I'm looking for a co-founder, how can I start? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
I'm looking for a co-founder for a startup I've been working on for the past 3 months or so. I built a complete prototype to make sure everything works and now I'm looking to apply for seed fund to take it further through YC or 500co.
The idea is in the realm of cloud bookmarking and I'm confident of its success with the proper circumstances.
The first step is to get myself a developer-cofounder guy.
Any pointers on how to get started with this? Anyone interested in hearing more about it? <comment><USER2> best way to get a cofounder is to make traction without one:

* build a landing page and start amassing users

* hire a contractor and finish that prototype

* start blogging and building an online following

"I'm confident of its success with the proper circumstances"

_you_ make those circumstances

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's as good a place as any. By all means tell us more.</comment>


Code PHP and Python on S60v3 Mobile (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://masteranza.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/code-php-and-python-on-mobile-s60v3/ <comment><AUTHOR> Additionally author create small tweak (as Python-script) that allow input Polish characters on Nokia SU-8W.[0]

[0] [https://masteranza.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/tweak- no-3-polis...](https://masteranza.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/tweak-no-3-polish- characters-on-nokia-su-8w/)</comment>


Ask YC: What Bank account and accounting software are LLC startups using? - <AUTHOR>

What kind of bank account? Something from Chase? (http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/753-ask-37signals-how-do-you-process-credit-cards)<p>For the accounting software, something from Quicken, a simple spreadsheet? Something homegrown? Nothing at all? <comment><USER2> We use Bank of America. They offer online payroll for $15/month. Free if you pay with direct deposit and all of your employees have BofA accounts. They will prepare and file fedaral and state tax forms and payments as well. That's a very good deal.

We use Quickbooks online (QBOE). Clunky interface. MSIE only. But it's a webapp (don't worry about backups).

We use PayPal for credit cards. They are not "unprofessional" and their API is simpler than any bank or merchant company that I know of.

</comment><comment><USER3> For the least hassle, PayPal's got a few options for payment. PayPal IPN can handle monthly subscriptions, and the service charges are not bad. You need to be diligent about moving the money out of the account, and about handling customer service problems.

Quickbooks is the default, but you can just keep a shoebox for your records and give it to your accountant every so often. You need a finance pro anyway, and if you don't have a founder who is an expert, outsource. You can't afford to screw that up.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use freshbooks for all of my invoicing etc. I couldn't be more happier with it. They will even post your invoices, estimates etc. You can also take payment for your invoices online with them.

I use spreadsheets for working out cash flow etc

</comment><comment><USER5> Just get a no-fee business checking account at a convenient bank with a debit card, once you are making or spending a lot of money you can shop around for something that suits you better.

I use Fifth Third.

<comment><USER6> When I was a student, I had a big problems with Fifth Third. Really stupid stuff like "unresolvable computer errors." I had to close an account and re- open it to solve the problem.

Needless to say, I didn't keep that new account open for long.

5/3 for the fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Washington Mutual for Bank, Quickbooks for Accounting

</comment><comment><USER8> I use GnuCash, which isn't great, but seems to be enough to keep track of the few transactions I have.

</comment><comment><USER9> Eating my own dog food.

</comment><comment><USER10> For my consulting business I had Bank of America Small Business account and used Quickbooks a little bit, but mostly did ad hoc accounting.

</comment><comment><USER11> Local bank with great customer service, convenient hours, etc.and Quickbooks -- although the software is extremely lacking on the Mac.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you need multiple user access for accounting, I recommend Less Accounting - think Quickbooks but online.

</comment><comment><USER13> fifth thirds for the bank account, braintree for credit card processing, and homegrown-turned-SaaS billing software corduroy: <http://corduroysite.com/>

</comment><comment><USER14> We're still in the development stage so we haven't even thought about this yet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Bank account is with the localish large bank, PNC.</comment>


American carnage - <AUTHOR> https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/04/american-carnage <comment><USER2> > Fifty-two thousand Americans died of overdoses in 2015—about four times as > many as died from gun homicides and half again as many as died in car > accidents.

Bloody hell!</comment>


The Spy Who Drove Me - <AUTHOR> https://www.gq.com/story/spy-or-uber-driver <comment><USER2> People are terribly sloppy at not discussing sensitive work, even when they've been trained and should know better, never even thinking about security implications. As a retired military guy with certain specialized, though rather dated, knowledge, I happened to be sitting in a restaurant prior to a business meeting a few years ago near a military base that has a large civilian contract support and research presence near it. There were a couple of guys having lunch at the next table and apparently "catching up". One guy was chatty. In the half hour I was there, I learned of his organization's budget cuts, where their resources were going to be refocused and what the priorities were, the likely reason certain things were cut because of specific technical issues, how much new work they were expecting on a certain program, and a dozen other things that a military or corporate spy would have loved to hear. I glanced over once and he was wearing his security badge right out in public so I was able to identify his name and organization. Idiot.

<comment><USER3> I sat in an somewhat deserted wing of an airport one day and this financial guy went off loudly on the phone for an hour about how their client was too stupid to understand the deal and gave no fucks about the long term damage the deal would do......

After a while I figured out he was talking about a wonky bonding deal and the stupid guy was that state's new governor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Engadget link is a weird blog repost of [https://www.gq.com/story/spy-or- uber-driver](https://www.gq.com/story/spy-or-uber-driver), which is actually a well written and fascinating story.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! We've updated the link from [https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/03/when- your-uber-driver-is...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/03/when-your-uber- driver-is-a-spy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was taking a lyft to the airport in St. Louis a couple months back coming home from a geospatial conference and the driver heard me talking to my coworker about maps and mentioned that he too worked on geospatial data as he worked for the national geospatial intelligence agency.

Considering how government salaries go I feel like this is the more likely spy in your Uber.

<comment><USER7> Oh man I'd be sucked in. Having geography degrees is a lonely thing in a world that doesn't need a whole lot of us...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This "older woman, somewhere in her 60s" probably just consumes a lot of news, as is common for people in that age group.

"DNI" isn't exactly a secret acronym for Director of National intelligence; if you enter the acronym into a news search engine you'd see it's commonly used in news articles. Also the website is literally DNI.gov.

I'd agree the North Korea thing is weird, but maybe she was just making conversation and dug herself into a hole. Plenty of Uber drivers have also told me vague stories about times they visited Country X long ago (many of which I thought didn't check out, but smiled and nodded anyway) just to keep the conversation going.

Certainly it is a possibility that the Uber gig could be some sort of cover, but I think it's unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems unlikely that "Gloria" was a spy, because if she was, she's not very good at it. A real spy wouldn't have mentioned having visited North Korea. Mentioning that just calls her out as someone who isn't your typical Uber driver, and a real spy's whole M.O. is to blend into the background.

What seems more possible is that she was what intelligence types call an "asset" \-- some non-spy person who's in a position to get their hands on information a real spy is interested in. The job of the spy is to convince the asset to put their hands on that information, and then to hand it over to them. If the spy does this right, the asset doesn't even realize they're handing the information over to a spy -- at least, not until long after the spy has reported the info back to HQ and vanished.

It's not hard to imagine a real spy, knowing that lots of highly trusted security types were going to all be together in Aspen at a conference, sidling up to all the Uber drivers in the area and making them an offer: "keep a list of the names of all your passengers and where you drove them from and to over these four days, bring me that list when the four days are over, and I'll pay you $1,000. And if you can get any of those people to tell you anything about North Korea, bring me those tips and I'll pay you an extra $500 each." If they ask why you want that info, you tell them you work for a defense contractor who's looking for an inside track in the acquisitions sweepstakes. They're not going to check, so you just need a cover story plausible enough to quiet their conscience.

Driving for Uber isn't exactly the royal road to riches, so that would be a pretty attractive offer for the driver. Most wouldn't go for it, but maybe a few do. And most of the information those few would bring you will be useless, but who knows, maybe there'll be a diamond hidden in there somewhere -- someone actually blabs something meaningful about North Korea, or the driver logs a trip taking some natsec big shot to meet their mistress, thus furnishing you with possible blackmail material. Even if all the drivers in Aspen take you up on it the total cost will be miniscule in terms of the amounts intelligence agencies throw around, so it's OK that it's a long shot.

<comment><USER10> > What seems more possible is that she was what intelligence types call an > "asset"

You seem to be using "spy" to mean "intelligence officer"; most of what in common parlance are "spies" are external agents or assets of intelligence services, not the officers who manage them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Shane, who had also come to see our suspicions of Gloria as silly and > paranoid, was now suspicious all over again, as was I. "What were you doing > in North Korea, Gloria?" he asked again. "Tell me, Gloria."

Over here in Eastern Europe this way of putting questions would have gotten that passenger out of the taxi in a matter of seconds (especially the "tell me, Gloria" part), with some departing swear words for good measure.

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe she had travelled to north Korea as part of a low-key religious delegation, hence the reluctance to discuss. Or maybe she hadn't been there at all and was just trying to make interesting conversation.

Seriously though - this article is not newsworthy. I mean, at the very least do some basic research. FB profile, interview friends. Take a bunch of different Ubers and fish for trends in questioning.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'll just point out that there's nothing particular to Uber that makes being a hired driver a honeypot job for foreign agents. The headline seems like clickbait for the #DeleteUber crowd, especially with lines like this:

> Thanks to Uber and Lyft's gig economy it's much easier. No union, no problem > (for them at least).

How does being in a union make you less likely to be a spy for a foreign government?

</comment><comment><USER14> The original story that this one is referencing: [https://www.gq.com/story/spy-or-uber-driver](https://www.gq.com/story/spy-or- uber-driver)

</comment><comment><USER15> Whenever I visit a foreign country for work and my host company provides a car and driver, I always assume that the driver is being paid to listen in on our conversation - either that, or the car is bugged. That may not be the case, but it's sloppy to have a sensitive business conversation in front of a third party and just assume that he or she can't understand what you are saying.

</comment><comment><USER16> Kind of funny that the first thing I see on this page is Oath begging me to let them spy on me.

</comment><comment><USER17> IMHO Gloria is just choosing targets, that's why she was deliberately asking provocative questions. The real spies will handle them at their hotel. You'd think that by asking questions about north Korea and Russia, they'd be targeting left leaning political activists, you might be wrong, they might be on the contrary targeting right wing radicals. An angry reaction from the passenger towards Russia/North Korea might be what she's looking for

</comment><comment><USER18> If "Gloria" were truly a spy then this would imply that whatever government she worked for was inside Uber's network enough to send certain targets to their chosen drivers. And are probably able to track whomever they want like the "celebrity stalker" thing Uber was doing a while back.

Or "Gloria" was just sitting on the event because she knew that's where the money was, was up on politics and knew who Julia Ioffe is because she (somewhat famously) got fired for saying on the twitter that Trump was having sexual relations with his daughter but didn't want to say _that 's_ how she knew she was Russian.</comment>


Cloudflare is protecting sites that host breached DB, cracking and hacking tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.nulled.to/forum/7-cracked-programs/ <comment><USER2> Looks like Cloudflare's normal firewall.

[https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/203366080-W...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/203366080-Why-do-I-see-a-captcha-or-challenge-page-Attention- Required-trying-to-visit-a-site-protected-by-CloudFlare-as-a-site-visitor-)

Unless there is a specific TOS violation I don't see a problem.

I'd guess lots of visitors to that site use VPNs or Tor, and that the site gets targeted by some malicious traffic. The captcha may keep some of the automated malicious traffic out.

Probably annoying for the users though?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main problem I see is that a public company is aiding an illegal website by protecting it against crawlers/scrapers and DDOS attacks. They already got backlash by protecting 8chan: [https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/04/cloudflare- will-stop-servi...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/04/cloudflare-will-stop- service-to-8chan-which-ceo-matthew-prince-describes-as-a-cesspool-of-hate/)

<comment><USER3> If that site is doing something illegal, then pursue them by legal means. Don't make the internet worse by DOSing them.</comment></comment></comment>


You've Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/fashion/02voicemail.html

<comment><USER2> Funny, I get so few voice mails these days that I always listen to them. I guess they're almost special...

On the other hand, I've disabled SMS on my cell phone starting about a month ago. So far it's worked out ok. I've had to explicitly tell a few of my heavy texter friends, but other than that it hasn't really been an issue. One of my friends, who works in the emergency room, seems to be SMS only (i.e. never checks email, voice mail, or answers calls) so that's the most difficult.</comment>


Ask HN: Coders:Do you create your own graphics/icons, and how did you learn? - <AUTHOR>

After a couple of decades coding, I've decided it's getting a little ridiculous now I still rely completely on things like Glyphicons, and HTML theme marketplaces. Now, I subscribe partly to the notion one should focus on their area of expertise, but I really would like to be able to whip up something at least clean and original, if not exactly hugely artistic. Enough, at least, to really appreciate what the real pros do. So my question is, has anyone here been in the same position, and what tools/course/books did you use to get started? <comment><USER2> I personally do. However, I haven't been coding for decades. I learned just for my startup and mainly deal with frontend with my co-founder on backend. Still, it wasn't necessary for me to create icons. It is nice to know though. Plus, I enjoy design. I would DL inkscape (unless you have adobe illustrator) and get svg files of icons you like. See how they have done it. Most icons are very simple shapes. I personally think they are more effective when bare and simple. Its as simple as just drawing and connecting lines. Smoothing edges. And most of it is actually fairly precise / logical and.less artistic (I.e. no need to learn to draw). With time you'll get better. And you can create cooler and more complex icons, logos, and so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I shall definitively give Inkscape a go, and downloading existing SVGs is a good idea, thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I used to try to do that stuff, but it really is truly the definition of a waste your time. I mean, doing it once to get appreciation for the experts, and to justify the value of those things is worth it. But continuing to blast your head against the wall ends up being pretty worthless.

With the availability of Glyphicons, or FontAwesome, or the numerous cheap assets you can buy it doesn't make much sense to spend your time on an area you're not proficient in. (Unless you want to become a designer?)

<comment><AUTHOR> My biggest motivations were having an understanding of the process, and being able to make something original, rather than just downloading it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had an art degree and a bit of work designing logos for various projects before I got into coding, so at least for me, the process was reversed.

I'd suggest doing some tutorials on [http://psd.tutsplus.com/](http://psd.tutsplus.com/) maybe, though I don't like how hard they're pushing premium content now, and I more or less deleted my own account in disgust after their passwords were dumped, I found them to be a pretty good resource.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, I do all of that stuff. I started doing it initially because I couldn't really afford to pay someone to do all of it. Bought a book, got a copy of PS, and away we go. I'm not a good designer - very poor actually. I make up for it by going to Shutterstock 1x every 3-4 years, buying a monthly membership, and downloading 400-600 stock illustrations and graphics. I then take those and convert them to my needs. It's not great but it works "good enough".</comment>


Ask: How do I memorize mathematical proofs for my calculus exam? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I studying computer science, taking a few courses of basic mathematics (Linear Algebra and Calculus II).
Our exams require us to mostly cite well known proofs, like the Bolzano–Weierstrass theorem etc. Altogether there are close to 50 such proofs to memorize.
Regardless of my understanding of the material, most of the students memorize these proofs, as there are very difficult, non trivial and are marked in a very harsh manner.
What do would be the best way to learn these theorems off by heart? <comment><USER2> Memorisation sucks - I remember having to memorise a similar number of proofs, years ago. (And then again a year or so later, in electromagnetism.)

Here are some things that helped me, personally:

Proofs usually have two things that you can focus on if you're having trouble getting them internalised: _intro formalism_ and some _key twists_.

The intro formalism is just the stuff that will be used in the proof - you've seen this: new definitions, maybe new symbols, and maybe some assumptions and 'wordy stuff'. Focus on understanding and recalling these _first_. Even if you can find it easier to recall other, more mathematical facts about the proof, it's possible you'll end up with a muddled argument, because the intro stuff usually makes things precise, and eliminates edge cases.

Once you've got the beginning formalism sorted out in your mind, the rest is the hard stuff: the key twists, the actual logic being performed. What I found useful is to avoid memorising every logical step in a derivation as a separate thing. Instead, memorise a few in-between steps and _construct exercises for yourself_ by trying to go from the intro stuff and the in-between steps to the actual final proof.

I used to have a little notebook with my own exercises in them, all constructed from proofs that I had to memorise. I didn't do this for each and every proof, just for the ones that were conceptually troublesome.

The key is to make the memorisation of proofs more like regular mathematics with exercises - with the full proofs being the solution to the exercises.

Another point - and this is somewhat unorthodox: for very hard proofs, the key mathematical machinery being used can be set at a level that's actually too high for your current course. I found this quite frustrating, so (in these cases only) I decided to focus on (almost) rote memorisation first, and _then_ understanding. I know that goes against the usual advice of understanding always trumping mere recall, but exams that force you to memorise lots of proofs are an artificial condition anyway; real-world maths isn't like this. So weigh this for yourself - maybe start with memorising hard stuff, then gradually chip away at it and try to understand it if you can.

All this obviously takes time, and for ~50 proofs this implies a substantial amount of work. I'm guessing you still have a fair amount of time left until your exam, so it's best to do this stuff early and consistently.

I've got a chapter on memorisation in my book about maths-heavy exams [1] - but it's not a free ebook. However, if you want it, send me an email and I'll send you the .mobi if you wish (or we can share via dropbox, rapidshare - we're spoilt for choice :)) - maybe some parts of it could help.

[1]: www.amazon.com/Exam-Mastery-excel-maths-heavy- ebook/dp/B00AMU20HE/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1355929591&sr=8-4&keywords=exam+mastery

</comment><comment><USER3> What a bummer. When I discovered that the best way to get an A in my math theory classes was to memorize proofs, I pretty much guaranteed that I wasn't going to get good at math.

Before I discovered this, I did the homework and learned from it, and I tried to figure out proofs in the moment during exams. One of my proudest moments was on an advanced linear algebra test, where I proved a theorem in a way that was not anticipated by the professor. He wrote a nice note next to my proof. But I missed more than I got, and I received a B+ in the class.

Later, I figured out that most professors rarely present completely new theorems on undergraduate exams, so I copied everything down and especially attended the pre-exam review sessions. I learned everything by heart. If you asked me how to prove anything that the prof had reviewed, I could bounce it to you immediately. I think my abstract algebra teacher had been doing some of it on the spot, because when I regurgitated one of his proofs back to him on an exam, he wrote a nice note next to it as well. It didn't feel nearly as great it had when it was really my own creativity, I remember thinking, "don't you realize you did this in class?"

Now, of course you can't learn it by rote. It's impossible to learn something as complicated as a proof, even a short one, without understanding it. So my advice about learning the proofs by heart is to make sure you completely understand them. I found that I still did get stuck, and I came up with little memory tricks - not mathematical things, the kind of tricks you'd use to remember people's names.

There was a rare breed of student who didn't memorize the proofs, and only sometimes came to class. They'd get the questions right on the exams anyway. The professors loved them.

I doubt I'm smart enough, but I do feel that I might have eliminated my chance of become one of these students by making sure I was an A student who memorized proofs rather than a B student, for a while, who understood the underpinnings and used logic and deduction (gasp! mathematical reasoning).

The best solution, I'd say, is to go ahead and memorize those proofs, since grades do matter an you aren't getting into a top grad school with mainly B's (and if you're doing this for engineering or something, I guess to some extent it's just something to get through). But if you care about math theory and want to be good at it, make sure you spend a lot of time working independently on problems that don't have an answer you can memorize.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think that memorizing is the perfect approach to learn mathematical proofs. Generally, you should be able to try the proof based on your understanding of the concepts, and hence if you can't proof them, it only means that you didn't get the concept well. When I used to be in the CPGE [1], we had one exam after two years intensive courses of maths, physics philosophy and engineering sciences. And we had pretty much everything demonstrated. The only way we, other students and I, dealt with it is by understanding the concept very well, rereading the courses and going through problems. It's been 6 years now that I left CPGE, And I am still able to proof the Bolzano- weirstrass theorem, and I am sure that most of the other students could also.

[1]I don't know if you are familiar with the french educational system, and specifically the CPGE( classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles). It consists of two very intensive years of mathematics, physics, philosophy and engineering science.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. understand the basic components of each proof 2\. practice and apply 3\. goto 2

I recently got through my undergrad math courses and was also looking for a way to memorize all the formulas, proofs, ect. A few different methods for consideration: holistic learning methods mnemonics loci/memory palaces

Personally, my favorite was to use a mnemonic or image then continually using this when applying to practice problems really helped it stick in my mind.

For a simple example the integration by parts formula: integral[ u _dv ] = uv - integral[ v_ du ] I would remember the right hand side as "UV [uv] 'voodoo' [v * du]" and imagine a shaman lining his voodoo dolls up inside a tanning bed as to burn them with the UV rays! Once you have the basic parts like that, writing in where the minus and integral signs go is second nature from practicing and applying.

Hope this gets you started

</comment><comment><USER6> It's basically impossible (or inadvisable) to learn proofs without understanding. Break the long proofs into sections like you might with a long function. Try to write summaries of the higher order steps. Try to uncover the intuition behind the proof or theorem.

My personal method for studying maths was to have latex versions of my notes. This is great because it makes lookup very easy (just ctrl f). I have a program that gets all the theorems and quizzes me on them and records how much I can recall. When it asks a question I rewrite the proof in full and only check back when absolutely necessary, then compare to the notes. Your quizzing program can focus on theorems that you did badly on.

It's important to focus your efforts. Pay special attention to the proofs that seem important or that a lot of other theorems depend on.

<comment><AUTHOR> what's the name of the program?

<comment><USER6> It's just something I wrote myself. Fairly adhoc - it just checks through the latex notes for theorems and keeps them in a list with a current score. The picking is done using softmax selection which picks randomly with a bias towards very low scores. When I complete a theorem I enter how well I did at recalling it and then it updates the score using temporal difference learning. I'm going to clean up the code and put something like it on github sometime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What helped me to learn proofs was applying the logic and axioms they relied on over and over again. When working through problem sets (or doing extra problems for study), don't just stop when you can cite the theorem, but work through why it's applicable to that specific use case.

You can then start working through the general cases, until that's the way that you start viewing the problems in the first place. If you decide to go further in math, this process will really prove out (pun intended), as the basic logic will stick with you, even if you don't remember the name of the theorem you're trying to use.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://ankisrs.net/>

I'm not sure what kind of cards you should make for this as I didn't use it to learn proofs (only starting uni this fall) but I've used it for everything from equations and syntax to poems.

The key is to break the info into the smallest pieces that still make sense. You'll also inadvertently learn a lot by making the cards.

</comment><comment><USER9> Check out this guest post by Scott Young. He was able to complete an entire MIT computer science curriculum in less than a year. [http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/10/26/mastering-linear- algeb...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/10/26/mastering-linear-algebra- in-10-days-astounding-experiments-in-ultra-learning/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very impressive, however I fear that he doesn't cover specifically the issue of learning by heart theorems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Find a book that has well written proofs and then just write them out on a first reading while looking at them.On a second reading,write them out without looking at a book.It eventually just sticks.I suggest using calculus books by Thomas&Finney or Apostol.</comment>


The Missing Link: Explaining ELF Static Linking, Semantically [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/research/papers/kell16missing-preprint.pdf <comment><USER2> Root cause analysis.

1\. Why is static linking[1] complicated? Because we want to 'reuse' libraries unmodified.

2\. Why do we want to use libraries unmodified? Because libraries can get quite complex, and building them isn't always trivial.

3\. Why are libraries complex to build? (Here I must resort to a weasel word.) Largely because we want to provide the ability to reuse libraries unmodified[2].

Oops, did I say root cause? We just have circular reasoning. I'm working on coming up with an alternative: [https://lists.tildeverse.org/hyperkitty/list/tildeclub@lists...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/message/Z7EBQ2ZCBIQ7YMA7Q3RUJWWB4LBIFS3M/)

[1] Dynamic linking has other values, like reducing memory requirements. But not static linking.

[2] Here's an example, about how Unix `cat` has gained bloat over time, purely out of compatibility concerns: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510#11341175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510#11341175)

</comment><comment><USER3> At a glance the paper looks good and made sense to me. But the codes went way above my head. I think reading more papers on this topic will give me more insight.</comment>


Dudepins - A social pinboard for men is live - <AUTHOR> http://dudepins.com?utm_source=hackernews Dudepins is a website to discover and share the coolest stuff for dudes. We at dudepins don't discriminate between dudes, sirs, dukes, bros gentlemen and other men of honor. Dudes like sharing stuff. Man up. Sign up. Pin up. http://dudepins.com/ <comment><USER2> Gentlemint.com manteresting.com pinterest.com Why is yours any different or better than the original and/or the clones?

<comment><USER3> Clearly, there is nothing different nor is it any better or worse.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are here to provide a platform for Men to share strictly male content.</comment>


Coming Soon, Free Hosting for Facebook Apps - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2007/11/12/free-facebook-app-hosting/ <comment><USER2> This is great news for those that want to give their app a try without too much costs, it will also solve the potential scalability issues for some apps that might have unexpected growth rates. Although, I doubt any new application would experience what iLike did at the beginning.

Its also interesting, since for developers the hosting issues was _one_ of the major advantages of OpenSocial to FB which is now solved.

Although this is not that important of a news but theoretically it could potentially change FB as a platform. As Marc Andreessen introduced his views on platforms and categorized FB as a level two platform which is a plug-in API. One of the disadvantages of this platform was the cost on the developer in terms of bandwidth and hosting of their applications. This problem was solved in the ultimate platform which is the level three. So maybe in Mark's definition, FB is now getting somewhat closer to a 2.5 platform! <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/09/the-three-kinds.html></comment>


Google Analytics Integrator: likes, tweets, youtube videos, page scroll - <AUTHOR> http://www.ata.io/google-analytics-integrator

<comment><AUTHOR> I look forward to get feedback to improve this tool even better. It tracks likes, tweets, page scrolls, linkedin shares, youtube video watches with percentage and more. Free and open source.</comment>


Minimum Viable Ops - Deploying your first Django App to Amazon EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://eddychan.com/post/18484749431/minimum-viable-ops-deploying-your-first-django-app-to

<comment><USER2> Thank you for posting this, it's exactly the kind of guide I've been looking for. I have a django site running on a local server at my workplace, that will only ever have four or five users. I have considered making the site public so that my colleagues can use the site from home as well as at work.

Do you know what would it cost to keep a site like this running for a second year, once I've run through my free year?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad somebody's reading it :) Thank you.

Looking at Amazon's pricing page (<http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing>) if you stick with 1 micro Linux instance past the free first year it's $0.02 per hour which works out to $14/month. Add some data in/out costs and I reckon you'd be looking at about $16/month.

Move up a step to the small Linux instance at $0.085c per hour and it becomes ~$70 per month but I imagine that could support a fair few users.</comment></comment>


Facebook, privacy, and the uncanny valley of advertising - <AUTHOR> http://ryanwaggoner.com/2011/01/were-in-the-uncanny-valley-of-advertising/ <comment><USER2> "What's the difference between recommendations from a friend and recommendations from a perfectly targeted advertising network? If anything, the friend is likely to be less useful."

No. A friend is much more likely to have your best interests at heart, especially when choosing between you and the advertiser. A targeted advertisement will usually be designed to benefit the advertiser/product, and not for you.

Although, I'm interested in the potential in target advertising's version of the big religious/motivational billboards. Imagine a Google search history that seems to be leading to suicide, and then ads popping up to convince you otherwise...

</comment><comment><USER3> You might want to re-save that article's image, it's half a meg. You can get it to 10th the size with just saving it as JPG, at ~65% quality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Duh. Thanks :)</comment></comment>


Build your own Command Line with ANSI escape codes - <AUTHOR> http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/BuildyourownCommandLinewithANSIescapecodes.html <comment><USER2> Isn't this a step back from curses? It only works on vt100-compatible terminals? ...or is this an indication that vt100-compatible terminals are all that's left?</comment>


Ask HN: How much does company name matter on a resume? - <AUTHOR> TLDR: Does the company names matter increase prestige of your resume? For example, does a job at a large corporation like Dell or IBM (obviously not on the level of a unicorn tech company) impart any kind of prestige?
I'm choosing between two internship offers at companies. One of them is Dell, the other is a lesser known but global company who's offer I have already accepted (they pressured me to decide that day so I don't feel too bad about declining). With Dell I'd be a "software intern" and they can't tell me anything more about it. With the second company I would be working on doing Full-Stack development to build (another) IoT product, which seems very interesting to me.
I feel this question is a bit cynical, but I think it is important to have some perspective. At the end of the day, I know it is my decision and it is only for the summer but I just can't see why a brand of company matters, especially if they are not "Google". I can always work full-time for a company doing what I truly enjoy (seems to be full-stack dev).
Of course, this is also an important question for prospective full-time employees. <comment><USER2> Personally, I care more about _what_ an prospective employee was doing rather than the _where_. If you are a Software Engineer at Unknown Widgets Corp (UWC) that has been heading up a small team of engineers to build a complete product, then I'm more interested than if you're a Software Engineer that has been silo'd in a very specific area at Dell.

All that being said the company you're at does matter for a couple of reasons. One is there is a small level of bias towards known companies. If two engineers have been doing the same kind of work at Facebook or UWC, I'll probably have a slight unconscious bias towards the engineer from Facebook.

Ultimately, I think the best bet is to go where you think you'll be happiest and have the most opportunities to _learn_. It's good to think about the impact that decisions will have on your long-term career, but the best way to get ahead is to be a stellar engineer. The happier you are in your day-to-day work, the more effort you'll put in to growing as an engineer to meet the challenges. And the more challenges that you're faced with, and the more smart people that surround you, the better opportunity you'll have to grow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Go with what sounds more like the interesting work (plus, it shows you keep your word).

Yes, the company name can have an effect. I worked early on for a major bank (global name), which made other banks more likely to look at and hire me, which made it even more likely major banks would want me, so I worked for lots of them. Got a bit typecast (but, that's where the money was ...).

So after Dell, you'd perhaps give off more of an "enterprise" vibe (and likely have very dull work!).

With the other company, it sounds like you'd be able to show more practical experience, and a less staid choice of company, which could make you more interesting to younger companies.

<comment><USER4> > So after Dell, you'd perhaps give off more of an "enterprise" vibe (and > likely have very dull work!).

I agree. I am weary when I see big company names on a resume. I've had interviews where someone's whole job was creating DTOs for a service layer or writing queries in a database. That's the worst kind of pigeonhole and it happens in big companies where everyone is in their own silo.

People become their inputs (specs) and their outputs (code) and people are layered in the same way code is, like an assembly line. And since the inputs and outputs are standardized, whole layers can be outsourced. As a business owner, I can appreciate the benefits of predictable results, but as a developer and a human, I can't justify hiring someone who is simply a cog in a machine and happy being that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> All thing being equal, yes, the company name does matter (at least as much as what you do there), to most people spending the requisite 200 milliseconds scanning your resume and/or profile 5 years from now. That is, again, assuming all other things about the role description being roughly equal.

But in a grossly imbalanced situation such as yours:

 _With Dell I 'd be a "software intern" and they can't tell me anything more about it. With the second company I would be working on doing Full-Stack development to build (another) IoT product, which seems very interesting to me._

Where company A seems eager to heap responsibility and challenge after challenge on you, while company B refuses to even tell you anything about the role other than that you'll be an "intern"... and given that company B, while you could say they're a household name, isn't exactly a Google, Facebook or Tesla... or anything close to it, really...

... then I hope you won't have any hesitancy in choosing the role offered by company A.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not just the name, it's the name in the niche.

If A (Dell/IBM) is a generic job, a small piece in a long, long, generic chain, and B (lesser known but global) is much better known in your area of interest, then B's name counts a lot more.

If A (Dell/IBM) is a global name, but you'll be in a small team, for example, designing chip architecture, and B is a bunch of rambling idiots that got lucky and now believe they will take over the world, then choose A.

Make the choice based on your department, role, and manager (the more senior the better is often, though not always, true), not overall company name.</comment>


Twitter Cofounder Evan Williams Reported To Have Sold Twitter Stake Early - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/10/03/twitter-cofounder-ev-williams-reported-to-have-sold-twitter-stake-early-which-may-cost-him-billionaire-status/ <comment><USER2> I am sorry, but this article is inane. At the time he cashed out, there were no guarantees regarding the size of the eventual liquidity event. He cashed out a portion of his stake for an assured $340 million which is more than enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life (and likely a few succeeding generations). Why does it matter that he might not have missed an "opportunity" to be a billionaire? I guess the author has never heard the phrase, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

<comment><USER3> It's amazing how Forbes has fallen in the last 10yrs. It used to be the go to magazine along with fortune but Forbes now looks like a collection of amateur blog posts with sensationalist headlines to get clicks.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely, they love their lists that make you click through 10+ pages reloading ads every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 2 hours later they printed another story correcting this nonsense, instead of pulling this article as a whole.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/10/03/twitter- cofou...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/10/03/twitter-cofounder- evan-williams-a-billionaire-after-12-stake-in-company-is-revealed/)

<comment><USER6> There really is no "they", forbes.com is just a platform for bloggers nowadays.</comment></comment>


Is "Star Trek" Socialist? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/armchair-economics/83f766828b33 <comment><USER2> Black-and-white cultural ideas like "socialism vs. capitalism" may be curious relics in a few centuries — think about the fact that even paper currency is a pretty new thing (740 B.C. China) and you get a taste for how things can change (or look at the rise of credit cards over the last 50 years).

<comment><USER3> Nicely said. My favourite insights into this system were in deep space nine, where many people did work for a living, and earned latinum.

I for one, am very much for sharing/pooling of necessary resources, but even in Star Trek, they didn't really explain the hows.</comment></comment>


On elevator pitches: Your solution is not my problem - <AUTHOR> http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/08/your-solution-is-not-my-problem.html

<comment><USER2> Summary:

When describing what you do, or pitching, start from the listener's point of view, not yours.

Now go read the article where he takes too many words in too many colors and too many fonts to say "I'm important, listen to me! Listen to me! You're an idiot!"

Sometimes how you say something is just as important as what you say.

<http://www.penzba.co.uk/SoothSayer.html>

I wish he'd said it less psychotically.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell? - <AUTHOR> We've had a couple of these threads in the past. It's time for another one.<p>If you have any side projects that you've built and that you no longer have time for, list them here and let's see if others want to buy it from you. <comment><AUTHOR> I'm selling TipTonight.com, a dead simple digital tipping platform.

Creators create a simple profile and can accept tips via Credit & Debit cards, Apple & Google Pay, Paypal, and Venmo.

No account is required for tippers. Creators can see who tipped them as well as a message if they included one.

Its a Rails 5 API application with Vue.js / Nuxt frontend.

Insignificant revenue to share. We haven't put hardly any marketing behind it. The code is clean and could be easily repurposed to fit any scenario where tipping is relevant.

Learn more here: [https://www.sideprojectors.com/project/14652/tiptonight- simp...](https://www.sideprojectors.com/project/14652/tiptonight-simple-fast- secure-digital-tipping)

Reach out to email@example.com if interested.</comment>


I'm a technical founder looking for a non-technical co-founder. - <AUTHOR>

Is there a better way to find each other?
I have a working product and need someone to help with customer acquisition and raising funding.
To discuss further, please email firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> What's your product? What's the industry? Where are you located? Does your cofounder need to live/move close to you?

<comment><USER3> Yeah - you should provide more info here rather than just getting blind emails.

People need more info to gauge their interest in wanting to email you.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, will re-do this</comment></comment></comment>


Antimony – A fresh look at CAD software - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/ <comment><USER2> Okay, I'm a CAD software developer instead of an actual CAD engineer, so my perspective may be a bit biased. But this CSG (constructive solid geometry) idea is not in any way new. The reason it's kind of obscure now is that spline-based boundary representation systems (B-reps) took over the market decades ago. If you think about, say, the latest car designs, those free- flowing shapes are pretty easy to do in B-rep, and quite hard in CSG. [1]

I've worked in CAD translators for the last two decades. Though both the IGES and STEP file formats include CSG modeling features, I have never implemented them. To the best of my recollection, I've never even had a request from a customer to do so. A pity, I think they'd be fun to try to implement... and most of the thorny bugs would officially be the B-rep geometry kernel's, not mine. :)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_representation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_representation)

<comment><USER3> And Auto-CAD had a Lisp engine in the '80s ... You could automate almost any function of the drawing system, build "macros" as well as patterns and even alter the DXF generation.

<comment><USER4> AutoCad got AutoLisp as an update to R6 in January 1986. AutoCad got solid modelling in R11 with the "Advanced Modelling Extension" add-on in 1990.

The whole history of AutoCad's feature evolution is that of a successful startup. There's an overview on AutoDesk's website:

[http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/autocad- release-...](http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/autocad-release- history.html)

<comment><USER5> I think it was release 2.18, retroactively named R6 maybe. John Walker and I hacked up a p.d. thing called xlisp by David Betz, removing some of the best bits (the 'X' parts) and fitting it into its own 64k 'small model' (x86) segment. I was a bit of a lisp nut, but even I (product manager at the time too) thought lisp as a 'macro language' for AutoCAD was a tinge crackers. Glad we did it though!

<comment><USER4> Yes, according to the timeline, it was 2.18, but it lists 2.1 as R6, so despite it's huge impact in allowing the creation of tools like AEC- Architectural it apparently doesn't get its own integer. As a scripting language it seemed to me a pretty good choice, because sat reasonably well with the command-line based interface in that it somewhat reflected its <command> <argument>* format.

And of course in the 1980's Lisps were tech's "the sharing economy". One of the reasons I went to vocational school to study drafting was to get my hands on AutoCad to get my hands on AutoLisp to get my hands on a Lisp. In 1991, I was doing timed Cad competitions using R10. My secret weapon was twenty minutes writing my own "PGP" command aliases in AutoLisp with edlin before I started drawing. That's how I won my copy of R11.

So I'm glad you did it too. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> > And of course in the 1980's Lisps were tech's "the sharing economy". One of > the reasons I went to vocational school to study drafting was to get my > hands on AutoCad to get my hands on AutoLisp to get my hands on a Lisp. In > 1991, I was doing timed Cad competitions using R10. My secret weapon was > twenty minutes writing my own "PGP" command aliases in AutoLisp with edlin > before I started drawing. That's how I won my copy of R11.

That sounds like a great story. Would you consider sharing it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having used OpenSCAD, Solidworks and NX fairly extensively, I can say that "code-based" solid modelling systems are good for some specific things - anything that is highly parametric, for example:

* Gears and sprockets * Fasteners (nuts & bolts) * Electrical components (ICs, etc)

For anything else they aren't at all suitable. It's just a million times easier to be able to click on dimensions _on the actual sketch_ and change them. You're never going to see a power tool or a tractor or whatever designed in OpenSCAD.

Few 2D drawing programs are specified in code - the only ones I can think of are things like TikZ for Latex, and ... well there's a reason only Latex geeks use them. They aren't very easy to use.

The main reason they exist is that it is _much_ (like 100 times) easier to write a code-drive CAD system than a GUI-driven one.

<comment><USER8> > The main reason they exist is that it is much (like 100 times) easier to > write a code-drive CAD system than a GUI-driven one.

The reason they exist is because they are very well suited for making changes on the model ... on shallow and deep level. It might be easer to "click on dimensions on the actual sketch and change them" for a few elements, but try making a fundamental change without code.

GUI vs. code/config file preference seems to be a personal disposition not only for CAD but for all kinds of software.

<comment><USER9> A parametric modeler, i.e. every major CAD system in use since 1995, allows you to specify your dimensions based on formulas that use relationships between components. If you look at Solidworks or CATIA and think "man it must be slow to point and click to set dimensions" you are missing how it is actually used in professional practice.

The difference between point and clicking dimensions in those tools and how they are supposed to be used is greater than the difference between pecking in Notepad and being a power user in Emacs/Vim.

<comment><USER8> Exactly my point. "Based on formulas that use relationships between components" means that they have internal language which if used well helps enormously.

<comment><USER10> No, it means they have an algebraic constraint solver. If you don't have this feature, you don't really have a CAD program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks nice. I have been working ten years professionally developing a CAD program, and if I could time travel and give my ten years younger self a single tip it would be to use a proper geometrical kernel (like CGAL) rather than doing _anything_ with floating point.

The tree rep is very cool. It could probably render implicitly using distance fields without even needing triangulation. [http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctio...](http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctions.htm)

<comment><USER12> > proper geometrical kernel (like CGAL)

Wow, that looks amazing. Thanks for the pointer!

[http://www.cgal.org/](http://www.cgal.org/)

(Pretending to add value, it's eminently googleable)

<comment><USER13> Does anyone know a CGAL-like library with an iOS App Store-compatible open source license?

<comment><USER14> From the web-site it looks like it is available as a dual-license, GPL3+ and commercial?

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I didn't realise that. Unfortunately, I wasn't looking to charge for my app, so a commercial license isn't feasible for me. As far as I know, GPL3+ is incompatible with the iOS App Store, so that's out too.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't that depend on how much they charge for a commercial license? After all you're already paying for OS X and other tools?

<comment><USER13> Certainly, but they're charging €1000+, so it isn't really an option for me. I'll just re-write the parts I need. I'll just almost certainly do it worse, and it'll take more time, that's all!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really nice. Seems super easy to use, unlike other CAD/3D modelling software I've tried before. I think a lot of software could benefit from this 'timeless' graph/node based approach, rather than most UI's which only let you see the latest version with a long undo chain. It reminded me a bit of Bret Victor's drawing tool[1] too.

Only problem, to me, is that it seems like a lot of work to get a UI like this off the ground. It'd be lovely to see support of a node-based UI built into some common UI frameworks.

[1] [http://worrydream.com/DrawingDynamicVisualizationsTalkAddend...](http://worrydream.com/DrawingDynamicVisualizationsTalkAddendum/)

<comment><USER15> >>seems super easy to use

Did you try sketchup?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Antimony is a computer-aided design (CAD) tool from a parallel universe in > which CAD software evolved from Lisp machines rather than drafting tables.

Funny, I'd be way more interested in the software engineering tools that are inspired by drafting tables than the mechanical engineering tools inspired by text editors.

If you spend some time with anyone proficient with the big CAD/CAE programs you will see how efficient they are. OpenSCAD and others are familiar to programmers so they are easier to learn, but if you learn CAD/CAE software they make text editors feel clumsy and slow. For an added bonus, use one of the input controllers specifically built for CAD/CAE, it opens a whole other world.

<comment><USER16> Drafting table style software engineering tools have been around for decades. It turns out that the only ones programmers actually want to use are the ones that deal with something that is actually visual/geometric, i.e. the layout of graphic user interfaces, so those are the ones that were kept; that's how Visual Studio got its name.

Nowadays when you need to cater to web browsers and mobile devices with a large range of screen sizes, even those are largely eschewed because the layout has to be redone at run time anyway. But there are still some in use by people who work on fixed size form layouts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, I thought OpenSCAD was a pretty fresh look at things:

[http://openscad.org/](http://openscad.org/)

.. with fairly similar goals - only not for architecture, but rather 3d-printig ..

<comment><USER18> OpenSCAD is functional (mostly), but it could have been great if they hadn't invented their own language. Then you could have had fancy features like error messages.

<comment><USER19> Openjscad (openjscad.org) is quite nice. I doubt it would be suitable for anything big, but it works well enough for small models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> First off, great work! Looks promising.

Does it use a geometric modeling kernel? e.g open source Open CASCADE ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology) ) ?

Two other open source CAD come to my mind that use Python as primary scritping language: FreeCAD and the unmaintained HeeksCAD: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeCAD](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeCAD) , [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeeksCAD](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeeksCAD)

<comment><USER21> It uses a homebrew kernel based on functional representations ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_representation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_representation)). Any function that comes out the end of the graph is rendered (as a bitmap) and blitted to the screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like the interface, and being a Blender3D user, I like nodes. However, I am long AutoCad / Inventor user, and I don't see what's new. You could do CSG modeling in AutoCad with union, difference, and intersection, and in Inventor you have that and sketch-based parametric modeling; update the sketch, and the model changes. Go back in the history, and change a value, and the model changes. In AutoCad you could use AutoLisp and later VBA. So aside from the look of the interface, and nodes vs. a history hierarchy what distinguishes it from decades-old parametric modelers?

<comment><USER23> Compared to AutoCad/Inventor, cost and licensing are two huge differences. Antimony is open source: [https://github.com/mkeeter/antimony/blob/develop/README.md](https://github.com/mkeeter/antimony/blob/develop/README.md)

<comment><USER22> True, but I was addressing the 'novelty' observation made, not cost and licensing. I do like the look of it.I just think it has been available, and is not new. Even the tease of Lisp machine when it has python in the background, not Lisp. For free, the now-opensource Solvespace [1] is a cool parametric 3D-modeler with STL check export and you can view some kinematic movement by dragging a constrained link in a linkage. [1] www.solvespace.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> CSG driven by a hierarchy of operations is the standard approach in CAD today. SolidWorks and Autodesk Inventor both work that way. Here's an Inventor tutorial on modeling the wheel of a scooter.[1] I picked this tutorial because the part and the operations used are very similar to the the Antimony screwdriver example.

Antimony looks like a nice entry-level program for this sort of thing. It's way ahead of mesh editors. Those are for graphics, not physical objects. In a mesh editor, you can't move a hole cleanly. In a mesh, the concept of "hole" has been lost.

What you get with the big expensive programs is 1) a GUI that scales well when you need to design something complicated (people do jet engines in these programs), 2) a constraint solver, where you can specify constraints and let the system work out a solution, and 3) lots of additional engineering tools. It's nice to see the low end catching up.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLZzS1k4tLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLZzS1k4tLs)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's neat, but really just looks like a pretty primitive version of Houdini to me: [http://www.sidefx.com/](http://www.sidefx.com/)

Perhaps the emphasis on CAD instead of computer graphics is the primary differentiating factor, but it's really too early to tell.

Good luck.

<comment><USER26> Houdini is proprietary, and even people whose idea of fun is getting fucked over by proprietary software might balk at the price tag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This looks _very_ interesting (from a DIYer point of view), however building under GNU/Linux amd64 isn't seamless. (Missing --std statements in the Makefile, notably)

I find openscad quite painful to use, I whish I learned about Antimony before. I think this has lot of potential, as a lightweigth, intuitive, free software, notably in the maker/diyer scene.

<comment><USER26> What changes did you have to make to get it to build?

<comment><USER27> #define M_PI and M_2_PI in three headers

add --std=c99 to CFLAGS and --std=c++11 to CXXFLAGS in Makefile

Still doesn't build, see: [http://pastebin.com/T17kCyG3](http://pastebin.com/T17kCyG3)

<comment><USER26> Looks like a Qt version skew problem; [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qjsonarray.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qjsonarray.html) suggests that in the current Qt, the QJsonArray constructors take either zero or one arguments, and the code is trying to invoke this one introduced in Qt 5.4 [http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qjsonarray.html#QJsonArray-2](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qjsonarray.html#QJsonArray-2), while your installation of Qt5 seems to only declare a two-argument constructor and the copy-constructor.

You probably already knew that, but I think it means the cure is probably to install Qt 5.4 (or the prerelease 5.5) from source.

Do you see other compile problems if you run make -k, or just that one?

<comment><USER27> After updating qt5base-dev using debian experimental, and adding -fPIC to the CXXFLAGS, it compiled nicely :)

edit: there seems to be a slight problem with text rendering tho(only lowercase 'a' and bullet points are drawn), see [http://imgur.com/MiX1hvL](http://imgur.com/MiX1hvL) More of a qt5 issue I think

<comment><USER27> Fixed it invoking as "antimony -style gtk"

According to [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_Look_for_Qt_and...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uniform_Look_for_Qt_and_GTK_Applications#Qt5_styles) qt5 attempts to be smart with guessing the desktop environment under wich it is running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's awesome how the nodes update as you drag things around in the viewer. I wonder whether there's a way to visually specify constraints (two points are coincident, two edges abut one another, and so on) instead of representing constraints implicitly through connections in the node graph.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is neat, but from a usability standpoint most mechanical engineers prefer to work with draft style sketches rather than a node-based interface. Thus it is neat and impressive, but I am not sure it is what the consumers in the CAD market desire.

<comment><USER30> Well this is a CAD software from a parallel universe, you wouldn't know what those mechanical engineers from that universe prefer.

I'm a physicist and I only used one CAD software occasionally. In the CAD software I used I had to clone primitive objects to use them in multiple operations. If I wanted to change one dimension I had to update all the clones. Simply the acyclic graph model works better for this than the tree model. (Also some operations were irreversible, that was absolutely inexcusable.)

<comment><USER20> In 3D CAD it's usually a parametric geometric modeling kernel. Everything is reversible and changeable, it usually it depends on an tree/directed graph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This looks like its direct ancestor by the same author a couple years earlier! Great work.

[http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/kokopelli/](http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/kokopelli/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Impressive. Wonder how long it took to develop.

<comment><USER21> I've been working on tools of this nature for about four years, though the only thing that's made it through mostly-unchanged is the geometry kernel.

This grew out of my thesis work (2011-2013); in rough chronological order, here are a few documents from that time period:

[http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/S62.12/people/keeter.matt/ind...](http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/S62.12/people/keeter.matt/index.html)

[http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/kokopelli/](http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/kokopelli/)

[http://www.mattkeeter.com/research/thesis.pdf](http://www.mattkeeter.com/research/thesis.pdf)

[http://www.mattkeeter.com/research/siggraph_poster.pdf](http://www.mattkeeter.com/research/siggraph_poster.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I just ran across your thesis a couple days ago while searching on representations for CSG. While I did not read it in detail, the representation seemed strange to me. I couldn't see how it can represent things like perfectly round holes.

BTW I was ray tracing CSG objects for RT chess back in 2001. Here's a pic:[http://www.caiman.us/scripts/fw/f282.html](http://www.caiman.us/scripts/fw/f282.html) I implemented a primitive called quadratic lathe which took 3 points on a curve and revolved them around the vertical axis as an implicit surface intersected with a slab to limit the vertical span. Most of the chess pieces were created by sketching them on graph paper and putting the profile coordinates into code.

If you want to run it, beware of potential malware from sites that have it. Also, replace the SDL dll in there - somehow a bad version got in our original zip. I may not have source for the game any more, but the renderer has progressed a bit and now supports multithreading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> ok, here a very specific question: can I chamfer or fillet a specific edge that is resulting from a CSG subtraction?

Because 3D printing supposes a very robust 3D CAD.

<comment><USER26> This is a really great question. I don't know the answer yet. I struggle with this problem _every day_ when I design things in OpenSCAD, because OpenSCAD doesn't give your parametric model access to the results of the modeling operations in any way (!!)

I think that Antimony kind of suffers from the same problem, but because it's using distance fields rather than plain CSG, it does have a "blend" operation ([https://github.com/mkeeter/antimony/blob/develop/py/fab/shap...](https://github.com/mkeeter/antimony/blob/develop/py/fab/shapes.py#L382)) that attempts to fillet the _union_ of two shapes. Now, Antimony has inversion (complement, more or less), and set A \ B is just A ∩ B', which by De Morgan's Laws is equivalent to (A' ∪ B)'. So what happens if you attempt to approximate a filleted A \ B with invert(blend(invert(A), B))? I don't know. But damn, I'm sure tempted to try it!

Of course, even if that works, that won't fillet _a specific_ edge resulting from the subtraction. It will fillet _all_ of them. Invariably, that is what I want.

<comment><USER33> in mold making for example, being able to chamfer some edges and keeping other edges very crisp (along the seam) is important.

<comment><USER26> That makes a lot of sense. I wonder if you can hack this in with a little more CSG stuff: maybe union the blended version with some giant solid blob that covers the crisp seam edges, and then intersect the result with the fully- crisp version. That's a pretty indirect way to solve the problem, but I wonder if it might work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> looks great

instead of using a popup menu for your commands consider using a drop down list with autocomplete -- and fuzzy matching

like sublimetext Ctrl+P.. to see a demo of this goto [http://www.sublimetext.com/](http://www.sublimetext.com/) and see slide #4 at the top of the page

</comment><comment><USER35> To add a bit of historical perspective, AutoCad could be extended through Lisp (AutoLisp), back in the day. So I posit that this approach is nothing new and unlikely to be what the customers of CAD packages don't already have.

<comment><USER20> ...and later also VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). The same goes for CATIA v5 (VBA).

<comment><USER36> AutoCAD also allows for .NET and C++ extensions now IIRC. I have a vague memory of JavaScript support coming soon too, perhaps it's already available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is very interesting, there is definitely a big opportunity for CAD software that does things differently. A lot of the supposedly 'BIM enabled' and 'parametric' CAD software in use in the construction industry suffers from over defined and inflexible representations of real world objects, which often fail in the edge cases. I don't think software should be defining what it thinks a wall or a slab is or how they connect to each other, I think they should be giving architects and engineers better tools for defining and categorising these things ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER30> OK, this is incredibly nice.

</comment><comment><USER38> Tangentally related... if you are a student... Solid works is ~$180/year... and autodesk software is free for 3 years from your enrollment. Haven't tried autodesk's offerings but Solidworks is unbelievably powerful software. It's incredible.

Guess what makes you a student? Any community college class. So go take a welding class.

</comment><comment><USER39> So it's like POV-Ray[1], with a visual coding paradigm rather than purely text-based source, optimised for CAD rather than raytracing?

[1] [http://povray.org/](http://povray.org/)

<comment><USER40> openscad ([http://www.openscad.org](http://www.openscad.org)) which is mentioned elsewhere in this thread is a much more direct descendant of POV- ray.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> reminds me of Farbrausch Werkkzeug demoscene tool ( [http://llg.cubic.org/docs/farbrauschDemos/](http://llg.cubic.org/docs/farbrauschDemos/) )

<comment><USER42> more info and kkrieger demo (just 96kb small ego shooter game): [https://web.archive.org/web/20070304204422/http://www.thepro...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070304204422/http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The implicit surface representation is obviously great for 3D printing. I wonder if it would be suitable as input to a CAM system. (note: this is not a rhetorical question. I have no idea how CAM systems work.)

</comment><comment><USER44> Huh, homebrew non-free license. I wonder if the intention was even to make it non-free. It does not allow commercial use, which is forbidden by default.

Oh well, at least homebrew licenses are getting rarer and rarer these days.

<comment><USER45> > It does not allow commercial use, which is forbidden by default.

what are you claiming here?

<comment><USER44> The MIT license says,

"Permission is hereby granted, [snip] including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or ___sell_ __copies of the Software "

The right to sell the software is part of the open source and free software definitions. A license needs to specify this, because by default copyright law does not grant this right. This homebrew license does not allow selling the software, thus it fails to be open source.

Failing to meet this part of the definition is why MAME wasn't open source either until last week.

<comment><USER45> What part of their home-brew license does not allow commercial use?

MAME was not free because they explicitly said "Redistributions may not be sold, nor may they be used in a commercial product or activity."

<comment><USER44> Anything not explicitly allowed is forbidden. That's how copyright law works. "All rights reserved" is the default. You don't even have to claim it. All rights _are_ reserved unless you relinquish them.

<comment><USER46> > Anything not explicitly allowed is forbidden. That's how copyright law > works.

Well, no, copyright law works by "anything explicitly made exclusive to the copyright holder by law, and not explicitly allowed by either other provisions of law or the copyright holder is forbidden, unless its in the rather ill- defined -- far from explicitly delimited -- domain of 'fair-use', or _implicitly_ permitted by the copyright holder under implicit license, or..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What's the best free cad modelling tool for osx?

<comment><USER10> >> What's the best free cad modelling tool for osx?

I've been using SolveSpace: [http://solvespace.com/index.pl](http://solvespace.com/index.pl)

There is a Mac port but it's still on a branch. You can find a link to it in the forum thread here:

[http://solvespace.com/forum.pl?action=viewthread&parent=586](http://solvespace.com/forum.pl?action=viewthread&parent=586)

Like the windows version it is a single executable file, so just put it somewhere and run it. It's worth reading the reference from top to bottom. Fantastic little program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The expression problem in CAD software

</comment><comment><USER15> As an architect, I wonder how this software can be useful in the real world, what _itch_ does it scratch?

</comment><comment><USER49> interesting concepts. some examples look like graphs.</comment>


Drums, Lies, and Audiotape - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/drums-lies-and-audiotape <comment><USER3> _" Bill Thompson, a psychologist at Macquarie University in Australia who specializes in music perception and cognition (and whom I once served as a graduate assistant at York University in Toronto), suggests that we may have lacked a mental template, or schema, for categorizing these rhythms, and were therefore unable to perceive them clearly"_

Reminds me of the research into not perceiving colors for which we have no word.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting article! The sound is blown out a bit on the video so it's hard to hear the subtleties of the beat but it's clear there are what would amount to quite a lot of time signature changes in our notation. Maybe Marco Minnemann could play it sight unseen ;)

I will have to keep an eye out for Alexander's book, it seems that it will be fascinating.

<comment><USER5> Time signature changes or just tuples? There's a thing about 0:40 where the whole top part sort of ... aliases/wagonwheels back around. Seems to be a mostly 4/4 foot throughout mainly kept by that cymbal sounding thing in a backbeat manner.

PAGING CHAD WACKERMAN. Seriously.

<comment><USER6> Time signature changes. And probably different phrase lengths.

It sounds to me like each part has its own separate timing grid, and - <USER2> from the backbeat - none of them are predictably regular.

Fascinating article - really, really interesting.

<comment><USER5> I dunno - maybe this is one of those "Black Dog (by Zep) is in 4/4" things. I didn't hear the backbeat vary much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" Please sign in to Nautilus Prime or turn your cookies on to continue viewing this site."_

Please don't link to that site. Thanks.</comment>


Everyone on Earth will be connected. - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/104233435224873922474/posts/a8buuEh8KL6

<comment><USER2> Oh excellent, he's planning to cure poverty and hardship is he? I hate to break it to him but right now there are people who sleep on the picnic bench outside of the ISP I work for which streams free wifi to anyone near the office. In the centre of the western world, in a well off country with strong social services... let alone the troubles the developing world has.

<comment><USER3> Poverty and connectivity are not mutually exclusive (and connectivity can yield huge benefits even to those who haven't yet escaped poverty). Just look at the history of mobile phones, especially in the developing world. I recall reading ~8 years ago* about fishermen in Indian villages who used their cellphones to figure out (while still out on the water) to negotiate prices with different buyers. More people in India have access to a cellphone than a toilet (which is a pretty decent heuristic for poverty).

*found the article: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/14/AR2006101400342.html)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it was just the eutopian arrogance of the statement that ticked me right off. I watch those homeless people who can't even make it to the shelters and food banks due to substance abuse every other day from my desk. It hit a nerve with me that those people are treated as sub humans, the forgotten, and his statement precludes them from his little dream. Just a personal rant I normally try not to put online but this one got me for some reason, probably should of deleted after I had my knee jerk disgust at it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's both exciting and disturbing. Does every culture need to be connected? I feel like this sort of proclamation is akin to saying, "and they will all worship our god."

Surely that's somewhat of an exaggeration but this is something I think about quite often. Watch The Gods Must Be Crazy if you haven't.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do when you hit your MVP and are ready to show the public? - <AUTHOR> I've just completed a project that is ready for public consumption, but not yet ready for mass market consumption. I have just completed the minimum viable product portion of the service. I'm aware of some bugs and the site simply isn't built to scale or work in all localizations. So I don't feel ready for a big announcement with a rush of visitors. What are some methods for doing a small scale launch? <comment><USER2> Honestly, the average launch doesn't get a rush of visitors whenever you 'make the big announcement' \-- that kind of thinking isn't really grounded in reality. You may hear about it on HN, PH and the Twitters, but they're the exception, not the norm.

Reality is that _nobody_ will visit your site after you launch and you'll have to work really, really hard at getting those first few customers.

I've put my hopes into the 'launch rush' before and was crushed when it didn't happen. (Twice, actually.)

You built the MVP, and that's an awesome milestone, but that doesn't mean the hard work is over -- it's only a start of a different kind of work.

Just pull the trigger and deal with issues as they come in.

<comment><USER3> which 2 products did you launch?

<comment><USER2> [https://keygen.sh](https://keygen.sh) and [https://www.themejuice.it](https://www.themejuice.it).

<comment><USER4> Themejuice has a sweet design.

I'm not your target market, but I liked looking around it for a minute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, let me ask you this (and this is NOT snark, honest):

What "big announcement" do you think you are capable of making that would result in some rush of visitors?

Gosh, most people have no idea how to make that happen. Do you? If you do, can I have some tips, pretty please?

Most likely, you don't even know how to engineer that. So, start putting it out there via whatever channels you are aware of that might work, such as Show HN or Twitter or whatever. It probably won't get the big rush you are expecting.

I say this as someone who sometimes posts things of mine to HN and they sometimes get a few dozen hits and eventually go up to like 100 or 200 page views. Yes, I also have one piece that has had around 40k page views over some period of weeks. In the grand scheme of things, this is not really a lot of traffic.

Even if you hit the front page of HN, it may not be the rush of visitors of your dreams of avarice. Going viral is the exception, not the norm.

</comment><comment><USER6> We did what was in hindsight a small launch. We put our app on Betalist first, got good response, redid a bunch of things, got it out on Product Hunt, got some more attention.

Then we targeted reviewers of competing/related products. That's what the kicker was in the end. A small launch easily eats up all your time, so keep it simple. A continuous drip beats a big bang.

Is your product niche enough so that there's a handful of sites covering it? Reach out to them. That's all you'll need in the start, and honestly all that is possible for you to reach. Don't go the way of paid ads and such, put in sweat first.

PS: IMHO you don't get to decide if you reach MVP, it's the users that do so by telling you it's a useful product and they're happy to be using it. Then they'll start asking to add more features ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Paid ads are good to start off with because they instantly drive traffic and will allow you to iterate quickly if users just aren't picking up what you're putting down. The downside is cost. Once you've established that you have a product that people want, then you can scale your marketing efforts to channels that require more effort (PR, relationship building, outbound sales).

read this [http://tractionbook.com/](http://tractionbook.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Use the group of people you talked to when you validated your idea before jumping on your MVP. At this stage you should have built something they want. Protect passord your website or app and send them an invite.

Unless you spent time building something without knowing if people want it...

</comment><comment><USER9> Friends, family and colleagues. Any other method runs the method of going viral. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps use a signup service that allows you to select which users can try your service.</comment>


Shuttleworth on Ubuntu Linux, Fedora, and the UEFI problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/shuttleworth-on-ubuntu-linux-fedora-and-the-uefi-problem/11270

<comment><USER2> The fact is that user control will always be a "security risk" and that there will therefore be a reasonable case to be made that use control should be restricted. A strong response to this line of argument is the Free Software perspective, where user control of a computer is a matter of liberty, not security. Freedom can be messy, it can result in a rootkit, but it's something many people value.

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of Stallman advocating that all computer users should have root access.

<comment><USER4> I don't see why this is controversial, especially if you replace "users" with "owners".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I will never buy any hardware, with any vendor specific keys inside. If Ubuntu or Redhat enter any key at hardware i will never use that distros again. My computer is mine. It does not belongs to Microsoft or to Redhat or to Canonical or to anyone else. I'am even willing to pay more money to buy hardware that i really own, if i have no other option.

</comment><comment><USER6> I run a project at my high school where students install linux on donated laptops, and use them for a variety of purposes. I read these articles and wonder if this project will come to a screeching halt.

Since our donated laptops are usually 3-5 years old, it seems the project will be able to continue for about that long without any UEFI-related problems. It seems we will start having problems when UEFI-based laptops are old enough to start being donated to us.

Is my understanding reasonable? It is pretty discouraging to think that this project will continue to evolve, only to hit a brick wall in the next 3-5 years.

<comment><USER7> It's bad, but not _quite_ as bad as that. The UEFI spec doesn't explicitly disallow making Secure Boot a toggle-able option, so some OEMs (like Dell: [http://www.osnews.com/story/25293/Dell_HP_Respond_to_Secure_...](http://www.osnews.com/story/25293/Dell_HP_Respond_to_Secure_Boot_Issue)) are planning to ship with it on but let you turn it off in the BIOS options if you want to. So someone technically knowledgeable could switch it off in your laptops before you hand them out to students.

Still two big "ifs" there, though:

1) You can turn it off _if_ the OEM gives you the option to, and OEMs are under no obligation to do so; and

2) All of the above is only true for x86 machines; for ARM-based systems, Microsoft is _requiring_ that no option be provided for the user to disable Secure Boot (see [http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open- enterprise/2012/01/is-...](http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open- enterprise/2012/01/is-microsoft-blocking-linux-booting-on-arm-based- hardware/index.htm)).

So the upshot is that _if_ your hardware comes from a cooperative OEM, and _if_ it runs on x86, the impact on you will be minimal -- just flipping a switch. But ARM systems and systems from uncooperative OEMs will be locked, so you won't be able to assume that any laptop that comes in over the transom will be useful to you anymore. (ARM laptops are uncommon today, but after Windows RT launches they may become more common.)

EDIT: Looks like since the last time I looked at this issue MS made it mandatory for OEMs to allow users to be able to turn off Secure Boot on x86, see comments below. So having to worry about which OEMs allow it and which don't isn't an issue. ARM systems still can't let users disable it, though.

<comment><USER3> >1) You can turn it off if the OEM gives you the option to, and OEMs are under no obligation to do so; and

Wrong.

>Mandatory. Enable/Disable Secure Boot. On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup. A physically present user must be allowed to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup without possession of PKpriv. A Windows Server may also disable Secure Boot remotely using a strongly authenticated (preferably public-key based) out-of-band management connection, such as to a baseboard management controller or service processor. Programmatic disabling of Secure Boot either during Boot Services or after exiting EFI Boot Services MUST NOT be possible. Disabling Secure Boot must not be possible on ARM systems.

Source:

Windows Hardware Certification requirements

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/hardware/jj1...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/hardware/jj128256)

<comment><USER6> Does this mean you'd just toggle a BIOS setting to disable secure booting?

<comment><USER3> s/BIOS/UEFI/

Yes, that is exactly what it means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems like the job for an independent non-profit organization. We need a trusted third party to rubber-stamp software signing until particular packages are flagged for malicious or incompetent behavior. It shouldn't be Microsoft _or_ Canonical.

<comment><USER9> I was thinking about this. It appears that software development is headed to become a regulated profession but the regulators will be the hardware manufacturers and platform providers.

There might be value in having a recognized "professional body" where membership can be revoked but having a rubber stamp issued by such an org allows the developers code to bypass a lot of the BS.

So "thou shalt not write malware" as opposed to "thou shalt not harm the interests of the platform vendor".

<comment><USER8> That's likely a glimpse of our future, since it's been tried so many times in the past, but I wish we could implement something a little more automated, decentralized and less prone to human failures than a single professional ruling body with permanent expulsion for "delinquents".

Maybe Github could offer a service to sign your software, free for open source, and pay for closed. They might run some kind of automated testing on your source for deviant behavior and to ensure quality, sign it, and revoke its keys if verified complaints are submitted. If the author is found to have malicious intent, then Github could ban him/revoke all his keys, and maybe a competitor could choose to sign his software instead, possibly one specializing in high-risk customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What are the actual problems Microsoft is ostensibly trying to fix with a secured bootloader? Something related to viruses/hacks or something else entirely?

<comment><USER11> I also wonder at the utility of this for end user machines. On end user machines, the valuable and secret data is _owned by the user_ , is volatile (not protectable at the OS level with current OS's which have no idea when/how user owned data should be changing), and furthermore is accessed and modified using processes owned by the user. Confused deputy process which are owned by the user seem much more likely to me to do real damage on a home machine.

Which is not to say that this technology is useless, boot-level attacks are important to defend against even if they aren't common now. But one has to wonder whether the costs are worth the benefit, on end user machines?

<comment><USER3> Botnets often cause little to no perceptible harm to the users of the zombies machines. I've heard of cases where the viruses actually attempted to improve the computers security to keep other viruses out and gain exclusive access to it. But still most agree that fighting botnets is important.

Note that I'm not saying that Secure Boot is significant in the battle against bots, but rather that security is important even if there is not immediate benefits to the users of that particular machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think there is a big presumption here that Microsoft will continue to dominate the tablet/mobile/ARM world like they historically have the desktop/laptop world. I don't see any reason to believe they will. They are grasping at straws here.

Frankly I can't wait for the rise of great UEFI Android tablets that lock out Windows OSes as "insecure". (Most Windows users won't know how to turn off secure boot. I hope Android doesn't actually permanently lock anything down.) Then watch Redmond accuse Google of anti-competitive behavior, going against the users wishes, and general mean-spirited-ness.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't see how Microsoft thinks that this can survive an antitrust case in Europe.

<comment><USER3> The situation with Secure Boot is bit like requiring admin rights to install Firefox. Neither is likely to trigger antitrust cases anywhere.

<comment><USER13> the only problem here is that in case of ARM devices, truly admin is only one - Microsoft. IMHO perfect antitrust case.

<comment><USER3> MS does not have significant enough marketshare in ARM devices to trigger antitrust case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if someone isn't going to crack it after a few days and it will be the end of the story?

<comment><USER15> That's sufficiently unlikely that we shouldn't be relying on it: <http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/12897.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If MicroSoft can implement a Secure Boot. Linux will implement it much better :)

<comment><USER3> "Implementing" Secure Boot afaik basically means appending a signature to your bootloader. Not exactly rocket science, nor much room for improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> People can continue the sport of throwing Microsoft under the bus. But twenty years on, there isn't enough commercial demand for Linux laptops to create market meaningful enough that UEFI implementation will affect a laptop manufacturer's sales.

It's great that Linux is out there. I use Ubuntu for the virtual machine I use exclusively for Facebook. I use another copy for the virtual machine I use exclusively for Linkedin, and Xbuntu for the one by which I access Gmail.

The very fact I use Linux at all places me in a tiny slice of the computer culture - the fact that I am running Linux in a virtual machine is without a doubt not a particularly distinguishing feature.

I've been reading _Hackers and Painters_. And the problem with Linux is that it's proponents lack empathy (in Paul Graham's sense). Nobody is going to give their mother a Linux box - PG even talks about his mother's Mac needing an upgrade.

There aren't any Linux laptops at your local BestBuy today because regular people don't want them...and BestBuy's GeekSquad damn sure doesn't want to support them. It's not Microsoft. It's the market.

<comment><USER18> You are correct in pointing out that absence of support and preinstalled Linux laptop and desktop is an impediment to Linux adoption.

However, after installing ubuntu on my Mom's computer last year, my support calls got cut in half. Now she doesn't have to fight with malware, viruses all the time. I think Linux as a desktop has matured enough that most people can use it for their everyday computing.

<comment><USER17> People could choose Linux for their everyday computing. But they don't for the same reasons they don't use Pine for their email and EMACS for business correspondence.

On the other hand, if they are forced to use it by their sys-admin, then of course they will.</comment></comment></comment>


Gox.com uses an invalid security certificate - <AUTHOR> https://gox.com/#badcert

<comment><USER2> Yes, we get it... MtGox / Gox doesn't know what they are doing. Trying to reuse certificates is not a good way get people to believe that you understand server security.

Honestly, at this point, I don't know of what they could possibly do to get their customers confidence back let alone the wider bitcoin community.

And this has been big enough of a cluster-fsck to cause the skeptical public that isn't using bitcoin to stay away from it like the plague.

</comment><comment><USER3> Considering gox.com is not even a website yet, just a redirect to mtgox.com, and that the certificate is the same for mtgox.com... I think it's a moot point.</comment>


Extraordinary mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck celebrates his 80th birthday in self-imposed isolation - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/31898/title/Sensitivity_to_the_harmony_of_things

<comment><USER2> There is an interesting Reddit discussion talking about the man:

<http://reddit.com/info/6ivyk/comments/>

For those who don't know who Grothendieck was, he essentially pioneered how we do modern mathematics. What Weierstrass, Riemann and Cauchy did to formalize the calculus, Grothendieck did to modern algebraic, topological and analytic notions. With the exception of Godel, I can't think of many mathematicians in the same league as he is (or at least was).</comment>


What you learn by teaching calculus - <AUTHOR> http://imprompt.us/2009/teaching-calculus/

<comment><USER2> I think for me, it was the same thing while learning calculus than anything else I have learned. I had to do a lot of exercises to really get the material. The chain rule for instance, seemed alien to me initially. It wasn't after I decided to do a lot of the problems at the end of the section that I truly could see the pattern. With me, I tend to only see patterns that I know exist (although sometimes my brain confabulates and confuses me).</comment>