Apple to plead the 5th – may set legal precedent for Warrant Canary - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/forget-the-1st-amendment-apple-to-plead-the-5th-in-iphone-crypto-flap/ <comment><AUTHOR> The basis for Warrant Canary is that people publish an "everything's ok" message periodically on their project or website, so if the feds pressure them into creating a backdoor (as was suspected in the untimely death of TrueCrypt), they simply stop posting the "everything's ok" message. The untested legal theory is that the government can compel you to remain silent about proceedings via gag order, but they cannot compel you to state anything falsely. If apple pleads the 5th, it may set a precedent that's relevant to Warrant Canary cases.</comment>


Ask HN: best seats on a plane - <AUTHOR>

I just booked a flight which had the following pattern of available seats: http://bit.ly/d1IXh4.<p>What are the factors people consider when choosing their seats? <comment><USER2> I flew every week for last 3 years. So here are my truths from trenches

\- Avoid seats in the middle. Period. Exception - exit row or front row seats

\- Select seats which do not have seats in front

\- Do careful consideration before taking emergency exit seats. The door is more than 50 pounds. You need to unlatch it , twist-turn to get the door inside or throw it out.

\- Do not take seats beyond the half way of the plane. The more you go behind, more you hear engine noise and longer it takes to disembark

\- Avoid seats near toilets. You need to put up with stink or people standing in your legroom

\- Take aisle seats if the wheels-2-wheels time is more than 3 hours

\- For frequent flyers - note down the sun direction if you are taking window seat. It will help you choose left window seat or right window seat. You do not want to face the sun all the way during the flight. You selected window seat for a view, it is stupid to close down the windows.

\- If flying red eye, choose window seat because you can rest your head against the window.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.seatguru.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> close to the front of the plane, but not the front row. this makes de-boarding the plane very quick. reason to avoid the front row is because there is no seat in front of you to store your bag/laptop under. they'll make you use the overhead bin which can be a hassle to get to.

window. this has absolutely nothing to do with view and everything to do with being able to control shade. you'd be surprised at how many people will not block the sunlight. bonus points for picking the window on the sun side of the plane.

exit row window can be a very bad seat. sometimes they don't have army rests on the window side.

extra leg room seats generally come with an extra price (this includes exit row). not worth it to me, could be worth it to you.

first class. if your airline has first class ask how much an upgrade costs when you check in. i use to fly las/msp 2 times a month on north west. the upgrade was 49$ and there were always seats available. now a days all the 'good' airlines don't even bother with first class.

saving time is huge. your time is generally worth much more than the cost.

fly when there will be less delays, redeyes.

boarding quickly, exiting quickly. don't waste 20 minutes standing in line to board the plane. it's much better to sit in the waiting area on your laptop and be the last to board when there is no wait. this can be a problem if you need overhead bin space. exiting quickly is all about being near the front of the plane.

dont check bags. just buy your shampoo/liquids at your destination. think of this as cost vs time.

avoid change overs/stops.

</comment><comment><USER5> \- Emergency exit row = more leg room. Those are usually taken though.

\- Isle seat if you are not interested in the view.

\- Window seat if you are.

\- Front of plane lets you get out faster.

\- Must: ask for a baby bassinet _in advance_ if flying with a baby.

\- On really long trips don't take the seat next to the bathroom. Then again, on fully booked planes those may be the seats where you have a whole row for yourself.

In your case, as others have noted, 23 window seat looks like the winner. Weird that it's still available.

</comment><comment><USER6> I fly a couple of times a month. I travel lightly and my preference is the front of the plane. Getting off the plane, post-arrival, can take an addl 20-30 (maddening) minutes.

I also prefer the aisle Though window seats mean being disturbed less by others needing to get up

</comment><comment><USER7> Easily a Row 23 window seat. More leg room and don't have the person in front of your leaning their seat back into your personal space.

</comment><comment><USER8> 12A looks like the obvious choice. No seat in front of you (I had that once and it was better than flying first).

<comment><USER5> I think you're looking at the image the wrong way round. (It's rotated in the _wrong_ way so not really your fault.)

<comment><USER8> I think you have it the wrong way. Every plane I've ever flown on (>100) starts numbering at the front, and you can see the wings are clearly swept downward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I prefer sitting near the center of gravity of the plane, if at all possible.

<comment><USER10> Why?</comment></comment>


ISO C++11 Published - <AUTHOR> http://herbsutter.com/2011/10/10/iso-c11-published/ <comment><USER2>
      Preemptive note for those who are concerned that ISO charges
      money for the final official text of the standard [...] the
      final text where ISO asserts copyright.

Why are ISO standards copyrighted, and sold for money? Isn't the ISO mostly funded by member nations? How is this helping to promote the actual _use_ of these standards, at all?

<comment><USER3> From the FAQ:

"Why aren't ISO standards free?

ISO standards cost money to develop, publish and distribute. Someone has to pay. The current system whereby users are requested to pay for the standards they use, not only sustains the development process but also, very importantly, ensures that the balance of independent vs. government, private vs. public interests can be maintained."

<http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/faq_standards_2.htm>

<comment><USER4> Whining about publishing/distribution costs for standards in 2011 is laughable. The only excuse for printing virtually anything these days is small quick reference cards, invoices and packing lists (mostly for shipping), and labels.

Most of the people that actually work on the standards are paid for their work by companies in the relevant field.

If the organization was running anywhere close to correctly, their costs would be limited to typesetting, some organizational work for meetings, and bandwidth. All of which could be trivially borne by modest contributions of the governments and corporations involved.

<comment><USER5> Yea, here ISO is just outdated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hooray! Anonymous Functions in C++!

I know VS2011 already supports some of the C++11 specification, and it looks like GCC has got a number of those features implemented for some time now. Anyone know how long it might take for people to sync up to the spec completely?

How long did it take with c++03? I remember I started seriously messing around with C++ around 01/02 and I noticed with every new version of VS then that things would just randomly change every few years and took a while before it became uniform.

<comment><USER7> Wasn't there a recent Sutter talk that mentioned that almost all of the spec is already supported in VC? I may be mistaken but that was the impression I got...

<comment><USER6> According to this:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/09/12/10209291.a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/09/12/10209291.aspx)

They still don't support initializer lists and variadic templates.

non-static data member initializers as well, but they're more of a nicety. Definitely was one of the nice bonuses whenever I did any c# stuff. Especially when you have to overload constructors so you can avoid massive initialization lists.

<comment><USER6> They don't support a bunch of other stuff too, those are just the features that I was looking forward to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks :)</comment>


Ask HN: What's interesting to do in SF the day before Thanksgiving? - <AUTHOR>

I live in Seattle, but my girlfriend and I are in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving visiting her family. We were planning on going to SF MOMA today for the Cartier-Bresson exhibit, but just discovered that it's closed for the holiday.<p>Any have suggestions on interesting things to do in San Francisco today? <comment><AUTHOR> I ended up working through the day and going to Range in the Mission for dinner. Great food. Saw Kevin Rose, of all people, there.</comment>


If you were to write Wikipedia today... - <AUTHOR>

If you were to write Wikipedia today using available languages and frameworks, what language/framework would you use? And why? <comment><USER2> I would probably make Wikipedia a front end to a Subversion repository. Then I would get all the data handling for free.

I would of course add caching, to limit the number of reads to the Subversion server.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wikipedia evolved over time, as users thought it was a cool idea. Nobody writes a complete project like they might write a function for an assignment because most "functions" of the type of converting one lossless image to another lossless format, or capitalizing all the letters in a string, have already been written for you.

You can't write something that happened at a certain time and place and expect it to fair better. But, if you want to write something in September of 2007, pick and language that allows you to prototype and iterate your features quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> let me rephrase the question then: how would one _start_ writing wikipedia?

<comment><USER3> I'd install and setup CakePHP to run off the public_html folder of my domain name in apache in my web host or server.

Keeping in mind what I was trying to accomplish, I'd show the article at domain.com/wiki/(article_name) if it existed in the database, or an error message if it wasn't found, with a link to create the new page. There would also be a link on top to edit the current page which would lead to a similar form. The form would allow you to save any changes you made.

I think that's the essense of Wikipedia and likely all it had in its first release.

With enough articles, you'd figure you'd need to write a search. With enough vandalism, you'd want to have banning and a versioning system. With a lot of traffic, you'd find a way to make it scale. After becoming an established leader, you could finally force users to register before contributing. You'd want to suggest articles if the user comes to the not-found page.

You'd figure it out as you went along.

Wikipedia didn't have versioning, user accounts, informational messages, spam catching, caching, multiple servers, multiple language support in its first releases.

<comment><USER4> >I'd install and setup CakePHP to run off the public_html folder of my domain name in apache in my web host or server.

That's awesome. No seriously it is. It answered his question in such a concise yet thoughtful way.

I hope he gets what you're saying though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would use Scheme. It's a good general-purpose language, suitable for about anything. You can whip up prototypes quickly and whatever you write ends up being pretty succinct.

Another option would be to just use WikiMedia's code.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the responses. Curiously, no-one suggested RoR (maybe with instiki) or django/pylons/etc. Why wouldn't one use these languages/frameworks, especially with e.g. RoR claiming 0.1x development time in some articles?

</comment><comment><USER6> This question can be answered only by Wikipedia IT since they are with the experience with Wikipedia needs in all aspects.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wikipedia is bogus and changing the language wont be of any help.</comment>


What Do People Use the Internet for in the EU? - <AUTHOR> https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/DDN-20190124-1 <comment><USER2> There's an activity not on that list, which undoubtedly forms a significant part of the bitstreams. Often isochronic mpeg encoded data. Futurama observed it's a significant part of the internet experience in the future too

</comment><comment><USER3> _Asking_ people what they use the internet for seems a bit pointless. Well, it's a great way of finding out what they _say_ they use it for.</comment>


Guardian kills its Facebook social reader, regains control over its content - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/12/13/guardian-kills-its-facebook-social-reader-regains-control-over-its-content/

<comment><USER2> Martin Belam (former head of UX at the Guardian, and designer of the app) has a great commentary on its successes and failures: [http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2012/12/guardian- facebook-...](http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2012/12/guardian-facebook- rise-fail.php)

<comment><USER3> thanks. would upvote again. more informative than anything else here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really didn't like the way I was required to indicate to my entire network what articles I'm reading.

<comment> k-mcgrady That was the whole point of the social reader - integration with open graph. Removing that and there was no reason for them to build it in the first place. If you didn't want to share what you were reading automatically you could just go to the regular website and use the regular sharing/like button. I was very particular about which stories I viewed through it. It's surprising the articles you read on a news site that you'd prefer not be shared.

<comment><USER5> It's more than just privacy, it's about utility: there's a huge difference in signal between an active recommendation for something from someone I trust, and the firehose of seeing everything they click on. The latter just tells me what headlines appeal to them, if that.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I was embarrassed whenever I'd click on a linkbait headline, get disappointed, and then other people saw I'd fallen for it. There was no good way to indicate "wow, this sucked" other than manually deleting it from my newsfeed or adding a comment.

I ended up just blocking the social apps entirely. In general, I hate facebook apps that exist on-facebook; I like the external use of the social graph by some other sites.

<comment><USER7> Whenever I'd try to visit a news link on facebook that one of my other friends had read (and had it autopost to the timeline) it would always try to get ME to sign up as well. I'm really suspicious of that stuff, so I always refused it and either decided I didn't care about the article or used google to find it on my own. I was always paranoid I'd click on some article that would actually turn out to be, I don't know, the secret sex lives of snails or something, and I'd be really embarrassed by it. (Why does a news application need access to all my personal info, anyway? I'm not agreeing to that!!)

It's great to hear that newspapers are starting to reject it. I really hate the idea of facebook becoming its own walled garden affair. Especially because there's no way to tell wtf is ever going on it, it doesn't show me half of what I want to see...so now I barely use it and have just left it up for party invites and all the nontech people who act like you're asking them to get a tooth extracted if you expect them to actually e-mail instead of sending a fbook message :/

<comment><USER6> I think I'm a "tech person" by most definitions, and I still like using fb messages vs. email in a lot of cases. It's a great directory service (I still don't have a good address book for mutt), shows presence (which is missing from email), and the integrated-IM is even better than google (because it doesn't end up sending messages to my desktop if I'm on my phone, etc.)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, everyone's different, plus it depends a lot on the situation (short message vs. long message, importance, is there an attachment, etc). Most of the people I know who insist on facebook messages -only- are more the type that can't figure out how to even open a zip file.

Also, a lot of people I know got hit in a round of account deletions and got majorly screwed over because they were conducting all their freelance business through fb messages (and then had no way to communicate with their clients, since neither of them had each other's e-mail). Because of that, it just feels more unsafe to me, like I could lose all my data at any time. Plus they keep doing weird things like deciding what posts I want to see from my friends (I'd like to see all of them by default?? if they are annoying then I will change it), constantly resetting my news feed to "top stories!" and etc. I guess I don't trust them not to mess up the messaging too and then maybe I'll miss a message from someone about something that's really important.

I agree that it works fairly well as a directory. I wish there were something like facebook that wasn't facebook, but none of the alternatives seem to have caught on quite as well yet. (also--I hope my original post didn't insult you or anyone else reading it on here, that wasn't my intention at all.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone else get the feeling that the newspapers really have no clue what they are doing? Paywall. No paywall. Paywall again. Login required. No login required. Facebook-only. No Facebook.

There doesn't seem to be any sort of overarching strategy here, just flailing.

<comment><USER9> If newspapers were startups that were "pivoting" would you be as critical of their changes?

<comment><USER10> That doesn't make any sense. Startups are not fully invested in any product or process, so they are nimble. Newspapers however are the exact opposite of startups: they have been here for a very long time. They already have well- established products. They don't have the luxury of just flailing around by throwing shit on a wall and seeing what sticks.

<comment><USER11> Actually, since they have more money and are more established, I would argue that they _do_ have the luxury of throwing shit on the wall and seeing what sticks. The reason we have companies in this country that are over 100 years old is because they were able to pivot long after they were established.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm glad they've done that - it was annoying not clicking on their articles.

Having said this, I'm hardly ever in fb any more anyway.

</comment><comment><USER13> Always avoided reading their articles because I needed to have the app. Happy to hear its going!

</comment><comment><USER14> The Guardian actually had a link, that wasn't super visible, that would direct you from using the app to the website, if you clicked it it'd remember your decision and _never_ bug you again. It was excellent, none of the other news publishers did it.

<comment><USER15> News publishers had a range of choices on how to implement this. ProPublica did not enable frictionless sharing or an automatic dialog box asking you to install an app

[http://www.propublica.org/article/introducing-a-new-non- evil...](http://www.propublica.org/article/introducing-a-new-non-evil-way-to- share-our-stories-on-facebook)

I don't think the app was particularly popular leading me to wonder "what's the point?" (I used to work there) but I suppose for users who choose to live their lives through FB, giving them the choice of sharing and consuming through FB isn't necessarily a net negative

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There was a post of what internet was and what was lost - how social media and prevelance of scocial graph as a tool has changed the game. But it is not quite certain that everyone is the winner for using a social graph except the company that manages is it. I think the process and environment surrouning social graphs has been corrupted and developed not in very forward looking way and things like that happend because of that.

Frankly facebook I think has bungled the whole advertising and integration of various internet services into crowded space on the 'wall'. There is much distraction, few pictures and no action.

</comment><comment><USER17> Please kill all these social reader apps, besides privacy infringement and spam, I've never seen any additional value in these apps to the reader ..

</comment><comment><USER15> > _When the Guardian social reader first launched, the impact was dramatic: > millions of users installed the app within a matter of weeks (a total of 12 > million have installed it so far, according to the Guardian post) and by > April of this year, 6 million unique visitors were reading content within > the app every month. According to former Guardian developer Martin Belam, > Facebook referrers at one point even eclipsed traffic coming from Google. > After the changes in May, however, the number of readers dropped just as > dramatically — falling from about 600,000 average users a day to below the > 200,000 level. Facebook now reports the app as having 2.5 million monthly > users._

This needs a little more context, doesn't it? Did usage drop because the app is unpopular? Did it drop because the Guardian is unpopular? Or is Facebook losing share overall?

The OP does link to a Buzzfeed analysis which points at the culprit being a change in FB's algorithm: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/facebook-social- readers-ar...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/facebook-social-readers-are- all-collapsing)

In other words, FB giveth and FB taketh away. The popular explanation may be that users were just fed up with the intrusion in their lives and the Guardian is making a principled stand...but let's face it, users have shown more than enough willingness to accept intrusions. And the Guardian clearly isn't doing this out of respect for their users' privacy...anger over inadvertent sharing was immediate at the app's launch, and the Guardian always had the option of turning off the auto-sharing element.

That said, I'm not sure why the drop in usage requires killing the app. A referral is a referral, right? Did the app require constant maintenance? There are some users who _love_ sharing what they read and so why not let them continue to do so and configure the app to not make such links lead to a "do you want to install this app" popup.

<comment><USER18> "This needs a little more context, doesn't it? Did usage drop because the app is unpopular? Did it drop because the Guardian is unpopular? Or is Facebook losing share overall?"

None, FB launched the opengraph plugin with a preferred list of partners, after the initial bedding in period other media companies were allowed to join, thus saturating the market and taking % share (UV).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm always amazed when I see companies make the mistake of giving facebook control over their business, pushing facebook's brand over their own, and driving people _away_ from their own site instead of towards it. What is so special about facebook that makes marketing people forget everything they learned about marketing?

<comment><USER20> It's where the eyeballs are. There's an enormous amount of collective time spent on Facebook these days. If you can capture a fraction of that, even if it's just in the form of brand recognition, that's a potential win.

<comment><USER19> You seem to have misunderstood. The fact that lots of people use facebook means marketers should be using facebook to push their brand, and engage with potential customers. Instead, they are pushing facebook's brand, and telling customers to go _to_ facebook. Users are already at facebook, so that is just dumb, and a waste of money. Every time you see a TV ad where some company says "go to facebook.com/stupidcompany" instead of sending people to stupidcompany.com is the backwards mentality I refer to in action.</comment></comment></comment>


Wikipedia volunteers: Our best weapon against misinformation - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90471667/how-wikipedia-volunteers-became-the-webs-best-weapon-against-misinformation <comment><USER2> Considering how few people can effectively work on Wikipedia I find this claim incredibly dubious. Did we just happen to find a way to find the thousand or two people who stick to the books and keep it all unbiased and objective? I somehow doubt that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wish more articles would correctly use "misinformation" or "disinformation" depending on the context.

Disinformation is the deliberate spreading of false information to mislead the public.</comment>


Ask HN: What libraries you use for Application Performance Monitoring? - <AUTHOR>

We are building a java backend service. Would like to ask the community how do you measure the performance of your service. How do you track exception rates (if any), no of tasks completed per minute, etc. Basically we want to define custom metrics, emitted periodically from the service and stored to generate realtime graphs. JMX is a way to get hold of these metrics, however, are there any end-to-end libraries that can help to log, record and generate graphs from this time-series data?<p>(I am looking for open source alternatives, for using in a commercial app. there is serverDensity but it is paid-subscription based API.) <comment><USER2> If you haven't heard of graphite, you should read up on it. You should be able to easily grab anything in jmx via one of the many statsd java clients for 0 impact perf monitoring or as I call it, "application telemetry". Using the most excellent graphite web ui and one of the dozen+ dashboard apps such as Descartes, jondot's graphene, kenhub's giraffe, etc, you can throw up some seriously nice telemetry dashboards with system and network stats all overlayed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Graphite is an awesome service. On the code side, I use Metrics (<http://metrics.codahale.com/>) for Java and for Python I use scales (<https://github.com/Cue/scales>)</comment>


Inside the Federal Bureau of Way Too Many Guns - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns?mbid=synd_digg&utm_medium=email&utm_source=digg <comment><USER2> This should get way more publicity than it does. It's absolutely insane to prevent this sort of investigation from being efficient by law.</comment>


Google+ for Google Apps users - it's a matter of days - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/100535338638690515335/posts/6QRgDAToF58

<comment><USER2> Seems like people with their own domains who use google apps should have been be the ideal lead users to _seed_ google+. A missed opportunity.

<comment><USER3> Passionate and knowledgable users would be good for early users. However, betas and paying customers don't mix well. People seem to miss that Google Apps is really meant for enterprise, government and education. So, the driving factor behind decisions for Apps users isn't the hackers and power users who use it for their own domain, but people like NYU, the City of Des Moines and Virgin America. It makes perfect sense to open it up for them last. It is just there happens to be a large vocal group of people who use Google Apps for their own personal use.

<comment><USER4> I get the point you are trying to make, but I think these circumstances are different. Your point is valid if you are talking only about consumer users. However, any enterprise App account is going to be run by a (generally speaking) technically literate administrator who decides what features to enable for their App users.

As long as Plus is sold as 'beta' or whatever, there is no real risk to opening it up to App accounts - regardless of whether they are personal users or enterprise users - because it's a conscious opt-in process being made by technically literate administrators.

And as many of others have already said, there is a big downside to treating your App administrators as second class citizens who can't make their own decisions - you lose the very people who have an appetite to try new things (why else did they move to Apps instead of using MS Office or whatever), and who are generally drinking the Google Kool-Aid. It's probably not the best analogy, but I think it's like Apple releasing the iphone 5 and saying 'Anyone who bought a previous iphone within 30 days of when it was released is not allowed to buy the new iphone 5'.

<comment><USER5> Good reasoning, although business accounts are still in slow water regardless what their curious administrators try in their spare time.

They can't just enable G+ for the sake of trial, when every employee must be trained for the application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's hope there's a way to switch existing Plus profiles over (retaining posts and circles, etc.). I know, probably not going to happen, which means I won't be able to use my Apps account.

<comment><USER7> yeah. seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I'd personally like to see is a way for multiple logins to work. Switching between my apps account and my gmail account is horrific. Myself and many others have taken to opening an incognito mode/privacy browsing session whenever we need to access them. Integration, a way to sync mailboxes (that doesn't use pop), or at least better cookie management so I can log out of one then log into the other is what I really want.

<comment><USER9> What's wrong with Account Settings -> Overview -> Multiple Sign-in -> On?

Then you can just switch account from the dropdown on the bar at the top, most apps remember which account you use with it, and you can even use gmail with different accounts in different tabs.

<comment><USER10> Why is this guy modded down? That's exactly what was needed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally.

[And to make this a less shallow post]

I find it interesting that Google thought they would have had more time.[1] I would have thought that they'd know that social networks these days either grow exponentially, or stay flat. Google should have been betting on the former, which would have made plain that they wouldn't have much time. Perhaps they thought they could limit it through the invite only stages?

[1]: <http://mashable.com/2011/10/19/google-plus-google-apps/>

<comment><USER12> Launch and iterate is why i think they delayed on this. prioritization is difficult (especially for such a large project) and I'm sure that many other things were prioritized over this feature. Now whether or not that prioritization was correct is debatable, but im pretty sure every software project in the world "thought they would have more time". That's just Hofstadter's Law (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadters_law>).

<comment><USER11> A fair point, and thanks for the link - I hadn't heard of that 'law' before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well it's about time. But I hope they provide some way to merge accounts. Since I have both an Apps account and gmail account.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hilarious to me that "that" post was on G+.

I have not created a G+ to prevent me from having to deal with the the forth coming !merge/!multiple accounts fiasco.

</comment><comment><USER15> Finally. Google has given me way too much time to bad mouth their service simply because I'm bitter that I can't have it yet.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seven days and counting. I'm tired from holding my breath for months now.

</comment><comment><USER17> G+ is just buying time before a Wave-like death.

</comment><comment><USER18> Google Apps users could have signed up with a normal Gmail account (or create a new one). I dont understand the frustration that it wasnt possible for Google Apps since you dont really own that mail account, the domain admin can delete it!

<comment><USER19> Many people, me included, use Google Apps for personal use. You get a much more personalised/professional email address.</comment></comment>


The Djen of Django - Our in progress book about Django. - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/agiliq/djenofdjango

<comment><USER2> Hey shabda, nice work. I have been following your blog posts to learn django as well. They are great resource for django noobs. The initial chapters of this book pretty look good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Most of the writing is being done by <http://github.com/tuxcanfly> though. Please use the book and leave feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks very promising. One thing that I think is often neglected is how to properly modify the admin interface to make it useful for all the little things you want to do. The admin interface is really useful and helps you get started fast, but it's a lot harder to grok and modify than models, forms and "vanilla" objects.

<comment><USER4> Check out this post: [http://brandonkonkle.com/blog/2010/oct/4/django-admin- custom...](http://brandonkonkle.com/blog/2010/oct/4/django-admin- customization-examples/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Agileiq has done a lot of great things for Django already. Keep up the great work. Your blog and code on GitHub is truly appreciated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its Agiliq. :)

(We were Uswaretech earlier.)</comment></comment>


Unsupervised translation of programming languages - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.03511 <comment><USER2> Now that's interesting. The examples are a bit cherry-picked, but there are some interesting results.

Seeing C++

        int allocation[n];
        memset(allocation, -1, sizeof(allocation));
        for(int i = 0; i < n; i ++)

translated into Python:

        allocation = [-1] * n
        for i in range(n):

is impressive. The translator picked up on two idioms of C++ and translated them to more concise forms in Python. Most "transpilers" just compile into the target language as if compiling to something like machine code, generating worst case wordy output. There's a C to Rust translator which translated C pointer indexing into Rust unsafe pointer arithmetic, which is not a gain in safety.

It's also claimed that this system is good at guessing types from untyped languages.

So a good way to use this technology might be to have something that looks at source code and tries to translate all the function signatures and type definitions. This includes looking at function calls and bodies to help guess ("infer" is a stretch for this approach) the types of ambiguous variables.

Example is

        int foo(char* s);

Is "s" a single character or a pointer to an array? You can't tell without context. This system might be able to do that. Or

        int getdata(int *buf, size_t bufl);

A system like this should be able to recognize the intent there.

Then try to translate the executable code with that information available. Bad guesses about types will usually result in translation failures or code that compiles with type errors, so someone will notice.

So this is promising for modernizing code.

I want to see one able to turn C pointer arithmetic into slice syntax. Now that would be a big step forward.

<comment><USER3> _The translator picked up on two idioms of C++ and translated them to more concise forms in Python._

It also either knew about the machine integer representation, or else made a combination of two mistakes that turned out to cancel each other out.

This

        int allocation[n];
        memset(allocation, 42, sizeof(allocation));
        for(int i = 0; i < n; i ++)

would NOT be equivalent to this:

        allocation = [42] * n
        for i in range(n):

<comment><USER2>
        Python 3.6.9 (default, Apr 18 2020, 01:56:04)
        [GCC 8.4.0] on linux
        >>> n = 10
        >>> allocation = [42] * n
        >>> allocation
        [42, 42, 42, 42, 42, 42, 42, 42, 42, 42]

That's what "*" does on lists in Python. The idea is that "abc" \+ def" is "abcdef", and then they overgeneralized.

<comment><USER4> memset() is bytewise, the only reason it works with -1 is all the bits are set in every bit width. 0xff repeated still ends up being -1 at int size (0xffffffff). But the byte 0x2a repeated will be something more like 0x2a2a2a2a, which is not equivalent to 0x2a.

<comment><USER2> Right. So the translation was idiomatic but wrong.

<comment><USER5> I'd say the C++ was wrong/unclear. If you want all the ints in your array to be a certain number, use std::fill. If you want all their bits to be 1, use something like ~0 in the memset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related: An IRS employee reportedly got 90% of their assembler (yes really) code translated to JAVA. IRS strangely abandoned the project.

[https://federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin- commentary/2020/01/...](https://federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin- commentary/2020/01/irs-programming-mystery-continues/)

<comment><USER7> Any developer with more than a few years of experience knows the first 90% is the easy part though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This paper is very interesting, but as with many recent company-funded DNN- related publications, I am missing some technical information here.

Publications by universities will almost always include details like dataset sizes, hardware used, and durations for pre-processing, training, and inference.

As-is, this paper leaves me puzzled as to whether this novel solution is even practical in any way shape or form.

If I essentially need the computational resources of a medium-sized data centre to prepare the data, and train the system for adding a new language- pair or fine-tuning an existing one, it'd not be a practical method outside of the Four Horsemen (GAFA) and their closest competitors...

I applaud the use of computational accuracy as the primary metric for evaluating the results, though.

<comment><USER9> Companies / researchers in general have no strong requirement to show you any artifacts to reproduce their work. There are incentives to not even provide that information at all.

What we usually see is that someone else goes through the time to reproduce the results when reproducing it. Or internally from companies you can see projects moving from one company to another like MapReduce (Google) to Yahoo (Hadoop).

And then if enough companies don't want to manage the whole project the software gets donated to the Apache Software foundation.

<comment><USER8> > Companies / researchers in general have no strong requirement to show you > any artifacts to reproduce their work.

That's quite literally the opposite of what science is all about! If they don't want others to reproduce their results, they might just as well end each paper with "You can take our word for it!" and skip the details altogether...

What I'm rather interested in are points of comparison. Performance in terms of a chosen metric is one thing, but research gets more useful if it can easily be reproduced. This is the norm in all other sciences - why not in AI research?

If I can see that their approach is 20% better than SOTA, but they require 1M LoC plus 3 weeks of total computation time on a 100 machine cluster with 8 V100 per node, I can safely say - sod it! - use the inferior commercial product instead and add 20% manual effort (since I need to add manual work anyways as the accuracy isn't 100%).

<comment><USER9> Yes, it is and I agree with you.

I worked in a lab where I had to reproduce others peoples code in Java. I never finished any of those projects.

For Example GPT-2 would need around ~$50k to reproduce from scratch. GPT-3 is probably a few orders of magnitude than that. How would anyone reproduce it unless they are a company? I've seen NVIDIA reproduce some results.

Also, most of the issues are you don't have the datasets and after the PhD students graduate and the professor gets a job your access of the datasets go away like bitrot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It says that it is possible to train the translator for any pair of languages. But they did it with C++, Java, and Python, which are all object oriented imperative languages. Would it work as well for a C++ to OCaml translation, or a Prolog to Java translation? Changing of programming paradigm can be quite tricky…

<comment><USER11> Yeah; I was far less impressed when I saw the languages in question when I ran across this. Yes, there are extra/fewer bits to consider when translating between these, but fundamentally there is a direct translation possible, that would still be reasonably idiomatic. Translate a Java program to Erlang, though...you have to completely change the design or it's not at all idiomatic. A task scheduler wouldn't rely on a priority queue; it would rely on spinning up a process per task that would sleep until it needs to execute, for instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is very impressive, but it can not handle large contexts.

E.g. in its current state it would not be able to translate large codebases, even more so using different libraries.

For example, the translator consistently fails to convert Python

      max(arr)

into proper Java. It generates

      Math.max(arr)

instead, which is a non-existent overload of the function.

Another problem is that unless you can port tests too, the code is not very reliable.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if there's value there for in-IDE snippets. I need to make some changes to some Java code, I know how I'd say it in Python, and this'll do the translation for me?

<comment><USER12> Overall I don't think it is a convenient way to program. Besides, you still need to test it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a related video at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTzFJIknh7E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTzFJIknh7E).

(via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23470668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23470668), but no comments there)

</comment><comment><USER15> Curious about how dependencies could be handled. Translating every library used doesn't sound ideal, but replacing with an "equivalent" library for the language wouldn't always (or even usually) work either

</comment><comment><USER16> It would be neat to see each language get a functionality subset defined that transpilation can smoothly translate from one language to another. The code itself wouldn't even have to be stored as one language, but rather in an intermediate representation.

I like the idea of shared VMs like Truffle and LLVM, but they really don't fix the problem of allowing developers with disparate backgrounds and preferences collaborate.

</comment><comment><USER17> It would be interesting compile languages into an intermediate form - like a lisp dialect/form or so - to see if that makes things easier. This could be used to have a common foundation on top of LLVM, for example.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know, the examples don't look too complicated. I wonder how it is possible that an approach based on rules would not work on those examples.

</comment><comment><USER19> Next step would then be FP<->Imperative paradigms?

</comment><comment><USER20> Could I use this to clean up my code? First write some garbage in java then do a round java -> python -> java. Does it result in cleaner code? :)

<comment><USER21> Probably more like doing a round trip in a natural language translator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Next step would then be FP<->Imperative.. Beginning with the static ones?

For dynamic it would require introspection...

</comment><comment><USER22> JavaScript > TypeScript translator might be a useful tool.

<comment><USER23> And then TS to C#, to make it compilable through things like il2cpp

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> what about template meta-programming C++ code? Can be converted in python or java?

</comment><comment> linux-hog To what degree must one consume the "prediction is more fundamental than understanding" koolaid before work like this looks reasonable?

<comment><USER25> This is a rude comment. The paper has no grander claim of AGI or 'fundamental' understanding. It's a novel algorithm that outperforms existing solutions. Not everything needs to be part of work towards 'understanding.'

<comment> linux-hog It outperforms existing solutions on a publicly unavailable corpus with no clear way to reproduce the results?

Hmm... The authors literally ran a series of experiments and published them without giving a clear way to reproduce the results. How is that useful to anyone except to self advertise?

My comment about prediction vs understanding was simply meant to underscore this, albeit it might rub some people the wrong way. If you publish a paper purely about prediction (ie a set of experiments) be prepared to release all pertinent information to reproduce said experiments. If you choose to publish a paper that aims to improve mankind's understanding of the problem at hand, you are intrinsically required to provide all proof in your exposition.

Otherwise we might as well just believe everything anyone ever says with no proof.</comment></comment></comment>


School of Hard Knocks: 'How Children Succeed,' by Paul Tough - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/books/review/how-children-succeed-by-paul-tough.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> _Nothing in the world can take the place of Luck. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Luck and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Good Luck' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race._

\- A reality based Calvin Coolidge

Hard work and luck are what's needed to succeed. If you ignore luck - you will end up bitter, sad and depressed.

If you were born female in the 1920s - you will not do well.

If you were black in the 19th century - you will not do well.

If you are poor in the 21st century - you will not do well.

If you die before you get anything done - you will not do well.

Luck > determination - always has been - always will be.

You can increase your chances at success but don't lie to people and say success is by hard work alone - that's a lie.

<comment><USER3> While we must all acknowledge the crazy amounts of luck we've been privy to - it's not super useful except as a salve for your lack of success - which could totally be due to luck, or to temper your success.

Luck and work on dependent - we need to acknowledge that. I've had some damn lucky moments that I had to work my ass off for. Where's the utility in knowing that much is left to luck? The only way I can think is optimizing for luck - networking a lot, giving talks, giving help, etc. all, as some HNer put it "expands your luck surface area" - an apt term

<comment><USER4> Reading about the 1920s stock market crash recently it struck me that many men ruined themselves because they were unaware that their previous success owed more to luck than to their mastery of the situation.

<comment><USER3> I think a public stock market is a hard game to "good" at - far more luck based than other things. I mean it's a pretty efficient market with really high incentives to get information, and hence pricing, reflected in your positions.

Whereas - a person opening a construction company just has to beat all the super-flakey contractors that already exist and of course sell like hell. This is far less luck than the stock market is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "For both rich and poor teenagers, certain family characteristics predicted children's maladjustment, including low levels of maternal attachment, high levels of parental criticism and minimal after-school adult supervision."

'maladjustment' seems quite a strong word, but I have seen this pattern with some teenagers I teach, including the ones whose parents have bought them cars, iPads, clothes &c, but don't seem to _spend time_.

A handful this year decided _not_ to go to University (UK: 18 year olds) but to get jobs or training positions in a different city. Sounds hopeful.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm probably too paranoid, because first things I think about are "appeasement": reading that article you can think "ah, it was just my laziness that made me fail, hard work still brings success even to poor people" and "even rich kids fail because they have callous parents". At the same time, a lot of people don't have to work at all, and probably sponsor articles like this to keep the working population calm.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a parent, I find these kind of books, well, silly. They generally leverage a series of small studies and then provide a handful of examples to reinforce their thesis. Now, maybe this book uses larger studies, but they are pretty hard to come by.

So what we're left with is essentially nothing new - poor children don't succeed, and rich kids can go off the tracks. Is this news? Is it news that perseverance matters?

I would love a book on parenting that is based on a large enough data set to make it relevant, and then provide some suggestions based on those studies - anyone know of any?

My guess is that anyone that reads this kind of book is already likely a decent parent - but I would need to look at the data. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> What do you do when your most determined best effort is still inadequate?

<comment><USER9> As harsh as it sounds, I'd probably re-read Taskstrike's comment above.

EDIT: On a more practical note, I find reading biographies of those who've succeeded in the face of adversity gives me motivation to "press on". Dyson's autobiography is a good example.

<comment><USER8> OK, so what do I do when my most persistent determined effort fails? I.e., if I never win and never give up?

<comment><USER9> This is difficult without context, but first I'd replace "never win" with "haven't won yet". And even if you haven't won yet, you've surely learned something along the way (even if it's what not to do). Can this knowledge be used to try again more effectively, or to try something similar in a different field with a higher chance of success (or less risk)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It maddens me when they use 'success' in such narrow terms. There are other kinds of success than a poor kid achieving a university education (as great as that might be).

</comment><comment><USER11> Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

-Calvin Coolidge

<comment><USER12> I know too many people who work too hard but accomplish too little to believe that. Sure, some persistence may be _necessary_ but it is by no means _sufficient_!

Put another way, I'm sure as many determined people fail as talented, intelligent or educated ones do.

<comment><USER13> Persistence often fails, even among smart people, because people don't know how to work productively. They think because they work hard, and are smart, they deserve some particular outcome.

They aren't try to produce, they are trying to earn a result. It isn't until people focus on trying to produce and create things of value to other people, rather than "earning" success, "doing the right things", that they begin to succeed. You have to take responsibility for your failures, no matter how unfair they may seem, look for the lessons in them and learn to be more effective.

Or at least that is how it seems to me.

The distinction here is very subtle, and possible to miss entirely. I think that subtlety may explain a great deal of confusion.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: pavoq – a marketplace for website-shaders - <AUTHOR> https://www.pavoq.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> We built this with Elm and Rust.

Especially Elm and the elm-ui library allowed us to move and build very fast!</comment>


Deep belief image recognition on Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jetpacapp/DeepBeliefSDK <comment><USER2> Apart from a recent (26 day old) update to the javascript, this looks like it got abandoned back when Google acquired Jetpac (who's website now seems defunct). Anyone know what the status of this is? I guess there must've been some more-recent-than_aug-2014 updates, since it mentions RaspberryPi2s...

<comment><USER3> [http://petewarden.com/2015/05/10/image-recognition-on-the- ra...](http://petewarden.com/2015/05/10/image-recognition-on-the-raspberry- pi-2/)

[http://petewarden.com/2015/05/18/jetpacs-deep-learning- frame...](http://petewarden.com/2015/05/18/jetpacs-deep-learning-framework-on- the-beaglebone-black/)

[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/445#event-48...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/445#event-486230566)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> you could also try this:

[https://github.com/teradeep/demo-apps/tree/master/generic- em...](https://github.com/teradeep/demo-apps/tree/master/generic-embedded)

or this:

[http://mxnet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/tutorial/smart_device...](http://mxnet.readthedocs.org/en/latest/tutorial/smart_device.html)

Not really RPi related - but I think it's only a matter of time until we have mobile GPU optimised BLAS libraries working with Mali, Adreno etc. At that point machine learning will become more feasible on current mobile devices

</comment><comment><USER5> Had had a good play with that lib earlier on debian, it's pretty cool! Very lightweight (considering) and I tossed it a few pictures of stuff, and it's quite impressive. I particularly liked my eBay shopping history. Didn't like my landscape photos so much, but it's likely to be that it hasn't been trained on any...

What would be fantastic is a way to recover some sort of rough coordinates of what the classification have found.

<comment><USER4> bounding box - [https://github.com/rbgirshick/py-faster- rcnn](https://github.com/rbgirshick/py-faster-rcnn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This lib is so small and self-contained that it was straightforward to port it to Windows (Visual Studio): [https://github.com/jetpacapp/DeepBeliefSDK/pull/62](https://github.com/jetpacapp/DeepBeliefSDK/pull/62)

I had trouble getting Caffe and Torch to run natively (i.e. MS toolchain), anyone knows of a good Windows port for these that one can link to?</comment>


Technically speaking, what makes Google Chrome fast? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2009/12/technically-speaking-what-makes-google.html

<comment><USER2> I don't really notice whether a page renders .1 seconds faster. But I do notice when a browser starts up quickly, and how smooth its responses are. And while I love Firefox to death, it is falling short of the mark in those areas of everyday use, compared to Chrome and Safari. If it were not for the addons, I would have dumped it by now. It makes me sad to even type that :(

<comment><USER3> I consider this notion of speed being the only important factor pretty stupid. No amount of speed matters when a browser's UX sucks. Firefox is the only browser where it's actually _possible_ to get a decent UX (vertical tabs and a way to quickly search through tabs are absolute necessities).

<comment><USER4> I think it depends on what kind of "browser" user you are.

I spend most of my time online, and only use my browser for viewing web pages, and sometimes testing during development. I rarely ever bookmark anything, and if I do, it's a link I "really" go to a lot and just put it in the bookmark toolbar. Basically, I use tabs and hot-keys.

In a nutshell, start up speed and browsing speed is most important to me. Take it with a grain of salt though, as I don't mind viewing documents online in lynx/w3m/etc.

<comment><USER3> I usually have around 200 tabs open, and any other browser is a nightmare to use. Firefox + Tree Style Tabs + Ubiquity is the only way I can maintain some degree of sanity. Since I keep my browser open all the time, I don't particularly care about startup speed.

Hell, forget about admittedly niche things like vertical tabs. Chrome gets so many basic things wrong, from scrolling to text selection, that it's just a poor joke of a browser.

<comment><USER5> If I may ask, _why_ do you have 200 tabs open? Are you really using the tab bar as a random-access array of pages, or are you using it more like a queue?

<comment><USER3> I'm just in the habit of opening tabs and forgetting about them for a few days, then coming back to them when I have time, so I guess it's more like a queue. I'm not saying it's desirable or optimal for everyone -- it's just how I work, and I find it quite effective, and I treasure my workflow a lot more than I care about "speed".

I also usually have lots of tabs with API documentation open, so it's important to maintain state such as the position of the scrollbar. Keeping tabs open is a much easier way to maintain this state than creating bookmarks for every function in the API.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps you should investigate some sort of bookmarking technology like delicious.

<comment><USER3> I've looked at them and tried to use them before, but the problem with any bookmarking technology is that I always get the feeling that bookmarks are permanent. (When was the last time you deleted a bookmark?) I really don't want most of the links I open to be permanent. With tabs, it feels good to know that there's always an out -- the red X in the top right corner.

<comment><USER7> I fear it is not the browser that is the problem: just that your workflow is unique.

As an aside I'm surprised you can survive with FireFox and 200 tabs. Once I get above about 50 the memory usage and lag just gets too much for it to be usable. Any tips?

<comment><USER8> Well, this usuage is not so unique, although I don't have 200 tabs, but usually way more than 50.

As a side note, untill chrome is ported to linux (with a usable state) and untill adblock is ported to chrome, this browser does not exist for me :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What makes google chrome fast? A solid javascript compiler, a fast page renderer with a high performance DOM (webkit), and a few additional tricks like dns prefetching.

... and lazy competition. IE is satisfied with incremental performance improvements every 5 years, firefox is arguably still burdened with the luggage of AOL's Netscape rewrite from ages ago (though they've been making tremendous progress with each release), and safari on windows is an after thought.

<comment><USER9> How does Safari (or WebKit) perform on OS X?

<comment><USER10> Very well. WebKit have a "zero-tolerance policy for performance regressions" [1], and it shows.

They also have a very good incentive to improve JavaScript performance, since Mobile Safari also runs on WebKit/Nitro.

[1] <http://webkit.org/projects/performance/index.html>

<comment><USER11> While safari has a fast rendering engine, and most of its performance benchmarks makes it out to be competitive - I don't know what it is - but it simply /feels/ slower. Less responsive - from beachballs on link clicks to loading up the initial 3D eyecandy. Than Chrome on windows, that is.

<comment><USER10> Safari _feels_ fast to me, but it's an open question how much our respective views are shaped by our preconceptions about our respective preferred browsers. Are you using it on Windows, or on OS X? I don't know (because I don't use it on Windows) what its performance is like on Windows, although as InclinedPlane pointed out upthread, Apple have less incentive to optimise there.

If it's slow on OS X, perhaps you view a lot of sites with Flash content. The OS X Flash Player is pretty awful (I use ClickToFlash [1] to block it), and a frequent harbinger of the beachball. I also tend to disable the "initial 3D eyecandy", because it does slow things down, and for me at least it's pretty pointless.

[1]: <http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/>

<comment><USER12> It would be interesting to do a study of which browser people _think_ is fastest (based on a trial of all the browsers somehow perfectly skinned to look like other ones).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've noticed that chrome is very fast at start up, but if I forgot it opened for some time, when I get back to it again switching tabs and repaint is very slow. Repaint take like 0.5 seconds. Could it be related to the handling on the many processes on Windows ?

<comment><USER14> I've noticed the same thing, and that I seem to have less of a problem with that on other platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The timing of this is funny. On the one hand, Google introduces a faster DNS service. On the other hand, one of the videos shows how DNS pre-fetching in Chrome means that DNS lookup speed is not that critical.

<comment><USER16> it doesn't mean it's not that critical... it means it's a problem, and that different teams are trying to solve it from different angles.

<comment><USER15> It does take away much of the incentive to use a faster DNS service though.

<comment><USER17> It's not like people not using Google DNS is losing them money.

<comment><USER18> It does if they are using OpenDNS or an ISP like Comcast (if they still do DNS interception?).

These organizations redirect failed lookups to their own search pages and sell the traffic on for a price or show their own ads.

The alternative is a clean failure which gets handled by the browser. I believe that most browsers send you to the default search in those cases - which is usually Google.

There's a kickback involved in that case too (searches from Firefox earn Mozilla a small fee for example) but I wouldn't be surprised if it was cheaper.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best Bitcoin exchange/wallet out there? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to purchase some Bitcoin but I don't have much idea about the best place to buy them.  I've had a look at Coinbase but they seems to have so many negative reviews.  Can anyone make any recommendations?  I'm UK based if that makes a difference. <comment><USER2> For wallets I really like using blockchain.info

\- [https://blockchain.info/wallet](https://blockchain.info/wallet)

It's free, well designed, secure (encrypted, two factor authentication), and there are mobile apps to access it anywhere. Check out the How it Works and the FAQ:

\- [https://blockchain.info/wallet/how-it- works](https://blockchain.info/wallet/how-it-works)

\- [https://blockchain.info/wallet/wallet- faq](https://blockchain.info/wallet/wallet-faq)

For UK exchanges I'm not sure, maybe also check /r/bitcoin ([https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin](https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin)) and the Bitcoin Wiki ([https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Currency_exchanges](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Currency_exchanges)).

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, [https://blockchain.info/](https://blockchain.info/) is bad idea for anything last year or so - under any non-zero level of [bitcon network] load it tends to show wrong values and stuff. Also, using hosted solutions for own wallet is not that great idea as you could think it is - site owner could ban your account, inject evil javascript etc. [https://electrum.org/](https://electrum.org/) is descent choice as a wallet. MultiBit HD ([https://multibit.org/](https://multibit.org/)) is possible alternative (not reached 1.0 so far)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://localbitcoins.com/](https://localbitcoins.com/)

I've personally not had problems with [https://www.coinbase.com/](https://www.coinbase.com/) thus far. I'm not a power user though, either.

</comment><comment><USER5> Coinbase is good to get the bitcoins, I wouldn't use them as my wallet. I've heard bad stories of them closing accounts due to bitcoins being used somewhere that they do not approve of.

I use electrum on my own machine as my wallet

</comment><comment><USER6> I have used coinbase for about a year now and am very satisfied with the service, security and new enhancements they have added.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've used mrcoin.eu a few times recently, all were pretty good experiences

</comment><comment><USER8> If you can, purchase from a Bitcoin ATM or using LocalBitcoins.com. Coinbase can be heavy-handed at times, but it's better than Circle by a country mile.</comment>


[video] Can These Revolutionary Body Hacks Beat Aging in Our Lifetimes? - <AUTHOR> http://longevityfacts.com/video-revolutionary-technologies-beat-aging-lifetimes/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi - I'm new here. Question: What does the * in front of the post mean? Thanks

<comment><USER2> It indicates submissions you've submitted or comments you've posted. Only you see the asterisk.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks so much</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can remote-first be a winning strategy for SV startups? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed that startups are often very insistent on their developers being physically present, and are less remote-friendly even compared to bigger enterprises.
I understand many of the reasons why, but going remote-first also seems like it would bring many benefits. Avoiding the high-COL-high-salaries problem in SV. Minimising facilities expenses. Attracting talented employees who enjoy working from home. Working with the best talent from around the world, and not just SV.
I'm aware that it's certainly possible for startups to go remote-first, but is it generally going to help or hurt the company? Do investors like YC and VCs encourage it or discourage it?
My general definition of remote-first: https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/02/08/means-remote-first-company/ <comment><USER2> I think the emphasis on requiring everyone to be physically present in a noisy, distraction-oriented open plan office is a direct confirmation that it's about optics and cosmetics.

The decision isn't driven by what would be productive in terms of work output, nor what would be healthy, nor even what would be cost effective.

They are willing to pay premiums in terms of the costs of lost productivity, costs of opulent office features that don't increase productivity or attract talent, costs of artificially reducing the candidate pool by excluding remote workers from consideration, etc.

The only way to see it as a rational choice on the part of management is if they are compensated more for the optics and cosmetic appearance of the company workplace than they are compensated for actual work output. I'd argue this seems at least plausible for a lot of start-ups seeking hype-driven investment.

By the formula, it then leads to a cookie cutter pattern of levering up the hyped private valuation followed by a race to an IPO and marketing campaign to distract everyone from loss growth and poor profitability prospects, to use the IPO to essentially externalize the losses that will come from a huge price correction out onto unwitting people who come to own the stock through some unmonitored 401(k) plan manager and onto employees who get trapped by IPO blackout windows preventing them from selling at the early, hyped IPO prices.

Spotify fit this pattern very well, and it is shaping up to be Uber's strategy over the next year too, while possibly even letting privileged insiders participate in a private equity sale to a few hedge funds, to capitalize even sooner on the hyped private valuation prior to the inevitable price correction.

Really, it's not hyperbolic to point out that even early choices to mandate an on-site only policy in a cost-ineffective open plan office are indicators of this optics-first-productivity-second way of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER3> Like many things, it has benefits and risks.

Are the benefits of reduced burn/increased access to talent particularly relevant for your business, such that they outweigh the increased communication & management difficulty?

I think VCs don't see raising money as an issue, and would rather you burn through a bunch of extra money than struggle with "unnecessary" issues. I mean, we all know AWS is more expensive than doing everything yourself, but yet almost no-one is operating their own machines.

</comment><comment><USER4> > _Can remote-first be a winning strategy for SV startups?_

Yes, although then it's hard to say whether the startup is still "SV" or not, assuming most of the company lives elsewhere.

> _Do investors like YC and VCs encourage it or discourage it?_

Don't optimize your company for raising money. Optimize it for not needing to raise money, i.e. being cash-flow positive. If you're successful at the latter, investors won't care whether you're remote or not.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use a printing API? - <AUTHOR>

Would you use an API that allow to print products such as postcards, stationery, business cards, mini-books etc... <comment><USER2> Yes. I am looking for one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you tell me what products you would be looking to print?

For example several social networks want to print postcards using users' photos.

<comment><USER2> Documents. We provide a Skype plugin for recording calls and our customers get them transcribed by us. The transcripts are in Word, PDF and ODT formats.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the information. I looked into your website. What I had in mind may not work for you, but I will still email you something that maybe interesting.

Thanks again.

<comment><USER2> Cool.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>