Thanks HN, I'm changing my life (In London?) - <AUTHOR>

"I always spend too much time on HN instead of hacking" Does this sound like you? Yeah, that's what I was thinking aswell until two weeks ago.
I don't write or share much here on HN but I read a lot and found that a lot of you (not just the "big names") have very cool ideas to share which made me grow both as an entrepreneur and as an individual.
--
Less then 2 weeks ago I read a couple of posts by Ryan Waggoner about habits ( http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/07/more-on-habits/ ). I just can't say enough about how much habits are powerful now that I tried them.
I ordered the book, started reading it but more important started my own habits.
It's only been 9 days but I haven't missed one and because one of my habit was "write a page of my book or a blog post each day" I wrote a post that got me a contact for a big client (45+ MIL euro yearly revenue, my usual clients are under 5 MIL revenue) that wants a web marketing project.
Also, the book is finally getting written, after 6 months of procrastination.
--
Some months ago I casually contacted Sebastian Marshall (www.sebastianmarshall.com one day to ask something about a game (Civilization IV), he was really kind and we started talking about various entreprenurial things. I admit I'm pretty envious of his nomadic lifestyle… I don't see my self in Italy for too much time (no startup scene, lot more things...)
A bit of background about me:
I started reading HN at 20 while I was still in university and I really wanted to build a startup. I finished uni and instead funded a now 4-person web agency here in northern Italy. 1 year after, at 22, I have more money then I wish and can focus on doing things that are challenging and fun rather than making money. But I wasn't really happy… the agency has a lot of small clients and it's not always fun anymore - I can't do big web marketing campaigns because of limited clients budget and mindsets.
I've always wanted to work/start a startup but since I own a company I always tought I was stuck here… But I now realized that since it doesn't take me much to manage current projects without taking new ones I can't go to the USA for sure but I can stay abroad in Europe for 2-3 weeks each month since traveling is pretty convenient from Milan. Heck, I can even sell the company in this time and move to full time startupping later!
I'm not sure how I realized this, I probably already knew but had fear of just going out and try
--
Now here I am, going to London tomorrow morning to attend Devnest and the Opencoffee. I will be looking for something to do part-time there (2 to 3 weeks a month as I said), either work in a or start a startup.
and most important: I'm happy. Thank you all!
Bottom line: Don't worry, Life is beautiful and HN Rocks!
If this somehow inspired you and want to connect feel free to message me, @paolomaffei or paolo-at-paolomaffei-dot-it <comment><USER2> Clickables:

<http://www.sebastianmarshall.com>

<http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/07/more-on-habits/>

Congrats - I'm pleased you're happy, and keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER3> It's always cool to move on if you're not happy.

Met one guy who started a web shop out of high school, ran it for eight years, jumped to a design portfolio school, went on with an agency, got 3 AIGA awards, jumped ship to an _internship_ and then took that to be a windowdresser and contract creative director for a lot of the high-end shops in New York.

<comment><AUTHOR> jumped ship to an internship? impressive!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found those Ryan Waggoner posts inspiring as well. I planned out my habits this weekend and todays the first day. Going well so far :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Congrats, I'm going to be at the London Devnest so feel free to say hi !

<comment><AUTHOR> awww sorry I didn't read in time, but couldn't you say hi instead? i even presented!</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Metro proves the PC is dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/microsofts-metro-proves-the-pc-is-dead/18705

<comment><USER2> Long live the PC!

I'm as tired of these proclamations an anyone else. But MS does seem to be in trouble long run, because its business model has been disrupted. Even if Metro is a wild success, it will be on devices that aren't expensive enough for them to command the margins of traditional Windows/Office.

That said, I find Metro to be very interesting, and might even dovetail with this in some ways: [http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different- kind-o...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different-kind-of-gui)</comment>


Show HN: TransferWind mobile app for football players - <AUTHOR> https://www.transferwind.com/#players <comment><AUTHOR> Download app from website only for android users. For iOS users, please provide us an email on firstname.lastname@example.com so we can add you in our testing group and give you access .</comment>


FTPloy – automatically deploy when changes are pushed to GitHub or Bitbucket - <AUTHOR> http://ftploy.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I use this quite often, for example for client sites who are on a cheap shared hosting where you don't have terminal access. And their pricing is great, too.

Also some great features are on the roadmap ([http://ftploy.com/roadmap](http://ftploy.com/roadmap)).</comment>


The StingRay Is Why the 4th Amendment Was Written (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/the-stingray-is-exactly-why-the-4th-amendment-was-written/ <comment><USER2> I work in the field of cell network security research and want to help clear up some misinformation I'm seeing in these comments.

First, I just want to highlight that reason cell site simulators (the more general term for StingRays/IMSI-catchers) exist is because cell phones cannot authenticate all messages coming from cell towers. I'm seeing some vague comments about "a lack of encryption", but it's primarily more of an authentication issue.

You can read more about why it's primarily an authentication issue + how some of the relevant types of cell network attacks work in this technical post I wrote for EFF: [https://www.eff.org/wp/gotta-catch-em-all-understanding- how-...](https://www.eff.org/wp/gotta-catch-em-all-understanding-how-imsi- catchers-exploit-cell-networks)

There are some interesting proposals for fixing this lack of authentication using a certificate-based PKI system, the most promising being this paper from Purdue: [https://relentless- warrior.github.io/index.php/publications/...](https://relentless- warrior.github.io/index.php/publications/insecure-connection-bootstrapping-in- cellular-networks-the-root-of-all-evil/). This solution is very far from production-ready, but it's a much-needed step in the right direction.

<comment><USER3> We have SIM cards for 30 years to authenticate unique users to the network, but those same cards can't authenticate the network? No, this is entirely by choice and could have been trivially solved. They just forgot the "server certificate" part.

<comment><USER4> I'd say it's less a "choice" than an "oversight". SIM cards solve the problem of "how do we know if Random Phone is attached to an account and the bill is paid?" The question of "how does the phone know it's talking to a real tower" was never even ASKED, as the very idea would have seemed preposterous.

<comment><USER5> This happened with networked OSes too. There was a time when Ethernet jacks were trusted unconditionally and hosts could be authenticated by their IP address or worse. NIS used to use the "honor system." Great fun in college in the 90s :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Between this example and "no knock" warrants (where people get killed, including police) I think it seems obvious that people have forgotten what the point of a warrant is.

A warrant is suppose to prevent either of the two cases from resulting in lengthy court battles or death from confusion, and it's very simple:

YOU SHOW THE PERSON BEING SEARCHED THE WARRANT IN ADVANCE!

That is how you gain authorization... somehow people are being searched and the warrant is either kept secret entirely or not shown to them prior to the search!

That's literally the fundamental purpose of a constitutional warrant!

Things are so backwards now, search then warrant, shoot first then ask questions, execution before trial...

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure where you are getting this definition of the purpose for warrants, but it's not based on any historical fact that I'm aware of.

The way I'm aware of history, a warrant simply allows for an individual or group to take an action on behalf of the state, specifically by statement from a judge, which would have otherwise been illegal. For some individuals and groups, specifically sworn Law Enforcement officers, they fall within warrant exceptions or broad granted "warrant authorities."

It has no relation to a suspect being notified of a warrant and there is no legal mandate to notify the suspect as far as I am aware.

<comment><USER8> The definition they use follows from the definition you use, but is dependent on the times. If you are given authority to act on a warrant by the state, then you show that to the person you're investigating so they don't shoot you for being on their property.

Without the warrant, they have every right to shoot a strange person walking through their property without permission. Since this was before the concept of Law Enforcement officers (I feel like people forget cops haven't always been a thing in the U.S.), people wouldn't just accept some nobody in a uniform as a person of authority.

There weren't cops, so the warrant was the only way to show you had the authority of the state.

<comment><USER9> > Without the warrant, they have every right to shoot a strange person walking > through their property without permission.

What kind of hellish "right" is that?

You should not have the right to shoot someone for merely walking on your property. That is preposterous!

<comment><USER10> So I am sitting in my living room at 12:25 in the middle of the night in Brooklyn right now. If I look up from my phone and I see someone standing unexpectedly in my kitchen, I should give them the benefit of the doubt and not assume I am in mortal danger?

I mean, what would you think?

<comment><USER11> In most of the world, yes, you don't assume you're in mortal danger. This is the kind of logic that makes US police officers shoot everyone on sight.

An intruder most likely wants to steal your stuff, which hardly requires a death sentence, as you seem to want to offer.

<comment><USER12> What do you think happens when someone just wants to steal your stuff and runs into property owners in the process?

1/4 of the time when a person is present for their burglary they are assaulted, robbed, raped, or murdered.

If someone breaks into your home and you shoot them to death they have zero chance of harming your family.

Decreasing the risk of breaking into people's homes incentivizes human trash to convert your valuables to drugs and put your family at risk in the process. Even junkies can grasp that housebreaking is dangerous which is why they try to at least avoid people most times.

Being kinder to garbage changes that dynamic.

<comment><USER13> I agree with you that lethal force is the only reasonable option in that situation, but a human doesn't become "garbage" simply because they fall victim to addiction to a substance which causes them such suffering during withdrawal that they feel like they have no other choice but to try to steal to end the withdrawal. If you were in that same situation after some friends got you hooked, you might steal something to stop the pain, too.

In my opinion, providing legal drugs and rehabilitation to addicts, free of charge, would significantly reduce these kinds of thefts and break-ins, in addition to a lot of other huge societal benefits. The system works by only allowing the addict to consume the drug under supervision; they can't take anything outside of the clinic. It seems to work very well in some European countries.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, but I'm going to fall on the side of the law abiding citizen here.

If you can't know the intent (and you can't), then you must assume the worst intent and act accordingly. Anything else is naive.

Because I promise you one thing, I look up and see a stranger in my house, I'm attacking them immediately with no thought towards anything except protecting myself and everyone in the house. There will be no questions until it's over with.

If they were just looking to steal something for drugs, that can be sorted out once I've subdued them.

<comment><USER13> As stated in my first sentence, I agree with you. I think lethal force is the only reasonable option here.

I was just saying drug addicts aren't necessarily garbage. They face lethal force because they've broken into one's home; not because "they're garbage".

<comment><USER12> Yes it would be wrong to hurt people unless it was to protect oneself or others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unfortunately the only way around this is to donate to the ACLU and have every single case thrown out no matter how egregious until the police learn their lesson.

<comment><USER16> I used to donate to ACLU when they were a pure civil liberties organization.

Now that they're a leftist/social justice group I have nowhere to donate.

<comment><USER17> Gay Marriage, Citizens United, Whistleblower protections, Encryption, Net Neutrality, warrantless surveillance...

It's actually hard to think of an issue where Republicans have been on the right side of protecting Civil liberties in recent history other than gun control.

Are the ACLU leftists or are leftists the ones protecting civil liberties? Sort of a chicken and the egg situation.

<comment><USER18> The ACLU and "Republicans" were on the same side of Citizens United.

<comment><USER17> Do you know what Citizens United is?

Where do you get your information?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wasn't this behaviour already ruled unconstitutional in Kyllo v United States ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States))?

<comment><USER20> Seems related but not the same. Looks like Kyllo took up the case all the way to the Supreme Court. I think the only way for this Sting Ray stuff to be ruled unconstitutional is if a specific case against it was brought forth.

> Kyllo then petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, which was > granted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems like a strong case for encryption. Why is it even possible for these devices to read your info?

<comment><USER22> Because phones are totally insecure.

The only secure option is using an external WiFi or cellular data router for Internet connectivity. The router can of course be geolocated. And adversaries may gain some access. But it should be possible to prevent access through it to the phone. That is, it's a firewall.

Then do end-to-end encrypted Internet stuff, messaging and VoIP. And by using some mix of VPNs and Tor, adversaries won't even see most metadata. Except for communication timing, of course.

See [https://blog.torproject.org/mission-improbable-hardening- and...](https://blog.torproject.org/mission-improbable-hardening-android- security-and-privacy)

Edit: But this still doesn't protect from some third party with root rights on the phone. For Android, the Copperhead OS might be enough. But I don't know enough to know. And for iOS, I suspect that you're stuck trusting Apple.

<comment><USER23> iOS's only security issue is users not updating and being vulnerable to well known vulnerabilities. Neither iOS nor Android will survive a truly targeted nation state attack, but for most people 0-days aren't worth protecting against.

The only exception to this is the checkm8 vulnerability, which can be performed on an A11 and older chips (so iPhone XR/XS/XS+ and 11/11 pro/11 pro max aren't vulnerable) from DFU mode, which doesn't need the device passcode.

<comment><USER22> Right. I guess that phones can't update without direct cellular or WiFi connectivity. But I don't know.

Is that true?

Could one somehow enable updates through pure TCP/IP?

<comment><USER24> You can update iOS devices through iTunes via USB, or buy an ethernet adapter.

<comment><USER23> But your computer does need internet, see [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT201442](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201442)

> If your computer can't communicate with Apple's software update server, you > might see one of these messages.

<comment><USER25> But at least I have more control over what my computer does when it connects to the internet than I do over what my phone does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> the simple solution is for cell phones to have a whitelist of cell towers that they connect to with GPS locations of those towers, it could even compare against known databases of towers [0]... Until some software like that gets implemented, this will keep happening.

[0] [https://opencellid.org/](https://opencellid.org/)

<comment><USER27> great idea...I wonder if a 3rd party app could enable this or if that type of access is currently closely held? I'd only consider software that has super low level hardware access so you could basically control electrical access to that part of the phone's circuitry (so backdoor features can't be built that make sneaky connections).

<comment><USER26> The closest thing I've seen was an opensource app called SnoopSnitch, but it requires root on the phone and supposedly only works on Qualcomm modems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Probably this isn't technically possible but here is a possible way to collectively authenticate cell towers:

A service which receives information from an app reporting which cell towers are in range of the phone. The server triangulates the positions of cell towers and updates users about their authenticity.

<comment><USER29> There are several several IMSI catcher detector apps, but they aren't perfect:

[https://www.wired.com/story/stingray-detector- apps/](https://www.wired.com/story/stingray-detector-apps/)

<comment><USER28> I don't understand how those work but they seem different from what I am suggesting. I am saying to use the strength of the cell tower signal received by many phones in order to detect where authentic cell towers are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Where I live I see police SUVs driving around with these types of devices on their roofs, this is a couple of times per day occurrence. I was wondering strictly for research purposes what kind of attacks are these devices vulnerable to? Could one for example spoof enough phones/connections to cause some DoS like affect.

<comment><USER31> Those devices are license plate readers. They use them to scan plates for "hits". I've heard of units in police departments that use stingray but they are detached with the feds and are on NDA's. How's that legal I don't know. You should be more worried about who agencies give body cam videos to and plate reader data too. I can tell you this if you dig it won't be good news. Axion is a for profit company pretty sure facial recognition is in there plans.

-from definitely not a cop

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Do y'all remember the (likely fake, but widely reported) news about Israeli stingrays in DC a few months back, in September of this year? Whatever happened to that story? It was memory holed very quickly, which makes me suspicious that those weren't actually Israeli stingrays.

<comment><USER33> It wasn't memory-holed: [https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel- white-house...](https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house- spying-devices-1491351)

<comment><USER34> That article is a few months old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Good article. Needs a (2017) though in the title

</comment><comment><USER36> It should be fairly easy to put together a Raspberry Pi as a stingray detector?

</comment><comment><USER22> Back in 1989, I had this dream that the Poqet PC would evolve into a smartphone. And that one could install Linux or *BSD on it. But no, it just died.

<comment><USER37> An android phone already runs Linux; you can use it as such, and in many cases gain root.

OTOH what's happening in the baseband processor is impenetrable, and that processor has much more control over the device than a cellular modem would.

<comment><USER22> OK.

But why did we end up with baseband radios instead of cellular modems?

Is it because they grafted "computer stuff" on phones? Instead of adding cellular capacity to computers?

Or is it just because we can't have phones without surveillance? All those wiretap-ready requirements, I mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why does law enforcement bother? Can't they just get the info from the telcos?

<comment><USER39> That requires a warrant. Surprised the FCC allows them to tamper with peoples phones tbh. Its all sketchy as heck and flawed if cases are dismissed when they question how the tech works.

<comment><USER40> Last I heard the FCC doesn't. When people complained the devices were not licensed the FCC issued licenses "for emergency use only". That's probably because interference with radio communications is against the law and the FCC as a mere regulator is subject to that law.

All rather moot as these things are mostly used for various forms of illegal surveillance. The police have to keep their activity as secret as possible. That includes the fact that they are using them in the first place.

This whole issue isn't new. The police normally do, or get others to do, surveillance that is illegal in various ways. The existence of these sorts of devices is an expression of a kind of desperation. Privacy is getting too good. So this might actually be a good thing if this forces a long overdue discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's tough to see how a court would rule. Existing privacy law cares a lot about whether what you're doing is some kind of trespass. In this case, it would be trespass on chattel. I wouldn't have guessed that a court would accept this reasoning for property in a public space, but that's happened this year in Taylor v. Saginaw, the tire chalking case. The stingray is eventually going to go to SCOTUS and I'm not sure how they'll rule. Modern conservatives don't like trespass, but they do like law enforcement.</comment>


Findka – All your content in one place - <AUTHOR> https://findka.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Found it through another submission (about web development with clojure) and this seems really nice, like something I've been looking for for a while.</comment>


iPhone 5 through 8 and some iPads self-destruct w non-MFi cables and chargers - <AUTHOR> https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/400522/How+to+I+test+the+Tristar <comment><USER2> I'm not surprised that if you use accessories that aren't vetted to work with a particular system, that the system may get damaged over time in a way that isn't an intentional "self destructing" design. At the time that I'm writing this, the HN title is an editorialized "iPhone 5 through 8 and some iPads self-destruct w non-MFi cables and chargers" when the ifixit link says "How [do] I test the Tristar?"

If you take your car to a mechanic and get repairs with generic third party parts and the car isn't as efficient or reliable as the same model car that was taken to the dealer mechanic doing repairs with parts officially approved by the car maker, would you be surprised?

Back in 2013, a woman in China was electrocuted because a poorly designed generic charger was letting dangerous current through to the phone while it was being used:

[https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-starts-power- adapter...](https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-starts-power-adapter- trade-program-electrocution-reports/story?id=19882296)

If you were Apple and wanted to guarantee a minimum level of quality and safety, doesn't the MFi program make sense? I've never thought of MFi certification as a ploy to charge more just because they can. Such a program lets you buy (MFi certified) Anker lightning cables for a lot less than a similar cable made by Apple.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This looks like an under-recognized, purposefully-anti-competitive gambit to lock people further into Apple's hardware ecosystem, limit consumer choices, and purposely ruin a customer's product if they stray outside the walled garden.

Both of the "tristar" and "hydra" chips are fragile and prone to degradation, when they are connected directly to the Lightning port.

[https://store.rossmanngroup.com/ics-components-and- chipsets/...](https://store.rossmanngroup.com/ics-components-and- chipsets/components-by-type/charging-circuit-components/tristar.html)

[https://www.ipadrehab.com/article.cfm?ArticleNumber=32](https://www.ipadrehab.com/article.cfm?ArticleNumber=32)

iPadRehab mentions a tester, on which site also explains the causes and symptoms

[http://tristartester.com/en/](http://tristartester.com/en/)

More technical discussion about Lightning

[https://nyansatan.github.io/lightning](https://nyansatan.github.io/lightning)

Replacing these fragile chips isn't a solution in the long-term because it reinforces an artificially-constructed monopoly. In the short-term, it may get a user's device working but it doesn't help but throw them right back into debt peonage.

</comment><comment><USER3> That just shows that the iPhone is "not suitable for use" and should be discarded.

Also a Brand that shows that it's "not suitable for use" is a Brand that I would be very reluctant to purchase again.</comment>


CommaFeed Reader for Android - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/doomrobo/CommaFeed-Android-Reader

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it's really not much at this point, but it's something. All (constructive) criticism will thoroughly considered and much appreciated.</comment>


Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behind_the_three_decade_scheme_to_raise_tuition_bankrupt_generations_and_hypnotize_the_media/ <comment><USER2> >...maybe it will dawn on Barack Obama, by then retired and relaxing on the beach in Hawaii, that maybe we shouldn't have thought of education as a market in the first place. Maybe college shouldn't be about individuals getting rich. Maybe there is another purpose.

Maybe the federal government shouldn't involve itself in private colleges at all? What mandate does the US government have to interfere in college pricing or the existence of an on-campus LGBT center?

College tuition has gone up for three reasons (in order of importance)

1) _Griggs v Duke Power_

2) The availability of huge amounts of credit to students combined with an easy way to rank colleges, the accept:reject ratio.

3) Government mandates, particularly under Title IX and "dear colleague" letter type nonsense.

<comment><AUTHOR> 0) Administration size and budget. Even public university presidents are paid like CEOs.

<comment><USER2> But that's all an outgrowth of #1. They wouldn't be able to do it if people didn't need to go to college to get a job.

<comment><AUTHOR> I read up on the court case, and the ruling was that you couldn't require people to have (in this case) a high school diploma without it having a defensible relevancy to performing the job.

I do not understand your argument.

<comment><USER2> You're missing the implications of the ruling. _Anything_ you do, as an employer, that has a disparate impact on hiring is illegal if it's not directly related to the job. If you're hiring programmers or, say, nuclear engineers, you can give tests about programming or nuclear engineering. That isn't affected.

But let's say you have a job position that doesn't require experience or a lot of education. You just want to hire someone who's _smart_ , someone who learns quickly and can communicate in English. You put out a job req and get back 1000 resumes. Having no way to winnow the field, and realizing you can't interview them all, what you'd like to do is give everyone an IQ test, something that used to be very common, and maybe some kind of reading comprehension test.

But because of _Griggs_ , you can't. If your test has a disparate impact on race or sex you're going to get sued. Not only that, your intent doesn't matter, even if the test is fair, you're still going to get sued. What you need is a proxy for intelligence. Some way the applicant can prove he/she is at least reasonably intelligent and can write a memo.

So... you change your job req to require a college degree.

 _That 's_ why jobs that used to require only high school diplomas now require college degrees. _Griggs_ created (or at least cemented) the practice of using a degree as a proxy for intelligence.

But wait, there's more! Now that college degrees are as common as dirt, you need some way to rank the people with college degrees. That's where #2 comes in. As an employer, you figure the smartest people are the ones who got into the the most competitive universities, and the most competitive universities are the ones that rejected the most students for each one they accepted.

So when you get a resume from an MIT (7.9% acceptance) grad and a resume from, say, an Arizona State (84% acceptance) grad, you figure the MIT grad is probably more intelligent. Might not actually be true, but that's the way to bet.

This is a positive feedback loop. MIT grads go right onto the lucrative _Wunderkind_ track when they apply for jobs. Therefore more people apply MIT, making MIT's acceptance rate even lower. Rinse, lather, repeat.

That's why you can stroll into a $300k+ job after graduating from Harvard Business School (5.2% acceptance), but an identical graduate from Podunk U is starting at $45k. Even if Harvard teaches you _nothing_ , the tuition is worth every penny. It would be worth 10x what they charge. Your employer doesn't care what you learned at Harvard. He cares that you were accepted to Harvard.

This is great for established universities, because it means they never have to face competition from new schools. You see, if you start a new university parents are not going to send their kids to your school, because they don't know what that all important ratio is. And because of _that_ your acceptance rate will be very high, meaning you won't get a lot of applicants next year, either.

What it all boils down to is the competitive schools can charge whatever they want. And because Harvard is charging $60k, mid tier schools can get away with charging, say, $50k, even though they couldn't really justify it in an audit.

And ultimately, it's all because of _Griggs_.

<comment><USER3> "One banking recruitment manager summarized the typical approach this way:

I'm just being really honest, it [an application] pretty much goes into a black hole. And I'm pretty open about that with the students I talk to. It's tough. You need to know someone, you need to have a connection, you need to get someone to raise their hand and say, "Let's bring this candidate in." … Look, I have a specific day I need to go in and look at … the Brown candidates, you know, the Yale candidates. I don't have a reason necessarily to go into what we call the "best of the rest" folder unless I've run out of everything else. … Unfortunately, it's just not a great situation. There's not an easy way to get into the firm if you're not at a target school."

[https://hbr.org/2015/10/firms-are-wasting-millions- recruitin...](https://hbr.org/2015/10/firms-are-wasting-millions-recruiting- on-only-a-few-campuses)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py If I were bernie sanders, I'd push for it to be illegal to ask about education status in job interviews (same as family status or sex stuff). This would hamper the signaling value of a college degree and get us back to the value of the skills conferred (if any).

... not that I'm bernie sanders.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're still buying into the myth/propaganda that higher education is only good because it makes someone more employable by providing skills (and/or connections) important for job-seeking.

Wouldn't you much rather create and live in a world where higher education was free or nearly free, so that your neighbors, fuck it, even those you will never bump into, those on the other side of the country _are better educated,_ better able to reason about the world, more likely to understand evolution and spot marketing and persuasion techniques around them, less likely to believe the blowhard on the radio who is promoting conspiracy theories, and more likely to have gone through a period of rapid personal growth during which they met and grew with people from diverse backgrounds? … _without_ obligating these strangers to a lifetime of bondage to a particular high-paying career?

<comment><USER4> Because the only way someone can be intelligent, is if they wasted 5 years of there of life, not working, but reading old theories and academic papers that don't line up with the reality we actually live in?

I'll rather save 100k and listen to the blowhard on the radio, than be in debt and listen to the blowhard on a podcast.</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla (TSLA) becomes worlds most valuable automaker, hits $1k per share - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2020/06/10/tesla-tsla-becomes-wolds-most-valuable-automaker-hits-1000-per-share/ <comment><USER2> Will automakers be able to make anything but EVs in the next 2 decades? Which automaker is in a better position for this future than Tesla?

<comment><USER3> Sure. BEVs aren't even necessarily the best environmental future. The manufacturing emissions of producing large batteries can overwhelm savings from charging emissions.

<comment><USER4> Where did you get that?

Page 8 says the contrary [https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2019-tesla-impact- report.pdf](https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2019-tesla-impact-report.pdf)

<comment><USER5> People who say such things typically just regurgitate old narratives.

In addition, renewables surpassed coal in US energy generation recently: [https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39992](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39992)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cynical that I am, news around how badly Tesla was doing frequently featured on HN front page. Not any more.</comment>


Ask HN: Pay-Per-Usage Remote Filesystem Mounted Locally in Linux? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I've had no luck getting any of the AWS "S3 on Linux" solutions to work right on my Linux boxes- there's always some minor detail that prevents them from working right. I've had it with Googling & trying to overcome each obstacle that presents with each option, & am looking for an alternative to S3 storage on /mnt.
I see Rackspace has a solution, & I don't know anything about it since I've never used Rackspace for storage. I'm wondering what other locally-mounted remote storage options are available before I dive in & get a Rackspace account & try theirs.
I would be happy with an iSCSI or NFS based storage, which I can use natively with my virtualization platform (Proxmox). If it's something I can mount locally in a VM on /mnt- that's suitable, too. Just as long as its 'Pay-Per-Usage'.
What do HN readers know about that could help me?
Thanks in advance, -c <comment><USER2> Speak to your hosting provider about options they have.

While considering Cloud based storage don't forget about bandwidth cost / latency. Depend on your application workload.

Maybe, SSHFS can do the trick for you.

[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- use-...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-sshfs-to- mount-remote-file-systems-over-ssh)

..depend on your use cases 2cents

</comment><comment><USER3> AWS now has NFS; I don't know how slow it would be over the Internet.</comment>


Github: Goodbye Priorities - <AUTHOR> http://blog.blossom.io/2011/04/10/github-goodbye-priorities.html

<comment><USER2> I agree, without the ability to easily prioritize the features I will have to abandon github issues. It was also extremely lame to "upgrade" everyone to version 2 and lose all the data the users had put into their issues for the priority order.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like you should be able to recover the priorities using their API [https://github.com/blog/831-issues-2-0-the-next- generation#c...](https://github.com/blog/831-issues-2-0-the-next- generation#comment-11400) but I agree that the decision to upgrade everyone immediately was a bad move especially since it resulted in feature-regression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I second the priorities feature; it gets more important as the project grows and more "noise" is added to the tracker. We'll see how the otherwise in every way better Issues adapts to it.

e.g. <https://github.com/pokeb/asi-http-request/issues> is now sorted after creation date - really not the best way to sort the list.

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember when Issues 1.0 came out, I tested it for only a short while before I found a blocking bug with vote counts. (The bug I found allowed anyone to downvote an issue as many times as they wanted). I wonder if the voting feature didn't get as much usage as it would have because it was buggy?

<comment><USER3> I agree. I believe version 1.0 was very well thought through and just needed some polish instead of a relaunch. A shame that I did not mention the voting feature because I also used it quite a bit and found it useful especially for public open source projects to see what features people care about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, I've had to create a "priority" tag. It's ok though.

The biggest thing that's missing for me is the ability to add screenshots. That just hurts.

<comment><USER7> > screenshots

Use Gyazo ( <http://gyazo.com> ) and then drop in the Markdown for the image. Works just fine.

Also the UI for voting was very odd to me. There were priorities? I think labels can mimic priorities very nicely (I suppose without sorting though). I don't miss these features, myself.</comment></comment>


Cobbler 2.4.0 and Beyond - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/cobbler24

<comment><AUTHOR> Just noticed that Cobbler are having a fund-raiser to help support the next version.

For those who don't know, Cobbler is a Linux installation and update server. It does all of the stuff you need to do to a new server between building the hardware and running Chef/Puppet.

More info on it can be found here: <http://cobbler.github.com/>

The money they are trying to raise is a pittance for the pain they solve, and whilst I'm bootstrapped to the point of having virtually no disposable income I cannot help as much as I want, so I've shared here hoping others might be in a better position to help.

</comment><comment><USER2> Haven't used cobbler in a while. Wonder how it compares these days to Foreman ( <http://theforeman.org/projects/foreman/wiki/Features> ) and Razor ( <https://github.com/puppetlabs/Razor> )</comment>


Equity Crowdfunding Legalized Today - <AUTHOR> https://www.seedinvest.com/blog/equity-crowdfunding-legalized-today <comment><USER2> I think whole hope that crowdfunding can become a source of capital comparable to VCs is flawed because people invest their post-tax money, while VCs don't. So any crowdfunding (and angels, too) are at a built-in disadvantage.</comment>


Show HN: Projects from "Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas" Hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://lav.io/2014/11/stupid-projects-from-the-stupid-hackathon/ <comment><USER2> I was at Stuipd Hackathon. I've never been to anything so unabashedly motivated to be pointless and irreverent. Workshops included: "3d printed sex toys", "how to be come alan ginsberg in 30 minutes", and "pissing off my landlord".

All the projects there were so beautiful because they were liberated from the whole motif in tech of products constantly "revolutionizing field-xyz and solving 1000 major world problems".

If we are going to enter into a truly tech-literate, post-internet phase of humanity, we gotta be making dumb, hilarious junk like this.

<comment><USER3> For the uninitiated: 3D-printed sex toys actually do exist, yes. For example I believe the infamous Dragon Dildos are 3D-printed? (I shan't link, for self- explanatory reasons.)

<comment><USER4> The Bad Dragon sex toys I've handled aren't 3d printed. (You wouldn't expect them to be, since 3d printer output is rigid plastic, which you don't want a sex toy to be, and covered with fine ridges, which you really don't want a sex toy to be.)

It's possible that the _molds_ are 3d printed, but if they are, it's using a printer with amazing surface finish, and Bad Dragon's never said anything about using 3d printing. Much more likely they're using conventional manufacturing processes.

<comment><USER2> I would also be concerned about the polymer used to print the toy. It would have to be hypo-allergenic & non-toxic for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is incredible. I think a few things are worth noting:

1) these "terrible idea" hackathon projects were so much more _sexual_ than your typical hackathon. This goes with the indications that the sex-tech space is anathema more for market reasons (VCs want to stay family friendly) than because sex-tech isn't fun or interesting to people. With the chance of funding not on the table, a healthy mix of projects veered toward sex. Maybe humor can actually be a way for a few sex-tech startups to take off. :)

2) the funniest projects all involved hardware. There's something extra- ridiculous about juxtaposing our own bodies into these stupid projects. I recommend anyone interested in a solid philosophical grounding in humor to read Henri Bergson's early 20th century treatise on laughter ([http://www.templeofearth.com/books/laughter.pdf](http://www.templeofearth.com/books/laughter.pdf)). He writes that we find use laughter as a way to draw attention to the rigid, mortal, and physical in all of us. That is why impersonating someone's habits is funny-- because the rigidity of their personality is made super clear. I wonder what it says about us that strapping ipads onto people's faces makes me laugh out loud.

<comment><USER6> I found that interesting to, and straightaway noticed the high # of women participants - in fact that made me guess it was based in NYC before reading up on the background to the event and finding that it is indeed based there (which I hadn't heard of before). I thought it was sexual in an assured self- aware way rather than giggly or tacky.

I was especially struck by the egg-timer clock.

<comment><USER7> It was held at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (started by Red Burns), whose student body is 50/50 m/f, half international students and grades are pass/fail. There's a really fun, collaborative, non-competitive culture in the program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is already over? DAMN. Now what am I going to do with my idea to build a payment gateway on top of snapchat...

<comment><USER9> i really really hope that you didn't know what they just released today...

<comment><USER10> What a coincidence!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is always my hacker's-block-breaker. If I'm stuck on something, and not feeling particularly creative, I'll make something intentionally useless, and funny, and it usually cheers me back up and gets me working again.

</comment><comment><USER12> Aren't we all participating in this hackathon on a global scale except for a very small number of us who build something people want?

<comment><USER13> You're saying that people's lives may not actually improved in any meaningful way by the Tinder for flatmates mobile app I'm building?

Seriously, the science fiction world of William Gibson and so on where normal people hack electronics for fun hasn't really emerged at all despite the tools to do things having become cheaper and more accessible. It seems we've moved away from that since the 1990s, as machines become more packaged and less customisable.

Maybe we need a a new lean hack canvas that isn't focused on revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish I knew about this. I wrote a file server that serves your webroot directory over League of Legends chat. Any time you request a file that is more than a few bytes, your chat gets flooded with base64 strings... The extraslow web.

<comment><USER15> Heh, I once wrote a piece of software that would read World of Warcraft's memory space, scan for the chat circular buffer and then post new guild chat messages to twitter.

At first my guild mates loved it - but then it created some guild internal drama as some "officers" were having a rather not nice chat about other guild members in the night and they thought they were alone.

Pretty much destroyed my guild. But at least I could finally say "What have I done!" and mean it ;)

<comment><USER16> Out of curiosity, were you an officer? The idea that private officer chat might be sent to just any guild member's client is hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Aw, I should have entered my rotary mobile phone...:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSkdWQswpc8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSkdWQswpc8)

<comment><USER18> That person in the video is utterly handsome. I'm sure you don't know them, so I thought I'd point it out.

<comment><USER17> Haha, thanks! I mean, I'm sure they'd thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks rad.

A very similar hackathon I went to a few months back is [http://www.comedyhackday.org/](http://www.comedyhackday.org/) They matchup comedians and hackers to create beauty.

Easily the most fun hackathon i've ever been to/

</comment><comment><USER20> The Stupid Font is actually very cool. I am going to use it for my blog title. So sorry Stupid Font creator: You failed - I find your idea useful.

<comment><USER21> How does copyright handle a case like this?

<comment><USER3> Broadly: Typefaces are _not_ copyrightable. Font programs, however, are.

So that's in the clear, which may be the point of the art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I learnt some great definitions around creativity and innovation at a conference I was involved with recently. To wit, "Creativity is the generation of novel and useful ideas."

The speaker (Dr David Hall) recommended that the search for Creativity often needs to start with generating something novel and _useless_ \- this can then inspire the useful application to emerge. Only when we pursue the novel, however useless, do we really open ourselves up to surprising creativity.

This Hackathon seems to fully embrace that principle, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if many of those who participated take the germ of an idea and develop it further into the _useful_ space.

[1] [http://jacobaldridge.com/business/3-blockages-to- creativity-...](http://jacobaldridge.com/business/3-blockages-to-creativity- shirlaws-conference-blog/)

</comment><comment><USER23> How is this different from every other Hackathon?

<comment><USER24> This one was honest

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is awesome. Especially the beautified intellectuals.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow. 100,000 projects submitted? With that many projects, you'd think the odds would make it that one wasn't terrible.

<comment><USER27> I think that was a joke. Judging from the rearview mirror video, the venue was pretty small. The event was also hosted by a graduate program at NYU, which in it's inception only had 20 members. While I'm sure NYC has a spare 100,000 people, I doubt such a high turnout for such a specific non-internet event.

<comment><USER28> It was definitely a joke.

<comment><USER29> Yeah anyone who missed that.. reading between the lines it looks like a pretty cosy event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Where is the "Intellectual Babes Calendar" I'd like to buy this...

</comment><comment><USER31> Please note:This is NSFW

</comment><comment><USER32> This is incredibly funny.

Just today I was reading i am devloper tweets and just started wondering are there communities for developer jokes? Reddit comes to mind, but it become too mainstream. Anything else?

<comment><USER33> Well it is reddit but [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/)

<comment><USER32> How about more hacker?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The food bite tweet is my favorite.

</comment><comment><USER35> Ahhhh this is beautiful :) Reminds of the days when blogs and websites were creative absurdities and programming was a cool hobby.

</comment><comment><USER36> How regularly is the Stupid Hackathon held? Fall and spring? Georgia Tech student here, I would seriously fly up to participate.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're doing it once a year in NY. We don't have a mailing list but you can follow @stupidhackathon on Twitter for updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The rearview mirror one is actually a really cool experiment. I wonder if eventually you'd just get used to it (although you probably wouldn't get used to all of the neck and joint pain from trying to do things so awkwardly).

<comment><USER38> I agree.

Here's a clever promo showing people trying to live with a Rift showing them a lagged version of reality. I laugh so hard when he tries to make a pancake.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fNp37zFn9Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fNp37zFn9Q)

<comment><USER39> That was funny, thanks for posting. Though I wonder what would happen for some of the tasks (dance/exercise, for example) - if all participants had the same lag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> That "tweet from food" thing reminds me of Vessyl. [https://www.myvessyl.com/](https://www.myvessyl.com/)

</comment><comment><USER41> If they sold it, I might buy that thing that tweets my food bites. It would also make twitter more useful / entertaining for me.

<comment><USER42> As other commenters have expressed, even stupid ideas may lead to an actual product: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bitbite-track-and- improve...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bitbite-track-and-improve-your- eating-habits--3)

I know this project is not related to the hackathon, but one can imagine how it could develop from stupid idea to raising funds for a maybe-not-completely- stupid product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> That "Focus Tools" chrome extension looks like it could potentially help me from getting distracted. Disqualified!

<comment><USER44> What exactly is the context of that GIF?

<comment><USER45> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8V74N64Q20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8V74N64Q20)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> So it's like a normal hackathon?

</comment><comment><USER47> kudos to the "Kim Kardashian On A Newton" team.

...thats some non-trivial archeology to get that running :)

</comment><comment><USER48> Any equivalent of this sort of a Hackathon in the SF Bay? If not, wanna organize one together? :)

</comment><comment><USER49> Really hope this type of event spreads - looks like a lot of fun.

</comment><comment><USER50> A very honest hackathon!

</comment><comment><USER51> DO NOT click to watch the drone delivery video. Trust me.

<comment><USER52> Could you explain why?

<comment><USER53> I suppose it's because of the weird footage of a birth by the end. Can't really tell what's going on there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Ahh unintentional hipster self-parody at its finest.

</comment><comment><USER55> Can someone do this in the Bay Area? I'll help.

</comment><comment><USER56> Hahaha! The Focus Tools one is great! looool

</comment><comment><USER57> This Hackathon should be international :)

</comment><comment><USER58> We need more Hackathons like this.

</comment><comment><USER59> Yeah... might want to mark this NSFW

</comment><comment><USER60> anddddddddddd NSFW

</comment><comment><USER61> can we please have a NSFW tag

</comment><comment><USER62> This is about systemd, I suppose?

<comment><USER63> you shouldn't have gotten downvoted, this was funny!

<comment><USER64> It was low-effort and off-topic, and you need higher standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> If no-one needs stupid shit, then what do we have Facebook for?</comment>


Future development of Detexify - producing TeX code from hand-drawn symbols - <AUTHOR> http://meta.tex.stackexchange.com/q/1210/213

<comment><AUTHOR> See also <http://detexify.posterous.com/update-on-detexify> for update information. Seems that it might also get a new name: Sketch-A-Char.</comment>


Hollywood Groups Advocate for More Internet Regulation - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180422/16535039688/hollywood-front-groups-decide-to-kick-facebook-while-down-advocate-more-internet-regulations.shtml <comment><USER2> Regardless of the spin of the article, it's important to note that the big entertainment companies are pushing for harsher punishments for internet companies to prevent the distribution of "unlawful" content.

I think this is interesting because while they sound like they are attacking Facebook, they are likely looking to go after their old enemies: YouTube and any video on the public internet.

<comment><USER3> What's the spin of the article that you object to?

<comment><USER4> Me personally, I'm concerned that media creation companies are trying to add harder penalties for DCMA by disguising it as a privacy issue. In the end, the voters will get nothing or very little to improve their privacy but we will get tougher DCMA laws and penalties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The copyright cartel will take any chance it gets to fundamentally reduce freedom. For every copyright extension and extra control it demands, it further violates the social contract. Their control over my speech is seemingly unlimited in duration and continues to expand its reach. I have no doubts their true motivation is "(3) prevent the distribution of unlawful and harmful content through their channels.". The cartel's only goal is the consolidation of your freedoms into an indefinite monopoly on their junk.

Long has this "IP" group sought to violate the social contract. When their control exceeds the social contract, then they no longer promote progress in the science and the arts. At which case I no longer respect their not-so- limited-time exclusive right to their writings and discoveries. May bittorrent, youtube, and the like continue to be the eye for an eye for their flagrant disregard of it.

</comment><comment><USER6> A strategic hole in America's privacy advocacy front, obvious with the benefit of hindsight, is the degree to which we count on lobbying by technology companies. They have the users and they have the lobbying dollars, the thinking went, so why not leverage it? It made sense. But it afflicted on us a Dutch disease [1]. Every problem was more easily solved by pressuring Google than by organizing a community. The more we did it, the easier it became.

This was fine, while they were on our side and influential. But counting on a small collection of correlated elites is not a robust strategy. We need to turn privacy into a grassroots cause.

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

<comment><USER7> This is normal. In [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674537514](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674537514) it is appropriately called the exploitation of the large by the small. That book is short and a classic. It is worth reading by anyone who is interested in these matters.

The underlying reason is that most of the time, most are only motivated to put out significant effort for their own personal gain. Which means that in public goods, only if they believe that they will make the difference. Therefore public goods tend to fall into one of the following buckets:

1\. A single individual or group supplies it out of self-interest and everyone else is a free rider. (This is the exploitation of the large by the small.) A good example is how most of the world lets the USA play global policeman and, despite complaints, contributes little to the effort.

2\. A small group provides the good with complex negotiations where each tries to do as little as possible. A fun example is the infighting within OPEC as it tries to keep oil prices high.

3\. A large group that is formed for some other purpose and is coercive in nature provides the good. Most government action falls into this category.

4\. The public good fails to be provided. Examples are too numerous to bother listing.

<comment><USER3> I find these sorts of theories by US economists (that game theory is how humans think, all humans are lonely, distrustful, little 'value' hoarders) little more than telling introspections. They're approximately as scientific as evolutionary psychology.

In the context of privacy, how would 1, 2 or 3 explain the FSF, the EFF, or Wikipedia?

Does the selection explain things better than people wanting them to exist because they inherently believe that public goods are good, and they want to make a better world for everyone? (Even if such a belief is 'irrational' and thus game-theoretically impossible.)

<comment><USER8> They do not need to be explained under the parent's rubric, because that's describing the provision of public goods by large organizations. FSF, EFF, and Wikipedia are small organizations and operate differently. Which the linked book covers. Even in its precis, had you bothered to click through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think something to note in parallel to this article is that today $FB is up 10%, and over the past month as almost completely recouped it's recent "privacy-related" drop. From a year ago Facebook indicated it was still gaining new users (+13% DAU), increased headcount by +50% and has over 2 BILLION monthly users worldwide...

So they will "Kick Facebook While Down"? Any company in the world would enjoy being "down" like Facebook is.

<comment><USER10> This is a great example of why media companies fear tech companies. The media has been engaged in outright war against FB. The end result? Nothing.

People don't let media companies tell them what to believe anymore, they do as they want and they want tech. The media is no longer the gatekeeper of public opinion and you can see their fear in every anti-tech push they make.

<comment><USER11> > The media is no longer the gatekeeper of public opinion

i feel like its a new media now... but still a media driven by advertising bux

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is simply another case of a group pushing for their evil to be classified as good and the good to be classified as evil. Their support of increasing penalties for what they claim is "theft" when they are supporters of actual theft is quite funny is a sad, sad way.

This is a case of them wanting their "rights" with no intention of ever carrying out their responsibilities.

I actively teach the young people that I have relationship with (including my children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, etc) that you have one right only, the rest is privilege and responsibility. That one right is to choose your course of action and there are consequences (good and bad) with every choice you make, but that is your right. Everything else that is called a right is a privilege and it comes with attendant responsibilities.

These kinds of groups make choices but have no desire to face the consequences of their action, they want to place on others those consequences.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hollywood needs its own regulation

<comment><USER14> Movies should be an artistic expression, not a mathematically-optimal plot to maximize repeat viewership wrapped in as many special effects as they can pack into 90 minutes.

We've reached "peak special effects" \- raytracing has been used in movies for decades, and we're very close to having realtime raytracing in videogames.

<comment><USER15> > Movies should be an artistic expression, not a mathematically-optimal plot > to maximize repeat viewership wrapped in as many special effects as they can > pack into 90 minutes.

Why? I want to be entertained and who the hell are you to say I can't get what I want (and millions of others want it too).

I don't have any problem you getting to watch some art film I have zero interest in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Meanwhile they cut deals that ensure very good shows, like "The Expanse", get pirated to hell because people won't wait for stupid regional delays.

Hell, I'll pirate a show to avoid waiting until the next day to watch it on Amazon. I still buy it, but why the hell should I have to wait.

I'm not even super anti-DRM. It's dumb, but if I can watch the show I just don't care. Just let me pay you money to watch content.

Easiest thing in the world and they fuck it up __constantly __.

<comment><USER16> > I'm not even super anti-DRM. It's dumb, but if I can watch the show I just > don't care. Just let me pay you money to watch content.

That's one of our biggest problems: no one cares about DRM until it directly hinders them.

Most people don't care about watching Netflix in Linux, but the rest of us have to deal with being arbitrarily constrained to 720p.

Most people don't mind their favorite video game needing to ask the internet for permission to load, or frequent large forced updates, but that leaves people with slow or limited internet in a frustrating situation.

Our society's problem is apathy: so long as copyright holders provide the _bare minimum_ , they can avoid any serious action, because there simply aren't enough people willing to _act_ against copyright abuse.

<comment><USER15> meh, pick your battles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article reads like it's written by an outraged 14-year old. It's point may be true, but I'm just not going to believe s/o who calls people's reservations about the Facebook business model an "exaggerated moral panic".

</comment><comment><USER18> Copyright is one of those issues where I haven't found a conclusive answer yet. The for argument is that the content makers need be paid. The against argument is that this hinders knowledge sharing and acts as a threat to humans' collaboration and there should be a limit to how much profit the content makers can make. Which one is wrong? And how do you find a middle ground? Piracy and torrents immediately start coming to my mind.

<comment><USER16> Piracy is not anywhere near as harmful as it is made it to be.

The copyright holder does not lose anything to piracy.

We need to lose the propaganda-based rhetoric, and go back to the real descriptive term for copyright: Monopoly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good. I've changed my mind. Let them fight it out, The Valley has long since abandoned the moral high-ground over Hollywood's attempts to control the internet. If Hollywood can kick them around a bit: great, they deserve it.

Facebook created a consolidation of control, so that they could use their newfound power to exercise their will over other people. They put a target on their own back, and on the backs of every last person running online systems in general.

That's the cost of creating control levers. You alone don't get to set them because nobody is ever - or has ever been - at the top of every power hierarchy simultaneously.

The problem was never that Hollywood wanted to _use the government_ to tell me what I could and couldn't do. The problem was that they wanted to _tell me what I could and coudn 't do_.</comment>


Open Source Obligations - <AUTHOR> http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/1078/open-source-obligations

<comment><USER2> In case you missed it, Jeff replies in the comments: [http://www.red- sweater.com/blog/1078/open-source-obligations...](http://www.red- sweater.com/blog/1078/open-source-obligations#comment-151941)

I think the moral of the story is, "Don't feed the troll". I'm not sure if Jeff is deliberately provocative in his posts, but many of them _do_ turn out that way, and you can bet he gets a lot of ad revenue from the publicity.

<comment><USER3> It strikes me that perhaps Mr. Gruber can't win here--either he's too lax as a project parent, or he rules the project with an iron fist, and gets complaints because he's not flexible enough.

<comment><USER4> Being involved in an Open Source project is expected for anyone that wants other people to use the code - implicit in publishing it. It doesn't imply working for free when asked, but it does require responding to email even if it's just to say 'sorry, I'm really busy right now'.

If he rules the project with an iron fist, that's still much better. People know if the project is alive or not, and can make the decision to fork the project easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cute. But it misses an important point in Jeff Atwood's original post, which was that John Gruber got actively hostile when someone else extended his Markdown code in a way he didn't approve of. If nothing else that was in poor taste.

<comment> brown9-2 When you put that quote in it's proper context, it doesn't sound 'hostile' at all: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1020864>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the problem with markdown is that it's too complex to write a good parser in a few lines of code, otherwise there would be no "open source obligations" issues at all, because what is really needed in a markup system is that it is widely accepted, all the rest will follow, _unless_ the format is so complex to implement well that most of the implementations will be hacks.

I also don't like how it looks from the human point of view, but this is just my opinion and I guess it's not very common as my feeling is that most people love markdown.

Given that this is the standard de facto at this point I guess that what's really needed is to write an high quality, fast, simple, reference implementation written in an algol-like language (guess what? The good Haskell implementation does not qualify), and share it under a BSD license so that it will be both the specification and the reference implementation everybody will use to derivate their Python / Ruby / C / ... solid implementations of markdown.

This is the perfect project to emerge in the coding community with little efforts if you are smart. It's a few days of work and it is very useful to many people, so what are you waiting for? :) Get some coffee and start coding now instead to waste all your time on hacker news! Then setup a page for your code and write a blog article explaining what are the hard part and tradeoffs about implementing markdown, and possibly how markdown could be enhanced. Don't worry, most of us understand that what you produced is FREE and will just praise you, without obligations ;)

<comment><USER7> Actually, Discount (<http://www.pell.portland.or.us/~orc/Code/discount/>) has been around for a while, and is rather high quality. It's a C library, but has a very simple API and should be easy to wrap in any language with a halfway decent FFI.

Oh, and BSD license? Yup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems to me as an ignoramus to these goings on that part of the impediment to progress is ambiguously named forks of the spec. For instance MarkdownSharp on the face of it isn't just a reimplementation of Markdown in C#, it's a fork of it. As someone who doesn't know C# were I to do an implementation of Markdown I'm not likely to look for improvements in something called MarkdownSharp.

</comment><comment><USER9> Has Jeff Atwood contributed any open source code? Given that he's criticized Gruber for not giving enough, I'm curious as to his own contributions (on Github, his codinghorror account contains no repos or activities: most likely a placeholder to prevent name squatting).

</comment><comment><USER10> Completely aside from this flamequest: I am sure at some point OS authors will start putting some promises about how they'll conduct their projects. Not because it's their duty - but because it can make the code more useful.

</comment><comment><USER11> The problem with forking is that you can end up with a situation similar to the UNIX Wars of the eighties and early nineties with multiple, not-quite- interfunctional versions. That almost killed UNIX and could more easily do it to a minor program like Markdown.</comment>


I'm Sorry - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/empire-state-of-mind/1e648785df94

<comment><USER2> Here is a copy of the original post: [http://cdn1.uptownalmanac.com/cdn/farfuture/NSQW_1fiNhQgHaAK...](http://cdn1.uptownalmanac.com/cdn/farfuture/NSQW_1fiNhQgHaAK0tTipUI1HV0r1r5mryhzC78tZ7k/mtime:1376614189/sites/default/files/imagecache/full- post-width-no-height/images-on-cdn/peter-shihs-original-post.jpg)

The original post was unsurprisingly deleted from Peter Shih's blog.

His post was a little rude (and a bit sexist), but I feel he makes some good points. San Francisco is kind of shitty, but the people I met there were so insecure about SF not being New York/LA that they would pedantically argue about the pros and cons of each place, always convinced that SF is some glorious wonderland that encompasses the best of all worlds.

San Franciscans need to travel more.

<comment><USER3> Well, I have never had the opportunity to visit San Francisco but if the OP thinks that _London_ has good transport and parking, then he must really be having problems!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who doesn't live in San Francisco (but has visited it, and found it very pleasant!), I thought the response to this guy on Twitter was absurd and disgusting: "#PeterShihFacts" was trending in SF ([https://twitter.com/search?q=%23petershihfacts](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23petershihfacts)), and it was pretty much just "Hey, lets shit on this guy because he insulting our city."

Printing out posters that say "Peter Shih is a prick, kick him out of SF" ([https://twitter.com/skilldrick/status/368818494231429120/pho...](https://twitter.com/skilldrick/status/368818494231429120/photo/1)) does very little, in my mind, to engender respect or affection for a place or a populace.

</comment><comment><USER5> I see this as a cautionary tale of how careful you should be with social media, especially if you are in a startup.

I give Peter the benefit of the doubt and believe that the original article really was meant to be a humor piece. And unfortunately for him, his writing was interpreted by a great deal of people for cruelty rather than satire. (Don't quit the day job, Pete!) Sucks to be him.

Then, rightly or wrongly, people attacked his startup as well. I can understand why. One reason is that our personalities, whether we like it or not, are deeply imbued in our startups.

But a closer reason is: if you touch a nerve, some people will find a way to lash back at you any way they can. And calling your startup out is one way. (For an example, look at the tragic case of the Adria Richards/SendGrid and PlayHaven firings.)

Think twice before you blog/post/tweet.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad he's at least not trying to claim it was "satire" because that's an insult to satire. He wrote complaints that lots of SF people share and that's probably why he thought it was a great thing to publish. But there's a difference between:

1\. SF has a bad homeless problem

2\. Why can't SF clean up after all these dirty drunk conniving homeless people?

And being unhappy about finding a date can be handled differently than trying to blame SF's "ugly" women for acting self-confident and rational

</comment><comment><USER7> What is he apologizing for? I have no idea what blog post he's discussing.

<comment><USER8> The original post was unsurprisingly deleted. Here's a discussion + copy of the original.

[http://uptownalmanac.com/2013/08/tech-founder-complains- abou...](http://uptownalmanac.com/2013/08/tech-founder-complains-about- shithole-city-hes-forced-make-his-millions#comments-anchor)

And here's a little more context for the backlash that caused the apology:

[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23PeterShihFacts&src=hash](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23PeterShihFacts&src=hash)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "10\. Bicyclists Stop being fucking hypocrites. If you want to share the road, then you need to respect the rules of the road and stop running stop signs and lights. Next time I see one of you fuckers bomb through a crosswalk and almost mow down a row of pedestrians I'm going to clothesline you."

LOL because bicyclists _always_ follow the rules in Manhattan, rite guys?

EDIT: I thought it was funny, but I don't live in either NYC or SF. But seeing SF through the perspective of a New York/East Coast city dweller's eyes is somewhat amusing sometimes.

For example, homeless people in Philly don't fucking FOLLOW YOU when asking for money. I think a lot of people out here wouldn't even bat an eye before beating the dude senseless. Sad, but in a way that keeps people in check out here.

<comment><USER10> That's just "tu quoque". The fact that place X doesn't follow the rules doesn't mean place Y gets a free pass.

<comment><USER11> Some of his original arguments were that X is worse than Y because X does Z, so pointing out that Y also does Z actually does negate the argument.

<comment><USER10> Ah, fair enough. That's a different argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Now that Peter has apologized for what he wrote, what about the people that wrote the sleazy and occasionally reprehensible responses?

Will they acknowledge that they might have gotten caught up in heat of the moment and said things they shouldn't have either?

</comment><comment><USER13> Well I like the post were he apologys for. I mean it seems like he got a point at what he says, are the other SF people just running mad or wth?

If something is shit there's someone who calls it and someone who clears it, or not. Why make a mess about it?

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought the original post was pretty funny. SF does have its shitty qualities. It's kinda scary that you can't criticize it without the pitchfork mob coming out. This will prevent all improvement.

<comment><USER15> There is plenty of criticism of San Francisco coming from people inside, and outside, of the startup/tech scene.

His post was misogynistic and hypocritical, which encouraged the pitchfork mob. (I don't intend to make a value judgement regarding the response his post got.)

<comment><USER14> It was misogynistic? I don't remember him complaining that SF needs to get rid of women or anything.

<comment><USER16> This part:

>5\. 49ers

>No, not the football team, they're great. I'm referring to all the girls who are obviously 4's and behave like they are 9's. Just because San Francisco has the worst Female to Male ratio in the known universe doesn't give you the right to be a bitch all the time

As a person who went to a university with a stilted sex ratio, then lived in a city with the opposite sort of ratio (aka, the good way for me), I'm guessing the guy just isn't adjusting well to moving west from an eastern city (NYC). I actually warned a friend of mine about this when he moved there.

[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/21/business/econ...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/21/business/economy/singlesmap.jpg) for comparison

Small overall imbalances lead to LARGE imbalances in singles at younger ages.

<comment><USER14> Is a guy misogynist if he complains about an imbalanced sex ratio and the social pathologies that spread from that? I just wish we were less quick to excommunicate people from the politically correct Church of All. Relax people, let a little heresy into your life. You'll age better.

<comment><USER17> It sounds as though "the guy" in question has certain expectations about the ways in which women are supposed to interact with him. These expectations apparently vary based on his perception of how attractive the woman is; he gives women he deems sufficiently attractive social license to behave in ways that women he seems as less attractive are not granted.

It's not expressly stated, but not unreasonable to guess that these behaviors revolve around the guy's expectation that a woman will respond positively to demands that she pay positive attention to him. Merely moderately attractive women are not expected to rebuff the attention of the guy, and doing so is "being bitchy."

There are certainly social pathologies here, but not on the part of the women.

The complaint being responded to is predicated on assigning every woman a social worth based solely on a numerical rating of sexual attractiveness. If this doesn't strike you as misogynist I'm unsure what possibly could.

What you see as a "politically correct Church of All" I see as "basic decency to your fellow humans."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> tldr: i'm a dick, but i'm not dumb and i understand that i should apologize.

<comment><USER19> You're probably right, but I at least appreciate that he didn't try to play it off as a joke or make excuses. That's pretty rare in internet apologies nowadays.

<comment><USER20> He did try to play it off as a joke, by editing the post and adding a disclaimer at the top claiming satire.. That didn't work, so here we are.</comment></comment></comment>


Need help breaking my programming language - <AUTHOR>

I've written a scripting language that runs on top of Java. At this point it has all the features I need, but I'm just trying to find bugs to fix. I know there are probably some wacky behaviors that I want to catch as soon as possible.
Any chance you could write some programs and see how they work out? It'd be hugely appreciated!
*I ported it to Java SE for testing on desktop
https://github.com/Team4334/gordianSE
Thanks guys! <comment><AUTHOR> By the way, if you know of a place where this might be better received, I'd be happy to go there.</comment>


Women Are Missing Out on the Biggest Job Boom in America - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-18/women-are-missing-out-on-the-biggest-job-boom-in-america <comment><USER2> FTA, "She recalls being a construction manager on a solar project and having to make multiple requests for plans from a contractor. She never received a response, and the information was instead being sent to one of her male colleagues, according to Yarmoff"

This has nothing to do with her being female vs male. I oversee a GC's IT infrastructure and the amount of times people have complained about hounding subcontractors and engineers for RFI's/Specs/OEM's is ridiculous and is a common occurrence.

Usually there is a lot of cooks in the kitchen and it isn't uncommon for a RFI to go to a site superintendent that is overseeing the job rather than the PM that is in the office.

I do agree there is a huge lack of women in the field when it comes to installers and people doing the legwork vs managing, but I think that comes down to personal preference. Most women I know don't want to work 60-72 hour weeks on construction sites, although there are some I'm sure who would be great at it.</comment>


Thinking big about the boundaries of science - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/thinking-big-thoughts-about-the-boundaries-of-science/2018/01/05/4efb4538-ce17-11e7-81bc-c55a220c8cbe_story.html?utm_term=.ddf21d7c7450 <comment><USER2> > And what, anyway, is "meaning?"

I sure would like to hear what they had to say about this specific question.</comment>


Flux Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/staltz/flux-challenge <comment><USER2> >Scroll buttons: up/down buttons, move the list 2 positions

The first thing I would do in this situation is that I would sit down with Obi-Wan (or his hologram) and try to smooth out any problematic requirements.

"Master Kenobi, I understand that you've required a custom scrolling system, and agree that it fits very well in the unified look you're going for. However, experience tells me that this is a move we might later regret and have to backtrack on. Custom scrolling systems are currently _very_ poorly supported by browsers, and I strongly suggest that we use native scrolling. The scrollbar can be styled, but our styling will not appear in all browsers."

And then, upon closer inspection... I realize that most of the requirements are pretty convoluted.

<comment><USER3> Yes this is very much a straw man...

GraphQL and relay are designed to solve his issue with async requests and state, not flux.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I think this problem is great. Flux sounds great on paper but these edge cases keep coming up again and again. How do you handle optimistic updates? Request serialization? Garbage collection in your stores? (Or do you just let them grow forever?) Flux doesn't solve these problems. Relay, on the other hand, does a much better job of tackling the actual hard problems of application structure head on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool, starred this for later! I want to see the results and compare with our current flux architectures at my work place.

It would be cool to see more things like this, maybe here on HN, or maybe some other website? I really like TodoMvc but it's a bit too simplistic to see the strengths/weaknesses of each library/framework. Sometimes you need something more in-depth to start getting the larger picture of what patterns and architecture works well. Also.. sometimes I feel like I'm floundering trying to make something elegant, then to find out later someone else already has thought through alot of the nuances. If I had some easy way to search for what the community deems as "good" code, it could really help speed up development.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great! In my opinion, this should not only be a challenge for Flux frameworks, but generally replace todoMVC as the "go-to" example implementation.

This should reveal potential pain points a lot better.

<comment><USER7> The main problem I see is that TodoMVC is immediately clear as an app and its requirements - this has a bunch of Star Wars-related stuff that distract from what the challenges and requirements of the app (both for a hypothetical user and for the implementors).

I like the idea of a fuller common-comparison app (and even some of the requirements of this app), but not sure this is the right framing.

<comment><USER8> Even without the Star Wars stuff, it's not really clear what value this app provides.

To me it appears to just be a cursable priority queue component. Such a component should be provided by a standard library, not implemented as its own app. Of course, this is a learning exercise so some leeway is afforded, but it might be even more effective to include extracting the core component into a reusable library as part of the challenge.

Also, what is a Todo app, but a priority queue?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like challenges like this because I can prove you can write elegant solutions using only vanilla JavaScript, HTML and CSS. This one is too restricting though, why not push all request via the websocket? That's how I do things nowadays, using sockJS to provide compatibility with old browsers that don't support Websockets.

<comment><USER10> Because it's written intentionally to make data access patterns which are weird. Having multiple modalities should theoretically make a lot of different design options awkward.

Presumably Stalz intends to use cycle and show that capturing everything as an Observable is a good unifying framework.

<comment><USER10> Staltz _

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given that Flux was made to go hand-in-hand with React I think all those XHR requests are somewhat non-idiomatic. Wouldn't it be better to just have a WebSocket sending across a large list of the latest data, sending a new list any time there's an update?

edit: Maybe I am misunderstanding and the way data is received in this challenge is meant to demonstrate your point about "multiple async data sources."

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I think the point was to showcase many async operations, and to perhaps have simpler code. Certainly in a real-life scenario it would be better to optimize by transferring the items as lists (though XHR would be just fine for that too, at least for initial population).

<comment><USER11> Yeah. So in my experience "state" based UI really pushes your app towards "real-time", almost like a multiplayer game. Given that your entire UI is rendered from a certain set of data, you definitely don't want to be in a position where you are personally reconciling the data structure in the browser with data received from the server.

In my view it's best for when you can directly tell the server, "here's my latest data", or ask the server: "What's up? What's the latest?" Think Gmail, or Facebook comments. So it's okay if the two states (server vs. client) get out of 'sync', to support something like Offline Editing, but the data received should be in an expected structure.

Oddly, a simple and clear way to think about this is that it's similar to server-side templates. You instantiate your variables first, then just run the rendering function. If the rendered view has to change it's still based on conditions or booleans held in your variables; you change them and run the rendering function again. That's how server-generated HTML works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would like to see some transitions, as that is something that I have found hard to do in a bunch of frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER14> This just about the most blatant nerd sniping that I've seen. "The Flux architecture sucks; try to prove me wrong."

</comment><comment><USER15> Give me a break with your "elegance". No matter how you twist it, it's subjective unless you provide some actual metrics. Once you do that, you might notice it's not "elegance" any more, it's something else.

<comment><USER16> I think that after a certain point in time in ones coding life it becomes fairly easy to determine the elegance of a small codebase. This is a reasonable ask.

<comment><USER17> Yes, except that that determination will be specific to the person doing the determination. That's the definition of "subjective".

Try submitting the same code to the IOCCC [1], the ICFP programming contest [2], the computer language benchmarks game [3], and the Flux Challenge (well, assuming they had the same problem statement, and that you could emscripten your C code for the Flux Challenge). They all have prizes for elegance. The only one of their definitions of elegance that is objective is the benchmarks game, which defines it as straight lines of code (and has resulted in some entries that most programmers consider to be abominations "winning"). It's different cultures, different judges, and different criteria for what's elegant.

[1] [http://www.ioccc.org/](http://www.ioccc.org/)

[2] [http://icfpcontest.org/](http://icfpcontest.org/)

[3] [http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/)

<comment><USER16> Sorry, but I think the authors ask is clear, simple and unambiguous. Your comment above strikes me as unnecessarily pedantic when paired with the challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like the solution you're begging at is to use something like bacon.js or csp inside of the flux actions.

<comment><USER19> Now you're making me want to implement this with the js-csp library to show it off.

But you're exactly right. Redux (imho the best "flux" implementation out there, quotes because its only partly flux) is not against async abstractions like channels or observables. It just eschews requiring them as the backbone for communication with the UI, and favors a simple naive state change notification. But in action creators, if you need to do complex work, you should absolutely use channels or observables to synchronize stuff, and then dispatch simple actions to make state changes.

I've found it really, really nice to constrain async abstractions into a single place. It makes the rest of the code just normal synchronous stuff (i.e. all the UI code, about 70% of our app), and you can do record/reply simply by just replaying actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've read this about 10 times and don't understand the problem at all. Seems like an extremely easy thing to do in angular. You just fire requests and cancel ones not in the view? I think the problem could be better explained in the readme.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this challenge too trivial to really show the strengths of Flux? I feel like it would be easy to bang out an implementation in jQuery in about 30 minutes.

<comment><USER22> I think this challenge is crafted to attack some oddities in flux that makes doing this difficult.

Another team working across the hallway from me was using flux style react for a cordova application, and they hit some hideous cases that resulted in bizarre looking code.

I've being hearing a lot of cursing from over there, and this is relative to the team that manages spring/hibernate/queryDSL/angularJS oddities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A solution in vanilla javascript:

[https://github.com/stinson7/flux- challenge/blob/master/submi...](https://github.com/stinson7/flux- challenge/blob/master/submissions/stinson7/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> looking at this (only vague understanding of Flex), I don't quite see why Flux would have difficulties with this.

Isn't most of the "hardness" solved by writing a good store? Your controller view makes a bunch of UI requests, and the store decides whether or not to notify based off of the ordering of the requests.

Feel like I'm missing something

</comment><comment><USER25> > being completely familiar with the tools used but completely unfamiliar with > the codebase

here lies the problem.Someone familiar with a specific pattern may find it more elegant that someone who is not familiar with the said pattern/paradigm/framework. I'm found of OOP, show me a codebase with mountains of FP everywhere and I might not find it elegant. Elegance here is really in the eye of the beholder.

I do not find Flux elegant at all, personally.

<comment><USER26> React builds a pure function that maps data to UI. Flux is a fold over a stream of events that generates a stream of data states.

That's ALL of it. What do you find to be inelegant: fold, or a pure map function?

<comment><USER27> I presume you mean `scan` not `fold`.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why should I do this when there lots of paying and non-paying work of various sorts out there already?

<comment><USER29> Why would you browse HN when there is lots of paying and non-paying work of various sorts out there already?</comment></comment>


Microsoft readies real-time language translator for Skype - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-readies-real-time-language-translator-for-skype/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if when they say 'all devices' they are meaning Windows Phone as well as Windows? Though the service might be cool on a desktop, using it while travelling on you mobile device I suspect is the killer application.</comment>


Tesla truck: $10.5B in pre-orders with $0 in ad spend - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/105-billion-pre-orders-0-ad-spend-tesla-disrupting-more-mahesh-murthy/ <comment><USER2> For reference, around 25% of model 3 pre-orders were cancelled, and its initial deposit amount was $1000 as opposed to $100.

<comment><USER3> Sure but the huge response nevertheless caused Tesla to reconsider its whole approach to how much demand there would be and consequently how much extra capital they would need to meet the demand. And now it looks like Tesla will be producing Model 3's in three factories world wide.

You can be sure that GM and Ford are taking these numbers very seriously if only because the Tesla truck is offering compelling utility and a very reasonable price aside from the controversial design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Counterpoint, it is a very rare and unicorn-like class of company that has assiduously and methodically cultivated a grassroots cult of fanboys, that can do a presentation like this with zero advertising spend.

The closest I can think of might be Apple.

I am not saying spacex or tesla are vapor or hype, but that their fans are very, very enthusiastic about sharing every new thing and wild theory with all of their friends, unpaid.

<comment><USER5> People are hype because.... end of the day, they ship products that basically do what they say, and what they say is a big leap from what you have now. The stats on the tesla truck are incredible, just clearly better than other trucks announced at the moment. The hype is - wow we're getting something new, and we can trust these people to deliver it.

<comment><USER6> >People are hype because.... end of the day, they ship products that basically do what they say, and what they say is a big leap from what you have now.

The hype train existed before Tesla was a company with a proven track record.

Elon Musk is an incredibly good hype-man.

I'm not saying that it's undeserved, but if cultivating the enthusiasm of others is a skill, folks like Musk have it.

<comment><USER7> You're right. Creating incredible products that people love is a good skill that creates enthusiasm

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would only call it $10.5B in pre-orders if people paid the full price when they put a deposit. it is more like ~ $25M in deposits.

<comment><USER4> One follow up question to that would be what percentage of people who made a Model 3 reservation (the $14bn mentioned in the article) ended up not purchasing their vehicle, when their reservation rose to the top of the queue. I'm sure Tesla has good internal numbers tracking this, but whether it's the level of granular data that will make it into public reports for shareholders, that's another question.

<comment><USER9> Comment above

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21644374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21644374) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21644374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21644374)

Says 25% of Model 3 pre-orders were cancelled and the reservation fee for those was $1000.

No source provided in the comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A linkedin article that is estimating theoretical pre-orders, written purely to "cash-in" on the current buzz.

The $100 refundable deposit makes it easy for anyone to "buy in" to the idea of owning a Tesla. It's clearly a great marketing technique, especially when there's a cult like following of the brand and 'outsiders' want to get in on it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think this is sort of a situation where all the R&D spend just makes advertising value irrelevant. I mean no advertising, but all that investment into R&D. I wonder how long before a return.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is very surprising. The aesthetic design ain't got no alibi.

</comment><comment><USER13> No, the announcement was the ad. Guessing that cost more than $0.

<comment><USER14> That's not advertising.

<comment><USER6> 'Announcements' became advertisement once they became 2-3 hour long demonstrations of a product (accompanied by band music and multimedia demonstration) rather than a paragraph-long press release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's amazing to see the Olympian gymnastics routines the tech world is going through right now to try to make the Cybertruck anything but a hilarious testament to Tesla's hubris.

Not only is it the ugliest thing that's ever existed on four wheels, it's poorly thought out for its market segment. Range under load was not even mentioned, why do you think that is? Good luck towing anything with the base model without a supercharger visit every hour or two. Luckily my door panels and windows* are bulletproof though, because suburban California is basically a war zone right?</comment>


Google Engineer: Java Options "All Suck", Android "Needs to Negotiate a License" - Apple-Guy http://obamapacman.com/2011/07/google-engineer-java-alternatives-all-suck-android-needs-to-negotiate-license/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is so biased that that its fairly offensive. Their 'source' articles are grossly misrepresented.

I would like to see a link to an article that is more balanced (too bad groklaw isn't around anymore). Does anyone have a more suitable source document for discussion?

<comment><USER2> I agree. From what I can tell, the site appears to be a platform for launching sidebar ads. The content seems to be an afterthought.

Just look at their definition of Chrome OS. "Chrome OS is basically a crippled netbook that currently requires constant internet connection to function, and to allow Google data-mining and ad serving."

Last time I checked, Chrome OS was an operating system, not a netbook. And a netbook whose main job is to surf the web isn't a "crippled" netbook...it's just a netbook.

<comment> Apple-Guy "site appears to be a platform for launching sidebar ads"

Not sure what browser you are using, but ads on the site are adsense ads, which do not "Launch" anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You know, the alternatives might not be great, but between Go and JavaScript V8, I bet Google could pull Java out of Android. It might take a few years, but it's possible. Then again, Oracle is trying to get Google to pay the $6 billion it paid for Sun.

Google should have just bought Sun, sold off the hardware business to say IBM, and kept Java and the patents.

In this case I think the nerds at Google were too clever for their own good and it's going to bite them in the long run.

<comment><USER4> What do you do with all the third-party software if you tear Java out of Android? I guess you could have a cross-compiler to <other-language> and run it automatically on install, with an option to run it at development time.

But that means you need to also re-implement the entire Java SDK in <other- language>, not to mention the entire Android SDK. Wowzer. Big project. But you're right, it seems possible.</comment></comment>


The official Mozilla JavaScript team blog - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/javascript/

<comment><USER2> From TFA -- Firefox 16 will be the first version to support incremental garbage collection. This is a major feature, over a year in the making, that makes Firefox smoother and less laggy. With incremental GC, Firefox responds more quickly to mouse clicks and key presses. Animations and games will also draw more smoothly.</comment>