Show HN: Tablo – Create and publish books socially - <AUTHOR> http://tablo.io

<comment><USER2> > Don't worry about tax details or bank approvals. The only thing you need is > a PayPal email address!

That is an _incredibly_ bad idea to phrase things that way. In general, unless you're a tax attorney, you should not ever tell somebody not to worry about tax details. In the US, it's almost certainly the case that income from self- publishing is taxable, and there are _lots_ of details that need to be worried about -- enough that a self-publishing site probably can't even get close to worrying about it for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't really like the fact that despite having to pay to use the tools you're not getting all the royalties. Like buying carpenter tools and getting 80% royalties off the table you made.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've had some feedback about this so we're toying with a new pricing model. See [http://tablo.io/plans](http://tablo.io/plans)

More inline with a blogging service. Thoughts?

<comment><USER3> Yeah I think that's pretty okay I guess. I'm guessing it shouldn't look like this: [http://i.imgur.com/QfWgsHs.png](http://i.imgur.com/QfWgsHs.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, just a mockup. We'll make the real one look pretty :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks nice, but there are three things that I absolutely need for any book publishing platform.

* The ability to sell multiple packages, each with different files

* The ability to capture buyer's emails

* The ability to set my own arbitrary pricing

No publishing site on the internet does this, and I am not about to give up these benefits just so I can have some automated convenience.

<comment><USER5> Nathan Barry uses Gumroad, as he suggests in his book 'Authority' for the above reasons. It's not really a 'book' publishing platform though, or at least it's not specific to that.

I'm not entirely convinced it's the best thing for most authors, but that's a longer post for another time.

<comment><USER4> Authority is where I got these requirements ;), and yes, its best suited for technical books IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's some encoding issues here. Can't write æøå, which is important letters in the norwegian language.

And it is seriously slow now, might be where it's been deployed, might be that I'm waiting for googleadservices on each page load. Might be the hug of death from hn.

</comment><comment><USER7> NoScript says your site is attempting an XSS attack.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice job! Question, are you guys using an API so users can share their contributions/writing potentially to other platforms?

</comment><comment><USER9> Crowdfunding should be free, pageviews, editor needs to be like penflip, collaboration like social github, dedicated ircs, all billed by dedicated storage standards. Focus on the real service: publishing to multiple bookstores, ISBNs and collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey! You're the guys I saw in the Avalon lounge Saturday night.

Hope my drunken pool playing didn't annoy you too much. Things seem to be getting off to a good start with Tablo—good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> Can you comment on the pricing structure? Breakdown why exactly it is $99?</comment>


#dev a new 1-month-old newsletter focused on dev news, free courses, and deals - <AUTHOR> https://hashdev.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys/Gals,

I'm publishing a new developers newsletter with general articles, news, and deals.

You'll also receive Google's Software Engineering Guide as a bonus gift after you sign up.

See you there. Firas

<comment><USER2> Who is writing the articles?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's mostly a curation from well-known resources such as Dzone, hackernoon, Martin Fowler (and "similar" authors) blog, companies tech blogs, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Zynga Gunning Up (And Lawyering Up) For War Against Facebook With Zynga Live - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/07/zynga-gunning-up-and-lawyering-up-for-war-against-facebook-with-zynga-live/

<comment><USER2> Aww too bad... it couldn't have happened to two sleazier companies.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but I do feel a little bad for the other 20,000 developers that don't have the resources to do anything about it.

It's now clear that "open platform" hype is pure marketing spin -- bullshit- speak to make you think they actually give a fuck.

<comment><USER4> Me too since I'm one of them (and my company now 12 of them) but FWIW, none of us ever forgot that Facebook is not the web, and that it has a profit- motivated owner. We've all expected this coming, and any who didn't deserve what they get for being naive.

I'm writing a blog post on my thoughts about it, story at 11.

<comment><USER5> Same goes for Apple and the uprising against their banning of non-native development tools. Facebook is not the web, and iPhones are not computers.

<comment><USER6> You may also like... <http://futureoftheinternet.org/> (hit the Download link for a free copy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not that I'm a fan of Zynga, but does anyone else think Facebook is moving too fast, too soon? In the past two weeks they've alienated their developers, their users, and generally inspired a lot of just plain bad press.

<comment><USER8> If there was a decent competitor to Facebook who had a lot of uptake (or even a more "open" networking system), now would be a good time to take advantage of all of Facebook's negative publicity.

Right now I don't see anything good enough to start a transition away from Facebook, even if many people wanted to move elsewhere.

<comment><USER9> Social Networks tend to be regional, bebo for europe, myspace in the US, friendster & hi5 for South East Asia, Orkut for Brazil, etc. If you decouple your game enough from social networks you can make them work on all of them and perhaps add incentives to use the more profitable networks over others. (10 Facebook credits only gets you 5 farmville points, but buying direct on farmville gives you 5 farmville points for the same price as 5 facebook credits, etc)

<comment><USER10> FYI, bebo is dead in Europe, its Facebook all the way. (I think I heard AOL announced they were shutting Bebo down anyway.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You would think that DST, who's invested tons of money in both Zynga and Facebook, would try to keep the peace here. I read they're pretty hands off though.

Zynga helps Facebook by keeping people on the site and giving them a reason to come back. Facebook gives Zynga a huge audience to tap into. If Zynga goes off on its own I don't see it helping either one.

I'd be happy though, less Farmville spam to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER12> From what I've read, Zynga's ad spend represents a huge portion of Facebook's revenue. If that's true, this could pull them right back into the red.

However, it's unclear whether Zynga would continue to advertise on Facebook even if their games no longer run there. I'm pretty sure much of their growth is due to ads on Facebook. It really would be the dissolution of a symbiotic relationship, which I imagine will be tough on both companies. Seems like the perfect candidate for an acquisition, but who would acquire whom? Does Zynga bring in more revenue than Facebook?

<comment><USER13> Interesting, I dont think Zynga brings in more revenue than facebook; however, facebook is trying to gradually acquire 30% of Zynga's revenue through facebook currency. Fb doesn't even need to acquire Zynga.

Zynga has a very weak hand, and facebook can always give priority placement to game companies that decide to play by the new fb rules.

Zynga's games are absolutely replaceable all the game companies have games that are almost perfectly identical.

This "leak" shows how weak Zynga's position actually is.

<comment><USER14> The games themselves may be replaceable, if you're just starting out.

But I don't think that anyone who has invested over a year in gaining achievements and advancement in FarmVille is going to just switch to a new farm game and start all over again.

<comment><USER15> Agreed, and these days I'd say most of Zynga's marketing is piggybacking on their existing games. They use their position as leverage to introduce new 'properties', which I'd guess they could use to direct you off of Facebook. Especially if this off-FB site of theirs takes off and the bad press continues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think I can sum it up by saying facebook has become a big, dumb company. It's a little early to call it, but it's looking more and more like the next excite/yahoo. Trying to be too smart by a half.

</comment><comment><USER17> So are they actually considering leaving Facebook?

The headline implies yes, but from the content of the article it sounds much more like this is just gamesmanship as the negotiate a rev share and need to act as if they have other options.

On the surface, this looks as credible as when Time Warner Cable and Viacom were pretending they could part ways.

</comment><comment><USER18> Facebook saw all those millions generated by Zynga and the logic step was to get Zynga to use their paying system and charge them a percentage...

<comment><USER19> Zynga makes some 1M a day, Facebook some 2M/day. Obviously Facebook is not so happy about someone making half what they make within their own platform.

<comment><USER20> Don't forget FB also has way higher expenses maintaining all of the servers and the larger staff, so their income may be higher but their profits are likely significantly lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a very weak leak by Zynga, I don't see how they can do anything but complain about facebook's change in policies.

<comment><USER21> Why can't Zynga use their games as a means to move its users outside of the FB wall and into a Zynga-only platform? It seems that many of Zynga's users would do almost anything for some free game credits.

<comment><USER13> Zynga can (and will ) I just think it adds a more difficulty to retaining customers, and getting the free advertising on facebook through messages and requests etc. as people log-in zlive and don't play on fb.

But here's the worst from Zynga's side:

I dont think there is anyway Zynga can move people over fast enough -- fb will own a large chunk of user data (and realistically that's the big advantage Zynga has right now -- copying gameplay is easy, analytic packages are out there like mixpanel to optimize ROI on ads).

This really signals fb must really see gaming as a pathway to significant profits, and fb is will own the data on the most active and profitable players ( time spent, new games tried and with fb currency $ spent etc.) and could always expose this data to advertisers in some fashion to commaditize the market further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The way facebook is going about this is absolutely the wrong angle.

I understand its their platform, and they can do what they want, but they should live and die like any other payment system. Zynga should choose them because even with the 30% skim, Facebook credits still give Zynga more revenue than other payment systems. This isn't too hard to imagine - Facebook has the ability to integrate credits with their site like no 3rd party provider can.

Instead they come across like cry babies.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is what happens when you live and die behind a walled garden.

<comment><USER24> Huh? Zynga's apps only depend on Facebook for advertising in users' streams. This is no different than Google refusing to show a company's ads.

This is what happens when you depend on anyone for anything.

<comment><USER25> Well, the problem is that Facebook hasn't found an as reliable revenue stream as Zynga.

As a platform owner, it must suck that people are making more money off your platform than you. So you are tempted to co-op other people's revenue stream as your own.

<comment><USER26> Facebook could always hire their own team to build games, and give them priority placement as some kind of special class of application all over the site. Then launch facebook credits with these games and give more perceived value with some kind of half price credits on these games deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1274692>

This is what you should expect. Platforms will maximize their profits if they "tax" people the way countries do. Unlike a country, a platform can often tax more efficiently, and closer to the peak of the Laffer Curve.

</comment><comment><USER28> Closed platforms...yay.

</comment><comment><USER29> After taking money from the Russians, Facebook all the sudden operate like a Mafia.

</comment><comment><USER30> Seriously, how on earth does Facebook expect to get away with a 30% tax _and_ reduce virality to the point of only being able to advertise to get users?

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure it's a good strategy for Zynga to make enemies of Facebook--for a number of reasons. The one that comes to my mind is Facebook must have tons of data on Zynga's deceptive trade practices. If this info gets out, and it's as bad as the conspiracy theorists suspect, it could shut Zyna down.

</comment><comment><USER32> Since Zynga's in-game credits are essentially a scam on multiple levels (remember Scamville? and the psychological manipulation / exploitation involved in the first place), they have absolutely zero moral high ground to complain about Facebook replacing their in-game credits with Facebook's own, especially if this cuts down on scammy behavior.</comment>


Intel Kills "Tick-Tock" - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/22/intel-corp-officially-kills-tick-tock.aspx <comment><USER2> Main take away: Intel is doing three phases instead of two tick-tocks.

Secondary take away: due to the increased time to move to a better manufacturing process, Intel will likely not have as much a competitive advantage anymore. Though the number of competitors will (and has already) decrease due to the high investments.

Would be interesting to see how long intel estimates the process cycles are going to be, i.e. how Moore's law will progress.

Weird statement in the article: "it (TSCMs 7nm tech) should be very similar in terms of transistor density to Intel's 10-nanometer technology". This makes no sense as it would be comparing apples and pears. Surely they are referring to TSCMs 10nm tech?!

<comment><USER3> >Weird statement in the article

At this point, process nodes don't map to a particularly well-defined set of feature sizes across vendors. So what I assume they're saying is that what Intel calls 10nm is actually pretty similar in terms of transistor size/density to what TSMC is calling 7nm. (No idea if that's actually true but it's what I believe is being said.)

<comment><USER4> I've been wondering if EUV will bring things back in line. They say the light sources are not bright enough yet, but isn't doing a 2-4x exposure better than double or triple pattering? If the total time were the same you'd still have the benefit of the shorter wavelength allowing dramatically smaller features. What am I missing?

<comment><USER5> It isn't 25% as bright as it needs to be - it's more like 1% or 0.1%. The total time isn't the same.

<comment><USER6> That is not true at all, wafer throughput is a factor 4-5 less... The mistake in the first comment is that with self aligned double patterning you only need one litho step, not two. The same applies for SQDP. And since litho is one of the most expensive steps double patterning is more cost effective.

From a technology point of view the problem with EUV is more the line edge roughness, line width roughness, defects and the reliability... Given, more light will make the job easier

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fun fact: The distance between silicon atoms in a crystal is on the order of 0.2 to 0.5 nm. The 10 nm process is therefore operating on the order of _tens_ of atoms. That's just nuts. Quantum effects must really complicate things at this scale!

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I've been looking forward to how they'll go past 10nm for years! Crazy to think how much control they have in the manufacturing process.

<comment><USER9> Aren't they planning to go to 7? I thought I read that somewhere.

<comment><USER10> It was in the article; TSMC expects it to go into production by 2018.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but is Intel?

<comment><USER11> Yes it will. [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2887275/intel-moores-law- will...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2887275/intel-moores-law-will- continue-through-7nm-chips.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So now it's "Tick-Tock-Tweak".

<comment><USER13> Some PR person at Intel is kicking themselves now.

<comment><USER14> Not necessarily, maybe they know it's time not to give the "tick" expectations anymore. They can be very soon away, and from their perspective, it's time to be identified with other aspects, not with "ticks."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> translation: this transition has been inevitable since we discovered that immersion lithography is a bear, the deposition processes to support atomic layer deposition are a bitch, copper has issues being anorexic, our fabs are so sensitive that they are effected by nearby farms, and EUV litho is a piper dream (in a vacuum).

Not to judge, they make things that are mere atoms in size...but the corollary to Moore's law should always have been EY's law: The cost of each major change in semiconductor production methods doubles

<comment><USER16> Can you elaborate on how nearby farms have affected microchip fabs? Something to do with airborn organics from their animals or chemicals?

<comment><USER17> My guess would be more vibrations?

Heavy equipment causes vibrations in the ground, which most people probably can't notice, but when you're literally printing at the atomic scale, microscopic vibrations probably make a difference.

<comment><USER18> I work in a lab. We can't use our most accurate scales when there's construction going on with heavy machinery within a couple of blocks. This isn't cutting-edge stuff either, it's measuring to 0.001 gram, with a $10k scale and a 4" thick granite table on rubber pads (unlike other equipment that's on air floating supports with active counter balancing).

<comment><USER17> That's so interesting, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been really disappointed in Intel's desktop offerings. At the 300$ high end (quad core i7) desktop price point we have been at 4 cores for years. I would really like an option for more slower cores at that price point.

I guess I kind of get why. Might be a socket compatibility and cost issue, the allocation of die space to a GPU, but it would nice to see some movement. Also probably zero demand outside of software developers, but I have to wonder if it is kind of chicken and egg problem.

It's actually kind of funny if I recall on desktops more of the die is GPU than CPU.

<comment><USER20> Large core counts are the bread and butter of enterprise/cloud. I suspect Intel is binning those chips for their real customers (not desktop users). Probably has to do with wafer yields or something if I can hazard a guess.

<comment><USER21> By now they probably have the yields. I'd guess it's just market segmentation. Harder to convince your server customers to fork out $4k for a 16-core chip when you're selling 16-core chips into desktops for $300.

<comment><USER20> Actually, I suspect you're right. I was being a bit generous with my characterization. :-) Maintaining the status quo allows Intel to add significant margin to their enterprise solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> People still haven't completely worked through the fact that Moore's Law has died. I think the anger phase was the late 2000's, when quantum computing, etc. was trotted out to denounce anyone noticing the slowdown.

This looks like bargaining to me.

<comment><USER23> Nah, you're not taking in account Moore's Meta Law:

"Whenever Moore's law is no longer applicable, its definition is changed to accommodate some new version of 'computers get faster'."

Moore's Law was dead a long long time ago.

<comment><USER22> Completely agree on both counts. There are seven stages of grief, so these things take time.

<comment><USER24> Classically there are 5 (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance)

<comment><USER25> That's the old version. Intel added two phases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They should call this tick-tock-tack, since the last stage is when they tack and introduce new architecture. You heard it here first.

</comment><comment><USER27> This turn of events was evident as of 2 months ago. I wrote: _" Intel's Tick- Tock is no more. Say hello to Tick-Tock-Tock."_

[https://plus.google.com/+MarcBevand/posts/ZpuSkXqaBfK](https://plus.google.com/+MarcBevand/posts/ZpuSkXqaBfK)

</comment><comment><USER28> So Intel's "Ticks" weren't quite keeping up with the "Tocks".

</comment><comment><USER29> Would it be fair to say ...

... they're switching to Tic-Tac-Toe?

(Thank you, don't forget to tip your waitress) ;-)

<comment><USER30> This is actually a nice joke.</comment></comment>


TIOBE declares Python as programming language of 2007 - <AUTHOR> http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index?2007 <comment><USER2> _"... The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages ... TIOBE declares Python as programming language of 2007! ..."_

Ho hum. Python has been a pretty useful language for a lot longer than the title suggests. [0] Is it just me or do lists like this one reek and makes me think this is the kind of _"language-popularity"_ graphy PHB"'s look at to start new projects.

Read _"Being popular"_ [1] to gain a different perspective on how language popularity has nothing to do with how useful a language is to hackers.

[0] Here is the graph of popularity ~ <http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/Python.html> At what stage did google decided to adopt python?

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html>

<comment><USER3> Well... good hackers are certainly good hackers with any language, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that popularity doesn't matter at all. Even hackers like to have handy libs, and those are more likely to exist for more things, the more people use the language.

That said, this is old news in any case, and my own site, <http://www.langpop.com> does a better job of aggregating more data sources:-)

<comment><USER2> _"... Even hackers like to have handy libs, and those are more likely to exist for more things, the more people use the language. ..."_

That could explain the popularity of 'c'. Something written in 'c' can be used just about everywhere. One of the reasons I despise Java & C#. Not because they are bad languages. Because they don't share very well.

 _"... That said, this is old news in any case, and my own site,<http://www.langpop.com> does a better job of aggregating more data sources:-) ..."_

Looks like your have been thinking about this a lot deeper. Do you supply the data? One other minor quibble the x-axes graph titles are hard to read. What graphing lib are you using?

<comment><USER3> > Looks like your have been thinking about this a lot deeper

I'm fascinated by it:

[http://www.welton.it/articles/programming_language_economics...](http://www.welton.it/articles/programming_language_economics.html)

<http://www.welton.it/articles/scalable_systems.html>

I get the data from Yahoo search (the open API is better than Google's, which doesn't exist any more) and direct scraping in some cases.

The graphing lib is Plotr, and yeah, it's getting too scrunched up, and I need to add some history functions, because I have a few months of data. Not much has really changed, but still, it's nice to show it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ruby or Python or Java: which should a non-tech person start first? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I decided to start learning how to code as I have a strong interest in starting a web-based startup.
However, i discovered my interest in web startups a bit late. I am close to finishing my degree in Econs, but hope to pick up coding & web development skills. May I know which language I should start learning first? and why too..
thank you! <comment><USER2> If you have little to no coding experience, leave Java out of the mix for now. I "restarted" my programming skills about 6 years ago with Python and absolutely love it. (And have since added C, java, javascript and of course conversant in HTML, CSS, etc) I know nothing of Ruby other than it has a following as devoted as Python. Look at the wikipedia entries for each language and see what "feels" more comfortable to you. If you find python "feels" best, and you're relatively new to programming... take a look at "Python Programming" by John Zelle (at Amazon, check out the reviews).

</comment><comment><USER3> When I had to pick a language to learn I chose Ruby and after spending 3 years learning it I'd say thats the language you want to go with. Its a strong web language with a huge community around it. The language is in constant development along with the libraries and frameworks supporting it. Getting started is real easy with the framework sinatra. In the beginning I found rails was standing in the way of just purely learning ruby and its sort of "magic" made no sense to me. Sinatra is simple. You start with one file with your request methods that are blocks of code starting with get, post and delete. You can then build that out into an mvc style if you so please by seperating things out.

Ruby is the way forth

edit: Also, why's poignant guide to ruby will be the ideal way for you to learn ruby. [http://www.scribd.com/doc/2236084/Whys-Poignant-Guide-to- Rub...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/2236084/Whys-Poignant-Guide-to-Ruby)

</comment><comment><USER4> I learnt Java first and it did me no harm. Now I love Ruby. I like Python too (they are similar in some ways) but I prefer rails over django so that's why I went with Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ruby is big on OSX, often used as a step up from applescript. Python is super- easy to learn. Java will give newbies a headache

<comment><AUTHOR> I got a copy of Heads First! introduction to software programming, and it started out with Python first.

It appears that python is the easy to learn..but Ruby seems to be the common lang that most web startup use these days.

Will i be at a disadvantage if I choose to start with Python first?

<comment><USER6> There is no harm in knowledge.

Even if you start with Java.

<comment><AUTHOR> okay..thanks for the info everyone!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mammoth - A Chrome extension that checks for +1 installations - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ibjgncenphgdlmfmiobphallfhdjplmg

<comment><USER2> There's one review: Best Chrome extension ever created.

This sounds pretty good :)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the point of this? I don't understand, why would I ever want a notification in the address bar that a G+1 link exists on the page?</comment>


Simulating squishy pixel-art spaceships on the GPU - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/pixelsim/ <comment><USER2> neat effect i suppose, but i can't imagine it looking very good in-game. doesnt this go against the whole style of pixel art, being aligned to a grid, low palette colors and keeping the same pixel resolution throughout? i see way too many things that change pixel sizes even through the same sprite. i think this would be better suited to larger svg or even pre-rendered images.

<comment><USER3> I had the same thought. If it's meant to look cartoony it might be better to just deform a simple box/balloon and map that to the sprite. This is worthy work, I just think it's a little _too_ realistic for the whimsical context and ends up failing to satisfy either criterion.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if perhaps you're not overlooking the trees for the forest here - maybe this effect doesn't apply too well to an 8-bit shooter ship, but there are certainly ways this effect can be utilized in other interesting 8-bit/pixel-style forms. Just adding structural deformation to a platformer, for example, opens up all sorts of interesting new dimensions - between the blocks. Sort of like Gish, I would suppose, and games like it ..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I'd like it, I would be compensating for the shift in mass. (What is on screen is not what is being simulated, or are the distorted pixels also used in the physics calculations ?) Other then that I can see it working very well in games with "jelly" art style.

</comment><comment><USER6> this is awesome on so many levels. but a spaceship is the worst example! :) something organic would awe much more... well it does have more organic examples at the end.

<comment><USER4> I've been trying to think how I would apply this deformation to a shooter- style game (I agree its a poor example perhaps) and I think it would be quite relevant as an effect to be applied during acceleration/travelling .. and also, one place it would be interesting as an effect would of course be: Asteroid Fields. I imagine an implementation of Asteroids which utilizes this effect for full mining-ship-plundering-the-billions-of-bits style gameplay. Imagine your little ship has to dig through every Asteroid to get the other little, squishy bits, buried there-in ..

<comment><USER6> when i saw the spaceship i assumed you were going to use if for a 'entering light speed' kinda of animation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That spaceship looks... suggestive. Nevertheless, this is a really interesting hack, good work!

</comment><comment><USER8> This might be useful in minecraft itself - to enhance a bit the animation.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very neat! Any ideas if this would run without much trouble in WebGL?

<comment><USER10> If it's running in a shader, which it is, it should work just fine via GLSL and WebGL

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This could be used to make an art tool.</comment>


Ask HN: what's your favorite web regression test software? - <AUTHOR>

Mrs Browl needs some suggestions for QA testing / validation / web regression software at the firm where she works (a moderately complex b2b webapp - mostly C#/.net, some legacy VB, ruby, python stuff). Sciptable or macro recording would be good, FOSS would be better, but recommendations for commercial software up to a few thousand would be feasible.<p>!Reward? One (1) free beer at the next SF HN meetup (details coming soon)!<p>Thank you kindly! <comment><USER2> The usual candidates: selenium, watir, HtmlUnit, HttpUnit;

Watir and selenium: plenty of examples of usage:

<http://delicious.com/tag/watir>

You can look at iMacros and testGen4web, here's a staggeringly large list;

<http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweb1.html#FUNC>

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, it was the size of the list which overwhelmed me a bit :)</comment></comment>


Clinkle App Now Available in iTunes Store - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clinkle/id458523629

<comment><USER2> "By entering my email address, I provide my consent and direction to The Bancorp Bank to share my personal information and all information about the use of my card with Clinkle so that they and others can market to me."

 _uninstall_

</comment><comment><USER3> Context: [http://valleywag.gawker.com/search?q=clinkle](http://valleywag.gawker.com/search?q=clinkle)

Clinkle had been in a private beta for awhile. Looks like it's now public.

</comment><comment> user-id The video on their homepage is way too OTT.

</comment><comment><USER4> You sign up and... you get added to a waitlist.

</comment><comment><USER5> according to version history, it's been there since 2011...</comment>


F# and the Meaning of Life - <AUTHOR> http://kalidor-web.com/blog.html <comment><USER2> I've been fiddling around with F# here and there, with the help of this amazing book - [https://swlaschin.gitbooks.io/fsharpforfunandprofit/content/](https://swlaschin.gitbooks.io/fsharpforfunandprofit/content/)

Check it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the book. Chapters about using F# are very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been a C# developer for quite some time now, and F# really is quite pleasant to work with. I use it for all my hobby projects now, and the work goes faster without the serious performance cost that python has.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand. And a smart compiler is a particular pleasure.</comment></comment>


Pinboard.in service limited - FBI raided hosting company and pulled equpiment - <AUTHOR> http://status.pinboard.in/ <comment><USER2> I love how Pinboard deals with this issue: site remains online (albeit with limited abilities), all data is secured and backed up, users are encouraged to use the export tool if they feel the need and there are status updates on Twitter.

Keep it up Pinboard!

<comment><USER3> _One thing that does work is our export page, and if you're feeling nervous about your data I encourage you to use it. We have fresh backups (from one day ago) safely stored on S3, but in these matters you can't be too careful._

+1 Maciej. I am glad I paid for an account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We're not down. Our main DB server is unreachable and there is limited service (no API, search or feeds) while we run off a smaller backup server.

See <http://status.pinboard.in/> or @pinboard on Twitter for updates.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, one question though... I've just been making some more bookmarks... is your backup server database now your master? So when you get your main databases back (or a replacement), will my bookmarks remain when you switch back?

<comment><USER4> It's a master-master setup with only one accepting writes at any time. So it should catch up first, and then I'll be able to switch back over to the original DB without data loss.

<comment><USER6> Good architecture. And nice of you to explain clearly and completely the problem and to invite your users to backup. I'd like to see that more often, but more companies are too scared to lose customers to do that.

<comment><USER7> But they'll win new ones when this story and the likes come to their attention, and when they learn how the company handled it with honesty and aplomb. I for one was unaware of this service and this story has made me consider signing-up.

<comment><USER8> @idlewords: would you have stats at hand?

Maybe a temporary loss of functionality earned you a few users above the daily average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am the founder and current CEO of a dedicated server host. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies do often contact us regarding activity emanating from or related to our network. Its the same for any host and the bigger you are, the more often it happens. Rarely, a local law enforcement officer from within or outside of the US get cranky when you tell ask them to get a subpoena (makes work for them). However, in my experience the FBI and other three letter agencies are very professional, fair, and genuinely want to do it right. Getting a subpoena is no big deal at all for them. Usually the US Attorney is right down the hall from them, in the same building.

They do officially have policies and programs designed to befriend local businesses in the area of a field office. They just want to catch the bad guys and not mess with the innocent. They want people to like them and trust them. They count on the cooperation of businesses, especially hosting and access providers. There are civilized processes for everyone to get what they want.

There are the cases of people trying to get information who are not actually law enforcement, and that is one of the many reasons you must ask for a subpoena... To protect yourself and your customers privacy. The FBI can get one in a very short time.

Where this all goes bad is when you do not respond to subpoenas for subscriber information, when you don't hand over the disks, etc. If you do not comply, then what alternative does the FBI have but to come and get it?

My guess?... The host didn't play nice with the FBI.

<comment><USER10> Or the FBI believed the host was aware of, sanctioning, in cahoots with, or participating in the alleged activity and thus could not tip their cards.

This happens more often than you might think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The FBI is just another in the list of bad things that can happen to your servers. Flood, fire, theft, law-enforcement... its all the same thing to a hosted service.

Off site backups, executed masterfully here saves the day.

There are a few services that I run on servers in separate countries. Failure of reasonable rule of law within a single country is a failure mode we consider.

<comment><USER12> Is it possible to insure / sue for careless seizures by government agencies? Pinboard is (probably?) not the one they are after. What recourse do they have?

<comment><USER13> I believe the current status is: no definitive resolution of whether there should be any compensation required, but, paying compensation is not typically done currently, and no strong precedent requires it, while some precedent holds that it isn't required.

A 2008 post by a libertarian law professor (<http://volokh.com/posts/1209706276.shtml>) argued that the Takings Clause (which requires compensation if e.g. land is taken to build a highway or military base) should also require the government to pay compensation to innocent third parties inconvenienced or harmed during the course of a criminal investigation. But, that post noted that no high courts had actually held that, and at least one appeals court had just held to the contrary.

This is in the normal case, at least; things would probably be different if it were deemed to be some sort of overt act, e.g. if a police chief orders a raid designed to intentionally damage an innocent third party's interests (and you have evidence to show that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The brave new world of overzealous law enforcement data warehouse searches just continues to wreak havoc on "cloud" services and content. It's akin to digging up the neighborhood to search somebody's house. What can the Feds/providers do differently to prevent this from happening so often?

<comment><USER15> It seems ridiculous that this is affecting so many customers - pinboard, Curbed, one Instapaper eval/test server, bunch of individuals - when there was one FBI warrant.

Apparently the FBI took three racks. If those are whole racks, it seems excessive. <https://twitter.com/#!/Pinboard/status/83256217174147072>

But another issue is that Digital One told Pinboard this was due to bad router firmware -- how do you confuse a software issue and an FBI raid? <https://twitter.com/#!/Pinboard/status/83257679023325186>

<comment><USER16> Most likely, DigitalOne doesn't have support staff sleeping in hammocks at the colo. If you were an admin, logged in remotely (from switzerland, say, where DigitalOne is headquartered), and you saw a few racks of equipment go offline, would you:

      1. suspect that someone had walked away with 3 racks, or

      2. guess that some network hardware had gone bad?

Usually it's a horse, but sometimes it's a zebra.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting to think through what would happen with AWS in the same situation.

Would the FBI turn up and say "Where's the 100 servers for customer X", then seize up to 100 different physical servers, depending on the distribution? Or even 100 racks worth of physical servers...

<comment><USER18> I think they just asked for a server on an IP and the datacenter staff (!= not the DigitalOne staff) said the IP was in the range of DigitalOne - so the FBI took them all. I think the datacenter will rent IP ranges to their clients.

I can imagine in an Amazone datacenter they would be able to point to the exact server they're looking for.

<comment><USER19> I think the OP's point is that Amazon EC2 can run 100s of instances for one customer which could be on up to 100 different physical servers and when not using EBS roots, any one of those servers might still contain the evidence the FBI wants.

Mentioning the specifics of Amazon further, what about if your account for the highly illegal operation was using/paying for EBS/S3/SimpleDB/RDS/SQS/SNS/SES (or all at the same time). Any could contain forensic evidence of a crime as they hold data in some sense. EBS especially is likely to run on some kind of SAN; would they have to crack open the racks and take out individual drives? would they have to take whole arrays of discs because of RAID-esque striping?

It's like a LEO denial of service (both on amazon and the forensic analysis). Pragmatically, they might trust amazon enough to consolidate/quarantine the data into the smallest surface area first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What I find awesome is that instead of being disgruntled or disappointed, the way in which pinboard has handled this situation has reinforced my confidence and appreciation for it's service. They are truly a case study in customer awareness and communication for the tech industry.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can a law-knowledgeable individual shed some light on what this means for individuals who weren't a part of the warrant?

i.e., I'm hosted on the same server as Joe, who the FBI are investigating. They seize the equipment we share. During the course of their investigation, they naturally also examine my data.

Do I then have a viable lawsuit or claim towards unlawful search & seizure, or invasion of privacy? Or, if I happened to also have illegal content on the same system, would they be able to use the evidence they encountered there in a case against me?

<comment><USER22> In general, law enforcement has to get very specific warrants accurately indicating where they're going to search and what they hope to seize. This includes both physical locations and, usually, computers. Additionally, case law makes a distinction between property that you personally own and/or control (e.g. your house that you live in), and property that is shared (e.g. the apartment you rent with a buddy), and recognizes that the part of something that is "yours" (your room in your shared apartment, for instance) is separate from you buddy's (their room). (I imagine this is because the 4th amendment protects your papers and effects from search and seizure, not just your real estate.)

So, all things being equal, the FBI is supposed to take pains not to even look at the data of people not named on the warrant (automated processes have been exempted from this, IIRC, as they aren't actual people), even though your data is housed on the save server as the person(s) named on the warrant. And if they did by chance see something they weren't supposed to, it wouldn't be admissible in court (in a case against _you_ \- they might be able to use it against someone else).

IANAL, I just took a couple of law courses in college.

<comment><USER21> > _...they might be able to use it against someone else..._

That's an interesting point. So, if I'm running a hosting company, and they come across data from one of my customers...?

Also, putting aside for a moment IT best practices and all that, they potentially are crippling my business by seizing machines which I share with someone else. Is there any recourse for that?

<comment><USER23> An article on HN a few months back about a guy who worked in a Three Letter Agency specifically stated that when or if a data analyst came across data that was not pertinent to their job, and viewing that data was potentially infringing on someone's constitutional rights, there were forms filled out and steps taken that stated such an occurrence happened. He also said the Patriot Act screwed that all up.

The WP article below specifically talks about communications, but the skeptic in me doubts there is much change between one form of data and another in a highly bureaucratic environment such as the NSA.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake>

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/07...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/07/13/AR2010071305992_pf.html)

<comment><USER21> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just started using Pinboard a couple days ago (mostly because of integration with Instapaper), and so far it looks great. The fact that, even with all this chaos going on, the main functionality of the service is still up and running is really great.

</comment><comment><USER25> Really impressed by your ability to weather this storm. Definitely going to take a closer look at the service and see if it's useful to me (I'm a kind of 'write-only' Instapaper user... could Pinboard help improve my read rate at all?)

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been a Pinboard customer for a long time, I think it is an example of a well executed, very well designed service that just blends into the background even when I use it a dozen times a day.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if the law enforcement folks look at the "collateral damage", i.e., all the innocent servers (virtual or otherwise), as a windfall of extra data to mine. If my neighbor gets his house raided by the SWAT team they do not have access to my house only his, but with hosting this is not necessarily true. Further, I at least know who my neighbors are and can choose to not live in a bad neighborhood or even move away if I want, however with hosting this is not the case.

<comment><USER28> Suddenly, the PCI compliance requirement to encrypt all sensitive "data at rest" makes a lot more sense. Probably not the case with Pinboard, but interesting nontheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can't wait to read the write-up of _that_.

</comment><comment><USER30> A site I visit frequently got its server raided by the FBI (the host was rewiredHost; it was unrelated to the site I visit). The site had to start from scratch except for their frontend code.

I wonder why the FBI is raiding all these servers. Another comment mentioned a few hosts they've hit.

<comment><USER31> A popular method used by hackers is to sign up for a virtual server with a stolen credit card. If they are careful and only access it through a proxy, their hacking attempts are virtually untraceable. With the amount of hacking going on lately by Lulzsec and other groups, there is bound to be a lot of collateral damage.

<comment><USER32> Sounds like a very black hat way of taking out your unprepared competition. I'm sure you can buy this sort of service somewhere - get a hit on a datacentre/rack by security services in response to highly illegal activity perpetrated in the open in order to cause the most possible disruption.

<comment><USER31> I didn't mean to imply they would intentionally do that to take out competition, although that is indeed a possibility. The main purpose of having a stolen virtual server would be to launch attacks from.

The truth is even if you rented a virtual server in the same data center, your chances of being in the same rack of hardware are pretty slim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If the data was replicated in N places would they serve all N places? Just curious how that works.

</comment><comment><USER34> It seems civilian causalities will always exist.

</comment><comment><USER35> Here's where hosting on EC2 might actually be worth it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Let this be a lesson to chose your hosting company wisely. You can't always predict such things, but I think if you pick a big name, with a good business reputation, you'll minimize the risk. They might do checks for abuse and have plans in place to keep everything up when something goes wrong.

Eg. I can't imagine that if you host with <http://www.rackspace.com/> your website would be down if you didn't do anything illegal.

DigitalOne's site is also down <http://www.digitalone.com/> so they don't even have a backup server for their own website..

<comment><USER36> All big names were once small. I doubt pinboard didn't choose their hosting company wisely, although I get what you're saying. Troubles and down times happen to anyone, it's how good you can deal with them that makes a difference, not the hosting company you choose.

<comment><USER18> Ofcourse, there's no blame on pinboard, they handled it amazing! And the webhosting company was around for 7 years if I googled it correctly - but I do think there's a big difference between webhosting company's.

Suppose DigitalOne rents space in a datacenter and has no one on-site (exept for staff from the datacenter). I can imagine that if the FBI enters there "we need servers from IP x.x.x.x and y.y.y.y immediately - that the people from the datacenter just point to the servers from DigitalOne "oh that's in their range"..

Ofcourse that's just speculation if you don't know how it really went down - never the less, I would chose webhosting carefully if your business depends on it:)</comment></comment></comment>


AppleCare: No Smokers Need Apply - <AUTHOR> http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/11/applecare_no_smokers_need_appl.php#comments

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the article discussed in the post [http://consumerist.com/5408885/smoking-near-apple- computers-...](http://consumerist.com/5408885/smoking-near-apple-computers- creates-biohazard-voids-warranty) , but it doesn't give any real information either.

</comment><comment><USER2> I thought the discussion of computers from smoking households was interesting.</comment>


Ask HN: get*.com and *app.com domain names - <AUTHOR>

I am building "productx", which is a nice and suitable name for the product. Unfortunately, productx.com isn't available. But getproductx.com is available.<p>While I am used to these kind of domains, my target audience isn't. Will opting for getproductx.com hurt in the long run? <comment><USER2> From a personal perspective, I'd say choose productxapp.com, if it is an app, over getproductx.com. (Or choose a domain hack, like produc.tx, if that would be possible/available?) But you always should keep in mind and accept the fact that some of your target audience and visitors will end up at productx.com anyway.

<comment><USER3> I agree - productxapp.com is probably best second choice after productx.com for an app name/domain combo, especially consumer apps. And make _sure_ that an existing productx.com service and domain are so different from yours in focus, there is no confusion for consumers who type productx.com by mistake, they know to keep looking for you. Also check US trademark and existing apps to make sure you can trademark it, else if you are successful you may find folks trying to clone variations of your name, or worse claiming your app name on different (android / windows mobile /...) app store if you just start with Apple, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Problem with Xapp.com or getX.com is that once you gain traction (and possibly funding), at some point you'll be buying the original domain for a lot of money (since the owner knows about your startup). I'd recommend to look for another name with an available .com domain.

<comment><USER5> That's a rich person's problem, along the same lines as "You might get a headache from all the expensive tequila you sip as you relax on the beach with millions of dollars in the bank." I'm not sure it's actually profitable to worry about this even in the long run, and certainly not before you even launch. As long as "getX.com" works for marketing purposes, it's better than choosing something weird and unpronounceable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is productx.com a parked name or will you be infringing on someone's copyright/trademark? If it is the former and you think you have a home run, buy the domain. If it is the latter you need a new name.

</comment><comment><USER7> At some point, if you're successful you're going to have to buy them out. I believe mobify started with mobify.me (hey another option!) and then later bought mobify.com after gaining traction.

</comment><comment><USER8> I personally went with productapp.com, since getproduct.com sounded a bit generic, while productapp.com implied that its a software app in some form.

</comment><comment><USER9> dropbox started with getdropbox.com and it didn't seem to do them any harm.

Their customers were techies though so I take your point about lay people not being 'used' to them. It's really a pretty arbitrary decision though, 'google' means nothing to their customers intrinsically. Build a brand and the name is unimportant.

<comment><USER4> Except that Dropbox needed to spend _a lot_ of money to get the .com domain.

<comment><USER9> and they acquired that money while they had getdropbox.com. If get __ __was a bad thing, it certainly didn't seem to hurt dropbox is what I'm saying.

<comment><USER10> So the point is, get it before getting famous, otherwise your fame will drive the price northward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's much easier to change a domain name than a product name.

</comment><comment><USER12> Did you try to make an offer for productx.com first? The fact that a given domain name is taken shouldn't immediately preclude you from obtaining it. If you were to contact the current owner and pitch a deal, you might be surprised by how flexible they are in working something out.

I say this as someone who has direct experience in these matters.</comment>


Books that have affected you and your life the most - <AUTHOR> I would love to hear what are some of the books that have significantly affected your life and why.
For me they are
Thinking fast and slow: This book helped me realize how to make sense of statistics that are usually cited in media and how to think critically about them and how to think about probability.
The power of habit: this book has helped me understand the habit framework and helped me curb some unwanted habits and helped establish some useful ones. <comment><USER2> Fiction and philosophical nonfiction has far more potential to affect one's life than a pop-science book, at least in my experience.

Some of my favorites:

\- Moby Dick. Probably the single greatest work of American literature, in my opinion of course.

\- Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche. An excellent primer to his thought. Any of his books are worth reading, though.

\- The Ego and Its Own, Stirner. An under-appreciated philosopher who can really shake up your foundations.

\- Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Borges. His favorite short story of mine. It serves as a very effective metaphor for the power of fiction.

\- Anything by Joseph Conrad, although I particularly recommend _The Secret Sharer._

<comment><USER3> The Immortal and The Aleph by Borges are pretty awesome too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Man search for meaning - I think that most people, at some point in their life face with the big question "What is the purpose of life ?". Author of this book is the one who can handle this huge question because he survived death camps, and noticed what give people will to live. Highly recommended.

Flow: Psychology of optimal experience - If you want do double down the concept of Flow (situations where you are so involved that you forgot to eat for the whole day (programming in my case)), how to achieve these situations, and how they work.

The lessions of history - This book is just a mine of great golden nugget thoughts.

Slight Edge - Stop looking for easy paths, for quantum leaps. Yes, this is hard, this is a slow path. But you need to follow it to achieve what you want from life. But do it wisely.

Thinking fast and slow and The power of habbit are also great :) Here you can find more of my favorite books: [https://stasbar.com/](https://stasbar.com/)

<comment><USER5> I read Frankl ( _Man 's Search for Meaning_) decades ago and was impressed too. But a year or two ago I learnt more about his story. A reader of that book, which sold millions, would be surprised to learn, for example, that Frankl only spent a few days at Auschwitz, himself performed medical experiments on Jews, or that "in 1978 when attempting to give a lecture at the institute of Adult Jewish Studies in New York, Frankl was confronted with an outburst of boos from the audience and was called a _nazi pig_ ". Frankl's biographer wrote "...we know the reality of Auschwitz is that attitude mattered little for survival."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl#Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl#Controversy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Art of Learning by Waitzkin.

The book details the lessons over time that the author (an American chess prodigy) learned about how to improve at chess. It gets interesting when he applies these same lessons to become a world champion at combat Tai Chi.

The impact this had on me is how I apply myself to any competitive discipline to maximize learning. Not necessarily success, but the amount of knowledge gained from practice. This has the happy side effect of often leading to success.

But also I liked the stories of a child growing up in a competitive world, the amount of love and support he receives from his mentors, friends, and family. The ability to share this love with other students of chess and to produce profound insight into how people in general learn and react to hypercompetitive situations.

What is also great about the book is that it written in very accessible language. The reader does not need to be a scholar to understand the concepts Waitzkin is trying to express in his book.

<comment><AUTHOR> This one sounds very interesting, I will definitely check it out. I especially like books that teach a framework that can be applied in multiple domains. Thanks for sharing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Language in Thought and Action, by S.I. Hayakawa. I read it in grad school and it opened my mind to how much of human language is subjective and made me think about the problems that arise because of that.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds very interesting, I will definitely check it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Never Split the Difference" and "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Before reading those I thought talking just happens between people with some of them being more resourceful. It never occurred to me before that simple tricks can be so useful in everyday conversations.

Why we sleep - changed my perception of sleep. I used to sleep the least I could get away with. Not anymore, I stand corrected by science.

</comment><comment><USER9> \- The essay "Complicating the Narrative" which lists out ways in which we can address the growing divide between humans on different sides of a debate. Vital for journalism to regain it's trust and also vital in everyday life.

\- JCIP "Java Concurrency In Practice" changed my mental model of programming.

\- Practical Vim, this was my Eureka moment with vim

\- Wait But Why, gave me a diverse perspective on a wide range of things

<comment><USER4> Practical Vim seems amazing, pushed it on top of my to-read stack :D By "Wait But Why" you mean this one ? The Elon Musk Blog Series: Wait But Why by Tim Urban

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> (Speculative) Fiction: "The City and The Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke

Nonfiction: "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The best book on how to communicate. The best part: the book is written in a way that its content sticks to your memory for a very long time thus proving what it preaches.

<comment><USER10> Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die sounds really cool...off to order it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I, Robot. I read the stories as a kid and I believed I could be a part of making them come true in the real world. We don't have sentient robots (yet) but following the vision/dream has led me on an interesting career in technology!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing, you are truly following your childhood dreams! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> \- Man search for meaning

\- Letters of a Businessman to His Son Paperback - G. Kingsley Ward (Author)

\- The Design of the UNIX Operating System

\- Horse Sense

\- Hemingway farewell to arms

\- Save your marriage

\- The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America

\- On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors: John Z. DeLorean's - made me never want to work for big company

1000s of books... no time to read or list them all.

</comment><comment><USER13> Contact by Carl Sagan - A good novel that deals with the politics of Science and religion. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse , A philosophical take on life , reality and belief system. The Code Book by Simon Singh - A book that explains the history of cryptography in a very interesting way

<comment><AUTHOR> I like works of fiction that can make you question aspects of our world. Contact sounds like a book in this category. I watched the movie few years ago, but will check out the book as well. Thanks for sharing your books! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, why I can't really say, it 'gelled' with me(?)

</comment><comment><USER15> Assembly language programming for the IBM PC (John Socha & Peter Norton) Advanced MSDOS programming (Ray Duncan) All books by Michael Abrash (esp Graphics Programming black book) ‐</comment><comment>---- With out these books, 13yr old me would have gone down a non-computer route!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing!! These definitely has a big impact on your life! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How to stop worrying and start living -- this helps every day.

How to become a hacker -- not actually a book, but helped build my belief.

The mythical man-month -- this tells me to never take software project time planning seriously because it won't be accurate no matter how confident people are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing these, I will check them out! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Vasistha's Yoga - highly useful for understanding and transcending psychological conditioning, using mind to master mind.

Early books: Arrow to the Sun and Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen and The Hobbit - all very stimulating to imagination.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing, I was looking for a good yoga book, will definitely check it out! :)

<comment><USER18> Just a PSA;

"Yoga Vasistha" has nothing to do with the physical aspects of Yoga i.e. Asanas (though some passages do talk about them) but deals purely with the internal/intellectual aspects of the mind. It is a very long book with lots of Allegories/Similes/Stories/Repetition and so you have to read it slowly and with patience.

I recommend reading "The Concise Yoga Vasistha" (an abridged version) before reading the unabridged "Vasistha's Yoga" both translated by Swami Venkatesananda.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good? Thanks for a heads up! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tom Hopkins master the art of selling. It changed my life and it was absolutely for the better and it was absolutely a book I shared with most all of my future sales pros. I would not be where I am today whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER20> Eat to Live (you will know more than your doctor about nutrition, 900 studies referenced, written by an M.D.)

Peak: Secrets of the New Science of Learning (changed the way I approach all learning, big compounding effect)

</comment><comment><USER21> Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing, this sounds like an interesting read!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why you worry?</comment>


Writing a Phase-locked Loop in Straight C - <AUTHOR> http://liquidsdr.org/blog/pll-howto/

<comment><USER2> PLLs are fascinating. Software PLLs are less fun than messing with the hardware, in my experience!

I started working on a software PLL recently -- not analog like this one, digital. Specifically, I was trying to work out the math on a fully event driven type-II PLL -- i.e. instead of updating at a fixed sampling rate, it'd wake only when an edge happened on the input or VCO. I was starting to get curious whether there's a solution for that somewhere on the web.

This is a good intro to (hardware) PLLs in general: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jzLDe950AY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jzLDe950AY) followed by [http://www.ece.tamu.edu/~spalermo/ecen620.html](http://www.ece.tamu.edu/~spalermo/ecen620.html)

<comment><USER3> This link is broken, looks like they've recently redone their webpages. [http://www.ece.tamu.edu/~spalermo/ecen620.html](http://www.ece.tamu.edu/~spalermo/ecen620.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Warning: You need ~three semesters of EE under your belt to grok the math used in this blog post. Incidentally at that point you dont need that blog post because this stuff is trivial and self explanatory. This makes me very confused. It almost reads like a solution to an assignment you would get in DSP class.

<comment><USER5> Man, EE is what I do for fun, and DSP is what I write every day. I can't even follow this without sitting down and spending hours on it, so don't feel bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone interested, here's the essence of a phase-locked loop:

Say you're climbing up a long staircase and the step height increases suddenly - then you'll bump into the next step. If the height were to go the other way i.e; decrease, then you'll put your foot down hard trying to place the next step. That change in step height is in fact a change in _frequency_ , and you're forced to adjust your pace abruptly by adjusting the timing (phase) of your subsequent steps.

Is there a 'gentler' way to adjust the phase? Now say you're wearing some kind of spongy sandals that can take up the slack, so at every step you _increasingly_ sense that the frequency has changed. This accumulation indicates that phase is mathematically the _integral_ of instantaneous frequency with respect to time.

We now put this integral in a feedback loop. Then, if the staircase step height changes suddenly we use the _slow_ accumulated phase to produce an error signal that gradually drives the frequency generator (in this case, our brain) to adjust the pace of our step till we get in _lock_ -step.

The actual dynamics is more complicated, involving a non-linear frequency capture (which linearizes the system) and then the _slower_ phase lock. You can see this in the waveforms in the original post.

</comment><comment><USER7> Lot of great things happening in SDR, especially since the RTL-SDR devices opened the field to more exploration, even in spite of their limitations. Examples like this are exposing more and more people to DSP as well, and that gives me hope for the future of learning.</comment>


Show HN: RGB colors database with gradients - <AUTHOR> https://www.odchazel.com/color <comment><USER2> Your 3D boxes are also cool !</comment>


4.95 million people signed up for Telegram - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/telegram/status/437743435395514368 <comment><USER2> Telegram registrations exploding in the wake of WhatsApp going to Facebook. Just more proof of how unpopular Facebook is with today's more tech-savy youth?</comment>


Overhaul Will Lower the Costs of Being a Woman - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/health/30women.html

<comment><USER2> Great. Maybe the government should take over auto insurance and lower the costs of being a young man.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternative to Authorize.net? - <AUTHOR> As of today, authorize.net has been down for more than 6 hours (why is no one reporting on this?). Any good alternatives? <comment><USER3> We switched to braintree from paypal at the beginning of the year - they are the most responsive payment provider I have ever dealt with. Our customer service that answers non technical questions also helped me troubleshoot some api issues I was having.

</comment><comment><USER4> Braintree has been good to work with so far. Haven't launched yet, but during the research & dev process they've been great.

<comment><USER5> I'll throw more support in for Braintree. We use them, and they are great. Their customer vault API is simple, straightforward, and very effective. They've been quick, and their whole system just makes slightly more sense than the others.

It's still credit cards, and it's still magic... just slightly less painful than other providers that I've used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like TrustCommerce; simple, solid API and no bullshit. Also their "vault" is great for storing CC info. It's a holiday weekend in the US so don't expect miracles, though. Setting up a new payment gateway takes time. For a quick fix it's better to use PayPal until you get something better set up.

<comment><USER7> I second that recommendation. I've worked with all the major payment processors at one time or another and TC is the only one that really seemed to Get It.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know there are a lot of haters, but I've had no problem integrating with PayPal's PayFlow Pro. It's not PayPal, it's a regular payment gateway. They bought the business from Verisign a while back.

I'm not involved on the business end so I'm not sure what the rates are, but the API is easy to integrate with and it's stable. Though I guess all gateways can have trouble like a datacenter fire.

Your best bet is probably to have a backup gateway and a non-gateway backup like PayPal or Google Checkout. Cover all your bases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We actually do have PayPal along with their Payflow Pro. However, not all of our customers accounts can use PayPal hence the need for another provider.

<comment><USER9> Payflow Pro just processes credit card numbers you throw at it. No need for your customers to have a Paypal account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> panicking because of random events doesn't do anyone any good. it's not like any alternative will guarantee that it doesn't happen to them either

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is this upvoted? I don't get it. This adds nothing. No one panicked. No one suggested anyone was panicking. Having alternatives that you can switch on in the event one goes down is just good practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> authorize.net was bought a few years back and there has been few changes to it. Some of the original developers on the authorize.net team have started mtrex. It is a similar service, but things seem to fit together better. I guess the second time around they know what they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Auth is nothing more than a gateway, ie, hosted software. There are numerous gateway software available which you can run yourself and connect directly to your merchant acquirer.

Many might want to consider Chase Paymentech, the largest acquirer, whom you can directly connect with. Paypal runs their credit and partner transactions over the Paymentech network if that gives you any confidence.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm setting up PayPal for payment processing next month. Is it really as awful as everyone on HN make it out to be?

</comment><comment><USER14> I am considering amazon fps for a project mostly because I'm using several other aws services and am comfortable hacking with those. I haven't had a merchant account before so I wonder with fps what advantages I'd be missing over authorize.net, braintree or paypal.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have experience with Auth.net and generally have been happy with them.

That being said, I also like VeriFone's offerings - very powerful and their rates are really good.

I've also used PayPal's Website Payments Pro and Payflow Pro - <USER2> experiences there as well.

</comment><comment><USER16> imeem.com used cybersource (authorize.net) for micro-transactions awhile back and the API was pretty straight forward. Support was very responsive. International payments is a whole other game.

</comment><comment><USER17> vxsbill.com jettis.com epoch.com

there must be lots more...

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any experience with any of those? I can google "authorize.net alternative" and find lots of "unbiased" reviews but if people here have experience with a good choice, I'd like to hear about it.

<comment><USER17> I'm currently using vxsbill, they're pretty good at what they do, segregated merchant accounts, vbv and so on. They do have a lengthy signup process though for that reason.

Epoch has been in business many years, jettis a bit less long.

I chose for vxsbill for a number of reasons, one of them is I am based in the Netherlands so it was relatively easy to get my own merchant account (but it still took more time than I liked).

If you're on the other side of the atlantic then I'd look at epoch first, then jettis, ccbill or some other reputable company.

If you can get a merchant account of your own, this will greatly reduce your exposure to trouble, as well as a significant reduction in fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I use paypal, personally.</comment>


A handheld SNES emulator that accepts original cartridges - <AUTHOR> http://gaming.icrontic.com/news/pretty-much-the-perfect-super-nintendo-childhood-dream/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty awesome. The SNES is by far my most favorite console ever. It had the highest gem-to-crap ratio of games, ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> do you mean the really chunky old ones for Gameboy??

<comment><USER4> Nope, SNES. <http://gear.ign.com/articles/116/1161572p1.html></comment></comment>


Find a Computer Job in Boston, Massachussetts - <AUTHOR> http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/united-states/massachussetts/suffolk/boston/ I have a lot more that I'll be adding soon - Harvard, MIT, Boston U, I expect many of the multinationals have offices there, like Intel, IBM, Apple and Microsoft.  I've mostly been focussing on the smaller, hard-to-find companies. <comment><AUTHOR> Oopsy... I mispelled Massachusetts in my URL. I've copied the page to a URL with the correct spelling, and will shortly put in a redirect from the wrong spelling to the correct one.

That is, when I can remember my root password. :-D</comment>


Helm – A Functionally Reactive Game Engine - <AUTHOR> http://helm-engine.org/

<comment><USER2> "Checkout the guide for more examples"

...nope. Looks cool but really early. Any particular reason the Elerea library would be particularly suitable for game development?

I'm not familiar with this particular flavor of FRP, but I'll be taking a look at the paper, looks interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think he used it solely since it's more similar to the FRP in Elm. Not completely sure though...</comment></comment>


Stranger Things, JavaScript Edition - <AUTHOR> https://livecodestream.dev/post/2020-06-03-stranger-things-javascript-edition/ <comment><USER4> This code snippets are the JavaScript equivalent of the Obsfucated C contest: amusing for insiders, a source of smug satisfaction for language warriors, and ultimately of no consequence to day-to-day practitioners.

There is a relatively small list of "gotchas" in JavaScript that stem from the early days of the language. They are easily avoided. Use a linter, "use strict," use ===, and be explicit about your type conversions.

<comment><USER5> I have a bit of a hard time with you there, I like to use maps in my code and trying to map a parser over a list of strings and getting the wrong answer is far from 'of no consequence' to me.

I'm not saying these issues make the language unusable, but you've got to be a bit more honest that you were if you want to be taken seriously.

<comment><USER4> "If I want to be taken seriously?" Was that bit of petty oneupmanship really necessary? I assure you, Alex, I'm completely unconcerned with whether you take me seriously.

You were probably just trying to show off. But in case you weren't, here's how JS works.

In JavaScript, if you're passing in a function as a parameter, the normal way is to use an arrow function. Like this: `array.map((element) => yourFunction(element));`. This gives you explicit control over which parameters are passed in to your function and how.

As a shortcut, you can provide a function _name_ rather than an arrow function. If you do so, you're saying that you want all parameters to be passed to that function. You're expected to know what those parameters are and how the function you're passing in will use them. If you don't know that, well, you're programming blind and bad things will sometimes happen. Maybe don't do that.

As with many things in JavaScript, it's better to be explicit than rely on the shortcut.

Edit: Just to be clear, here's the correct way to map an array of strings to an array of numbers in JavaScript: `array.map((s) => parseInt(s, 10));`

<comment><USER5> It wasn't meant to be oneupmanship, just that you were deliberately ignoring the core of the argument. I could make an article about why NULL in C is a wonderful feature and how it allows such nice optimizations, or I could acknowledge that it has a great cost too. You basically said "There's no downside if you are as smart and experienced as me", but with respect to Javascript, much of the world (myself included) are not. Your argument came down to "people with sufficient skill don't make this mistake", which was definitional instead of actually addressing that the default behavior of an actual usecase was not sane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I tend to avoid parseInt unless I explicitly need a specific radix. I find the Number function much more reliable in parsing numbers.

        ['1', '7', '11'].map(Number)

And if I explicitly need integers I can always filter the result

        ['1', '7', '11'].map(Number).filter(Number.isInteger)

It also doesn't silently parse '123thisisnotanumber' or `0x11`

</comment><comment><USER7> Wat [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)

</comment><comment><USER8> Say what you will about the fact that these exist in the language, I found this post interesting because although realistically and thankfully I never have to deal with these quirks day-to-day, it brought me more insight to the weird nature of this language.

More specifically, the first one was quite interesting and subtle enough that if I didn't have the `parseInt(N, 10)` rule ingrained in my head, if I had to parse a list of numbers I would try that and then scratch my head for like 30 minutes being very confused. It's also subtle enough that I could see it possibly going to production, because it could be missed if the code is only lightly tested and could be missed in a code review too.

The other one that intrigued me was the second one, and I had to look up why it works -- I didn't realize that using the + operator turns any non-parseable value into NaN.

Thanks for the cool article!

<comment><USER9> I recommend people to study few things before jumping in to something complex which will help them deal with the mess -

Understand the difference between primitive values and object values. There are few historical bugs here with typeof that are now defined in the spec (null, undefined etc are primitive values but will give object etc).

Floating point math:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating- point_arithmetic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_arithmetic)

Type coercion:

[https://exploringjs.com/deep-js/ch_type- coercion.html](https://exploringjs.com/deep-js/ch_type-coercion.html)

Prototypical inheritance:

[https://javascript.info/prototype- inheritance](https://javascript.info/prototype-inheritance)

How this works:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/this)

And you will be fine for the most part. Other things you will discover on your own.

And use typescript if you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is written like these flaws in javascript are just a quirky feature.

No, they are an embarrassment.

They don't make the language cool or interesting, they aren't tricks. They are logically incoherent nonsense.

<comment><USER11> The cooles trick in JS is that they fixed the off-by-one error using dates. Since Month are stored in an array the 5th month is... April! How did all other Languages get this one wrong? I don't know. That's the stuff that makes JS cool and interesting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The solution to Scenario #1 is still going to break. As far as I'm concerned, if you're using parseInt, you MUST explicitly define the radix. Not doing so Will absolutely bite you in the ass.

In some cases, the parseInt rules go sideways when your number string starts with a 0 (zero). That's going to be a rare occurrence that happens months after you write this code, works just fine on your machine, and is going to take days to find.

Per MDN [1]:

 _If radix is undefined, 0, or unspecified, JavaScript assumes the following:_

 _1\. If the input string begins with "0x" or "0X" (a zero, followed by lowercase or uppercase X), radix is assumed to be 16 and the rest of the string is parsed as a hexidecimal number._

 _2\. If the input string begins with "0" (a zero), radix is assumed to be 8 (octal) or 10 (decimal). Exactly which radix is chosen is implementation- dependent. ECMAScript 5 clarifies that 10 (decimal) should be used, but not all browsers support this yet. For this reason, always specify a radix when using parseInt._

 _3\. If the input string begins with any other value, the radix is 10 (decimal)._

1: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/parseInt)

</comment><comment><USER13> None of those are mysteries and have been demonstrated years and years ago... So posting clickbait...

Any engineer that allows any of the code like this in their codebase has only themselves to blame.

</comment><comment><USER14> i've been reading the "professional javascript for web developers" by matt frisbie. matt has done a great job, the book is very thorough. after reading through about a 1/3 of the book it's evident that js is a very flexible language and riddled with soooo many inconsistencies due to all the band-aids manily due to the evolution of the js standard. the section of var blew my mind. it's really sad that so many engineers are exposed to this mess. there is a reason there are so many languages that compile to js. with this pattern, it boggles my mind that the js standards folks continue to add more cruft into the language. they've done enough damage.

</comment><comment><USER15> It doesn't help that JS initially had no formal specification. So every implementation had their quirks (because there were no grammar or implementation tests).

Later formal standards created the "use strict" feature which alleviates a lot of problems.

<comment><USER16> In the beginning, there was just a single vendor (Netscape) and a single implementation (Netscape Navigator). Then there was also a license and a non compliant implentation and things became a bit weird. (E.g., missing implementations of standard functions or missing bound checks.) However there were definitions of the core language available from Netscape for each of the versions, even before the ECMA standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Everytime I think i understand JavaScript i am proven wrong. It was pretty fun read tho

</comment><comment><USER18> Common confusion has to do with how JS overloads the "+" operator.

        '9' + 1
        = "91"

        +'9' + 1
        = 10

It's all very weird though...

<comment><USER19> What would you expect string + number to do?

<comment><USER20> Kind of depends on the language. Perl converts the string to an integer if you use a math operator on a numeric string. Python just throws an error.

<comment><USER21> When I want either addition or string concatenation, I know it, I can't think of a use case where I'm happy getting either randomly. Perl got this right:

      2 + 2 == 4
      2 . 2 eq 22

You can even declare that failed conversions should throw:

      use warnings FATAL => qw(numeric)

<comment><USER22> Yes, perl is consistent

perl

        print "2" + 1
        3
        print "2" - <USER3>
        1

js

        > "2" + 1
        "21"
        > "2" - <USER3>
        1

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another fun one to figure out is:

      072 === 058 // returns true

Thankfully, doesn't work in strict mode.

<comment><USER24> If that is a combination of octal and decimal how is 058 not a parser error?

<comment><USER25> `072` is interpreted as octal, and `058` is interpreted as decimal (7·8+2 = 58). Ah, the dumpster fire that is JavaScript.

<comment><USER16> Prefixing octal numbers by zero was a common convention. The real dumpster fire was all those intermediate years without an octal notation in strict mode. (If you needed them, either forget strict mode, or choose between converting to meaningless decimals or using strings and feeding them through parseInt. What's sane about this?)

However, 058 should have been a parse error.

<comment><USER25> I agree. That inconsistency in how the `0` prefix is handled shouldn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In the second scenario, I don't think it's the pre-increment operator that's shown but the unary-plus.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Either you love it or you hate it, there's no middle ground with JavaScript

<comment><USER27> I used to hate it. Now I'm meh. I'm on the middle ground!

<comment><USER28> I'm with you, but I think the parent comment is right. Because generally comments here are either over-criticizing or over-defending JS.

<comment><USER29> The language has finally achieved "meh" status if you can use only the latest version and ignore at least half of it completely. This may or many not still make it very bad or entirely fine depending on one's perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> " ['1', '7', '11'].map(parseInt);

For what you would expect the output to be:

[1, 7, 11]

However, things get a bit off here, and the actual result is:

[1,NaN,3]

At first, this may look up very weird, but it actually has an elegant explanation. "

The elegant explanation is that JavaScript was taken over by psychopaths like bajcmartinez.

JavaScript is fine for button onClick code. Outside of that it's garbage.

<comment><USER31> parseInt has an optional second argument. map provides two arguments. Why is this an example of psychopathic design?

<comment><AUTHOR> it's just something unexpected that can happen because of the way you can pass functions as callbacks. I liked this example because the result looks really weird, and it can really happen to anyone, it's a mistake you can easily make and can go unnoticed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> JavaScript is the upside down.

</comment><comment><USER33> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSFuck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSFuck)</comment>


Career Development Is a Toxic Idea - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dillonforrest/career-development-is-a-toxic-idea-1c4fa454ebb6 <comment><USER2> The gist of the article is that flighty millennial job hoppers are bad employees and that companies won't invest in those employees "career growth" if they don't think there will be a ROI.

What I think is missing from the article is that these "job hoppers" lack of loyalty is often a learned response. Employers did this to themselves by showing employees a total lack of loyalty. Millennials only need to get burned once in their career by some company that "needed to reduce headcount to boost our earnings prior to the IPO" to understand that their loyalty will be exploited, not rewarded.</comment>


How to rebuild your attention span - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/how-to-rebuild-an-attention-span/279326/

<comment><USER2> This article distracted me for a full 5 minutes and didn't even have the common courtesy to cover a game that could be played outside of a research study. :(</comment>


Clipboard+ Changes the Way You Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clipboard-plus/clipboard-changing-the-way-you-work

<comment><USER2> It uses a suction cup? Really?</comment>


Navy Drone Wanders Into Restricted Airspace Around Washington - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/us/26drone.html?_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss <comment><USER2> I think it is cool that it is semi-autonomous.

I don't think it is cool that the US military is using it for law enforcement operations in Central America.

Can't wait until the US starts blanketing various countries with drones. Excellent precedent.

<comment><USER3> I understand Foucault observed that imperial countries tended to bring their methods of colonial control back to control their home populations, in a sense colonizing themselves. Similarly, it seems like it's only a matter of time before this ubiquitous surveillance and automated enforcement are used in developed, democratic countries.

<comment><USER4> Well the British Empire isn't exactly as large as it was in its imperial days but London could be fairly accurately described as ubiquitously surveillanced, perhaps moreso with CCTV than mere (ha) UAVs would allow, since the CCTV cams permeate urban canopies (buildings).

<comment><USER5> I was impressed (not in a good way) by this news:

[http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/web-used-to- trac...](http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/web-used-to-track-woman- who-binned-cat/)

CCTVs seem to be quite ubiquitous indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Additional info on The Register: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635807>

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex...

<comment><USER8> You're thinking of 2nd Gig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unmentioned in this story: what _happened_ when a low-flying aircraft entered restricted airspace around DC? Did they already know it was this wayward drone, either by transponder or the drone's ground crew informing them?

<comment><USER10> Actually, this question was addressed by the best line in the story: _The Navy did not describe the scene inside the ground station as operators sought to re-establish control with the drone._

<comment><USER9> The ground station was where the operators were controlling (or not, as it happened) the drone from. It wasn't the place air traffic was being monitored or where reactions to a blip in restricted airspace would be determined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder, how much damage could you actually do with that drone? I mean, if it isn't armed then there isn't much too this story - failures happen all the time.

<comment><USER12> A 600 lb helicopter landing on your house would do significant amounts of damage.

<comment><USER13> Depends on how concentrated the weight is and how hard it hits. Most roofs can handle a bunch of 200 pound roofers working on them, or tons of snow, without any difficulty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And so skynet begins.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

<comment><USER15> Funny joke.

But I'm pretty sure this reinforces how far away our robot overlords still remain.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: 0.25s to run first 50 Euler solutions. Interesting or not? - <AUTHOR> Not too long ago, I decided to finally become comfortable with Rust. So I read through the new Rust book and used Rust to solve the first 50 project Euler problems.
Here's the part that I think is interesting:
As I progressed through the problems, I started noticing that people were posting run times along with their code. So I joined in and began posting my run times with each bit of code.
Of course, once you're posting a performance-related number, you're playing a game and that gets a bit addictive. I started trying not just to solve the problems but to make the solutions fast.
After I completed the first 50 problems, which was the original goal, I measured total runtime for all 50 problems. It was just under 2 seconds. Seeing that new number led me to go back to improve the slow solutions. On some I was pretty stuck so I went to the Euler forums for ideas. In two cases, I found algorithm improvements that bought me factors of perhaps 100.
Plucking low-hanging fruit brought the total time quickly down to about 0.5 seconds. Wrestling brought it down from there to under 0.25 seconds. For example, for p14 I never did find any real algorithm improvements, but gradually brought it down to 29ms by speeding up the implementation. I changed implementation details on faster solutions, analyzed bounds, etc. and generally climbed further up the tree.
I think it would be fun to open up the code on Githup and see if together we can get down to 0.1 or 0.05 seconds. Also, I think the code can be made prettier and more Rust idiomatic without slowing down. Anyway, I was thinking of writing up a lessons learned post and making a general invite. But before spending the time, I wanted to see if there would be any interest. So ... would anyone be interested in reading a lessons learned post if I were to write one?
* All times are on my HP 7z laptop. Specs: AMD Dual-Core A9-9410 APU (2.9 GHz, up to 3.5 GHz, 1 MB cache) <comment><USER2> People on the users' forum or on the Rust subreddit might be interested!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reaching out. And thanks for pointing to the users' forum. I've now joined. (Was already listening on the Rust subreddit.)</comment></comment>