Heroin addiction in the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvjgvb/the-terrifying-new-trend-in-heroin-addiction <comment><USER2> Of all the things that make me wish I were smarter, being able to do something with public policy about heroin addiction is very near the top of the list.

I grew up in the nineties and my set of friends and I were all self-medicating our way through our teenage angst and emotional problems to some degree or another. It seems like almost overnight heroin showed up in our scene, not because anyone was addicted to opiate pain medication, but just because someone's dealer got some, exactly like this article describes.

Within just a couple of years, the collection of friends had an enormous rift right down the middle: half had tried and become addicted to heroin, and the other half of us felt like we had no choice but to get out of the scene and get our shit together.

To this day, I have no idea what factors other than chance put someone in the former group vs. the latter. Those of us that went into the latter group weren't any smarter and we didn't have better support networks. Of the dozen or so people in the former, maybe only 2-3 came out of it successful in the long-term. Everyone else is either dead, in jail, or living as addicts. I've spent a _lot_ of time thinking about this to no effect.

Becoming a heroin addict isn't something I would wish on my worst enemy. It's the most awful thing to see someone you love go through that I can think of. Treating it as a criminal matter instead of a public health matter is absolutely the worst possible way to deal with it.

<comment><USER3> My experience as a 28 year old former heroin addict is equally as anecdotal but contradictory. As preteen and teenager I was a big pot smoker and later cocaine enthusiast. I medicated throughout those teenage years but never saw opioid pain medication or heroin even though I was fairly deep into the NYC drug scene. If you had asked then if I would ever inject heroin I would laugh at you.

Around my freshmen year of college (2007) pain pills started showing up. They were an instant hit and all my friends start doing them. I explicitly remember sniffing my first oxycodone in my dorm and thinking "this is what I've been missing my entire life". My life spiraled downhill quickly. As a lifelong programmer / math enthusiast I managed to get to my second semester junior year before my lifestyle really caught up. By then I was homeless, facing serious felony charges, OD countless times, doing whatever I could for my fix. Oxycodone was around for a few years before they reformulated and then you needed heroin to get high. I was shooting it only a week after first trying it. For the next several years I went from a middle class college student to a IV homeless heroin junkie. I caught very serious charges and took drug court. Violated drug court 3 years in and then spent a year in a bad NY jail where I leaserned to fight and throw urine on people. I learned to act like a fucking savage. I got out and finished drug court only to get addicted again.

I finally got on Suboxone about 4 years ago. I finished my degree and went from homeless to making 6 figures in those years.

I'm literally the only success story I know. For most of my peers they died or are doing long prison bids. We all started from pills, and I can honestly say I would never have started if it weren't for them. However I recognize the need for them and don't know if serious restriction is the right way either

<comment><USER4> Wow... It sounds like you and OP are roughly the same age, and the same age as my youngest brother, who also kicked heroin addiction (he kicked it a couple of years ago). What I'm wondering is if there is something generational here.

My father also kicked heroin before I was born in the late 70s, and since his recovery was such an important part of our life as a family, when we learned my brother was using, it shocked us, because it seemed so obvious not to do it. What I've been wondering is why the current crisis is affecting your generation more heavily than the ones between (or maybe I'm selectively seeing it in your generation).

Was it the easy access of oxycontin in the late 90s that finally trickled it's way through the culture and started a resurgence? Was it some other factor (the fashion cycle that goes in and out every 20-30 years)?

I do know my brother was exposed to it from a friend around his age, and of course during a painful part of his life, but I'm curious as to the origin because I see how culture and influence work it's way though our lives, but I'd love to have some hints as to why heroin itself made such a comeback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reads like something big pharma would write to shift the blame away from themselves for causing the opioid epidemic and killing hundreds of thousands of people.

> Although most users still get their first taste from one of several > prescription pills, heroin is now the single most common individual opioid > taken by people first trying this class of drugs, the study found.

Or said another way: there are so many prescription opioids on the market that lead to addiction that no single one wins.

I don't buy the idea that the opioid epidemic was some natural and inevitable consequence of the economy or stress or whatever. "Oh look, some people addicted to opioids never took prescription drugs. See, it wasn't our fault after all! Now let us go back to the good old days where we bribed doctors to prescribe our stuff to everyone."

<comment><USER6> I agree completely that the opioid epidemic was inevitable either. I'm from Dublin (Ireland) where heroin just 'appeared' in the 1980s. But it didn't just appear, a few criminal families introduced it, got richer selling it in deprived parts of Dublin, then with the increased wealth, spread the drug around the larger cities in the country.

I live in Stockholm and there is pretty much no heroin here. Don't let people say "there is", there's not. Compared to any large european city, you never see strung out junkies anywhere.

I would love to know how much of the crime difference between a city like Dublin and Stockholm can be explained by heroin (just heroin - we don't have much crack or breaking-bad stuff). I expect it's the majority of crime and definitely the majority of homelessness. Heroin is like a viral infection. If it appears in a city, you have to quarantine off that area, clear the infection or it will spread and then it's just chronic management after that.

<comment><USER7> Norway recently legislated for Portuguese style decriminalisation of drug use. Dealing hard drugs will still be illegal and dealers will still be pursued, but drug use and the behaviours typical of addicts will no longer be treated as criminal matters but as public health issues. This approach has had a massive effect in Portugal, dramatically reducing use rates, medical complications from drug use and related crime.

Obviously Norway is a different country from Sweden, but do you know what made them go down that route? Do they have a significantly bigger drugs problem there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you missed it when it first appeared last September, the Cincinnati Enquirer's _Seven Days of Heroin_ was a gruelling but phenomenally powerful read.

[https://www.cincinnati.com/pages/interactives/seven-days- of-...](https://www.cincinnati.com/pages/interactives/seven-days-of-heroin- epidemic-cincinnati/)

<comment><USER9> Along similar lines, The LA Times' series on opioid addiction was gripping. It offers a story of how some people fall in to worse and worse spirals.

[http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin- part1/](http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/)

I hadn't seen that Cincinnati Enquirer article though, so thank you for sharing. I'm not looking forward to hearing about the suffering, but I feel the need to educate myself. I worry this is the new normal.

Edit: God, the pacing of that article...all the lives lost in short vignettes, names unknown, punctuated by daily death/overdose numbers for just one city? Horrifying when you realize what a tiny facet this represents of the national suffering due to this epidemic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having first hand experience with the addiction epidemic in the U.S., education and rehabilitation is where 90% of all resources should be allocated. Not in the penal and policing policies, budgets or systems of influence. The website I edit raises money for a non-profit structured sober living in Los Angeles called Awakening Recovery which helps men become productive members of society after giving up any mind altering substance. [https://www.awakeningrecovery.org/](https://www.awakeningrecovery.org/) [https://latechnews.org/we-support/](https://latechnews.org/we-support/)

<comment><USER11> unfortunately the rehab industry is filled with questionable players and downright con-artists:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/27/business/new-...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/27/business/new- drug-rehabs.html)

(the entire nyt series is this from is excellent)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there any talk of legalizing heroin to make it easier to provide treatment options?

<comment><USER13> Or at least decriminalizing its use. Maybe leaving the process of dealing in large quantities as illegal but trying to see users of it as patients rather than as miscreants.

According to this article [0] from the NYT, nothing really compares to maintaining prior abusers on buprenorphine/methadone while working through therapy as far as efficacy for the masses. Granted, I think everyone responds differently to all sorts of things and have met some phenomenal individuals two credit 12-step programs for both their sobriety and living more fulfilling lives than they had even before their addictions, so mileages will vary.

Between the two, methadone's effects on QT interval and cardiac mortality makes me think that it's morally reprehensible to get patients stuck on it, while buprenorphine also has the prophylactic effect of muting any recreational opioids that patients taking it might encounter, reducing the positive feedback loop.

Regardless, it's definitely time for us as a society to focus more on helping people rather than marginalizing them.

[0]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/opinion/treating- opioid-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/opinion/treating-opioid- addiction.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So does this mean opioids are an actual gateway drug?

</comment><comment><USER15> American govt is helping or allowing it into the country. Their actions must be stopped first. U.S. Troops Patrolling/protecting poppy fields in Afghanistan. Yeah, go war on drugs....

[https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama- hezbollah-d...](https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah- drug-trafficking-investigation/)

[http://humansarefree.com/2015/02/overwhelming-evidence- that-...](http://humansarefree.com/2015/02/overwhelming-evidence-that-cia- is.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW2YWqVpT4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW2YWqVpT4E)

[http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/10/14066.html](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/10/14066.html)

<comment><USER16> This is the truth.The war on drugs is a war on people. Did you know that in 2000, opium production had almost completely stopped in Afghanistan, thanks to the Taliban? That's like 80% of the worlds supply of heroin. The global market value of heroine is like half a trillion. Where do people think intelligence agencies get all of their black money from? That's the real reason that we went to Afghanistan.

<comment><USER17> I've read that before the Taliban banned production they stockpiled a lot of it, then when prices skyrocketed they sold their reserves at a much larger profit.

[http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a0700poppyban](http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a0700poppyban)

<comment><USER16> That's very interesting, especially the timing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Pouch.ly an utility platform give your feedback - <AUTHOR> http://pouchly.in/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my first initiative after seeing lots of discussion in HN. Please share your feedback and what could be the more value add you required if possible. I am willing to hear from the members of HN

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently I have make it down in-order to fix one small issue. I will inform once it is up...

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> The link is wrong.</comment>


Ask HN: Suggest a suitable project in machine learning? - <AUTHOR> i have been trying to get a good hold of the concepts i just learned. Can someone suggest me something suitable and not too demanding? <comment><USER2> You could try some of the challenges at hackerrank.com : [https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/ai/machine- learning](https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/ai/machine-learning) (you may need to sign up)

Also there's kaggle - [https://www.kaggle.com/](https://www.kaggle.com/)</comment>


Visual, multi-language XKCD-style password generator - <AUTHOR> http://password.optionfactory.net/ <comment><USER2> From the previous HN thread on this:

 _To have fun on April Fools ' Day we wanted to build something useful and funny: we created a new XKCD-like password generator that can use different languages dictionaries and show a picture for each generated term by searching Google Images. We had a lot of laughs playing around with Italian and English passwords and we hope you'll have as fun with this as we did!_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9304688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9304688)

It should be just for fun and education, anyone foolish enough to use these generated passwords as real passwords is well ... foolish enough. Flaw #1: no HTTPS.

<comment><USER3> HTTPS does nothing for you in this case. The passwords are generated locally with JavaScript, and there is an option you can check to prevent them being sent back to the server. But even if they actually were generated on the server, HTTPS would be of limited use, since you'd still have to trust the server itself and the people operating it.

<comment><USER2> Good point. However, the dictionaries also need to be transferred to the user and a MITM could easily replace this with his own (flawed) dictionary.

Same point: JavaScript injection/modification.

HTTPS doesn't guarantee that the dictionary isn't flawed or the JS is secure, but it does guarantee that the received data/scripts/dictionaries are exactly the ones the server intended to send.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/choosing_secu...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/choosing_secure_1.html)

> This is why the oft-cited XKCD scheme for generating passwords -- string > together individual words like "correcthorsebatterystaple" \-- is no longer > good advice. The password crackers are on to this trick.

<comment><USER5> 4 true random choices from a dictionary of 5000 words is 50 bits of entropy. All things being equal that is just as good as any other password scheme with 50 bits of entropy. I think that's about the same as a 10 character upper/lower/numbers/symbols password.

That's your worse case scenario. Add to that the fact that:

a) the attacker doesn't have your dictionary b) they can't be sure you're using this method c) you might add a minor extra step of your choosing

then the attack becomes significantly harder than attacking a 'normal' password with 50 bits of entropy

<comment><USER6> I just looked at some of the hashcat benchmarks and they are clocking MD5 on one of their test machines at 115840 Mh/s.

(2^50)/(115840*10^6) = 9719.43 seconds, or about 2-3 hours to break one correct horse style password. I think the point is that 50 bits of entropy is not enough when you consider the speed of GPU hashing.

Obviously you shouldn't use MD5 for hashing passwords, but since you often have no control over what algo a site uses (or even information about which one they did pick), assuming they will do something common and bad like unsalted MD5 isn't a bad starting point for this kind of analysis.

<comment><USER7> Maybe so, but then that doesn't say much about the usual alternative which has even less entropy.

EDIT: Actually I was going by xkcx's claims, which start with a dictionary word and adda random tweaks to it. I don't know off hand how long a random password would have to be to match 50 bits. But ultimately, that is the question; is this method at least as good as the alternative.

<comment><USER6> Assuming 80 possible characters (A-Z,a-z,0-9 + 18 punctuation symbols), log2(80^8) ~= 50. So a correct horse password would be about the same as a random 8 character alpha-numeric entropy wise.

The XKCD argument is that correct hose style is way easier to remember. It's possible Schneier thought Munroe was arguing that a correct horse was as much entropy as a 20 character random password, even though he isn't. This is the first I've heard of this argument though so I'm not even sure how much of a controversy it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8>
        $ shuf /usr/share/dict/words | head -n4
        Zygopterides
        frenulum
        unexuberant
        delightsome

        $ wc -l /usr/share/dict/words
        235886

<comment> vive-la-liberte

        $ # No need to use head. Also, I prefer output on one line.
        $ shuf -n4 /usr/share/dict/words | xargs
        limper mastoplastia highfaluting Bobbinite

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like the image search doesn't work?

<comment><USER10> From the source it looks like the "feature" isn't implemented yet. Only image reference is:

 _$( '#xkcd-image-'+(index)).html(" ");_

This should be a "Show HN"

<comment><USER11> Uhh. Why post it then? Where's the innovation here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> \- It would be good to document the entropy evaluation for readers to check if the assumptions are correct.

\- Which random number generator is involved? Optimally, the user should be able to put his plain entropy in the locally run "nice password" maker for which he also checked the source code. Anything else, IMHO, isn't more than the game inspired by the real problem.

Edit: itcrowd clears it up: it's made for April 1st, that explains the problems.

\- Worth knowing, a simple solution to real user-generated entropy:

[http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html](http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html)

The page could be actually useful if it would run fully locally (e.g. on an air gaped computer) and take the input of the values of the user thrown dices.

</comment><comment> james-skemp Nice, but I think I'll be sticking with Preshing's version. I even have my mom using it plus KeePass.

My usage is to generate four words, replace a/e/I/o in one of them with 4/3/1/0, capitalize, and throw on some punctuation that makes sense.

Sites with forced password limits and those that don't accept special characters are still a pain, but using dashes, capitalization, or three of the four words usually helps.

[http://preshing.com/20110811/xkcd-password- generator/](http://preshing.com/20110811/xkcd-password-generator/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Unless the test will be performed using dictionary words only. Starting with 1 word 1st capital letter followed by 1st lower case. I think the calculation time would drop significantly.

<comment><USER14> Compared to brute forcing all alphanumeric passwords of the same length, true. However, even if you know the complete dictionary of 5k words this uses, 5000^4 = 625,000,000,000,000 > 2^49. Not trivial to brute force; comparable to a completely random 8-character password that uses letter, numbers, and symbols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For me, at least, I'd rather use a line of poetry that is clearly already memorised. An old router password was "It profits little an idle king, _etc_ ". (Thanks Frasier). I imagine the real winners would be older work with non- current English, or perhaps some good nonsense?

Obviously when someone knows that's my thing it's easier to crack though... I shouldn't have said anything :(

<comment><USER16> this sounds like a good idea for those folk who are walking poetry references

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Serving password and copying over HTTP is actually a very bad idea.

Moreover, for my language I have some non-latin symbols. I'm not sure if every service can be trusted to treat non-latin alphabet password. And this tool generates words with umlauts that we don't even have in Latvian. Some words are already translited, some not - that doesn't help.

<comment><USER18> The passwords are generated on the client.

<comment><USER19> What if someone is listening to your traffic and injects a script which sends generated passwords to a server? http only is a bad idea in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Several mostly grammatical examples (English common): "catholic conversation served laughter" "zoo bearing child useless" "hitting burning psychiatrist much" "justice except critical vacation" "assigned fantastic shower interests"

</comment><comment><USER21> This site [http://correcthorsebatterystaple.net](http://correcthorsebatterystaple.net) takes it's inspiration from the same XKCD cartoon

It lacks the language choice but other options are more useful to me. Also the domain is easily memorable.

</comment><comment><USER22> "schatzmeister anschlägen vormarsch stolzen" Yeah. Pretty german.

</comment><comment><USER23> "admire fucking ali beautiful"

I've already memorized it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does this word list purposely choose insulting words? Out of 4 tries I was given both p&#$y and c@#t.

<comment><USER25> Here's the 5K english wordlist file:

[http://password.optionfactory.net/dict/en-5k.json](http://password.optionfactory.net/dict/en-5k.json)

Looking at the JS it doesn't appear to do it on purpose, although I did experience a similar situation.

Also to add, this is probably one of those situations where a JSON file isn't really that useful. It's a wordlist that could be split by newlines or similar. There's 12 bytes needlessly added to each word when using JSON formatting (the "'s and ,'s).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder where they got the commonly used word lists.

</comment><comment><USER27> it would be nice if it allowed to combine words from multiple languages.

That's my technique on the websites that allow long passwords.

</comment><comment><USER28> "sexy corpse guys grunting"

Hmmm ...

</comment><comment><USER29> A good password could be created by using a sentences with > 14 words. And than you should use the first letters in their plain form i.e. This is a sunny day will be: Tias, now you should change any s/S to a $ and any a/A to a @ after that you should add the last two bits of your birth year in fron of the sentences and the first two bits at the end of your sentences.

So now you would have something like: 57Ti@$19</comment>


Taco Bell will pay some workers $100k this year - <AUTHOR> https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/taco-bell-will-pay-some-workers-100000-this-year-heres-who <comment><USER2> Why not an overall raise for all coworkers, even percentages?</comment>


GCC diagnostics are great, but they are not enough - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@emma_programmer/gcc-diagnostics-are-great-but-they-are-not-enough-718cdd1f1bfc <comment><USER2> I mostly agree, but keep in mind that there are a differences in their goals; so a straight up comparison may not be all that fair. I think compilers try to avoid FP in their reporting, hence a little bit restricted and held back in the types of warnings they add, while many tools may shot at anything that looks suspicious. I still use static analyzers, even thou they have "FP rates" and it has saved me once or twice so it's still worth it.

I think (if you have the time and resources) you should try every tool available on your code, they really catch different things (and in some cases, tools which are solely "regex/pattern" based may find things that "we parse and understand everything"-tools miss.</comment>


Android emulator updated with GPU acceleration and more hardware support - <AUTHOR> http://android-developers.blogspot.ca/2012/04/faster-emulator-with-better-hardware.html

<comment><USER2> Using the x86 emulator makes a huge difference. On my machine, the ARM emulator takes over a minute to boot, and then my app's tests take another minute to run. With the x86 emulator, the boot happens in a few seconds and my tests run in 10 seconds. Hardware-assisted emulation is a wonderful thing :)</comment>


SHN: "Big Iron Age"-Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://www.masswerk.at/keypunch?b=XDAwMzIwMTM0MDMxYTA3MzQwNzM0MDMxYTAxMzQwMDMyXCAgIFwwMDFjMDAzMDA1M2MwMzFhMDEzYTAxMzgwMTNhMDMxYTA1M2MwMDMwMDAxY1wgICBPTUcsIGxvb2sgYXQgdGhpczogaHR0cDovL3d3dy5tYXNzd2Vyay5hdC80MDQhICNlcnJvcg==

<comment><AUTHOR> Not exactly new, but updated to detect and extract any links (URL) provided in the text. So, you can forward a working link using a punched card. (Images are bit tricky, use MLT PNCH or column binary.) Links must start with "[http://"](http://") or "[https://"](https://") as fully qualified URLs in order to be detected, case will be preserved, even when displayed in upper case on the card.</comment>


The FBI Bought a 'Tool' to Hack San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/04/07/comey-apple-fbi/ <comment><USER2> The new tagline "The TOOL's tool for accessing the iPhone."</comment>


Big data, Google, and the end of free will - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/50bb4830-6a4c-11e6-ae5b-a7cc5dd5a28c.html?siteedition=intl <comment><USER2> Interesting read, though I would have liked more highlight to the fact that all of these algorithms are biased against you.

You aren't just giving control away in exchange for an all-knowing algorithm helping you with how to live your life. No, these algorithms all actively use this control and they have no interest in making your life better.

They all want you to buy something that you wouldn't have otherwise bought or want you to spend more time on their service watching ads than would be sensible.

They might try to be useful at the side, so that you don't abandon them entirely, but whenever they can, they will do what's best for their company. Because that's what they are programmed to do.

<comment><USER3> Your perspective seems right, relative to the status quo. But, in time, fair algorithms could be put in use by open source and creative commons to empower regular people. Today it is easy to fork or extend a system, even an AI system. Data can be collected by offering services. I don't think a few companies could hold AI hostage, especially because the practice is to share and because the entry barrier is low with regards to computer power.

<comment><USER4> If humans write the algorithms then all the subconscious bias of their authors will still influence them.

Algorithms are not holy. Nor is data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Unabomber's manifesto doesn't seem so crazy now, does it?</comment>


Facebook app developers sold user info - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20021296-93.html

<comment><USER2> When you write a Facebook app that hooks into the Facebook API and a user allows/authorizes your app to access friends and post on their wall etc, there is nothing stopping your application from storing all that "retrieved" information into a database of your own. You can do this because Facebook isn't hosting any of the files that make up your app. They all live on your own servers.</comment>


The Incident Response Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://incident-response-challenge.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

There is new incident response challenge is out there.

[https://incident-response-challenge.com/](https://incident-response- challenge.com/)

25 levels, mostly related to infosec forensics.

(Doesn't work in mobile for some reason )

Good luck</comment>


Show HN: BlobCity DB - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blobcity/db/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I am the chief architect & creator of BlobCity DB. Other DB's such as MongoDB, Cassandra, Couchbase, ArangoDB all require data to be in a single format (JSON, XML, SQL, CSV etc). We believe this is an unreasonable ask, as not all data can be converted to a single format. Hence we created BlobCity DB that stores 17 formats of data. That covers almost every format of data you are likely to have.

Look forward to your feedback and happy to answer any question. #AskMeAnything

Formats we support: [https://docs.blobcity.com/docs/using-blobcity-with- diverse-d...](https://docs.blobcity.com/docs/using-blobcity-with-diverse-data- models)

<comment><USER3> "Store unlimited data for free and pay only for what you analyse" - <USER2> data for free? Not happening. I would really take that off before someone tries to find out limits of your "unlimited" offering.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is of course virtually unlimited, but this is true. Push in all the data you want. We only charge for the selects.

If you fire

"SELECT SUM(amount) from shop.sales"

and you have 1 billion sales transactions in your table; since the "SUM(amount)" returns a single row, we count it as 1 row selected for billing purposes. And the charge is $10 per million rows selected. Always rounded upwards to the nearest millionth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A quick 2 min read on what BlobCity DB can do:

* Store JSON & XML data side by side in the same table

* Store your images and perform face detection and run your custom image classifiers on the same

* Schemaless storage with auto indexing on first query

* Clustering with automated sharding

* Integrated AI & ML libraries: TensorFlow, DeepLearning4J, Weka, OpenNLP and more …

* Java & Scala based stored procedures, for extreme high speed data operations

* ACID compliant down to individual records

* Advanced permission control, data encryption & data compression

* The only DB offering full integrated on-disk and in-memory storage

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Join us Tuesday 06 Aug 11:00 am EDT for a live product demo webinar

[https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/106892031637377793...](https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1068920316373777932)</comment>


Yahoo Unveils Webtop Plugin, BrowserPlus, Before It's Ready - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/28/yahoo-unveils-webtop-plugin-browserplus-before-its-ready/

<comment><USER2> W3C, please hurry up with HTML5. This is getting ridiculous. I wonder if anyone will actually use this over Gears, Silverlight, AIR, or Prism?

So much fragmentation and I only see it getting worse..

<comment><USER3> Actually, I hope HTML5 dies. It's horrible. Innovating by writing standards documents is going to get us nowhere. (Some things look great in standards documents, but don't work in real life. That's why people still use tables for layout.)

All we can hope for is that the people with new ideas keep them open source. Then we can standardize after we see what works and doesn't work. (I think we're OK here; Microsoft is in a poor position. They write their plugins for Windows only, but most web designers use OS X and most programmers use Linux. So although most _users_ can use MS technology, the people making the content can't.)</comment></comment>


How to convince your friends vertical farming is the next big thing - <AUTHOR> https://urbanverticalproject.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/why-vertical-farms/ <comment><USER3> Vertical farming is an energy nightmare. It requires at least 1000x more energy than conventional agriculture because you have to provide supplemental light for the plants to grow indoors.

Others have addressed this:

"... the light required to grow the 500 grammes of wheat that a loaf of bread contains would cost, at current prices, £9.82. (The current farm gate price for half a kilo of wheat is 6p.) That's just lighting: no inputs, interest, rents, rates, or labour. Somehow this minor consideration – that plants need light to grow and that they aren't going to get it except on the top storey – has been overlooked by the scheme's supporters. I won't bother to explain the environmental impacts."

\-- [http://www.monbiot.com/2010/08/16/towering- lunacy/](http://www.monbiot.com/2010/08/16/towering-lunacy/)

<comment><USER4> Is it possible to pipe free sunlight into a vertical farm using fiber?

<comment><USER3> You would need a fiber collection area the same size as the total floor space of your vertical farm. So it would have to be absolutely massive.

<comment><USER5> So, this sounds like it could be great for very arid areas, where it might be easy(?) to build a massive solar farm in the desert, and run a cable to the city -- but not sustainable to water the same area where one can put solar? Switch solar for wind turbines in areas with little sun light and strong winds.

I wonder if it would be any easier to recycle water in a city/building than if used for "normal" farming?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's making this transition difficult is the economic viability. It only makes sense in densely populated areas but those areas also have ridiculous property values and higher utility costs. That makes it increasingly difficult for these farms because the margins in farming aren't that great. I work for a vertical farming company (Verticulture Farms) and we've been struggling to find a place where we can expandthat makes financial sense.

<comment><USER7> That's certainly true today. I'm sure Verticulture Farms is in it for the long haul though.

The dramatic improvements in output, quality, and water use will make vertical farming superior in nearly all cases within a few decades. It'll make sense everywhere traditional farming occurs, not just in densely populated areas. That's not the case today, but it will be the case tomorrow, given this is the first inning of a multi-trillion dollar global revolution in food production. People in the future will think it's crazy that we used to grow so much of our food outside.

<comment><USER6> That's definitely true. As the cost of LED fixtures go down and the cost of food goes up, it'll definitely becone profitable quickly and there will be a surge in appearances of vertical farms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There was a lot of discussions about the benefits, and some discussion that was missed. However, vertical farming is still not cost effective compared to more traditional greenhouses. And that's for the highest value crops like lettuce and tomatoes. Commodity crops and animal agriculture are the biggest resource users in this system and vertical farming is no where close to finding a substitute for those. The cost of production will need to come down below the alternatives and that will be challenging, although not impossible in principle.

<comment><USER9> Farming comes with huge amounts of negative environmental externalities (lost ecosystems, runoff, pesticides). I'm curious how the cost effectiveness would change if farms were properly taxed for their environmental impact.

<comment><USER10> > I'm curious how the cost effectiveness would change if farms were properly > taxed for their environmental impact.

Conversely, I wonder if the viability changes if urban areas would subsidize the underlying (most likely expensive) land costs for vertical farming, due to food being required to survive.

<comment><USER11> > Conversely, I wonder if the viability changes if urban areas would subsidize > the underlying (most likely expensive) land costs for vertical farming, due > to food being required to survive.

Well, the viability of living in urban areas would certainly change if another land use competing with housing and existing commercial uses was subsidized by taxing existing residents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem here is that in many cases, you're replacing things that have historically been free (light, water, air) with things that are not free (LED lights, irrigation systems, exhaust/air circulators). The increase in complexity also incurs a lot of additional overhead costs. Modern "horizontal" farming is already largely automated; so vertical farming doesn't deliver any savings on that front.

Don't get me wrong -- I am a fan of vertical farming and I think that it's an important technology for us to develop because we're going to eventually trash the planet and we need some way to grow food -- but there are way too many economic problems with it for it to be much more than a novelty right now. IMO the most promising near-term use case is marijuana - there are already regulatory reasons to incur most of the costs of vertical farming, so it's less of a disadvantage (not to mention that high-grade stuff has to be grown indoors to prevent cross-pollenation).

</comment><comment><USER13> Many people are concerned about the economics of this, but in my mind, trying to scale food production is itself the problem. I know I sound over- idealistic, and usually am not well received when I ask this, but I'll ask anyway -- If every home had a room dedicated to vertical farming, instead a room for watching TV, what would that do for the problem?

<comment><USER14> The question is moot, because most humans have decided they're going to watch TV and not garden. There are hundreds of millions (at least) of people living in urban and suburban areas who could be gardening today, indoors or outdoors or both, with far less investment and expense than this method entails. Very few do. There's no reason to think that you're going to convince those who are not to start by adding the further requirements that they (a) dedicate a room to it, (b) buy a bunch of expensive shelving, (c) buy a bunch of expensive LED lights, (d) triple their electricity bill (at least), and (e) double their water bill (at least).

Maybe if food prices are 50x what they are today this starts to seem interesting. Like Victory Gardens. Of course, if that happened, then electricity and urban (potable!) water prices would immediately become unaffordable as well and we would simply end up at a new equilibrium with higher urban water and electricity prices, slightly lower food prices, and a few extra indoor gardeners making up those margins.

And don't tell me that solar-generated electricity is the answer here. A PV module is about 16% efficient; absorbing sunlight directly is 100% efficient (in both cases, photosynthesis itself is then about 45% efficient). So you would need 6x as much land dedicated to PV modules as you would need to dedicate to outdoor, rooftop, or windowbox gardens to get the same output. This is a problem of physics; even a 100% efficient PV module would be only marginally useful, in that it would allow capturing energy on land that is not itself suited for agriculture.

No free lunches, and that's before we're talking about wholesale changes in human behavior.

<comment><USER13> I agree, which is why I said I was overly idealistic. But we are at (or approaching) a point where wholesale changes in human behavior are needed. We've spent the last 100 years getting more and more obsessed with TV, movies, and pop culture. It is time to swing our culture back the other way. And to start those changes, you need to ask questions and build up new (or old) ideas..

So I ask the question. Thinking about making large societal changes is a first step towards actually making a change.

<comment><USER14> If the predicate is wholesale changes in human behavior, there are plenty of less costly ways people could, and can, produce their own food. Imposing a moral judgment on people obsessed with things you don't happen to like is orthogonal to that. People will change their behaviors when the market dictates that they change them, and when that happens they will change them in the direction dictated by the market. Your personal preferences for how others should spend their time will not factor.

<comment><USER13> Clearly, you and I are not going to see eye to eye. "The market" is a societal construct to begin with. Money is a societal construct. "Less costly" is a concept based on top of those things. In my mind, humans starving to death is a pretty high cost, no matter how much cash a solution would require.

<comment><USER14> > Clearly, you and I are not going to see eye to eye.

For sure. The market is not a social construct at all; beings that want to reproduce (i.e., everyone) are going to adopt the lowest-cost means of doing so. Growing plants indoors will always be a higher-cost solution. "Money" has nothing to do with it. What you're really saying is that you want huge numbers of less-fit humans to survive and reproduce. That's a profound statement that deserves its own article and a tremendous depth of thought to evaluate. As you probably imagine, I don't share your goal.

<comment><USER13> "You want huge numbers of less-fit humans to survive and reproduce."

Yes, I really do. I believe wars have been fought over people putting fitness requirements on survival and reproduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I doubt we are going to see a revolution in farming. The reason traditional farming is most likely still much cheaper than vertical farming is because of all the government's implicit and explicit subsidies. For example: For most farmers water is free so the 99% reduction in water usage won't reduce the price for the consumer in the aisle. I think if we wan't a real shift in agriculture (a shift towards more ecological vertical farming), we would require an actual market price for water. And most people (farmers and non- farmers) hate that idea.

<comment><USER16> Only in California and the Colorado basin is water allocation and pricing a real concern. The Midwest and south have water surplus and produce immensely more food than CA. So I don't think this has a significant impact.

<comment><USER17> Ding, ding.

The math has to be done on a case by case basis. Why are all potatoes grown in Idaho? Because soil and climate conditions there are _really good_ for potatoes. You can grow potatoes in Idaho and ship them to Kansas for less -- less land use, less effort, less energy-cost, less environmental impact -- than you can grow them locally.

There are going to be some crops and some urban environments where vertical farming is the best option. There are going to be some where it is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So instead of less expensive land outside cities, we should grow food on expensive land inside them. Ok.

And instead of less expensive nonpotable water supplies, we should use expensive potable urban water supplies to irrigate it. Ok.

And instead of 100% efficient sunlight to drive photosynthesis, we should use either 40% efficient fossil fuel derived electricity or 16% efficient PV derived electricity to do it. Ok.

Also, instead of polluting creeks and rivers with agricultural runoff from farms, we should pollute creeks and rivers with agricultural runoff mixed in with urban sewage (sorry, there's no such thing as a "closed system"). Ok.

And finally, instead of paying $2 for an organically-grown, sustainably-farmed head of lettuce at the farmers' market, we should pay $12 for a hydroponically-grown head of lettuce.

This article contained zero analysis of economics. Comparisons made were with "other indoor growing methods", not with outdoor sunlight-powered methods. No analysis was undertaken to show that transportation costs make up the difference. No explanation was provided for the added burden on urban (potable!) water supplies. The electricity demands made by this method are obviously unmanageable, yet no solution to this problem was offered (I guess instead of polluting the planet with industrial ag, we pollute it by burning 10x as much coal?). The problem of waste is hand-waved away by calling the operation a "closed system"; nothing lasts forever, and eventually the materials used will have to be discarded, along with residues from the inorganic inputs. "Weather-related crop failures" are dismissed; one wonders where the author thinks urban water supplies and electricity for climate control come from (hint: outdoors!).

If you want to improve the efficiency of farming, I'm all for it. You've got a scalable, sustainable way to use less water? Great, go implement it on an existing farm and put your competition out of business. But this is not that. It's a gimmick that is at best marginally economical in places with the world's highest real estate costs and customers willing to pay far above the market rate for gimmicky products. That is not a situation that describes most people on this planet. It's one thing to sell a few thousand heads of lettuce to stockbrokers in Singapore; it's another thing entirely to convince a billion Chinese people to leave their entire country fallow so that they can pay a month's income for one of those heads of lettuce while breathing air so heavily polluted by coal smoke that they drop dead at 25. Good luck with that.

<comment><USER6> The reason for growing in the city is to reduce transportation cost and time.of it gets in the store the same day the plants were harvested then it increases freshness/nutritional value and it increases the shelf life.

Growing indoors also allows for a greater control over the growing environment. You can grow any particular grow all year round with much less crop loss. This also eliminates the need for pesticides since you're closing off the plants from insects. Therfore, the "agricultural runoff"is definitely not the same as from an open farm. The only "runoff" is a handful of times a year (maybe 4ish) where the reservoirs are emptied and cleaned.

Organically grown plants are GMO free and therefore need a lot more pesticides to keep it looking good. So if you want to pay the cheaper price for a mouth of chemical then that's on you. A lot of people aren't.

I agree that the electricity usage is an issue but this is something that is being solved. Year by year we see lights getting more efficient and solar panels getting more efficient as well.

When it comes to running out of farmable land and fresh water becoming more scarce and a growing population though, the cost of electricity is a worthwhile trade off in my opinion. You can't wait until the last minute to make the transition away away from traditional agriculture and into more future proof methodologies.

<comment><USER14> > The reason for growing in the city is to reduce transportation cost and > time.of it gets in the store the same day the plants were harvested then it > increases freshness/nutritional value and it increases the shelf life.

So let's see some analysis on the cost of growing in the city vs. cost of transportation plus spoilage. Data, numbers, the good stuff!

> This also eliminates the need for pesticides since you're closing off the > plants from insects.

You don't need to grow indoors to grow pesticide-free. Nor do you need to grow indoors to protect plants from pests.

> Organically grown plants are GMO free and therefore need a lot more > pesticides to keep it looking good. So if you want to pay the cheaper price > for a mouth of chemical then that's on you.

Holy conflation, Batman! First of all, "organic" is a family of growing methods; one could grow GM stock using organic methods if one wished, though in most places it will be difficult to get certification. Second, by definition "organic" methods prohibit or greatly restrict the use of pesticides. So you're contradicting yourself here; someone growing non-GM food organically is by definition not using them.

> I agree that the electricity usage is an issue but this is something that is > being solved. Year by year we see lights getting more efficient and solar > panels getting more efficient as well.

As I explained, this doesn't matter. A 100%-efficient PV module connected to a 100%-efficient LED bulb with a 100%-efficient transmission and distribution system is _at best_ going to provide the same growing area as the area of those PV modules. The physics of the situation simply do not allow anything more than that, and in this universe, where we obey the laws of thermodynamics, they don't even allow that. Surface farming will _always_ be more efficient than covering the surface with PV modules and farming somewhere else. If you cannot accept this, then your entire argument reduces to "indoor farming is a perpetual motion machine" and you should expect it to be taken as such.

> When it comes to running out of farmable land and fresh water becoming more > scarce and a growing population though,

If you don't have fresh water, you cannot farm anywhere, period. A tap in an urban building is not inhabited by magical water fairies; that water comes from the same places that traditional farms get theirs. If you believe you have a more water-efficient way to farm, why not combine that with the most energy-efficient farming method as well and employ it on the surface? Don't waste such an important advance by trying to sell it in a bundle with magic and perpetual motion.

<comment><USER11> > A tap in an urban building is not inhabited by magical water fairies; that > water comes from the same places that traditional farms get theirs.

Well, the same general class of places, maybe not the same place. Which may make the issue _worse_ \-- moving farming from existing locations to cities may further concentrate water use in urban areas, leaving them needing to meet the existing urban needs plus food production needs -- which may have a very high cost in terms of new water delivery infrastructure.

<comment><USER14> Right. I was trying to afford the benefit of the doubt in every possible way. At the very best, theoretically, this type of farming is as efficient as the usual kind. In reality, it's much worse, always.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Let's not forget algae. Solazyme is already producing various food components for food companies, from algae, in highly efficient and dense factories, and at a competitive price.And i think with time it might be a cheap carbohydrates source.

And those food components are much better than natural components - <USER2> you can tailor the exact chemical composition of them.

And with technologies like molecular gastronomy, or making great meat substitutes out of protein(like beyond meat), food components could become the basis for a lot of food variety.

</comment><comment><USER19> Worth checking out - I'm an early adopter for the Grove aquaponics system which is similar in idea but meant for individual homes ([http://grovelabs.io](http://grovelabs.io)). Not cost effective yet, but hoping they continue to grow and refine their research and process to a point that it will be in the near future.

<comment><USER6> Yeah man, multitrophic systems are the future. Hydroponics is just a stepping stone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Vertical farming: Another 'solution' that won't work [http://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/12/13/vertical- farming/](http://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/12/13/vertical-farming/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm convinced after reading that. I knew about NASA researchers trying to grow lettuce crops with LEDs to support long missions in space even in the 80s. LEDs have come a long ways since then. I'm glad to see it happening today commercially. Quick and low growing plants like lettuce and greens are well suited for vertical farming. I haven't read specifically about it but I'm not as convinced something with a long growing cycle and tall plant such as corn or sugarcane is as feasible, so it will continue to be a regional crop where it's naturally supported. I'm just happy to see the innovation and full scale use of LED indoor growing!

</comment><comment><USER22> Page must be dying from Hacker News hits

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For what it is worth I have been casually reading about vertical farming and think this may be a very valuable technique to feed more people with less resources.

I'm looking forward to reading this blog post when it is accessible.

<comment><USER23> It's up for me, try again. In disagreement with the posts above -- I think innovation in food production is possible, neccessary, and looks like it is underway.

<comment><USER24> Where I live, the average farm loses money every year. The only reason farming exists in its current form in this area is because of government subsidies. There are big lobbying groups to make sure that specific methods are paid for by taxes, even if they aren't efficient. Also, the average age of farmers is over 60, so they are extremely unlikely to try innovative methods. Only once the current generation dies off will there be any major changes, because right now everything is prescribed and paid for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A rational, fact-supported argument is not sufficient to convince some people of anything.

If I want to convince _all_ of my friends, I will also need an emotionally- loaded propaganda documentary with more anecdotal, scripted illustrations of the human impact on a handful of stereotypical everyman characters.

I have been convinced for about 20 years that large-scale indoor farming will become cost-competitive with standard industrialized farming around 2040. The epic drought in California may have accelerated my estimate to 2035.

We won't be at the tipping point until a profitable cornfield is replaced by a greenhouse-like structure with a roof 30m above ground level.

<comment><USER26> Exactly.

I remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine about vertical farming. He's big into his food, cares about food quality.

Anyway, I bring it up, he's not impressed, in fact far from it. The impression I got was that it ruined the emotional impact behind the origin of food. Instead of growing in fields, in natural time-honoured traditional way (I should mention at this point that my friend believed in buying organic, just to nip the pesticides/herbicides argument in the bud), we'd be replacing that with what amounted to growing in a lab.

If you're going to convince anyone, beyond tech heads and those that only care about cost, you're going to need to address the story of food, its role in our culture. I strongly doubt it would get anywhere close to the mainstream without the type of emotionally-led marketing that logfromblammo suggests.

<comment><USER27> Why do you need to "convince" anybody? If companies want to build urban farms, let them compete and we'll see what happens.

My money says that if you are _really_ hung up about the energy transport costs of food, you should just build an electric transport system into the city, from the farm outside the city.

A lot of this research is very interesting for things like space colonies, so I pay attention, but on earth it's a solution in search of a problem.

<comment><USER26> > "Why do you need to "convince" anybody?"

I don't. However, I was pointing out for those that want to try, there's more to it than listing the technical benefits.

To use another example, most people accept that investment in public transportation is a very good thing (both for the environment and the vitality of a city), yet people still plow huge sums of money into their cars, because cars = freedom. In cities like New York where many people don't seem to own cars, is their freedom restricted? Doesn't seem that way. Cars only = freedom if your other options are subpar.

Why bring this up? Reliance on cars is an example of what results when people think individualistically, whereas investment in public transport (and investment includes use) is an example of when people think collectively. Some changes require an amount of consensus. Whilst I agree you could let companies try it and let the market decide, I expect you'll encounter NIMBYism before too long. It's no problem to me though, I've got no horse in this race, will wait to see how it plays out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Take a look at pictures of actual vertical farms vs. artist concepts and compare their use of natural light and then tell me if this is truly as "sustainable" as they say. Growing things is more than getting the soil right. It's (for most plants) the use of chlorophyll to make sugars which (again for most plants) is harnessing the equivalent of sunlight.

Aquaponics are definitely sustainable and just downright awesome and we should invest more in them, but without sunlight you're just running a power hungry "grow op".

<comment><USER6> I'm working for aquaponic company Verticulture Farms and I couldn't agree with you more. Multitrophic systems are definitely the way of the future. Plants/fish/crustaceans, all grown organically and locally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _ ... there are no fertilizers needed. There are no pesticides needed. There is no chemical runoff. Even if you make a worst-case assumption that each farm will use synthetic nutrient solutions, these solutions are used in a closed, recirculating system with no chance for environmental contamination._

Can someone explain how this is so? What is the alternative to a "synthetic nutrient solution"?

<comment><USER6> The alternative is natural nutrients from plants rather than lab created Burien which are essential chemicals. If you try a synthetic nutrient plant by itself you probably won't think anything is wrong. But if you taste it side by side from a natural source like nutrients from fish then the difference is mind blowing. The synthetic nutrients really do change taste for the worse and it makes me wonder if it has any affects on the body.

<comment><USER29> I'm still not following. Are these "vertical farms" then aquaponics affairs, where the fish tank waste is what feeds the plants? Or is it like organics, where a crop like peas concentrates nitrogen from the air in order to fertilize something else?

<comment><USER6> Aquaponics is one closed loop option for acquiring organic nutrients for the plants. You can read more if you Google "organic vs synthetic nutrients" and click the first link by The Grow Scene. They explain it pretty well there and in only a few short paragraphs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It seems like making more land for horizontal farming (converting unusable land, reclaiming from the sea, etc.) should be way more cost-efficient. Heck, even growing stuff on boats would be more efficient than using skyscrapers, because of the free sunlight and water.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just in case anyone, like me, read the headline and wanted to see the old 'Green Desk' feature on Brass Eye, I found it here:

[https://youtu.be/usTT3RuWu_g?t=4m44s](https://youtu.be/usTT3RuWu_g?t=4m44s)

</comment><comment><USER32> Let's build huge arrays of vertical farms on top of traditional farms!

</comment><comment><USER33> It will never, ever, be able to out compete Dirt + Sun.

<comment><USER29> That's my gut instinct— and there are so many secondary services which nature provides you for free out there, like pollination.

And yet, the article does make some pretty compelling points, especially about year-round yield, continuous yield, and isolation from environmental factors like drought, pests, etc.

What's actually most exciting to me is greater integration of food production directly into the places where people live and work. Why have a separate vertical farm when it could be the two floors above your company cafeteria, and the lettuce in your lunch literally never left the premises? _That_ is really exciting to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "closed loop production cycle" \- this sounds like a perpetual motion machine?

<comment><USER35> I think they just mean that the waste materials can be used to provide inputs to the next production cycle. Obviously the loop is not close because there is energy coming in, and grown plants going out.</comment></comment>


IE9 can only go up - <AUTHOR> http://michaelmonteleone.net/2010/08/03/low-blow/

<comment><USER2> Evidently someone at Microsoft noticed the disparity:

[http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/08/leaked-screenshot-shows- a-c...](http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/08/leaked-screenshot-shows-a-cleaner- simpler-ie9/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's strange that the title is 'Windows Internet Explorer' - isn't that exactly what their antitrust suit was about? I thought IE was supposed to be decoupled from the operating system (not that they ever really did it).</comment>


iOS 12 Relies on Downloaded Lua Code - <AUTHOR> https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/08/06/ios-12-relies-on-downloaded-lua-code/ <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17700894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17700894)</comment>


A map on advertising business model - <AUTHOR> http://wallen.typepad.com/wallen/2009/05/a-map-on-advertising-business-model.html

<comment><USER2> I can't be the only person who hates those PearlTree "maps". When people gripe about stupid uses of flash, this is exactly what they're talking about.

<comment><AUTHOR> teej, I understand that some people don't like flash. It was actually a key decision that we had discussed a lot internally, notably given that flash is not open source. But we came to the conclusion that to build what we wanted to, we needed flash. What is Pearltrees about ?

First, Pearltrees enables to map and organize your web. It is an easy and powerful way to store and retrieve the valuable contents you find in your every day navigations. While browsing, you record contents whenever you want and at the end Pearltrees shows you the map of your surf. By simple drag & drop, you can easily re-organize/re-order this map, make intersections, delete useless items, etc. to build the story you want to on the topic. You can also enrich your map with those of other users by simply including them in your own map. A map organization gives a structure and a meaning to these contents. A bit like the curator of a museum puts arts pieces in a certain order on a given path to tell a story to the visitors. Basically you have crystallized your thinking on this topic.

Second, you can guide your friends on the web. By building your map, you have cut through the "noise" of all contents on the topic to build a story with what you think are the most relevant contents. This has value to other people that you know. With those maps, you can make a point, have people laugh, prepare a trip, etc. (we even had a wedding invitation sent via Pearltrees). You can share maps with other users, via one link by tweet, embed it on your blog, etc.

Third, you can discover new contents close to your interests. Your maps will cross other maps, you can then navigate from your map to other users' maps along the same line of interest. Even if there is no direct crossing, you can also see the closest maps to yours so as to broaden your horizons with maps build by people that have similar interests than yours.

Very clearly the platform can be improved, simplified and optimized. It is still a very early alpha. We are working hard on it with the community of users and I'm sure it will get better. It is already a very powerful tool for my everyday web usage (though I'm of course biased as I'm part of this team).

<comment><USER3> STW, I just tried looking at the pearltree and here's what happened:

* It made safari freeze for a minute or two, which really annoyed me

* While safari was frozen all I saw was a tiny clock in the upper left corner of the browser, which didn't really give me an idea of what was going on

* After the flash loaded I had no idea what I was looking at. I didn't want to waste any more time so I just closed the tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> nonrecursive, thanks for this feedback. It is strange that it took so long to upload because it usually works correctly on Safari. Could you maybe tell me your OS and browser versions so that we look into it? Thanks

As to what you ended up on, it was the map on ad revenue model (if you went via the pearl in the post). To read the map's content, you can just click on the play and the arrows buttons in the left bottom corner.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Chromda – Serverless Website Screenshots - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/luisfarzati/chromda <comment><USER2> This is very impressive (the way that is implemented on top AWS services).

I would be curious to see how accurate it is when it comes to rendering. I have a Screenshot as a Service side project ([https://getscreenshot.rasterwise.com](https://getscreenshot.rasterwise.com)) that is also build with Puppeteer, but accuracy is a completely different animal.

Out of the box Puppeteer is really not that accurate so you need fine tune it to address a huge amount of rendering edge cases.

This is the area where most services come short imo. I have put a lot of effort into optimizing my service accuracy but it's a never-ending task. There always seems to be one website that doesn't render the way it's supposed to be rendered.

I really don't understand why headless browsers seem to be developed with UI rendering as a low priority. Simulating a viewport is not equal to simulating an actual screen.

<comment><USER3> I hear you. I run Urlbox ([https://urlbox.io](https://urlbox.io)) and accuracy is one of the hardest parts, as well as scaling hundreds or thousands of instances of chrome since it's a real memory hog.

I also managed to get a version of the urlbox renderer working on lambda but it fails on some websites due to the /tmp space limits, for example trying to do a full page screenshot of a heavy page like dailymail would use up all of the available disk space in the lambda environment with chrome's media cache.

<comment><USER2> Love what you have done with URLBOX dude! That's my goal standard when it comes to improving accuracy for GetScreenshot. I have tested with your website preview and I think both of our solutions nail accuracy, but you have been longer in this game so you probably have way more edge cases covered. I still find myself trying to address new edge cases every certain time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice! You should publish it to the Serverless App Repo ([https://aws.amazon.com/serverless/serverlessrepo/](https://aws.amazon.com/serverless/serverlessrepo/))

</comment><comment><USER5> One thing from the readme that concerns me:

S3_ACL "public-read"

It will be great if you can explain why and how is this used in the ReadMe file.

<comment><USER6> Searching the constant will yield one use in the code, further Googling yields [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/acl- overview...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/acl- overview.html#canned-acl)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh cool. I did a similar thing for snapshotting Unity games [https://corepox.net/devlog/visual-game-worlds-hosted-on- func...](https://corepox.net/devlog/visual-game-worlds-hosted-on-functions). The joy of Chrome is that it has a webGL software implementation, so you don't need to spin up GPUs to get a graphical runtime of a 3D game engine.

</comment><comment><USER8> Definitely a noob at npm, when I run 'npm install', it freezes at:

[ ......] / extract:aws-sdk: sill extract email@example.com extracted to /home/foo/serverless_apps/chromda/node_modules/.staging/...

Any tips or tricks would be much appreciated?

<comment><USER8> Never mind. No idea why but installed after multiple tries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Was looking at building something similar on top of Lambda but I'm so happy that I found this!

Quickly browsed through the code and I don't think it supports local pages but might throw a PR your way to add support if you don't mind. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there any javascript library to do the same? It would be useful to have a library as a dependency and just initialize it in the code and then you have screenshot in meta of each page

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't a problem with lambda to have a potential CPU waiting time of 30 seconds ?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I get what you meant. One AWS Lambda function can run for up to 15 minutes.

<comment><USER13> I think they meant run time which means they are concerned about how much it will cost since lambda charges by run time.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that's correct, my question was about costs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Bad Time to Be A Professional - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/05/a_bad_time_to_b.html?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis

<comment><USER2>
        Yikes! These numbers are scary. A 10% decline in
        engineering occupations in just 8 months?

The 10% decline was in "Engineering and architecture occupations," it would be nice if the two were separated out. We had a massive housing bubble and construction boom. It popped. In light of that it is hardly surprising that Architects had a major fall off.

<comment><USER3> "'Engineering and architecture occupations' (actually the BLS reverses the order) is roughly 67% engineers, about 10% architects, surveyors and the like, with the remainder engineering and mapping technicians"

So the majority of 10% decline are engineers.

<comment><USER4> no offense, but that makes no sense whatsoever

<comment><USER5> It makes perfect sense, if the entire decline was in architects then there would be 0 architects left.

Though I'm a mechanical engineer and my company hasn't really been affected, and my brother is an architect and his company has shrunk from 15 to 3. So I imagine the OP is right that a large chunk of the decline is from architecture/construction related jobs, but certainly not all.

<comment><USER4> i agree that the entire decline couldn't have been in architects, but remain mystified as to how (someone would conclude) this implies the _majority_ wasn't in architects

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All the evidence available to me suggests that, however bad things may look for long-term employment in IT and CS, the market for freelance talent is strong --- enough so that we've been left wondering for the past 6 months if our business is countercyclical.

<comment><USER7> The freelance talent market is strong, really?

You have any friends looking for a LAMP hacker?

<comment><USER6> I'm looking for HTML/CSS work right now. I'm having trouble finding one of my usual sources that isn't booked up.

<comment><USER7> I may be able to help you out. firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER8> For what it is worth, if you are actively looking for work a more professional email address would be better. Ideally, it should be something like 'firstname.lastname@example.com' (or zach.burt, zach, etc) where mydomain.com hosts your resume, professional blog, portfolio, etc.

If that isn't feasible, even your school email address would be pretty good (a free domain isn't a deal breaker, but would rank pretty low for me) - but the local-part should be more professional than 'zackster' or 'zackattack.'

Nothing wrong with using nicknames/handles for personal stuff, but I would shy away from doing so while actively asking for work.

<comment><USER9> I make an exception for Gmail addresses when it comes to non-professional. I know that you can get free Google Apps and all that, but I'll generally trust someone on Gmail. Doesn't mean you can get away without a live blog/portfolio site, however.

<comment><USER8> I would definitely agree. The 'gmail' part didn't strike me as out of place so much as the 'zackster' part. I believe Zackattack's name is 'Zachary Burt', which would make 'zackster' an informal (and, in my opinion, somewhat frat-ty) nickname.

The only situation I could imagine that would make 'zackster' appropriate for someone looking for a job would be if his first name were Zack (or Zachary, or some other derivative) and his last name were 'Ster.' Since I doubt that is the case, I suggested he set up some other address for soliciting business

Since Zack is just graduating it will be (relatively) easy for him to make the change now. It will likely be more difficult in a few years once his name/email get out there.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. I have a personal account and a professional Gmail account. My professional Gmail account isn't mapped to my URL; it's just my full name @ gmail.com; the personal is this username at Gmail. Not quite as informal, but still not business appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know that personal experience is anecdotal, but I have a full-time job and a wide choice of side gigs that I can pick up. I don't even say this to gloat, it just seems like the news outlets are blowing it out of proportion (as always)

<comment><USER11> What you said.

My little slice of the Japanese countryside is heavily invested in manufacturing. There are 6,000 Brazilian factory workers in my town. About 5,000 of them are out of work right now, and many have taken a government offer where they'll pay for your plane ticket if you leave the country and promise to not come back.

Meanwhile I'm in an air-conditioned office, just got a positive performance evaluation, will receive my bonus on time this summer, and have job security that the Pope would envy.

We don't even know how good we have it some days.

<comment><USER12> Historically, our job security beats the Papacy hands down. Even excluding the early Popes who were martyred in quick succession, the average papal tenure is under 8 years, with a fair number of murders and alleged murders. Check it out: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popes>. So I think you're right about the Pope's envy :)

Regarding the job market, I do contract work in Colorado and have had no problems either. My programmer friends in the US, Europe, and Brazil are all gainfully employed. I think there's a chronic shortage of good programming talent that's not going away anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yet we had tremendous trouble hiring a solid developer (Denver/Boulder) a month and a half ago. We had a bunch of applications from the barely qualifieds, but it seems that those with a strong skill-set are still in demand.

Hell, I still get 2 or 3 queries a week from headhunters, and I'm not actively looking.

</comment><comment><USER14> I want my seasonal variation.</comment>


Vector Android now also on F-Droid - <AUTHOR> https://matrix.org/blog/2016/07/13/vector-android-now-also-on-f-droid/ <comment><USER2> WTF is vector?

<comment><USER3> It's an open source chat/VoIP app that acts as a glossy client for the Matrix.org ecosystem for decentralised communication. You can use it to talk to anyone in Matrix or bridged into Matrix (e.g. from IRC, Slack etc), and run your own Matrix server (e.g. [http://github.com/matrix- org/synapse](http://github.com/matrix-org/synapse)) so you end up owning your conversations rather than being trapped in some walled garden.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A free and open-source command line note organizer - <AUTHOR> Hello,
Motivated by this discussion https://goo.gl/te4BFv, I have created a simple (free and open-source) command line note organizer. The tool, called npmnotes, take a folder with notes (written in markdown/texdown) and creates a webpage that lets you search and browse through the notes. You can then publish this webpage or use it locally.
The result (built with npmnotes) looks something like this https://npmnotes.org.
Currently, this is just a (working) prototype and I plan to add more features soon (based on the feedback I get).
What do you think of it? <comment><USER2> OT, but can we not use url shorteners, it obscures where the link is actually pointing and makes it hard to evaluate wether or not to click the link.

The goo.gl link points to this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17532094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17532094)

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me a lot of [Tiddlywiki]([https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5](https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5)). I love the built in .td support!

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks cool, but I'm still in love with [https://github.com/terminal-velocity- notes/terminal_velocity](https://github.com/terminal-velocity- notes/terminal_velocity) \- even if I am the only one left using it. For me, a switch to the browser is a risk to attention.

<comment><USER5> never switched to nvalt?

<comment><USER4> I loved it when I was on a Mac full time but now my work desktop and home laptop are linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Displays ok but links (i'm assuming on the left) don't work in FF on Fedora.

</comment><comment><USER7> See also miki, a Makefile-based wiki, written by a friend of mine: [https://github.com/a3n/miki](https://github.com/a3n/miki)

</comment><comment><USER8> One feature to consider is import from other tools ( eg, evernote ).

</comment><comment><USER9> I also get only a search bar in Chrome on an iphone.

<comment><USER10> Same, thought it was a Windows phone issue but i guess not

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That doesn't seem to be working in Safari.</comment>


Streaming Porn Produces as Much CO2 as Belgium - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2209569-streaming-online-pornography-produces-as-much-co2-as-belgium/ <comment><USER2> Porn scratches an itch. If it didn't exist the itch would still be there. So the CO2 production of porn should be measured against whatever the alternative is. Wouldn't people spend more time and CO2 producing energy finding mates or other distractions in place of porn? If they do spend more time mating with non virtual partners won't they spawn more CO2 producers than before?

It may be that porn produces lots of CO2 AND it is a net CO2 sink compared to the alternatives. The article mentions no such trade offs.</comment>


A Brief History of Null Island - <AUTHOR> http://seagor.tumblr.com/post/59492652116/a-brief-history-of-null-island <comment> david-given Important but missing context:

\---snip---

Null Island is a fictional island in the Gulf of Guinea added to the Natural Earth public domain map dataset,[1] located where the equator crosses the prime meridian, at coordinates 0°N 0°E.[2][3] Natural Earth describes the entity as a "1 meter square island" with "scale rank 100, indicating it should never be shown in mapping."[1] Although intended humorously, the fiction has a serious purpose and is used by mapping systems to trap errors.

\---snip---

(Wikipedia.)

<comment><USER2> For anyone who's curious about what it means to "trap errors" in a mapping system, I found this on [http://www.naturalearthdata.com/blog/natural-earth- version-1...](http://www.naturalearthdata.com/blog/natural-earth- version-1-3-release-notes/):

Being centered at 0,0 (zero latitude, zero longitude) it is useful for flagging geocode failures which are routed to 0,0 by most mapping services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I suppose the NullPointerException is totally legal on this island.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.google.ca/maps/@0,0,10z/data=!3m1!1e3](https://www.google.ca/maps/@0,0,10z/data=!3m1!1e3)

</comment><comment><USER5> Whar ken a git one o them blue t shirts depicted in the photo?

<comment><USER6> [http://www.customink.com/designs/nullisland/jmd0-00ae- ag03/t...](http://www.customink.com/designs/nullisland/jmd0-00ae-ag03/twt)

<comment><USER5> aha - thank you very much.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best source for logo-wear? - <AUTHOR>

I know that this question is not as deep or thought inspiring as many of the awesome posts here, but I am sure that this community has a wealth of experience in more mundane topics.
We're looking to get some logowear for our new startup, such as T-shirts, polos, hoodies, or button-up shirts. Anyone have any recommendations? We've looked into the Cafepress or Zazzle route, but on a single piece basis, it's still pricey. Is that the best approach? At first, we're going to get these items for our own use, a team of around 6-10 people.
Tnx! <comment><USER2> I've used <http://www.queensboro.com/> several times. First-time orders get free logo setup and it's a 4-piece minimum. Look at the sales etc. I've gotten 4 polos for ~$20.

If you prefer screenprinting, the guys at <http://pofd.com/> have been great and have some of the cheapest printing I've come across.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome - thanks for the reply!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In my experience Cafepress-like systems are fine and can be good quality but can't (or don't need to) compete with a local workwear suppliers on price. But, a local supplier may be targeting the bottom of the market and be cheap product as well as a cheap price.

Where are you based?

<comment><AUTHOR> Baltimore, MD -- thanks for the input!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> American Apparel has cheap high quality shirts/sweatshirts that you can buy in bulk, then just work with a local printer to print them. Also, most local printers already have preferred suppliers (American Apparel is often one of them), so check with them.

</comment><comment><USER5> We have used landsend in the past. Great quality. Bit pricey. Now, we have bought 20 tshirts and created a unique design with office "comments, jokes, phrases, etc" and took them to the local print. We have like 5 per developer and we are planning to get 20 new ones as we get new "content"...

Still, startups shouldn't spend on this. We did it as a trade off for the local guy print shop web site redesign!

</comment><comment><USER6> Look for local shops that traditionally print college wear - fraternity/sorority gear. In my experience those have been cheaper.</comment>


Tail-call optimization added to 6to5 compiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/6to5/6to5/pull/714 <comment><USER2> I was literally complaining today about the fact that no-one seems to have yet implemented that part of the ES6 standard yet[1], and yet now here it is.

As someone chiefly interested in .js for it's 'functional curious' side, the new features in ES6 have me really excited.

<comment><USER3> Which parts of es6 would you call 'functional curious'?

<comment><USER4> With destructuring and tco, the only thing its really missing is pattern matching on multiple function bodies.

<comment><USER2> This is the single biggest thing I miss from Haskell when programming in other languages.

Pattern-matching and guards are crazy useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Best part, from the actual commit[1]:

      Showing  24 changed files  with 182 additions and 214 deletions.

More lines _deleted_ than added.

[1] [https://github.com/6to5/6to5/pull/714/files](https://github.com/6to5/6to5/pull/714/files)

</comment><comment><USER6> Available as of 3.5.0. Happy to answer any questions if anyone has any!

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://jsperf.com/tco/8](http://jsperf.com/tco/8)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for sharing the benchmarks.

I'm not sure how 6to5, or any other transpiler, could do much better. The job these tools exist to do necessarily means they can't do better than what today's browsers' JS engines will support.

Presumably in due course browsers will provide ES6 natively and so be better able to optimise code that uses tail calls in this way. Still, it's important to realise that the 6to5 implementation is _much_ slower, and more of a forward-compatible stepping stone if you need it than something to use routinely if you like a functional programming style.

<comment><USER7> Ingvar Stepanyan, author of the original 6to5 pull request has finished submitting a series of further optimizations via [https://github.com/6to5/6to5/pull/736](https://github.com/6to5/6to5/pull/736).

I'm clocking a 110-215X performance boost: 1,255,700 - 2,384,556 ops/sec! (on Chrome and Firefox alpha builds respectively) Check out the new JSPerf: [http://jsperf.com/tco/17](http://jsperf.com/tco/17)

<comment><USER8> That's quite a speed-up, isn't it? It looks like the newly optimised version of 6to5 effectively inlines the tail call, similar to the way a real compiler would, and so avoids function call overheads altogether. Smart move. I hadn't realised the processing done by transpilers like 6to5 was so sophisticated, and I have even more respect for their developers now than I already did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if this implementation idea is general enough that it could be added to clojure anr script.

<comment><USER10> Clojure has recur, which is tail recursion that detects not being in the tail. I prefer that to implicit tails with quiet , expensive fails like scheme.

<comment><USER11> Tail _call_ optimization is more than optimized tail _recursion_.

Recur provides an explicit form of support for the latter, but not the former.

<comment><USER12> In practice recursion probably covers most of the cases where it matters. Corecursion could (if awkwardly) be converted into ordinary recursion.

<comment><USER13> Corecursion doesn't mean what you think it means. You mean mutual recursion.

<comment><USER14> (read this with a mild trollface) Given functions f and g, it is possible to write them as the same function M. Supply an extra argument called "mode": if 0, then the function behaves like f, and if 1, then the function behaves like g. If you want to call f or g, call M with the "mode" argument as 0 or 1 respectively. If f and g take different numbers of arguments, let M take the larger number of arguments, and when you intend to call the function that takes fewer arguments, supply 0s for the extra args. This should indeed implement mutual recursion in terms of self-recursion.

The grandparent commenter did say "Corecursion could (if awkwardly) be converted into ordinary recursion", which I would say is technically correct, which some say is the best kind of correct. (Perhaps he has a somewhat less awkward scheme in mind.)

<comment><USER15> You seem to be talking about mutual recursion.

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

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_recursion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_recursion)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Best-Yet Measurements Deepen Cosmological Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/best-yet-measurements-deepen-cosmological-crisis/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR; there are two common methods to measure the speed of Universe expsnsion: pulsar stars, whose luminosity has a fixed ratio to the pulsing rate (which enables distance estimate by brightness), and cosmic microwave background measurements.

They got more precise results from pulsars, than were available previously. These results confirm and strengthen previous estimate by the same method.

The expansion rate results from pulsars and microwave background are different (65 vs 72 km/s per megaparsec (?), and error ranges do not overlap). So there is a mistery of why.</comment>


Groklaw - The Blog That Made a Difference - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Groklaw-The-blog-that-made-a-difference-1243836.html

<comment><USER2> My only wish: Groklaw had been around for the Micrsoft monopoly trial, the one litigated by David Boies in front of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. I say this because it's pretty obvious in retrospect that the mainstream media of the time did a pitiful job covering that trial. And who knows, that trial might have turned out differently, as the SCO v. Novell trial(s) surely did, in the presence of Groklaw.</comment>


French government's EU campaign blocked because Twitter fears it's fake news - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.eu/pro/report-french-governments-eu-campaign-blocked-on-twitter/ <comment><USER2> Entire article is behind pay wall

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah crap that's true. I wonder how I could access it earlier. I don't know if there is any other source in English, sorry.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: help test Google reader alternative - <AUTHOR>

I've been building https://feedreader.co and need volunteers to help test it. Things you can do: 1. Visit https://feedreader.co/arpith/labels/read so I can see what happens when more than four people use the site. 2. Email me (arpith@) a subscription list so I can set you up with a page which looks like https://feedreader.co/arpith 3. Take a look at the api (https://feedreader.co/api) and give me feedback. The bookmarklet (https://feedreader.co/bookmarklet/js) I'm currently working on is an example of how the api can be used.<p>If you'd just like to be notified when sign ups are possible please email me (arpith@) <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links: <https://feedreader.co> <https://feedreader.co/arpith/labels/read> <https://feedreader.co/arpith> <https://feedreader.co/api> <https://feedreader.co/bookmarklet/js></comment>


Apple gets "free publicity" from the line-ups - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2010/06/24/appleGetsFreePublicityFrom.html <comment><USER2> Weak post; gets all its major facts wrong, such as claiming Apple never used a reservation system before (false), never had pre-ordering issues before (false), etc.</comment>


Private YouTube for your business ready in 30 seconds - <AUTHOR> https://circlehd.com <comment><AUTHOR> Great for use cases like Employee Training, Sales Staff Training, New Hire Onboarding, Close Customer-Parnter collaboration etc. Free for up to 10 users team. Attractive pricing beyond that too. Get your video content out of those sharepoint sites, hard drives and make them easily discoverable, playable and useful. Employees and Businesses benefit tremendously from it.

[https://medium.com/@circlehd/private-video-sites-for-your- bu...](https://medium.com/@circlehd/private-video-sites-for-your-business- ready-in-30-seconds-3004bb585eee#.eic82z1xp)</comment>


The Scale of the Universe - <AUTHOR> http://visual.ly/scale-universe?utm_source=visually_embed?view=true

<comment><USER2> High-quality 3D renders showing the relative sizes of stars and planets:

<http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/gallery/star-sizes/></comment>


Special Use Domain 'home.arpa.' (IETF Draft) - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-homenet-dot-14 <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR:

> _... it is rather the case that 'home.arpa.' is the correct domain for uses > like ... local name service in residential homenets._</comment>


Stop Obama's Internet Giveaway - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-obamas-internet-giveaway-1458505088 <comment><USER2> I don't really follow ICANN news. I have some vague idea that they've made some questionable moves over the past several years.

I know nothing of the Obama administration's involvement.

Could somebody translate the article into a form I understand? ICANN manages the sale/assignment of IP addresses and manages the Root DNS Servers, right?

How does USA currently control them and what does the proposed change mean?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't able to read the article since it was paywalled, but I'd guess this Economist piece is on the same matter: [http://www.economist.com/news/international/21693922-organis...](http://www.economist.com/news/international/21693922-organisation- runs-internet-address-book-about-declare-independence-we)

<comment><USER2> wow it's a very, very different article! Try pasting the original url into the Google News search box in an incognito window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The Internet as we know it won't survive if other governments get their way."

Here's a quick recap from TechDirt on the kind of Internet the author of this article would prefer:

[https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=gordon+crovitz](https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=gordon+crovitz)

</comment><comment><USER5> Background:

[http://www.ipjustice.org/internet-governance/ip-justice- jour...](http://www.ipjustice.org/internet-governance/ip-justice-journal-the- iana-transition-and-the-role-of-governments-in-internet-governance-by-milton- mueller/)

</comment><comment><USER6> >It's up to Congress to block a surrender that could give control to authoritarian rulers.

Oh, the irony!

<comment><USER7> If you know anything about the farce that is the UN Human Rights Council[0], the idea of some international coalition of governments having any control over the fundamental infrastructure of the internet should be concerning. All things considered, the IANA has been in good hands under the purview of ICANN and the US Department of Commerce.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Council)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> google link to bypass paywall [1]

[1]:[https://www.google.com/#q=http:%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%...](https://www.google.com/#q=http:%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fstop- obamas-internet-giveaway)

<comment><USER9> Which takes me to a google search page with the article as the top link, and when I click it I still get the paywall. Something I'm missing?

<comment><USER10> Try opening the Google link in incognito. Or don't, it's not really worth the effort to read such a biased piece.

<comment><USER11> worked for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A curious pharma patent outcome - USPTO backlog driven. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v30/n2/full/nbt0212-123.html From the full text:
Amgen has received another 17 years of patent protection on its blockbuster autoimmune drug Enbrel (etanercept)—which could mean that it will be on the market for 30 years before it faces competition from biosimilars. The patent (US8,063,182) came in November 2011 and was a surprise to many in industry; Merck, of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, had already announced plans to develop and commercialize a biosimilar version of the drug, plans that are now likely to be shelved.
Amgen was granted this unexpected stretch in patent protection because its '182 patent was filed in May 1995 under old rules that applied to patents filed before mid-1995. Those rules, which have now lapsed, awarded patents 17 years from the date of issue. This means the new patent will expire in November 2028. Current standards give patents 20 years from the date of filing.
The 16-year delay between the filing of the '182 patent and its issuance is probably due to a combination of a heavy workload and the backlog at the Alexandria, Virginia–based US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). According to Leslie Meyer-Leon, a patent attorney at IP Legal Strategies Group in Boston, who specializes in biotech patents, Amgen itself is unlikely to be culpable for the delay. "I don't think Amgen acted in a way that unfairly manipulated the system; if anyone is at fault in having this patent issued so late, it is the USPTO. Because of inadequate funding, they have a huge backlog of pending applications, especially for those applications whose initial rejection is appealed [which happened with the '182 patent] and so it can take a very long time for a patent to issue." Meyer-Leon notes that the slow pace of patent prosecution can still occur under the current system. <comment><AUTHOR> From the full text:

Amgen has received another 17 years of patent protection on its blockbuster autoimmune drug Enbrel (etanercept)—which could mean that it will be on the market for 30 years before it faces competition from biosimilars. The patent (US8,063,182) came in November 2011 and was a surprise to many in industry; Merck, of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, had already announced plans to develop and commercialize a biosimilar version of the drug, plans that are now likely to be shelved.

 _Amgen was granted this unexpected stretch in patent protection because its '182 patent was filed in May 1995 under old rules that applied to patents filed before mid-1995._ Those rules, which have now lapsed, awarded patents 17 years from the date of issue. This means the new patent will expire in November 2028. Current standards give patents 20 years from the date of filing.

 _The 16-year delay between the filing of the '182 patent and its issuance is probably due to a combination of a heavy workload and the backlog at the Alexandria, Virginia–based US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)._ According to Leslie Meyer-Leon, a patent attorney at IP Legal Strategies Group in Boston, who specializes in biotech patents, Amgen itself is unlikely to be culpable for the delay. _"I don't think Amgen acted in a way that unfairly manipulated the system; if anyone is at fault in having this patent issued so late, it is the USPTO. Because of inadequate funding, they have a huge backlog of pending applications, especially for those applications whose initial rejection is appealed [which happened with the '182 patent] and so it can take a very long time for a patent to issue."_ Meyer-Leon notes that the slow pace of patent prosecution can still occur under the current system.</comment>


Don't worry, Paul Graham, Australians aren't all stupid - <AUTHOR> http://delimiter.com.au/2010/11/29/dont-worry-paul-graham-australians-arent-all-stupid/

<comment><USER2> Despite being a re-submisssion, this one got noticed and therefore has the comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1952730></comment>


Fast mover advantage - <AUTHOR> http://elshawwa.blogspot.com/2010/08/fast-mover-advantage.html I think people should think more about the "Fast Mover Advantage" (I'm surprised there is no Wikipedia page on this today). The fast mover is able to counter all the hypothetical advantages associated with the first mover. <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing, I truly believe a "fast mover advantage" is super important in Startups, especially when a window of opportunity becomes obvious, it's all but a race of speed to market by a multiplitude of startups.

Having said that, I wouldn't try to steal users from Facebook or Google in the same market today because of the "network advantage" they have created over the years - it's where your friends use, and that makes the website sticky. Maybe there are ways to do it, but I think it's more efficient to try create something completely new.

Perhaps Foursqaure or Gowalla isn't that sticky yet?</comment>