Make: Electronics Book Bundle - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/books/make-electronics-book-bundle <comment><USER2> I'm very tempted to buy this, but I know it would just be another hobby that I don't have time for. Even if I could afford to be retired, I doubt I would have enough time to explore all the things that interest me.

<comment><USER3> Yup... I have "The Art of Electronics" megatome sitting right next to this keyboard I'm typing on. Will I have time to open it up this month? Maybe to wistfully flip through it, right before I go to bed. Otherwise, probably not.

<comment><USER4> That book -- I tried reading it. It's ... well, hard to stay focused. Ended up just now getting "Learning the Art of Electronics: A Hands-On Lab Course," its student manual companion, in the hopes that I'll be able to follow both easier than just one alone. :)

<comment><USER5> I have an earlier edition of "The Art of Electronics" and I'm wondering how different the latest edition is. That said, I rarely open it so it probably doesn't really matter anyway.

I've done only one electronics project since my electronics course in undergrad. I keep meaning to do more, but I never get around to it.

<comment><USER6> I bought the new one on the basis of the sample chapter that is available to download at any number of places. It's a much much better book in terms of readability and structure, and has a lot of additional content compared to the previous edition. A lot has happened in electronics since 1989. I recommend you go read the sample chapter and decide accordingly.

<comment><USER4> To be clear, though, it doesn't cover software, or what you'd need for Arduino-based projects. But it has quite a few sections at the end for micro- processor based projects and communication protocols, etc. I found it to be a good starting point for definitions or ideas, and to then head to the internet for more details.

There's also: Ladyada interview with Paul Horowitz - The Art of Electronics ... [http://youtu.be/iCI3B5eT9NA](http://youtu.be/iCI3B5eT9NA)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the info. I'm not worried about software. I've done enough low- level programming for that to be not a problem. I'm knowledgeable enough about electronics, what I need most of all is a good reference which is why I have the earlier edition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone who has actually bought this tell us whether this is as good as the print versions? Things like all the diagrams and photos being present, having good resolution, etc.

I've heard so many horror stories about how great technical books get mangled when they're made into ebook versions (frankly I'd be quite happy with a proper PDF version).

<comment><USER8> I bought one of the previous Make Magazine bundles, and the PDF's were very high quality. Definitely recommended over the ebook versions, as there's a lot of formatting.

<comment><USER9> I buy all their bundles. The PDF quality is usually good but that could also mean that the files are too big to be read on a tablet or a phone. The mobi & epub versions are sometimes just a dump of the PDF file.

Speaking of quality, their Android bundles are unfortunately pure garbage. They used to be great but now they are just garbage. If someone from the humblebundle team is reading this: what the hell is going on there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FYI, the "Making Things Talk" book is not about attaching voice circuitry to devices. It's about making devices that can communicate with each other.

</comment><comment><USER10> FYI: You need a Kinect for the Making Things See book.

<comment><USER11> And, if you're picking up one on eBay (approx £15), be sure to get the standalone version which comes with an external power supply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Slightly off-topic.

I've tried to do some basic circuits, but I always strike the same issue: resistors. Most basic books just say "add this resistor here", meaning that whenever I've tried to make changes I either kill my circuits or don't give them enough power (you can have hours of fun debugging electronics when you have a dead circuit and you don't know it).

Is there a simple equation I'm missing somewhere? And perhaps more related, is this issue covered in one of these books?

<comment><USER13> There is a simple equation, Ohm's law. Resistors are usually there to drop voltage, but there isn't enough detail in the problem you're facing to know exactly what the answer should be.

I'm not very proficient in hardware, so I'm about as confused as you, but clarifying your question can help. I bought these books (not the plus bundle, though) and they explain things a lot, so there is a very nice explanation for what resistors do in them, and hopefully why they're used where they're used. I mean, for $2 or so, there's no question about it.

<comment><USER14> Ohm's law is a important starting point (and will explain a lot of the basics if you branch off from there search terms you don't know).

However, I think the biggest problem for why resistors / capacitors / inductors / transformers are confusing for people coming from a software background is that they tend to (a) have to do with power circuitry, (b) be backed by physics that are non-digital, & (c) be fundamentally parallel/functional in nature. So a lot of intuition we have about digital state wrt imperative languages makes analog power circuitry design / function seem bizarre.

If you're really curious, I'd try and find an introductory text to basic power circuitry design (good starting point: how to build a passive & active AC/DC transformer). Most of the components get used in that context and if you can understand them there then you can understand them anywhere.

<comment><USER13> Relatedly, I skimmed one of the Make books (the encyclopedia of parts, part 1), and it goes into some detail about how a transformer works, so that seems like a good starting point (for me as well), thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this worth it? I'm not familiar with the series, but I love hardware hacking at a novice level.

<comment><USER15> Where I live 15$US buys you 4 12 Oz (Large) flat whites - that would be 'latte's' for Americans, I think. So its probably worth it. I own (sorry, licensed user) of a few of the books in the bundle and they are good introduction material generally. You will get your $15's value out of them I'm sure.

<comment><USER16> Starbucks sells flat whites, bringing culture to those Americans who have never visited Australia or New Zealand.

<comment><USER17> Not in China! Here we mug a cino, homes. Smacks of LA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice bundle. Wish each book linked to a list of components required to complete the activities.

<comment><USER19> For the first Make Electronics book there are kits available on eBay containing all or most of the parts to complete the exercises in the book.

<comment><USER20> I can second the use of eBay to get cheap component kits, or even single bags of a specific component, usually for $0.99 posted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It looks like almost everything in this bundle is available on O'Reilly Safari. Still worth it.

<comment><USER7> Their individual membership is $399/year[1] for "unlimited" books and videos, but there's no obvious place on their website where they actually list the books available -- very annoying.

I suppose their target audience is a manager at a large enterprise who's buying a subscription as a perk for his employees; he doesn't really care about a precise list of books so long as he knows that it's big.

[1] [https://www.safaribooksonline.com/pricing/](https://www.safaribooksonline.com/pricing/)

<comment><USER21> You can search from the main page and get a list of Maker Media electronics books:

[https://ssearch.oreilly.com/?all=2;i=1;q=electronics;q1=Book...](https://ssearch.oreilly.com/?all=2;i=1;q=electronics;q1=Books;q2=Maker+Media+Inc;x1=t1;x2=publisher&act=pg_viewall)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> missing a 't' in electronics</comment>


Unprecedented Ozone Loss Over Arctic - <AUTHOR> http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/03/study-shows-unprecedented-loss-of-ozone-above-arctic/?hpt=hp_t2

<comment><USER2> The Arctic hole graphs are from the end of Winter, and the Antarctic hole graphs are from the end of Summer.

∴ ozone holes are, in my estimation, a seasonal and natural feature of the atmosphere. It makes perfect sense, given that all ozone is created by solar radiation and only persists until it oxidizes something else.

However, the plan to blame humanity for this curious and poorly-understood behavior isn't over...</comment>


Should We Prohibit Genetically Engineered Babies? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2013/02/15/172137776/should-we-prohibit-genetically-engineered-babies

<comment><USER2> Evolution is, of course, a form of genetic engineering.

Suppose that a child is born who was genetically engineered. What then? Retroactive abortion?</comment>


Expanding Context in Diffs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1705-expanding-context-in-diffs

<comment><USER2> I hoped they would fix line wrapping - which should be a relatively simply task - by now.

This is a very needed feature for projects that work a lot with text files (such as markdown) that do not automatically break on set widths (e.g. [1])

I've already contacted Github support with this request months ago, but no one's stepped up with a fix. Maybe this can get escalated somehow? Heck, I'd even submit a pull request if it was possible for github/github.

[1] - [https://github.com/cryptoparty/handbook/pull/72/files](https://github.com/cryptoparty/handbook/pull/72/files)

<comment><USER3> Why not add line breaks using your text editor? That will also help your collaborators who prefer not to wrap long lines.

I have a hook in my .emacs that turns on auto-fill-mode whenever I open a .md or .rst file. I'd assume there's something analogous for vim or whichever editor you normally work with.

<comment><USER4> In text, hard line breaks can be content rather than presentation, so adding them to the raw file is not always desirable. It would be fantastic if the github web viewers offered this feature.

Also, won't it mess up diffs for wrapped text? If you add a few words in the middle of a paragraph and then re-wrap the text, won't the contents of every single following line be altered and show up as a diff?

<comment><USER5> Unified and side by side diffs were never really meant for diffing documents. If you do go the route of introducing line breaks to improve readability and/or editing, you really need to use a different diffing algorithm. What I've found useful is the Google diff match and patch library.

[http://code.google.com/p/google-diff-match- patch/](http://code.google.com/p/google-diff-match-patch/)

Its extremely easy to integrate as well. You can see how it handles a markdown diff at:

[http://ny.testdrive.gitsense.com/index?#pid=23&cid=27&trail=](http://ny.testdrive.gitsense.com/index?#pid=23&cid=27&trail=)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since we're touching code reviews, I'll plug my userscript here. It's useful for me for code reviews of big commits: you can fold the files, mark them as reviewed etc. and all of this is persisted in the local storage. You can install it from [1] if you know userscripts or read [2] otherwise.

[1] [http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/153049](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/153049)

[2] [https://github.com/jakub-g/gh-code-review- assistant](https://github.com/jakub-g/gh-code-review-assistant)

</comment><comment><USER7> Worth noting that BitBucket had this as long as I can remember.

</comment><comment><USER8> Side-by-side diffs would be superior.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure if their stance has changed and I can't seem to find the answer that was given, but it had to do with aesthetics/layout. Basically their web layout width was too restrictive for showing side by side diffs. They only really have two options:

1) Do what Bitbucket does and have the side by side diff be a pop up window. I personally find this to be jarring and unnatural.

2) Combine both elements. It's what I do for my product. To better understand this take a look at

[http://ny.testdrive.gitsense.com/index?#pid=22&cid=27&trail=](http://ny.testdrive.gitsense.com/index?#pid=22&cid=27&trail=)

and switch to the side by side view. If you hover over the line number, you'll be able to see the diff line in unified mode below. With this setup they can provide side by side without having the user to constantly scroll left to right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > and the feature is available anywhere we render diffs

No, it's not available on gist.github.com.

Sure, they may (or may not) port it over after some time, but I just don't get why they can't use the same code in the first place. Why is GitHub reinventing the wheel in for its very own sub-site?

(Other than that, this is absolutely great!)

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice! I've been wanting this feature for a long time:

[http://philfreo.com/blog/the-problem-with-pull-requests- code...](http://philfreo.com/blog/the-problem-with-pull-requests-code- reviews/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Since we're on the subject of Github's diff viewer, thought I'd throw in a plug for a chrome extension I wrote recently to improve it:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github- enhancement...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-enhancement- suite/ahamcncifjblaomhphpfpopppadboiin)

Has side-by-side + word wrap + context (somewhat nicer looking than Github's, although could be biased)

Largely inspired by Phabricator's diff viewer.

</comment><comment><USER12> Cool! Now the only thing missing is to integrate this[1] to natively support syntax highlight on diffs ;)

[1] [https://github.com/danielribeiro/github-diff-highlight- exten...](https://github.com/danielribeiro/github-diff-highlight-extension)

</comment><comment><USER13> I was just looking for this over the weekend, and found it this morning.

When I talk about code to collaborators in email or chat, I always try to link to the file on github rather than just giving a path. I much prefer to recieve feedback that way. Maybe i'm not good enough with my text editor, but it is just a lot faster to get to the file that way.

</comment><comment><USER14> Been needing this badly for reviewing changes to legacy code which tends to require a much larger context for understanding of a diff.

Hope it shows up in GH enterprise soon!

<comment><USER15> AFAIK it should be in the next major release (330)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When working locally you can do something similar with -U<n> and I've also found using --patience can sometimes generate cleaner patches.

</comment><comment><USER17> Fingers crossed for "default to ignore whitespace in _all_ diffs" to be the next feature they roll out...

</comment><comment><USER18> phabricator has had this feature forever. Here's an example diff: [https://secure.phabricator.com/rP1b026fa6291fd86ed6a2e598e6a...](https://secure.phabricator.com/rP1b026fa6291fd86ed6a2e598e6a013b5b6124532)

</comment><comment><USER19> I love these guys

</comment><comment><USER20> If any githubbers are reading, it would be great to be able to filter my organization's timeline events out of my personal timeline events. It's been bugging me for years. Thanks.

<comment><USER21> Oh man yes please to this. The timeline is effectively useless right now.</comment></comment>


Man, 69, loses legal battle against temporal reality in effort to become 49 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/03/man-loses-legal-battle-against-temporal-reality-effort-become/ <comment><USER2> For a second I thought I was reading The Onion.

I do however like the philosophical nature of the question: If people can change their gender based on they feel, why can't they change their age?

<comment><USER3> "Gender" is a social construct but while "old" or "young" is a social construct "69 years old" isn't really.

<comment><USER4> People are male or female by genetics and have a personal perception of themselves as something other than that gender.

I can totally see how someone might be 69, but still running triathlons, and want to identify with an effective age that is 49.

I fail to see how these two cases are different.

<comment><USER5> Age is determined by trips around the Sun and sex is determined by genetics. Gender, by definition, is not determined by sex. You are conflating sex and gender, but they are not the same thing. You can feel like a man, but be biologically a woman. You can feel like 40 at 70, but you're still 70.

gen·der

/ˈjendər/Submit

noun

1.

the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> +1 for Team Reality finally winning one. Feels like we've been getting shut out all season. A small victory to be sure but even those are worth celebrating in these dark times.

</comment><comment><USER7> This made me laugh, but unless I'm mistaken, he's quite serious. Luckily, however,

> An Arnhem court ruled in favor of the fourth dimension.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if he'll be remembered as a visionary of the age dysphoria trend: "I was born 69 years ago and identify as myself born 49 years ago."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This brings up a valid point about health technology and "biological age". As (usually wealthy) people are increasingly able to delay the onset of senescence, the law is going to have issues with time defined "age" which represents capability.

For example having to retest every 5 years maybe unneeded if people are living to 125 and remaining healthy along the way.

<comment><USER10> Agree and was thinking that in the future, this snarky article will seem in poor taste, representing a time when fixed identity began unspooling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> He clearly has not thought through the consequences..

eg

turns up to pick up rented car..

Goes to bank to arrange a bank loan..

Tries to sell or buy land.. or anything for thar matter..

Tries get on an international flight...

Result..

sorry sir there is no way you are 49 years old you have obviously stolen someones identity just wait here while i call the police..

</comment><comment><USER12> If he _looks_ as young as he feels, then he doesn't need to legally change his age to say he is 49 on Tinder.

<comment><USER13> That's a violation of the terms of service.

<comment><USER12> Probably so. Do most people on Tinder abide by the ToS? If he looks 49, who is going to report him for a violation? If someone does report him, how hard is it to make a new account?

<comment><USER13> It's also a violation of Facebook's ToS

<comment><USER12> Is the ToS a binding and enforceable contract in your country?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> people arguing, that temporal reality is absolute. what do you think about daylight savings?

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't see why one can change sex, but not change age, race, etc.

<comment><USER16> It's an issue of fact vs expression/perception. There was a moment in time when you started breathing outside of your mother's womb. There is usually a witness and time is a one-way metric.

Gender expression is a different, more complex matter. There has always been "grey" areas from an anatomy perspective and I think there is consensus that other factors affect this as well. Race, depending on context, is even more complex. Is it about nationality? Geography? Skin color? Religion?

Most things about people don't fit in neat boxes. Age is not one of those things.

<comment><USER17> Really? The idea of age being a publicly known and verifiable fact is completely specific to highly developed Western cultures. Many places in the world attach no importance to date/time of birth and do not record it.

<comment><USER16> The Netherlands, the country in question, is a highly developed western culture.

Whatever adjudication process that exists in a culture that doesn't care about date of birth would probably reach a different judgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Time is a constant.

Verifiably false, but pedantic.

<comment><USER15> Scientists can prove someone's gender by looking at his/her chromosomes, can't they (if you take exceptions, there are people born with 4 arms, or even 2 heads: was a new species created, or it's just very rare exceptions?)..?

If you abandon common sense and gender is a construct, race and age should be a construct, or however you want to call it, people should be able to change it.

<comment><USER19> No they can't.

Gender is a social construct. But they can't tell that for physiological sex either. Humans have a whole host of secondary sexual characteristics, most of which are more important than genitals in determining how other people categorize them. But even ignoring all of that, chromosomes don't strictly determine what sex characteristics someone ends up with. AIUI a lot of this has to do with the presence or absence of a testosterone wash in-utero (which itself is supposed to be determined by chromosomes, but this doesn't always work).

There have been documented cases of women with XY chromosomes who not only exhibit all the usual female sexual characteristics, but even have working ovaries and have carried babies to term. In fact, while I don't have it handy, there was a story not that long ago about a woman with XY chromosomes successfully having a baby, and then they discovered that her mother also had XY chromosomes.

<comment><USER5> So the answer is that they in fact can in the _VAST_ majority of cases. An extremely rare exception doesn't negate the rule.

<comment><USER19> AFAIK nobody's done a study to determine what percentage of the population has chromosomes that don't match with their expressed sexual characteristics (either primary or secondary).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This legal battle was really about giving a platform to bigots who want to conflate gender with sex to invalidate transgendered people. Just look in the comments for proof.</comment>


Facebook Friendship Pages: A New Level of Stalking? - <AUTHOR>

Facebook is constantly rolling out these new updates, but almost every single one has been met with outcry from the users for the privacy concerns they raise. Yet, eventually, people seem to accept and use these features -- is this simply resistance to change or is FB able to shift our social paradigm?<p>http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=443390892130 <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=443390892130>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - forgot about the text field restrictions</comment></comment>


The Sobering Reality of Entrepreneurship in the U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/entrepreneurship-06252010/ <comment><USER3> Self employment in Mexico City is a bit different than the startups you find in San Francisco.

No, it's not a bit different. It's completely different. It's another universe.

The vast majority of self employment in DF is a fruit stand or selling cigarettes at traffic lights (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I spent some time with an Italian entrepreneur a few weeks ago and he told me "we have three VCs in our country. and two are out of money."

The Sobering Reality of Entrepreneurship in the US is that we have it better than everybody else in the world, and even more so if you are an entrepreneur in SF, NY, Boston, Austin, etc.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the US economy is better than most places where entrepreneurship is a necessity. But it's also a world of paperwork, high tax and stifling administrative work -- and that's _if_ you happen to be making a profit.

The problem is that the US is hostile to small businesses. Are you a single member LLC? Then _you_ are personally liable for claims against your business. Want health insurance? Get ready to pay through the nose. How about at tax time? You'll have self-employment tax, and most likely special state taxes on businesses (NY has this) to look forward to. The list goes on.

If you have a successful software business and don't need to be in the US it's actually better to leave and run it elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> Do you think it's better anywhere else in the world. Up until a year ago, the country I am in made it inconceivable to be an entrepreneur. And they invented the f __king word! You think paying taxes at tax time is bad. How about paying taxes before you are allowed to start your company.

If people could do a startup elsewhere you don't think they would already. Taxes, liability, and health care are the least of the problems for a startup.

You might as well be saying people should emigrate to country other than the US. There are far easier entry ports, yet the US still manages to be #1 no matter how many hoops they make you jump through.

While this infograph is inconclusive it gives an accurate picture overall [http://grasshopper.com/img/blog/entrepreneurism-us- europe.PN...](http://grasshopper.com/img/blog/entrepreneurism-us-europe.PNG)

<comment><USER6> Yes, many countries are better than the US for entrepreneurship. I'm sorry that France is not one of them, but that doesn't really speak for the rest of the world -- your countrymen invented the word 'entrepreneur,' but they also invented 'bureaucracy' and 'laissez-faire'.

In Austria, if you become unemployed, and want to use that as an opportunity to start a company, the govt will extend your unemployment benefits by 6-18 mos, and give you a big break on your social taxes for years.

Also, you get unemployment insurance as a self-employed person, as of a few years ago.

And, naturally, everyone - no matter what they do or how much they earn - <USER2> covered by social health insurance, which is excellent. (Also pensions!)

Also, yes, you have to come up with 20-30K euros to start a true LLC -- but you can do business for "free" as a selbständig, or self-employed person, including employing another. However, if you do set up an LLC, you can never be liable for more than that 20-30K euros - it is not a fee, it is an escrow. If you were to close the business, without outstanding liabilities, you would get your money back.

Taxes, liability and healthcare may SEEM like the least of worries for a startup -- right up to the point where they suddenly become life-or-death, mission-critical. Naturally.

<comment><USER5> You've only addressed the bureaucratic part of startup. Many countries are only now seeing the benefits of encouraging entrepreneurship instead of taxing them out of existence. But just because the government writes a decree doesn't mean everyone stops what they are doing to change course.

There is a reason its called a startup culture. It takes a societal shift to get one running not just a few tax incentives.

Also unemployment doesn't change it. There are certain people that have what it takes to run a successful startup. These people are in demand and are never unemployed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One large reason is the lack of universal health care in the United States. Should you or your family be hit with a major illness while you're busy being entrepreneurial, you are sunk. One of the best things the United States could do to promote entrepreneurship would be to implement proper universal healthcare. Sadly, it's unlikely to happen in the near future.

<comment><USER8> Easy access to insurance that isn't provided by an employer is important for entrepreneurship, but if by "proper universal healthcare" you mean single- payer insurance, I disagree. The individual insurance market sucks in America because of preexisting conditions and the higher taxes on individual insurance than on employer-provided insurance. The former is getting fixed. I'm not sure if the latter actually made it into the final bill, but I don't think it did, and that's a shame.

Beyond that, the only advantage single-payer systems have is the lower prices that result from wielding monopsony power. I don't think it's possible to maintain the quality and pace of improvement of health care when people are funding it less than they would be willing to. Health care is expensive because we value it so much that we throw tons of money at it. People try to provide better care in order to get some of that money, and if you take some of the money away, there will be less people advancing the industry, which isn't what people want.

<comment><USER9> Having lived in two countries that have free public health care at a good level, I can say that starting my own business is much more relaxing in that environment. I would not dream of doing the same in the USA at my age or family situation.

<comment><USER8> Of course it's more relaxing. You don't have to worry about researching your insurance options because the choice has already made for you. I don't think "more relaxing" is a very compelling reason to choose a policy on its own, especially when the cost of that relaxation is a slowed pace of advancement in medicine.

If the U.S. government stops incentivizing the connection between employment and insurance, starting a company wouldn't need to have any effect on your health care. No single-payer system required.

<comment><USER10> I'm starting in the UK and I'm more relaxed because I don't have to worry about health care - I'm covered come rain or shine. I'm not relaxed because of avoiding researching options.

Also, you assume a slow in advancement in medicine. This can't be further from the truth. Small example: all of the patients registered in the UK (i.e. residents) are getting digital patient records.

<comment><USER8> I don't assume a slower _localized_ advancement in medicine. There is a global market for medical technology, and it will be sold wherever it is profitable enough to do so. The fact remains: the further the price of health care is forced down by insurers who comprise the bulk of their respective insurance markets (usually governments), the less money will be available to incentivize people to produce medical technology.

Americans will be covered rain or shine once the healthcare reform bill kicks in. If you can afford it, you have to by insurance. If you can't, it will be subsidized so you can afford it. That's the goal, anyway.

Markets require choice to function properly. I think the American approach is less likely to result in unintended consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As defined in this article (% of people self-employed / owning small businesses), I think there are some other factors involved. I only know about Greece first-hand (about half my family lives there), but one reason there is that regulations and incentives generally discourage large corporations from entering a whole lot of markets, though they've been relaxed somewhat recently.

For example, Greece's high self-employment rate includes a _lot_ of one-man grocery store or fruit/vegetable stand operations, because large supermarkets were more or less banned until recently. More generally, there were (again, recently relaxed) regulations on how many hours you could have a retail establishment open per week, and what hours they could be, intended to make it easier for small businesses to compete with the large ones: a one-man store can't reasonably be open more than maybe 60 hours/week, so the law generally banned businesses from being open more than a certain number of hours a week, and required them to close at least one or two days a week (depending on market segment). That made it much easier for small operations to compete with the large ones, because your mom-and-pop store open 6 days a week, 8 hours a day, wasn't up against a 24/7 chain store.

Some though is perhaps just cultural. When a rich Greek builds a vacation villa, for example, he'll typically get a independent architect to design it and oversee its construction, rather than going with a big design/architecture/construction corporation, which is seen as too cookie cutter / less prestigious. I bet just architects alone account for several thousand of the self-employed Greeks, whereas most American architects work for corporations (exceptions only on the _very_ high end of world-famous architects). It even extends to commercial real-estate: the typical 6-story office or apartment building in Thessaloniki or Athens is designed and built by a small independent firm.

</comment><comment><USER12> Entrepreneurship ain't for everyone.

You will: \- work more hours. \- deal with so much more stress. \- flirt with financial ruin at least once. \- struggle to balance work and family.

But some folks are just cut out to do it. It's like a genetic predisposition that can't be denied. And if one can learn to cope with the issues I mentioned (and more) being an entrepreneur is one of the most rewarding life experiences out there.

</comment><comment><USER13> _Turkey, Greece and Mexico had the highest self-employment rates as a percentage of total employment._

I bet Mali or Niger have an even higher rate, given most of the working population are subsistence farmers. Further, many countries don't have the laws that, say, the US and UK do to prevent abusing "self employed" workers by treating them as employees without benefits.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Self-employment" doesn't mean what we think of entrepreneurship.

PG has the great metaphor two saplings, one of them is a redwood sapling, it's expecting to grow. On that measure we don't create self-employment with entrepreneurship we create jobs.

HNers want to create a lot of employed people when they are succeeding.

</comment><comment><USER15> And now, a word about entrepreneurship in Greece:

[http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive...](http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/04/28/greece- is-one-giant-ponzi-scheme.aspx)

(and, less humorously: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230425270457515...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304252704575156023250923324.html))

<comment><USER16> The first link doesn't look humorous at all. The article is pretty serious.

<comment><USER17> I don't know, the comment at the end of the article is pretty funny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I read this book and while the statistics were interesting the author's complete disregard for correlation!=causation was extremely disappointing. It was mostly conjecture and hand waving. Also if you're a minority woman, don't read this book. It will seriously bum you out.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think America is saturated and suitable for people who will live on <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_income>

</comment><comment><USER20> entrepreneurship is stressful? Other countries, especially developing ones, have more small businesses?

This might be one of the least insightful articles ever on mint life.</comment>


Breaker 101 – Online Web Security Course - <AUTHOR> https://breaker101.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Breaker 101 launched about 3 years ago on HN. At that point, it was extremely time-intensive (for students and myself) and cost about $1000. The price only went up over time, which meant that fewer and fewer people could afford this information.

Today I'm happy to announce the new Breaker 101. Same great material, but for a fraction of the price -- only $149. I truly believe that every programmer would benefit from this course, and now it's accessible to many, many more people than ever before.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks great - what is the time commitment to go through the entire course?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's 99% self-driven and constantly expanding, so it's tough to pinpoint an exact number. But for the content as it is right now, it's 20-40 hours of work. Some people take more or less time (depending on prior experience, distractions, etc), but that's the ballpark. The only thing that's strictly timed are the two "mid term" exams, which are 4 hours each.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice. Are you using an LMS, or did you roll your own?

<comment><AUTHOR> Everything is running on my own platform (aside from videos hosted on Youtube). As the class has evolved, the platform has grown quite considerably, but it's really held up well. I've considered moving it to something off-the- shelf, but I like the flexibility that I have with my codebase; anything that students want, I can typically implement quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool ad, bro.

<comment><USER5> Come on, that's not nice. daeken's been a fine HN user for years, and hasn't posted this project since 2014. That's hardly overdoing it, and HN is supposed to be a place where people can share their work.

<comment><USER6> Is it really appropriate as a "Show HN" though, or should it really have been a more general submission?

Feels like a link to a 'paid only' project goes against the spirit.

<comment><USER5> Fair point, and my mistake. I added "Show HN" earlier since daeken is the creator of the project, but I forgot to check that there was a way to try it out. We'll take that bit out again.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An American Black Site - <AUTHOR> https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2019/06/04/force-feeding-american-prison-supermax-mohammad-salameh/ <comment><USER2> > family members and attorneys in touch with SAMs prisoners can be prosecuted > and incarcerated for repeating anything the inmate told them

This is interesting and I'd be very curious to know what the courts have made of this kind of prior restraint. I'm not skeptical that threats of this nature have been made, but I am skeptical that such a prosecution could actually be brought- under what statute? Lawyers may be gagged somewhat, as an officer of the court, but a family member seems like a real stretch.

Edit to add: here's a simple explainer on SAMs and what they do: [https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/10/SA...](https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/10/SAMs%20Report.summary_0.pdf)

> Prisoners under SAMs are prohibited from communicating with anyone except a > few pre-approved individuals – their attorneys and immediate family members > – and SAMs prohibit those individuals from repeating the prisoner's words to > anyone else.

I am still awfully curious as to what possible statutory authority the DoJ could have to regulate the speech of people who aren't actually incarcerated.

<comment><USER3> I imagine that it isn't actually prior restraint in the classic sense, but instead in the form of an agreement that the lawyers and family members have to sign before talking to the prisoners in question.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I suspect that they're non-disclosure agreements. So violating them puts one in contempt of court. And punishments for contempt are whatever judges say they are.

<comment><USER2> See, that would make a least some sense. But apparently "The U.S. Attorney General has sole discretion to impose SAMs". With court imposed gag orders there's a court order from a judge. These things seem to be administrative decisions about detention conditions (the same way prisons can regulate the books prisoners can have, etc). But if so, they wouldn't ordinarily regulate the speech of people not actually in jail. I think the worst they'd be able to do is ban that person from visiting again, not actually prosecute them. How can you be in contempt of court if SAMs are at the sole discretion of the AG?

<comment><USER4> I guess that the US AG has that power. Or maybe some tame judges. I suppose that it could go to the Supreme Court.

However, many cases have been quashed, based on national security grounds. For criminal cases, charges against suspects have been dropped. But about SAMs, that would likely leave the status unchanged. IANAL, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is mortifying and humiliating. It makes me ashamed to be associated(by being a citizen and armed services veteran) with the country. I suppose I could speak out and try to change things...but I fear that doing so would ensure a similar fate for myself; rotting away in a secret prison, while my family is threatened with prosecution if they talk about it.

It's all happy times here in the USA, anyone that will tell you otherwise has already been imprisoned and/or re-educated.

<comment><USER6> Who in a US prison is there for speaking out and trying to change things? Name one.

<comment><USER7> Manning is currently in prison for refusing the illegal attempt to abuse a grand jury to make her testify when the grand jury has already made a charge and should have no further role.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why are western nations retreating from any semblance of the moral high ground?

<comment><USER8> It's just exposure and acceptance (or lack thereof).

Fifty years ago we (the US) were carpet bombing neutral countries as part of a bloody war to prop up a brutal dictatorship.

Around the same time, we were shooting protestors and systematically shutting minorities out of civic involvement.

A couple of decades before that, we put a hundred thousand innocent civilians in concentration camps because of their ancestry.

Less than a century before that, "the land of the free" had laws allowing people to buy and sell other people. And slavery was never really ended: the 13th Amendment has a big fat exception for prisoners, which we've taken advantage of ever since.

What's different now is that we find out what's happening more quickly and in a way that makes more people take notice.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about "western nations" generally, but "American exceptionalism" is well known.

And about TFA, millions of prisoners, mostly male and mostly black, suffer in arguably worse conditions. Especially, I gather from a recently posted article, prisoners in county jails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Setting aside this specific situation. Let's say you run a prison, and an inmate goes on a "hunger strike" for a reason that's important to them. What should the prison operators do? Force feed the inmate, negotiate, give into their demands, or let them die? Let's say you try to negotiate, but the inmate is making unreasonable demands or you are not willing to meet their demands, then what?

<comment><USER10> To everyone saying to let them die, then where is the punishment? Most terrorists would rather and, in fact, intend to die during their attacks. If you let them die, not only are you giving them what they want, but then there is no deterrent to carrying out suicide missions.

<comment><USER11> I don't see any reason to believe that the fear of prison should they fail to die has ever, or will ever, deter even a single person from carrying out a suicide mission.

<comment><USER6> The lack of deterrent effect doesn't mean that society's desire for punishment vanishes. If there was a treatment that could make Osama Bin Laden a perfectly normal accountant in Des Moines I would not advocate for it compared to a trial and execution.

<comment><USER7> C/f this vindictive attitude with how the Norwegians have treated Brivik. He has been gently and humanly turned into a joke when he could have been a martyr...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Crazy how there are people out there that can live with performing these acts, or "reviewing" them even. How many thousands before they are completely desensitized?

<comment><USER13> The "Banality of Evil" is a useful idea when trying to understand how the Nazis did what they did. It's wrong to think that it was anyone other than 'normal' human beings who have committed atrocities through the ages.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem)

I've never been able to bring myself to read the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> can someone speak to the level of credibility of this site/organization? I have never heard of them before.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why isn't there more of a highlight on Salameh's actual charges. This is grossly glossed over especially when understanding what you have to do to land oneself in a blacksite to begin with.

<comment><USER16> yeah, tell that to the black teenagers dragged to Homan Square in Chicago

<comment><USER15> which would be exactly why I would want to know the charge's

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The author really glossed over the reasons for the communications ban imposed on the terrorist prisoner - multiple people he spoke with ended up committing terrorist acts. Seems like a good enough reason to completely cut him off. In addition, the author really stretches when she complains that they brought in a gallon of liquid to feed him. If you've tried to feed a prisoner multiple times and you know they're going to deliberately vomit it up, of course you'll bring extra. There's enough going on here where the author doesn't need to add in things that actually seem logical, because now I'm questioning everything she wrote and how much of it was exaggerated.

<comment><USER2> Force feeding is arguably a form of torture.

[https://www.apnews.com/e0941d7d1b0d413b9d9a0b792c34dd26](https://www.apnews.com/e0941d7d1b0d413b9d9a0b792c34dd26)

<comment><USER18> Arguably. But if you let the prisoner die while in your custody, a lot more people are going to be screaming about how evil you are to allow that, and how it's your fault that they died because you didn't protect them, and it's even _more_ your fault because you probably wanted them dead and at least encouraged it to happen, and and and...

<comment><USER8> Maybe we should house these prisoners under conditions where they don't become suicidal, then.

<comment><USER19> While I agree with humane treatment of prisoners, that's a very slippery argument. Every prison is technically inhumane enough to send some people to attempt suicide.

<comment><USER20> Makes you think, doesn't it?

<comment><USER18> Well, what's your alternative? The death penalty? Release them?

<comment><USER8> Make your prisons humane, don't force-feed anyone, and accept the condemnation that occurs when one of your prisoners decides to starve himself to death anyway.

<comment><USER18> That's fair. But you aren't the one I was asking. I get the impression that that wasn't danharaj's alternative.

<comment><USER8> I don't see how "Makes you think, doesn't it?" would imply anything more than the comment it was in response to.

<comment><USER18> I read it as implying that all prisons are inherently inhumane, and therefore that nobody should be in them. But that's one of the problem with drive-by questions like that - you can't tell for sure what their actual point is.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Lulz Timeline (Chrome or Firefox required) - <AUTHOR> http://www.lulztimeline.com/ The storyline of the epic battles fought on the internets... Feel free to contribute :) <comment><USER2> That was not a very good way to view a timeline. An ordered list would have worked wonderfully and could have supported more browsers.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice if you could zoom out somehow?

</comment><comment><USER4> i don't like when ppl insult my browser telling me its not modern. (latest Opera) Not supported would be more polite.

</comment><comment><USER5> Needs to be up to date if it's going to be at all useful.</comment>


Ask HN: Review My Site - Studylance.com - <AUTHOR>

www.studylance.com
It would be good to hear back any feedback on my site, studylance.com. Students can ask questions and tutors respond with answers, the students see a preview until they pay the tutor.
Any comments are appreciated. Im sure someone will ask if its cheating, its not, Im more interested in usability and general feedback rather than comments on the overall concept.
Many thanks! <comment><USER2> I really like the well designed site. Well laid out and easy to use.

However, your paid model feels a lot like ExpertSexchange.com, a much loathed site, and it seems you are dealing in very small dollar amounts which means that managing the cost/payment process creates increased overhead and adds complexity to the system where it may not be needed, and the dollar amounts may not be high enough to be worth the extra headaches. (if an answer was worth $10-20 I'd be singing a different tune).

There may be other revenue opportunities outside of advertising (though you're in the right market for lots of advertisers).

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand the comparison with expertsexchange but I think Studylance is different. Expertexchange is all about spamming the search engines with common problems, Studylance is more like Elance or Rentacoder, in that individuals get a real response, rather than having to pay for the answer to a previously asked question,

The amounts are in £pounds for the moment, I'm going to add the option to view in USDollars soon.

The values are low for the moment you're right!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neat concept.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Is your work better than kittens? - <AUTHOR> http://betterthankittens.com

<comment><USER2> while it's a wonderful idea and I love it, it has one problem. No matter your work, you can't beat kittens.

And also the work images sometime don't load.

<comment> bulte-rs Unless your work incorporates multiple kittens. Moar kittens > One little cat

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Right frame isn't loading properly when it progresses to the next one for me (on Chrome), so I get a kitten or a black screen. Pretty easy choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> It sometimes takes a while for the photo on the right to load, but eventually they do (at least for me, i'm on Opera)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One problem. The kittens are loading much faster than the other images. This might be skewing the results.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm confused on how to vote. Intuitively I think I click on whichever I think is better. But when I hover over the the non-kitten, it gives me a weird message like "Get Real", "Are You Blind?", "Not Now, Not Ever", and "Not Likely". Which kind of leads me to think that I'm voting for the kitten even when clicking on the non-kitten?

<comment><USER6> I've clicked a few, and I still don't get which way I'm voting. Dumb user or bad UI?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Caution, NSFW content.

<comment><USER8> Which also happened to be the only work that is better than kittens, go figure...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good idea, but ideally it should use machine learning to try to show as interesting stuff as possible to each user, based on results of earlier answers. I.e., if I choose the non-kitten, show me something (statistically) related to that.

(Not sure what goes on behind the scenes, but it did feel very random and not very adaptive to my previous decisions)

</comment><comment><USER10> Love the concept. But the descriptions like "Oh, come on!" or "Are you sure?" are confusing. And actually pushing people too much towards joking.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe this could be transitioned to some sort of live split testing platform or something...otherwise, I don't see much value to it other than show-and- tell.

</comment><comment><USER12> Highly allergic to cats, of all ages and sizes. Regardless of my work, it will always be better than kittens.

</comment><comment><USER13> Huh. Definitely wasn't expecting porn to show up when clicking this link...

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't expecting it to show when I posted it either. It was mostly people's work. I've seen it posted on quite a few places, so I'm guessing the surge of posts and lack of (or insufficient) moderation did their thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Someone uploaded a puppy as the constrast vs kitten.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't click clickbait.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to offer equity to someone joining early stage startup? - <AUTHOR>

Background: I have a startup I've invested a lot of time (and also money) into already, just about to go to beta and I have someone else who wants to join the team. They would be a valuable asset no doubt and bring skills I don't have.
I approached them originally about doing some work for me and me paying them for their time. After talking about the project they want to be involved long term, and they have offered to partner in exchange for a share of the company.
My concern is obviously how to make sure this is a priority project for them and that they only get the equity once they have 'earned' it so to speak.
I'm also concerned about just signing over X% out the gates and have been imagining some sort of agreement whereby they have a fixed amount available (let's say 5%) which they 'earn' over 5 years. e.g. 1% a year.
If we come to raise VC in the future (I guess crucially, in the first 5 years before they earned their full allocation) would this be an issue? I'd assume that the VC offer would want a certain % of the company, and then the remainder would be split between us two founders in the same ratio. e.g. 95/5
What's the best way to offer them equity then?
Is there any common setup for this kind of thing?
Any and all advice much appreciated.
Thanks HN :) <comment><USER2> Yes, almost all employee (and founder!) shares are vested over a period of time. Typically, shares are vested over 4 years, with a one year "cliff." This means if the employee (or founder) leaves before the one year has elapsed, they don't get any of their shares. Then, after this set "cliff" period has ended, they get some fraction of their total shares each month.

But based on your question, I'm guessing you haven't yet set up your own founder share structure yet? If so, that's probably the best thing to do first. Sites like Clerky.com can help a lot like this, and you can figure out how all the bits and pieces work together with a good amount of googling and persistence. Of course, if you have some money, talking to an attorney about this can really speed up the process and help make sure you don't make any obvious mistakes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks phillipn :)</comment></comment>


Predators pick body parts for balanced diet - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37376994/ns/technology_and_science-science/

<comment><USER2> So much for the idea that only humans waste.</comment>


Appcubator Helps Beginning Developers Easily Create Their Own Web Applications - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/12/appcubator/

<comment><USER2> I can't help but think this will only result in disasters. "Business people have a hard time grasping the fundamental concepts behind web applications, and they often lack the patience required"

Exactly. That's why those business people hire developers to build their web applications. If we're going to let them create their webapps using drag & drop, what do we expect for an outcome?

<comment><USER3> Hey, we all started somewhere...

We do not expect miracles, but we help beginners of web development get started quickly with web apps, and we're going to see what they can achieve given time.

<comment><USER4> I'm very interested in working with this, despite being a full time web developer. I have a couple ideas I'd like to execute, but neither the time nor attention span to build them out in the evenings. This gives me a good base app to build from, and if I need to get fancy, I break into the django code and do so.

I'm really looking forward to getting started!

<comment><USER3> Looking forward to seeing your ideas! Email us at email@example.com and we'll pitch in where we can.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to learn Linux? - <AUTHOR>

I have a macbook pro 2013 15inch OS X 10.8.5. I love this machine. A few years ago I switched from Windows to Mac and I never looked back this machine is awesome and powerful I love it and use it every second of the day but lately I've been having a craving for Linux plus I'm always in the mood for expanding my knowledge for technology and always want to learn new stuff.
To be quite honest I've always heard about linux but never actually tried it the idea of it confuses me in a way. I would like to play with it and learn all about it plus I hear it's important for any programmer to understand how linux works. A lot of jobs are also in Linux!.
I want to learn Linux in and out from how to set it up to all the Linux distribution (distros) like Mint, Ubuntu and Debian, what they're, which is best and how to use them. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I really got into Linux by setting up servers on CentOS back in 2007. Linux, the resources and the community are great and the fact that those servers still run fine today is a testimony to that.

If you have some time and you would just like to read some good basics start with [http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/prologue/for...](http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/prologue/foreword.html) and go as far as you can.

If you would like to get down and set up a server grab a Debian install kit.

The other option would be to get a RaspberryPI and start with that. Tons of resources and much closer to the hardware as a server install. Good if you re into electronics too.

I am a Mac user myself and you will find that the BSD underneath is mostly what Linux works like. They do say that MacOS is the best BSD available :-) So learning Linux will definitely help you to get much more from your Mac as well.

Have fun!

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's something I did that I highly recommend: build your own Linux distribution via the Linux from Scratch (LFS) project (Google it).

I took an old laptop and installed Slackware with an LFS partition. Then I downloaded all the packages and followed the directions from the LFS book.

It took a while, but by the time I had finished I had learned three key things: (1) a lot about how Linux works, (2) how to find information (about Linux and for solving problems with Linux), and (3) a lot about BASH.

Seriously, although it sounds daunting, it is doable and you will learn more than you ever imagined.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think there are huge difference between Mac OS and Linux, they all derived from Unix.

I suggest using VM to learn Linux, for example install Linux VM in VirtualBox and have a try.

</comment><comment><USER5> Many Linux distros come on a live CD allowing you to try them out without changing anything on your hard drive.

Or you could try a virtual machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> This sounds interesting, I would appreciate for some tips on how to go about the Live CD or choosing the right Distro something other than Ubuntu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> i started with making custom iso's of slax linux and then moved on to slitaz linux, haven't used any other linux since, ended up learning bash awk, setting up webservers/cgi, compiling pretty much anything out there on the internet, making it a router/firewall etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Use it to accomplish a task. Repeat.</comment>


How to get gmail.com banned (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-get-gmailcom-banned-not-that-i.html <comment><USER2> Wow. Do my daily HN scan for the day and find an article you wrote ~4 years at #1.

I hadn't read that in many years, and what fun to do a re-read.

Thanks Internet - don't stop being you.

<comment><USER3> I was sad to see that the link to the domain generator was broken. The new one on the home page is a div that's generated server-side.

I hope you don't mind that I wrote a quick one-liner to see if you're still detecting bots...

        @bobmail.info
        @zippymail.info
        @thisisnotmyrealemail.com
        @spamhereplease.com
        @safetymail.info
        @suremail.info
        @mailinator2.com
        @spamherelots.com
        @mailinator2.com
        @spamhereplease.com
        @spamherelots.com
        @spamherelots.com
        @mailinator.net
        @mailinator.net
        @mailinator2.com
        @mailinator.net
        @mailinator.net
        @mailinator2.com
        @mailinator.net
        ...

Yup :)

I didn't see any "evil" insertions, though...

<comment><USER4> I tried something similar and got a similar pattern. After a few changes, I just started seeing mailinator and mailinator2 over and over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few years back we came into work one morning to find that some bot was scanning our site so hard that it seemed the lights nearly dimmed. Some detective work suggests that it was a service performed on behalf of a competitor, to get our price list (bear in mind that our catalog has a few hundred thousand products).

We were really annoyed that rather than just ask us, they had launched what amounted to a DDOS attack. So we thought about how we might exact vengeance...

After a few hours we figured out a pattern to the rogue requests that allowed us to filter them, despite their efforts at stealth (like, they cycle through a list of various user agent strings to make it look like there are multiple different users). We toyed with the idea of, rather than outright banning them, making our pages sensitive to their presence, so that when we detected them, we'd display a false price, defeating their whole operation.

We finally just decided to take the high road, temporarily banning any rogue IP addresses we detected (we couldn't make it permanent because many of the requests came from the Amazon cloud, from which we also receive some legitimate requests)

EDIT: you wouldn't think that requests for a few hundred thousand products would amount to a DDOS, but the bot was rather poorly written and grossly inefficient in the way it walked through the list.

<comment><USER6> I built a system called caltrops that did almost exactly that. As a given session's requests grew more and more suspicious, their data would skew from reality further and further. A real user on the line would notice immediately (and the more real-looking the user interactions, the more it would reduce suspicion), but competitors scraping our data would get pretty deliciously bunk data.

<comment><USER7> to deal with similar problems, kickstarter built a pretty useful tool called rack-attack [https://github.com/kickstarter/rack- attack](https://github.com/kickstarter/rack-attack)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Thousands of people use Mailinator everyday, so clearly, its a useful tool that many sites accept"

How many of you would have an outright revolt on your hands from your QA/QE folks if you banned mailinator? I think everyplace I worked would experience this same issue if we did this.

<comment><USER9> Could use + in the first part of email such as: firstname.lastname@example.com to create throwaways. most sites consider those to be different email address then firstname.lastname@example.com for account purposes but email service, who respect the rfc, will threat them as the same.

<comment><USER10> Many sites won't accept email addresses with + in them, because many devs have extremely wrongheaded ideas about validation.

I used to have a firstname.lastname@example.com address and that one was touch- and-go as well due to the fact that the mailbox had two .'s in it. I actually had to file a support request to get Amazon Student to accept it, even. Nobody from a university with that scheme ever registered before?

For the record, the gold standard for email validation is "send a confirmation link and see if they click it". Don't try and get fancy.

One other trick is that Gmail ignores .'s in addresses entirely. email@example.com is the same as firstlast or f.irstlast.

<comment><USER11> My favorite is e-mails with three dots in them. Which is actually not a valid address - the RFC specifies that you must have a valid textual character between dots[1]. However, because of poor decisions by Japanese telcoms, a substantial chunk of their users have 'e-mails' associated with their mobile phones with three dots, breaking goddamn every sensible validation script.

[1] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#section-3.2.4](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#section-3.2.4)

<comment><USER12> There's only one sensible validation script: "Send an email with a confirm link".

<comment><USER11> Sadly, if you're sending e-mail sanely, your mail provider likely validates recipients, and will be annoyed at you if you send them recipients they think are bogus.

<comment><USER13> The relevant rfc (on mobile; don't remember which) specifically states that intermediate servers must not validate mailboxes (local parts). And honestly the domain should be "validated" by the server doing an mx lookup; let dns handle it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One way to get around a domain blacklist is to point your own domain to Mailinator. Heck, since last year you can even get your own private Mailinator...

[http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2014/10/mailinator- launches-p...](http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2014/10/mailinator-launches- private-domains_25.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of the sites that discouraged hotlinking by examining Referer and then sending Goatse.

<comment><USER16> [http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1011](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1011)

<comment><USER15> I'm glad I was brave enough to click. b^)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That was a fun read.

It took me a bit to get my head around the use cases. It's sometimes amazing how many different ways you can twist a simple (complex really) thing like email into a product/idea.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is great, but it seems like he got rid of the separate page now (the link in the article 404s) and the text is just inline again.

</comment><comment><USER19> I love mailinator!

However tricking site scrappers may not work perfectly if the site scrappers maintained a list of websites in their "whitelist". Say if I am scrapping mailinator.com for domain names, if I see gmail.com or yahoo.com, I might just not put them in my database because they are in my whitelist.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've used Mailinator for years and it's always interesting to read what this dude has to say.

</comment><comment><USER21> Mailinator seems to have added some other anti-scraping detection.

Unfortunately it does not work very well as I was not scraping mailinator, but still somehow got IP banned. Fortunately my ip has changed. But they definitely have some strange and overzealous method now.

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's a list of disposable email domains if you'd really like to block them: [https://github.com/lavab/disposable](https://github.com/lavab/disposable)

I would go one step further and look for {spam_words} in "username+{text}@{googledomain}.com", where spam_words can be "junk", "spam", etc. This is like a _very_ narrow edge case, but still might catch something. Again, if you're into that kind of thing; I'm quite skeptical that it brings any value.

<comment><USER23> until you have a the german guy, Joseph Unker, with junker89@gmail and your validation prevents them signing up :)

<comment><USER22> That's not at all what I meant. Gmail redirects emails to "email@example.com" to "email@example.com". Some people filter emails this way, henceforth my suggestion to check for this edge case.

[http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get- mo...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.de/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from- your.html)

PS: The downvoters are downright silly on this website lately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great story! Before deciding to use blacklists or lockouts (on anything), know that it can and will be used against you.

</comment><comment><USER25> So much fun to read. Great post, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER13> Most of the comments here about '+' parts are rendered completely irrelevant by single-user domains. Not to mention "one email ~= one person" schemes.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why not encode the domain strings into an image?

OCR requires a lot more programming effort compared to a text-based content scraper

<comment><USER27> FTA: "Could I make it harder to scrape? Well, I could, but wouldn't really slow anyone down much."

I think that's the basic idea. He could spend his time making it harder to scrape, like the bar across the steering wheel. Some people would be deterred, others wouldn't, and time would be wasted all around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not sure his method would prevent a headless scraper like CasperJS or PhantomJS from doing the dirty work, but nice technique nonetheless.

<comment><USER29> At least at the time of writing, if you had enough foresight and engineering time to set something like that up, you had enough foresight and engineering time to not make your system treat email addresses as meaningful identities.

<comment><USER30> Perhaps I'm missing something, but an extremely high percentage of the sites I have accounts on use my email address for authentication. Those that don't often suffer from username squatting. Maybe most sites are just doing it wrong, but what's the prevailing alternative?

<comment><USER29> Your email address isn't your _identity_. It's a name associated with your identity, but the identity itself is your account. Or put another way, not all valid email addresses are valid identities for these websites.

If the website is doing things right, they have other means (like a CAPTCHA at the least, or phone verification, or you buying an item from them) before deciding that an email address really is an identity.

<comment><USER30> I guess I still fail to see the distinction. CAPTCHAs really only keep out bots . . . they do nothing for keeping out Mailinator abuse. Throwaway phone numbers are easily obtainable. They might not be as cheap as Mailinator, but the point is Mailinator made it faster and cheaper for people. Buying an item doesn't really work out when the expectation is you offer a free trial and that's where the bulk of abuse occurs.

I realize this was a non-comprehensive list and I'm not trying to just attack it. I think I agree with the core assessment around what constitutes an identity. But short of some really draconian methods, I think you're basically trading off one insufficient method for another. And at that point, you may as well focus on making things easy for people, which typically means just working with email verification.

FWIW, when faced with Mailinator abuse I resorted to requiring a credit card number to sign up for a trial of my SaaS product. The abuse stopped immediately. But there were other impacts to the business as a result. I still debate the wisdom of it and how much of this should have been foresight. As a bootstrapped company, dealing with abuse was just a resource drain and forced me to focus my efforts on dealing with a segment of the population that was never going to give me money. Suffice to say, it was all very disheartening.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


T-Mobile "Officially" Confirms Google Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.tmonews.com/2009/12/t-mobile-officially-confirms-google-phone/

<comment><USER2> Not really official. Even the posted article has "official" in scare quotes.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are already other post(s) about the Google Phone "leaks".

</comment><comment><USER4> WTF is tmonews.com? "Official" means t-mobile.co.uk/shop.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have been reading tmonews for a while, you should probably take this with a grain of salt.</comment>


Using SVG as image placeholders - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jmperezperez/using-svg-as-placeholders-more-image-loading-techniques-bed1b810ab2c <comment><AUTHOR> These placeholders are tiny (<1 kB for images with 10 triangles) and quite beautiful in their own right. I found this post inspiring.</comment>


Royal Constellations - <AUTHOR> http://www.datasketch.es/october/code/nadieh/ <comment><USER2> What means the x axis?</comment>


Software Allows Hackers to Activate MacBook Webcams Without Green Warning Light - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/18/software-allows-hackers-to-activate-macbook-webcams-without-green-warning-light/ <comment><USER2> Article is from 2013. Issue doesn't affect Macs made after 2008.</comment>


Haskell in JavaScript  - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/johang88/haskellinjavascript

<comment><USER2> Awesome. It'd be cool to see <http://tryhaskell.org/> use this.

Also, when using the REPL, it stops after about 2 seconds trying to print "[0..]", which is a _very_ nice feature.

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent.

Is it just me, or does JS seem like its fast becoming the new object code?

<comment><USER4> It's about time. Because of browsers, jdk 6+ (which comes with rhino, the javascript runtime) and v8 (specially on nodejs), javascript is one of the most widely deployed languages/platforms. It is on desktops, mobile phones and servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're interested in this, you might also want to look at the JS backends for GHC and Yhc:

<http://vir.mskhug.ru/>

<http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Yhc/Javascript>

<comment><USER6> <http://github.com/sviperll/ghcjs>

It's another attempt by "vir" to create haskell-to-javascript compiler. Now it uses "GHC as a library" (ghc package) and should be more amenable to hacking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Once everything runs in JS, the browser will become the defacto write-once, run-anywhere platform...

<comment><USER8> I believe that Google agrees with you: <http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For something along the same lines, I'd like to shamelessly plug <http://www.wescheme.org/>

The heart of WeScheme is moby-scheme a self-hosting compiler <http://github.com/dyoo/moby-scheme> . The server runs on AppEngine.

</comment><comment><USER10> REPL live in your browser here:

<http://hiji.tinyrocket.se/>

<comment><USER11> Too bad that even simple commands like "sum [1..10]" don't show output. :-(

Just "[1..10]" or a simple calculation like "1 + 1" work fine.

<comment><USER12> It looks 'sum' is not defined at all. Looks just ignoring undefined symbol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very nice! I've been loving Haskell, but I spend most of my time in Javascript. This is a pleasant mix of both.</comment>


GitHub is down - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/?sad-octocat <comment><AUTHOR> I haven't seen the sad octocat falling off a cliff before. Wonder if it's just a new error page or a different type of outage than they typically have.</comment>


Ubuntu 18.04 with Unity8 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7KnfxXWHtY <comment><USER2> Ubuntu has always confused me. It seemed like such an obvious gag from the very beginning, a theme job on Debian unstable without much engineering teeth. But people went crazy for it. The resources would have been better spent working directly with and on Debian, and offering support/consulting/employment to do so and it made Mark's intentions seem seriously dubious to me (although aside from the ad spying thing he hasn't really done anything egregious as I feared initially). It's water under the bridge now and the two have learned to coexist, but I think the future of Debian is unquestionable while Ubuntu has a SPOF in Canonical. I heard a rumor that Shuttleworth is trying to sell Canonical right now. He approached Red Hat and they weren't interested. I can't substantiate that, just hearsay.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's a secret that Shuttleworth is looking for outside investment, or at least to put the company on a more stable financial footing. That's why Unity was dropped.

As to you other point, their goal was to make a Linux distro that was easy to install, setup and use for the ordinary person (or ordinary geek at least). They might have lost their way a bit in recent years but they were initially remarkably successful. Sure others had tried to do the same before them but for its time Ubuntu was by far the best of them.

That's more arguable nowadays but that doesn't undermine what they achieved.

<comment><USER4> Yup, things were different 10 years ago and Ubuntu really made a lot of things easier. Back then getting 3D acceleration to work was a real nightmare (for a linux newbie like me) at the time. Or WiFi drivers. Or getting your system to play videos, because you didn't have the correct gstreamer-* packages.

10 years later and pretty much every distro works out of the box on pretty much all hardware, but back then Ubuntu was definitely ahead of the pack in these regards.

<comment><USER5> > _10 years later and pretty much every distro works out of the box on pretty > much all hardware_

I do appreciate the strides Linux has made since a decade ago, but I still think that's crazy talk. I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" on, and I've installed it on at least 15 laptops in those ten years.

I mean if "works" is defined to mean something equivalent to what macOS or Windows do. Wi-Fi, webcam, bluetooth, graphics acceleration, highres screen, sound, fingerprint reader, keyboard backlight, hardware volume/brightness controls, multitouch trackpad... at least _some_ of those things are _always_ broken on any mainstream distro I've tried, including Ubuntu.

Doesn't mean Linux isn't awesome, but saying it works out of the box on almost all hardware is a pretty radical downward redefinition of "works".

<comment><USER6> > I've never seen laptop hardware that Linux "works out of the box" on, and > I've installed it on at least 15 laptops in those ten years.

I've recently bought a HP ProBook (a xx75 model) for dual booting of Linux and Windows 7. Imagine my surprise when in Linux everything was working out of the box, whereas in Windows I had to actually use another laptop first in order to load WiFi drivers. Even USB 3.0 ports didn't work under Windows out of the box.

<comment><USER7> To say nothing about the nightmare it is to find out what is actually broken in Windows. Should you use the Control Panel wireless applet or the vendor supplied GUI app with non-standard UI?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like this post is giving impression that Ubuntu 18.04 will use Unity, but that's not true. Official Ubuntu will be still using Gnome desktop environment. In this video some guy is running Unity 8 on Ubuntu 18.04, to show it's possible.

<comment><USER9> Yep this is mainly part of UBports project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wasn't Canonical going to drop Unity?

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/04/ubunt...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead-desktop-will-switch-back-to-gnome- next-year/)

<comment><USER11> The video description links to this repo: [https://github.com/ubports/unity8-desktop-install- tools](https://github.com/ubports/unity8-desktop-install-tools)

which basically does "apt install unity8-desktop-session". So the default desktop environment is GNOME, and this is just showing off Unity 8 as an alternative.

<comment><USER9> Is not just showing off Unity 8 as an alternative, this is part of a community effort to port Ubuntu to mobile devices.

See ubports.com

<comment><USER10> Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks good!

Given this is unity and not Gnome, does this mean that typing in a file explorer window will select matching files folders in the current directory? (Forward search I think it's called?)

Because currently, Gnome in 17.10 performs recursive search and it's terribly annoying and unhelpful and there doesn't appear to be any way to change it.

<comment><USER13> That would be a feature in Nautilus, Gnome's file explorer. Unity uses/used it as well, so I would expect it to behave in the same way unless patched or reconfigured (if that is at all possible).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really wish that at least unity 7 is an official/semi-official flavour for 18.04. I'm perfectly happy with my workflow on 16.04, and have no desire to switch to Gnome, Plasma or anything else. None of the other alternatives come close enough to the simplicity, intuitiveness and stability of unity 7 at the moment. This is of course subjective, but without unity, I see very little reason to use Ubuntu over other distros.

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought Unity was abandoned? Isn't the default Gnome 3 now?

<comment><USER9> Yep this is mainly part of a community project called UBports.</comment></comment>


This Japanese hotel room is $1 a night. The catch? You must livestream your stay - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/livestream-hotel-room-japan-intl-hnk/index.html <comment><USER2> I can go with this deal of course. But those private people would definitely decline this kind of promo as we called it. This is great for Vloggers who review their stays in hotels all over the world. And Japan is a nice country.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Engaging in "lewd acts" with a romantic partner is not allowed during your stay.

Sheesh. What's the point then?</comment>


Foundations of Data Science [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-US/people/kannan/book-no-solutions-aug-21-2014.pdf

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=foundations+data+science#!/story/f...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=foundations+data+science#!/story/forever/0/foundations%20data%20science)

</comment><comment><USER3> yes.</comment>


Regarding Java and Hardware - <AUTHOR> Question for the room:
Question for the room:
I've been working in mostly Operations roles primarily with Java over the past several years and most recently have started to become interested in development.
In the past, I've heard a few people mention that we truly don't have the hardware for Java though I never really understood that statement.  I can also not cite any official source for this or similar statements.  Question is, with the advent of Cloud Infrastructure, does this apply anymore? Do we now have the hardware necessary for the JVM?
Can any veteran Java Technologists explain the statement above? I also saw a recent talk about Spark mentioning the low-level Hardware optimizations (Tungsten) which is attempting to address some of the low-level instruction sets etc.  I would love to hear others thoughts.  Regards <comment><USER2> This probably refers to hardware optimized for running Java:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_processor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_processor)

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


Show HN: Premortems, help projects be more successful - <AUTHOR> https://premortems.com

<comment><USER2> I'm intrigued by 'premortems' because the name sounds interesting. However, I find myself very hesitant to pay with my email for a 'free' signup unless I know what it is. Even with the examples, I have no idea what a 'premortem' is or what form that takes in your app; its value is still a complete unknown to me even after visiting your site and blog.

I don't see any unique value proposition that offers me value. For those who understand what a 'premortem' is they might find it valuable but I cannot even begin to understand it nor do I find it necessary to invest time enough to find out because I don't understand its value. In the words of Clayton Christensen, what job is it accomplishing? When I walk by a restaurant that is new, I have no idea what the food might taste like but at least I know what value food offers. In this case, I don't even understand the value that 'premortems' offer.

So, I would offer the following suggestions:

1\. Give a clear, one line explanation of what can be achieved with a 'premortem' (i.e. what job is getting done; more successful projects doesn't count as a tagline because it gives no explanation of what that means. You set X = 'Premortem' and Y = 'Successful project' but there is no explanation given of the correlation between X and Y.)

2\. Give a clear demonstration of that being achieved with an example 'premortem' (i.e. how the job is done with your site)

3\. Show pictures/screenshots of that being done (There is currently too much reading to be done on the site)

Once again the name is interesting enough to get me to write this explanation. Thus, there is at least minimal value in the name. I'm intrigued but purely by curiosity. The curiosity is simply a vessel waiting to be filled in order to create value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! Thank you. This is really awesome feedback.

I really did drop the ball on that, this is the second person to bring that up. I intended to record a video for the launch explaining it (Premortems in 60 seconds) but couldn't find a mic.

I think my favorite post explaining Premortems is on the iDoneThis blog: [http://blog.idonethis.com/post/43078049631/the-perks-of- cons...](http://blog.idonethis.com/post/43078049631/the-perks-of-considering- your-plan-dead)

Again, thank you so much for your great feedback. I really appreciate the time you spent writing it up.

I only spent 3 days on the app so far, it's a weekend project for me, so I'll be making these changes soon (hopefully this coming weekend)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The story of building this app is interesting. I discovered the premortems technique the weekend before last, and challenged myself to build an entire app in 3 days with a full infrastructure (monitoring, customer service, marketing plan).

</comment><comment><USER3> > _even anonymously to avoid political reprisals!_

May want to trim off newrelic and google-analytics snooping scripts from your site then.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is that the board owner cannot see who raised the individual concerns, not that it isn't stored.

People who wrote concerns can go back and edit, but it is hidden from view.

Also, you cannot flip an Anonymous board to "Show Names" after concerns are raised.</comment></comment>


Relational Program Synthesis - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.02283 <comment><USER2> cf: Recurrent Relational Networks: Complex relational reasoning with neural networks.

[https://rasmusbergpalm.github.io/recurrent-relational- networ...](https://rasmusbergpalm.github.io/recurrent-relational-networks/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a grad student in computer science who reads papers (though more focused on systems) almost every day and I just have to say.... is there an English translation available?

<comment><USER4> [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.02283.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.02283.pdf)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep track of your pricing plans in your SaaS? - <AUTHOR> Specifically, the interaction between a customer's current pricing plan, and the features that you enable for them. I'm trying to validate an idea of a pricing plan service that would run alongside your application that would track pricing plans, which customers are on which plan, and the features each plan enables (including tracking usage levels, e.g. the silver plan allows up to 10 messages per day and customer X has used 2 messages of out 10 today). <comment><USER2> Take a look at resin.io. You don't need to keep track if you build something novel and extremely useful then charge an arm and a leg to make it scale.

<comment><USER3> Did you mean a different service? I don't see the connection to pricing plans. "Resin.io brings the benefits of Linux containers to the IoT. Develop iteratively, deploy safely, and manage at scale."</comment></comment>