languages_part_3/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not that i'm the proshit haskell expert, but I don't think that GHC does the most amazing job in applying optimizations and I definitely think its performance paradigm is really hard to reason about.

Still, it was a nice breakdown of a real non-toy problem in haskell!

<comment><USER8> I've heard quite the opposite. I've heard that GHC is state of the art in the depth and breadth of optimizations it can perform. I'm struggling to remember if the context was "of everything" or just within pure functional programming.

<comment><USER13> GHC has great optimizations within the scope of modules (and seems to balance for the right level of polymorphism/modularity/linking), and can inline some things across module boundaries. But at the level of entire programs more advanced optimizations are possible; I gather there are tradeoffs too.

[http://mlton.org/](http://mlton.org/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2tpmbo/what_on_ear...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2tpmbo/what_on_earth_happened_to_whole_program/)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4720499/possible- optimiza...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4720499/possible- optimizations-in-haskell-that-are-not-yet-implemented-in-ghc)

<comment><USER8> ML isn't that popular though right? Would it be fair to say GHC had the most impressive optimizations of mainstream language?

With that said I certainly wonder why ML isn't more popular!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really interested to see how the author will turn Cover Trees into a generic inference algorithm for bunch of models in HLearn library.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know what the growth in the dimension is for cover trees? I'm guessing it's exponential in some way?</comment>


ACTA killed in EU parliament: 478 votes to 39 - <AUTHOR> http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/04/victory-acta-suffers-final-humiliating-defeat-in-european-parliament/ <comment><USER2> As expected.

Even most pro-ACTA parties voted against to save their countries leaders from having to find another way out of this mess now that public opinion turned against it. Blaming the EU parliament is a relatively cheap and easy way to nullify their previous commitment (and signatures!), and one that won't result in US sanctions against individual member states.

It's basically a get-out-of-jail card for those countries that did a 180 and would no longer ratify ACTA despite signing it.

<comment><USER3> For once the EU parliament is good for something!

<comment><USER4> It has been good for many things so far, it just doesn't get reported usually.

And if the Constitution Treaty hadn't been rejected by popular vote some years ago, the EP would actually have much more influence over the Commission.

<comment><USER2> "more influence" isn't good enough in a democracy. These are supposed to be the people's representatives. Calling the treaty a "constitution" without it guaranteeing civil rights and true democracy was an insult to the people, and quite rightly buried by those that were allowed to vote on it.

The EP is a joke, a political instrument played by the same people that supported ACTA, and is now being used as a way to get out of it.

Which in all makes it more significant. In reality, it isn't so much that the EP stopped ACTA, but the people who first supported it (people with actual power) that have changed their minds, even though most of them can't admit so directly because of international (read "US") relations. In the long term, that (changing minds) is the bigger victory.

<comment><USER4> "more influence" is enough. In a democracy, nobody has but "influence", that's called "checks and balances". Giving real power to any human being --elected or not-- is generally a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a list of the MEPs who voted yes? I'd like to make sure to vote these MEPs out if I have the opportunity, and I'm sure others would as well.

<comment><USER6> Here's a raw list of those who voted for ACTA

ALDE: Newton Dunn, Takkula

EFD: Allam, Provera, Tzavela

PPE: Audy, Bendtsen, Berra, Cadec, Casini, Dantin, Dati, Deß, Florenz, Gahler, Gallo, Gauzès, Grossetête, Hortefeux, Juvin, Lamassoure, Langen, Le Brun, Le Grip, Lehne, Mathieu, Morin-Chartier, Motti, Ponga, Posselt, Proust, Quisthoudt-Rowohl, Riquet, Rivellini, Roatta, Sanchez-Schmid, Vlasto, Weber Manfred

S&D: Moreira

And those who abstained:

ALDE: Chatzimarkakis, De Backer, Hirsch, Klinz, Krahmer, Lambsdorff, Manders, Meissner, Paulsen, Reimers, Thein, Theurer

ECR: Ashworth, Bradbourn, Cabrnoch, Callanan, Campbell Bannerman, Chichester, Deva, Elles, Eppink, Fajmon, Ford, Foster, Fox, Girling, Hannan, Harbour, Karim, Kirkhope, Kožušník, McClarkin, McIntyre, Nicholson, Ouzký, Stevenson, Strejček, Swinburne, Tannock, Tošenovský, Van Orden, Vlasák, Yannakoudakis, Zahradil, Zīle, van Dalen, Češková

EFD: Rossi, Salavrakos, Vanhecke

PPE: Albertini, Andrikienē, Angelilli, Auconie, Ayuso, Becker, Boulland, Böge, Băsescu, Caspary, Collin-Langen, Correa Zamora, De Veyrac, Dehaene, Dorfmann, Ehler, Essayah, Estaràs Ferragut, Feio, Fisas Ayxela, Fjellner, Fraga Estévez, Gardini, Gargani, Garriga Polledo, Giannakou, Gräßle, Herranz García, Higgins, Hohlmeier, Hökmark, Iacolino, Ibrisagic, Jahr, Jeggle, Jiménez-Becerril Barrio, Jordan, Kalniete, Karas, Kariņš, Kelly, Klaß, Koch, Koumoutsakos, Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou, Kuhn, Kukan, Köstinger, La Via, Liese, Lope Fontagné, Lulling, López-Istúriz White, Macovei, Marinescu, Matera, Mato Adrover, Matula, Mauro, Mazej Kukovič, McGuinness, Mikolášik, Millán Mon, Mitchell, Muscardini, Mészáros, Naranjo Escobar, Niebler, Ortiz Vilella, Pack, Papastamkos, Patrão Neves, Pieper, Pietikäinen, Pirker, Preda, Pöttering, Reul, Rübig, Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra, Sarvamaa, Saudargas, Saïfi, Schnellhardt, Schnieber-Jastram, Schwab, Sedó i Alabart, Seeber, Sommer, Striffler, Svensson, Tatarella, Thyssen, Tıkés, Ulmer, Vaidere, Verheyen, Voss, Weisgerber, Wieland, Winkler Hermann, Zalba Bidegain, Zanicchi, Zeller, Záborská, de Grandes Pascual, del Castillo Vera, Šadurskis, Šťastný

S&D: Christensen, Correia de Campos, Costa, Jørgensen, Schaldemose, Thomsen

from page 19 of this document: [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=PV&re...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=PV&reference=20120704&format=PDF&language=EN&secondRef=RES- RCV)

<comment><USER7> Scary number of Finnish names in that list.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Exactly one. And Takkula is an opportunist turncoat who has pretty much zero chance of being re-elected in the next MEP election. (The centre party probably won't accept him on their list.)

<comment><USER7> Ok, correction: _Finnish-sounding_ names

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Commissioner Karel De Gucht said recently he'd re-field it until it passed:

> If you decide for a negative vote before the European Court rules, let me > tell you that the Commission will nonetheless continue to pursue the current > procedure before the Court, as we are entitled to do. A negative vote will > not stop the proceedings before the Court of Justice.

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120625/12333619468/eu- com...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120625/12333619468/eu-commissioner- reveals-he-will-simply-ignore-any-rejection-acta-european-parliament-next- week.shtml)

<comment><USER9> That's addressed directly in TFA:

> The European Commissioner responsible for the treaty, Karel de Gucht, has > said that he will ignore any rejections and re-table it before the European > Parliament until it passes. That's not going to happen. Parliament takes its > dignity very seriously and does not tolerate that kind of contempt, > fortunately. This is something relatively new in the history of the European > Union's democracy – the first time I saw Parliament stand up for its dignity > was during the Telecoms Package, where the Commission also tried to ram > through three-strikes provisions. (Instead, Parliament made "three strikes" > schemes illegal in the entire European Union.)

<comment><USER8> yes, but the article is written by an activist with obvious bias.

Not a bad thing, but TFA isn't authoritative.

<comment><USER10> Regardless of bias, it is a fact that the Parliament, being a relatively new institution with very vague and weak powers (compared to the Commission and the Council), is eager to pick as many constitutional fights as it can win.

In this sense, the Commissioner's remarks were like a red drape waved in front of a sleepy bull, and were probably the main cause for such an overwhelming rejection.

Never tell politicians that they don't matter; it's the best way to motivate them to prove you wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm very happy about this. Not only because ACTA was bad, but also because this shows the views of the parliament were fairly congruent with the views of the public - and that's always a good thing in a democracy.

Of course, the battle ain't over yet.

<comment><USER12> While this is really good news, and should be celebrated, I'm still asking myself if this would have been approved if a draft wouldn't have leaked. However, we must not rest on our laurels, as I'm sure something else will appear sooner than later to replace ACTA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A victory of common sense. It's nice to see a logical outcome rather than a sponsored outcome (which is how the US and its intensive lobbying works).

<comment><USER14> For what it's worth, some of us _have_ been lobbying our MEPs. We just did it the old-fashioned way, by writing to them and asking them not to support this if they want us to vote for them next time.

It will be interesting to see what really killed this agreement. I'd like to think it was a principled stand against conducting negotiations behind closed doors, or an objection to the dubious copyright provisions, or perhaps the implications for supplying medicines to developing nations.

Sadly, I suspect in reality it was at least partly driven by fear of association with politically toxic subjects like SOPA/PIPA. Still, a win's a win, and if the result here is as straightforward as the reports so far imply, hopefully ACTA is effectively dead in Europe now whatever the (unelected) Commission and (unelected) representatives of national governments might prefer.

<comment><USER13> A big thank you to those who did lobby!

I concur with the toxicity of the subject.

Unfortunately, as I live in the UK, I suspect that ACTA could reveal itself again here.

<comment><USER14> I'm in the UK as well, and have similar worries. My own MP (Julian Huppert in Cambridge) seems to be fairly clued up about these technical/IP issues, but I fear he is in a small minority within Parliament as a whole.

There is a certain kind of person -- I'm still not sure whether it's in the political classes or whether it's an ingrained assumption/bias at the top of the civil service -- who keeps supporting harsh IP-related laws. I don't assume that they're doing it out of malice. I think there _are_ good arguments for having a robust IP framework, at least until someone demonstrates anything more effective at promoting creation and distribution of new works.

But at the same time, as a practical matter, there is inevitably a balance to be struck between enforcing someone's IP rights and protecting someone else's rights of privacy, freedom of expression, and so on. I get the feeling that a lot of the briefings used to persuade representatives to vote for these draconian laws aren't paying much attention to the costs in these areas, only to the assumed economic benefits of having a strong IP regime in place. At least if the problem is ignorance rather than malice/corruption, one possible solution is education, and thus I write to my representatives in the hope that at least some of them will listen.

FWIW, I had about a 50% response rate to a letter to 7 MEPs on this subject, although I don't think I should count the one whose letter basically repeated each of my points verbatim but with the words "I understand that..." at the start of each sentence!

<comment><USER15> > FWIW, I had about a 50% response rate to a letter to 7 MEPs on this subject, > although I don't think I should count the one whose letter basically > repeated each of my points verbatim but with the words "I understand > that..." at the start of each sentence!

3.5 MEPs answered?

<comment><USER14> Well, technically 5/7 replied, but two were little better than auto-reply e-mails mumbling something about sending a reply later (which never came in either case) so I discounted those to leave 3/7 and called it around 50%.

One of those was the utterly vacuous letter I mentioned, so I think I should discount that one as well.

So really, I got only two substantive replies (for the record, one was from a Lib Dem and the other from a UKIP MEP) that genuinely addressed the issue I'd brought up and explained their position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone else pointed out, the concept of Intellectual Property, its goals, and how it is enforced continues to diverge on the two sides of the Atlantic, which is probably a good thing.

<comment><USER17> This probably comes down to the kinds of democracies. In the US we have a two party system where both candidates are the same in most cases. Do you want to vote pro ACTA or pro ACTA?

<comment><USER16> Well, the UK (where I'm from) isn't much better. I'd call it 2.5 party system. Two large parties: Labour (centre-left), Conservative (centre-right), and the small Liberal Democrats (centre to centre-left), and the minority parties. But both Labour and the Conservatives keep moving closer to the centre. And quite a lot of issues you wouldn't have any choice on. For instance, same-sex marriage: Do you want same-sex marriage, same-sex marriage, or same-sex marriage?

<comment><USER18> Should one of the parties also support slavery just so that you have a choice? Eventually an issue reaches a point where the vast majority of the population supports an issue (such as keeping slavery illegal), and when that happens it shouldn't be a surprise that no parties are against it. I hope and think this is what has happened to the issue of same-sex marriage in the UK.

<comment><USER16> Oh of course. I'm in favour of same-sex marriage, personally, and I like the fact almost every important party supports it.

I'm just using it as an example of something that there is very little real democratic choice on, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's strange to live in a world where sanity feels like insanity.

<comment><USER20> I believe you mean, where the common good triumphs over personal agendas.

IMO, in a democracy, we have only ourselves to blame, it's our indifference that manifests as our leaders' arrogance and ignorance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> An important event for subjects outside intellectual property context. The next time someone has the bright idea to create a treaty in secret, people can point to ACTA as an cautionary tale. It alone is maybe the most important victory from this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great, thanks to this thread comments I have realized the only representative "my" party has on the EU Parliament did not vote... but her last bog post says she is happy they wont let ACTA to be approved. I feel... sad

</comment><comment><USER23> There are other laws that are in procedure with the same dangerous lines: TRIPPS IPRED. Europeans, take care, there's more work to do!

</comment><comment><USER24> Next up: TPP. Bring it MPAA/Obama administration!

<comment><USER25> Actually, the government has no idea what's being proposed in the treaties yet the apparent American diplomats are pushing it.

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120629/13095119537/ustr-r...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120629/13095119537/ustr- rejects-rep-issas-request-to-observe-tpp-negotiations.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Even though ACTA is dead, I would like to see those 39 that voted for it lose their seat in office over it.

</comment><comment><USER27> > _The European Commissioner responsible for the treaty, Karel de Gucht, has > said that he will ignore any rejections and re-table it before the European > Parliament until it passes_

Is it just me with limited political understanding or is making this claim publicly just an outrageous slap in the face of EU citizens and democracy? Could someone with better understanding shed some light on the processes at hand and how de Gucht could make that statement without instantly being oust from office?

<comment><USER28> That seems to be how the EU works. They did exactly that when Ireland rejected the Lisbon treaty. Ignored the referendum results and basically told them to go back and vote again, until they came up with the right result.

Also De Gucht was appointed to office, not voted in. There is no democratic way to oust him.

<comment><USER29> Appointed by whom?

<comment><USER30> EU Commissoners are appointed by member states. Roughly one commisoner per state. The European Parliament is elected by the people. The Council of Ministers is made up of the governments.

<comment><USER31> Can not be un-appointed, or are they like US Supreme court judges and serve for "life".

<comment><USER30> They can be removed from office, yes. The European Parliament can even impeech the lot of them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: HelloBlock – Focus on building Bitcoin apps, not infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://helloblock.io/

<comment><USER2> Ya this is really slick looking. There are some issues here and there but it's a new site so that is to be expected.

The close tie in with testnet is a nice touch. A lot of developers seem to forget that testnet is there to help them.

Do you plan on trying to farm additional details regarding transactions such as estimated originating IP address or known address labels?

<comment><AUTHOR> We already collect that information about relaying IPs (although you can never really be sure who is the originating IP). We have custom nodes that specifically listen for that information. However, we decided this wasn't useful enough to be included in the versioned API.

Although, we are about to release labs.helloblock API, which will include a bunch of experimental features, including information about IP addresses.

Out of curiosity, what do you plan to use information about IP addresses for?

<comment><USER2> I work in digital forensics so information like an IP address can be just another piece of the puzzle. It's not something we would base our entire case around but I'm sure it would be helpful in some way.

I certainly understand that it is just an estimate though, thanks to the beauty of the btc network in general and other fun tools like tor and your own transaction relay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> They are clearly a mac shop - their CSS requests the 'menlo' font only for their code examples.

Looks like Times Roman on everything I own :)

</comment><comment><USER4> As a consumer of the API, I can attest that the developers of HelloBlock have a put a lot of thought into the API. Developers of Bitcoin apps might find the Testnet faucet particularly useful: [https://helloblock.io/docs/ref#faucet](https://helloblock.io/docs/ref#faucet)

<comment><AUTHOR> In particular, these endpoints are designed to be used as part of the 'before hook' in your integration tests so that you can start with fresh testnet coins in every test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice looking site :) But, doesn't Blockchain.info already offer a developer API?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you brought this up. Prior to building helloblock, I built a couple of other open source apps (tippercoin / sparecoins) which used the blockchain.info API.

There were a few problems that I encountered. Blockchain.info is focused on consumer and their API is structured to back their consumer facing sites. As such, they have no testnet support. This is a deal breaker. Because that means, any integration tests come at a tangible financial cost.

Furthermore, their API has always been a documented internal API rather than a public one. That meant, there is no versioning on the API and they sometimes make breaking changes without deprecation notice. The lack of versioning caused a bit of issues.

And in general, I found the API is set up in a way that is, frankly, a bit strange. For example, instead of a status code of 400 for an client side error, they generate a 200 status code with an error text in the body. That also caused issues for debugging and error handling too.

In the end, the various quirks finally led us to build this API.

<comment><USER6> You forgot another reason. I've been trying to run several businesses on the BlockChain.info API and it's just plain unreliable. Funds forwarding and notifications of transactions can take hours and that's just not acceptable if you're trying to run a business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean the HTTP webhook for notifications of transactions?

<comment><USER6> Yes, but only with the transaction forwarding feature.

They offer a free service where you can give their API a destination address and a webhook and they'll give you back a individual deposit address.

You can then give that deposit address to your customer. In theory, the customer is supposed to make the payment, Blockchain.info sees the transaction, notifies your webhook, and forwards the payment to the destination address.

The problem is that the system that looks for the transactions sometimes doesn't see them for hours and the webhook isn't notified until the payment is swept.

For example, one of my customers transactions was this one. [https://blockchain.info/address/1PD8c6fjiYT4Hdq3SFavLBGNgV1B...](https://blockchain.info/address/1PD8c6fjiYT4Hdq3SFavLBGNgV1BY2Pgfx)

The money was received but it took 2 hours and 15 minutes for my webhook to be notified that payment was received and for it to be forwarded. In the meantime, the customer who was told that the transaction would be approved after 1 block confirmation was furious.

This seems to happen about 30% of the time with their API.

<comment><USER7> Why don't you just .... use Bitcoin Core. Or bitcoinj, or any API that doesn't rely on third party infrastructure?

<comment><USER8> I'd be curious to have your perspective on the risks of relying on 3rd party infrastructure. That 3rd party can't really try to feed wrong blocks or transactions, it would ruin its business. Then from a practical standpoint, the only attack it can run is a Sybil attack which, when not spending any transaction, can't result in double-spends. So what do you see as a problem relying on 3rd party infra for Bitcoin development?

<comment><USER7> The OP was complaining that blockchain.info has outages (which it does), so there's one reason. But more generally, the whole _point_ of Bitcoin is you don't have to rely on trusted third parties. You might as well say, "the bank can't really try to gamble with your money, it'd ruin its business". But it happens! Now block explorer sites can't gamble with your money, but they can do plenty of other things. The assumption that they won't do problematic things because it'd hurt their business is just as weak. E.g. what happens if they start charging you fees?

But more generally I wonder why people are doing this. If your app really needs indexed access to the entire block chain, you probably designed it wrong. If your app doesn't, then you could as well use local software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Do you have any plans to offer the API for altcoins as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> Which altcoin would you like to see support for?

Although, given the similarities, if we can probably support all the popular altcoins if we do decide to extend support.

<comment><USER2> Honestly, none in particular at the moment and yet also any that's needed. I just see a situation where if I did need to work with two currencies, having an API for one and then building the infrastructure in house for the other seems silly, especially since most alt coins are literally clones of each other.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is true. I can certainly see that.

If enough developers want support for altcoin. I think that wouldn't too hard to do

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those poking around the blockchain might also be interested in coinsecrets.org which shows all OP_RETURN metadata on the main blockchain as well as testnet.

</comment><comment><USER10> Have you put any thought in to enabling CORS?

<comment><AUTHOR> That should already be supported. Are you having issues?

<comment><USER10> Nope, I haven't tried, I was just looking for a quick answer without having to try it out myself!

Thanks for facilitating my laziness. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I took "Show HN" out of the title. "Show HN" is for products and projects that readers can play with now, not just sign up for.

Edit: That's the principle, but it didn't apply to this case. I reverted the change.

I'm posting comments like this for two reasons: for greater transparency, and so you all can tell me when I get it wrong. There is too much material on HN for anyone to evaluate it all accurately, so we're relying on you. Our goal is to have the best stories on the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> dang, this is not just to sign up for.

The project is actually fully functional. The link links to the front page, but if you see the top tab, you will both the API documentations and the blockexplorer.

<comment><USER11> So everyone can try the product now? In that case, I'll put it back. Sorry for getting it wrong in your case.

It's often difficult to make this call, but I do think it's important that HN distinguish email signup and fundraising posts from things people can actually play with.

I'm going to make this thread drop to the bottom to clear the way for on-topic comment. Best of luck!</comment></comment></comment>


Indian firm makes carbon capture breakthrough - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/03/indian-firm-carbon-capture-breakthrough-carbonclean <comment><USER2>
      the race to turn CO2 into profit...

Except baking soda isn't profitable without substantial local consumption. I doubt they'll be able to move it all at a profit, given its low value-to-mass ratio.</comment>


AudioGridder – DSP servers using general purpose networks and computers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apohl79/audiogridder <comment><USER2> This is fantastic. Would it be possible to make it cross platform? I like using Logic on my MacBook, but have an AMD 3900x sitting around too which I'm currently not using for audio. I was looking into running vsti's on it as a slave and just routing audio back and forth, but would it be possible to use it for distributed DSP directly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, as AudioGridder is using JUCE, many parts of the code are cross platform already. But there is some parts of the network code as well as the screen capturing and keyboard/mouse code in the server, that is OSX specific. I would expect the efforts to add support for other platforms to be reasonable. So I hope there will be interested developers, that could have a look at this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is really cool! This is kind of a cloud CPU version of Universal Audio Apollo which offloads on local DSP chips.

What's the lowest latency achievable in practice? I'd be surprised if you can run anything under 50ms, so it's probably limited to mixing use-cases, which is already really cool because that tends to be the "plugin-heavy" phase.

How does it work in terms of licensing for the plugins that run remotely? I'm not familiar with common licenses used by plugins.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can get below 50ms. But yes, the intention building this was mixing.

You can start with no additional buffering In AudioGridder. The additional latency on top of your configured I/O latency (based on the I/O buffer size in your DAW) will be the network RTT plus DSP processing time of one sample block.

The lower the latency the more fragile the setup will be. That's why you can add additional buffering in AudioGridder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprising that this makes sense rather than just doing the processing locally or on the GPU. What kinds of filters are people using that are this intensive?

<comment><USER5> GPUs may be used more and more for usage outside of graphics, but they don't lend themselves very well to audio, in particular recursive filters which are very common.

<comment><USER6> Nvidia has been working on this a lot lately. Check out CUDA Graphs. It's not there yet, but they're working on reducing kernel launch times. You still have the overhead of moving data to/from the GPU, but if you can come up with a complicated workflow that can run on the GPU it may be worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool that this is possible. I wish it gave some numbers about best-case and typical latencies that are added by using this.

<comment><AUTHOR> This requires experimentation. On my network I get around 1-5ms rtt. It's a 1gb ethernet giving around 100mb/s throughput. So I'm _usually_ able to work with an I/O buffer size of 512 samples which is ~23ms at 44,1khz and no additional buffering in AudioGridder. Larger projects with many channels or complex plugin chains probably require larger buffer sizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Will someone please make an external general purpose DSP box (for Max/MSP, etc) similar to an external Thunderbolt GPU?

<comment><USER9> These have existed for a long time. They used to be called sound cards and maybe still are, I've been calling them audio interfaces for the last decade, and getting what you need in this space is an exercise in defining your actual requirements, because there is no standard for what's important and what's not. A good one can do wonders for latency when doing a lot of DSP.

<comment><USER10> That's not what parent is asking for (especially given the context). Sound cards don't perform "general purpose DSP" for "Max/MSP, etc", they focus on input, output, and closely related tasks.

I think the answer would essentially have to be a full-fledged computer running something like the AudioGridder server. Except ironically that still wouldn't help you run generic "Max/MSP, etc", it would only run the plugins supported by AudioGridder (VST3/AU). The scope would necessarily be limited by software, because that software usually expects to be running on your CPU.

<comment><USER11> There are a couple of audio interfaces that have the potential. UA interfaces have DSP chips that can run (sort of) general purpose stuff that could be leveraged by Max/MSP if the SDK were open (it may be, I haven't looked). Also, RME interfaces often have an FPGA in them which I've often thought would be a useful co-processor for audio, but I'm pretty sure that they aren't user programmable either.

Basically, the hardware has been around for ages, but the software is non existent/limited due to the vendors not fully realising the potential of the hardware, and reverse engineering this stuff is really hard!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Super cool!

I wonder how/if it handles latency compensation when used with other plugins.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does take this into consideration and reports it to the DAW. So things stay in sync.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reaper DAW comes bundled with Reamote, which has a similar scope

<comment><USER12> Does that work with AU/VST plugins or just the native reaper effects?

<comment> squeaky-clean All 3, AU, VST and JSFX (the reaper effects). I've never used it but I've heard very complex plugins like Kontakt don't work in it? My info might be way out of date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Awesome - can't wait to try it over the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER15> really cool, excited to follow along, Have you tested in pro tools at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was talking to avid. But their "business" model does not seem to support open source. I have AAX support, but they do not provide me with the signing tools required to sign AAX plugins to get them loaded by protools production builds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> awesome, definitely keeping eyes on this one.</comment>


Monkey Patching in Scala - <AUTHOR> http://zameermanji.com/blog/2013/3/31/monkey-patching-in-scala/

<comment><USER2> (Scoped) Implicits are awesome, it turns out that scope is exactly the solution to the problem with generalised monkey-patching :o

Also props to the author for not using the (horrible) term used in early Scala documentation/papers/books of "pimp-my-library"

<comment><USER3> Bah. Programming should be fun; there's a reason the biggest scala web framework is called "play". pimp-my-library is a memorable way to express an important concept. Documentation shouldn't have to be po-faced all the time.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that pimp has two meanings, the unintended meaning painting a weird picture in my head.

<comment><USER5> Really? The only image I get is a leopard print chevy with a hottub on a trailer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ruby is gradually adding the ability to monkey patch without polluting the global scope via Refinements:

[http://timelessrepo.com/refinements-in- ruby](http://timelessrepo.com/refinements-in-ruby)</comment>


Show HN: Funnel optimization service for bloggers selling products - <AUTHOR> https://www.funneloptimizer.io/

<comment><USER2> This looks awesome. I'd love to see an example of it working on a site.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's live on FunnelOptimizer.io itself, also on my site: brandonhilkert.com.</comment></comment>


Google apologizes for Mocality data theft - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/115264064268941645500/posts/T43MtzPV7Xh

<comment><USER2> Great. Now I just want to know how did this happen and what measures were taken to prevent this from happening again.</comment>


Cameroon is planning a Universal Health Coverage project - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2020/09/18/cameroons-universal-health-coverage-project-and-the-place-of-technology/ <comment><USER2> Although I'm generally very much in favour of UHC I'm worried about how to combine an acceptable level of universal health coverage with an acceptable level of payment for a country with a gdp of about $1500 per person annually. I guess the poorest will be earning quite a bit less than that. Assuming little income inequality you'd be talking 2 dollars a day. how much of that can reasonably be healthcare? maybe 40 cents? that would put the amount of health coverage at 150 dollars annually. Then we have to ask how much coverage can you provide for this amount.. I'm guessing the poor will be pissed about the amount they need to pay and everyone will be pissed at the lack of coverage.</comment>


Hardware Acceleration of Key-Value Stores [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~kubitron/courses/cs262a-F14/projects/reports/project13_report.pdf <comment><USER2> The linked PDF describes a group project from the fall 2014 term of CS262a, a graduate computer science class. Here's the full list of papers, with links to more information about the class:

[https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~kubitron/courses/cs262a-F14/ind...](https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~kubitron/courses/cs262a-F14/index_projects.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Who's Hiring? - <AUTHOR> It's been a while since there has been a "who's hiring" thread.  What companies out are there looking for hackers? <comment><USER2> SpaceX, Los Angeles. With the Obama administration's recent budget recommendations for NASA (cutting the Constellation program), we're continuing our expansion. Mad C++ & Linux skillz? Want to write code that lives on the International Space Station or controls our vehicle while it visits? Think humanity should colonize Mars? Drop us a line, we're hiring. Visit spacex.com/careers for more info.

<comment><USER3> This is quite possibly the first job posting I've ever seen that has made me want to write C++.

<comment><USER4> sending c++ up in space - i's wouldn't want to sit on the spacecraft

<comment><USER4> c++ is legitimately a bad choice -combination of python and c, or compiled safe languages like lisp/ocaml/haskell is better

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ok, it's the third time in less than two weeks that I'm going to pitch it, but I think it's for good reason: I think that a good solution to all of these "who's hiring" threads is on the website that I'm working on.

Please take a look at <http://job4dev.com>. We want to make it more than a simple job board. Our goal with this site is to make it a tool where people can do research about the job market on their own. A "wikipedia of the tech market", if you will.

Things that are relevant to recruiters: posting jobs is free, provided there is enough information about the company and the nature of the project.

Things that relevant for job seekers: you can get custom RSS feeds, based on location (you can filter by country or state), type of job (part-time, contract...) or by tags. So if you are a Python programmer in Boston, you might be interested in this: [http://job4dev.com/jobs/feed?province=MA&country=USA&...](http://job4dev.com/jobs/feed?province=MA&country=USA&tag=python&lang=en)

Just for now, you don't need even to create an account to use the website.

I added myself some companies: I got listings from Mixpanel (<http://job4dev.com/company/mixpanel>) and AdMob (<http://job4dev.com/company/admob>).

Please, take a look and _help me help you to find a job_. :)

<comment><USER6> I appreciate what you're doing. But I don't appreciate you sending me an email culled from my listing here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Salesforce.com - Looking for a disillusioned web developer that just spent a year or two bootstrapping own startup but now wants to save some money, get some health insurance, and live in San Francisco.

Build cool demos with me and then one day...go back to the startup world.

You are 70% backend, 30% frontend.

We'll pay you a lot.

<comment><USER7> If you must see the actual job description, here it is: [http://www.salesforce.com/company/careers/locations/a0800000...](http://www.salesforce.com/company/careers/locations/a0800000000Ab4dAAC/a017000000HmbRr.jsp)

It's vague for a good reason. We don't want someone who has been coding in only one language for the last 5 years. We need someone entrepreneurial...more like a jack of _many_ trades.

I know there are people like that out there and I'm willing to wait to find someone good.

<comment><USER8> I just sent you an email, but I forgot to mention that, yeah, sure, you can pay me a lot. Consider this my P.S.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My company (<http://postabon.com>) is hiring 1-2 great programmers in NYC!

These are our first technical hires, so you'd have a huge impact early on in a growing startup!

Experience with Git, Linux, a dynamically typed language (Python, Ruby, etc), a functional language (a lisp, Haskell, etc), HTML/CSS/JS, mobile app development, etc. (or any subset thereof) would be great.

If you come work for us, we'll pay you well, give you benefits and equity, and you'll get to work on a lot of cool stuff. In the short term, we need to do a fair amount of front end work. In the longer term, you would have the option to work on a variety of other things (depending on your skills/interests) like mobile app development, building a facebook app, machine learning, moving into the (Lisp) backend, and a lot more.

Email me (address in profile) if you're interested!

</comment><comment><USER10> If you are posting job opportunities for a large company (Google, Facebook, Yahoo etc.), can you please provide personal contact info. Many people likely already applied at such firms but were nicked because of their more unique backgrounds.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone hiring for non-technical positions?

I'm posting this on behalf of my wife, but I'm sure there's some other people on this site that would be interested working for a startup, but aren't necessarily programmers or designers.

So, anyone hiring in non-tech positions? Ad inventory management, sales, project management, content administration... any of those jobs needed to actually run a site.

(Submitted this a few days ago, but it fits under this topic better than by itself.)

<comment><USER12> yes <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1104550>

quantcast

<http://www.quantcast.com/info/job-listing>

feel free to either contact me or submit job via web form

<comment><USER11> I'll let my wife know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> LinkedIn is hiring across all our groups. Mostly a java shop, we are also working with Scala (and, semi-covertly, Clojure (at least I am at any rate)). <http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=jobs_open>

<comment><USER14> Nested parens. Nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bump Technologies: We are looking for smart people that fit our culture. Mac/Obj-C/iPhone/Cocoa/Android experience a plus, but not required if you are interested in learning iPhone or Android.

The Bump App is one of the most popular iPhone applications with >9M downloads. Our Bump SDK lets anyone add bumping to their app in ~9 lines of code. We have a big vision and are having a lot of fun! :) Half of our dev team came from HN. YC/Sequoia/Conway backed.

Email email@example.com and mention HN.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Democratic National Committee is looking for engineers to help us build out tools for the 2010 elections and <http://www.barackobama.com/>

More info here: <http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/6116>

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if PG should implement a feature for a regularly scheduled article for this question.

The alternative is for one of the expanding membership of this site to randomly decide there hasn't been a discussion of this topic "in some time" and post this and get some quick points (not saying that this is happening here, now, but I can see the potential for abuse)

<comment><USER18> Coax:

Created 100 days ago, karma 41.

<comment><USER19> Account creation dates are just that, when the account was created. Personally, I was reading the site for a while before I ever created an account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Android / iPhone / Web / Backend

We speak scala, Obj-C, java, python, Thrift, whatever gets the job done.

#1 productivity app on Android, and TechCrunch/MobileCrunch named us(3banana) one of the top ten apps on Android.

Please shoot me an email at email@example.com

Looking for folks to come hack with us in South Park, SF.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=953052>

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm looking for members on my team here at TripAdvisor, near Boston. We're building apps: facebook, iphone, "and others.."

Drop me a line and I'll fill you in with more info. Or you could come to a talk I'm giving at MIT on Monday and meet my haircut in person!

</comment><comment><USER22> BackType is hiring software engineers. Our tech blog has a small glimpse at some of the tools we're working with: <http://tech.backtype.com>

We're also contributing to some cool projects: <http://github.com/nathanmarz/crane>

</comment><comment><USER23> Could be nice if the poster could said if the jobs are US-only. Begin in Mexico I know I would appreciate it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Axolotl is hiring developers to work on health information exchange web applications. In particular I'm trying to find a specialist release engineer. We're in Silicon Valley. <http://www.axolotl.com/careers.html>

<comment><USER25> Awesome, awesome company name btw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> We're hiring across the board, from Python developers to sys admins.

<http://www.yelp.com/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER27> PARC is hiring. <http://www.parc.com/about/careers/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Ning is hiring. We have some Apache guys, some PHP guys, etc. We need more people in Ops!

<http://about.ning.com/careers/index.php>

<comment><USER10> Can you post your email please

<comment><USER28> What do you need, exactly?

<comment><USER10> I would like to find out more about your role, how you like it there etc.

<comment><USER28> Ah, OK. E-mail me at <firstname.lastname@example.com>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Squarespace (NYC) is looking for developers. We're building some cool new stuff and we have a good time doing it. Drop me a line at email@example.com if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER30> OpenDNS is hiring really fantastic computer scientists who want to run very large systems.

A focus on global networks, security, and performance.

Lots of C, Linux and FreeBSD, BGP speaking processes and some python are all in use here. The website front-end is PHP. New tools are welcome.

Your code will touch our 10s of millions of end-users every second of every day.

</comment><comment><USER31> ITA software is hiring an implementation engineer in Cambridge, MA:

<http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/jlisting.html?uid=718870>

ITA's the place to be if you're into the air travel industry. The job is to be a technical go-to guy for airline/travel IT folks while they get up and running using an ITA product, like our search engine QPX. There's a lot of freedom, management gets out of your way and you just do whatever needs to get done. You can use any language for personal projects, web app demos, etc. Knowledge of lisp is a plus. Also we get catered Friday lunch, free snacks, great benefits, and a surprisingly good tea selection. You can ask me questions or shoot me your resume (email in profile) but along with your resume, do one of those programming puzzles we have up on the site.

</comment><comment><USER32> CollegeHumor is hiring a PHP developers. We are in New York City. Come work for us!

<http://www.collegehumor.com/jobs#job_18>

</comment><comment><USER33> Guidewire Software in San Mateo is still hiring developers (and QA and product managers), primarily on the more senior side at this point. Applications are written in a mix of Java and our C#-ish JVM language called Gosu (open sourcing later this year, we hope), the platform infrastructure is pretty much all Java, and we do a lot of testing and use a lot of agile practices to organize our releases. You can apply from the website (<http://www.guidewire.com/about_guidewire/careers_listings>), which will go straight to HR, or send me an e-mail (akeefer at guidewire) directly if you'd prefer and I'll answer any questions you have and/or pass along your info the appropriate parties.

</comment><comment><USER34> SB Nation is hiring engineers and designers: <http://www.sbnation.com/jobs>

We're a network of community-driven, fan-centric sports news sites, with a passionate audience of around 9 million. It's an interesting and challenging space to be working in, especially given the current transitional period for news media.

Engineers mostly code in Ruby/Rails. Other stuff in the stack: Linux, Apache, Mongrel, HAProxy, Memcached, Solr, MySQL. We have nice offices in a great neighborhood. People are smart and friendly. We're well-funded, pay well, and have solid benefits. It's a good place to work.

We're based in Washington DC but are open to remote workers. Apply at our jobs page or email me directly if you have any questions.

</comment><comment><USER35> We're looking for a Lead Developer at SeatGeek.

We're in Manhattan. Truly compelling work; good comp/benefits. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to learn more.

</comment><comment><USER36> Posterous is hiring frontend engineers, designers, and Rails hackers!

<http://posterous.theresumator.com>

</comment><comment><USER37> Twitter is hiring for systems, frontend, etc. We're pretty polyglot but the majority of integration with the web app is ruby, a good deal of the backend is Scala and the rest is whatever works best.

<http://twitter.com/jobs>

<comment><USER37> Okay, really, I want you to apply for Systems. We're building horizontally scalable, distributed, big data systems that can take unprecedented growth. The company is only a 134 people right now, and your impact as a developer would be huge.

<http://twitter.com/job.html?jvi=oAPbVfwf,Job>

<comment><USER38> Sounds interesting. I'll apply. (I'm a new grad from Case Western, and I'm really good at learning languages and systems I don't know quickly, and I have at least a passing familiarity with tons of topics.) I am curious though: the requirements mention "deep knowledge of a compiled language". What part? The language, the compiler, the libraries, the generated code, or something else? I've got the first two in spades for C (and Objective-C, but somehow I doubt you're using that much) and can figure out most anything about the third and fourth in a few minutes with the right book or Google query.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> EnticeLabs is hiring hackers with a thing for UI and print design in the Salt Lake City / Provo Utah Area. We're turning the HR Recruiting space upside down, growing like crazy, and have great customers.

Learn more about us at <http://www.enticelabs.com>

Check out the position here: [http://www.enticelabs.com/EL/engage.me?j=489def8a421da130759...](http://www.enticelabs.com/EL/engage.me?j=489def8a421da13075902b253113d8f1&s=67cd9392421da1300a6308fd8175096d&i=67b52828421da1300a6308fd085f7e2e&a=67b3a784421da1300a6308fd528ce569-fb612502421da1301a29f5949f3ff804&m=67cd91a3421da1300a6308fddf3b6fdd)

</comment><comment><USER40> Anybody hiring in India/South East Asia??

On a separate note - maybe we should start a thread for startups outside the US looking for devs.

<comment><USER41> Yes, Wingify (Delhi based) is looking for software engineers to work on online marketing technology. <http://www.wingify.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Any European startup hiring ?

</comment><comment><USER43> TomTom in Amsterdam is hiring. Looking for junion and senior Java/Javascript/Flex/Scala/Lucene/GridGain/Hadoop/Mahout folks to work on next-generation location services. Ping me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER44> Mixpanel (realtime web analytics) <http://mixpanel.com/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER45> HarQen is hiring. Venture backed. Working on a web telephony platform. We hope to be to voice what Oracle was to databases.

We're looking for a Java Ninja.

More info here: <http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddrmdxkz_107d7szcqfw>

Plus test out our flagship product here, incidentally an interviewing tool: <http://interview.harqen.com/interviewnow/2113/2965>

Bonuses points: \- Member of an above-average band \- Like Indiana Jones 1-3 \- Invisibility

</comment><comment><USER46> kaChing is hiring. <http://www.kaching.com/company/jobs>

We're disrupting the mutual fund industry: $11 trillion market. Whoa.

Looking for great hackers: Java, Scala, Rails. Downtown Palo Alto CA. Lots of cool tech and a 5-minute commit-to-deploy cycle.

</comment><comment><USER47> AboutUs is hiring: <http://www.aboutus.org/AboutUs.org/Jobs>

We have a lot of interesting challenges--if you want to deal with tons of data and pretty high traffic this is a pretty great place to be.

We're primarily Ruby/Rails. A new project features HAML, SASS, and well- factored javascript. We use Scala for some heavy lifting. We use MySQL, Memcached, Tokyo Cabinet, and are evaluating Cassandra for our backend. It's a challenging place to work.

</comment><comment><USER48> Eventbrite is hiring a frontend dev, a serious python backend engineer, and a UX expert.

If that's you, email me at luke at eventbrite. Awesome, profitable, growing, Sequoia-backed company.

</comment><comment><USER49> NREC (CMU's Robotics Institute applied research arm) is generally looking for people with robotics background (perception, planning, positioning) and good C++/Linux development skills. We write software to automate anything from tanks to haul trucks. If you've worked with cameras, lidars, GPS receivers, inertial sensors, are a machine learning expert, or hacked your Roomba to vacuum better than your mother, let us know!

</comment><comment><USER50> Qype, Europe's largest local review site is hiring, if you're looking for a job in Europe/Germany:

<http://en.blog.qype.com/qype-is-hiring/>

we are a small team with big challenges ahead. Location based services is an exciting area, we're experimenting with "20 percent time" and looking for great Rails developers and a sys admin/operations engineer.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is a post for entry level jobs.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1104493>

<comment><USER52> This comment should be at the top of the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Webs.com, right outside Washington DC (Silver Spring, MD).

Looking for a front-end developer (HTML/CSS/JS) - email me if you're interested: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER54> Working at Webs, for me, was a life changing experience. They took a chance on me when I was young & inexperienced and really launched my career. It's a gem in the DC/MD/VA area.

Great work environment, smart people, and an awesome place to work.

<comment><USER53> Haha, I always forget you're lurking around these parts.

The man speaks the truth, people. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm also looking to possibly add a contract head to my roster. I run a small technical services company who develops connected TV/OTT/interactive TV applications. We're based in SF and likely would need someone on site in the SOMA/South Park area. I'm in the same building as Engine Yard and Sauce Labs (Sauce Labs actually rents a few desk in the same suite as me - though they're mostly in their own space now). We've done work for CBS/Brightcove/ The UFC and a few others.

I'm looking for a contract junior dev mostly with Javascript skills, but with the ability and desire to dive into new platforms and programming languages.

Can't guarantee much right now but I have a ton of work in the pipe that could make this a regular to full time position.

Drop me a line firstname.lastname@example.com if this sounds like something you might be interested in.

</comment><comment><USER55> Red Hat is hiring: [https://redhat.ats.hrsmart.com/cgi- bin/a/alljobs.cgi?qty=25&...](https://redhat.ats.hrsmart.com/cgi- bin/a/alljobs.cgi?qty=25&order=jobs.timedate%20DESC)

(Don't worry much about the location as you search -- most positions allow working from home too...)

</comment><comment> brown9-2 CitrixOnline (makers of GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC, etc.) has a number of positions in the Santa Barbara / San Francisco area for software engineers, primarily using Java.

<http://www.citrixonline.com/careers.tmpl>

<comment><USER56> I have a bunch of friends working there and they all love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Successfactors in San Mateo, CA is hiring:

Application Security Architect [https://performancemanager4.successfactors.com/career?compan...](https://performancemanager4.successfactors.com/career?company=sf&career_job_req_id=5529&career_ns=job_listing)

Application Security Pen Tester [https://performancemanager4.successfactors.com/career?compan...](https://performancemanager4.successfactors.com/career?company=sf&career_job_req_id=5532&career_ns=job_listing)

Application Security Code Reviewer [https://performancemanager4.successfactors.com/career?compan...](https://performancemanager4.successfactors.com/career?company=sf&career_job_req_id=5531&career_ns=job_listing)

</comment><comment><USER58> Nasuni is hiring - Cloud Storage startup near Boston, MA (Natick). Python developer, Test/QA Engineer, Inside Sales Rep, Admin. Assistant.

We're in stealth right now, please do contact us if at all interested!

<http://www.nasuni.com/sub/jobs/>

</comment><comment><USER59> We have two positions available. For both we would like at least a year of experience with C#, but if you're a perfect fit in every other way we'd still like to talk to you.

1\. We're looking for someone who's really good with MS SQL Server (database design, query writing, administration, etc...).

2\. The other position is for a web developer and designer that can quickly build professional looking dynamic web application GUIs and connect them up to the backend.

The company is Conversive, Inc. <http://www.conversive.com/> We are a small, but growning, customer service automation solutions company. Location: Agoura Hills, CA. If you'd like more info, you can contact me at "aaron" at the above domain.

</comment><comment><USER60> We're hiring in Sofia, Bulgaria:

<http://blue-edge.bg/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER61> AdMob is still hiring software and operations engineers for a variety of different roles. E-mail jobs@, visit <http://www.admob.com/home/jobs>, or e-mail me directly at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER5> Hi Kevin, hope you don't mind, I took one random listing from the website and put it on job4dev.

\- The company page is located at <http://job4dev.com/company/admob>

\- The listing I took is located at <http://new.job4dev.com/jobs/708/admob- performance-engineer>

Please feel free to add others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Google is hiring for positions everywhere.

<comment><USER63> I can't find your email address on your blog or in your profile. I know you're pretty new there but I'd like the chance to talk to someone working at google now.

Submitting resumes online is like dumping stuff into a black hole :(

<comment><USER62> My email is my user name at gmail.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> My firm Hashrocket is hiring senior web designers, front-end specialists, and Rails programmers for our offices in Chicago, Jacksonville Beach and Santiago, Chile. Might have a position for a geeky business analyst too.

Current headcount at 35 and growing fast by doing kick-ass work for our clients while sticking to strong Agile values like fulltime pair-programming, strict BDD and quick iterations. We're known for our deep expertise in Rails, but quickly growing a reputation for our work with MongoDB also.

Email firstname.lastname@example.com for more information.

</comment><comment><USER65> oneforty inc. (Brighton/Boston/Cambridge, MA) is looking for a front-end user experience person: <http://bit.ly/oneforty-ui>

</comment><comment><USER66> American Roamer in Memphis, TN is hiring. We are the leading provider of wireless industry data and data analysis. If you've seen a map of coverage availability, it's likely that we made it. We provide an interactive mapping tool written in Javascript with Ruby and Java backend services. I'm pretty sure local candidates are being considered first.

<http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/6160>

</comment><comment><USER67> Yahoo! is hiring

<comment><USER68> In particular, Yahoo Mail is hiring top Javascript and front-end programmers. We have wicked smart people working on one of the most popular apps on the web, and we're looking for more. Drop me a line; my email is in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Atalasoft is looking for support engineers. We make .NET imaging SDK's and all of our customers are developers, so all of our support questions are programming questions. See <http://atalasoft.com/company/careers> to learn more or apply. We're in Easthampton, MA in the western part of the Massachusetts (2 hours west of Boston, 45 minutes north of Hartford, CT).

</comment><comment><USER69> We are. Ruby on Rails shop (<http://turingstudio.com>) - we essentially operate as an external engineering team for startups. Current projects include a well-funded, pre-launch social networking project for preteens, a web-based CRM for non-profits, lots more in the pipeline. Distributed team, smart people, desperately need more engineers. Hit us up at email@example.com.

<comment><USER11> Where are you based? And if you're not in the SF Bay Area, are you open to telecommuters?

I can't find an address on your site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Blue Frog Gaming is always looking for hackers to help us make social games. Experience with RoR or Actionscript is a plus but not mandatory.

<comment><USER71> What is a way by which a person interested in such a position could contact you? I looked at your blog, which was quite interesting, but I did not see any method by which to contact you other than the comments on the blog.

<comment><USER72> I would assume through here: <http://www.bluefroggaming.com/jobs.php>

But a direct way to contact him/her would be nice so that you don't have to deal with getting past the HR wall of nonsense (i.e. 30+ years of Java experience).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> We're looking for .Net devs (Silverlight experience a bonus). We're based in Guildford in the UK. You can find out more about what we're going from a video we've just done for channel 9 [http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/David+Gristwood/Real-World- Az...](http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/David+Gristwood/Real-World-Azure- Projects--Sharpcloud/).

Email me if you want more info.

</comment><comment><USER74> We're hiring Frontend and Backend engineers with varying range of experience from fresh-grads to experienced. We're a LAMP shop (P is for PHP). We're doing a lot of interesting technical projects that are bridging the print (physical) and social gap. Send your resumes to firstname.lastname@example.com and put [HN] in your subject line.

</comment><comment><USER75> IMFT is hiring.

<http://www.imftech.com>

[https://imflash.taleo.net/careersection/10000/jobsearch.ftl?...](https://imflash.taleo.net/careersection/10000/jobsearch.ftl?lang=en)

Electrical/Computer Engineers with strong programming (C/C++) skills are welcome to apply for the Probe Test Engineer position.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone hiring for less-experienced roles? Either for new grads, or for someone who is trying to change careers.

<comment><USER52> I'm in the same boat... It seems that startups have even more stringent hiring requirements, because they want someone to prototype fast from day one.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I guess it's a bad time to switch careers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Ventana (in SF) is hiring coders, user experience experts, and other people excited about creating something to make healthcare simpler and better. <http://www.ventana.com/corp/careers>

Coders should apply with a puzzle solution (comments, questions welcome).

</comment><comment><USER77> Bizo is looking for a UI/UX person in the SF/Bay Area. We are a good group of people and the company is growing fast. We recently came in second place in the Amazon Web Services Challenge and also raised about 6M from Bessemer Venture Partners.

Most of the eng team are HN lurkers and/or commenters...

Drop me a line: donnie at bizo

<comment><USER78> I just joined the Bizo team three weeks ago. Great company, fantastic people (~15 total now), and, as Donnie said, we're growing very quickly.

Bonus points for foosball, ping pong, or GH/RB skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Craigslist , developers in San Francisco. If you are coming from HM send me an email to pablo @ craigslist.org

</comment><comment><USER80> Rackspace Cloud <http://www.rackspacecareers.com/>

</comment><comment><USER81> Justin TV <http://www.justin.tv/jobs> Please apply (:

</comment><comment><USER82> Storm8, the #1 Role Playing Game company on iPhone is looking for someone to hack with us. ([http://www.storm8.com/2010/01/18/software-engineer- objective...](http://www.storm8.com/2010/01/18/software-engineer-objective-c)) We are located in Redwood City, CA.

</comment><comment><USER83> If you want to work for an _awesome_ financial services startup in London, look no further than youDevise!

<http://www.youdevise.com/about/careers.php>

(I use to work there before I needed to move back to the states - I miss it a lot!)

</comment><comment><USER84> Flurry's hiring. New York or San Francisco. Looking for developers with Java experience that want to work with large datasets / Hadoop, also possibly some mobile phone client work - iPhone, Android, Blackberry, possibly others. Mail greg -at- flurry dot you-know-what.

</comment><comment><USER85> Trulia is looking for a few good search engineers. In SF, good culture, not too big, not too small. Java but not enterprise java, hadoop, solr, lucene. Great place to work. <http://www.trulia.com/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER86> Hands on Apps engineer for series A startup tackling energy efficient lighting. In bay area. Looking for smart problem solvers, as this product is in a new space (networking meets LEDs). <http://bit.ly/dcMTVy>

</comment><comment><USER87> We are at Performable. We're located in the Boston area and open to telecommuters for the right person.

More details here: <http://www.startuply.com/Jobs/Software_Developer_1984_1.aspx>

<comment><USER88> Y'all related to Exceptional? Have a similar name and that logo is practically identical. <http://getexceptional.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Panjiva, a NYC/Boston startup I worked for last summer, is hiring (<http://panjiva.com/jobs>). Their web app uses Rails and they're looking for a web app engineer and an information retrieval engineer.

</comment><comment><USER90> Mochi Media is looking for hackers.

       Work in SF.
       Code in Python, Erlang and ActionScript(Flash).
       Open Source contribution a plus.

See <http://mochimedia.theresumator.com/>

<comment><USER91> I'll toss in a recommendation for Mochi Media. They were very accomodating to me during my brief stint with them 2 years ago. The briefness was my doing, not theirs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Inventables is looking for a few awesome ruby/rails engineers in Chicago: [http://www.inventablescorporate.com/careers/positions- availa...](http://www.inventablescorporate.com/careers/positions- available/software-engineer/)

</comment><comment><USER93> We're always looking for green-but-promising and rockstar-veteran software engineers, preferably with C# and C++ experience. Local to Reston, VA, USA is pretty much a requirement.

<http://www.appassure.com/>

</comment><comment><USER94> Invite Media is hiring in Philadelphia and New York City.

<http://www.invitemedia.com/careers/open_positions.shtml>

Big engineering problems, an amazing team, growing quickly, and free food/beer!

<comment><USER95> Would love to hear more -- can I email you with some questions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Gravity Mobile (<http://gravitymobile.com>) is looking for smart, experienced, engineers with J2ME/BREW/iPhone/Android/WinMo/Blackberry skills. Email to haseman at gravitymobile dot com.

</comment><comment><USER97> I might be looking for a subcontractor if a contract comes through.

Looking for a good all around programmer with database and web development skills (Python a plus). Ideally I'd like someone in the MD/DC/VA area but remote work might be possible.

Email me if interested.

</comment><comment><USER98> Wikispaces is hiring in engineering and sales: <http://www.wikispaces.com/jobs>. We'll cross 4M registered users today (see our front page). We're an 8-person company in SOMA.

</comment><comment><USER99> DailyBooth is looking for talented engineers. Email firstname.lastname@example.com for more info.

</comment><comment><USER100> We're hiring a Facebook Developer or just a PHP developer who wants to do Facebook apps.

[http://egghaus.com/2010/01/12/hiring-facebook-application- de...](http://egghaus.com/2010/01/12/hiring-facebook-application-developer/)

email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER101> I'm hiring a Jr. PHP/Drupal developer. Great gig for someone fresh outta school. <http://www.fiercemarkets.com/about_us/join_our_team?job=3>

</comment><comment><USER102> Kiha in Seattle is still hiring people, especially if you have experience with Android (or other mobile development), NLP, data mining, or web services. <http://www.kiha.com/>

</comment><comment><USER103> Trulia.com in San Francisco is hiring engineers who know PHP, Java, or system administration.

<http://www.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qzZ9Vfwm>

</comment><comment><USER104> Presence TeleCare is hiring. (<http://www.presencetelecare.com>)

We're looking for a good Flex engineer. We're an early startup and it would be our second technical hire.

</comment><comment><USER105> Lolapps is hiring! We're looking for smart engineers to work on social games. Check out: <http://www.lolapps.com/aboutus.php?s=jobs>

</comment><comment><USER106> I'm looking for someone In the SF Bay area with metal casting experience to do some paid consultation. I know, this isn't programming related, but it is science related. Email firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER83> Have you looked at <http://thecrucible.org/> ? Perhaps they could put you in touch with someone.

<comment><USER106> Yeah, I did. They're more about teaching than putting artisans in touch with potential customers. There's nowhere on the site I could see to get in touch with community members. Kind of funny, since they proffer themselves as a community organization.

<comment><USER83> That's too bad. The only other thing I can think of is TechShop, but they don't have the same focus. I know they at least have a board up in the kitchen area where people put up ads and requests, but I don't know if there would be any casters. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> We're hiring java devs in London, we're working on Mobile payments, SMS, MMS and VoIP

<http://www.mxtelecom.com/uk/careers/roles/softdev>

</comment><comment><USER108> Dolby is hiring, in Santa Clara, looking for a javascript/REST/Erlang/Mongo person to hack/design/etc on a distributed validation engine. DM f00biebletch or email kevin.mcintire at dolby.com.

</comment><comment><USER109> I'm looking for a freelance developer to build against a business plan. I have a $15K budget at present. Selling tickets and downloads. adrian at bopgig dot com for further info.

I might do front-end work.

</comment><comment><USER110> We're looking for mobile developers and UI designers in Palo Alto. <http://www.thinkcomputer.com/corporate/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER111> Justin.tv is looking for a data engineer (analyst) and a mobile products engineer (iPhone/Android hacker).

( <http://www.justin.tv/p/jobs> )

</comment><comment><USER112> WePay is hiring PHP engineers in Palo Alto, CA (www.wepay.com)

</comment><comment><USER83> We're looking for Rails and Flex developers: <http://www.blurb.com/join_us>

edit: And helping people make books is cool! :)

</comment><comment><USER113> drop.io, Brooklyn, NY.

Most of our stack is in Ruby - always looking for good front-end hackers as well. Especially if you like clouds, you might be into what we're cooking up. Check out <http://drop.io/jobs>, <http://dev.drop.io>, or stalk us here: <http://twitter.com/ChrisRicca/drop-io>

<comment><USER113> nearly forgot - I'm firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER114> i got stood up twice by the founder of drop.io who never showed up to two separate meetings he setup.

really awesome to have to pay $20 you don't have for a taxi to meet the companies founder and then have them not show up, twice.

i would highly advise against applying

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> Facebook is always hiring, check them out @ <http://www.facebook.com/careers/?ref=pf>

</comment><comment><USER116> Wikia is hiring in SF and Poland. Both technical and product roles.

<http://www.wikia.com/Hiring>

</comment><comment><USER117> MileMeter, in Dallas, TX. See <http://milemeter.com/jobs> for details.

</comment><comment><USER118> Posterous <http://posterous.theresumator.com/apply/>

</comment><comment><USER119> Last.fm are: <http://www.last.fm/about/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER120> Digg is hiring (<http://about.digg.com/jobs>)

</comment><comment><USER121> we at neustar have a ton of openings for software developers etc. Our better known brands are webmetrics and ultradns

[http://www.neustar.biz/about-neustar/career- information/job-...](http://www.neustar.biz/about-neustar/career- information/job-listings)

<comment><USER56> UltraDNS is awesome! (But I'm biased since I did the Admin UI.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER122> Any one out in Tx?

<comment><USER117> MileMeter in Dallas, Tx. See <http://milemeter.com/jobs> for details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> Google is hiring.

</comment><comment><USER124> Salesforce.com

</comment><comment><USER12> Quantcast

We're a rapidly growing, venture funded company.

We have a bunch of interesting problems -- from pixel servers that see a pretty decent percentage of the internet's net web traffic, to scaling our large hadoop cluster, to real time bidding on ad exchanges, to predictive models for demographics.

If any of the above sounds like your thing, feel free to drop me an email.

</comment><comment><USER4> do your own thing - why work for someone else? With platform as a service like aws,appengine,heroku you can build your own salesforce/google/ebay from scratch with no money/hardware/scaling bs

<comment><USER4> being downvoted on a site all about startups for suggesting to do a startup!

<comment><USER125> Still Off-topic for the thread, tho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Slideshare is hiring in their San Francisco (SOMA) and Delhi offices <http://www.slideshare.net/about/workatslideshare>

</comment><comment><USER126> ExtraHop Networks in Seattle, especially if you're into systems-level programming or networking. Email me: ben@

</comment><comment><USER127> Fi you're looking for work in the Minneapolis are and have .NET and mobile phone skills, holler.</comment>


Google confirms Nexus S will get Ice Cream Sandwich (Gingerbread devices too) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/19/google-confirms-nexus-s-will-get-ice-cream-sandwich-for-real/

<comment><USER2> I was hoping my trusty old Nexus One would be able to hop on to the ICS bandwagon.The Update at the bottom just dashed my hopes after the headline raised them. In my opinion none of the more recent Nexuses have been able to match it for looks (Nexus S looks positively ugly).

<comment><USER3> It is a disgrace that a phone I bought less than 2 years ago will not run the latest OS.

Not really, but just jumping on the OS bashing bandwagon, a few hates did with iOs 4/5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nexus S is pretty much a given—it came out this year. The real question is the Nexus One. As an N1 owner, I hope so.

</comment><comment><USER5> without any new hardware requirements I think a lot of phones will see ICS, if not officially than through many of the great roms available. I have a fairly old phone running latest cm7 gingerbread and it still runs great. Looking forward to ICS.

</comment><comment><USER6> ICS does look much nicer, can't wait till CyanogenMod offers this (if they do).

There's no "phone must have at least 2 core CPU" requirement somewhere is there?

</comment><comment><USER7> The question is what happens when the phone has actual hardware buttons and you port the OS to it which has virtual buttons in it...that gets weird I think...

<comment><USER8> Are you seriously considering the fact that virtual buttons will be always present regardless of the presence of hardware buttons ?

<comment><USER7> The way he showed the virtual buttons last night made them seem highly customizable by each app for different purposes. So once app creators start making these custom virtual buttons for their apps, they will not have multiple versions of their app for phones with and without hardware buttons...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there going to be source code for this release?

<comment><USER10> Yes. They said that they didn't release the source for Honeycomb because there was no support for smaller devices because they were "cutting corners". I closed the tab a few minutes ago otherwise I'd have the link for you.

<comment><USER10> Found the link: [http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/18/exclusive-matias- duarte-i...](http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/18/exclusive-matias-duarte-ice- cream-sandwich-galaxy-nexus/)

This is the exact quote: "On Honeycomb we cheated, we cut the corner of all that smaller device support. That's the sole reason we haven't open sourced it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great, now all I have to do is to either jailbreak my Galaxy S or wait 2 years for an official upgrade.

<comment><USER12> As a fellow Galaxy S owner, install a custom rom, darkkys or similar, it makes it a new phone, much zippier and they'll have ice cream sandwhich going not long after the source is released (and it is being released)</comment></comment>


The Mathematics of Aircraft Boarding - <AUTHOR> http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_06.html

<comment><USER2> The suggested system by this guy is very similar to the method employed by Southwest Airlines.

Grouping is mostly by check-in time, and groups are let in, in order, but seats are chosen at random by people. This means that as soon as someone sees a "good" seat, they get down, and people can keep moving. This has its own issues, but in my experience flying on many different airlines, leads to the smoothest and fastest boarding I've experienced.</comment>


Aaron's domain registration runs out in Sept. We should archive it in his memory - <AUTHOR> http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/Aaronsw.com <comment><USER2> Aaron left instructions for his digital estate.

<http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/continuity>

<comment><USER3> "I'm not dead yet!"

Damn, that feels weird to read right now.

<comment><USER4> People live on in their ideas.

<comment><USER3> Too true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've emailed both Linode and Name.com asking if I can pay for his domain and hosting to continue on for eternity.

<http://d.pr/i/2ysc> (and they're looking into it - <https://twitter.com/namedotcom/status/290111405410091008>)

<http://d.pr/i/CEji>

<comment><USER6> You need root access to his linode. Eventually something on his instance will break and take everything down with it.

Even if you keep the bills paid forever, the only long-term solution is to focusing on archiving static copies of everything you can.

<comment><USER7> I second this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It might be a good idea to collect, archive and publish (on-line) his collected works. I have a feeling that there is still much we can learn from him.

An Aaron Swartz memorial online library.

</comment><comment><USER9> This might theoretically be copyright infringement. Since Aaron didn't specify any license (like CC) for his blog, reproducing his content without his estate's permission is technically illegal.

<comment><USER10> If IRC chat logs are legally admissible, I can provide documentation going back to at least 2001 of Aaron being in favour of putting all of his work into the Public Domain.

<comment><USER11> Please, please save those IRC logs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Might not be true for all TLDs, but I think you can actually pay to renew one's domain even if you don't own it.

<comment><USER13> "but I think you can actually pay to renew one's domain even if you don't own it."

In general it depends on the policy of the registrar (we are a registrar).

But even though renewing the domain gets by the defacto problem of payment there is still the contract between the registrant and the registrar. If the registrant dies then something happens to that contract. As a registrar for example we don't care who pays for the domain name and this happens quite frequently (designer pays etc.). But paying for the domain doesn't get you access to login and gain access to the account. In order to do that there would have to be some legal document (court document) which allows the new person to take control of the account. (And we've received this).

Now on a "wink wink nod nod" basis of course a registrar can do what they want to do whether legal, allowed or not.

But in the case of this domain, if we were the registrar, we wouldn't because the entire thing is to high visibility.

It would actually be quite easy for someone to (for whatever reason) blow the whistle on name.com doing something like this. ICANN may look into it and do something (they are auditing 1/3 of the registrars right now) or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would like to save his entire site on my Hard disk. I did not know he had written some gems on his site.

<comment><USER15> Luckily his site works very well without javascript, so `wget --max-redirect 0 -mk <http://www.aaronsw.com/`> would give you something like this:

<http://dl.nux.ro/aaronsw/www.aaronsw.com/>

(~53 MB - <http://dl.nux.ro/aaronsw/www.aaronsw.com.tar.bz2>)

<comment><USER16> Don't forget his quote blog.

<http://qblog.aaronsw.com/>

<comment><USER15> <http://dl.nux.ro/aaronsw/qblog.aaronsw.com/>

<comment><USER17> <http://dl.nux.ro/aaronsw/qblog.aaronsw.com/page/2>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know a lot about his personal life - does he have a family or anything?

I'd happily donate them some money to help with things - I know that it's not easy tying up someone's personal life - funeral costs, lawyers, etc.

<comment><USER18> <http://rememberaaronsw.tumblr.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm sure his site has enough google juice that people will fight you for it in the auction after the redemption period, unless his family takes care of it before it enters the aftermarket...

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone have source to theinfo.org or any of its previous versions? I have a full archive of the short-lived mailing lists and would like to ensure this site isn't lost.</comment>


30 billion dollar hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2012/03/the-30-billion-hack

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have corroboration? I mean, Cringely has a history of overstating his claims, and this story is _very_ thinly sourced. The only evidence that Cringely presents is the one Wall Street Journal article that is, by his own admission, inadequate to support his claims.

Further, he presents the existence of Form 14039 as further evidence of massive tax fraud without any indication that correlation in this case is due to causation. I mean, on the basis of this article alone, I have no reason to conclude that the IRS introduced this form for the purposes of addressing or covering up this fraud. In fact, a much more likely scenario is that identity theft is now so common, the IRS has formalized its procedures for dealing with it by creating a new tax form. Finally, I don't see any of the "draconian policy changes" that he's referring to on the horizon.

This entire article just strikes me as somehow... _wrong_. There are just too many conclusions being drawn off one piece of very weak evidence for me to give it any credence.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since the site is dead, here's the text from my RSS Reader:

The $30 billion Social Security hack

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Sometime last year computers at the U.S. Social Security Administration were hacked and the identities of millions of Americans were compromised. What, you didn't hear about that? Nobody did.

The extent of damage is only just now coming to light in the form of millions of false 2011 income tax returns filed in the names of people currently receiving Social Security benefits. That includes a very large number of elderly and disabled people who are ill-equipped to recognize or fight the problem. It's an impact pervasive enough that the IRS now has a form just to deal with it: Form 14039: Identity Theft Affidavit, December 2011.

The Wall $treet Journal has a story about this problem specific to Puerto Rico, but the Journal fails to mention that this is a national problem — a $30+ billion problem.

The story is going public now because tax season is upon us and there's no way to keep it under wraps as people file their tax returns only to learn that a return under that name has already been filed with refunds paid electronically into a bank account now closed. The December date on that IRS Form 14039 shows the Treasury has been expecting this for awhile.

The question being asked about this in Washington, DC today is whether this hack was an act of war? More likely an act of Tony Soprano, I'd say. If the goal of war is to sow confusion and discontent, then okay, maybe China or Iran are behind this (you don't have to be a superpower to take on the U.S. government anymore). But the more probable goal is simply to steal money and that's a domestic job.

Either way, that big hacker score guys like me have been predicting for several years has finally happened with draconian policy changes sure to follow. Lucky us.

WSJ Link (mentioned in the article): [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230340470457730...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577309854181227634.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories#printMode)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ouch. If this is true (and I find it a little unlikely, given the lack of corroborating evidence so far), it's gonna be _big._

Props to Cringely if he's breaking something amazing here…

</comment><comment><USER5> Is the $30 billion number substantiated anywhere in any way?

All I can find is WSJ saying "$2 billion", "$7 billion" and "$14 billion" with no reference to this specific hack...

</comment><comment><USER6> China is going to try to tank an economy that its holding a bunch of debt of? Or hurt the confidence in that same economy?

</comment><comment><USER7> Anybody have a mirror? The site's dead.

<comment><USER8> It seems to be back up now, but have this CoralCDN (<http://www.coralcdn.org/>) link in case it goes down again:

[http://www.cringely.com.nyud.net/2012/03/the-30-billion- hack...](http://www.cringely.com.nyud.net/2012/03/the-30-billion-hack/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me it's the plausibility that matters even if this is not real ( the fraud is clearly real and probably not rare, the scale is the thing at issue) even if it's not real, there is little to suppose it cannot be real. Social security numbers are / used to be a simplettransposition of date of birth iirr

it's how do we prevent such frauds - and if we do it's still a clever dos attack on the IRS. 10 million fraudulent tax returns. How do you deal with that except manual review?

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks legit.</comment>


Show HN: WriteDown - a Markdown text editor for iPhone with sync support - <AUTHOR> http://vinhnx.github.io/writedown-site/

<comment><AUTHOR> Developer here, if you have any question, feel free to post :)

I also have 5 promo code for you to try WriteDown out:

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The Bitcoin mining network is offline - <AUTHOR> https://blockchain.info/blocks

<comment><USER2> Odd, all right. Blockchain shows the last block as height 308923, with 2348 transactions, making it appear to be a legitimate delay. Interestingly, [http://blockexplorer.com/](http://blockexplorer.com/) shows that block and the next one, 308924, with 1666 transactions, which was still 20 minutes ago when I wrote this. I'm not sure why that block isn't showing up in Blockchain. So far, it seems like a normal network quirk.

This may be strange, but I see no reason to think that the mining network is offline - that statement doesn't even really have any meaning. There is no mining network other than the whole Bitcoin P2P network. I don't see how that could possibly be down, being P2P and all, short of a global campaign by all governments and ISPs to block all Bitcoin traffic.

And whoop, there's another one, just as I'm finishing up. Almost certainly nothing to see here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quit posting X is (offline|down), definitely when it doesn't make sense ("The Bitcoin network"), is technically inaccurate ("Didn't you mean blockchain.org"?), or will be discovered by the person accessing it, and they'll find out anyway (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc).

</comment><comment><USER4> My wallet reports 8 connections and no issues at all, status at the bottom of the blockchain.info pages reports 'Ok (466 nodes connected)'. How did you determine that the _network_ is offline?

(my own wallet also seems to be working just fine, I just received a transaction).

</comment><comment><USER5> It is much more likely that there is an issue with blockchain.info than the bitcoin mining network

<comment><USER6> According to [http://blockr.io/](http://blockr.io/) there are new blocks that aren't showing up on blockchain.info, so I think you are correct

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There has only been one block mining in the last two hours. Something appears to be affecting the miners. Does anyone have any more info?

</comment><comment><USER7> Bitcoin mining is fine. Just a blockchain.info issue: [http://blockr.io/](http://blockr.io/).

<comment><AUTHOR> blockr.io is only showing one block more than blockchain.info.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you find out what you want to do? - <AUTHOR>

It may seem like a easy to answer question, but I'm struggling with it and I'm betting I'm not the only one.
How do you find out what you want to do with your life? Where should you take your career? What are you absolutely best at? What makes you happy? What are you passionate about? How do you find all of that out?
And don't say "it's whatever you're passionate about." How do you discover what your passion is?
Personally, I'm currently working as a developer building mobile apps with titanium. I don't know if I would rather be developing for web or mobile - they're both interesting with their own pros and cons. I'm also not sure my personality suits development the best, although I love technology and the abilities it brings us. Sitting at a desk for 40 hours rarely talking to people isn't my favorite thing in the world. I like interacting with people, writing, traveling, some coding, and teaching.
I've thrown around ideas about consulting, product management, and startups but am at a standstill. I would love to talk to people in those positions to see what their life is like and if I would fit in in their job. Where can I do that? <comment><USER2> Identify your talents, develop them into strengths, and then seek roles that will allow you to play to those strengths.

If you're not sure how to name your talents (many people are much better at identifying their weaknesses), a good way to figure them out is the StrengthsFinder inventory, which I posted about on yesterday's "I'm not cut out to be a programmer" post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4975353>

</comment><comment><USER3> You do lots of different things, and once you discover that whatever it is you are doing right now is not bringing you satisfaction and the people who have been doing it for longer than you are not the sort of people that you'd want to become, you leave. There's no magic.

</comment><comment><USER4> On a related note I saw a link posted about a year ago to a "guide to life- type pdf that was written by the CEO of an investment fund. The book had some good points in it, if anyone could share the link again I'd appreciate it.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is indeed a much harder and deeper question than it seems.

I would ask Christopher Alexander's great question: What feels more alive?

</comment><comment><USER6> An email would be great.I believe I can help you that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! milesmatthias at gmail :)</comment></comment>


What is the "--" operator in C++? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642028/what-is-the-operator-in-c <comment><USER2> The title doesn't seem to have come through correctly on HN; it should say:

What is the "\-->" operator in C++?</comment>