Show HN: Zapmarks - <AUTHOR> https://zapmarks.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking out Zapmarks! I created this product for myself first and foremost but I am hoping other people find it as useful as I do.

I am a developer by day and jump from device to device and browser to browser. I hated having all of my bookmarks tied to one or the other so I created Zapmarks!

Also, being a small business owner, I wear many hats and have lots of different accounts for everything. It's great coming up with a keyword in your head and knowing it will take you directly to what you want it to.

For example, I have many Google Drive accounts for different things, I have 'drive' set up to go to my personal Google Drive and 'drive2' goes to my business Google Drive. Since I know this and have built that muscle-memory, I can get directly to exactly what I need very efficiently! Here are a few other Zapmarks I use frequently, as examples...

vzw = Verizon Wireless Account budget = Google Drive Personal Budget Sheet qb = QuickBooks Online bank = Online Banking fbm = Facebook Messenger en = Evernote gh = GitHub

I have lots planned for Zapmarks! Give it a shot and let me know if you have any questions!

<comment><USER2> Best of luck to you on your project. It reminds me of aol keywords

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hmm, isn't this built into Firefox? Bookmarks can have keywords and they are automatically synchronized everywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Firefox has bookmark keywords. I remember using these way back when, but then I moved to Chrome and I was lost. Zapmarks is cross-platform and works with any browser, that's our main advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious - why is the pro membership limited to 500 zapmarks? Seems like it would be trivial to make that unlimited.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was set at 500 as a starting point, if we find Pro users are frequently getting close to that limit, I'm sure we'll tweak things as needed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a bookmark manager UX enhancement, and while I can understand a value of this being cross-platform, it would probably make more sense in a form of a browser extension.

Alternatively, I can see it being a "start page" sort of thing with support for efficient keyboard search, but again this doesn't strike me as something dramatically more useful than a static HTML page with Ctrl-F for search.

This basically solves a trivial problem in a somewhat overcomplicated way while creating a paid dependency on external service.

<comment><AUTHOR> We already have a native Chrome extension to do just this, and are working on other native solutions. We also offer a number of other ways to integrate it into other platforms using simply a URL. When logged in, we have a "Tools" page which lists some of the options for integrating Zapmarks into various platforms but are working to add more as we go!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice! I do the same thing with custom aliases in my .bash_profile for all kinds of things, including opening various webpages, opening meditation videos on youtube and such to certain timestamps, so I think the idea has some legs. One thing I do with my aliases is have custom arguments, so like if I want to open a stock ticker on yahoo it's `yah goog` from the command line. So being able to add custom arguments might be a cool additional feature.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I use lots of bash aliases as well!

Yep, query strings are on our list! Thanks for checking things out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm:

\- Are variables allowed in the links?

\- Can you set it as the default search engine for your browser so these can just be typed into the main search bar instead of going to the Zapmarks site each time?

Firefox's built in keywords already do great for this, and I have seen [https://shortmarks.com/](https://shortmarks.com/) for other browsers. What does your site offer that those do not? They are both free options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Variables aren't supported in the links yet, but this is definitely on our radar! We focused on keyword functionality for launch, but the search would definitely be handy as well!

Yes, you can manually change your default search engine using this url. Substitute %s for whatever your query string variable is for your device/browser.

[https://zapmarks.io/u/%s?api_token=your-api-token- here](https://zapmarks.io/u/%s?api_token=your-api-token-here)

On Chrome, you can simply install our extension which allows you to type 'z {keyword}' to access your Zapmarks. Other native browser extensions are in the works as well.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zapmarks/pdomgldhp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zapmarks/pdomgldhpdbgeogocoogemipgcjmbfhi?hl=en- US)

We have a few benefits over the competitors, like Secret Access Links which allows you to use your Zapmarks on new browsers and devices without logging in.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr4dPcnrUMM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr4dPcnrUMM)

Also, we are working hard on developing lots of other ways to integrate our product into other devices and platforms, like Alfred on the Mac.

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/graftechnology/zapmarks/Zapmarks.al...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/graftechnology/zapmarks/Zapmarks.alfredworkflow)

Hope that answers your questions. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congratulations on launching Zapmarks!

I'm a big fan of bookmaking services. Having better ways of managing your saved information is important to me. I run [https://trackr.sh](https://trackr.sh) that serves a similar goal.

Why did you pick a single keyword to identify your bookmarks? I use a similar workflow in Firefox vit found that it doesn't scale for a lot of bookmarks. For [https://trackr.sh](https://trackr.sh) I chose to go with a multi tag combination where you select a number of tags to narrow down your list of bookmarks.

<comment><USER9> Hijacking other person's ShowHN to promote your own project of nearly the same exact nature is not very nice, don't you think?

<comment><USER8> It certainly wasn't my intention to hijack this post. I wanted to ask a genuine question. Personally I don't think referring to a competing product is bad when asking for a comparison of features.

Sorry if my comment came across as self promotion!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this like (and a competitor to) Pinboard[1]?

I love Pinboard. I was lucky to have bought the lifetime license during one of the promos.

Free App, Shiori[2] on the Desktop is an excellent companion.

1\. [https://pinboard.in/](https://pinboard.in/)

2\. [https://shiori.apponic.com/](https://shiori.apponic.com/)

<comment><USER11> Shoiri doesn't always work with Chrome. It doesn't work with a lot of other browsers. It's not dependable anymore if you're not using the most basic or common browsers (Safari, Chrome). And whatever causes it to not work with Chrome for me sometimes.

I use either Spillo or Alfred workflows now on Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious, why make users type in the keyword? They already have the links saved and are logged in. You could display them in a tile format or a list something? Seems to me like 2 steps, visit zapmarks and then type a keyword is a lot of work. That's just my 2c, respect you have a different flow and this feels right and nice product

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Zapmarks is definitely more focused on the keyboard than the mouse. If you have a keyword in your head, we want you to be able to type it and go. Tiles would cause you to have to look around to find what you want.

We have thought about maybe having your top 3 most-used Zapmarks appear under the search bar for quick access, but not sure if that's something we will move forward with or not. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER12> I get it. Seems very niche use case. Keyboard requirement in a mobile world. I feel like the browser bar essentially solves for it already except I have to remember the 3-4 characters to get the autocomplete to fill in. But at least I don't have to configure it either. My idea of tiles is like a phone/tablet where I could order it myself and learn the placement through muscle memory. Scanning by eye is much easier than typing and remembering what keywords I set up. I can hardly remember my passwords.

Anyways not raining on you're parade. It's a cool concept just doesn't fit the use case I'd prefer. Best of luck with it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did you look at [https://www.golinks.io](https://www.golinks.io)?

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks good. I have too many bookmarks for this. Might be interested if you can add folders and ways to access them for infrequently used items.

I miss foxmarks. I pay for another service, but you have to log in at least once. Firefox accounts and thus bookmarks are blocked at work.

</comment><comment><USER15> I typically remember at least one or two keywords about any site I visit. Usually, typing these into the URL bar will turn up the desired website as a suggested result in Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, most of the time this might work, but it also might not. With Zapmarks you know exactly what you're getting because if the keyword doesn't match, it doesn't work. One example would be my Google Drive example, I have multiple accounts and deep link to each of them using their own keyword (drive, drive2, drivepersonal, etc) I know if I type that keyword, I will get right there.

With suggested results, you might get to the main Drive account but then will have to go through a series of steps to "switch accounts" to whatever account you're looking to access.

This is one of the big differences. Thanks for checking us out!

<comment><USER15> The keyword idea would be a great fallback for the existing "suggested URL" function in Chrome.

I think it works as intended about 95% of the time. It'd be nice to be able to add to a simple Map<Keyword, Url> table that the "suggested URL" feature can use as a fallback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Your copy is really bad. I have no idea what your product does after looking at the website. Maybe I would if I watched the video, but I'm not going to watch the video.

<comment><USER17> This is harshly worded but completely true. Until I reluctantly watched the video, I had no idea what the product was. I wouldn't rely only on the video and I wouldn't invite sign-up before telling people what they were actually signing up for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We'll definitely look to improve on that. It's a hard concept to convey in text. Most people don't get it until they are shown, that's why we did the video, but we'll look at other ways to help people "get it" when they first visit our site. Thanks!

<comment><USER17> Try an autoplaying silent video without interface. Or an animated GIF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> in Firefox I can sync my bookmarks everywhere. Bookmarks can be easily accessed using *<keyword> format

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, but Zapmarks is browser-agnostic which is a main feature.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a code for 50% off of your first year of Pro. Expires on 10/31/19\. Enjoy! F5zLMQTX

</comment><comment><USER19> How's this different from syncing host files between machines?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't sync a host file to an iPhone.

That's just one example, but at the core, that's the difference. You could access Zapmarks on your Kindle browser or your refrigerators smart display if you really wanted to.

<comment><USER19> I guess so, although I'm not that avid of a phone user.

In either case, most of the time when I type "n" I get HN or "m" for mail and so forth. I can't really see a good use case for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's another difference. With Zapmarks, there is no "most of the time". If you type a keyword you have set up, and hit enter, you will get exactly to where you wanted to be 100% of the time. Once you've got the keywords baked into your brain, accessing them from everywhere is very handy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is the same as AOL Keywords, welcome back :)</comment>


NSA's massive database struggling under weight of spam  - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/nsas-massive-database-struggling-under-weight-of-spam-7000021953/ <comment><USER2> Somebody ought to author a program that will send meaningless emails (e.g. output from /dev/urandom, base64-encoded) between accounts on Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail, just to keep NSA's machinery busy.

Some stupid (American?) politician said (in an attempt to justify NSA's wiretapping) that in order to find the needle you need a haystack, so let's give'em the haystack they need!</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a web framework as 'good' as Rails for Clojure? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Noir is not bad. I've been using it for a side project. Its no Rails, but its the best option I've found for Clojure at this point.

<http://webnoir.com/>

<comment><USER3> you wanted to link <http://webnoir.org/> the .com is somewhat different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check out Joodo. There's a good getting started section and sample app instructions - <http://www.joodoweb.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Not yet. But when there is, it'll be called Noir.

There's a lot of components of a good web framework, some of them just aren't there yet.</comment>


Ask HN: Deploy a sandboxed desktop software? - <AUTHOR> I have a nw.js application but at the same time I don't want to allow malicious code to be run on the clients machines.
My thought was to put the app in a sandbox and distribute the software along with the sandbox.
Has anybody run into such situation with Electron/nw.js? Say you ship a browser built on Electron/nw.js, how do you make it secure enough and is sandboxing the right approach?
I'm not sure where to ask this question as stackoverflow has already closed it <comment><USER2> Hi, you may find a solution in the "node-main" key of a nw.js application manifest without sandboxing, see the manifest format here [https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js/wiki/manifest- format](https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js/wiki/manifest-format)</comment>


What's wrong with CSS-in-JS? - <AUTHOR> http://bradfrost.com/blog/link/whats-wrong-with-css-in-js/ <comment><USER2> The author mentions separation of concerns. I would suggest reading [https://blog.cloudboost.io/separate-your-code-with-styled- co...](https://blog.cloudboost.io/separate-your-code-with-styled-components- ec4fd1ee3ef8)</comment>


Show HN: GraphCMS – A GraphQL-based Headless CMS - <AUTHOR> https://graphcms.com/blog/new-graphcms-ready-for-launch <comment><USER2> >> Can I host GraphCMS on my own servers? >> Please talk to sales to discuss deployment options.

This is not an answer. Talk to sales?

I don't mind paying for support. I'm not a fan of paying for enterprise features. I would never want a dependency to something which is not free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our new architecture allows much more flexibility on the deployments, so just speak to us about your favorite setting. However, it is quite complex and we rather focus on delivering a high quality cloud infrastructure that works for everyone. I can understand your perspective but our mantra is to remain a SaaS company, which means to be able to focus on ONE code base. This allows us on delivering a higher quality product in the long run so all users can benefit from it.

<comment><USER3> So basically no?

<comment><AUTHOR> So basically, lets talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The scary thing to me is if a service like this stops, I have an angry client and a lot of work. Headless CMS's are a delight to work with though.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Or drastically changes their pricing model (see: Contentful).

I understand the benefits of all of these individual services, but I also miss the days of the only service I had to worry about when I handed off a client site was hosting.

Now it's often the headless CMS hosting (i.e. Contentful, GraphCMS), actual hosting (Netlify), CDN, Image CDN, Search (i.e. Algolia). So many places for things to break. So many separate charges.

I also love headless CMS's but much prefer self-hosted ones. Directus has been a favorite to experiment with so far.

<comment><USER6> Checkout daptin if you are looking for an open source self hosted solution for headless cms

[https://github.com/daptin/daptin](https://github.com/daptin/daptin)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excuse my ignorance, and I don't mean to troll.

Why would I want a "Headless" CMS?

Why would I want a CMS based on GraphQL?

What is wrong, with plain old HTML?

<comment><USER8> > Why would I want a "Headless" CMS?

Perhaps your CMS serves multiple front ends: a website, or a mobile app.

> Why would I want a CMS based on GraphQL?

The way I see it, the CMS is not based on GraphQL, it's just a CMS that you can query with GraphQL. I haven't used GraphQL at all, but it seems like it could be useful for working within a system where you need to bring data from many different REST endpoints together. Usually I would have to hand code something like this myself on the backend, but with GraphQL it seems like once you have it all set up, you can get data from multiple APIs, while specifying the schema of your response on the client instead of on the backend.

> What is wrong, with plain old HTML?

Nothing, if you can build what you want to build with "plain HTML" then do it.

<comment><USER9> "Headless" is a weird term for an HTTP API.

<comment><USER8> It's describing the CMS, not the API. It's not so familiar to software engineer types, but is pretty well understood in publishing / Drupal / WordPress space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It'd be rather refreshing if one of the headless CMS PaaS solutions could follow an open model similar to WordPress/Gitlab

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I'm one of the co-founders of GraphCMS.

We will soon start open sourcing our content management interface, so users have the opportunity to customize the CMS UI to their needs. Most of our customers just want us to take care of the hosting.

<comment><USER11> Can you compare pros/cons to Contentful?

<comment><AUTHOR> GraphCMS is the only CMS that exclusively offers GraphQL. Other CMSs have since entered the space to offer GraphQL technology, but they still try to maintain both REST and GraphQL APIs which will lead to some maintenance issues in the future. An example of this is that the other CMSs aren't able to offer a "mutation" API for their CMS through GraphQL. With our CMS you can query the data and change it through the same powerful interface. This opens the door to a wide range of tooling and custom workflow enhancements. Additionally, because we only offer GraphQL, we are able to be more agile with changes to the technology.

In the future, our focus will shift even more to content based BaaS as we will support end user authentication. We are also preparing a new suite of workflow tools that will make managing large datasets a breeze.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I reviewed the site. I still have no idea what GraphCMS does.

<comment><AUTHOR> TLDR; It allows you to bring content to any platform.

It allows you to build content databases in an easy and visual manner. Once you have your content in GraphCMS, you are able to fetch it in an elegant way by using GraphQL. The target platforms that consume the content can be anything: web, mobile, alexa skills or just business partners you want to share digital content with so that they can put it on the target platform of their choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do people really care about the library used to build their CMS? Surely this will only appeal to those that already use GraphQL...

<comment><USER14> It's about the language front-to-back. The language that builds the CMS is also the language that you build your sites with! So you keep the overhead low on various technologies being used. Yes, GraphQL users are the primary people drawn to the app, but that's sort of true for any platform?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just the other day I learned about [https://github.com/unite-cms/unite- cms/](https://github.com/unite-cms/unite-cms/) .

Though obviously GraphCMS is different (technology-wise and business-wise it seems).

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks great, excited to try it out. Just skimming through the Documentation, is there any way to specify the Schema through an API? My use case that I want to define my schema somewhere, and have something which "syncs" the it with GraphCMS, is this possible?

<comment><AUTHOR> You could use the management API for this. It's basically the same API the content management interface also speaks to. You can open up the API explorer and switch to the management API in the top bar and play around with it!

(fyi: the documentation is not released, yet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Gentics Mesh can also be used with GraphQL and REST (e.g. for File Uploads). GraphQL is (imho) no silver bullet.

[https://getmesh.io](https://getmesh.io)

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't any database with a GraphQL interface a superset of a "headless CMS"? And the subset is just a particular schema?

</comment><comment><USER18> mlukaszczyk,

Is GraphCMS a Graphcool service? I see their style of sorting and filtering in your API. If so, what's your experience with Graphcool, and what value does GraphCMS add?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hirundo,

the former GraphCMS was built on top of Graphcool, with the new system, we also move to Graphcool's new product, Prisma, which is a setting we enjoy a lot. Prisma runs at the core for CRUD and then we add an additional API layer to it to add the features we think make sense in a CMS context.

The value add depends on perspective. If you are looking for a tool to build a content database, then GraphCMS brings definitely a lot to the table. While you get the content management interface and tools, we add just enough opinion to the APIs that makes sense in a context of building a content database.

Graphcool is also not actively maintained anymore as the team is now focusing on Prisma.

The Demo-API on the landing page is from the former stack. We will soon add a new example to showcase all the new API utils.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How are you currently handling subscriptions or live updates/polling?

</comment><comment><USER20> Graphql is not a product pitch. I don't care. Even your product page just shows an editor that looks like a WordPress article. Why do I need graphql to pull an article from a remote api to my local cache? Your front page is just reasons why graphql is good. Maybe so, but I'm sizing you up for a cms api for my business, not a library. Technology itself is not a product

<comment><AUTHOR> GraphQL is fun on the frontend. On the backend, there is a gazillion things that need to be considered. You can build a powerful GraphQL backend via the GraphCMS UI.

So we leave you with the fun part.

This has proven very valuable to our users that don't want to implement the backend part of things, while getting a content management interface for editors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A must see for every frontend engineer working with GraphQL!

</comment><comment><USER22> Pretty cool, but I can't help but feel really soon that browsers will just implement a similar rich default GraphQL and there will be some CSS concept for it when there is no full app code loaded.

<comment><USER23> What you're saying sounds intriguing, but I'm having a hard time understanding what is you're expecting browsers to implement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can't wait to use the new version! I've been looking forward to a lot of the new features.

<comment><USER14> Great! Excited to see what your thoughts are on it!</comment></comment>


Best Places to Find Investors for Your Startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-s-the-best-place-to-find-investors-for-your-product-idea/answer/Vadim-Lidich-1?share=1 <comment><USER2> Tried to sign up for Airdyme. Entered my email and it started "processing"....still does, one hour later....hope your investments are doing better.</comment>


I Know What You Download on BitTorrent - <AUTHOR> https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/ <comment><USER2> [https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/?ip=127.0.0.1](https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/?ip=127.0.0.1) ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER3> [https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/?ip=192.168.0.1](https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/?ip=192.168.0.1)

<comment><USER4> >> Torrent downloads and distributions for IP 192.168.0.1: Distributes child pornography, Static IP, Likes porn

I wonder if they share their data with law enforcement, because there appears to be al lot of valuable data to be mined in the DHT swarms. This service reminds me of the crux in the most recent south park season.

 __* SPOILER __*

Wherein world-order is threatened by the 'troll-trace' program that will expose the on-line behaviour of everyone.

 __* END __ _

<comment><USER5> The collection method here do not actually verify if the information given by the DHT network is correct, which should be rather obvious when the data include invalid IP addresses. A node when receiving a GetPeer request can simply make up any claims they want.

Of course law enforcement don't operate on guaranties and even weak evidence can help if a already suspected person is involved in an investigation, but its important that we distinguish between weak evidence vs strong evidence. The GetPeer reply is about as good as an anonymous tip arriving by email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find this extremely inaccurate - especially when ISPs rotate your IP address.

It mentioned that I downloaded the following on Dec 11th:

1\. Office 2016 Pro

2\. Assassin's Creed Unity

3\. Watchdogs

Not only is it completely inaccurate, no one used my internet on Dec 11th (which meant my IP was probably shuffled by my ISP to someone else).

This is one of the reasons why you should probably take all those DMCA notices with a pinch of salt...it's almost impossible to argue that you pirated in the first place.

<comment><USER7> > it's almost impossible to argue that you pirated in the first place

Wouldn't the ISP be able to prove you were assigned that IP at that time of day?

<comment><USER8> Yup. ISP gets DMCA notice, notice says date and time and IP -- ISP absolutely capable of knowing which customer was assigned that IP at that time.

You can't really take DMCA notices with a "grain of salt". Many ISPs will just cut you as a customer after you get enough of them, as DMCA notices require effort on their part and the amount of effort their IT and legal staff spend dealing with other IT and legal staff looking for you quickly exceeds how much you are paying a month. So unless your area has an overabundance of ways to get internet to your home (in which case you must not live in America), you probably can't afford to have your ISP ban you from using their service.

<comment><USER9> I've gotten plenty. The most that's happened is Comcast injected a warning that refused to disappear into my http traffic until I called the list phone number.

After you do that, they basically forget all the notices (although the copyright holder can still sue you).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is very strange, as I highly doubt they're crawling the entire DHT space, and even if they did they would be getting only infohashes. These are hashes of (a subset of) the torent metadata (including the chunk hashes), so it won't actually tell you what the content is, unless you also download the torrent metadata from peers using BEP-0009.

I'd bet they're pulling popular torrent files from big sites and then pulling peer lists from the DHT. This will work OK for 'hot' content, but they could probably get much better lists if they actually connected to swarms and did peer exchange (PEX) which clients effectively have no control over - it's up to their peers if they are going to reveal addresses through PEX.

Also note that of course none of this will work for private torrents (which almost all clients respect) as they disable all methods of peer/metadata acquisition other than from the trackers directly.

<comment><USER11> You're spot on. I downloaded quite a bit from private trackers and none of it showed up. Nada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> By putting the infohash in the URL your site is effectively equivalent to The Pirate Bay - you're distributing links to pirated content, the only important thing in a magnet link is the infohash, the rest can be obtained via DHT.

For example:

[https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/torrent/?infohash=81ac3d...](https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/torrent/?infohash=81ac3df677afb84211d59443fbb65f5f584cfa1a) -> magnet:?xt=urn:btih:81ac3df677afb84211d59443fbb65f5f584cfa1a

Paste into torrent client and download. You might want to doublehash that to avoid a potential legal threat.

<comment><USER13> They have Russian interface ([https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ru/peer/](https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ru/peer/)), so I guess they are based in Russia? Also, Russian "about page" is more informative than English: [https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ru/contacts/](https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ru/contacts/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "In addition, the site offers a nifty spy tool where you can see what your friends are downloading, without knowing their IP-address. If someone clicks on a link you send them, their alleged download history shows up immediately, without the IP-address being exposed."[1]

[1] [https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-downloaded-on- bitto...](https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-downloaded-on- bittorrent-161223/)

<comment><USER14> Wow, they're just straight up distributing spyware and getting people to install it on their friends machines huh.

<comment><USER15> How is this spyware in any definition?

<comment><USER16> It's a pun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fails for me because I connect to their website via IPV6.

 _IPv6 is unsupported temporary_

Odd though, if you don't support searching via IPV6, why have a website that accepts IPV6 connections?

Edit: Likely because they are using Cloudflare, which bridges IPV6 to IPV4. They should probably turn that off until they support IPV6 searches...it's under the network settings in cloudflare's control panel.

<comment><USER18> Me too, but it says that I'm in the USA, AT&T Wireless. Very wrong guess by thousands miles.

<comment><USER16> Canadian, eh?

<comment><USER18> Somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _How we collect data_

 _Our system collects torrent files in two ways: parsing torrent sites and listening DHT network. We have more than 500.000 torrents which where classified and which are using now for collecting peer sharing facts (up to 700.000.000 daily). We don 't guarantee we can show ALL peer sharing facts:_

 _Single IP address could be assigned to multiple users. It depends on user 's ISP. For example mobile operators often used this schema._

 _\- IP address could be dynamic. In such case it changes every_

 _\- time user connects to the Internet or periodically._

 _\- User could donwload torrent which we don 't have_

<comment><USER20> I think ISPs limit the usefulness of this since they rotate IPs so often. I tried it because I knew I didn't have any torrents downloaded in the last year at least, but last week it shows a Jurrasic World download

<comment><USER21> ISPs don't limit the usefulness of this as much as private trackers that do; my IP address is completely clean but if you look at my Transmission you'll be surprised ;)

<comment><USER22> And disabling DHT in your client. I've seen trackers that have that as a rule.

<comment><USER21> All private trackers have that (otherwise the private tracker is irrelevant), the torrent file just flags DHT off as well as any other decentralized peer discovery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> VPN for the win! After receiving one of the threat letters from a cheesy law firm representing the RIAA and MPAA 3 years ago, all of my downloads via torrent go through a VPN. Keep yourself safe online.

<comment><USER24> VPN isn't a guarantee of safety. I got a DMCA warning for downloading one file once using a top VPN service.

<comment><USER25> 5 dollars say your torrent client wasn't using the VPN.

<comment><USER26> And/Or DNS resolver leak (not using dnscrypt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just a side-note: the attitude expressed in the Russian version of the website is nowhere that mild and neutral as in the English one. I personally do find it not only alarming, but disgusting to the very least (esp. the "torrent- tracker users deanonymization" part).

[https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ru/contacts/](https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ru/contacts/)

Screenshot: [http://imgur.com/a/PTiDT](http://imgur.com/a/PTiDT) (under the title "Сотрудничество", which means "Cooperation").

Here is my crude translation:

...

Cooperation

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

We are ready to share data on an automated basis, in a different cross- sections and formats. Besides we do have the technical means for "catching" users, who do participate in the torrent-file seeding. By means of connecting to the user's device and subsequent downloading of one tiny piece from the torrent-file, it is possible to collect a TCP-dump of the data exchanged for that piece. There is a unique fingerprint associated with both those data exchanged and the torrent-file itself [0]. That allows to prove the fact that torrent distribution had been taken place from the particular IP address [1]. Everything mentioned above will be potentially actual/useful in Russia [2]. If interested in cooperation, you could let us know: <cooperation-email-address>

P.S. We also have means/possibilities to build recommendation systems, to de- anonymize torrent-trackers users and much, much more.

...

[0] I guess, they speak about "piece" from the "info" array: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_file#File_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_file#File_structure)

[1] They have downloaded it from you, so the fact of the distribution, am I missing something?

[2] [http://hitech.newsru.com/article/03oct2016/piratefine](http://hitech.newsru.com/article/03oct2016/piratefine) || [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhitech.newsru.com%2Farticle%2F03oct2016%2Fpiratefine&edit- text=&act=url)

<comment><USER13> A quote from TorrentFreak article:

"The company informed us that the site helps to showcase their abilities to the various outfits they work with, including copyright holders.

"We've set up the site for promotional purposes and as a demonstration of our capabilities," Marketing director Andrey Rogov says.

"We are engaged in the distribution of information relating to torrent downloading activity to rightsholders, advertising platforms, law-enforcement and international organizations."

The company offers API access to its data for interested parties and can also provide TCP dumps as extra proof that downloaded content is linked to a certain IP-address."

[https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-downloaded-on- bitto...](https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-downloaded-on- bittorrent-161223/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is actually quite scary. They seem to be technically capable people willing to provide a service to law enforcement. They write on the Russian version of About Us page: [1]

We are ready to share our data, providing automated API to raw data or aggregated reports. We also have technical means to catch users who share torrent downloads. By connecting to user's computer and downloading a small piece of torrent, we can get a TCP-log of communication with the user. Data in this log have a unique "print" \- crypto hash, which matches hash from the torrent. This allows to indisputably prove the fact of distribution of content from a given IP address. It will be important in Russia soon. [...] P.S.: We also can build recommendation systems, deanonymize users of torrent sites and many other things.

[1] [https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ru/contacts/](https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ru/contacts/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Interestingly despite the advice given by the Tor website 'Don't torrent over Tor', people still do this:

[https://check.torproject.org/exit- addresses](https://check.torproject.org/exit-addresses)

</comment><comment><USER30> I downloaded none of those things.

<comment><USER31> I trust you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Was this site supposed to have showed me what I downloaded?

<comment><USER5> Based on their about page (and some assumptions), their method is to web scrape a bunch of popular torrent sites and then do a simple getpeer request to harvest a list of peers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Something similar here: [http://youhavedownloaded.com/](http://youhavedownloaded.com/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Unless this site only shows what you're downloading at that moment, it doesn't seem to work. It shows nothing at all for me, even though I downloaded a large public torrent (the new CentOS release ISO) a few days ago. It wasn't even from a private tracker or something like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it only shows torrents they track... if you downloaded a torrent that wasn't being tracked it won't show it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > 18.104.22.168 is your IP address.

I don't think so.

<comment><USER8> DNS server by day, Anime torrenter by night

<comment><USER36> When you think about it, it is a bit suspicious that 22.214.171.124 knows where _all_ the websites are. Even really dodgy ones. What does 126.96.36.199 spend its time doing to find all that out, eh?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The results are garbage. Zero correct results and tons of false positives.

Checked the last dozen or so IP addresses I used. I don't see a single valid result. I torrent lots from the most popular torrents on the biggest site. You'd think it could get that right.

</comment><comment><USER38> Apparently not if I'm using IPv6:

> IPv6 is unsupported temporary.

</comment><comment><USER39> "Cool, now build a comparison tool into Tinder so I can find local friends who like the same movies and porn I like."

This is creepy.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've definitely torrented plenty but this site has nothing for me. I don't use a VPN, not sure why but cool.

<comment><USER41> Same for me. It could be because I use private trackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Would torrent encryption help? I mean assuming all the major torrent clients would decide to enable it all at once.

<comment><USER10> Most torrent clients do support encryption (opportunistically), although the bittorrent protocol's encryption is relatively weak and uses RC4. It should be considered more obfuscation to avoid DPI and whatnot.

Bittorrent peers are fundamentally public by design, unless the torrent is marked private, so this is just curating and presenting that information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not from the States, not on AT&T Wireless. None of my torrents is shown. I think you don't know anything.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've torrented both the archiso and debian iso's this month, but nothing came up for my IP

</comment><comment><USER45> It shows hashes so you can download listed torrents too.

</comment><comment><USER46> Didn't work for me.</comment>


Ask HN: How to manage Engineering and Pre-Sales? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, just wondering how others approach the balance between engineering and pre-sales work. Should we hire a technical pre-sales engineer or is it expected for senior engineers to do pre-sales work? <comment><USER2> Too little detail. What is your product? How technical is it? What stage of development is it in? How big is this team (sales/eng)? What happened for this question to arise?

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on the size of your sales pipeline; if small or just starting out, a senior/lead should be able to do sales as well but not everyone is good at it. I've done each & both together. Solution design and pre-sales work aren't always compatible due to different turnaround times so prioritisation if being done as a combined role can be challenging.</comment>


Covid-19: Not all patients develop protective antibodies - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-covid-patients-antibodies.html <comment><USER2> This doesn't mean there is no immunity.

First of all, from the paper itself:

> Since we could not perform additional virus-neutralization tests we cannot > exclude the possibility that COVID-19 convalescent subjects produce other > types of protective antibodies besides those inhibiting RBD-ACE2 binding.

Second: they took antibodies from serum, which would exclude mucosal responses (IgA), observed by other groups.

Third: There's the whole matter of T-cell immunity which is not touched by this paper at all.

The antibody-dependent enhancement test was done in vitro, so there is no guarantee it would happen in vivo. In fact, the authors say so themselves:

> However, studies are needed to investigate if antibody-mediated increases of > RBD binding to ACE2 have a clinical relevance.

I'd add that a few vaccines in trial use the full-length spike protein, rather than just the so-called "receptor binding domain" (RBD; the part that binds to the ACE2 receptor), so more data are needed to see what is observed here has implications or not.

Personally, I'm still optimistic.</comment>


Stealthy startup Soft Machines launches virtual CPU cores - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2838018/stealthy-startup-soft-machines-launches-virtual-cpu-cores-that-trounce-traditional-processors.html <comment><USER2> I'm going to remain skeptical until they publish more details. The report[0] linked from their homepage seems to contain more/better information, but it's not much.

What seems pretty clear is that they use a proprietary ISA and have developed dynamic binary translators for ARM and x86 code. It's not clear if it's a VLIW architecture or if the ISA has any other properties required by the hardware.

From this report it sounds like they're essentially doing thread-level speculation in hardware.

Based on the linked article I would have been tempted to think they have reconfigurable pipelines, but based on the report I'm somewhat sure it was just a misunderstanding.

I generally think it's a bad sign when a company implements relatively well known concepts from research and then doesn't use the standard terminology and tries to pitch their creation as something 100% new and original. In any case, there's no need to rush a judgment, I guess they'll publish better technical information in time.

[0] [http://www.softmachines.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/10/MPR-1...](http://www.softmachines.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/10/MPR-11303.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Came here to say exactly the same thing. I get that you could create a fabric of hard cores which could be combined into a complete execution pipeline, and I love the idea of imagining something like an FPGA with integer execution units rather than complex logic blocks as building blocks. But it feels like the Lego Technic kit that builds a motorcycle, sure you can build anything you want with the parts, but the motorcycle is the only thing that makes sense. In the same way I wonder if a programmable fabic layered over a series of chip building blocks wouldn't resolve down to a 'best' (or 'least bad') solution and nothing else, at which point why not just add a metal mask and make the chip non programmable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article didn't make very clear the differences between Soft Machines and some now quite old work by Michael J. Flynn on _universal host machine_ and some work by Kemal Ebcioglu on using _very long instruction word_ (VLIW) on code for nearly any instruction set.

Last I heard, Ebcioglu's execution timing simulations were getting 9:1 speedup on IBM's 370 code via 24-way VLIW.

My favorite old idea was to find and offer some programming language constructs that, in their implementation, could make good use of multiple threads without the programmer having to consider multiple threads.

<comment><USER5> VLIW in reality was actually worse (see Itanium as an example) than the currently favored superscalar out of order execution with register renaming. Both of these techniques try to take advantage of instruction level parallelism inherent in pretty much all code.

The reason for failure is that VLIW is basically stuck with whatever the compiler decides can be done. OoO does it dynamically. In the end the only real drawback with OoO vs VLIW is the chip area and increased power consumption required for the logic.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. One would wonder if we werent so stubborn with the way we write our programs what kind of performance we can get from our processors.

<comment><USER7> Well, if programs are created to process simple instructions on lots of data there are huge speedups to be had on current x86 processors. By doing this memory latency is no longer a bottleneck and SIMD instructions can be used much more often. If unnecessary heap allocations have already been taken out, structuring a program like this can result in very substantial speedups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've seen this movie before. The next step is to hire Linus Torvalds.

<comment><USER9> For those that don't get the reference: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta)

<comment><USER10> It's also covered in the article:

"Industry skepticism is likely. The notion of abstracting software from chip hardware has been tried by companies such as Transmeta, a startup born in the mid-1990s that labored for years in secret on technology based on translating computing instructions in novel ways. The startup ultimately failed."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The idea of breaking a single thread into parallel parts automatically at runtime has been thrown around in academia for a while -- anyone interested should search for "dynamic multithreading" and "thread-level speculation". So industry is going to be (rightly) skeptical. _But_ if they've managed to build something that actually works, and on real code (not just toy benchmarks), this is a huge accomplishment.

<comment><USER5> Modern CPU's do this on very limited level by basically looking at the instructions and executing those in parallel which have no dependencies with eachother.

The thing I'm wondering the most is that how on earth can they get so many instructions per clock with short pipeline? Without knowing the details on how they compiled the SPEC benchmark it's really hard to say. Who knows, maybe they cheated and ran parts of the benchmark parallel on their cpu and not on others, with "It's the natural way for this chip!" as an excuse.

<comment><USER2> What superscalar and out-of-order processors are exploiting is instruction level parallelism, while their technology seems to use thread level speculation.

> Without knowing the details on how they compiled the SPEC benchmark it's > really hard to say. Who knows, maybe they cheated and ran parts of the > benchmark parallel on their cpu and not on others

That's most likely the case, but I wouldn't consider it cheating. As long as from the software perspective only a single thread is running (and SPEC CPU 2000 and 2006 are single threaded), I think it's fair game. The whole point of their project is to expose parallelism without requiring the programmer / execution environment to explicitly support it.

<comment><USER5> > seems to use thread level speculation

If the software is compiled into a normal single threaded program then what else there is left except instruction level parallelism?

And if you can compile it to work with two threads then we have Hyperthreading to take advantage of that even with a single core.

Their [Soft Machines] latest patent is about basically an OoO method in overdrive, it abuses only instruction level parallelism. And based on that their claim that their pipeline would be short is not really valid.

<comment><USER11> Thread-level speculation _is_ exploiting ILP. In some contexts it's compiler- assisted but in this context I would imagine it is fully microarchitectural (i.e., in hardware/translation firmware, running a single instruction stream of user code, invisible to the user). Dynamic multithreading (Akkary 1998?) did this by splitting the thread at predictable points like function calls/returns and (IIRC) backward branches. So it's still ILP within a single thread, but at a much longer distance than what an OoO scheduling window provides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not sure if the article did not do into enough detail, or I am not technical enough in this field. But would this be able to bypass python and other interpreters GIL. ie "VISC's secret sauce" is to hook into raw machine code instruction set and determine if it is changing anything in other cached/executing instructions, and if it is not pipe it to another core. Thus if Python issues instructions it can immediately determine if it can be piped to multiple cores.

</comment><comment><USER13> Semiaccurate have a bit more information. I'm still skeptical that the magic box which turns serial code into threaded code without any overhead from Amdahl's law can be done. [http://semiaccurate.com/2014/10/23/soft-machines- breaks-cove...](http://semiaccurate.com/2014/10/23/soft-machines-breaks-cover- visc-architecture/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Can someone help my ignorance? I understand the appeal of automatic parallelization, but what is the advantage to creating your own chip? It seems to me that this is a translation that could be done in software either at runtime or at compile time.

Trying to launch line of processors, even without any of the translation magic, seems like a very difficult venture all by itself.

<comment><USER15> The auto-parallelization requires new hardware features that don't exist in existing processors.

<comment><USER5> I'd really love to know what those might be. Unfortunately Soft Machines don't tell any details.

EDIT: Jackpot! Google patent search to the rescue. Based on their patents in the last few year (latest one was published March 2014) one can get an understanding what the fuss is all about. Have to read those trough today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow. This is like the holy grail of processor performance optimization. It's so weird that 1000's of PhDs in the academia have not been able to solve this yet 250 engineers can. If this were true, it will drastically alter the course of research in computing. I'd see "low-hanging fruit" optimizations in ISCA, MICRO, ASPLOS, HPCA and the likes in the coming years. Again, assuming this technology will deliver.

</comment><comment><USER17> another great informative article full of details by the WSJ.

Here is a better article:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2838018/stealthy-startup- soft...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2838018/stealthy-startup-soft- machines-launches-virtual-cpu-cores-that-trounce-traditional-processors.html)

<comment><USER18> Ok, we changed the url to that from [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/10/23/secretive-startup- unv...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/10/23/secretive-startup-unveils- universal-chip/). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Multithreading shouldn't be my job as a programmer. I love the idea. If this takes off and become standard it's going to save us from dealing with multithreading issues.</comment>


Ask HN: Which computer/laptop do you use? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I've been a Lenovo man for the longest time, and I am currently running a T430s. I find it to be the best balance of physical size and computing power there is to find.

<comment><USER3> How do you find the keyboard? I'm not too concerned about the weird island style, but only six rows slightly freak me out (currently using a T410s).

<comment><USER2> I was afraid I wouldn't like it, but after using it for a couple of weeks I am very pleased with it. I think the island style mainly was implemented to allow for the keyboard backlight. That's a bonus for me since I work in low light from time to time. Backlight really helps then. Also, the six rows things is no issue for me. I rarely se the extra keys anyways. The PrtSc placement perplexes me though.

<comment><USER4> With adding the keyboard backlight, did they get rid of the Thinklight at top of the screen?

<comment><USER5> I can't speak for the T430S but the T430 has 2 levels of backlighting and then if I click function space 1 more time the backlighting goes off and the little lamp at the top of the screen turns on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Macbook Air 13" (2011). All the power I need and small enough to carry everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've just today, finally relegated my T400 Lenovo to media server duties for the bedroom. It was my desk computer, utilising the docking station and a second screen.

I now have my 2012 i7 Mac Mini on my desk.

<comment><USER8> I used to have an Acer with an IR port at the front. So when I was demoting it to the media server duties, I thought I'd try and piggy back on that IR port to control it with the regular TV remote. It was a good hack and it actually worked, but I forgot ... to test it from a distance. Apparently the IR receiver, even with the decorative cover removed, wasn't sensitive enough to pick up anything from farther than 1 feet away. Likely, by design too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Macbook Air 13" (2012). Powerful enough for webdev and easy to transport.

</comment><comment><USER10> Macbook 15 inch i7 2010. It's fast but worthless battery life. Recently got the $249 Chromebook and i'm finding that besides creating actual ipa's and apk's, I'm not touching the macbook anymore. I usually get 8+ hours out of the ultra light thing and it's fast enough to do mostly anything I want on it (including web dev, mobile dev and 2d game dev).

Manage to do quite a bit of work on an old Fuijitsu p1510, my Galaxy s2 and, when in on the move, the openpandora.

</comment><comment><USER11> Asus G75VX (laptop) with some aftermarket parts (x2 -- one for home, one for work)

Intel HM77 Chipset with a i7 3630QM, 32GB of DDR3 1600 MHz (Crucial), 2x M500 960GB SSDs (Crucial), GeForce GTX 670MX with 3GB GDDR5, 17.3" screen (1920x1080, amazing matte screen, my favorite feature).

Cons: Ugly as hell. Heavy as hell. Battery life is terrible. The chicklit keyboard seems to require a breaking in period of about a month. Stupidly wide bezzle around the 17.3" monitor (just because the rest of the laptop is to big).

Pros: That ugly design creates the best cooled laptop I have ever worked with, it is a joy to game on for hours, best matte screen I have used on any laptop, tons of USB ports (USB3), and overall I would buy it again. Relatively clean audio out for high end headphones (Shure SE530), but at home I still use a external usb soundcard. Naturally spaced keyboard + numpad is awesome.

EDIT: I am also a bit of an Asus loyalist at this point, as it is the only company that has built laptops that survive the way I treat them. Apple, Dell, Acer, Sony (worst!) all fall apart on me. That said, I understand that the Lenovos are built like tanks and have similar features.

</comment><comment><USER12> Custom laptop by DevilTech. I don't recommend them because of bad customer service (it takes long for them to answer to emails etc.), but the hardware has been solid. Bought it 1.5 year ago, so it has an i5, 8GB ram and 128GB SSD along with Nvidia's crappy Optimus technology. I'm pretty satisfied though, as the laptop has a FullHD glare screen and everything I want in a laptop.

At work I use EliteBook and iMac.

</comment><comment><USER13> @ home an old single core Pentium 4 2.1GHz Compaq Evo D500 Small Form Factor box w/ 3GB RAM from the late 90's.

On the go, a Dell Inspiron 1120 netbook from 2010.

Before too long I hope to install OpenStack to a dual quad core Xeon 3GHz server I've got w/ 32GB RAM & rdp to a Windows 7 VM from the old Compaq box & finally have some decent speed at home.

<comment><USER14> I find your setup intriguing. Clearly, you've got some spare cash for a beefy virtualization server. Why did you stick it out with the Compaq for so long?

Is the plan to have multiple VMs for other users in the household? Do you like the idea to be able to create/destroy machines if they start behaving oddly?

Is the plan to just play around with administering a VDI deployment (however small)? If so, did you consider any other hypervisors?

Sorry to probe... I just think it's interesting :)

<comment><USER13> The server was only $600 on eBay, part of a prototype project for me to learn on since I'm working on deploying an OpenStack based dedicated server company on other, much faster hardware in the coming year.

There's no one else in the household- just me, and I considered using ProxmoxVE for the VM backend because the guys behind the distro offer single instance support tickets, but for now I'm sticking with OpenStack since it's feature rich & offers additional functionality I need.

The Compaq stays around because it was my Mom's before she died- just for sentimental value really. I'm looking forward to repurposing it as an rdp client station.

The laptop's going to be part of the OpenStack cluster, too. So I'll be able to migrate my Win7 VM to it when I go out & just reach it through a KDE4 desktop installed to the OpenStack running on it.

I have lofty plans, and alot to learn to implement it. I just got the server & it took me a week to figure out how to use the arcane RAID interface in its BIOS. I have an OpenStack install guide bookmarked, but haven't taken the time to go through & do it yet. I had been working on my website, which I just finished, and was sidetracking me. I'll get to it eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use a Thinkpad T430, which I love. I especially love the extra battery I can put in. I get about 8-12 hours of battery life out of it so I can jet around cafes and not worry about having to sit near an outlet. Also, on the days I go into the office I don't have to worry if I forget my cord. It seems really sturdy so far too.

</comment><comment><USER15> At home, I'm running a MacBook Air 13" (2011) but with Fedora 18 installed directory on it (no VM or Bootcamp). Love the hardware of Mac but not particularly fond of their OS. Absolutely love it.

At work, I've got a Dell Latitude something-or-other running Fedora 18 as well.

Linux is yummy goodness.

<comment><USER16> How are you finding running Linux on that machine? I use the 4,2 Air as well, but I've seen reports of incompatibilities, as well as reduced battery life, when running Linux.

<comment><USER15> It's pretty good. I did have some issues installing Fedora the first few times. I'm not sure if it's something I did but the very first time I installed Fedora, I thought I bricked the MBA. Couldn't get anywhere past the Disk Utility. But, I reformatted the drive twice, let it sit for an hour, and then attempted the install again. The second time is when I couldn't get the wireless working so I tried one more time and it went successfully. I actually installed Fedora 17 because that was the latest at the time. However, everything is running very smoothly now. Fedora is wicked fast on the SSD. As for battery life, it's very comparable to the native OS; I've gone just over 4 hours before needing to worry; I think the longest I've gone is around 5 hours. The weird thing is that I have double battery indicators in the tray when unplugged from the power cord. I've got it hooked up to an external monitor and that works; closing the lid puts the laptop to sleep. I've also encrypted my hard drive and the only issue I noticed there is that if you don't type in your password relatively soon after boot, the OS will fail to load so you have to force the shut down and restart. Feel free to email me any specific questions if you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thinkpad W520 w/ RAID.

It must be a laptop. Can't really take a desktop on a vacation, can I now? :)

</comment><comment><USER18> 13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display (late 2012). 256GB SSD. 2.5GHz i5. 8GB RAM.

I was about to buy a Macbook Air with similar hardware, but the Retina Display got me and made me spend a few bucks more. Totally worth it!

</comment><comment><USER19> At home: self-built Linux box

On the go: 13" MacBook Pro (mid 2009). It's been a great machine, but is finally starting to show some age. I'm looking into upgrading to something new soon.

<comment><USER20> MacBook Pro mid-2009 user here. 17" high-res screen awesome for coding. Recently upgraded to 8GB RAM & 256GB SSD using off-the shelf components. Works well, but suspect that four year old machine will need to be replaced in the next two years. 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo starting to feel slow. Expect to change in the next two years, but currently missing a compelling reason to do so.

<comment><USER19> How is the SSD? My biggest issue is with the 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. CPU usage goes up to 80% while using Google Hangouts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 13" Macbook pro and a Toshiba Satellite 17" laptop. Toshiba's have been super reliable for me, drawback is they always weigh a ton, but it is basically a desktop in a laptop case.

</comment><comment><USER4> Lenovo X220 with 16Gb RAM, the long-life battery, and a few docking stations (for work and mobile); IBM-era X60s Thinkpad moored to a docking station for home.

<comment><USER22> does the X220 really take 16gb of RAM? crucial.com says it only takes 8, how did you do that? The x230 takes 16gb...

<comment><USER4> It doesn't "officially", but if you put in a pair of 8GB sticks with the specifications that Crucial gives you for the recommended RAM, it works fine (although it takes a pleasant while to come back up from full hibernation).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just got a 15" MacBook Pro w/Retina display a couple of weeks ago. i7, 16Gb RAM, 512Gb SSD. It's replacing a 7 year-old MacBook. I'm expecting to get 7 years out of this as well. I'm still at the "new machine" stage where everything just "pops" - not even a hint of delay. The 15" screen is really nice, highly recommend it over the 13", yet it's still portable and not as crazy as some of my friends who have 17" MBPs.

<comment><USER19> Would you say it's worth the money? I'm looking to upgrade and the 15" rMBP looks awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thinkpad W530, 16Gb, i7-3820QM, 1920x1080 res.

Nvidia graphics, easily supports 4 external 1920x1080 monitors via docking station. Pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER25> Desktop: i7-2600, radeon6870, 8GB 9-9-9-24, 128GB M4 SSD, 27" 1920x1200 IPS

Laptop: Acer AS1810T-8679

For actual code, though, everything happens on an EC2 instance (a medium size) that I leave running and can ssh and gnuscreen into from anywhere at any time. Probably the best perk of being a 100% curses / vim user. Also impossibly easy to back up with snapshotting.

</comment><comment><USER26> Asus Zenbook UX-32VD, upgraded to 10GB of memory ($30) and swapped the disk for a 256 GB SSD. It had a suspend issue at first (late 2012), but a kernel upgrade fixed it. SSD helps battery life--up to 6 hours at low load. There is some convenience in the 1920x1080 display matching my external display at home, though I'd rather go higher res in both.

<comment><USER27> i was looking into that option for a while. didn't it have bleeding on the screen, and a horrible touchpad? what are your experiences?

<comment><USER26> I use 'synclient PalmDetect=1 PalmMinWidth=3', otherwise I bump it with my palms. The touchpad works fine, though I still use an external mouse at home and work. I've been pretty happy with the screen. I can see some edge-bleed on early in the boot sequence in a dark room, but it mostly goes away. I normally use a light background, but I've never noticed it after startup, except at 100% brightness with black background in a dark room. The screen gets pretty bright so I don't go above 50% brightness unless I'm outside. The viewing angle on the screen is quite good.

<comment><USER28> 'synclient PalmDetect=1 PalmMinWidth=3'

Where do you enter these settings?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Custom PC with triple monitor setup. Ivy Bridge i7 with a Vertex4 512GB SSD and plenty of RAM. I love to build systems, and need a big workstation, fullsized mechanical keyboard, large screen etc. All three screens are on articulated wall mounts, so I can arrange in any configuration. Windows8 for games, linux VMs or my VPS for development.

</comment><comment><USER30> 15" 2011 MacBook Pro. I'll probably go back to a Thinkpad with Linux for the next one, if Apple keeps tabletizing OS X.

</comment><comment><USER31> Dell Latitute E6430, i5-3340M, 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Docking with Linux Mint 14. Cheap & Blazingly fast. Love it!

</comment><comment><USER32> Laptop: HP Probook 4530s, upgraded to 8GB of DDR3 RAM and a 128GB Plextor M3 SSD. Windows 8 Pro + Ubuntu 12.10 in VMWare Workstation.

Desktop: Silverstone SG06BB, 8GB DDR3-1600, 256GB Crucial m4 SSD + 320GB Samsung 2.5" HDD, EVGA GTX 650 Ti graphics. Windows 7 Ultimate + Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in VMWare Workstation.

</comment><comment><USER33> ThinkPad T420, 8GB of memory, 500GB Disk and 256GB SSD (mSATA)

(Actually the SSD just died, waiting for RMA.)

</comment><comment><USER34> On the go: a Samsung Chromebook 550, so the old version of the $250 model. I use this to SSH into my development server, which consists of a series two Raspberry Pi.

I keep my old 15 inch MacBook pro around for TF2 and to run more involved deployments on VMs.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm using a Dell xps 1640 (1080 res, 8gb, 128gb ssd) for the past 4+ years. With the SSD it's silent and runs cool for the most part.

I do graphic design.

For extra storage I use a DLink dns320 with a fan mod so it's cooler and also silent.

</comment><comment><USER36> MacBook Pro 10.1 (Retina, 2.7Ghz, 16GB RAM, 751GB SSD) Only issue, battery life

</comment><comment><USER37> Desktop, i7 3770, 6gb RAM, HD5970, RAID of 3 1tb drives and a 64gb SSD that I run Linux off of when I need to get real work done.

Laptop is a ThinkPad x121e that desperately needs replacing.

</comment><comment><USER38> Notebook: MacBook Air 2011 13" i7 4/256GB.

Desk: MacBook Pro 2010 17" 8/512/750/3tb, with a 24" LCD

Desk: i7-970 24/512/2x2tb with 3x24" LCD. (Win 7 and Ubuntu)

iPad and iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER39> At home I use a $249 Samsung Chromebook and RDP into either a Mac Mini or Dell Windows PC.

If WWDC brings a Macbook Air with at least a 1080p display, I'll switch to that.

</comment><comment><USER40> I currently use an entry-level 2012 MacBook Pro, which is abysmal. My ideal setup would be a Chromebook Pixel for home and a fully-maxed retina MBP with a 512gb drive.

</comment><comment><USER41> I use a custom-built PC (AMD Phenom II X4 955, 8GB RAM, nVidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti) for working (and gaming) at home and a Google Nexus 10 for working on-the- go.

</comment><comment> micro-ram 15" MacBook Pro Retina 16GB 512GB SSD + (2) 27" Thunderbolt displays rotated to portrait on ergotron arms and Matias tactile pro keyboard on the desk.

</comment><comment><USER42> This machine, Asus Eee PC. 1015PX? Atom N570, 2 GB RAM.

Work: i5-3330, 8 GB RAM. No SSD, just spinning platters (~2 TB storage, much of it unused)

</comment><comment><USER43> MacBook Air 11" 8 gb ram plus Thunderbolt Display.

</comment><comment><USER44> Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2012). Lightweight (rivals the MBA), best-in-class keyboard, with an understated yet beautiful design

</comment><comment><USER45> Macbook Pro 15" Retina - good enough to be your primary workstation and I think it is perfectly portable (carry anywhere).

</comment><comment><USER46> MacBook Air 11". The best computer I've used.

</comment><comment><USER47> Dell Inspiron 15R - i3, 4GB RAM, 500 HDD + Win 8. Tried using a second monitor a while ago, didn't find any use for it.

</comment><comment><USER48> 13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display (2012)

</comment><comment><USER49> 4 years old Asus K40AB with the performance of a 6 years old. Still saving up for a new machine.

</comment><comment><USER50> Macbook Air 13" 2011, i7, 256GB SSD - perfect for programming, good enough for playing Bastion.

</comment><comment><USER51> Thinkpad x60, I have yet to find a laptop that can live up to how these series feels.

</comment><comment><USER52> @Home Acer Aspire S7 @Work Macbook Pro 15" retina @Both Chromebook Pixel

</comment><comment><USER53> 15" MacBook Pro (early 2011) with 16GB and 512GB SSD. I'm satisfied :-)

</comment><comment><USER54> Work: Chromebook Pixel

Hobby: 11" MacBook Air; Early 2011-ish?

<comment><USER11> Do you mainly use the Pixel in ChromeOS, or go developer mode and boot Linux?

<comment><USER54> I use it exclusively in Chrome OS, but I'm sort of cheating :). If nothing else, I work at Google (although nowhere near Chrome or Chrome OS), and a lot of our non-coding workflows already favor browser-based tools.

The vast majority of my day is spent in the Chrome SSH client ssh'd into my desktop Linux box where I've usually got a half dozen windows open in a persistent tmux session. I've bound tmux to switch windows with alt+function keys, so this is pretty comparable to working on a good old-fashioned text terminal with much prettier type. My development life is largely writing C++ in vim. These days with a suitable set of plugins, vim can make for a really solid development environment (with semantic completion, file navigation, etc.).

For the rest, well, most of that happened in a browser already anyway. Reading docs, writing docs, code reviews, code browsing, e-mail, calendaring.

Prior to Google I was definitely a Mac guy. At times a miss it, but not as many as I was expecting, roughly two months into this little experiment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Custom built gaming desktop. No laptop/tablet. HTC Sensation.

</comment><comment><USER56> Lenovo ThinkPad T430s

</comment><comment><USER28> Asus Zenbook UX31A (on the go), Asus N56VJ (home/office)

</comment><comment><USER57> Mac mini 2011, base model (the $599 one).

</comment><comment><USER58> Macbook Air 13" (2012) 8GB RAM 256 Flash

</comment><comment><USER59> HP EliteBook 8540p 8GB ram

</comment><comment><USER60> Does anyone know if there is a laptop or desktop the parts of which are made ethically?

</comment><comment><USER61> Macbook pro 15 Retina

</comment><comment><USER62> Dell XPS 16GB (W7)

</comment><comment><USER63> 17" Macbook Pro (2010) that I've spent way too much having upgraded because I don't want a 15" screen. Dear Tim Cook. Please bring back the 17" MBP.

27" iMac (2012) - standard top end specs.

</comment><comment><USER64> 13inch Mac book pro, using it for past 1yr and its awesome.</comment>


Nightline Interview with Steve Jobs (1981) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H-Y-D3-j-M <comment><USER2> What I find impressive is how confident Steve Jobs was in 1981 that soon everyone would have a computer -- just like in 2007, he was confident that everyone would soon have a smartphone. I wasn't around in 1981, but I know that in 2007 that wasn't a popular opinion. People talked about the "smartphone market" as if it would stay a fraction of the general phone market.

In retrospect, it's pretty obvious that computers/smartphones would take over the world.

What are the revolutionary things that are starting right now that will be obvious in retrospect?

Best I can think of is that electric cars will become ubiquitous in a couple of years, and they might partially drive themselves, but that's not really a big revolution.

People who tried VR seem to be pretty optimistic about it's future, but I don't see many uses except for games and maybe some specialised applications.

What am I not seeing?

<comment><USER3> Hydrogen fuel cells. Elon Musk is talking them down like Steve Jobs talked down native apps in favor of a web app.

<comment><USER4> Hydrogen is a shitty fuel. Hard to contain, burns too easy, explosive.

<comment><USER5> For pedestrian uses, yes. But it could be used in more specialized applications that already require a lot of attention. E.g. commerical airplanes.

<comment><USER6> That's not really life or industry changing though.

<comment><USER5> Depends on your life or industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Are we becoming controlled by the computer..." "...our computer weighs about 12 pounds, you can throw it out of the window if the relationship isn't going very well..."

And WOW, 6 minutes of discussion of privacy concerns with computers in 1981!

<comment><USER8> Haven't watched the video just yet, but Jobs also once said:

"Man is the creator of change in this world. As such, he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them."

I think it served as part of Apple's internal mission statement in the 80s or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Interview that starts at 5:50 seems to be the one where this pre-show clip is from: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDBiUemCSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDBiUemCSY) CNN dates that video to 1978 though: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb9YTXmPolo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb9YTXmPolo)

</comment><comment><USER10> Interview starts halfway through the video. The question of privacy is brought up, and Jobs says (paraphrased) "privacy concerns will be mitigated by a computer literate public".

As I watch this on my Macbook Pro while the NSA records the event, I can only say that Jobs was right in some ways.

</comment><comment><USER11> The fears about citizens privacy being severely eroded came true! Steve was speaking more like an ideaologist / optimist than a pragmatist, but I believe his intentions were sound.

It seems generations (young and old), never became computer literate to the level Steve anticipated. Personal computing access quickly outgrew computer literacy in the time frame required to stop societal damage being done.

The majority of users have become passive consumers and not free spirited, well rounded, democratically inclined, creative types that fit go with Steve's vision and observations.

Hindsight is 20/20 though and one can't blame them, who could've predicted the rapid PC uptake _plus_ the Internet of 2017 back then?

</comment><comment><USER12> Just as fascinating as Steve Jobs' comments are the prescient privacy concerns voiced by David Burnham. Incredible that over 35 years ago, the impact of computers on civil liberties was already in public discussion.

<comment><USER13> The impact of computers on civil liberties predates that by decades [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/29/humanities.hig...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/29/humanities.highereducation)

<comment><USER14> Probably predates computers, if you look back far enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The interview is the less interesting part of the video, at least the Jobs part is "out there" and not really answering the questions.

Which Apple office was that? Bandley Drive maybe? [http://www.cultofmac.com/128374/blast-from-the-past- floormap...](http://www.cultofmac.com/128374/blast-from-the-past-floormap-of- apples-original-bandley-1-headquarters/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Good documentary videos to understand the history of computer as a tool for humans.

</comment><comment><USER17> visionary</comment>


Ask HN: Any Books on Inspirational  Computer Science Personalities ? - <AUTHOR> Recently I have read books on Nicola Tesla & Richard Feynman and both were immensly inspirational.<p>Was Wondering if there are any similar books on famous Computer science Personalities ? <comment><USER2> My inspiration is Steve Wozniak. To this day, I try to write software with the same thinking he used when he built the Apple II. Get a clear picture of what you want, keep it as simple as possible, stand on the shoulders of giants but build your own tools when you have to, and keep all the details in your head. (This last one has made a huge difference in my work.)

You have no excuse not to read about this because Chapter 3 of Jessica Livingston's "Founders at Work" is one of the best treatments of Woz and is on line here:

<http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html>

Then check out

"IWoz"

[http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-Personal-Co- Fou...](http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-Personal-Co- Founded/dp/0393330435/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263908387&sr=8-1)

"Founders at Work"

[http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups- Problem...](http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Problem- Solution/dp/1430210788/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263908416&sr=1-1)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution)

[http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven- Lev...](http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven- Levy/dp/0141000511)

Stories from early in the personal computer era. This book inspired me greatly when I read it as a high school sophomore. After reading it, I taught myself Pascal (that dates me -- I guess this was in 1989) and started making little drawing programs on our old Fat Mac.

At this point it's an old book, but it's still in print, and the profiles in it are pretty timeless.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coders At Work is a book about a lot of high-profile programmers (Crockford, Knuth, Peyton Jones, Thompson, among others). It's not a biography on any of these people, but it was very inspiring to me.

<comment><USER5> This plus Founders At Work and as a side note - John Carmack's original .plan files.

He goes into great details about issues he was having with Video cards(NVIdia vs. ATI), 3D rendering etc and then his plans of how he was going to tackle them, the approaches he tried, what did not work etc. I somehow find them very unvarnished and inspirational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not in the similar vein, but I would recommend "The Last Lecture" (by Randy Pausch). It was very inspirational to me. [http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture- Randy-Pausch/dp/140132325...](http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy- Pausch/dp/1401323251)

</comment><comment><USER7> I was going to recommend the Hodges biography of Alan Turing, but it appears to be (sadly) out of print.

[http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turing-Enigma-Andrew- Hodges/dp/08...](http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turing-Enigma-Andrew- Hodges/dp/0802775802/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263905638&sr=8-1)

[edit: In the US. Someone else posted the link to the UK edition, thanks!]

</comment><comment><USER8> Steven Levys "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" from 1984 is a great read. It pictures three major hacker cultures: the MIT hackers; Woz and the other early hardware hackers; and the video game hackers of the 70's/80's.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hackers:_Hero...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution)

John Markoffs "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry" from 2005 is another great book that follows the history of the PC industry, from it's roots in the ideas of Vannevar Bush and Doug Engelbart to the modern PC. IIRC Woz and the MIT hackers are portrayed here as well, but there's not too much overlap with Levy's book.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/What_the_Dorm...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said)

</comment><comment><USER9> In the same vein as Coders at Work is Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers: [http://www.amazon.com/Programmers-Work-Interviews- Computer-I...](http://www.amazon.com/Programmers-Work-Interviews-Computer- Industry/dp/1556152116)

The book is now out of print, but the author has a blog on which she is gradually posting all the old interviews and also provides a place to discuss the interviews: <http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I kept adding Inspirational stories I find on HN and other places on <http://inspiry.tumblr.com> (Just wanted to share)

</comment><comment><USER11> Portraits in Silicon: [http://www.amazon.com/Portraits-Silicon-Robert- Slater/dp/026...](http://www.amazon.com/Portraits-Silicon-Robert- Slater/dp/0262691310) It has short bios of several computing pioneers.

</comment><comment><USER12> Jeff Bezos: King of Amazon.com is a very inspirational reading:

[http://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Bezos-King-Amazon-Com- Techies/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Bezos-King-Amazon-Com- Techies/dp/076131394X)

<comment><USER13> Oh the irony -- it's not available on Kindle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Grace Murray Hopper:

[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0766022730/thegreatid...](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0766022730/thegreatideafind)

Also googling her will turn up inspirational material.

</comment><comment><USER15> Out Of their Minds: [http://www.amazon.com/Out-their-Minds-Discoveries- Scientists...](http://www.amazon.com/Out-their-Minds-Discoveries- Scientists/dp/0387982698)

</comment><comment><USER16> Don't forget about Johnny von Neumann! Read his biographies too.

<comment><USER17> I recommend the following. Don't know why, but after I read a biography on Oppenheimer I just had to read this too.

Aspray, William (1990) John von Neumann and the origins of modern computing. MIT Press. ([http://www.amazon.com/Neumann-Origins-Modern-Computing- Histo...](http://www.amazon.com/Neumann-Origins-Modern-Computing- History/dp/0262011212/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://www.turing.org.uk/book/></comment>


Your Node.js authentication tutorial is wrong - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@micaksica/your-node-js-authentication-tutorial-is-wrong-f1a3bf831a46 <comment><USER2> Authentication is hard. And that's exactly why you should never have to be writing your own auth code, but rather, use existing frameworks.

There's so many tiny details and edge cases that can have such catastrophic results, it's too much of a risk to do it yourself. Unless writing auth frameworks is your job, for course.

<comment><USER3> So what are the current good options in Node?

<comment><USER4> There isn't one.

I think that the Node ecosystem tends toward minimalism and compartmentalization in modules, and in doing so monolithic authentication solutions don't really exist like they do in other frameworks in which there's more "magic", like Ruby/Rails.

You'd have to choose a higher-level Node.js-based framework, and there isn't an emergent solution yet. Personally I've been directed toward Hapi and Feathers.js as of late. Feathers I committed some PRs to and filed some issues against this weekend, which the maintainers are taking seriously, but it could use some more functionality and deeper testing. Hapi I haven't personally looked at, but is backed by some of the Auth0 guys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Stack Overflow isn't of too much help, as developer relations from a company > called Stormpath loved plugging their IaaS startup on every imaginable post > regarding this. Their documentation also popped up everywhere and they have > a blogvertisement on password reset, as well. However, all of this is for > naught as Stormpath is defunct, and it shuts down entirely August 17, 2017.

I remember these guys and I had a serious argument back them with one of the. I pity companies who bought into their services and depend on it today. People often push the idea that security and ID management should be "outsourced". They shouldn't, security audits should.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is why I love Django. Django's defaults seem to be sensible and "just work"

<comment><USER7> Node is analogous to Python, not Django.

Django would best be compared to LoopBack, although at this point there are many reasonable competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has bcrpyt become the node standard? There's no mention of pbkdf2, which I thought was NIST's current recommendation.

<comment><USER9> bcrypt is a hashing algorithm, pbkdf2 is a key derivation function. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER10> pbkdf2 can be used as a computationally expensive hash... bcrypt does a few other things in terms of the output format beyond just the hash though, it contains enough information to repeat the hashing settings to verify another entry against it.

IIRC bcrypt isn't an in-the box feature in crypto, but pbkdf2 is.</comment></comment></comment>


Butlerian Jihad - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad <comment><USER2> I think this is candidate for laziest Hacker News submission ever, but I will always upvote Dune.</comment>


Free sms providers and advertisments - <AUTHOR>

my web app has an sms functionality, since i dont have any users yet, i was thinking of using a free sms provider (would not mind them insering adverts into the free sms) until i become profitable and then use paid sms services. Any help on good free sms providers? <comment><USER2> As for receiving messages, receive SMSes on a phone connected to computer. Use a package like Gammu or Gnokii(<http://www.gnokii.org>) on your computer to read SMSes from your phone. Gnokii has wrappers for a lot of languages including Python. That should make you feel comfortable.

There is another package like Gnokii that starts with 'K', which I'm not able to remember.

You could use the free Email to SMS gateway to push messages. ex: firstname.lastname@example.com there'll be no ads in this so rejoice. :)

A lot of carriers have this facility. But if you are from India you are out of luck to push messages. Coz only a few carriers have this kinda facility. And even if they have it, you still have a problem since email-to-sms gateway urls are different for each state even for a single carrier. And since we the frequencies in India are auctioned based on circles(areas), there are a lot of small carriers which operate in just 1 or 2 states.

</comment><comment><USER3> these were pretty good <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211853>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=224324>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295674>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i have to make some points clear here. I am living in west africa for now, and I am not interested in email to sms since that doesnt work here. And i dont have physical access to my hardware because i am using AWS. thanks</comment>


Show HN: Fiction55.com - 55 word micro-fiction stories. - <AUTHOR> http://Fiction55.com

<comment><USER2> I would like a "more like this" feature and maybe some voting buttons. The quality is pretty variable, although there are some gems in there. Not sure how you prevent voting from being gamed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I agree on basically everything you just said :) Thanks for the comment

Not sure how to best implement features, so I left them out for now. I think my biggest problem is going to be traffic generation. I am considering making the SPA SEO'able, so that it could possibly start collecting some long tail organic traffic.

This was more of a passion project but if I could find a biz model I'd be super stoked :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Every entrepreneur needs to be a good storyteller :)</comment>