Underwater Drones Nearly Triple Data from the Ocean Floor - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-07/underwater-drones-nearly-triple-data-from-the-ocean-floor <comment><USER2> I work for the company building these, albeit in a less sexy division - I help design the kit which launches and retrieves the Hugins[0].

At the time being, these are too expensive for just about any research institution, but I really hope Kongsberg manage to push the price down a bit as several oceanographers I've spoken to at institutes around the world basically view the Hugin as the stuff from which dreams (and scientific papers) are made.

[0] Named after Norse god Odin's raven, which along with companion Munin was sent out in the world every morning, observing all that happened and reporting back to Odin in the evening, thus making Odin the most well-informed of gods.

<comment><USER3> I was recently at a workshop about Marine Permaculture Arrays (MPA).

Picture square-kilometer kelp farms in the open ocean, using ocean current eddy shear levels to move MPA to different locations in a region (different vertical layer current speeds enable a kind of underwater sailing).

MPA need new kinds of sensors to enable this marine autonomous navigation.

I asked what tech was available off-the-shelf, wondering if sensors from ocean gliders could be used for the MPA autonomous navigation capability. Brian von Herzen said they were too expensive now.

He followed up by writing that current sensing is something they are working on. Cost effective nutrient sensors are needed also...

Getting the sensor cost down will help develop multiple new industries providing a range of ecosystem services that would supply food, fuel, fertilizer, fiber, farmaceuticals (nutraceuticals). And carbon sequestration. When kelp sinks in deep waters, it stays there. On the ocean floor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This will be enormously helpful for climate modeling, lack of subsurface oceanic data severely limits accurate long-term prediction.

One of the elephant-sized gaps in our ability to model the climate is that we know our current understanding of subsurface oceanic geochemistry and geophysics is basically fiction, we are routinely surprised in this regard when we actually measure it. The measurements we've based models on have been extremely sparse relative to both the complexity and dynamics of the system. We tend to model it as a relatively dead, static space but we have substantial evidence that suggests this is very far from the truth, we just don't have enough data to understand what drives the actual dynamics. This is one of the biggest inputs for climate behavior and it is by far the biggest hole in our models that prevent us from making useful predictions.

</comment><comment><USER5> A future version that can continuously dive (with visits to the surface for solar) would be amazing. A Google Earth of the sea with regular updates.

Building sensors that detect fish populations and could accurately, automatically flag potential new species would be amazing.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if there's a decent way to encourage kids want to grow up to explore the ocean floor, rather than everyone wanting to become an astronaut? The difference had always been so interesting to me, since so many writings draw comparisons between the surface of planets and our ocean floor.

<comment><USER7> This is a tangent, but all my adult life I thought that construction workers are fascinating and I wondered why the occupation is not more popular among kids. When you pass a construction site, you see the workers walking around, shouting a bit, hammering some small seemingly insignificant thing (or driving a powerful machine which is cool on its own), but over time an enormous structure rises around them, and it seems that they were just there, doing their thing and that was all it took. It fascinates me. In part because the process is counter-intuitively ungrandiose, at least if you're just a casual on-looker, but the result is grandiose and exceptionally material, as opposed to say an intellectual project's result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I assume this 3X number does not include the data collected by the US and Soviet Navies.

That being said, I remember reading in Backroom Boys that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the KGB tried to moneitze spy satellite photos by selling them to Vodafone for radio planning purposes.

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be really neat if they found traces of "Atlantis", assuming some of it survived underwater erosion. They already found a few sites off the coasts of India and Indonesia. And We know an ancient civilization existed that got wiped out at the end of the last ice age - for those interested in a virtually unending rabbit hole, look up Gobekli Tepe and Graham Hancock on YT.

<comment><USER10> There's a lot of myth and ancient legends insinuating that we're only building our world on top of pillars built by "those who came before", but that's quite expected considering that there are abandoned human settlements spread all over the globe. Every generation has seen more and more of those abandoned settlements as time has passed, and so those legends were born.

That doesn't mean we _know_ there's been civilizations that were wiped out during the last ice age, though. All evidence is circumstantial at best. It would be awesome if those bots found something, though.</comment></comment>


An Easy Way to Increase Creativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=an-easy-way-to-increase-c&sc=WR_20090729

<comment><USER2> one of the editors of this posted the important part of this along with links to related studies and the hn page for it is <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=718700>

the final line of that post got me thinking about how good my work environment is: ideal creative workspace: a room with blue walls that feels very far away and is filled with references to foreign countries.

i don't know about blue walls though :P

<comment><USER3> And a slightly earlier submission: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716818>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or: take shrooms.</comment>


What Americans know and don't know about science - <AUTHOR> http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/09/10/what-the-public-knows-and-does-not-know-about-science/ <comment><USER2> I expected questions on the scientific method or something. Wouldn't the title be more accurately "What Americans know and don't know about nature"?

To me, knowing some facts about nature is different than knowing how one would use a scientific approach to test hypotheses about nature. I'd like to save the word "science" for the tools and processes. I see too much "because science" out there, which is basically the opposite of rational, skeptical thinking.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I think knowing about science is probably more useful and relevant to the majority of people than trivia. That can be used more generally to distinguish scams and fearmongering from important issues.

That more than a couple of percent knew the inventor of the Polio vaccine was a surprise to me. Is he a popular hero in America or something?

Also, height of a sound wave? Don't they mean high of a graph of a sound wave? It doesn't really move up and down except where it's travelling upwards or downwards.

<comment><USER4> RE: Polio - I suspect this is because most Americans do know who the other options (Isaac Newton, Marie Curie and Albert Einstein) are. This may be reflected in the fact that the most obscure of those three (Marie Curie) is also the one with the most incorrect guesses.

<comment><USER5> Marie Curie is obscure? Now I have heard it all.

<comment><USER4> That was a relative statement; out of the three I'd expect the general public to recognize Einstein and Newton (in that order) before Curie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is uranium really needed to make nuclear energy? I was under the impression that you could use thorium. I only got that question right because the other options didn't make sense.

<comment><USER7> Thorium reactors are also Uranium reactors. The difference is that instead of powering the reactor directly with fission of Uranium you feed the reactor with Thorium which is then transmuted into Uranium in the reactor and then nuclear fission of that uranium is used to generate power.

<comment><USER8> Its complex. Thorium has a long chain of transmuted states called the 'Thorium Cascade', during which it is twice Radium, twice Polonium, twice Lead and even twice Thorium (232 and 228)! The form of Uranium it passes thru is called 'synthetic' and is not the kind that makes bombs. All steps in the cascade generate power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apparently sound waves aren't used to make cellphone calls. I thought the whole point of phones was to receive and emit sound waves.

Like many tests this comes down to being good at knowing what the question asker is really after. It amounts to a test of how good are you at standardized tests.

<comment><USER10> Phones work by displaying text and detecting keypresses, everyone knows that.

<comment><USER9> So last year. Modern phone interfaces are back to soundwaves: "Siri, play Nicki Minaj".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought the tides question was a bit flawed/ambiguous, despite knowing which of the answers they were really looking for.

"Which of these is the main way that ocean tides are created?"

Are 'tides' defined as the tidal bulge caused by the moon, or the harmonic rising and falling of water levels caused by earth's rotation relative to that bulge?

Would we (laypeople) even recognise there were ocean tides if earth's rotation was somehow slow enough for the moon to be geostationary? The bulge would still be there, but without the earth's relative rotation to the moon the sea level doesn't go up and down any more (ignoring the smaller tides from the sun).

</comment><comment><USER12> I just blasted through the quiz and got the astrology question wrong because I didn't read it carefully. The results on the questions that require flawless English comprehension are suspect.

<comment><USER13> This question was flawed, I believe, as none of the answers for it were correct. Astrology isn't science and the others don't study effects of stars on human behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amplitude doesn't directly translate to volume/loudness, in the same way that frequency does not directly translate to pitch.

For those interested, pitch vs frequency is covered by the mel scale [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_scale) and "loudness" in decibels is logarithmic (and at best, not a great measure of volume as perceived by people in different environments).

Seems a bit rich to fail people on this ambiguous question..

<comment><USER14> Hey, why the downvotes?

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


The Internet Is As Dead And Boring As You Want It To Be - <AUTHOR> http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/08/the-internet-is.html

<comment><USER2> I agree to a certain extent. I don't expect to see any mind-blowing innovations on the Internet until bandwidth constraints dissipate, but that definitely doesn't mean it's dead.

Think about the automobile. Fundamentally, it hasn't changed since the Model T. However, there have been many incremental improvements that have made a significant impact on our lives (A/C, seat belts, power-steering/brakes, GPS, auto-parking).

In about 20 years, the technology they're working on right now at Stanford for the DARPA Challenge will be commercialized and cars will drive themselves. That will be mind-blowing.

Hopefully we'll see something game-changing on the net sooner rather than later.

</comment><comment><USER3> > But even more importantly, the web is primarily a communications platform, > not a broadcasting or publishing platform, those are secondary uses.

Except he's wrong on this. File sharing has always been an extremely popular use for the web. Most of the social networking platforms allow you to publish to a large audience of people you don't really know. Facebook does this to a lesser extent, but that's why it's not #1.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the same type of "dead" as when Paul Graham said Microsoft is dead. Of course they aren't literally dead. They're still profitable. But they aren't leading in innovations and they never will again. Similarly, the internet is dead because many breakthrough technologies will require exponentially more bandwidth.

PG calling Microsoft dead worked better because all it takes for the internet to become undead (alive?) is fiber to many homes.

</comment><comment><USER5> I kind of agree with Mark Cuban. Sure, there are a bunch of new services on the web, but anyone could predict this linear growth in innovation. The thing is, we are not seeing the exponential growth in mindshare and adoption that we saw in the 90's. We are still using the same or similar standards that we used in the 90's as well. When the internet started to gain interest, it was mind blowing. It simply isn't anymore. More bandwidth could allow us to deliver deeper innovations. Imagine if Gigabit connections were the norm. We could bring massively parallel grid computing to consumers. Just imagine encoding H.264 in seconds instead of hours. Right now we are in a stalemate with the telcos.

<comment><USER6> I hate how the Internet is US-centric. There are many other countries that are more progressive and have insanely fast Internet connection speeds such as Sweden, Japan, Korea, etc. It's only in the US (and Canada) that the telcos are allowed to be complete assholes towards customers.

<comment><USER3> Let's get real. Unless you're going for the asian markets, those other countries really don't matter.

<comment><USER7> Getting real means they matter.

<comment><USER3> Getting real means lets see some numbers.

<comment><USER7> I hate sourging for sources, and it seems obvious enough, but fair point. This is from a quick google.

I'll talk regarding the Asian market, which is far from saturated (this I'm not going to go compile more research on, so challenge me if you will)

[http://www.blogherald.com/2005/05/25/world-wide-blog- count-f...](http://www.blogherald.com/2005/05/25/world-wide-blog-count-for- may-now-over-60-million-blogs/) Old, but if this is good, 15M blogs in South Korea is quite a large market.

[http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/06/27/yahoo-japan-more- page...](http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/06/27/yahoo-japan-more-page-views- than-yahoo-us/) Recent, but here again I will go uncited: Yahoo dies against Google in USA, but in Asia they have been king. Yahoo is plenty real, and Asia matters to them, a lot.

You might be fine with the North American market. It's hella big. But if you have an entry point into Asia and don't use it, that's wasted potential, because cloning works on an international scale. <http://mashable.com/2007/08/19/doktus/>

What's so real about the internet is that it's zero distance from anywhere around the globe, and only a relatively small number of companies exploit this fully. If more companies did, Mark Cuban wouldn't be complaining about it being boring today.

<comment><USER3> Are you blind? I said except for asian markets.

<comment><USER7> Woops! You got me. I got carried away. I'll only admit being half blind though, because I'm willing to bet that "emerging markets" will eventually visit the same cycles of soft development that are taking TechCrunch headlines now. Brazil is not a question. Vietnam/Thailand... ok that's SE Asian.

Turkey is a possibility. A little west of India are others. East European countries like Slovenia. Alright, maybe the effects aren't immediate enough to be obvious like South Korea, but new markets will appear and you might just want to do something about it if you have the chance.

I guess I failed to back myself, oh well. I don't need to change your opinion though. Whatever works.

<comment><USER3> I cannot dispute that "eventually" many things will happen:)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Facebook turning from Social Network to Sponsored Network? - <AUTHOR>

Today Morning, I opened up the facebook ! On my Wall's right hand side was 'Sponsored' link and 'Sponsored Pages' - around 4-5 Sponsored links. Fine not a problem!!
Then I clicked on Friend's photo to comment on it - WOW another 'Sponsored Stories'.. below the Photo Comments they have put sponsored stories.
What next?? I assume they will promote 'Sponsored Friend' !! Get life Facebook. <comment><USER2> Its better than banner ads</comment>


Ask HN: How do Independent Contractors handle "company benefits" - <AUTHOR>

This probably applies to both Independent Contractors as well as founders, essentially anyone who isn't tied to a large company.  Most large companies offer benefits like Health insurance, 401-K matching, Social Security deductions, etc., all of which are done pre-tax.  I'm guessing that most independent contractors need to take care of these things themselves.  If you do, would you mind sharing your experiences?
In particular, which of these do you consider necessary?  Does what you consider necessary change with age?  How do you go about making the necessary investments?  How does it show up when you file your tax returns?
My interest is US based, but I'd love to hear about how people in other countries handle the same, so in your response, please state which country this applies to.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> If I where under 32, healthy, and single, I would go with a Major Medical plan where anything under 5K is out of pocket. I would put 5K away in a savings account and then be done with it. In the long run it would be cheaper.

Being that I am not and that I have a family I must carry a plan. After I left my last position I carried COBRA until it ran out. It was the best plan that we have ever had and we kept it until we cold no longer. After that, we picked up a policy via our accounting firm. Our Accountant's firm manages a lot of small business, consultancies and start-ups and acts like the accounting department for each of them. It is like timeshare accounting (and HR). Anyway they can negotiate group policies because they represent a larger pool of people which works out well. I always tell people a good accountant (and lawyer) are worth every penny, it is the people who most believe that they can't afford an accountant that usually can't afford to not have a good accountant.

<comment><USER3> and they are? ...

<comment><USER2> Sorry I am in FL so I did not mention their name, figuring that most on here are interested in CA and NYC, but the name of the Accountant is Swart Baumruk & Company and they are in the greater Orlando area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The cost for health insurance varies a great deal from state to state. I don't want to sound like my dad, but anyone who thinks they don't need heath insurance is kidding themselves. If you do something as minor as break a leg you can go through $20k pretty quickly (i've had a friend or two who did that). Too many twentysomethings think that they won't hit a major health issue, and for the most part they're correct but there are exceptions that happen every minute of every day.

For advice on other issues like setting up your won payroll or doing a 401-k plan talk to your accountant for advice.</comment>


New York Times Set to Sell About.com for $270 Million to Answers.com - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120808/the-new-york-times-is-about-to-say-goodbye-to-about-com/ <comment><USER2> Unreal. How can such an awful website have $270 million on hand, and how can they be willing to spend it on another awful website?

<comment><USER3> They don't have $270 million on hand. They are looking for financing.

<comment><USER2> Whoops, my mistake - thanks for the correction.

Still baffled by how answers.com expects to get $270M of financing to buy about.com. To anyone who has ever clicked a link to either of those domains from a Google query, the headline must seem Onion-like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope these awful SEO-bait sites keep consolidating so they can eventually fade away into history. I've never gotten a useful answer from either site, just bombarded with ads and filler text. Quora and Wikipedia should be more than enough to fill that entire space (assuming Quora can keep up the quality as it gets more and more mainstream).

<comment><USER5> I know Yahoo Answers has a lot of spam but there's some gems in there that Quora doesn't have. Especially casual questions and questions related to sex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a huge deal. Historically, about.com was an excellent reference, but with the advent of wikipedia and, in my opinion, the general decline in quality of about.com authorship, it was easy to ignore them.

Hopefully Answers.com can revitalize their unique editorial model, but I'm not really holding my breath.

<comment><USER5> It's not about Wikipedia. It's about the declining ROI on online publishing, and the effect of Google Panda on their bottom line. Historically, noone visited about.com for reference on a topic.. they just stumbled upon it when they saw it ranking #1 for a keyword.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> About.com is the "for dummies" books of search results. Mediocre information on a wide vaiety of topics. It's kind of like a unisex salon in a one-horse town. You don't want to go, but it's there, so many do by default.

Quora, please, please send Answers / About to a spot in the late 90's graveyard next to Pets.com.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone remembers the price About was sold several years back? I recall another private equity who bought it and then flipped it for bunch of profits.

<comment><USER9> It says in the article About was bought by the New York Times for $410 million in 2005.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> hopefully getting rid of needless costs too. I don't know anyone who uses this

</comment><comment><USER11> more ads than content. where is the value?</comment>


Team GliderzZz Hackers Strike - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcticfalls.se/ TeamGliderzZz hackers have striked again. irc.anonywebz.com
#gliderzzz <comment><USER2> HN is officially dead to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why?</comment></comment>


The Flipside of Louis CK: Patton Oswalt asks a YouTube taper to stop - <AUTHOR> http://jonaspolsky.tumblr.com/post/15443875845/comedy-audiences-and-taping

<comment><USER3> It's not complicated. Look how Louis CK markets his own shows: "ALL NEW JOKES". People want to pay for new stuff, not just jokes they've heard. Comedians test out new material in safe, small sets; if you record that material and stick it on Youtube, you're fucking them over.

Regarding the personal drama tacked onto this:

@pattonoswalt Less and less sorry for what I did. Got into comedy 'cuz it's the one vocation that lets you treat assholes like assholes.

@pattonoswalt I'll post my response to this gnat-fart of a situation sometime this weekend. But no matter what...

@pattonoswalt I'll always err on the side of real human emotion. If it costs me asshole "fans"? Guess what? Less assholes in my life.

(Incidentally, Patton Oswalt is I think the only "celeb" I follow on Twitter. He's pretty excellent there. Also, the best live show I've been to.)

<comment><USER3> (Oswalt's response: <http://www.pattonoswalt.com/index.cfm?page=spew>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's certainly not the flipside of Louis CK and the author of the post does not say anything to that effect.

Nevertheless, comedians are running into this problem all the time. People don't understand that 1.) they aren't just "talking," but these ideas were thought up ahead of time, 2.) they are constantly working on new material that they hope to one day sell in some form (CD, TV special) and uploading it on Youtube takes away from the surprise of the joke, 3.) they should be compensated for their work

That's what it comes down to. A comedian has the right to use his artistic work how he wants. He can give it away from free through Amazon servers or he could charge $50 for a DVD, but it's his choice. It's not like comics are patenting their premises.

Patton probably went a bit too far but this probably happens to him constantly and he's so sick of it. I hear about stories like this all the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's what I meant by "flipside": while we're all praising Louis CK for what he did, he also managed to do it without the majority of his material leaking on the net beforehand. Comedians are a somewhat unique case worth watching because they develop their product in public as opposed to a typical company that can (usually) throttle the news as they see fit.

I posted the article above as opposed to the Barbara Grey post because I think Oswalt should be supported in what he did (although he kind of did it in a bad manner but like you said, it's not the first and won't be the last)

Oswalt has promised to offer his view of the story later today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get how these people seem to think it's their right to start recording just because they are there. You paid to watch a show. You did not pay for the right to record it and share it later. You did not pay for the right to annoy all the audience members around you (and ruin the show they paid to see).

Hopefully we'll see more comedy clubs (and other venues) enforce a no recording policy - coupled with ejections... and bans for the belligerent - <USER2> the rest of us can get back to actually enjoying a show.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For balance, here's a more detailed account of the story from someone else who was there:

[http://barbaragray.tumblr.com/post/15420368620/that-one- time...](http://barbaragray.tumblr.com/post/15420368620/that-one-time-when- patton-oswalt-was-an-asshole)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's the prerogative of a performer to ask someone to stop taping their set. But I'm not buying the whole "you're taking food out of the mouths of children" argument. Give me a break.

There's no way to gauge how many people _don't_ buy an album or DVD because they already saw leaked footage online. There's no way to prove those people would have bought the product if the material hadn't been leaked.

On the other hand, if enough people _do_ buy the product, then who cares how many don't, for whatever reason? You've made your money. You win. Be happy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seemed pointless. Did people really need this explained?</comment>


Object Pascal Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.marcocantu.com/objectpascalhandbook/ <comment><USER2> So does anyone on HN use Free Pascal? How do you find it. I heard some comparisons of Nim to Pascal as its veiled resurgence.

I am novice, so be gentle. I know this might seem dumb.

<comment><USER3> > I heard some comparisons of Nim to Pascal as its veiled resurgence.

I don't know that much about Nim, but there are a few things about it...

1\. The Nim compiler was originally written in Pascal.

2\. Nim uses Pascal-style type syntax (i.e. "name: type" rather than the C-style "type name").

3\. Nim syntax was inspired by Python, which in turn was heavily inspired by Modula-3, which in turn is a descendant of Pascal.

<comment><USER4> There are tons of influences from ObjectPascal:

* Range-based subtyping: You can declare a type as being an int of 1..5. Many Pascal-derived languages (Modula, Oberon, Ada) have this.

* Ranges are first-class values and can be used in loops and case statements: "for i in 0..10".

* Arrays: "array[1..5] of integer" becomes "array[1..5, int]". Nim also has open arrays, just like ObjectPascal.

* Enums. Almost exactly like Pascal.

* Sets, eg. "set[char]", which can then assign things like {"a".."z"}, almost exactly like Pascal.

* Functions like ord() and prec().

* For a long time Nim used Borland-influenced naming conventions (mainly three: TFoo for classes, PFoo for pointers to objects, FFoo for fields). Fortunately this has been deprecated.

* "var", "type" etc. being block-oriented and used to declare multiple things on separate lines.

* Functions/methods are called "procedures". (The Nim manual insists this is more correct. I'm not so sure.)

* Case insensitive identifiers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The page says "The ebook (in PDF) is currently available at part of a promotion by Embarcadero Technologies.", but I don't see a link to a PDF file.

<comment><USER6> [http://cc.embarcadero.com/item/30018](http://cc.embarcadero.com/item/30018)

Object Pascal Handbook by Marco Cantu

Available to registered users of Delphi XE8, RAD Studio XE8, C++Builder XE8, and Embarcadero All-Access XE This promotional item are available on XE7 purchases made after January 1, 2015 and for XE8 purchases made after April 7, 2015.

That's the link, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Where is the actual download link here? I feel as if I must be missing something.

</comment><comment><USER8> Love the cover art</comment>


GNU ethical repository criteria - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria.html <comment><USER2> I don't understand why these specifications:

* _Does not log anything about visitors. (A+1)_

* _Follows the criteria in The Electronic Frontier Foundation's best practices for online service providers. (A+2)_

* _Follows the Web "Content" Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) standard. (A+3)_

* _Follows the Web Accessibility Initiative — Accessible Rich Internet Applications 1.0 (WAI-ARIA 1.0) standard. (A+4)_

.

... are considered less essential than these:

* _Says "free software," not "open source." (A6)_

* _Clearly endorses the Free Software Movement 's ideas of freedom. (A7)_

* _Avoids saying "Linux" without "GNU" when referring to GNU /Linux. (A8)_

.

Is privacy and accessibility really less important than GNU's branding?

<comment><USER3> > Is privacy and accessibility really less important than GNU's branding?

For the GNU project? Obviously.

Heck, note that at an even higher level of importance than any of those, to be merely _acceptable_ , a site must be one that "[r]ecommends and encourages GPL 3-or-later licensing at least as much as any other kind of licensing."</comment></comment>


Clean and Consistent Express.js Controllers - <AUTHOR> https://khalilstemmler.com/articles/enterprise-typescript-nodejs/clean-consistent-expressjs-controllers/ <comment><USER2> I wrote _a lot_ of TypeScript just using Express, and it pretty much always ended up looking kind of like this.

Today, though, I think this is reinventing the wheel for little benefit. I've moved my own projects to NestJS ([https://nestjs.com/](https://nestjs.com/)) and have found myself paying a lot more attention to logic and application behavior rather than structuring code around a too-thin web server.

NestJS uses Express or Fastify under the hood--because both are great web servers!--but serves to make life a lot more pleasant when using them. The way it strongly encourages the decoupling of application logic (services) and the serving of data to clients (controllers) is a good one and, to me, does a _much_ better job of creating an "enterprise NodeJS and TypeScript" environment than rolling one's own.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been hearing a lot about NestJS recently. I've yet to try it out on a Greenfield project.

Yeah, I'm totally with you on that. Frameworks have the structure we all need but seem to neglect:) Although there is a lot of merit in learning by doing (hence the purpose of the article and my website overall).

Lots of brownfield vanilla Express.js Node APIs can be improved using this pattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love Typescript but as a recovering C# programmer, I try to stay away from OOP in nodejs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Object modeling is definitely not the easiest thing in the world, but for complex problem domains, it can be what makes or breaks being able to continuously push a project forward.

For simple RESTful todo apps, I'd definitely say you could get away without objects.

But if I was to build a GitLab clone, it would be incredibly difficult to model such a complex problem domain without using a domain model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why reinvent the wheel. Just use NestJS.

<comment><AUTHOR> After further thought, because overarching opinionated frameworks sometimes aren't the answer.

From an architectural POV, sometimes frameworks dont solve all your problems, and sometimes they make things harder for you by going against the grain of how your problem domain actually wants to be architected.

Knowing the basics of good software design and how to not use a framework if you're not able to has a lot of merit.

Some domain driven development can actually be idealized as you building your own framework of the problem domain. Why complicate that by adding an additional layer of infrastructure?

It really does depend on the project and evaluating the framework.</comment></comment>


Wikipedia deletes lists of scientists who disagree on warming - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_scientists_who_disagree_with_the_scientific_consensus_on_global_warming <comment><USER2> For those who are interested in seeing what was deleted, here's the most recent archive of that article: [https://web.archive.org/web/20191115154603/https://en.wikipe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191115154603/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_who_disagree_with_the_scientific_consensus_on_global_warming)

</comment><comment><USER3> After reading the reason: The list was of general non-climate scientists who disagreed with the consensus. It made perfect sense to delete it. They are open to creating a list of climate scientists who disagree, although they will probably be harder to find.</comment>


How to save the princess in 8 programming languages - <AUTHOR> https://toggl.com/programming-princess <comment><USER2> ( And in postscript, you accidentally manage to castle the princess from freedom. )</comment>


Candy Japan total sales cross $1M - <AUTHOR> https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/sales-cross-million-dollars <comment><USER2> For those jumping to conclusions, beware:

> Most of this money has been spent on product and shipping, meaning I haven't > made anywhere close to a million dollars in profit with this.

<comment><USER3> And a counterpoint

> But the great thing is, I've been able to live off of the sales.

So, he's at least been able to live off the profit, which is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kudos to the author, Candy Japan has always been one of my favourite stories on hacker news :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Congratulations!

Curious to know - do you need any type of FDA or import-export license to ship things in US from a foreign country?

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems HN users are familiar and even enthusiastic with Candy Japan. I'm not sure I understand, though. It's just a dude offering intermediary shipping, right? Am I missing some interesting tech stuff here?

<comment><USER7> The service is simple, no fancy tech (it's just a bunch of Python). Possibly the initial appeal was that random-boxes-of-surprises services were rare, and my openness with the numbers.

<comment><USER8> You should expand the service (or start a new one) into other categories of physical goods: manga, novels, video games, figurines and other merchandise not found anywhere else outside of Japan.

Let subscribers pick their preferred categories and allow them to choose the amount of money they want to pay each month + shipping costs,

then you go out and buy random things from one or more of those categories (in order of user preference), and keep a record of which items you sent to each customer, to avoid duplicates.

Social fluff: Let users post on-site reviews of the items they receive from you.

Ideal outcome: People discover the uniqueness of Japan, share it with their friends and other users, and you help spread some joy and pocket the change.

<comment><USER9> How about just offering other kinds of snacks? I'm vaguely interested in this service, but I'm also trying not to eat too much sugar.

<comment><USER10> Japanese sweets, especially chocolate, taste like they have less sugar to me. They might be the same, but you could be better off with them than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good to see Candy Japan growing! I was a huge fan of the article about making an algorithm to pack the candy that showed up on HN [1]. After the article, I spent the next week or two looking into packing algorithms...

[1][https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic- fit...](https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic-fitting-of- japanese-candy)

<comment><USER3> Box filling algos are rough. Working in ecomm for many years and trying to optimize costs, you spend a lot of time thinking about these kinds of problems. Apparently Amazon's answer is "F it" as they send massive boxes for tiny things frequently.

Slightly related, I worked in the sign printing industry for many years as well. There we also had fitting algorithms for ganging vector designs into runs for printing and cutting on large format printers. Those are a lot easier since it's 2D only, but they are still hard to get to perfection.

<comment><USER11> Yeah it's crazy when you think about it. We somehow manage with new break through on voice, image, and speech recognition but yet we still struggle figuring out how to efficiently pack things in a box or plate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats to the author. I remember first hearing about this as a side project and thinking it was a super cool and fun thing to work on!

As a side note, nearly half this thread is talking about health insurance...really?

</comment><comment><USER13> So cool! well done :)

I found a minor bug, if you go to [https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the- scenes/](https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/) (note the slash at the end), then the server gives 500. Perhaps just redirect the user to [https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the- scenes](https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes) for a better UX.

</comment><comment><USER14> Have you considered offering a savory snacks crate, which doesn't consist of majority ramen?

Japan Crate has the Umai crate, which we (Tofugu) subscribed to for six months; majority of the contents were ramen :/ Was hoping for some chips and other goodies.

<comment><USER15> as someone operating a similar candy subscription service, we have been considering that offering (a savory snacks box) but the issue with shipping things like chips is that they have so much air in the packaging itself. this is a problem because let's say we ship in a small box, which for us usually contains around 1kg of candies, it can only contain at most four small bags of chips. for four bags of chips, taking shipping costs into consideration, it would cost close to 40 dollars, with more than half of the costs coming from shipping. would people really be willing to pay 40-50 a month for 4 bags of exotic chips?

<comment><USER14> Ahh right. This is definitely a road block :(

What was the cost analysis like to include a diverse selection of savory items? Filling an entire box with chips is definitely not cost effective, but including one with a mix of other goods seems plausible? Is there demand for a "snacks" box consisting of sweet and savory?

The problem I had with Umai crate was nearly every box was just ramen. Might as well call it the ramen box.

<comment><USER15> well yeah there were some demand for snack boxes from customers who were keen on Japanese chocolates and confectionaries like Pocky, Glico as well as exotic chip flavors from Asia. interestingly, there was even a request for a ramen box. it's not something we've written off entirely, it's definitely something my business partner and i still discuss from time to time. if you genuinely are interested in a savory box, drop me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com. i'd be willing to start that new line if there is even a single interested subscriber. i will make sure there's no ramen haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Really happy to see the figures :), stories like this are highly inspirational to me. I am sure it's not going to take a long time to touch $1M in profits too. Keep up your hard work!

</comment><comment><USER17> This guy spends 297 USD per MONTH on convenience store snacks??

That's insane. That's roughly $10 worth of "snacks" _per day_.

<comment> intro-b having lived in japan, the amount and quality of food/snacks/drinks/alcohol at convenience stores makes them a pretty attractive option

something as simple as coffee and a sandwich in the morning and some beers and snack food after work could easily add up to a couple hundred a month, even though most of it isn't the kind of food traditionally associated with convenience store junk food

<comment><USER18> Yep. I live in Japan and while I probably (...uh... probably...) don't spend $10 a day at the convenience store, it would be pretty easy. I also go at least once a day. $1 for coffee, 80 cents for daifuku (the best food in the world), $1.50 for yogurt, $2 for fruit... I notice he has a bag of beef jerky in his picture. That's particularly expensive (probably $3 or so).

I think the thing missing from the picture is that convenience stores in Japan are a _lot_ more convenient than they are in many other places in the world. The 7-11 store near me sells vegetables, sliced meat, bacon, eggs, milk, etc, etc. So while it is common to buy months and months of food items from a grocery story (or possibly a yearly supply of mayonnaise from Costco) in NA, people tend to buy small amounts of things from smaller stores in Japan.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, the convenience stores were one of the biggest surprises for me when touring Japan. I ate a lot of my lunches at 7-11 and Lawson, whereas I completely avoid 7-11 in the US.

<comment><USER20> While convenience store food in Japan is far superior to convenience store food pretty much anywhere else in the world (except maybe Thailand!), it's actually somewhat expensive and not as good as what you'd get in Japanese fast food chains. For example, a convenience store gyudon (beef bowl) costs more and is less tasty that Yoshinoya's standard Y300 gyudon.

<comment><USER21> I think it's mainly because you can't find a Yoshinoya in a town/road that isn't even on google maps but you can find 3 lawson's and a famlymart. (convenience≠cheap)

<comment><USER19> Also, afaik Yoshinoya doesn't carry anything that can compete with Family Mart Milk Cocoa. Japanese convenience store drinks are so good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> im actually quite surprised that the online candy market is still so small. candy in general is a multi billion dollar industry and with the benefit of the large hn community and its multiple first page posts, i expected them to have grew to a mega online mall for candies by now. its quite an interesting case, what could be the problem here?

<comment><USER23> There are a few things removed in your assumption:

1\. Most prefer what they're familiar with. They grew up with the candies in their local stores so they might not be too eager to purchase foreign candies.

1\. Candy is often a very impulsive purchase. You might grab a small bag or a bar at the checkout aisle. As a result, a monthly scheduled purchase might not be what people are looking for.

<comment><USER24> _Most prefer what they 're familiar with._

Don't they just. Convincing people who grew up eating ketchup that it's revolting is almost impossible.

<comment><USER25> Mustard is the one, true condiment.

<comment><USER26> Pardon me, would have you any Grey Poupon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Congrats!!! You are one of my favorite stories to follow. Keep up the great work, and congrats on the new family member. :)

<comment><USER7> Thank you. Went from balancing "dev mode" and "business mode", to having "daddy mode" added on top.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm surprised it still succeeds despite CrateJoy having a bunch of Japanese candy subscriptions

</comment><comment><USER8> Japan has plenty of unique stuff not found anywhere else (not counting the inevitable Chinese knockoffs, which, tangentially, almost seems to be a law of physics; if something exists China _will_ make a copy of it, but I digress.)

#IdeaForHN: Someone could start a service where people sign up for receiving random goods from Japan, from their preferred categories (e.g. video games, figurines, sex toys, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER28> I love Candy Japan - are there any services like this for other countries?

<comment><USER15> shameless plug - i run supercandyshop.com and i can confidently say our box is way more value packed than any other box out there. we ship Asian candies, mostly premium Japanese and Korean candies, but we also search for high quality and seasonal candies from other parts of Asia like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great idea! Is there any interest in shipping instant Miso soup from Japan? Trader Joe's has discontinued their offering and I am looking for a replacement.

</comment><comment><USER30> >"Health insurance To me this was the biggest sticker shock, which I didn't mention at all in my old post as I wasn't paying it yet, as I was still tax resident in Finland. Now I'm currently paying 508 EUR or 569 USD for my health insurance here [for a family of 3]. That's not a typo or a yearly cost, that's what it costs every single month."

Sounds like a bargain

<comment><USER31> In The Netherlands this would be quite expensive, though it depends a bit on what your insurance would cover. For example, my health insurance plan (covering just me, not a family of 3) costs around €110 / month ($130) but is a fairly basic plan and requires that I pay the first €300 myself (which is stupid if you ask me) per year, anything after that is covered.

You can get cheaper or more expensive plans depending on the amount of value you pay yourself (known as the "eigen risico" or "own risk"), but the cheapest I could find was around €80 / month.

<comment><USER32> Family insurance plans in NL can be pretty good though. Can't remember what my wife pays for her and our 3 kids but it's less than 4x one person.

<comment><USER33> IIRC it's exactly 1X. Children are covered by their parents' insurance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission, turns 90 this weekend - <AUTHOR> http://cs.astronomy.com/asy/b/astronomy/archive/2018/03/23/send-your-letters-to-lovell-through-the-adler-planetarium.aspx <comment><USER2> What an achievement it was. Of the 12 people who have walked on the moon, only 5 are still alive.

(Note: Lovell flew to the Moon twice, but did not land on it.)</comment>


Are People Allowed to Use Deadly Force to Defend Property? (It Depends) - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/06/02/are-people-allowed-to-use-deadly-force-to-defend-property/ <comment><USER2> Not unless access to that property will certainly result in the deaths of more than the people your potential use of force would kill.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's complicated! The article explains it. (And it varies from state to state)</comment></comment>


Posterous Adds Theme Support; Continues To Grow  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/17/posterous-adds-theme-support-continues-to-grow/ <comment><USER2> dupe of direct announcement: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=828551></comment>


30 Days to Better Business Writing - <AUTHOR> http://www.badlanguage.net/ebook

<comment><USER2> Step one: Realize that even though it looks pretty, a small font size can cause your writing to be unreadable. Even in full screen, the font is still half a point too small for extended reading.

</comment><comment><USER3> And for good writing in general, read Orwell's Politics and the English Language.

 _1\. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2\. Never us a long word where a short one will do.

3\. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4\. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5\. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6\. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous._

Full essay: <http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html>

<comment><USER4> +1

That is one of my favourite Orwell essays. This site is more readable and has all of them - [http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/part42.ht...](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/part42.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quote from the book:

"In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities," said Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen Buddhist priest, but "in the expert's mind there are few." We are all experts in our own world and the only way to get past that is to become professional beginners. (...)

Quite insightful, "professional beginners!"

<comment><USER6> Yeah, when you think you're good at something, you think you know how it ought to be done, and thus (likely) close your mind to other possibilities (because you already know the 'right way', and that means the other way must be wrong).

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is the book it's from. Very, very worth the read, and this coming from someone who thinks the whole new-age zen hippie thing and most books are BS (and they miss the point).

He has another book, but it isn't as good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone seen something similar to this for science writing? Academic papers, dissertations, etc.</comment>


Mircosoft Edge Team: Putting Users in Control of Flash - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/04/07/putting-users-in-control-of-flash/ <comment><USER2> I just wish they would stop including it by default in windows.....

EDIT: and making it a pain the a.. to uninstall completely</comment>


I don't like heroku - <AUTHOR>

blah = IO.popen("echo -e '#!/bin/sh'  \"\n echo 'test';\" > /tmp/fuck.sh; chmod +x /tmp/fuck.sh; /tmp/fuck.sh").readlines
I think it's pretty trivial to see where this is leading too... :)
platforms like heroku make me want to pull my hair out -- not knowing things like cpu/mem usage, being able to use tools like netstat/lsof, etc.... this is why these #PAAS offering will eventually die out -- they simply don't give you what you need to scale appropriately -- now don't get me wrong, give me a barebones ec2 instance (or 200 of them) and I'll be good but this PAAS stuff -- not digging it at all <comment><USER2> I think you are on the wrong side of history on this one. Like the people who lamented the lack of MS Dos in Windows XP or package managers in linux (I mean, if you can't ./configure;make;make install; then you shouldn't be running linux).

New layers of abstraction come along and people who are experts in the now abstracted layer think the new abstractions are unnecessary and dangerous.

I for one welcome PAAS. I have had good experiences with App Engine in the past and Heroku these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's not the 'un-necessary' part -- is the fact that not even giving out the SIMPLEST of offerings like 'how much memory is my software using?' -- 'how much memory do I have access to?" -- things like that are a given in almost ANY serious sofware project -- and if you can't have them then you have NO CLUE what you are doing and shouldn't be writing software

<comment><USER2> I don't care how much memory my software is using. I care if it is performant and if it is using resources in a cost-effective manner.

With Heroku I just add the New Relic plugin and I have quick access to most of the information I need to know about performance.

Maybe I have "no clue", but I have been doing this for 10 years. Maybe I shouldn't be writing software - as a technical founder it is definitely my goal to spend less time writing software. Admittedly I am not working on "serious software" - I am just trying to add value by solving a common pain point for a group of people. So far Heroku has been helping me to do that faster and easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot of people who'd feel pretty lost with a barebones EC2 instance and who don't care about lsof and netstat.

If their app needs to eventually scale off of Heroku, it wouldn't be _that_ hard for someone who knows more sysadminy stuff to do the migration.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand that there is a lot of people out there that see this as the easiest way to get something out there ASAP but for any real business -- the 'platform' is an utter joke</comment></comment>


Matchmine.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.matchmine.com/ <comment><USER2> recommendation: when I click get started, don't make the first thing you ask me be my zip code and gender. show me some results, and THEN ask me for the personal stuff.

though the claims sound interesting, nothing about your site compels me to take the time to figure it out.</comment>


Panono: Panoramic Ball Camera - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/panono-panoramic-ball-camera

<comment><USER2> I met these guys at SIGGRAPH Asia, HK 2011, where they had two prototypes which already worked as advertised.

Really a kick-ass product. A bit expensive as an x-mas gift for a 3rd party ... but maybe I should get one for myself? :)</comment>


Text Only CNN - <AUTHOR> http://lite.cnn.io/ <comment><USER2> I read the same page from lite.cnn.com. I wonder what / if there is a difference. Visually they are the same.</comment>


Show HN: New Landing Page Launched - <AUTHOR> https://skedlo.com <comment><AUTHOR> I just released the landing page for my new project, I called it Skedlo!

It is a post automation and growth tool for Twitter which is focused on giving users additional insights about which of their tweets are doing better than others. Tweets analysis is something that other competitors just don't do properly, hence why I started this project in the first place.

I am still actively working on it, but I realized that in order to start marketing your platform you need a landing page even before having the underlying service up and running.

What you think of my project?</comment>


When did people first start thinking 'C is portable assembler'? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3040276/when-did-people-first-start-thinking-c-is-portable-assembler <comment> non-entity > stems for the simple fact that most "pop-culture level" C programmers are > too lazy to learn the language "hard" \- academic - way, and instead prefer > to "learn" from practice

Now I'm rather curious what this "academic" way of learning languages is.</comment>


DNA Hacking with Swift 4 – Xcode 9 - <AUTHOR> https://www.udemy.com/dna-hacking-with-swift-4-xcode-9/?couponCode=SWIFTDNAFOR25 <comment><USER2> Simple question before I buy. Is the lecturer a robot ? His voice tone and rhythm remind me Microsoft text to voice of Windows 98.</comment>


Paramilitary police: Cops or soldiers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers <comment><USER2> And here's the meat, since the article does come from Economist:

> _Because of a legal quirk, SWAT raids can be profitable. Rules on civil > asset-forfeiture allow the police to seize anything which they can plausibly > claim was the proceeds of a crime. Crucially, the property-owner need not be > convicted of that crime. If the police find drugs in his house, they can > take his cash and possibly the house, too. He must sue to get them back._

> _Many police departments now depend on forfeiture for a fat chunk of their > budgets. In 1986, its first year of operation, the federal Asset Forfeiture > Fund held $93.7m. By 2012, that and the related Seized Asset Deposit Fund > held nearly $6 billion._

Proliferation of SWAT team setups may have been due to a perception issue, but they sure as hell are kept going because there is a real financial incentive. For that reason the answer to the article's title should probably be something like: "Neither. Try mercenaries."

<comment><USER3> > _Because of a legal quirk, SWAT raids can be profitable. Rules on civil > asset-forfeiture allow the police to seize anything which they can plausibly > claim was the proceeds of a crime._

Isn't this true in general, and not only when SWAT is deployed to arrest the suspect?

> _Crucially, the property-owner need not be convicted of that crime._

I would have thought this to be contrary to the US constitution, since it clearly breaks the presumption of innocence, but it turns out that it doesn't feature in the US constitution explicitly, according to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence)

<comment><USER4> You are afforded rights such as a presumption of innocence. Your property however, not being a person, has no rights. That's why they sue your property, not you.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture#United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture#United_States)

<comment><USER3> That's legal sophistry.

<comment><USER5> Most of the US legal practices regarding the constitution are legal sophistry of the worst kind.

Take the "right to bear arms" for example, which is clearly stated that it applies to citizen militias (something important at the time it was written). Through tons of applied sophistry it was decided that it also means the right for every redneck to buy military grade automatic weapons for "self- protection"...

<comment><USER6> " _Take the "right to bear arms" for example, which is clearly stated that it applies to citizen militias...._"

Only to those with fundamental failures in English comprehension, which does not include the Supremes, who in _Heller_ agreed 9-0 that it's an individual right.

And the Federal courts have been implacably hostile to "assault weapons"/civilian semi-auto assault rifles and the like (full auto has been covered elsewhere in this subtread; I'll just add there are about 200K legal ones out there, and two known crimes committed with them, one by a police officer). Not a single favorable opinion prior to _Heller_ , and none that I can remember after it.

Try again.

<comment><USER7> That's two crimes committed with NFA weapons in the 80 years since the NFA has existed. One committed by an active duty police officer and the other by a former police officer.

And to the previous poster I'll add that production of AR15-pattern rifles and carbines alone for the commercial market averages about 380K units per year since 2008. Adding in non-AR pattern "military style" rifles brings that number to about 480K per year, or about 20% of all rifles produced and sold commercially in the U.S. The AR15 is undoubtedly the most popular rifle in the U.S. and that includes a hell of a lot of folks who can't reasonably be classified as "rednecks."

<comment><USER6> I think, to the typical anti-gun bigot, by definition nearly all of us gun owners are "rednecks", in spirit if not quite so the stereotype.

Quoting production and sales numbers isn't likely to help with them, except to possibly scare them away from trying to pass gun grabbing laws that will result in massive resistance and/or civil war. We're holding our breath right now with Connecticut, which was surprisingly quite pro-gun in practice pre- Sandy Hook and which, due to passive resistance, has now created an estimated 300K felons, with the usual suspects calling for all of them to be prosecuted.

And a cherry on the top with Connecticut State Police Spokesman Lt. Paul Vance telling a newly made subject of the state, after she said " _You 're the servant, we're the master_", that " _I 'm the master, ma'am. I'm the master_"([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxjuz2o9Gk;](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxjuz2o9Gk;) jump to the end).

I don't think these people understand the forces they putting into play.

<comment><USER8> Not necessarily rednecks, just low intelligence people that live in a fantasy world.

<comment><USER9> Your ridiculous hyperbole undermines your attempt to position yourself as the intelligent side of your false-dichotomy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _These programmes provide useful defensive equipment, such as body armour and helmets. But it is hard to see why Fargo, North Dakota—a city that averages fewer than two murders a year—needs an armoured personnel-carrier with a rotating turret. Keene, a small town in New Hampshire which had three homicides between 1999 and 2012, spent nearly $286,000 on an armoured personnel-carrier known as a BearCat. The local police chief said it would be used to patrol Keene's "Pumpkin Festival and other dangerous situations". A Reason-Rupe poll found that 58% of Americans think the use of drones, military weapons and armoured vehicles by the police has gone "too far"._

Oddly enough, I was under the impression that a large part of the American population protested loudly whenever their tax dollars are spent for "useless" reasons. Do the complaints only apply when it's the Federal government doing it?

<comment><USER10> That was the federal government doing it:

[http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120326/NEWS07/703269971](http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120326/NEWS07/703269971)

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/20/local- cops-...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/20/local-cops-ready- for-war-with-homeland-security-funded-military-weapons.html)

(Each article discusses a grant from the Department of Homeland Security being used to purchase a vehicle)

Which is probably part of the problem, an average citizen can't do much more than whine to their Congressperson about this sort of spending.

<comment><USER3> It's more complicated than that. First off, local councils take the decision to buy these toys with Federal money, so there is irresponsibility on both sides, but they also do it on their own:

 _Nashua police purchased a BearCat with drug forfeiture money in 2003._ (from your second link)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.volokh.com/2013/07/04/a-real-live-third- amendment...](http://www.volokh.com/2013/07/04/a-real-live-third-amendment- case/)

Summary of the case: cops wanted to use a neighbor's house to surveil their suspects. The neighbor who owned the house reacted about as would be expected.

<comment><USER12> In the spirit of police brutality:

[http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=69016...](http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=69016&sitesection=dash&VID=24990535)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13>
      > One had a criminal history that included three assault charges

I really dislike when "charges" are used this way to defame character. Were the charges dismissed? Was the person found innocent during a trial?

<comment><USER11> Not found innocent. All the jury said is that the state did not prove its claims to their liking.

<comment><USER14> That's why the opposite of "guilty" at trial is "not guilty". Someone who is not guilty is not necessarily innocent, even of the charged crime, but there's not enough evidence there to find guilt.

<comment><USER15> Interestingly, in Scotland (but not the rest of the UK) there's still the third choice of 'Not proven' which indicates that there is not enough evidence (or a problem with the evidence) to prove guilt, whereas acquittal is seen to be a finding of innocence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > On hearing intruders break in, the homeowner's son, a disabled ex- > serviceman, reached for his (legal) gun. Luckily, he heard the police > announce themselves and holstered it;

There is a new tactic for intruders to use: announce themselves as police officers.

Really. That's not a way to raid a house due to "allegedly" buying things with a stolen credit card.

<comment><USER17> That wouldn't be a new tactic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Incidentally, I've always been a bit baffled by the _Gendarmerie_ units in many Central and Southern European countries. They're typically a military police force tasked with policing civilians, and the concept really rubs me the wrong way from a Northern European perspective.

</comment><comment><USER19> > One had a criminal history that included three assault charges, albeit more > than a decade old, and on his arrest was found to have a knife ...

Is that illegal?

<comment><USER20> That's how law works nowadays. Make most things illegal, but don't prosecute so no one worries about having so many laws. But then when you want to place someone behind bars you can cherry pick any law you like.

"Show me a man, and I will show you what he is guilty off" \- old communist saying.

<comment><USER21> Hi i think you refer to this : "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." and is attributed (disputed) to Cardinal Richelieu , not a communist precisely. By the way i completely agree with what you are saying , that's the tactic and is been used in a lot of places around the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Relevant map of botched paramilitary police raids: [http://www.cato.org/raidmap](http://www.cato.org/raidmap)

</comment><comment><USER22> Paramilitary police is called "gendarmery" and they are used against organized crime or at outbreak of civil war. US did good job at Philippines with those units.

Current SWAT teams are just bunch of happy triggers and robbers.

</comment><comment><USER23> They are cops pretending to be soldiers; if they had to fight a real army, I bet they would all shit themselves, and die shortly thereafter.

<comment><USER6> The stark raving mad behavior of LA area police in reaction to Chris Dorner removes pretty much all plausible doubt from your supposition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Drug warriors = soldiers.</comment>


Open Source Could Be a Casualty of the Trade War - <AUTHOR> https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5590 <comment><USER2> Quite the opposite - it makes more and more companies to consider open source. RISC-V is all rage now, people turning their eyes to open source EDAs. I hope with the help of SymbiFlow[1], Chisel[2]/FIRRTL[3], and other similar tools the duopoly of Intel (Altera) and Xilinx will come to its end. There is also an interesting initiative[4] to make ASIC design as affordable (in terms of time, knowledge, and money) as possible. And using KiCad[5] for simple projects can help for small businesses.

[1] [https://symbiflow.github.io/](https://symbiflow.github.io/)

[2] [https://github.com/freechipsproject/chisel3](https://github.com/freechipsproject/chisel3)

[3] [https://github.com/freechipsproject/firrtl](https://github.com/freechipsproject/firrtl)

[4] [https://theopenroadproject.org/](https://theopenroadproject.org/)

[5] [http://kicad-pcb.org/](http://kicad-pcb.org/)

<comment><USER3> The issue is not that it reduces interest in open source. In fact the article states there's evidence that open source solutions are getting renewed attention in the Chinese government.

The issue is that the executive order would make it unlawful to share technology with foreign adversaries. So it effectively forces open source projects to hard fork along geopolitical boundaries. For example, if (and these are still if's) Huawei were to be designated a foreign adversary; and, if Huawei were to develop a RISC-V implementation of interest; it would be unlawful for a US person to use that implementation, or otherwise "acquire" said technology from Huawei.

The underlying premise of the executive order, as I understand it, is that technology developed by, or under the influence of, foreign adversaries is potentially tainted. Thus to defend the US national security interest, US persons shall be penalized for using their technology.

Thus the concern is that US-based open source developers and users would be directly at risk by interacting with the very projects you cite, should they fall under the influence of a foreign adversary.

Or to put it more concretely: ARM might be very happy if Huawei were designated a foreign adversary, and Huawei invested heavily in RISC-V. Because then ARM could lobby US lawmakers to rule that RISC-V technology is tainted under the theories contained in the executive order, thus reducing competition from open source alternatives.

(editted to clean up grammar)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the answer, it makes the problem clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A contact at Foxconn just told me yesterday that Apple is genuinely serious about leaving China completely.

Apparently, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Cook last week, and extended an offer of a tax break and other "relocation packages" on the size "not seen in human history" if Apple moves to USA.

Hearing things like that keeps reminding me that Taiwanese engineering fraternity is one of worlds best intelligence agencies :)

<comment><USER5> And Apple will milk that agreement long after Trump leaves office, doing whatever makes more sense for the bottom line, even if that means moving to production to Mexico eventually. And, just like all these large companies, will avoid paying corporate taxes to an even greater extent. Trump will claim he restored American manufacturing, and he will have, long enough for him to Tweet about it, and not much longer.

<comment><USER6> Every company considering a deal with Trump should consider that America has walked away from shitty deals before. Sometimes it just takes a little while.

<comment><USER7> \s It just has to last long enough for executives to cash in their bonuses.

<comment><USER8> I know that was sarcasm, but I don't think it applies to Apple. Their managers seem to be employed long-term and they seem to be loyal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Considering that two U.S. appeals courts have ruled that source code which was _classed as a munition_ was protected by the First Amendment, I'm not too worried just yet.

Of course we have a lot of new judges so who knows.

<comment><USER10> Bunnie seems to fear this type of IP restriction but with regard to closed source chipset designs and proprietary hardware, which he views as key to continued innovation in China.

I have met Bunnie, and he has a bit of a warped view of the world. I think it caused him to gloss over things like [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversi...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversight_board_savaging_annual_report/) where Huawei did not give a single shit about security in their cellular basestation codebase.

Sure, Huawei will read CVEs and sometimes deal with them, but really basic things like updating OpenSSL libraries seem near impossible for Huawei. Their hardware is thus vulnerable to exploitation by any ill intentioned person wandering by :c

Part of this is the whole stolen codebase problem, where Huawei (as Nortel's Chinese manufacturing partner) took their designs and code, without fully understanding them. They've been able to tack on a lot of neat stuff, but the underlying architecture is still not understood by their engineers.

<comment><USER11> And so is so much other US-produced or maintained hardware. Do we now ban outdated corporate websites which can be hacked and used to launch attacks on other servers?

The Huawei ban is very clearly a political anti-China move, not one based on technical reasons.

<comment><USER12> Do you not understand the part about Huawei's rampant, Chinese-style IP theft directly contributing to the poor security of its products?

<comment><USER13> I haven't ever seen any evidence of "rampant" IP theft by Huawei. Every time, it's the same one Cisco case that got settled 15 years ago, unsubstantiated claims about Nortel two decades ago, and T-Mobile's "Tappy" robot. This for a massive company with over $100 billion in revenue a year. If there were actually something to the characterization, you'd think there'd be more evidence. It's a bit like defining Google solely on the basis of Oracle's case and Apple's earlier claims of Android being an iOS clone.

<comment><USER12> Try taking this position with, say, Samsung.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure I follow.

Samsung was embroiled in a very bitter IP dispute with Apple, in which it was found to have violated Apple's patents, essentially copying the design of the iPhone, and ordered to pay over a half a billion dollars.

Yet American companies aren't banned from doing business with Samsung, nor should they be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article takes a while to get to the point made in the title but the way to counteract this seems to be, get the infrastructure for open source out of America before it's too late. In contrast to the ARM example, the US doesn't really have any leverage against a volunteer open source project not within its borders.

<comment><USER15> Fortunately, there is a bulwark:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The bulwark defending the bulwark is the population.

<comment><USER16> Good luck explaining your commits to that munitions grade crypto used by terror cells in the mideast region as "Free Speech".

Hope that works out for you. :-(

(I'd wager there'll be a few more Snowden types asking for asylum outside the US before this is all over.)

<comment><USER17> Already holds up: "The claimed principle was simple: export of munitions—guns, bombs, planes, and software—was (and remains) restricted; but the export of books is protected by the First Amendment. The question was never tested in court with respect to PGP. In cases addressing other encryption software, however, two federal appeals courts have established the rule that cryptographic software source code is speech protected by the First Amendment (the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Bernstein case and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Junger case). " [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy)

<comment><USER18> How it worked out last time is no guarantee of how it will work out this time.

<comment><USER19> I like the odds in the US better than anywhere else. No other country has a better track record of protecting freedom of speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "through powers granted via the "EAR" (Export Administration Regulation 15 CFR, subchapter C, parts 730-774), along with a sometimes surprisingly broad definition of what qualifies as export-controlled US technology."

Boom! I told people they might do that back in the crypto discussions. Custom crypto and high-assurance security are still munitions with only a few things re-classified such as mass-market, one-size-fits-all software and use of ciphers in browser (https). This is what they might do to the rest with the leverage if it was ever truly threatening. They're already doing it to companies over Huawei.

I also speculated they might have done this to get backdoors in products. A combo of offering payment and threats together. We know they do the payments. I don't know if they do export threats, though.

"some independent security research would have already found and published a paper on this. Given the level of fame and notoriety such a researcher would gain for finding the "smoking gun""

Bunny is being really naive here or maybe doesn't understand computer espionage. Most subversion must be done in a way that doesn't look like subversion. The system just has to be remotely exploitable. The best route to that is to intentionally leave in memory safety bugs or a configuration that enables privilege escalation. Hackers find those all the time in all kinds of devices. They say, "Hey, they just made a common mistake." Maybe it was there on purpose. We won't know.

"It's no secret that the US has outsourced most of its electronics supply chain overseas. From the fabrication of silicon chips, to the injection molding of plastic cases, to the assembly of smartphones, it happens overseas, with several essential links going through or influenced by China."

And this is why what the U.S. government is doing is incredibly stupid. You could substitute other industries in here. It's a smarter move to minimize one's dependency on a country before pissing that country off in a way that can prevent them getting what they depend on.

<comment><USER21> > The best route to that is to intentionally leave in memory safety bugs or a > configuration that enables privilege escalation. Hackers find those all the > time in all kinds of devices. They say, "Hey, they just made a common > mistake." Maybe it was there on purpose. We won't know.

By that logic everyone from Apple to Xerox could possibly be enabling computer espionage. You'd never be able to prove a bug wasn't a deliberate back door.

<comment><USER22> Well, you can't. Whether it was a mistake or sabotage only changes the timescale for exploitation of the bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The weakness of freedom of speech is it also allows freedom of lying. It's the cost of it. I think there could/should be an amendment to constitution that prevents government officials from consciously lying to people

<comment><USER24> The fact of whether an official "consciously lying to people" is extremely hard to know, because it is a measure of someone's status of mind in the past. The real world is much more complicated than what you could imagine.

Take Obama's: 'If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan' as an example. He repeated this message for many many times: [https://www.politifact.com/obama-like-health-care- keep/](https://www.politifact.com/obama-like-health-care-keep/)

How do you objectively decide:

1) Is this statement true?

2) Did he lie about it?

Also, how do you handle "if there is something I should not know, do not tell me"?

<comment><USER23> Good points. Clearly there are gray areas. But sometimes it would be possible to prove lying. Just like it is possible to prove some marketing is fraudulent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> No way. Open source will (keep) finding a way. It's a force of nature.

</comment><comment><USER26> A trade war may stimulate Open Source. Each adversary might subsidize the development of Open Source equivalents of the other's key proprietary products and services protected by Intellectual Property.

</comment><comment><USER27> I actually hope that software ( open source) could be more like trade.

Eg. Follow human rights, No great firewall and you can use it.

Global trade has done a lot of good for the world, in general, there hasn't been any big war in the last 70 years.

Why: 996

</comment><comment><USER28> > If Huawei has truly engaged in a long-term pattern of conduct significantly > adverse to national security, surely, some independent security research > would have already found and published a paper

Presenting non sequitur as evidence has become par for the course. Let's step back to one day before the heartbleed bug was discovered in ssl libs, when a similar argument could've been made regarding the ssl library's security. Only to be disproven a day later.

</comment><comment><USER29> why is ARM doing business with Huawei? they don't manufacture their SOCs or do they?

<comment><USER30> Huawei licenses the ARM instruction set and some architecture components. If it's a mobile processor, at the very least it's going to license ARM instructions</comment></comment>


Bend Over Shareholders, Here Comes The Dilution - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/new-york-times-nyt-bend-over-shareholders-here-comes-the-dilution <comment><USER2> Why does anyone care about Blodget's opinions given his track record?

He has been barred from the securities industry: <http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2003-56.htm>

and, comes up with a lot of bad analysis:

<http://moneyterms.co.uk/blog/200805-blodget-incentives>

Apparently, people will listen if you are well known: it does not matter what you are well known for.

</comment><comment><USER3> based on the NYT's inability to print solid reports on what's really going on in the world over the last decade, I would say their share price reflects their value.</comment>


Nginx quick reference - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/trimstray/nginx-quick-reference <comment><USER2> Just skimmed through it, and most of this seems to revolve around hardening, not performance, and most of the hardening seems questionable at best. Some of the headers that is suggested have some implications that aren't really explained at all. Like HSTS including sub-domains.

And you don't set the `default_server` as this document suggest. `default_server` is a parameter to the `listen`-directive. The only reason the docs might work is because the first server-block defined, when no-one is defined as `default_server`, becomes the default server.

      server {
        listen 80 default_server;
        return 444;
      }

This will close the connection and log it internally, for any domain that isn't defined in Nginx.

Edit: Shout-out to #nginx on FreeNode, where you'll always find someone to point you i the right directing or help you out.

<comment><USER3> "and most of the hardening seems questionable at best." \- Don't do this, please add rationale, not bullshit.

"Some of the headers that is suggested have some implications that aren't really explained at all. Like HSTS including sub-domains." \- This repo also contain "Force all connections over TLS". However, I understand your attention.

"And you don't set the `default_server` as this document suggest. `default_server` is a parameter to the `listen`-directive. The only reason the docs might work is because the first server-block defined, when no-one is defined as `default_server`, becomes the default server." \- You're right, your suggestion is very well (it's also from Nginx official handbook) and rationale, thanks for this! I receive this criticism, My mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't casually enable HSTS with the following:

add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains" always;

On a top domain site like [https://example.com](https://example.com), if there are subdomain sites like [http://golf.example.com](http://golf.example.com) which are not configured with TLS. The setting will be stored on the clients and they need to "forget" non-https sites after you have rolled back the misconfiguration. Of course you could go in the other direction and enable https for all subdomains. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> "Disable compression (mitigation of CRIME attack)"

Is this really the best solution? This might get me an A+ at ssllabs but I also need an "A" from gtmetrics[1] and if I turn of gzip I will not get an A.

[1] [https://gtmetrix.com/enable-gzip- compression.html](https://gtmetrix.com/enable-gzip-compression.html)

<comment><USER6> I was surprised to read that as well. I have gzip compression "turned on" in all of the nginx servers I administered. Didn't even know it could be an attack vector.

[https://www.acunetix.com/vulnerabilities/web/crime-ssl- tls-a...](https://www.acunetix.com/vulnerabilities/web/crime-ssl-tls-attack/)

<comment><USER7> What's probably worth saying is that (at least for Apache), you can enable compression only for certain file types, such as static text files (HTML/CSS/JS) but not dynamic files (thinking of classical CGI scripting -- PHP/Python/Ruby). It should be possible to seperate this also for modern-world fcgi services.

How does HTTP2 and HTTP3 perform in this question? I always percieved deflate/gzip compression as something preferable. I never realized the CRIME attack before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For SSL Configuration there's always [https://mozilla.github.io/server-side- tls/ssl-config-generat...](https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl- config-generator/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Off topic, it makes me wonder if a well designed IDE, a step by step wizard could save a lot of time from reading docs.

Web server Configuration should be simple if you already have the correct mindset. It's the nuances of each specific directive or variables that makes config hard. Try remember all those access_log formats. Ehh!

<comment><USER10> Like this? [https://nginxconfig.io](https://nginxconfig.io)

<comment><USER11> +1, this is fantastic. Curious why the setting events { multi_accept on; } is flipped on from the default of off though. Is that a performance optimization?

Also, I added a PR to add thread_pool support ([https://github.com/valentinxxx/nginxconfig.io/pull/66](https://github.com/valentinxxx/nginxconfig.io/pull/66))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a Nginx administrator, but the general documentation flow is very much agreeable: actionable summary guideline, concise rationale, relevant example, external resource(s).

</comment><comment><USER13> Awesome doc. Beware though lot of tradeoffs towards security in prejudice of performance and usability.

</comment><comment><USER14> 'quick reference'

1100 lines (707 sloc) 36.4 KB

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h For what it is, that's absolutely quick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A printable lists of SSL ciphers... but why?? how could that be useful to anyone?!</comment>


Ky, a delightful Fetch-based HTTP library for the browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sindresorhus/ky <comment><AUTHOR> Released in 2018 but I missed it. Main reason I posted it: compare Ky's usage with all the boilerplate required by Fetch at:

[https://github.com/sindresorhus/ky#usage](https://github.com/sindresorhus/ky#usage)</comment>


An Empirical Study of Affiliate Marketing Disclosures on YouTube and Pinterest [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://aruneshmathur.co.in/files/publications/Affiliate_Disclosure__ConPro_2018_.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> _We have three main findings.

First, we find that—on both YouTube and Pinterest—content with affiliate URLs have significantly higher user engagement compared to content that does not contain affiliate URLs.

Second, we find that affiliate marketing disclosures appear in three distinct formats—which we term Affiliate Link disclosures, Explanation disclosures, and Support Channel disclosures—as opposed to one standardized format.

Third, we find that the overall prevalence of these disclosures is low: only ∼10% of all affiliate content on each platform has accompanying disclosures._</comment>


Ask HN: Do you take Ritalin or Adderall? - <AUTHOR> I have heard that many American students use these when they are studying.
Do HNers use these when they are programming or studying? Does it work?
EDIT: I am asking because this kind of medicine is not in wide use by students in Denmark. <comment><USER3> I was recently diagnosed with ADD. I would have trouble staying focused on tasks, drift to something else and lose an hour or so. Procrastination and underachieving were a constant theme throughout my life (child and adult). I've been taking Adderall twice a day for the past month. It's a huge improvement. I can stay focused on a project for an entire workday and not have the desire to drift. For me, it feels like time is slowing down. I can process my inbox and check the daily websites in say 15 minutes, where some days it would last an hour or more, due to not being able to stay focused. It takes a few days to get used to the initial rush (30 minutes in).

If you think you're having trouble, go see a Psych.D and be evaluated. I should have gone 15 years ago.

<comment><USER4> If you started doing cocaine, the first month may also be highly productive. All drug habits start out good. Hopefully it's sustainable and not too unhealthy.

<comment><USER5> The difference between cocaine and ADHD meds is that the feeling of being on an amphetamine analogous is not a pleasant one. Although it is possible to become reliant on ADHD meds, I think it's pretty difficult to become addicted. Classic amphetamines may be a different case, however, and Addy is pretty close to a classic amphetamine. And then you have methamphetamines, which are rarely prescribed any longer because they're so addictive.

<comment><USER6> 100% disagree I have worked with co-workers who took a lot of adderall due to tolerance and they had to be terminated because they had meth like rageouts. Don't kid yourself, Adderall is an amphetamine just like meth is.

<comment><USER7> A hallmark of "real ADD" is that tolerance typically doesn't build. Once you are at an appropriate dose you can stay there. The treatment is supposed to reduce inattentiveness and improve focus. If abused or used recreationally, it has the opposite effect, to stimulate and enhance mood, to create a kind of manic energy. I've been at the same dose for over 7 years with no noticeable tolerance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relevant [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/15/students- smar...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/15/students-smart-drugs- higher-grades-adderall-modafinil)

</comment><comment><USER9> I tried the stuff as a kid and in undergrad -- I was diagnosed with ADHD. It very much helped me concentrate, but stopped me from thinking creatively, clamped down on my ability to think socially, and gave me damned irritating headaches.

Today, I'm more successful with no drugs and an improved work ethic. And less headachey.

<comment><AUTHOR>
      I tried the stuff as a kid and in undergrad

How often and when did you take it? Did you take it during holidays when you didn't have to study?

<comment><USER9> I tended to use it only on workdays, and to take something like 10mg once per day. I think I had slow-release at one point.

But again: I had a _prescription_ , from a _doctor_ , due to a _diagnosis_. The experience remained quite unpleasant, and I don't recommend it to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My sister is a pharmacist and she told me that in her pharmacy school years, it was common for students to take Adderall to help them study. She swears the pills work like magic.

</comment><comment><USER11> For me, I smoke 1 hoot of pot in the morning, 1 after lunch, and 1 on the drive home to make notes. I've been doing so for 8 years now. I find great concentration, as an extrovert it helps me think inside my head. I always have notes that I write in pen, and bang them off as if everyday is the supperbowl

</comment><comment><USER12> > Do HNers use these when they are programming or studying?

I mean, focus is focus no matter how you use it.

For anyone who wants to consider Adderall or Concerta, please do yourself a favor and look into Vyvanse. No crash, no jitters, much smoother delivery - <USER2> least for me.

I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has about (any) stimulants.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I was under the impression that Vyvanse was a more classic amphetamine than Adderall. Apparently I was wrong.

One issue with Concerta is that the name brand and the main generic (there are two different generics) use a different release timing mechanism. I'm shocked that the FDA allows these to be marketed as the same drug. The generic results in a much more "wired" feeling, at least for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Never tried, they definitely interest me though. 25 years old.

</comment><comment><USER14> I just drink a lot of coffee.</comment>


Pulumi Kubernetes Operator: A K8s controller that deploys cloud infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://www.pulumi.com/blog/pulumi-kubernetes-operator/ <comment><USER2> Is this just a really obfuscated and cryptic alternatative Terraform?

<comment><USER3> Pulumi itself ([https://www.pulumi.com/](https://www.pulumi.com/)) is a Modern Infrastructure as Code tool much like Terraform - but focused on modern cloud workloads like containers, serverless and Kubernetes - and using programming languages like Python, TypeScript, Go and .NET instead of constrained DSLs to bring improved software engineering capabilities into cloud infrastructure projects.

The Pulumi Kubernetes Operator ([https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi-kubernetes- operator](https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi-kubernetes-operator)) is a new project that provides a Kubernetes-native way to continuously deliver cloud infrastructure defined using Pulumi into AWS, Azure, GCP or a Kubernetes cluster.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Android Wear keyboard lets you draw letters on your smartwatch - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/11/6961447/microsoft-android-wear-keyboard-download-features

<comment><USER2> As a former Palm user, this seems awfully familiar. I'm glad handwriting recognition has improved since then though. On a smartwatch there isn't enough space for the Graffiti Alphabet stickers.</comment>