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Eyeview's effort could be a reach, or brilliant - codyb
http://www.adweek.com/videowatch/b-b-firm-hopes-facebook-look-back-styled-video-reels-zuck-martin-and-marissa-155645
======
codyb
Full disclosure: I'm currently an engineer working at EyeView.
This is our new viral marketing campaign focused on showing the tech world
what personalized video advertising can do.
We've generated hundreds of thousands of videos for individual campaigns
before and our ads are broadcast quality and can be viewed on any platform (No
flash overlays, or other technology incorporated).
If you'd like to create your own video check out:
[http://www.eyeviewdigital.com/yourvideo](http://www.eyeviewdigital.com/yourvideo)
It's really pretty cool. Either sign in with LinkedIn or use the "Create for
Someone" button to fill in information for yourself or someone else. Then
check out how beautiful everything comes together when you receive the link in
your e-mail.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are you penalized for linking directly to a HackerNews submission? - matt1
There is a widespread belief among many HackerNews users that you should not share a direct link to a submission because there are systems in place to detect it and the submission is more likely to be killed because it indicates you're asking friends to up-vote it which is frowned upon.<p>Instead of sharing a direct link to the submission many folks share a link to the newest page and then ask their friends/followers to find the submission on there, check it out, and up-vote it as applicable.<p>Given that a lot of people do this and I haven't seen any evidence supporting it, I figured I'd ask: are you or your submissions penalized for linking directly to it?
======
brudgers
My understanding is that evidence of voting rings is acted upon. My suspicion
is that the algorithms for detecting voting rings are sophisticated.
The practices you describe sound like the sort of thing voting ring algorithms
would be designed to catch. I doubt those practices add much to HN.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Embassy Espionage: The NSA's Secret Spy Hub in Berlin - biafra
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cover-story-how-nsa-spied-on-merkel-cell-phone-from-berlin-embassy-a-930205.html
======
a3n
> The necessary equipment is usually installed on the upper floors of the
> embassy buildings or on rooftops where the technology is covered with
> screens or Potemkin-like structures that protect it from prying eyes.
Put a giant faraday cage around the US embassy. Won't stop everything, they're
probably tunneled out into Berlin's telecom cables, but it would hinder cell
and satellite.
Oh, you need access to _American_ satellites from the US embassy? You'll have
to earn your privileges back.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: Starting a search startup, please review our project - lkozma
The website is http://www.metahint.com<p>Currently we have a working prototype for searching some of our favorite blogs. We are soon sending out beta invites, and opening it up for general use.<p>Our idea is to make an embeddable search widget for websites, that generates suggestions from the content of the site. This came from the frustration that the search boxes on the vast majority of websites today do not suggest anything. While Google and Bing suggest previous queries, for small websites that might not be useful, so instead we extract phrases from the text and rank them by how well they describe a given page.<p>Let us know what you think, we are lkozma and pceelurd, lkozma has been on HN since the first days, when it was still SN.<p>Thanks !
======
chime
In a similar vein, I used Google's Ajax Search API and made this last year:
<http://chir.ag/projects/drop-search/> (Google even interviewed me for it:
[http://googledata.org/google-code/google-narratives-
series-c...](http://googledata.org/google-code/google-narratives-series-
chirag-mehta/) ).
'Drop Search' lets any site owner create a search box customized to their own
domains using just a few lines of JS code. There's an example of drop-search
at my own site in the top-right corner: <http://chir.ag> (search: cat). It
does not have the neat lightbox + readability view that metahint has. But it
does have excerpts from search results. Metahint users will most likely want
that.
Personally, I think metahint is a great execution of a good idea and that's
partly why I made Drop Search. It didn't become popular but then I created it
as a mini project for fun and not a startup with marketing goals. I wish you
the best of luck. I would suggest to you that you take a look at Google's
APIs. I don't think the search results are bad at all. I haven't tried Bing.
Creating your own search engine is kind of a big deal. Ask Gabriel Weinberg @
DDG.
~~~
lkozma
Very interesting, Chirag, and thanks for the suggestions. I was following your
projects in the past but somehow I missed drop-search until know. I think
there is room for more experimentation and new services, as the majority of
sites currently lack a usable search, so I'm happy to see others attacking the
same problem.
------
pjscott
I tried it out, and the bottom line is: this is really slick, and I want it on
my blog immediately. How soon are you sending out those beta invites?
Now to make myself useful:
1\. This pulls in about 50 kB of very useful JavaScript: jQuery, jQuery-ui,
TopUp, jCarousel Lite. Your own JS code is very light in comparison. All this
is minified and gzipped, which is good, but that's still a fair amount of
stuff. Do you have any plans to lighten this a bit? Perhaps use something like
Closure Compiler with advanced optimizations to get rid of functionality that
you don't use, and package it all into a single file?
2\. How are you going to check for updates to the blog's content, so you can
re-index it? The traditional way would be polling the RSS/Atom feed; the shiny
new way is to get realtime updates via PubSubHubbub where available, and fall
back to polling when that's not available. This can be simplified by using a
service like Superfeedr to handle the polling fallback for you and just
provide everything as PubSubHubbub feeds.
3\. It's probably too early to talk about tweaking your ranking algorithm
before you've started getting actual user data (you are storing complete logs,
right?), but I'm sure there's a lot of room for improving the results. Again,
this can happen after you've started to get more blogs and more user data.
4\. A lot of people have blogs on Blogger, and despite being run by Google,
their search box is pathetic. However, terrible as it is, it occupies some
prime screen real-estate. I would like to have some Blogger-specific
JavaScript I can drop in to replace that search box with yours.
5\. If I type in a search query and press Enter without selecting one of your
drop-down menu suggestions, nothing happens. It would be nice if pressing
Enter did something, even if it just sent the user to a Google search.
6\. Seriously, when are you sending out beta invites? ;-)
~~~
lkozma
Hi, great questions, I'll try to answer them:
1\. Yes, it is critical that we minimize the amount of JavaScript necessary.
Most of the libraries you observed are needed for the demo webpage: the
horizontal scrollbar, the popup box, etc. The widget, if embedded on a webpage
will need very little code, only the part that does autocomplete. We'll do our
best to make that minimal.
2\. Yes, we want to check for updates, and we will try to use all methods that
are available. So far we use our own http crawler, and where they are
available RSS/Atom feeds or sitemaps. It would be easiest if the sites would
notify us automatically of changes, but otherwise we can recrawl at a given
rate.
3\. Yes, we are still tweaking the algorithms for ranking and building
phrases. One of the reasons behind doing this demo is to get feedback on what
could be improved there.
4\. Good idea, we will try to do somthing like this. This is one of the
reasons for going for blogs as the first target: they have well-defined format
so we can do specific things for Blogger, Wordpress, etc.
5\. Yes, we want to do this. This demo showed just the suggestions, but we
will have traditional search as well.
6\. Soon, hopefully... We are aiming for a few weeks from now. Thanks for your
interest !
------
drats
Looks great! I can think of countless sites that need this.
Even if when you embed you take the colours of the site you are embedded in
you still need to improve your own site to make the pitch; it just looks too
plain jane at the moment. I'd recommend heading over to colour lovers for some
inspiration from their most popular palettes.
[http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/most-loved/all-
time/met...](http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/most-loved/all-time/meta)
You could build a database from those palettes, detect colours on a users page
and automatically select a complementary colour from the database for your
widget when you are presenting the demo (or three different colours to select
from as little boxes in the top right, also - perhaps provide an inverted
colour option for the readability widget). A test embeddable phase that works
from their last week of posts/RSS feed would also be something cheap/fast to
implement. So they can point it at their blog and then get a quick demo of the
search working on their last 20 posts in a handsome widget that already looks
like it belongs on their site.
Also rather than site owners, perhaps you could work towards the readability
widget thing you have going. So a user comes to you, plugs in all their sites
and then they can read cleanly with that widget and/or do a mass export to pdf
or their kindle. So bookmarks+readability+pdf/ebook = personal magazine
specifically for bulk reading/offline reading/distraction-free reading. I know
there are endless RSS readers out there, but how many are catering to ebook
readers with a pleasant search or even older types who like to print things
off. Your main strengths are in user interface and simplifying various
workflows, rather than search technology, so I'd play to those strengths.
~~~
netmau5
Just wanted to thank you for that link, one of those palettes was exactly what
I needed for my work today. I've used Kuler before but never seen
colourlovers. tyty
------
ryanwaggoner
I like it. How would integration work with my site? How would you make money
with this?
I'd also be curious to hear what you're doing behind the scenes. Also, what's
the general method for extraction the primary content of a page the way you do
for the lightbox preview?
Overall, it's very fast and the results seem relevant, plus you've identified
a niche where you can get a foothold, so I think you're on the right track :)
~~~
lkozma
Thanks for the comment.
We want to make the search widget customizable and in general unobtrusive, so
it should fit well on any site. Initially we target blogs mostly.
Behind the scenes we crawl the websites with our own crawler, we filter the
content and run our own algorithms for building and ranking expressions.
For the preview we use TopUp (lightbox clone) and we filter the page with
arc90's readability algorithm. If someone is interested we can write a blog
post with more details about the tools and libraries used.
For monetization, freemium would be the default route. What would you suggest
otherwise?
~~~
hardik988
I would love a blog post about how you guys went about doing this.
------
ch
Just wanted to throw my companies product out for a bit of shameless
promotion: www.picosearch.com.
We support suggestions (which drive an auto-complete feature) based on the
sites content, much like you guys.
I always welcome new competition into the search space, good luck on your
startup.
~~~
lkozma
Interesting, I was not aware of picosearch. Do you have an example link where
auto-complete is used with suggestions from website contents?
I agree that competition is good in this space, especially since most websites
don't have a usable search, let alone one with meaningful suggestions.
Thanks for your comment.
------
nostromo
I like it -- very useful.
A few questions:
* Why only blogs? I'd love to use it on other types of sites. (For example, maybe a wiki.)
* I like the keyboard support. (Search, hit down, press enter.) However, I'd like to be able to hit Esc to return to the list -- without using my mouse. It's pretty standard for Esc to close modal windows.
* When I click to see an entry full-screen, I'd rather it just open in the current window rather than a pop-up.
* If you don't mind, I'd love to hear a little about the backend. Is it Lucene?
~~~
pceelurd
* We said we'll start out with blogs, because that's where we miss such a feature dearly. In the long run, anything which contains plenty of text could be "metahinted".
* Very useful suggestion, thank you. It is implemented now: ESC should close the popup window.
* Few commenters have suggested that. Would you prefer to see the entry occupy the entire screen or fit in a text-area of some sorts?. Anyways, reworking the preview functionality is on our TODO list.
* We'd respectfully defer answering this question in ample details to an upcoming blog post. We appreciate your understanding in this matter. To give you a short answer, however: no, it's not Lucene.
Thank you for your comment!
------
revorad
Wow, it's really cool!
I searched for some obscure words just for fun (like "nirvana" on scott
aronson's blog). It came up with no suggestions. A google search revealed that
the term nirvana only occurred in comments. Are you not indexing comments?
Also, why can't I just search for any words of my choice? It looks like I have
to choose one of your suggestions.
Edit: Oh and it would be a lot nicer if the results are just displayed below
the search box instead of the animated lightbox, which just makes me wait
more.
~~~
lkozma
Currently we only index the blog posts and the demo shows the suggestion
feature only. We will probably add the option of searching for arbitrary
queries. When the widget will be integrated on websites, the result will take
you to the given page, instead of the lightbox used in the demo.
------
db42
Though I haven't fully explored it yet, I would like to give you a suggestion.
After a user enter some search keywords and press enter, the resulting blog(or
article) is shown on different window(and control no longer remains on the
main site page). It discourages a user to search more on your site as
everytime he would have to close that new window and return to your main page.
I think it would be better if you use space below search fields on the main
page itself for this purpose.
------
arethuza
Do site owners get some kind of analytics to see what people have been
searching for (and maybe to tune the search process)?
~~~
pceelurd
Yes, we've got a nifty set of statistics in the making.
~~~
arethuza
Cool - looks like a really nice product. Good luck!
------
nl
I found that pretty impressive.
I'm pretty sure that the Google AJAX search API bases suggestions on your site
though, and they have just launched the ability to edit suggestions. But I
think your thing compares quite well with Google AJAX API, assuming it's going
to be easy to setup.
------
ritonlajoie
<http://www.metahint.com>
~~~
arethuza
Doing a search for lisp in Paul Graham's essays (predictable, I know) gave a
list of results where the first three look identical (Lisp Lisp Code Lisp) -
clicking on any one of them gives a message saying "Looks like we couldn't
find the content.".
~~~
lkozma
Thanks, good catch, we fixed it. It was for the page:
<http://paulgraham.com/lisp.html>
We will have to watch out for such pages with minimal content.
~~~
arethuza
The dialog box that opens when you click on one of the suggestions pretty much
always seems to have a scrollbar - which is on the right.
The X icon to close the dialog box is on the left - meaning that if I have
been scrolling I have to move across to the left side to close it. Which is a
bit annoying...
------
iworkforthem
Any reasons why can't I search words like "the", "a", etc?
~~~
pceelurd
These words (and a few more) have been filtered out because they are far too
common in everyday English and statistically not [so] important. Had we left
them in, they would probably outweigh the meaningful suggestions.
~~~
kakaylor
Pretty cool site.
You might want to look into TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency)
weighting as an alternative to filtering for common English words.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf%E2%80%93idf>
~~~
pceelurd
Thank you!
We are using both techniques (filtering + TF-IDF weighting), actually :)
------
nithyad
Your site isn't working now!
------
TheSOB88
Pretty cool. Seems to work awesomely. The animation when you preview a site is
a bit gaudy, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Demand growing for open access science texts and tools - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/building-sustainable-open-access-science-texts-and-tools.ars
======
iwwr
With regard to OpenCourseWare, MIT are not selling secret knowledge, but a
certificate stating the bearer is smart enough to go through their courses and
has done all the work necessary to complete them. This should be the m.o. of
all learning institutions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
So if Wikipedia is the web's encyclopedia, where is the web's user's manual? - davewiner
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/12/11/theWorldwideWebUsersManual.html
======
zdw
"Hi, where can I buy just enough rope to hang myself"?
For some things, simple instructions are fine - the coffee example being one
of them. Once you get into complex or dangerous things (home improvement,
etc.) you need to impart some safety and theory before just giving
instructions.
There's a reason that they make undergrads go through the "Lab Safety" course
before doing work in a science lab...
------
zachrose
Before reading the article, I thought it was going to be about a universal
manual for web browsers.
Such a thing would be immensely helpful.
Say, for instance, that your site asks the user to disable their popup
blocker, or install a bookmarklet, or upgrade to a newer version of IE. It
would be great if everyone could just use a "how do I do this?" link that goes
to a neutral site with instructions. Sort of like whatbrowser.org, but with
info on how to actually do stuff.
------
mishmash
One scoop per cup is the golden rule. ;)
------
gojomo
<http://www.wikihow.com>
~~~
TobinCurry
Yes, wikiHow is it. From wikiHow's about us page,
<http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:About-wikiHow>:
"wikiHow is a collaborative effort to build and share the world's largest,
highest quality how-to manual. Like Wikipedia, wikiHow is a wiki, in that
anyone can write or edit a page on the site. Thousands of people from all over
the world have collaboratively written 93,410 how-to articles. Over 25 million
people a month read wikiHow, which makes it the 150th most popular website
according to Quantcast."
------
dheerosaur
The web itself is a user manual. And the index/catalog is called a search
engine.
------
rds2
It's not open, but eHow.com is pretty much a general FAQ for the web.
~~~
ComputerGuru
PLEASE NO.
eHow is Demand Media. It's a spam/scam - they generate millions of pages with
almost zero content. Contributors are paid pennies to write the bare minimum
to get a "PASS." Demand Media is a disease of the web.
[http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/e-media-
ti...](http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/e-media-
tidbits/100146/demand-media-may-be-bad-for-social-media-but-not-for-
journalism/)
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/demand_media_is_a_page_...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/demand_media_is_a_page_view_generating_machine.php)
[http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/ehowcom-demand-
med...](http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/ehowcom-demand-
media-c295301.html)
------
mooism2
Who would read it?
Does anyone read user manuals any more?
------
ajaimk
"Kick to restart"
------
kissickas
It's down- mirror?
~~~
Groxx
Looks like it's back up. Worked for me * shrug *
If not:
>I was just making a small pot of coffee, just two cups. So I measured out two
full cups of water, and guessed how much coffee to put in the basket. The
coffee came out great, but could just have easily come out awful.
>So if Wikipedia is the web's encyclopedia, where is the web's user's manual?
It would be infinitely expandable, aspire to cover everything, and take a
practical 1-2-3 approach to doing things we humans do on this planet in the
times we live in.
and try googling for "cache:url" in the future :)
~~~
kissickas
Awesome, thanks for the tip! I searched for the url but the results didn't
have "Cached" links below them, this is so much faster (and clearly more
effective).
~~~
Groxx
The cached-links seem intermittent at best, cache: finds a _lot_ that aren't
linked. Searching also takes you straight to it, which is nice.
I only found out about that trick ~ a month ago, from here. It has quickly
become my favorite / most-useful Google trick _ever_.
------
yycom
wikihow
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Has Reinvented Research - DmenshunlAnlsis
https://daily.jstor.org/amazons-mechanical-turk-has-reinvented-research/
======
Radim
Mechanical Turk is great for "open", public research. We used to use them a
lot for machine learning tasks (data cleanup, model comparisons, label
annotations), along with similar services like CrowdFlower / Figure Eight. We
saw two primarily issues when applied to "non-open" (commercial) projects:
\- business-related data too sensitive to share with strangers (contractual
obligations, too much risk)
\- some tasks required non-trivial subject matter expertise and context to
annotate properly (quality control issues)
For this reason, we gradually moved to an in-house team of long-term
annotators. It's not much more expensive (moms on maternity leave, students…),
but infinitely more flexible and safer for our purposes. YMMV.
~~~
therealmarv
try PYBOSSA, open source crowdsourcing platform, you host it yourself, you are
in control of your data.
~~~
k__
I think the problem is more that you give the data to the turkers than to give
it to Amazon.
------
rococode
MTurk is a godsend for ML research and is a huge game-changer. For every other
project where the problem is "that sounds cool but we don't have enough
labeled data" the answer nowadays is "just turk it". Sentiment labeling,
qualitative comparison, error identification, and tons of other traditionally
data-scarce tasks are made trivially easy (at the cost of some money) with
MTurk, and it's pretty much a win-win for everyone involved too!
Now the ethics as far as exploitation are definitely important, but I think
the design of the site handles things quite well and makes everything fair for
all parties. If you feel a task is underpaid, there are enough alternatives
that you can just not do it. It's also true that there are many international
turkers for whom $8/hour or less is still solid pay. Then there are also many
third-party tools that allow turkers to see which HIT (task) requesters have
good track records (low rejection ratio, good pay, etc.), and the site's own
tools allow requesters to avoid turkers with bad track records. In my
experience just browsing through tasks, heavily underpaid tasks don't tend to
get done (for example, writing a 100-word summary for $0.50).
~~~
krageon
You can't receive any actual money (only amazon money, which is much less
useful) as a worker outside of the US as far as I know.
~~~
lozenge
You can in India as well which must be where most of the work is coming from.
------
chx
Data cleanup is also a great use. For example, we needed to parse an amount of
address data, we just needed country, state (or equivalent), city, we gave out
each address three times, whatever results were the same at least twice was
accepted. We had over 92% where all three were the same, another 7% with 2-1
(required review), less than 1% needed either manual cleanup before re-Turking
or just manually entering some of the more gnarly cases. We considered it a
truly massive success, price efficient and absolutely unbelievable quick.
~~~
sametmax
You outsourced personal data to mechanical turk ? Can I have the name of your
company ?
~~~
robryan
Is address data without a name/email or phone number to link it to really
personal data?
~~~
sametmax
They extracted it, so it means it was in a context. Address + context is very
much personal.
Also I note that the comment author prefers not to answer.
~~~
icebraining
_They extracted it, so it means it was in a context. Address + context is very
much personal._
That doesn't mean it was available to the MT workers. Why would it be?
_Also I note that the comment author prefers not to answer._
They haven't made any new post since that one, how do you know if they even
saw yours?
~~~
dx034
Even if it's just an ID, if you know the company you work for is a specialised
online shop and you see your neighbor's address on there (assume rural area),
you know they ordered with them. Depending on the kind of store that can
already be critical.
------
ehead
It's an interesting question, whether or not the data is representative (or
what demographic is the data representative of).
Are there any studies done of the demographic distribution of Turkers?
~~~
archgoon
Several of the referenced papers from the article seek to address this
question:
"Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's
Mechanical Turk"
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/23260322?mag=amazons-
mechanical...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/23260322?mag=amazons-mechanical-
turk-has-reinvented-research&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
"Socially Mediated Internet Surveys: Recruiting Participants for Online
Experiments"
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/43284764?mag=amazons-
mechanical...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/43284764?mag=amazons-mechanical-
turk-has-reinvented-research&seq=5#page_scan_tab_contents)
------
jankotek
Please fix misleading title, it should be: Reinvented _Survey_ Research.
> _thirty to forty minute survey ... paid $1.10_
What sort of results do you expect from this "research"? Do you really expect
people to read the questions and answer truthfully?
You can prove pretty much anything, by reordering fields or manipulating the
questions.
~~~
mbym
Prolific ([http://prolific.ac/](http://prolific.ac/)) is designed specifically
for science research, but I've used used it for two different use cases: 1\.
Product research, quickly testing appetite for an idea. 2\. Micro tasks (a
"survey" with at least one participant, where basically the only question was
"have you done the task (on external page)?" The task in question was editing
a public transcript, so confidentiality wasn't even a concern.
Each time I was impressed with the quality of the responses. In the optional
open-ended text fields for the research survey, in particular, I was impressed
with how people took time to free-write their thoughts, rather than just
rushing on to the next question / to complete the survey. Point is I do think
you get what you pay for...
From my experience, it seems Prolific's ethical approach (e.g., insisting on
decent minimum payment rates) leads to overall higher quality of participants
as well as responses (vs. race-to-the-bottom micro-task platforms like MTurk).
[Disclaimer: I'm friends with the founders -- so I'm quite familiar with the
amount of resources devoted to ensuring truthful/quality responses.]
------
myro
I've been turking once, made a $100 worth of Amazon credits and bought a first
version of Kindle :) good old days
~~~
dx034
How many hours? Was it 30-50 hours as some reports suggest or a decent hourly
wage?
------
jonbarker
To paraphrase The Simpsons: "In the future, computer programs will be built by
labeled data sets. And our job will be to build and maintain those labeled
data sets."
------
Nasrudith
I can't help but imagine unscrupulous bot programmers going through every
possible survey and answering them quickly with garbage. Or if they monitor
expected times doing parallel instances while waiting long enough to look like
a human. High volume low value junk ruining things has a long history with the
internet.
~~~
benp84
Sadly there is disincentive to report bad workers on MTurk. You can block them
through the MTurk system which rightfully puts their account at risk for
termination. BUT Amazon sends them an email identifying you as the blocker,
which causes them to go write terrible reviews of you on worker sites, which
reduces the supply of workers for your HITs. So the ideal way to handle it is
block them from your HIT server so at least they can't do YOUR HITs again and
never report them.
------
knguyen0105
Have anyone used Mechanical Turk for tasks that involve non-English languages
like Chinese or Vietnamese?
~~~
titanix2
I tried a batch for some data typing involving Chinese characters. Nobody did
it. Maybe it wasn't paid enough, maybe there was no skilled people willing to
do it. I'm also interested in other people experience involving to two
languages.
~~~
jdietrich
That's not too surprising - most of Amazon's IP ranges are blocked by the
Great Firewall.
------
ada1981
My friend has used this extensively for all kinds of interesting things.
I interviewed him about his work combining mturk & AI to help Trump / Clinton
supporters better understand each other.
[https://huffpost.com/us/entry/us_581a4825e4b0f1c7d77c9555](https://huffpost.com/us/entry/us_581a4825e4b0f1c7d77c9555)
With regard to pay, it seems reasonable to adopt a standard where the average
per hour rate is disclosed in the research papers. This alone may provide
social pressure for academics to adopt payment inline with local norms.
Also this brings up some questions for me. Is it unethical for a researcher in
a locale with low wages to post on mturk looking for work at comparable rates?
Should posters be posting rates comparable to their own countries minimum wage
laws? Is there another standard? Could requiring some researchers (from richer
countries) to increase their rates result in resesrchers from other countries
being priced out or having their research deprioritized by Turks?
------
8bitsrule
'Mechanical Turk' is a sweatship run by a notorious skinflint.
------
ccnafr
Do people who participate in MK get any money for their time?
~~~
iagovar
Not outside the US, so I won't be so confident for non english data.
~~~
ccnafr
Why not? Are they afraid of users from low-income countries flooding the site?
~~~
mberger
Yes, and that you get a lot of tasks that you can't prosecute their origin.
For example (off the top of my head) solving captchas, cracking passwords,
doxing, hacking offers etc. I think there was also the spectre of organized
crime enslaving people to do the tasks and taking the profits.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Evolved virtual creatures (evolutionary programming, 1994) - derwiki
http://www.archive.org/details/sims_evolved_virtual_creatures_1994
======
danbmil99
(shameless plug:) here's a paper I worked on where we used evolved neural
networks to control a robot (simulated, hoping to reproduce on the real robot
soon):
<http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1839>
I've been fascinated by this idea since before I saw Karl Sim's work. My take
on it now is that it is something that could really break out, but there needs
to be some hard-ass work on scaling, and on how to apply the technique
effectively. The hardware we have now is so off the charts compared to 1994,
you would suppose that everything would be easier -- but not really. Evolution
is one application that can really, really eat up every ounce of CPU you throw
at it, and still scream for more.
But flops aren't the sticking point, at least not yet. What is extremely
difficult is finding ways to map evolutionary techniques to real-world
problems effectively. It's just such a radical way of thinking that it tends
to work at cross-purposes to the 'normal' patterns of engineering.
I can elaborate if anyone cares.
~~~
jal278
Very interesting, I've done work evolving neural networks for biped walking.
As far as I know, usually researchers use monolithic NNs, why did you use 22
separate NNs? I've never seen anything like that, opens my mind up to some new
NN architectures.
All evolutionary approaches seem pretty susceptible to local optima when
tackling ambitious problems like biped gaits. You maintain diversity through
demes and use incremental evolution?
One thing I hate about research in CS is that rarely is the source code
provided to reproduce the research. I spent 3 months unable to reproduce the
seminal Reil + Husbands biped walking paper (Reil went on to found
NaturalMotion, which makes natural motion for CGI in movies). I swear they
used some sort of voodoo magic. Is the source available for your simulator?
------
shib71
This reminded me of the game "Creatures". The artificial lifeforms the game
revolves around use complex neural networks (with a few interesting twists).
"Creatures can learn a simple verb-object language, either via keyboard input
from the user, or by playing on a teaching-machine in the environment, or from
interactions with other creatures in the environment." [http://www.cyberlife-
research.com/cyberliferesearch/Creature...](http://www.cyberlife-
research.com/cyberliferesearch/Creatures/scientificpaper.htm)
------
papaf
I had the pleasure of doing some genetic programming research last year. It
was lots of fun.
The most impressive use of simulated evolution that I've seen recently was a
paper which describes the evolution of proteins, how this evolution mirrors a
simulated annealing algorithm how this behaviour forms species.
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1869.abstract>
For genetic programming in general there was a paper in Science this year
which is beautifully written and describes how physical laws appeared in the
output of a genetic program applied to experimental data:
<http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/natural_laws>
If anybody is interested in genetic programming the following free book is
very practical:
<http://www.gp-field-guide.org.uk/>
~~~
danbmil99
> how this evolution mirrors a simulated annealing algorithm how this
> behaviour forms species.
Before we did the full-on evolutionary stuff, I was fiddling with simulated
annealing. There's definitely a connection.
It's all a subset of global optimization really. What makes evolution so
fascinating is how it seems (at least in real life) to be able to direct its
own path towards interesting solutions to particular problems. It's sort of
like this mad genius, who keeps shouting brilliant things at you, but never
listens. So you can never ask him a question -- you just have to set things up
so he'll want to find an answer to the question you wish you could ask.
------
sblank
Jeffrey Ventrella and Brian Dodd expanded on these ideas in 1996 with one of
the early PC games based on genetic algorithms (at Rocket Science Games.)
<http://www.ventrella.com/Darwin/darwin.html>
Ventrella's main page is worth a look <http://www.ventrella.com> if you're
interested in examples of genetic programing.
------
jacquesm
Simply wow. Is there any follow up to this research ?
~~~
jcl
Not really. It demos very well, but it's a difficult area, and there's not
much real-world application (like most other a-life projects).
The guys working on EA's Spore considered evolving their creature animations,
but opted instead for retargeted animation generated by hand.
<http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/28338.page>
There are also procedural animation techniques, where you have a fixed
skeleton and you are trying to find an animation that satisfies user-specified
constraints, but that is really more of a motion-control topic.
I recall a professor of mine saying that Karl Sims's project is a popular
choice for a final project in his advanced graphics course, but he tries to
discourage it, as it turns out to be deceptively difficult to implement in a
semester, even for particularly capable students.
------
acj
The DevoLab at Michigan State University is doing ongoing work in this area.
At least one researcher (Jeff Clune) is looking at evolving generative
encodings for neural networks, using the gait of virtual creatures as a sample
problem.
<http://devolab.msu.edu>
~~~
jal278
I have to say that generative encodings are the most exciting new development
of genetic algorithms.
Basically, the idea is this: Typically in GAs, the genotype (the bits that
make up the genome, the ones that undergo selection and recombination) maps
directly to a phenotype (one to one).
So if you were going to evolve a brain, there would have to be one gene for
each connection in the brain. The problem is, such a direct 1-1 encoding can't
scale to huge brains. For example in the human brain there are trillions of
connections (synapses), which would mean searching a trillion-dimensional
space (unfathomably difficult). Nature's solution is to use development, where
a brain grows over time, where the genes don't directly specify each
connection, but the blueprint for how a brain should grow.
So, in generative encodings in GAs, the principle is simlar. An indirect (or
generative) encoding is where one gene can represent an aspect of a
developmental process instead of directly specifying each component. In some
ways it's similar to how in engineering you reuse components when making a
building; if the manufacture of each nail had to be specified completely
separately a project would be overwhelming.
~~~
papaf
_So, in generative encodings in GAs, the principle is simlar. An indirect (or
generative) encoding is where one gene can represent an aspect of a
developmental process instead of directly specifying each component._
I haven't heard of generative encoding before -- it sounds really cool. I
could imagine something similar done with Genetic Programming. You could
design a DSL (domain specific language) that is capable of building Neural
Nets and then perform GP on programs written in the DSL. This could take the
pressure off having to design a good development algorithm -- the GP would
would do that for you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why does the world still need the Mozilla Foundation? - pwg
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/02/why-does-the-world-still-need-the-mozilla-foundation/
======
csmattryder
We need the Mozilla Foundation for it's values, not it's software.
Things like setting up a free SSL CA [0], and lobbying alongside the EFF are
what Mozilla should focus on, privacy advocacy isn't something folks would
reject.
But I have been playing with Mozilla's Rust, and I think even if FF drops out
of the game, Mozilla should certainly focus on making sure this language
reaches production-ready status.
[0] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/certificate-
authority-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/certificate-authority-
encrypt-entire-web)
------
coding4all
Because Google, Apple, and Microsoft decided profit was better than true
choice and freedom. Their products are almost malware at this point.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If you could use any language for general development, then which would you use? - baccheion
For example, which would you use to replace Java (if you didn't have to worry about finding Engineers, etc), for example, or would you just use Java?
======
edwcar13
I would say either python or ruby. Reasons:
PYTHON:
1\. Python is white space sensitive forcing you to write clean code.
2\. Python has been around since 1991.
3\. Python is in my opinion the easiest when it comes to learning curve
4\. Sites like YouTube and Google started on python.
RUBY:
1\. Ruby is the popular language today because of ruby on rails.
2\. ROR cuts down development and testing time.
3\. Ruby has gems for just about everything now, most vendor code that use to
be considered third party are now gems.
4\. Sites like airbnb and fiverr use ruby
End: This is for both. The communities are huge, the years of examples,
modules and libraries are extensive
------
pedalpete
Javascript, I know there will be many haters, my reasons are
* it runs on so many devices, browsers, servers, mobile, IoT, what's next...
* large community of developers
* huge number of available modules
* decent performance (and improving with things like asm)
* so many languages compile to it
I think it is important to think not only of where the language is today, but
where it will be in 10 years or more. Sure there are issues with Javascript,
their are issues with NPM, etc, etc, but with the huge body of developers
working on javascript and the javascript ecosystem, I suspect these will
continue to be worked out.
Javascript devs have a bit of a cavalier attitude at the moment (I'm one), but
I think/hope that over the coming years we will work out the existing issues
and make javascript a more respected language.
------
mpbm
Livecode. It's a high level scripting language that compiles into executables
for every platform. They're almost done with the HTML5 version, which will
compile into an executable for the browser.
It's friendly enough that I taught myself and got my prototype built for all
the major desktops. I'm working on an associated website now and I don't even
have to learn PHP because I can keep using Livecode for web scripting as long
as Livecode Server is installed.
So, basically, learn Livecode and replace a half dozen other languages.
------
enitihas
Python, because of two reasons: 1\. The syntax is very clean and readable. 2\.
Availability of libraries for almost every task.
------
download13
Haskell. The type system eliminates a huge segment of errors that you only
discover later in more dynamic langauges.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask YC: Has anyone else here worked in the video game industry? - gabrielleydon
Just curious...
======
uuilly
I graduate from college way into CG. Oddly I'm not into video games. After
some exploration though I found that people in that industry are over worked
and underpaid. I found other uses for CG instead. Not really an answer to your
question but there ya go...
~~~
icculus
I've been in the game industry as a programmer since 2000. I read this site
everyday, but I'm not submitting an application to ycombinator, so maybe I'm
not the audience for your question.
I wanted to reply to the overworked/underpaid thing, because you read it a lot
on non-gaming hacking sites...it's like parents tell their baby hackers to
behave, or they'll have to go work in the game industry.
If you're talented and not willing to accept shitty working conditions, you
won't end up in a sweatshop. Lots of good companies treat their employees very
well, both in terms of work conditions and compensation. Game houses on the
West Coast are abundant, but there are some very good ones in the East (Epic
being one of the brighter lights there), and middle (Raven and Human Head in
Wisconsin, id in Texas, many many others), so don't feel like you have to
readjust to a Californian way of life or living expenses.
The rough equivalent of sweatshops _do_ exist, but these aren't as rampant as
you would think, even at places that have been (in)famous for them, like
Electronic Arts.
Aim for smaller, privately-held game companies. They tend to be most
satisfying to work for. If they get bought by EA or Microsoft (or Activision,
or 2K, or, or, or...), jump ship when your options vest. Very few people seem
to be as happy after the acquisition, but there are always exceptions.
If you are a generic coder with no identity within your company or project,
jump ship immediately. Before the interview, if you can. :) Most places won't
have you in the spotlight at all, but are very good about making everyone feel
like an important contributor to a team. If you don't feel like that, you
should get out, because the work is always challenging, but it doesn't suck
unless you feel like a cog in a machine.
~~~
shawndrost
Just to add another data point -- I was interested in the games industry, and
interviewed around a bit. I turned away because it looked like
overworked/underpaid was the norm. Some people (like icculus) said that wasn't
necessarily the case, but even they acknowledged it was the norm, and it's
hard to be sure of what you're getting into when you're interviewing.
This agrees with the obvious economics at work: games are sexy, so programmers
are in greater supply, so their value goes down.
------
shiro
Yes. I was in R&D of a game company, worked on console game titles (PS, PS2)
and CG film productions. Also did some technology demos at siggraph.
Overworking---well, you can't avoid occasional crunch time, and because of the
nature of game development, you sometimes have to face the design being
overturned and have to rework development. But how far it goes largely depends
on the team and/or the culture of the company. I know some who were deep in
crunch time for over 9 months to meet the deadlines of monthly milestones; but
also I know some who were able to leave office 6-7pm most of the time.
------
palish
Yeah, I work on HeroEngine (<http://www.heroengine.net>), a MMO platform. The
guys behind it are really smart, and I'm lucky to be able to learn from them.
If you're interested in game development, the single best thing you could do
is hang out in the IRC channel #gamedev on the server irc.afternet.org and
learn from them. There are a surprising number of excellent developers in that
channel, so even if you're not interested in game development you'd probably
find it worthwhile anyway. Just wait for an interesting conversation.
~~~
derefr
Interesting. My slant is more to game design, though, and I've never been able
to find a web community specifically for it. Something like The Forge
(<http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/>), but with video games in mind instead of
the Pen and Paper sort. Heard of anything?
------
mxh
Yes, I spent about 3.5yrs in it. I can't really agree with the
underpaid/overworked thing; the pay was fair, and the hours not unreasonable.
I left the industry because the idea of spending 2+ years on something that
may-or-may-not pan out, with no way to tell before release, was beginning to
get me down.
I realize startups are sort of the same thing, but I think they actually offer
earlier feedback and greater opportunities for recovery than games.
------
coffeeaddicted
Yeah, I have worked for several game companies, started an own and currently
I'm working as freelancer on a video game.
------
Tichy
Just mobile games for a while. And of course my erotic puzzle game ;-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SimCity Developers' Reddit AMA Swiftly Turns Into WTF With The Online-Only DRM? - secretwhistle
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121214/16262621391/simcity-developers-reddit-ama-swiftly-turns-into-wtf-with-online-only-drm.shtml
======
fruchtose
Reddit communities are a minefield, at least in terms of the larger
subreddits; Reddit is a site which has a significant young, male, socially
liberal audience that is suspicious of advertisers. On Reddit, companies are
seen as inauthentic, because people pushing a product cannot contribute to a
community that was created without a profit motive (i.e. Reddit). For many
users, this suspicion extends to corporations as a whole, since the profit
motive poisons any interaction a company has with consumers; any interaction
is dismissed as inauthentic. This sense of cynicism has become pervasive
throughout the site, such that any self-promotion is questioned, even when
money is not at stake.
And EA thought it would be a good idea to advertise on Reddit? I can
sympathize with the team members who have no control over the business
decisions. I am sure they are great at making awesome games. However, a
cursory search of Reddit would show that more vocal Redditors hold extremely
hostile views of EA's games and business practices; these opinions cover such
grounds as studio acquisitions, DRM, game quality, content distribution
methods, DLC pricing schedules, and artistic vision--just to name a few topics
of scorn. Given the extensiveness of the Reddit echo chamber, I wonder who at
EA made the brave decision to send the SimCity 5 team into it.
~~~
redthrowaway
Reddit also has a fairly dim view of IE, but that didn't stop the IE9 team
from having a fairly successful AMA[1]. The difference was, the Redmond boys
owned up to past failures and seemed genuinely interested in fixing them. EA's
response to customer dissatisfaction appears to be to claim that they're
wrong, and should not be dissatisfied. Two different approaches led to two
entirely different outcomes.
An AMA on reddit can be successful for anyone, so long as they're primed on
how best to interact with the reddit community. Obama was well-primed, and his
inclusion of several reddit in-jokes in his replies (no doubt at the
insistence of staffers) made for a very successful AMA, even if it was an easy
crowd for him. On the other hand, Woody Harrelson should also have faced an
easy crowd, but his ignorance of what's expected in an AMA led to that
infamous clusterfuck.
EA should have known that online-only DRM would be a big issue, and they
should have prepared a better answer to it. That they didn't is only their
fault, especially given what I suspect is fairly high reddit usage among the
rank and file there.
[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_memb...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_members_of_the_ie9_product_team_here/)
~~~
wlesieutre
Last year I had a few weeks between real internet connections at my house, and
it really drove home how bad an idea these systems are. Even Steam, which
ostensibly has an "Offline Mode" did not do as well as I'd have liked because
one of the residents didn't have it set to log in automatically.
So now we're in a situation where all of her games refuse to open and we won't
be back online for a while. But you'd think Steam would have no problem
authenticating through a tethered EDGE connection. It's not a ton of data, and
it doesn't need low latency. But it didn't work. Even if webpages loaded
(albeit not quickly), Steam would not log in.
So it strikes me as incredibly arrogant for companies like EA and Ubi to come
along and tell me that these always online systems aren't a problem. They are.
And it sucks how many users accept them. Even when we're not talking about
days/weeks like I discussed above, small Comcast outages here are not
uncommon, and it's crazy that games will quit or entirely refuse to run when
they happen.
I absolutely agree that they should have seen the reaction coming. The same
kind of systems have been in place with games like StarCraft 2 and Assassins
Creed, and they've all gotten similar receptions on sites like Reddit.
~~~
redthrowaway
It's interesting that you had issues launching Steam games without an Internet
connection. I've never had a problem with it, although I've got a MBP and so
my library of games is quite limited. Might the issue have not been Steam, but
rather something the game publishers had included that caused it not to work?
~~~
wlesieutre
If you have Steam set to remember your password and log in automatically, it's
fairly reliable. If you prefer to not leave passwords remembered, Steam will
not launch even in Offline Mode until you restore the connection and
authenticate. This is by design.
<http://i.imgur.com/NXCpk.png>
While I understand the reasons for designing it this way, it's still very
annoying to be caught off guard by it. I'm glad that nobody could get access
to any actual account data like my friends list, time played, etc. But I'd
much rather it be a system like the Mac App Store, where software will run no
matter what once it's been downloaded, and running things I've installed is
entirely separate from my account authentication and anything with personal
information in.
------
btown
The TechDirt article says this:
> [Developer] Kip's followup was downright laughable. > > "We will allow you
> to play for as long as we can preserve your game state. This will most
> likely be minutes."
Everyone seems to hate on the DRM, thinking that it's just a business decision
that is not at all integral to gameplay, but they all seem to be forgetting
one key thing:
The new SimCity is, at its core, a multiplayer game!
Sure, it's a multiplayer game with the majority of the user experience
dedicated to non-social, intra-city interactions. But your city lives within a
global economy, and if it's possible to mutate your offline state without
mutating your online state, then sync becomes a huge problem.
Consider the server that models a consistent virtual entrepreneur who's moving
or visiting from one city to another (which the new AI actually might do, from
seeing the videos). Now, say the destination city goes offline for hours. Both
the source city and the destination city could end up _believing_ that the
virtual entrepreneur is helping their city grow. If the offline time period is
short (i.e. the "minutes" that the developer refers to), then the offline city
can "snap back" to the correct state much as laggy players see themselves
jumping across a map in a shooter. But if it's a long offline period, they
could be snapping back in a very visible and jarring way. And it's near
impossible to test all of the edge cases unless you can make assumptions about
maximum latency before a disconnect.
The developers can only be faulted for not _communicating_ the intricacies of
an MMO to their audience well enough. Instead, they allowed their game server
to be characterized as a DRM device, and tried to respond to criticisms as if
it was just a DRM device.
I want to be able to play Skyrim offline. But I have no qualms about WoW
disconnecting me if I go offline for more than a few minutes, or if I tried to
log on with a stolen or copied account. I'd expect them to do the same to
other players who did so. On that note, we should really just be glad that
they're not making SimCity a subscription service!
~~~
wlesieutre
I think that a lot of people are aware of that; they question whether it
actually adds value to the game. Given the choice between an entrepreneur that
moves between cities (and other similar features) or a game that works when
the internet goes down for 5 minutes, I'd take the latter.
Having interactions like pollution between neighbors is pretty cool. But
there's no good reason it couldn't work with AI neighbors too. The online only
features feel tacked on to force players into staying online all the time.
~~~
wlesieutre
Perhaps a more important point that I should have mentioned: I can still play
Sim City 2000 (published in 1994). Games like this that depend on online
servers for basic functionality? I doubt they'll work in 18 years.
------
talmir
One thing about this DRM method that worries me is what happens in the future?
I still occasionally play my ooooold copy of simcity 2000. So if I do like the
new simcity, what happens ten years down the line? Will I still be able to
play it? Or will I not be able to authenticate/save/access old saves because
the official simcity server was taken offline?
It seems to me that we are buying digital products with an expiration date.
And that seems wrong to me.
~~~
bincat
That is broadly the reason why I don't have the Kindle, for example.
EA has in its bowels made a choice that Sim City fans will become its new cash
cow. They will be now free to sell you the game and turn it off when they
choose that releasing another version is more profitable. They easily could
have allowed the game to function without inputs from neighboring areas or
could have simulated it.
As a Sim City fan I am deeply disappointed since I have fond memories playing
the game from the very first release. But these days I have chosen to only
support and reward companies who do not make relationship with their customers
a power play.
------
csense
Capitalism is the answer to DRM.
If the games put out by bloated clueless bigcorps are filled with draconian
DRM, then their lunch should be eaten by agile indie startups that know
better.
If you buy video games, take note: Minimize or boycott entirely games that
have DRM. Reallocate that part of your video game budget to buy DRM-free
games. Use Gamersgate and Good Old Games; avoid Steam.
If you make video games, take note: There's at least some subset of people who
hate DRM, and they'll presumably be attracted if you use the words "DRM-free"
somewhere in your website/app description/marketing.
------
Pezmc
Online only DRM depresses me slightly, until the internet is available
"everywhere" we shouldn't be restricted to having to be connected to it.
I play games on the tube, trains, on holiday without wifi and many other
places where I don't have internet access.
Some of the most successful gaming devices of the past few years
(iPhone/iPad), don't require an internet connection to work, neither do the
major consoles. Why should be users be forced into this? Haven't they heard of
laptops?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dinosaur Easter egg on Vogue.co.uk - joebeetee
http://www.supajam.com/news/story/Dinosaurs-in-hats-on-Vogue-website
======
joebeetee
Check out [http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/](http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/) for a
suited version - same keys - UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A and
then press A for more dino's...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hledger entries with Haskell and Elm - narendraj9
https://github.com/narendraj9/hledger-serve
======
brudgers
If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN". Guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)
Curious if there is a story behind its development or plans for future
features.
~~~
narendraj9
Yes, I plan to make it independent of hledger command. So, that I can do all
the stuff on mobile. But currently I want to be able to fetch things in emacs
so that they can be added to the main journal file. When there was no
authentication it was easy, but now since Yesod uses a session cookie for
keeping you authenticated, I am wondering how I can make emacs fetch the
entries. I would have to have something like api keys and two kinds of
authentications. One from the website and the other with a query parameter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This Dutch master builder creates the most wonderful devices - ggdG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1ODwgX_KkQ
======
beerbajay
This is Tatjana J. van Vark:
[http://www.tatjavanvark.nl/index.html](http://www.tatjavanvark.nl/index.html)
------
noonespecial
One of the reasons I think guaranteed minimum income is a fantastic idea. I
really would love a world full of lots of people like this!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Alternatives for high end network monitoring - FireBeyond
Looking for an alternative to things like Landscape, NewRelic - ideally something self-hosted, free, pretty. Something more user-friendly, less intimidating than Nagios.<p>Ideally, but not necessarily, multi platform client support.
======
GiHe
NetXMS (www.netxms.org) may or may not fit your needs but is an open-source
gem that deserves more attention
~~~
FireBeyond
This looks excellent. Definitely worth some more investigation, thanks!
------
sysroot
Try Zabbix
[http://www.zabbix.com/true_open_source.php](http://www.zabbix.com/true_open_source.php)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete - lelf
https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828
======
yorwba
I guess this is newsworthy because a paper was put on arXiv, but the result
has been known for a while. See e.g. this submission a year ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15712377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15712377)
~~~
mettamage
I'll just make my submission here then as I don't want to clutter the front
page [1]. The submission includes a list of a lot of things that are
accidentally turing complete _including_ Magic The Gathering.
[1]
[http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/accidentally_turing_complet...](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/accidentally_turing_complete.html)
~~~
gwern
I have a more up-to-date list at [https://www.gwern.net/Turing-
complete](https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete)
~~~
eindiran
Why do you consider it surprising that Peano Arithmetic is Turing complete?
~~~
gwern
Because they're supposed to just be the integers. If it is obvious to you that
'the integers' means undecidability/Turing-completeness, and that integers
_without_ multiplication (Presburger) does not, then all I can say is that
your mathematical logic intuition is vastly superior to mine and everyone
before Turing/Godel.
------
baltimore
I'll see your Magic and raise you Nomic:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic)
~~~
vanderZwan
I have never played Nomic, but I can say from experience that Mao is a very
fun way to practice game design skills _and_ troll new players at the same
time
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_\(card_game\))
~~~
meruru
This sounds really cool, but where am I going to find someone who already
knows it to play my first game?
~~~
vanderZwan
Just use the following rules:
\- turns go clockwise
\- play one card per turn
\- if someone breaks a rule, they take back their card and draw one extra
\- first to shed all their cards, followed by saying "Mao!" wins
\- saying "Mao" any other times means drawing three cards (so if someone broke
a rule playing their last card and had to take back their card, they end up
drawing three cards
\- Similar to the previous rule: _not_ saying "Mao" upon successfully playing
the last card also means drawing three cards. And it is breaking the rules, so
the player has to take back the card and draw a card.
\- asking any question means drawing a card (be brutal: _" WHAT?!"_ counts as
a question)
\- one player starts with making up two extra rules
\- the winner of a round makes up a new rule, the old rules stay
... then grab a bunch of friends, say "you'll figure it out", come up with two
rules of your own and start playing. You'll likely win the round (because they
will all ask questions in confusion), and be allowed to add another rule.
Restart after a couple of rounds. Troll until they threaten to quit (at which
point you explain the rules) or until they actually figure it out. Watch their
expressions go from frustration to gleefully anticipation, and go look for a
fresh victim together.
------
C1sc0cat
erm "Though similar to role-playing fantasy games such as Dungeons and
Dragons"
No MTG is not at all similar to role playing games.
~~~
gberger
It is similar in lore/setting.
~~~
C1sc0cat
Not sure that's true MTG is not based on any of the DnD settings nor does it
have Character Races and Classes.
~~~
aloisdg
You have creature type (a list of tags basically). A Human Soldier or a Goblin
Wizard is common in MTG.
~~~
C1sc0cat
You Have a thief in Catan
------
vaylian
Some thoughts about AI: After Chess, Go and StarCraft 1, Magic is definitely
an interesting game for AI to tackle next.
While there are certain play patterns, the space of potential actions is
extremely large and there is a great number of synergistic interactions
between cards that needs to be taken into account.
From an AI perspective Magic is also very hard because it is:
* Non-deterministic
* Partially observable
* Antagonistic
~~~
shapiro92
but those interactions are actually not as large as a real time game such as
Dota or even Go. Your deck has an X amount of cards and the synergies can be
easily calculated from a machine. The real problem would be, is it smart
enough to beat an unknown opponent deck?
~~~
mratsim
As a Magic player (since 1996) and Go player (since 2004) and also deep
learning scientist, the main issue with Magic is modeling the game. The
interactions and exceptions are really numerous, I expect Magic Arena and
Magic Online are a mess of spaghetti code.
For go modeling basically you have in input an image of the go board, and for
DOTA an image of your screen and the action you have are "limited" and do not
change wildly depending of the state of your screen (except if you're dead on
Dota).
For Magic, you can't just use deep reinforcement learning with an image input,
you need to somehow track the state of your deck, cards, instant effects, what
your opponent did ...
~~~
Qwertystop
Arena at least has the advantage of not including all-cards-ever, only going a
few sets back relative to release. That strips out some of the worst of them.
------
Sahhaese
Does it actually make sense to say that something that is non-computable is
most complex?
That seems like a contradiction.
~~~
theoh
I think you are misunderstanding the article. The point is that when the game
is considered _as_ a computation, the problem of figuring out who is going to
win is not computable. Like every discussion of the halting problem, this is
about whether or not a program exists that can calculate how some other
specific program will behave.
~~~
Sahhaese
I understood that, but question whether it's meaningful to say that is
therefore more complex. Complexity theory just doesn't apply? (Or does it?)
~~~
theoh
Well, it's at least as complex as a Turing machine. That's a statement of
complexity.
Maybe you are asking whether it is possible for the winning strategy of a very
simple deterministic game to be non-computable. In other words, maybe there's
a possible way of defining computability which is orthogonal to complexity.
The CS definitions of both terms are closely connected to Turing machines,
though. Can you imagine a simple deterministic game that couldn't be "solved"
by an algorithm?
------
cosmolev
A collection of things that are Turing-complete by accident
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16383072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16383072)
------
kowdermeister
DeepMind engineers are probably getting triggered by this headline :)
~~~
gwern
They'll have to finish solving Hanabi first:
[https://twitter.com/deepmindai/status/1092471486936436736](https://twitter.com/deepmindai/status/1092471486936436736)
------
dagw
The actual article (as opposed to this summary) states that it's the most
computationally complex game, which is quite a different claim.
------
devit
While this paper shows that a player can create a game state where deciding
the game result is Turing-complete, it does not show that doing so is an
optimal strategy under any circumstance (in particular, the setup requires a
starting situation where the player can just win the game instead of
performing the setup).
So it seems perfectly possible (and in fact highly likely) that this result
does not hold if players play optimally, especially if deck selection is
included in the strategy.
~~~
UncleMeat
In game playing theory, an optimal strategy is a function that takes any state
and tells you the proper next move. It does not matter how you got there
For MTG strategy to be computable you must be able to compute whether entering
this computation is a good choice, which requires solving the halting problem.
~~~
manifestsilence
This does mean that MTG is not algorithmically solvable, which is very
interesting. However, in most cases I think it is heuristically trivial to
determine the best move.
~~~
UncleMeat
Sure, but that isn't what theory people care about. Most real world SAT
instances are tractable. But SAT is still NP-Complete.
~~~
manifestsilence
True. There's sort of a divide in this thread over two questions that are
interesting in completely different ways. One is how deep a game MTG is in
practice, and the other is whether it is an algorithmically solvable game
(no). My take-away, other than it being really cool that it's Turing-Complete,
is that any bot will need to accept that not all infinities it could get stuck
in are even detectable and resort to heuristics at a certain point.
------
logfromblammo
So add a new rule:
Choice-lock. If any player is unable to make a choice for some finite
countable number of consecutive turns, they lose.
This could have also prevented combining infinite turn combos with the ante-
related cards to produce "I have created a game state where I can take
ownership all the cards in your deck, and then win," which was fun to do in
the original M:tG PC game, even though running through the combo to actually
take all of the cards was a bit tedious.
~~~
magnat
Now, if only we had algorithm to decide whether for provided game table state,
the chain of triggers ever stops or continues indefinitely.
~~~
logfromblammo
It stops at the Nth instruction, where N is determined by some game designer
to be long enough to create interesting combos, but not so long that one
player can force the other to be their CPU indefinitely.
------
halfdeadcat
Oh good. This will be handy if I ever need to compute FFT's using only Magic
cards.
------
cryptica
I don't understand why researchers are so interested in 'Turing completeness'.
The concept of a Turing machine which operates on a strip of tape is outdated
and no longer intuitive. It would be good if the abstraction of a 'Turing
machine' could be refined into something more modern.
~~~
stellaathena
To be more specific about what the other responses say:
Being "equivalent to a TM" and being "equivalent to the Python compiler" mean
the exact same thing. Pretty much every widely used model of computation is
equivalent in computing power to Turing machines. The notable exceptions are
all _weaker_ than Turing machines, such as arithmetic circuits.
------
lozenge
"By contrast, the chess problem must be solved by brute force, and the number
of steps this takes increases in proportion to an exponential function of the
input. "
What is this input? Board size?
~~~
cluoma
Usually it would be number of legal moves. Of course this would also change
throughout the game as pieces are removed.
~~~
philipov
The number of legal moves is an intermediate calculation. The input is the
initial game state, and the output is usually the number of possible final
game states.
------
lawn
Somehow I highly doubt Magic is the most complex played game in the world.
For instance there are many different card games, what's to say Magic is more
complex than them?
~~~
stellaathena
Did you actually read the paper? There's a mathematical definition of
complexity that is used, and on that metric it is shown to be far harder than
any other previously analyzed game.
~~~
lawn
Yes. The paper is good, the title of the submission was not.
Of course by now the title and even the submission link has completely changed
(it was linked to an article before).
------
hu3
Direct link to the study "Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete":
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.09828.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.09828.pdf)
~~~
justinmchase
Thank you sir, I am not smart enough to find the direct link from the overview
page linked apparently.
~~~
hu3
You're welcome.
When I posted this, the thread linked to a sensationalist article. The link
was later edited along with the title.
------
thatoneuser
Basic question but what does being Turing complete actually signify? I get the
concept but don't know why it matters.
~~~
mankyd
In theory, if you can perform a computation/algorithm on one turing-complete
device, you can transform it to run on another. That is to say, anything your
desktop computer can do, Magic can do as well (albeit much much _much_
slower).
~~~
vectorEQ
saying anything your computer can do in such a sentence is misleading.
computers are far far away from turing machines these days. they can do much
more. for example, good luck making a socket connection on Magic the
gathering. even if you can compute everything you need with it, you will never
succeed to connect...
~~~
mankyd
That's a statement about the practical engineering involved, yes. However,
saying a computer is "Turing complete" is not misleading. It is purely a
statement of its mathematical properties.
If sockets were given absurd timeouts and/or you could run MtG at much higher
speeds, (and it was given a medium through which it could communicate), it
would have no problem making a socket connection. It is only the practicality
of the matter that becomes a barrier.
------
arey_abhishek
It should be retitled as 'MTG is the most complex game we've played'. I would
counter that other card driven games like Android Netrunner, Terraforming
Mars, Lisboa, Hanabi, etc are just as or even more complex.
~~~
mattashii
I have to disagree on that. At least Terraforming Mars and Hanabi have a
playtime limited by ever-dwindling resources. I don't know the other games,
but I suspect they also have some kind of supply that has a limit in how much
it can be used/aquired.
MTG has ways to return to a previously seen play state, technically allowing a
game to continue infinitely, depending on your deck, of course.
~~~
eru
Loops don't really add complexity. MtG can add now tokens of arbitrary number.
So that can add arbitrary complexity.
------
x0to1
From the paper:
"In this work, we solve this problem by reformulating the construction to
exclusively use cards with mandatory effects."
So it's more a of a subset of MTG's rules. Still, there are commercial video
games out beyond MTG and they've been out for some time. Why has the game
theory field not kept up with them?
~~~
yorwba
> Still, there are commercial video games out beyond MTG and they've been out
> for some time. Why has the game theory field not kept up with them?
Why assume that it hasn't? The paper cites
[http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2018/8805/pdf/LIPIcs...](http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2018/8805/pdf/LIPIcs-
FUN-2018-14.pdf) which claims to "show the undecidability of whether a team
has a forced win in a number of well known videogames including: Team Fortress
2, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, and Mario Kart."
------
r34
I'd claim strongly, that any game with:
\- finite number of pieces (eg. cards)
\- finite number of actions each round
\- clear endgame criteria
is computionally solvable. What comes with randomness is stochasticity, but if
that made game unsolvable what about poker (solved for limit heads-up) and
even scrabble?
Probably it's kind of semantic problem. I'm not complexity nor game theory
expert.
~~~
Benjamin_Dobell
Combat resolution/targeting can get a wee bit out of hand:
[https://i.redd.it/wyn3d22evs011.jpg](https://i.redd.it/wyn3d22evs011.jpg)
This is not the worst I've seen, simply what I was able to turn-up on short
notice.
_EDIT: To clarify (the UI isn 't great), what you see above is a selection of
the "cards" (creatures/tokens) in play, more are off screen._
~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Maybe the UI isn't great in an absolute sense (that situation would be really
tedious to play), but I don't see how it could be made substantially better.
It wouldn't be better if that situation arose in a physical Magic game
either... the problem there is the game state, not the UI.
~~~
Benjamin_Dobell
My point was that for people that have never seen MtG Arena before, it's non-
obvious that there's more going on off-screen. A more intuitive UI would make
that situation more explicit and not require explanation.
As you've rightly pointed out, a better UI isn't going to solve the UX issue
of ridiculous game state; but it could better depict the state itself.
------
crimsonalucard
Turing completeness in something designed to be domain specific is a sign of
bloat and is a sort of smell. It's a sign of a design taken so far that it now
has the capability to compute anything when in all intents and purposes it's
design is domain specific.
One other example of this is css. Did you know css is Turing complete?
Note that most programming languages are Turing complete because that is the
domain: To express every possible computation in the language, and thus in
these cases Turing completeness is not a design smell.
~~~
hannasanarion
CSS is not turing complete. CSS can do arithmetic, but it has no way to
designate routines or repeat its own behavior.
~~~
crimsonalucard
You are not categorically wrong because I missed some semantics in my
statements. However the essence of what your saying is incorrect.
Let me rephrase more specifically: CSS3 + HTML5 is turing complete. Since CSS
is always used in the context of HTML I left that out, but rigor is important!
source: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-
co...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-complete)
Note that this happened with the later versions of CSS indicating that the
specification became turing complete after years and years of tacking on
features. This is the pattern of bloat accumulating over time.
------
petters
MtG is played by choosing 60 cards from 20k. Everything is finite. There must
be some generalization in order to make it noncomputable.
There are probably many games that can somehow encode a halting problem if the
board size is made arbitrarily large.
EDIT: This from the real abstract sounds very strange:
"Our result is also highly unusual in that all moves of both players are
forced in the construction. This shows that even recognising who will win a
game in which neither player has a non-trivial decision to make for the rest
of the game is undecidable."
~~~
tacone
AFAIK 60 the minimum number of cards you have to put in your deck, but (at the
least at the times) there was not a maximum number.
20k is the number of unique cards, but you can put as much as 4 copies of the
same card in your deck for the vast majority of cards. You can also put as
many "normal" lands as you wish in your deck.
~~~
tapland
As many as you can shuffle unassisted is the upper limit.
~~~
mywittyname
This is an interesting rule, as it seems to provide an advantage to players on
the basis on hand size.
~~~
gpderetta
Unless you really really want a Battle of Wits deck (which is maybe tier 7)
there is really no advantage and quite a bit of a disadvantage to running more
than the minimum allowed number of cards.
~~~
stellaathena
For those who don't play Magic, this is on a scale where tier 1 decks are top
decks, tier 2 decks are reasonable, tier 3 decks have serious weaknesses but
are playable.
------
emilfihlman
Eh, just because you have a big 20000 choose 60 initial set doesn't make it
"most complex".
~~~
rcxdude
Deck building is not the entirety of the decision involved in playing magic.
One of the points in the paper is that the number of decisions in the game is
potentially infinite and that the consequences of those decisions can at lease
in principle be rendered incomputable.
~~~
simonh
And the paper proves that this is true even if all the moves in the game are
forced by cards that give you no choices to make as players.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Start ShareMeme Now? - zaveri
http://blog.sharememe.com/2008/09/20/why-start-sharememe-now/
======
acangiano
What does it do though? It's not very clear.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter character limit broken - daleharvey
http://twitter.com/davewiner/status/21186748082
======
enathu
now Twitter has fixed the bug and only shows the t.co link not the text or
exact URL in the tweet! No more longest tweets! Only t.co links.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What do USAA, CVS, Costco, and Berkshire Hathaway all have in common? - lotusleaf1987
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-gibson/america-needs-taxes_b_869744.html
======
foxhill
it's actually slightly unsettling to see that some corporations that pay the
amount of tax they should, is considered news!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What is the best way to get notified of Hacker News follow up comments? - ececconi
I've tried looking online but there doesn't seem to be much discussion on this topic. How do most people keep up with responses to their comments? Do most people just scroll down the threads section or do they use an external application?
======
Mz
<http://hnnotify.com/>
~~~
ececconi
Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle - zachallia
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/170315130/boosted-boards-the-worlds-lightest-electric-vehicl
======
pg
This is one of those things that's like Google in the sense that it seems to
be just an improvement on existing technology, but in fact is enough of an
improvement that it's qualitatively different.
In all the startups we've funded I don't think I've seen one whose product was
so enthusiastically embraced by YC partners. Three bought one of these boards.
One says it "changed his life."
~~~
jonnycowboy
At a 1,000$ pricepoint I'm not so sure it will be good enough for the masses,
especially for such a standard powered longboard setup. Longboards can be
found for 100$, add two 50$ brushless motors, a belt-drive setup and a
controller, I don't think they can justify that profit margin. I'd expect that
with a BMW StreetCarver truck setup, it would be a much easier sell (in fact I
would probably buy one). With regards to the product design, I think you'll
find the unsupported belt pulley to cause motor failure in normal use (these
type of brushless motors are not designed for sideloading, even with dual ball
bearings).
~~~
skdoo
We're starting with a longboard setup that costs over $300 retail. The reason
those sell is because they have lots of advantages over $100 longboards.
We are still refining our transmission design, but even in its current form,
we haven't had a bearing issue or motor failure in the past year of continuous
and rigorous testing.
~~~
Brashman
I've tended to find the $300+ price tags on Loaded boards to be a bit high,
but they are head and shoulders much better than anything you can find for
$100. This is really exciting to see a motorized version of an actual good
longboard.
------
IanDrake
This sounds cool, but (IMO) it's actually a bad idea. When I was in my late
teens / early twenties, I essentially had a 180HP version of this.
It was a lot more expensive back then: $4,000 for the 1984 Chevy Blazer and $0
dollars for an extension cord we found in the garage, but going going fast on
a skateboard, no matter what the method, is dangerous.
The worst part of this idea is "braking". I can assure you the only good way
to brake a skate board at speed is a power slide, which you need to be an
expert to do.
I've hit sand at speed and, even knowing it was coming, the slight braking
power of the sand was enough to throw me. It's difficult to explain, but
between knowing how far to lean against the braking force AND managing your
balance side to side on the trucks, it ends up being harder to pull off than a
good ole power slide.
That said, a roller blade version of this would be cool.
~~~
njoubert
Are you suggesting that, because it takes skill to operate, it's a bad idea?
I commute on my longboard every day between the parking structure on campus
and my building, which is about a mile away - takes me 10 minutes of kicking
the board around and working up a sweat.
An electric longboard woud fit right into my current commute, except I'd
arrive at work without my shirt soaked through.
For this type of commuting, a couple of days practice in a empty parking
garage or lot gets you good enough to safely commute, and if the SF hills are
intimidating, you can always walk down them.
As for braking, they indicate that the remote does have a brake slider, and by
using regenerative braking, they can slow the board down (to some extent). You
would still need to know how to brake the board, but the board can stop
itself.
This would also be a super fun toy - I already take my longboard out to race
down hills, with this I get to ride up before I fly down.
But, a rollerblade version? Can you explain how that doesn't have the same
concerns you raised? Rollerblades are even more difficult to brake than
skateboards, and you're committed on rollerblades, while on a skateboard you
can jump off and carry the board whenever it's inappropriate or too difficult
to ride it. There's also zero cost to hopping on a skateboard, while
rollerblades involves sitting down and changing your shoes.
I doubt this product will fix all of the transportation woes of the US (which
their marketing seems to point to), but it's great for current longboarders
and people already interested in unconventional transportation options.
~~~
IanDrake
>Are you suggesting that, because it takes skill to operate, it's a bad idea?
Jeeze, I guess I did, I must be getting old. It is a cool idea.
>But, a rollerblade version? Can you explain...
Setup aside, going fast on roller blades is much more controlled than on a
skateboard. You can't bail, sure, but you also won't get the death wobbles.
At speed, you can inline your feet (one foot in front of the other) and put
80% of your weight on your back foot, since the only instability is front to
back. This guards you against pebbles, cracks, and what not. You have the same
side to side stability as a someone riding a bike.
Skateboards at speed have instability front to back (obviously your weight is
back to guard against pebbles, etc..) but also side to side. Keeping the death
wobbles away takes a lot of practice.
Behind the Blazer I got up to 45Mph on my blades, but not even close to that
on a skate board (with tight trucks and soft wheels). At the time I considered
myself to be about equal in terms of skill with both.
(edit for line break)
~~~
barrkel
It was a surprise to me when I learned it on a motorbike safety course, but
it's useful to know that an impact with a solid object at 35mph is only 50%
survivable - a blow to the torso at that speed will tear the aorta. It's even
worse if the object is something small in profile like a lamp or sign post.
Here's a forum post by a guy who was lucky to survive a crash at 30mph (some
nasty post-op pictures - may be NSFW):
<http://www.bikechatforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=253168>
------
noonespecial
I've been building that project over and over since I was 14. My first try was
a "Vision Gator" skateboard with a 35watt brushed dc motor and vacuum cleaner
belts for drive.
It is astonishing (and more than a little awesome) that you can pack 2kw of
motor power and so much range into so small a space now. Oh how I wish parts
like this had been available in 1989.
------
thomas-st
Seems like it's illegal to use in California:
<http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc21968.htm>
~~~
skdoo
We're still researching all the legal issues that vary from state to state. So
far, we've never heard of a ticket being issued, and all the cops who have
seen it think it's a fantastic idea. I think the biggest factor will be how
responsible our new users are.
~~~
jonnycowboy
You might have luck in voluntarily limiting the power output to 1,000W and
trying to follow the California guidelines for electric bicycles. Then
gradually petition the government to delete the current motorized skateboard
law.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_bicycle_laws#Californi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_bicycle_laws#California)
------
typicalrunt
Great idea. I'm surprised nobody has done this before (but they probably have,
I'm no longer a skateboarder).
But I'm wondering about the prices. $10 stickers and $40 t-shirts are still
advertising, so people are paying to advertise for your company? That doesn't
seem right.
In reality, they are really trying to push people to spend $1200 for a board.
Even the $1099 pledge is a complete rip-off since you spend $100 less than the
pledge that gets you a board, and they only give you a $100 coupon when you
buy your first board for full price. That doesn't make sense.
A suggestion: create a small batch (5) of $500 or $700 pledges that provide a
board. That kicks everyone into gear to get that pledge as soon as possible
and fight over the $500 pledge spot.
~~~
avree
The pricing seems like a complete rip-off, to be honest. $10 for a sticker?
$40 for a t-shirt? $1000 for a skateboard?
For comparison, you can buy a top-of-the-line longboard for $200, full kit. An
essentially equivalent product [1] is selling for $500 a pop, half the price.
That's more in line with what I'd pay for a luxury product like this.
Also, I'm not sure how comfortable this would actually be to carry around.
Most longboards are around 7 pounds... this says "12 to 15" in the
description. So, basically, this is going to feel like I'm carrying two
skateboards around, not one.
[1] - [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1645804961/the-zboard-
th...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1645804961/the-zboard-the-weight-
sensing-electric-skateboard?ref=live)
~~~
sequoia
$10 for a sticker? $40 for a t-shirt? $1000 for a skateboard?
You are not "buying a sticker" or a t-shirt. The offer is " _donate_ to this
project and receive a 'thank you gift'." This is referred to as a "premium"
and can be seen in the USA in Public Radio fund drives: "Give $60 and get an
NPR mug" they are not "selling really expensive mugs," they are soliciting
donations and giving gifts or "premiums" in exchange.
A premium is, basically by definition, worth much less than your donation.
Giving a premium with a $100 cash value for a $100 donation would not be a
good way to raise money. ;)
~~~
avree
My understanding is that Kickstarter is a _funding_ platform, not a _donation_
platform.
Funding and donation have very different connotations.
~~~
sequoia
actually I'd like to hear more about this because it looks like a donation
platform to me and I'm confused about this. You give money -> don't
necessarily get anything in return, this alone fits the definition of
"donation" to me. When you do get "premiums", they are typically worth far
less than the value of your donation (stickers for $20, eat lunch with the
team for $5k etc.). Again this fits the donation model.
I'm referring to "donation" model vs. "goods/services exchanged for money"
model. I think both of those can be "funding." Anyway I am very interested in
this perspective and in particular why someone wouldn't consider giving money
in exchange for as little as nothing a "donation."
------
ChuckMcM
Sounds cool, but even a 95% efficient 2kW brushless motor would be dissipating
100W of heat. Not easy to dump in a small package. I've never tried building a
skateboard but I've built quite a few mobile robots (and a few battlebots).
Wish they had a bit more detail on the tech.
~~~
skdoo
Part of our tech is very efficient, compact, and (relatively) cheap brushless
motor controllers. It's not easy.
~~~
jonnycowboy
How are you cooling the motors?
~~~
indiecore
I'd assume that you'd have a rad over the bottom of the board and the motor
housing that uses the air going by as it moves to dump the heat. At least
that's my first idea, since I'm not a skateboard engineer it's probably not
even close.
~~~
sbierwagen
They'll just be air-cooled: 2KW motors in a skateboard are going spend very
little of their time running at max load.
I of course have no idea what the average load is, but a reasonable wild ass
guess is ~100W.
~~~
ChuckMcM
My experience with DC motors was that they got hottest when starting and
stopping, that was the result of a high current demand for torque and
relatively low operating speed with meant minimal airflow. If you're going up
a hill you're easily burning 1 - 1.5 HP or a .75 - 1kW of power. They look
very cool, can't wait to see one 'in the flesh' as it were.
------
skdoo
Co-founder here. Feel free to ask questions!
~~~
polshaw
2KW sounds a hell of a lot, when a 250W motor on a bike can get up to 20mph?
Do you actually use the full 2KW of power? it seems like it would throw the
rider to me.
I'm willing to bet from ebike knowledge that the regenerative braking is more
of a marketing feature, and may not even break even with the added weight.
Have you done tests on this?
Others have touched upon price so i'll ask if you had any concerns about
liabilities? and are you hoping to grow organically post-kickstarter, or a
funding round?
~~~
skdoo
The key is to have enough power for hills, but make it controlled enough that
you don't throw the rider. From the rider's perspective, the board has so much
power it's like the hill isn't even there, but it's still gentle on
acceleration and braking.
Regen braking doesn't add any weight for us.
Liability is an issue for sure, and we're handling it just like any other
vehicle or consumer product.
------
massarog
Isn't this the same thing? Was launched on kickstarter months ago:
<http://www.zboardshop.com/>
~~~
MartinCron
The zboard is a different design in that you don't have a hand-held remote,
you press on footpads to accelerate/brake.
I would have to try them both out to see which is a better solution to the
control problem.
edit: another key difference is that this is 12 pounds vs the 30 to 37 pounds
for the zboard. That difference is HUGE.
~~~
zzzmarcus
Absolutely. The weight difference is definitely the biggest difference.
I've ridden longboards with both foot and hand brakes. All the hand braking
boards I've tried had a cable from the board to the controls and even with
that hassle, I much prefer them to the foot brakes. Moving your foot around
and trying to get even pressure at 20mph is a lot more tricky than squeezing a
lever.
~~~
MartinCron
I'm interested in getting into longboarding. Would you be willing to share the
name of the hand braking board you've used?
~~~
zzzmarcus
Looks like it's evolved some since I used it, but this is the company:
<http://www.skatebrake.com/products.html>
------
liamondrop
`The last mile of transportation is this huge problem that hasn't been solved
yet`
Really? I think we've had it solved for at least several million years. Anyone
that isn't capable of walking or skating a mile is certainly not going to be
served by this. It looks like a cool toy, but I don't think it's going to
revolutionize transportation.
~~~
natrius
"Last mile" is a transportation (and telecommunications) term that doesn't
mean a literal mile. It's the last leg of your trip. Solutions to the last
mile problem _will_ revolutionize transportation, though this probably isn't
that solution. I'd bet on bike sharing systems.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)>
------
moreati
I was surprised by 2 kW. I have an electric moped that's 2 kW - and in that
class 1.5 kW is more typical. Maybe a burst vs steady state spec
------
cpeterso
Why is the only woman in the Kickstarter video little more than a prop
watching the boys play with their toys?
------
asdfs
How many Ah is the battery? It seems extremely small for the quoted 6 mile (@
20mph?) range.
------
Permit
Looks pretty awesome, but the price tag instantly puts it out of range for a
student like myself. Hopefully they attain some level of success such that
they can mass manufacture them and bring the price down.
I'd love to have one.
------
Robby2012
I love it but isn't it freaking expensive?
~~~
stephengillie
Putting a skateboard on top of a $100 RC car would be less elegant.
------
ricardobeat
Looks like a great technologic improvement, but not revolutionary at all. A
search for "electric skateboard" returns a dozen manufacturers, some with
similar specs, most much cheaper - yes, they have that bulge going on but it
doesn't change much in terms of feasibility. A skateboard is still not a
viable means of daily transportation unless your route consists solely of
smooth, untrafficked asphalt and you're a lucky person.
Why not sell it by what it is (a very cool electric longboard), instead of
making surreal claims about changing the world?
------
orangethirty
My only concern is the belt driven drivetrain. I used to race R/C cars who
used the same time of layout (belts and plastic/aluminum gears), and the belts
did not last that long. Given that this board would be pushing a fair amount
of weight around, I don't see how it would last over a reasonable time frame.
Though I'm just speculating. If anyone can chime in with more data, I'd love
to know about it. Maybe the belts are kevlar reinforced? I know there are
suppliers making those and they are readily available.
------
arikrak
It sounds like it could be dangerous enough to lead to lawsuits. I think
there's a reason why electric scooters are much more common than electric
skateboards: people can stay on them.
------
ulyssesgrant
What exactly will/could change between the 1st, 2nd, and final production
runs? The board is compelling, and it does fill a spot that I and many
students likely have, but unless the price comes down I don't see how this
will take off.
edit: Also, after these boards do reach final production, do you plan on
expanding your tech to other loaded longboards? Never loved the vanguard, but
the tan tien is great.
------
ck2
I think I've actually seen these on DIY electric bike boards?
I would recommend a direct drive motor though, less parts to break, direct
torque.
------
HyprMusic
I can't help but think if you're willing to carry around a long board for your
journey, the extra effort in pushing it manually is not much and probably more
fun (I can't really judge, having not used the product).
If you were really against walking or pushing, then a foldable bike would be a
lot more useful, safer and cheaper.
~~~
muraiki
Where I live, there are many urban areas but also many hills / roads with long
inclines. Longboarding isn't that popular here because:
1) You can't longboard up a hill, or even much of an incline. 2) More
importantly, when you go _down_ a hill, it's pretty difficult to stop quickly
(this is why I personally stopped longboarding)
This device would help with both problems!
~~~
wwweston
> More importantly, when you go _down_ a hill, it's pretty difficult to stop
> quickly (this is why I personally stopped longboarding)
This might help you stop the _longboard_ quickly, but will it help _you_ stop
quickly (but not too quickly)?
~~~
muraiki
Good point! The stop will never be instant... and you'd better have good grip
on your shoes, too.
While I think this product will be pretty neat, I can't see it revolutionizing
transportation simply because longboarding requires a good amount of mental
energy in comparison to a scooter or bike. But I have to admit, it is
seriously fun, and the sensation of gliding is awesome.
------
abecedarius
This looks like a fantastic product. But how about a video with at least a
minute of uninterrupted actual use? The video is very slick but only a small
fraction of its 3 minutes goes to people using it, with no clip longer than 2
or 3 seconds (as far as I can remember).
------
duked
I went saw the descriptions the pictures and it looks awesome until I saw the
price, I'm not saying it's not worth it: I have no idea how much they have
invested in R&D/prototyping etc.. but it's too much for me $1000 for an
electric board :/ too bad.
------
will_work4tears
This would be really cool if it was rechargeable by use rather than merely
plugging it in.
------
BasDirks
Love the disclaimer, love the realism ++ the idealism. F __* the danger, let's
board.
------
wheelerwj
As I scrolled up to kickstart it myself, I saw the price. Thanks but I can
walk.
------
Toenex
In the UK all such novel forms of transport have to first shake off the C5
effect <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5>
------
jazzdev
I got to ride one of these at Disrupt today. Inside, in a crowd, but still
impressive tech. Smooth acceleration. I do ride boards, so I'm not a newbie.
Loved it. I want one.
------
Poiesis
Ok, I have a 5.6 mile commute each way, with 300 feet ascent worst case (just
under 100 ft descent). Charging at work is no problem. Is this going to be a
good fit?
------
marquis
I have zero balance. If this were a scooter I'd be in.
------
Datonomics
Maybe the following title would attract more people willing to invest:
Electric longboard: 12 lbs, 6 mi range, $1,099
------
TomatoTomato
Are batteries quickly replaceable? i.e. If I had a spare battery in my pack, I
could change it out and continue on?
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Or can it come with a larger pack to begin with? Avoid changing it at all.
~~~
TomatoTomato
If they don't do it, I'm sure someone will hack multiple batteries together
and post a how to.
------
brianstorms
Great, empowering more idiots to set out on public thoroughfares and ignore
every basic traffic law (stop signs, red lights, for starters; look 'em up if
you're not familiar with the concepts) not to mention common sense.
Ought to produce a few Darwin Award winners.
------
dredmorbius
Chiseled spam.
------
ph0rque
Does it do regenerative braking?
~~~
ph0rque
Also, it would be really cool if a few years from now, the board became the
battery.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
"Voice cues for the unfortunate souls that gave us 1-star reviews." - epaga
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stuck-on-earth/id478313722?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
======
epaga
Here's the whole text, as an app developer I definitely can relate:
About .01% of users got stuck on the first screen where it says Enter Your
Name. They apparently got stuck and not understand that you were supposed to
Enter Your Name. We have now added voice cues to help out these unfortunate
souls that gave us 1-star reviews.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“Tests should be poorly factored” - alecbenzer
This is a piece of advice I'd seen somewhere once, but can't remember where (or if this is exactly how it was worded). Does anyone know of an article or something that talks about this, or a more well-known term for this idea?<p>The basic idea: Say you have some code like:<p><pre><code> def square(x):
return x ^ 2
</code></pre>
A test like:<p><pre><code> def test_square():
for inp in [3, 4, 5, 50, 100]:
assert square(inp) == inp ^ 2
</code></pre>
is "well-factored", in that it doesn't have a lot of repetition, but isn't a great a test, since it's basically testing that the function's code does what the function's code does.<p>A better test would be something like:<p><pre><code> def test_square():
assert square(3) == 9
assert square(4) == 16
assert square(5) == 25
# ...
</code></pre>
because, for one, it would expose the bug (^ is XOR in Python, not exponentiation).
======
tabhygfr2
I wouldn't call the first version well factored since "x ^ 2" is repeated. So
you could simplify to
assert square(inp) == square(inp)
...at which point, if it's not 3:00 AM, you hopefully notice that it's not
actually testing anything and include both test input data and output data.
~~~
alecbenzer
I meant the test itself being poorly factored. But, even in that case, I'm not
sure realizing that square(inp) == square(inp) is silly would direct you to go
to manual input/output lists and not something like square(inp) == inp ^ 2.
This is of course a bit of a contrived, very simple example, so it might seem
silly, but I think you can imagine more complex functions where it's less
clear that "computing" the expected output in some way "cheats" the test.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mean Street: Crash - The Machines Are in Control Now - drawkbox
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/05/06/mean-street-crash-the-machines-are-in-control-now/
======
froo
I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Interview with AMD Java Labs - dforbin
http://javaposse.com/index.php?post_id=454436
Well someone just convinced me older news is cool as long as it hasn't been posted, and this isn't that old.<p>Fascinating podcast from the AMD java labs team (how many of you knew such a thing existed?). Some nice performance tips, and a must listen for anyone into Java.
======
dforbin
It's a few weeks old, but as someone pointed out to me, if it hasn't been
posted, why not :)
This is a fascinating interview (who here even knew there was an AMD Java
labs?). Some nice performance tips, and just a great listen for anyone into
Java.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intrade: Only 30% chance US debt ceiling will be raised by July 31st. - ticky
http://intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=745701
======
ForrestN
Could be a really interesting/useful hedge for a lot of people.
~~~
ticky
I tend to like the think the masses are usually wrong...
------
STHayden
don't they have till the 2nd? I have a hard time believing they will bother
doing anything useful until the last possible second.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Saul Griffith on winning a MacArthur, entrepreneurship, and dumpster diving - toffer
http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/14/smbusiness/Saul_Griffith.fsb/?postversion=2007111509
======
quickpost
His TED talk is pretty interesting:
<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/48>
------
electric
Amazing.. there are so many paths to realizing a startup. These people
bootstrapped, consulted, etc. and finally found their startup path, not unlike
Cognos which was recently acquired by IBM for $5B.
------
mynameishere
_What are you going to do with the $500,000?
...I'd love to see a CAD program that allows you to enter folding patterns for
origami and paper airplanes._
The "genius" grants have always been a sad joke.
~~~
marcus
If you take his idea for the CAD program and combine it with his ideas from
the TED speech of using materials as code you might end up with something that
you can digitally generate very complex 3D structures from very simple
building blocks using only a sequencer for the blocks and that might be a very
cool product - think of it as the next generation of 3D printers.
And then if you opensource the diagrams people can finally apply opensource
ideas to production.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mario running in Unreal Engine 4 [video] - latenightcoding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUKcSiAPJoQ
======
frik
Nice.
Though Nintendo won't be happy and will shut down your video as you use their
IP as happened many times before. Some months ago, someone did the exact same
thing with Unity engine, and his Youtube video and website vanished within two
days. [1]
Nintendo's upcoming NX console (successor of Wii U) will hopefully be more
powerful than PS4/X1 at the end of 2016. And hopefully we get nice reboots of
Super Mario 64, Mario Galaxy, Maria Kart and Zelda.
[1] Edit: I found the HN news from 3 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9276605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9276605)
-> [https://roystanross.wordpress.com/super-
mario-64-hd/](https://roystanross.wordpress.com/super-mario-64-hd/)
\-- the website now reads as follows: " _The project is no longer playable, or
downloadable in any form. I received a copyright infringement notice on both
the webplayer as well as the standalone builds. Which is fair enough, really.
In light of Nintendo recently making a deal to release some of their IPs on
mobile platforms, it’s probably not in their best interests to have a mobile-
portable version of Mario 64 sitting around. In any case, I didn’t really
expect for this project to get so popular, and was hoping it would function
primarily as a educational tool and a novelty. (...)_ "
~~~
Narishma
> Nintendo's upcoming NX console (successor of Wii U) will hopefully be more
> powerful than PS4/X1 at the end of 2016.
Yeah, I wouldn't count on that.
------
pillowpants2
The lack of NPC's in this version of the castle reminded me of an eeriness
that existed in Super Mario 64, something I haven't felt in Sunshine or
Galaxy. The feeling of being thrown into this new world without any allies or
clear direction on completing the objective. At the time it felt exciting and
scary, maybe I was just young...
~~~
jansenvt
I get that feeling playing Dark Souls now. The game offers very little
narration and is quite intimidating.
~~~
krisdol
I think Dark Souls is one of those few games that does a perfect job of
projecting the emotions of the hero and the atmosphere of the world onto the
player's own emotion and perception. It could have used more guidance at the
onset, and it doesn't clearly convey the type of game you're about to play (I
was expecting something like God of War meets Skyrim), but once I pushed past
the first region or two, it became one of my favorite games. Learning more
about the lore took it up a few notches.
------
nickysielicki
From the title and the context of this post being on HN, I expected to see
someone reverse engineering Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Bros and using that
in the context of UE4.
But this is really just a typical game mod. Someone made some models for Mario
and coins and put them in various UE4 tech demo scenes.
That's not to say it isn't cool. it just isn't extremely interesting from a
technical perspective, besides the amazingness of UE4 in general.
~~~
reubenmorais
This is mostly about replicating the physics of Super Mario 64. Modeling Mario
and coins is obviously not that big of a deal.
------
markus2012
Incredible:
\- all the environment assets were taken from the Unreal marketplace
\- all the character actions were scripted using blueprints only
~~~
crimsonalucard
Is something like this particularly challenging in blueprints? If I wanted to
make the UE do something like this video, would I typically directly edit the
C++?
I've never actually developed for the UE, just read about it.
------
coldcode
That was so refreshing to watch. Maybe someone needs to make a movie about
Mario leaving his world and visiting others, like Wreck It Ralph. You could do
the whole movie inside UR4.
~~~
tammer
the total uncanniness of survival horror mario is untapped gold
------
eddieroger
The comparison at the end had a weird effect on me. I remember playing Mario
64 for the first time and thinking the graphics were the tops. But this new
one looks so much better. How will I feel in in another 15 years when I see
Mario in Unreal 20 or Source Film Maker v15?
~~~
nitrogen
One of the first things that stands out is the lack of angle dependence in the
floor reflections. In 15 years we can probably expect to see reflections that
are sharp for objects that are close to the surface and/or at highly acute
angles, with gradually increasing blurriness based on distance. I'm a little
surprised this isn't already there, since it could probably be done just with
the z-buffer and a single shader.
------
adamnemecek
Out of curiosity, how much work is it to do something like this in UE? I'm not
quite sure what everything does UE give you out of the box.
------
legohead
A great demonstration of how graphics does very little for the fun factor of a
game.
------
phaser
It reminds me how a good mario game is about the art style, not graphics.
------
jebblue
It looks promising. With Steam's success and now Unreal is back in play, Linux
gaming's future and gaming on open platforms in general, gets brighter every
day.
------
tbrock
Why won't Nintendo just remake Mario 64 with better graphics. The new super
Mario brothers for Wii was decent but all of us who were kids in the 90s would
be happy with a decent remake.
~~~
lnikkila
The original DS had a pretty good remake as a launch title with improved
graphics and a bunch of new stuff.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_64_DS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_64_DS)
------
joshuapants
This is magnificent. If only I could use .NET with Unreal Engine. Guess I'll
have to look into blueprints.
~~~
thefreeman
Are you sure you cannot use .NET? This website claims you can use .NET up to
4.5 via mono: [https://mono-ue.github.io/](https://mono-ue.github.io/) .
~~~
joshuapants
Well that changes everything! I was just going by the Unreal Engine site,
didn't think to look for anything third party.
I'm in the throes of learning F# and didn't want to muddy that up by learning
C++ at the same time, so thanks for alerting me to that.
edit: Hm, looks like it's unsupported as of late. A bit disappointing. May
still be usable, but I'll have to dig deeper to make sure it's not a total
PITA
edit2: And it seems that they've nuked the download page as well as the git
repository. Oh well.
~~~
empyrical
Epic made a change to the EULA requiring that all script bindings be free and
open source in case a large part of the community became dependant on the
bindings and people couldn't update them themselves as the engine changed. The
maintainers of that project couldn't meet those requirements and thus
abandoned it
------
lurkinggrue
I do believe the phrase is "Shut up and take my money."
------
anon3_
HOLY SHIT!
What about trademark? Could the author sell it?
See what happened to Super Mario 64 HD (an attempt at a remake with unity):
[https://roystanross.wordpress.com/super-
mario-64-hd/](https://roystanross.wordpress.com/super-mario-64-hd/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Found this site, apply to New York City's startups in 60 seconds - mergesort
http://underdog.io/
======
mjolk
It would be nice to see a list of the startups that can see resumes (or opt
out of some).
If I was at a startup and looking to move to a new one, I wouldn't want it to
be public knowledge that I was looking until I at least talked with a couple
companies.
~~~
jpwright
Exactly. With no knowledge of who my information is going to I can't agree to
submit an application. Privacy is one reason; not having your time wasted if
the companies aren't something you're interested in is another.
~~~
gearoidoc
It takes, like, 2 minutes to fill out the form so you wouldn't be wasting much
time on that side.
That being said, I'm __assuming __you 'll be told what company is interested
in you (if any) when/if they make contact rather than the usual recruiter
nonsense ie. "A company in the financial services space" etc etc
~~~
jpwright
It's the follow up communication that could waste time. I would prefer to do a
little research on each company before applying to a dozen of them at once, or
to see that the companies listed are known and trustworthy.
------
mason55
What sort of candidate volume are you seeing? I signed up from the startup
side but for $350/month I want to have a pick of a lot of candidates. Maybe
some way to preview candidates without getting their contact info so that I
can feel better before handing over some money? Or free accounts for startups
too while you guys build out your volume?
Also I think your tone is too informal for this kind of thing. Seeing "moar"
made me cringe.
~~~
ILIKEPONIES
Hey Mason, we'll send you an email to discuss. We just went live (like one
hour ago :D) but we're seeing a good deal of traffic.
------
tharshan09
The part about needing sponsorship - Don't you think your form should have a
field to reflect this. So that the startups can easily see if the candidates
are not in the US and need sponsorship? Without having to view each resume.
~~~
ILIKEPONIES
Also great feedback. We'll add this later today.
------
terramars
looks suspiciously like hired.com - but as a resume aggregator rather than
talent marketplace. maybe you can convince companies to pay $350/mo for your
book, maybe you can't. good side project though :)
------
mjolk
How do you prevent a bad actor from signing up as a fake startup and
harvesting your users?
~~~
ILIKEPONIES
We do our due diligence on every startup before we partner with them.
~~~
mjolk
Great -- and well done going into the thread and answering questions.
------
jsnk
I don't want to specifically say this site is good or bad, but I've had really
bad experiences with sites of this sort.
Essentially, sites of this sort were all just recruiters trying to farm up
candidate contacts, and all you are left with is just spam.
My advice to underdog.io: tell us who you actually are. What's your name? What
experiences do you have? Your "About Us" says nothing about you, and makes me
suspicious that you don't want to put yourself out there.
~~~
ILIKEPONIES
Hey, I'm one of the people working on this.
That's totally a legitimate concern. I can promise you we aren't recruiters.
It's just a side project at the moment, so we didn't want to draw too much
attention to ourselves.
~~~
doctorcroc
I was interested in your service until I read the about us and the FAQ
sections. They are respectively, not transparent enough and patronizing. If
you want me to use your job-search service, treat me like a professional and
don't address me as "silly" and "cute". I like that you're trying to make it
easy, but as you say, a job search is not easy, and your website makes it seem
suspicious too. I put all of my information and then what do you do with it
exactly?
~~~
opendais
Pretty much this. I'm not sure why I'd use this service either, if they are a
serious company they'd put effort into getting the word out about the jobs in
the first place.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you backup your linux system? - Dowwie
Describe your backup workflow
======
gerdesj
It .... depends.
Given I worry about this sort of thing for a living and am a partner in the
firm: I think in terms of backup, DR, BC, availability and more. I have access
to rather a lot of gear but the same approach will work for anyone willing to
sit down and have a think and perhaps spend a few quid or at least think
laterally.
For starters you need to consider what could happen to your systems and your
data. Scribble a few scenarios down and think about "what would happen if
...". Then decide what is an acceptable outage or loss for each scenario. For
example:
* You delete a file - can you recover it - how long
* You delete a file four months ago - can ...
* You drop your laptop - can you use another device to function
* Your partner deletes their entire accounts (my wife did this tonight - 5 sec outage)
* House burns down whilst on holiday
You get the idea - there is rather more to backups than simply "backups". Now
look at appropriate technologies and strategies. eg for wifey, I used the
recycle bin (KDE in this case) and bit my tongue when told I must have done
it. I have put all her files into our family Nextcloud instance that I run at
home. NC/Owncloud also have a salvage bin thing and the server VM I have is
also backed up and off sited (to my office) with 35 days online restore points
and a GFS scheme - all with Veeam. I have access to rather a lot more stuff as
well and that is only part of my data availability plan but the point remains:
I've considered the whole thing.
So to answer your question, I use a lot of different technologies and
strategies. I use replication via NextCloud to make my data highly available.
I use waste/recycle bins for quick "restores". I use Veeam for back in time
restores of centrally held managed file stores. I off site via VPN links to
another location.
If your question was simply to find out what people use then that's me done.
However if you would like some ideas that are rather more realistic for a
generic home user that will cover all bases for a reasonable outlay in time,
effort and a few quid (but not much) then I am all ears.
------
pmoriarty
I use rdiff-backup.[1]
_" rdiff-backup backs up one directory to another, possibly over a network.
The target directory ends up a copy of the source directory, but extra reverse
diffs are stored in a special subdirectory of that target directory, so you
can still recover files lost some time ago. The idea is to combine the best
features of a mirror and an incremental backup. rdiff-backup also preserves
subdirectories, hard links, dev files, permissions, uid/gid ownership (if it
is running as root), modification times, acls, eas, resource forks, etc.
Finally, rdiff-backup can operate in a bandwidth efficient manner over a pipe,
like rsync. Thus you can use rdiff-backup and ssh to securely back a hard
drive up to a remote location, and only the differences will be transmitted."_
[1] - [https://github.com/sol1/rdiff-backup](https://github.com/sol1/rdiff-
backup)
~~~
atmosx
Me too and I'm pretty happy with it. My retention period is 1Y for most
systems.
------
bluGill
Put all personal data on a zfs z2 RAID system (FreeNAS). Take regular
snapshots.
Someday I'm going to get a second offsite system to do ZFS backups to, but so
far the above has served well. Then again I've been lucky enough to never have
a hard drive fail, so the fact that I can lose 2 without losing data is pretty
good. I'm vulnerable to fire and theft, but the most likely data loss
scenarios are covered.
~~~
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u
Even in 2017 you still can't sneakernet sometimes. I have a ZFS file server
similar to yours, and it acts as the backup destination for all my other
devices. Then, I use two USB HDDs to back up the server, then bring one to
work. If either is attached a nightly script bring it up to date. I just keep
rotation the two between home & work.
------
sanpi
With borg
([https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/](https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/)) and
a custom script
([https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sanpii/deploy/master/src/b...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sanpii/deploy/master/src/backup))
to test pg backup and sync to another server.
------
drbawb
I use `btrbk` as a systemd service to snapshot my `/home` subvolume hourly &
any other important subvolumes daily. `btrbk` manages the retention policy,
which is roughly something like:
\- daily snapshots for 1 week
\- the first snapshot of every week for 4 weeks
\- the first snapshot of every month for 2 years
\- the first snapshot of every year for 5 years
Since I use entirely SSD storage I also have a script that mails me a usage
report on those snapshots, and I manually prune ones that accidentally
captured something huge. (Like a large coredump, download, etc. I do
incremental sends, so I can never remove the most recent snapshot.)
Since snapshots are not backups I use `btrfs send/receive` to replicate the
daily snapshots to a different btrfs filesystem on spinning rust, w/ the same
retention policy. I do an `rsync` of the latest monthlies (once a month) to a
rotating set of drives to cover the "datacenter burned down" scenario.
My restore process is very manual but it is essentially: `btrfs send` the
desired subvolume(s) to a clean filesystem, re-snapshot them as read/write to
enable writes again, and then install a bootloader, update /etc/fstab to use
the new subvolid, etc.
\---
Some advantages to this setup:
* incremental sends are super fast
* the data is protected against bitrot
* both the live array & backup array can tolerate one disk failure respectively
Some disadvantages:
* no parity "RAID" (yet)
* defrag on btrfs unshares extents and thus in conjunction with snapshots this balloons the storage required.
* as with any CoW/snapshotting filesystem: figuring out disk usage becomes a non-trivial problem
------
blakesterz
This comes up here quite a bit, lots of great answers in the past 2
discussions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12999934](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12999934)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13694079)
------
portref
I've long used rsnapshot for automated incremental backups, and manually run a
script to do a full rsync backup with excludes for /tmp, /sys and the like to
an external drive.
[http://rsnapshot.org/](http://rsnapshot.org/)
~~~
stakent
I use rsnapshot from cron to external USB drive encrypted with luks. I swap
the drive with similar one weekly and store it offsite.
------
blfr
I don't back up the system. Drive failures are so rare nowadays that I will
reinstall more often because of hardware changes.
The important stuff (projects, dotfiles) I keep on Tarsnap. I also rsync my
entire home directory to an external drive every other week or so.
Similar for servers but I do back up /etc as well.
~~~
icebraining
Why would you reinstall due to hardware changes? My Debian installation has
survived the move from two laptops already without any glitches.
~~~
gerdesj
My Arch and Gentoo installs have gone somewhat further than that 8)
Admittedly I'm not sure that you can consider one of them that went from i386
to amd64 as the same install simply because /var/lib/portage/world and
/etc/portage/ (plus a few other bits) are the same. I still use it and it's on
its fifth or sixth incarnation as my current laptop.
Trigger's broom?
(OK
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ship_of_Theseus_exampl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ship_of_Theseus_examples))
------
derekp7
[http://www.snebu.com](http://www.snebu.com) \-- something I wrote because I
wanted snapshot style backups, but without the link farm that rsync-based
snapshot backups produce. Snebu does file-level deduplication, compression,
multi-host support, files are stored in regular lzo-compressed files, and
metadata is in a catalog stored in a sqlite database.
Only real things missing is encryption support (working on that), and backing
up KVM virtual machines from the host (working on that too).
------
brensmith
For both windows/linux/macOS boxen we use burp. Replaced a propietary program
used for over 15 years. [http://burp.grke.org/](http://burp.grke.org/) I
highly recommend it.
------
cmurf
Mostly local network storage which is backedup multiple times automatically,
for the laptop I do manual btrfs send/receives manly to get things restored
_exactly_ the way they were.
#helps to see the fstab first
UUID=<rootfsuuid> / btrfs subvol=root 0 0
UUID=<espuuid> /boot/efi vfat umask=0077,shortname=winnt,x-systemd.automount,noauto 0 0
cd /boot
tar -acf boot-efi.tar efi/
mount <rootfsdev> /mnt
cd /mnt
btrfs sub snap -r root root.20170707
btrfs sub snap -r home home.20170707
btrfs send -p root.20170706 root.20170707 | btrfs receive /run/media/c/backup/
btrfs send -p home.20170706 home.20170707 | btrfs receive /run/media/c/backup/
cd
umount /mnt
So basically make ro snapshots of current root and home, and since they're
separate subvolumes they can be done on separate schedules. And then send the
incremental changes to the backup volume. While only incremental is sent, the
receive side has each prior backup to the new subvolume points to all of those
extents and is just updated with this backups changes. Meaning I do not have
to restore the increments, I just restore the most recent subvolume on the
backup. I only have to keep one dated read-only snapshot on each volume, there
is no "initial" backup because each subvolume is complete.
Anyway, restores are easy and fast. I can also optionally just send/receive
home and do a clean install of the OS.
Related, I've been meaning to look into this project in more detail which
leverages btrfs snapshots and send/receive.
[https://github.com/digint/btrbk](https://github.com/digint/btrbk)
------
heywire
Main home "server" is an Ubuntu system with a couple 2TB HDDs. It runs various
services for IoT type stuff, has a few samba shares, houses my private git
repositories, backups from Raspberry Pi security cameras, etc. It is backed up
to the cloud using a headless Crashplan install. I use git to store dotfiles,
/etc/ config files, scripts, and such, in addition to normal programming
projects.
We back up photos from our iOS devices to this server using an app called
PhotoSync. I also have an instance of the Google Photos Desktop Uploader
running in a docker container using x11vnc / wine to mirror the photos to
Google Photos (c'mon Google, why isn't there an official Linux client???). I'm
really paranoid about losing family photos. I even update an offsite backup
every few weeks using a portable HDD I keep at the office.
~~~
gerdesj
"I'm really paranoid about losing family photos"
No you aren't paranoid. Sensible. However, you've only just started. Try and
do a restore every now and then from the HDDs.
There is no such thing as paranoia when it comes to protecting your data.
~~~
heywire
>Try and do a restore every now and then from the HDDs.
Not only do I do that, but I also occasionally pull down some files from
Crashplan just to make sure everything is backing up and working as expected.
~~~
gerdesj
Cover off longterm restores and you are pretty much good.
Don't forget that families/friends can also effectively offsite each other's
backups without invoking third parties. That does assume connectivity, storage
etc. Also it does need managing 8)
------
alyandon
CrashPlan for /home
Plain old btrfs snapshot + rsync to local usb drive and offsite host for /etc,
/var, /root
------
towb
Just keeping my home folder safe, everything else is up and running in less
than one hour if I had to start over. Daily backups with borg backup plus a
couple of git repos for the dotfiles. All the important stuff is small enough
for this, my backup is like 25 gb (a lot of random crap included), and all the
photos and videos we used to worry about a few years ago is up in some
unlimited sized google cloud for free. Times are pretty good :)
------
binaryapparatus
Excellent rsync-time-backup for local machine, backing up etc and home to
external disk: [https://github.com/laurent22/rsync-time-
backup](https://github.com/laurent22/rsync-time-backup)
Duply for servers, keeping backups on S3:
[http://duply.net/](http://duply.net/)
Cron does daily DB dumps so Duply stores everything needed to restore servers.
------
paol
\- Dirvish[0] for local backups (nightly)
\- Crashplan[1] for cloud backups (also nightly; crashplan can backup
continuously but I don't do that)
Pretty happy with it, though dirvish takes a little bit of manual setup. Never
had to resort to the cloud backups yet.
[0] [http://www.dirvish.org/](http://www.dirvish.org/)
[1] [https://www.crashplan.com/](https://www.crashplan.com/)
------
arunpn123
Most of my projects fit in my laptop hardisk. I have a dropbox subscription
which syncs everything interesting in my laptop to dropbox servers. This setup
has saved my work once when my old laptop died - I just bought a new laptop
and synced everything from dropbox.
------
libx
I use rsnapshot [1] for /home data and afio [2] for other stuff (offline
databases, system, photos, ...)
With rsnapshot, I have hourly, daily, weekly and monthly backups that use hard
links for the saving disk space. These backup dirs can be mounted read-only.
With afio, files above some defined size are compressed and then added to the
archive, so that if some compression goes wrong, only that file may be lost,
the archive is not corrupted. Can have incremental backups.
From the afio webpage: Afio makes cpio-format archives. It deals somewhat
gracefully with input data corruption, supports multi-volume archives during
interactive operation, and can make compressed archives that are much safer
than compressed tar or cpio archives. Afio is best used as an `archive engine'
in a backup script.
[1] [http://rsnapshot.org/](http://rsnapshot.org/) [2]
[http://members.chello.nl/k.holtman/afio.html](http://members.chello.nl/k.holtman/afio.html)
------
beeforpork
Backup to external hard drive with btrfs. Rsync is used to copy the full
source file system, with short exception lists for stuff I don't want
backupped. After the sync, a btrfs snapshot is taken to get history. These
napshots are removed with an exponential strategy (many snapshots are recent,
few are old, the oldest is always kept), keeping ~30 snapshots a year.
Backup takes ~10min for searching 1TB of disk space. The daily diff is
typically 6..15 GB, mostly due to braindead mail storage format...
I want to keep it simple but still have full history and diff backup: no
dedicated backup tool, but rsync + btrfs. A file-by-file copy is easy to check
and access (and the history also looks that way).
If the source had btrfs, I would use btrfs send/receive to speed it up and
make it atomic.
I have two such backup disks in different places. One uses an automatic backup
trigger during my lunch break, the other is triggered manually (and thus not
often enough).
The sources are diverse (servers, laptops, ...). The most valued one uses 2 x
1 TB SSDs in RAID1 for robustness.
All disks are fully encrypted.
~~~
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u
> If the source had btrfs, I would use btrfs send/receive to speed it up and
> make it atomic.
btrfs subvolume snapshot / send are _not_ atomic, for various definitions of
atomic.
Unlike zfs, subvolume snapshots are not atomic recursively. That is, if you
have subvol/subsubvol, there's no way to take an atomic snapshot of both. At
least this one is obvious, since there's no command for taking recursive
snapshots, so it tips you off that this is the case. Not having an easy way to
take recursive snapshots, atomic or not, is a different pain point...
What's more insidious is that after taking the snapshot, you must sync(1)[0]
before sending said snapshot, otherwise the stream would be incomplete! I'm
invoking Cunningham's Law here and saying for the record that this is fucking
retarded. I have lost files due to this...design choice.
Moreover, though is is probably a fixed bug, I used to have issues where
subvolumes get wedged when I run multiple subvolume snapshot / send in quick
succession. I'd get a random unreadable file, and it's not corruption (btrfs
scrub doesn't flag it). Usually re-mounting the subvolume will fix it, and at
worst re-mounting the while filesystem would fix it so far. I haven't had it
happen for a while, but it's either due to my workaround -- good old sleep(60)
mutex -- or because I'm running a newer kernel.
I can't wait until xfs reflink support is more mature: that'll get me 90% what
I use btrfs for.
tl;dr: btrfs: here be dragons!
[0]
[https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Incremental_Backup](https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Incremental_Backup)
------
Yetanfou
I use _rsnapshot_ to create hourly/daily/weekly/monthly snapshots of
configured systems. Backups are written to a dedicated drive (which just
started showing SMART-errors at so I'll replace it ASAP). I regularly create
PGP-encrypted archives of selected sets which get stored off-site, spread
around the 'net on cloud hosting services. I'm also thinking about making an
arrangement with some friends and family members who have a) good network
connections and b) personal servers and c) a need to backup such to swap off-
site backup copies - I'll store yours if you store mine. I currently have
about 100 GB in 'critical' data which is stored off-site.
I also keep current copies of most configuration data for all systems, mainly
by backing up their _/ etc_ directories. This is also done for network
equipment and remote network configuration data (zone files, etc).
------
b_emery
No workflow, we just use BackupPC
([http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/](http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/)) - cant
recommend it enough. Restores are easy, monitoring and automation on different
schedules is all built in. It's really great.
~~~
sliken
Love backuppc, especially 4.X where they replace the somewhat ugly hack of
using hardlinks with checksums. Recommended if you have a collection of
systems, if it's just a single system I'd use rdiff-backup (if you have remote
storage) or duplicity if you want to pay for remote storage (amazon,
rackspace, or similar).
------
AnthonBerg
I've gotten so used to Arq Backup (macOS/Windows) (and Time Machine (macOS)),
neither of which are convenient to run against Linux, that I've actually come
to avoid using Linux as something to be backed up except as a container or VM,
wholesale.
------
Symbiote
With rsync, using the --link-dest option to make a complete file tree using
hard links to a remote server.
Cron runs it, on @reboot schedule. If the backup is successful, some (but not
all) old backups are deleted. I delete some oldest preserved backups manually,
if disk space runs low.
------
abell
After being partially dissatisfied with various existing solutions, I have
written my own backup software: file4life
([http://www.file4life.org](http://www.file4life.org)). I've been using it for
the last 3 years and am currently working on a new release.
Its main advantages with respect to other approaches, at least for my use
cases, are:
\- metadata is stored in a single append-only file: no extra software (DB
etc.) is needed;
\- partial backups can be performed to separate storages. In fact, source and
backup directories are not conceptually different, so a duplicate of a
directory counts as a backup.
------
kxyvr
Perhaps someone could offer a related suggestion. At the moment, I use rsync
to backup files to external hard drives. One of the difficulties that I run
into is that some folders I want to mirror exactly between my computer and the
backup. Other folders I want to only add files, but not delete, to the backup.
Still others, like git repositories, I'd like to bundle rather than backup the
directory itself. Finally, I make redundant backups to multiple external hard
drives, so it would be nice to replay the same backup procedure to multiple
devices. Does anyone have a workflow that accomplishes this or something
similar?
~~~
gerdesj
No, that is not backup or DR or BC (Disaster Recovery and Business
Continuity). What you are describing is personal data management mixed up with
backup.
~~~
kxyvr
Interesting. I've not heard that term before. Can you suggest a personal data
management tool that works well with one of the suggested backup solutions in
this thread?
------
bakedbean
I've used clonezilla ([http://clonezilla.org/](http://clonezilla.org/)). You
create a bootable media (usb stick) then use that to clone to another
drive/partition.
------
BeetleB
I use a cloud based service to back up hand selected directories.
I run a weekly script to rsync one HD to another. The backup HD is exactly the
same size and partitioned identically. I had a HD crash some years ago and it
was fairly trivial to swap out the drives (probably needed to make some
changes to the MBR). Unfortunately, I had an HD crash some months ago and it
was _not_ as easy this time round. Apparently my rsync would fail in the
middle and so a lot of files were stale. Unbootable. Fortunately, all the
critical data was copied.
I should have a smarter backup script that will alert me on failure to rsync.
------
Comkid
For my backups, I use rclone with Backblaze B2 and Google Cloud Storage
(Nearline) using Crypt (with the same password and password2 for both B2 and
GCS). This gives me the benefit of file level encryption, with filename
encryption too. In my case, I'd rather not use encrypted archives in case a
bit got flipped and rendered my archive useless.
I have a systemd timer to run (incremental) backups every 3 hours, and I plan
on setting up a mechanism to automatically verify all of my data that has been
uploaded.
------
trelliscoded
I don't back up my systems. Everything important is in some cloud storage
somewhere, and I have network boot into installers set up on my network.
There's actually one machine where I ran out of space on the local disk and
didn't feel like getting up to replace it, so I copied it into a bigger volume
on one of my servers and it's been booting off of that ever since.
My customers and employers have all had these rube goldberg enterprisey backup
systems, usually Symantec or Veritas talking to HP MSAs.
~~~
gerdesj
"Everything important is in some cloud storage somewhere"
Delete one of them and then get it restored by your supplier - I assume you've
done that already. I did.
------
LarryMade2
Home - I back up the data areas. Dump the databases then run Back In Time
which covers the home folder and my web folder. From that I can get from 0 to
fully running in a few hours if necessary. And with Back In Time I have a
usable portable copy of my stuff to take along when I need to.
At work we do regular TAR backups to external drives and SSH-rsync data to our
sister office via VPN nightly. Backups are good for system restore then rsync
back from remote to get to most recent.
------
lloeki
Something similar to [0] but using restic. For machines that have enough
uplink, restic does its thing to S3 as well.
Sidenote: I was using Time Machine on MacOS but since I upgraded to 10.13,
APFS disks are mandatorily excluded by the OS (apparently as a workaround to
to some bug), so restic it is too.
[0]: (warning: jwz)
[https://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html)
------
AdmiralAsshat
If you want something GUI-driven, deja dup or Back in Time might work for you.
You can take a look at the articles I wrote on them here:
[https://github.com/kororaproject/kp-
documentation/blob/maste...](https://github.com/kororaproject/kp-
documentation/blob/master/UsingKorora/General/Backup-Intro.md)
------
david-cako
Not Linux, but same answer as it would be.
`rsync -av --files-from=".backup_directories"` on a daily cron job.
iMac and work hackintosh rsynced to local and remote backup machine daily.
Windows machine (where all my music and pictures live) both rsynced to local
and remote backup machine, and Cobian'd to a second drive daily. I also will
run the same Cobian backup to a cold external drive every month or so.
Deathly afraid of data loss.
------
pacificengima
Bacula manages our network backups to an Overland Storage tape library. While
involved to setup, I found it worthwhile given the capabilities it offers and
reliability. Bacula can also backup to file system volumes if you don't have
tape libraries but would still like the other features (eg encryption,
network-wide backup, file catalogues, retention and recycling rules etc).
------
scottLobster
Crashplan for docs/media. As for the system, I've been meaning to set up
proper automatic btrfs snapshots/rsync but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Worst case scenario all the docs/media are on their own RAIDZ array, so if
some weird system corruption ever happens I can just reformat/reinstall.
------
icebraining
I sync data using git-annex to a home server (atom with a couple of drives)
and a hosted dedicated server. Technically not "backup" since I don't store
old versions.
My work files are kept in git repos which I push to the same servers.
I use Ansible to configure my machine, so that I don't have to backup system
files, just the playbooks.
------
theandrewbailey
1\. Place desired data to back up on a drive (which may be network attached).
2\. Clone said drive to an external drive. Detach and lock it in a
water/fireproof box when not in use.
3\. Swap external drive with another that is stored off site every week or
two.
4\. Swap with yet another off site external drive less often (a few months).
~~~
earlcp
No test to ensure proper copy?
------
cweagans
Hourly incremental backup with Deja Dup saved to Synology NAS. My wife's
macbook also backs up via time machine to the nas.
Synology NAS backed up daily to Backblaze B2
Dead simple to set up and maintain, and in the event that I need to restore a
file or files, it's relatively fast.
------
Veratyr
I have:
\- A home NAS (4x5T + 7x4T = 48T, btrfs raid1)
\- A 2U server sitting in a local datacenter (8x8T + 2x4T = 72T, btrfs raid1)
\- An unlimited Google Drive plan
I run periodic snapshots on both servers and use simple rsync to sync from the
home NAS to the colo. Irreplaceable personal stuff is sent from the colo to
Google Drive using rclone.
------
zeep
I have a script that checks which external drives are connected and when it
finds the correct ones it backups to them using rsync. (Only /home is backed
up but it varies depending on which external drive is connected)
------
atsaloli
At hime, I keep my files in a local Git repo and back it up once in a while to
another drive. If I accidentally delete a file, I can get it out of git. Plus
I get the benefit of Version Control.
------
doublerebel
rsync /home, /etc, and a text file of the currently installed package list to
my homebuilt ZFS RAIDZ2 NAS running Arch Linux. This has been enough to
recover when my laptop drive fails.
Each device gets its own ZFS filesystem and is snapshotted after rsync.
FolderSync on Android does this automatically when I'm on home wifi. AcroSync
for Windows. Both FolderSync and AcroSync are worth the small purchase price.
Cronjobs for nix machines. iPad syncs to Mac which has a cronjob.
Stuff I really don't want to lose (photos, music, other art) are on multiple
machines + cloud.
------
pmontra
My laptop: rsnapshot to local USB disk, duplicity to remote server, git push
for code.
My (two) servers: dump of db, rsync of dumps and files to another server.
It's ok only because I've got little data.
------
atsaloli
At my last job I used BackupPC to automate backups.
[http://backuppc.sourceforge.net](http://backuppc.sourceforge.net).
------
oconnore
I use blurays to store "archived" files that I don't actively edit: music,
pictures, book reports from high school, etc.
Then the usual btrfs send/receive tricks.
~~~
gerdesj
Do you off site them?
------
kronos29296
Ubuntu comes with Deja Dup which backs up files. It works fine for me. For the
installed packages I use aptoncd for backing them up as an iso image.
------
zbuttram
Veeam Agent for Linux is a surprisingly nice and easy-to-use image-based
backup for free. Backup my two home servers to my NAS, which syncs up to
Backblaze B2.
------
hugo19941994
I use Borg to incrementally backup /home to a Kimsufi server with a 2TB hard
drive which costs around 20€/month.
------
billfor
\- Crashplan on NAS
\- 6 month archival image of NAS to external HDD, rotated every 2 years
\- 3 month differential rsync to nearline storage, kept for 5 years
------
jenkstom
# apt install backupninja # ninjahelper
------
alanbernstein
I just use rsync and a weekly cronjob.
------
dpc_pw
rdup + rdedup + rclone + backblaze b2
------
aorth
Tarsnap for documents (rotated with tarsnapper), S3 reduced redundancy for
Pictures (JPG + RAW).
------
nailer
Tarsnap
------
qrbLPHiKpiux
rsync -aAXv --exclude-some-stuff / /media/usb
------
gcoda
ecryptfs-mount-private
Symlink ~/.private to Dropbox/private
Per file encryption, and I do not care if Dropbox will get hacked again
------
gorer
I use rsync with external disks
------
unstatusthequo
Spideroak One
------
hachre
zfs snapshots + borg
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined? [pdf] - dbcooper
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shoag/files/why_has_regional_income_convergence_in_the_us_declined_01.pdf
======
dbcooper
> The past thirty years have seen a dramatic decline in the rate of income
> convergence across states and in population flows to wealthy places. These
> changes coincide with (1) an increase in housing prices in productive areas,
> (2) a divergence in the skill-specific returns to living in those places,
> and (3) a redirection of unskilled migration away from productive places. We
> develop a model in which rising housing prices in wealthy areas deter
> unskilled migration and slow income convergence. Using a new panel measure
> of housing supply regulations, we demonstrate the importance of this channel
> in the data. Income convergence continues in less-regulated places, while it
> has mostly stopped in places with more regulation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Russia’s Retro Lenin Museum Still Runs on Decades-Old Apple II Computers - yawz
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/retro-apple-computers-lenin-museum-russia
======
amq
The irony that you have to use a computer from your main enemy for your main
ideological museum.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Minimalist open source gdocs like editor, 91 LOC - lecarore
https://simpletext.link
======
lecarore
Hi, author here, I started this project 8 hours ago to solve one very specific
problem : organizing a small event with friends in a WhatsApp group. Keeping a
list of "who brings what" up to date was a pain. Simply opening this link
gives you a plain text, real time editor that you can share in your WhatsApp
group, and get all the updates in one place.
The code is very tiny, because it lies on the shoulders of two giants :
MeteorJS and Quill
If I see some interest, I'll develop it further.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Fastest and Shortest Algorithm for All Well-Defined Problems (2002) - tosh
https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/cs/0206022/
======
carapace
See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI)
[http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/goedelmachine.html](http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/goedelmachine.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_machine)
------
chronolitus
A selected excerpt from this paper:
"The same should hold for Theorem 1, as will be discussed. We avoid the O(1)
notation as far as possible, as it can be severely misleading (e.g. 10^42 =
O(1)^O(1)) = O(1)).
This work could be viewed as another O() warning showing, how important
factors, and even subdominant additive terms, are."
~~~
riku_iki
O() is a notion of speed of growth, not measuring how large are constants.
~~~
Chickenosaurus
Right, the critique is evaluating algorithms based solely on asymptotic time /
space characteristics is insufficient. Constants can be significant if they
are big enough.
------
dang
Discussed in 2010:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1083567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1083567)
------
foo101
From the header of the website:
> arXiv Vanity renders academic papers from arXiv as responsive web pages so
> you don’t have to squint at a PDF.
Why aren't more PDFs displayed like this on the web? I thought the math stuff
would be a problem but this site shows the math stuff alright.
Anyone knows how to reliably convert complex PDFs to beautiful web pages like
this?
~~~
currymj
with arXiv the TeX source is available for download (under the "Other formats"
link), which I think is what arXiv-vanity uses. I imagine it would be really
tough to go reliably from arbitrary PDF to HTML without screwing up the math
and figures.
~~~
Doxin
I mean firefox' built in pdf-reader is javascript based. I imagine it renders
to a canvas instead of to html, but it doesn't seem like an impossibility to
render to html in any case.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Inferno OS for Raspberry Pi - rcarmo
https://bitbucket.org/infpi/inferno-rpi
======
ZenoArrow
What are the major differences between (the latest versions of) Unix, Plan 9
and Inferno? Is there anything that Inferno and/or Plan 9 do that would be
harder to achieve with a Unix-based system?
~~~
MaxBarraclough
Inferno OS is built around the Dis virtual machine, which is akin to a JVM.
Unix-like OSs are native-code oriented.
HN has previously discussed this question of where 'grand abstractions' should
reside - in the OS, or above?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9807777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9807777)
To quote from that old thread (they discuss Taos not Inferno, but the
distinctions from Unix are similar):
> could you efficiently implement Taos abstractions on top of POSIX? (probably
> yes) Could you efficiently implement POSIX abstractions on top of Taos?
> (probably no)
~~~
ZenoArrow
Thank you for your response, but I'm thinking perhaps I didn't explain the
reason why I was asking. I understand that Inferno has a different design
based on a VM, what I'm trying to ascertain is... why is it better than what
came before? The design decisions were more than likely based on a desire to
improve on what came before, my questions are about what the designers seeked
to improve. In other words, rather than knowing it's a different design, I'd
like to know why it's a better design (or to be more fair, what are its
strengths and weaknesses)?
~~~
qubex
Plan9 (and Inferno, the virtualised descendent thereof) embody a single,
unifying abstraction: that everything is a file. This often stated in Unix but
(beyond the /dev and on Linux /proc & /sys filesystems) there’s lots of things
that _aren’t_ files (the framebuffer, network sockets...). In Plan9 and
Inferno if you want to do something to anything all you need to do is know
fopen & company.
------
qubex
Delighted by this. I’ve always appreciated Plan 9 and its derivative Inferno.
It’s a pity they never gained much of a toehold.
~~~
pjmlp
Me too, it also saddens me that many aren't aware of Inferno OS and always
think Plan 9 was the end of the line, when that status actually belongs to
Inferno OS.
Which implemented the original vision for Plan 9, regarding what Pike wanted
to do with Alef.
~~~
shimon_e
Surprised someone didn't make an Android competitor with Inferno OS. It was
already part way there to being a mobile OS.
~~~
yiyus
The Hellaphone was an idea in that direction. They substituted all the Java
bits in Android with Inferno:
[http://jfloren.net/b/2015/8/18/2](http://jfloren.net/b/2015/8/18/2)
~~~
squarefoot
Too bad they didn't continue its development. Probably choosing a different
GUI than TK would have helped to spark more people's interest in the project.
There's a huge need for an alternative OS on Android phones, but most of the
people who would benefit from it don't know that, so that need doesn't
translate to actual demand.
~~~
rcarmo
I don't see Tk as being a problem. Rio, however, and the continued reliance
upon 3-button mice, dates both Plan9 and Inferno and makes it quite hard to
use them on laptops with trackpads.
~~~
walshemj
what's wrong with three button mice? virtualy all pc's outwith macs that use
mac mice use three button mouse's
~~~
rcarmo
Emulating three buttons on a trackpad (or touchscreen) is hard to do right. I
don’t use mice on my laptops.
~~~
walshemj
ah I see what you mean I mostly used desktops hadn't thought about ipads and
the like
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No More Excuses: Lazy Load Your Images - vzhou842
https://victorzhou.com/blog/lazy-loading-images/
======
forgotmypw17
Why does lazy-loading of images suck? Let me count the ways...
Lazy-loading sucks for anyone whose connection is not stable or always on.
It also sucks for offlining content you want to read later and archiving.
It's also incompatible with many older browsers, not that anyone seems to care
about that.
It's also incompatible with nojs browsers, so most of the images on this blog
are white space or blurry preloaders.
Even if everything is working perfectly, the user will see distracting
movement as they scroll down the page.
Here is a quick demonstration:
[http://youtu.be/watch?v=aGy9IL0qtw4](http://youtu.be/watch?v=aGy9IL0qtw4)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A wild PyBoy appears: a GameBoy emulator written in Python - skelliger
https://notamonadtutorial.com/a-wild-pyboy-appears-a-gameboy-emulator-written-in-python-22666762232f
======
ericfrederich
Written in Python2.7 which had its end of life in January
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How we solved an infamous sliding bug - exch
http://joostdevblog.blogspot.nl/2014/04/the-infamous-sliding-bug.html
======
tetrep
Problem: Lag + collision detection = characters slide. Solution: Turn off
collision detection.
I was sincerely hoping for an actual technical solution for dealing with peer-
to-peer networking and lag. I feel somewhat cheated out of the time it took me
to read that article. While it did explain the problem very nicely, the
solution was to just disable the feature outright.
~~~
blahedo
Well, the first paragraph did say
> _The solution we finally managed to come up with is also a good example of
> how very incorrect workarounds can actually be a really good solution to a
> complex problem._
So you knew they were presenting a "very incorrect workaround"\---which,
counterintuitively, worked better than some of the more "correct" things they
tried.
~~~
tetrep
>So you knew they were presenting a "very incorrect workaround"
It actually made it a bit more enticing, I was expecting a horrific chain of
gotos or some other cliche programming paradigm being completely violated for
the sake of pragmatism.
What we got instead was, "This is a hard problem, let's just not solve it."
which was written up with a title of "How we solved a hard problem"
~~~
bm1362
They did solve the problem, the solution was to turn of collision detection.
------
sigvef
How do you stop clients from cheating in a peer-to-peer game like
Awesomenauts?
~~~
Negitivefrags
You probably can't. If stopping cheating is a goal you need to go for client-
server were you host the servers yourself. A lot of developers are not
prepared to take that on.
~~~
cclogg
In many RTS peer-2-peer games like Starcraft or Age of Empires, they use a
lock-step model, which can stop the majority of cheating.
Every player uses a tick-engine (ie tick every 0.1s) that performs the same
commands on the same ticks. When a player issues a command, such as "Build
Unit X", it sends it to every other player to run a couple ticks ahead (how
far ahead is based on average lag or whatever). If anyone performs
differently, then a de-synchronization occurs and the game is over.
It's explained much better here
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3094/1500_archers_on_a...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3094/1500_archers_on_a_288_network_.php)
"Because the game's outcome depended on all of the users executing exactly the
same simulation, it was extremely difficult to hack a client (or client
communication stream) and cheat. Any simulation that ran differently was
tagged as "out of sync" and the game stopped. Cheating to reveal information
locally was still possible, but these few leaks were relatively easy to secure
in subsequent patches and revisions. Security was a huge win. "
~~~
endianswap
Your assertion that a game like Starcraft is built such that it makes cheating
difficult is unfounded. Because Starcraft players both synchronize the full
state of the game, even what's in the fog of war to your opponent means that
cheating is trivial. There are some trivial countermeasures here where if the
two simulations differ it the two machines will quit over the
desynchronization, so you can't just spawn a million units, but you can have
full map vision in a game whose rules are tied strongly to the notion of
imperfect knowledge of the board.
I've worked anti-cheat (and written cheats) for several games, and there's
little you can do in the space of 1-on-1 games to prevent cheating(1), but in
the space of 3+ player games the separate simulations can "vote" to remove the
player who is cheating (in the desynchronization fashion as above), if you
assume there are going to be fewer cheaters in games than legitimate players.
Of course if there is any knowledge hidden by the client in its render/UI of
the game then a cheater can always recover that data, which is why when you
can build a client/server model not transmitting hidden data is the most
effective strategy to counter cheating (for example don't transmit entities
the player shouldn't be able to see.) This is often difficult, of course, for
example if you want footstep sounds to travel through walls in an FPS, but a
lot of low-hanging fruit that cheaters would want can be pruned that way.
1: The other (common) approaches are to detect the cheats and punish the
cheaters afterwards (Punkbuster, Valve Anti-Cheat, Warden, etc.) or try to
lock down the process and make it difficult to write effective cheats
(GameGuard, or one trick Blizzard does is attach a second process as a
debugger of the game process and IPC validation checks so you can't
directly/easily hook into the main process.)
Edit: I now realize you mention hidden data still being recoverable, and
desynchronization as a method to combat cheating, I missed that at first but
figure I'll leave my post up anyways, even if only to emphasize that seeing
the whole map is a _very_ valuable cheat that has taken players easily into
the top of the Starcraft ladder (and the top of the Grandmaster rank in
Starcraft 2).
------
m_mueller
This is the first time (as a non game-dev) I'm reading about a P2P game where
each peer computes only part of the world. That's quite clever, especially for
an indie developer who'd be hurt more by spending lots of money on server
resources. It should be possible to build quite massive multiplayer worlds
this way. Has this ever been attempted, say, in a WoW or Eve type game? I
imagine that for massive battles, each peer could serve as a proxy for all the
data it has received already, such that only one connection to another peer is
needed to see the whole thing - similar to how bit torrent works. Lag could
become a larger problem there of course, so it probably only lends itself to a
slower paced gameplay where players don't target each other using a visor -
but it should work for a WoW style combat system, no?
------
kevingadd
It seems like this solution implicitly acknowledges (and fails to resolve) the
fact that their game has frequent, pervasive desyncs. The bug being described
is _only_ possible when in a state of persistent desync - that's a little
scary in a competitive or semi-competitive game (like most games in the 'MOBA'
genre are, including Awesomenauts).
I wonder what their reasons were for going with peer-to-peer instead of
anointing a player as the 'server' as many other console multiplayer games do
(Awesomenauts started out on console, IIRC)? That would solve a lot of these
desync problems because the server would be responsible for resolving all the
collisions.
~~~
toast0
Unless you run in lockstep, your distributed game is always in a persistent
state of desync. It's probably more fair for both players to be desynced
equally, than to let one player be synced perfectly with the server, and the
other be subject to latency issues.
------
jbert
Would it work to have a different response to collision, namely to apply a
reverse of your last step? (A full reverse or partial).
There might still be corner cases, but it would seem to resolve the described
issue, since irrespective of where you think the other player is, if you both
reverse your motion you should disengage.
I can see 3-body problems being more problematic, but that's probably also the
case with the original code.
~~~
placeybordeaux
With their example code if lonestar is walking to the right and froggy
precives that they land on the right side of lonestar, but lonestar precives
that they landed on the left of them, then they would both slide to the left
if they just undid their last step.
~~~
gpvos
Yes, and that would make it so they would not collide anymore, so I'd be
interested to know why they did not use that solution. Probably it would also
give a wrong feel in gameplay.
~~~
placeybordeaux
If they both slide to the left then they would still be in a collision.
~~~
gpvos
Okay, because of lag they might have to retrace more than one step. But
eventually, they would have gone "back in time" enough to disentangle,
regardless of their direction.
------
eridius
How does the player with the lower objectID detect that the sliding bug is
happening? The way it was described, only the player with the higher objectID
would be able to figure that out. Did they change it so both players sends the
message? Or does the player with the higher objectID simply send a message
when they detect the bug, meaning they turn off their collision first? Or
something else entirely?
~~~
Guvante
> How does the player with the lower objectID detect that the sliding bug is
> happening?
In the original version only the higher objectID would react and disable his
collision, thus not requiring the lower objectID to detect the problem.
It is not called out, but it looks like they not have both sides call out when
a collision occurs, allowing both to turn off in this case.
So the collision occurs, both say "I am going right" and when they hear the
other one doing the same they both stop.
------
scottfr
Could you resolve the issue by introducing an element of stochasticity into
the distance players are displaced to avoid collisions?
That way, one player would move right (or left) more than the other player and
the collision would still resolve itself.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In 5 states, richest Americans live in a “new Gilded Age” - hellofunk
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-5-states-richest-americans-live-in-a-new-gilded-age/
======
padobson
_Even as the gap between the rich and everyone else widens, the quality of
life for the bottom 99 percent has vastly changed since 1928._
This makes me wonder how much people care. In a global economy where the 1%
are investing in markets that can reach billions of people, extreme poverty on
a global scale was sliced in half in a 30 year period, and supply chains allow
us to have super computers and unlimited entertainment for tiny fractions of
the median wage, you can expect a lot of inequality, but life is way better
for _everyone in the world_ since 1928.
Inequality is only a problem in so much that it leads to higher crime rates
and (eventually) civil instability in places where its most apparent. We
haven't seen much of that (yet), but don't stop looking for it.
~~~
CompelTechnic
If you want to understand wage stagnation in the US, look up the "elephant
curve." In a nutshell: middle income of rich countries has stagnated because
of the new need to compete with rapidly industrializing poor countries.
Everyone's income around the globe tends to increase during this process (a
very good thing!), except for middle wage earners in rich countries.
Meanwhile, in local politics, both sides of the aisle blame eachother for this
effect, which is totally outside of either of their control.
~~~
glaugh
I find the elephant curve explanation compelling. But I’m not sure it’s fair
to then say there’s nothing that can be done to mitigate the impact of that.
Rich Scandinavian countries, for example, have a more redistributive tax
system that appears to leave people broadly happier. Fine to argue the
relative merits of such an intervention, of course, but worth noting it’s very
much an option.
~~~
kryogen1c
Not really an option. The largest scandanavian country, sweden, is a little
larger than Los Angeles and the rest are much smaller. They have little
emigration and immigration, and although their gdp per capita is similar, the
huge population difference means their economies/gdp are of a totally
different scale.
Apples to oranges.
~~~
mr_overalls
Your rationale for the Nordic model being inapplicable to the US is a common
one among conservatives, but it baffles me.
Of course the Nordics are smaller than the US, but all of the economic
variables in question should scale on a per-capita basis. Specifically, what
is it about a population difference that makes a strong safety net
inapplicable?
~~~
klipt
"America is bigger than X" is a thought terminating cliche to make people stop
asking awkward questions like "why is quality of life better in X?"
Except it's baloney, the EU even has a bigger population than the US and has
universal healthcare, public transit, etc.
------
metalliqaz
History rhymes.
Of course, this time the robber barons know what will happen if they delve too
greedily and too deep. Unions, the New Deal... can't have that. This time they
are making more clever investments in propaganda, government control, and
distraction.
~~~
rapnie
..and supported by the latest tech to make that all much easier :)
~~~
metalliqaz
tech is just tech, used as a tool by both the forces of good and of evil
~~~
tntn
This is a BS cop out to avoid having to think about ethics.
Some tech is inherently good or bad. If you create platforms that spread
misinformation and rage much more effectively than information and reason, you
shouldn't be able to walk away saying "it's a neutral tool!"
~~~
malvosenior
> Some tech is inherently good or bad.
Not true. You might see a platform "spreading rage" as bad but to the people
on the platform it's giving them a way to fight injustice (hence the rage --
what are they angry about).
Tech connects people. _You_ may not agree with those people but they'll be
glad to have the platform.
------
r_singh
Not surprisingly, there's 5 places in California where the top 1% has more
wealth than in 1928. Which means that the ratio of income of top 1% to income
of bottom 99% is higher than it was in 1928. Which is a sign of rise in income
inequality.
I would be really interested in studying the breakdown of wealth within the
top 1% in all the places listed. In my experience (here in India at least),
most people in the top 1% are just as worried [about income inequality] as the
rest of us. It's the people at the top 20% of the 1% that can live anywhere,
but sure, journalists can still call them the 1%.
~~~
sbjs
I’ve always wondered, where did California’s wealth originally come from? Was
it the gold rush that started it all?
~~~
kaycebasques
The Gold Rush did indeed make a lot of people wealthy. Not the gold itself,
but rather land speculation and the business bubble.
When I randomly recall old wealth families that I’m aware of, they pretty much
all started from local business tycoons (newspapers, railroads, essential
consumer products, etc.) that usually diversified through real estate. No
different than the rest of the US.
~~~
r_singh
and no different from a lot of the rest of the world
------
dagaci
Just to give unspoken point of view, a scenario which i would like to pose:
That Income inequality provides a kind of fiscal stability vs uncontrollable
inflation.
If you overlay a chart of inflation on top of the chart of inequality you will
find that maximum equality appears to correspond closely to periods of maximum
inflation.
Governments from both sides of the argument have focused on reducing
collective bargaining and on ensuring that efforts to rejuvenate economies,
like quantitative easing via the financial sector and tax breaks are focused
on the corporations and wealthy precisely because of the low impact this can
have on inflation
The effect of these measures tends to pump money into the already wealthy
while bulk of the population experience no-change.
~~~
Spooky23
Inflation isn't all bad.
The lack of inflation is making it easy to concentrate and safely hoard cash,
which is cutting off the oxygen for everyone else. We've had 30 years of an
ultra-safe, guaranteed strategy to make money -- move all value-added services
to places with cheap labor and cheap money and export cash, facilitated by
tithing a good portion of GDP to the OPEC producers. It's destroying western
society.
The best thing that could happen to the west today would be a devaluation.
~~~
Pulcinella
Yeah inflation can be good if you have debt.
------
kaycebasques
This article’s chronology is off a bit. It compares current income inequality
to 1928. But 1928 was not part of the Gilded Age. 1870-1900 is usually the
period known as the Gilded Age.
Aside from that anachronism, I used the exact same term to describe where
we’re at just a few weeks ago.
~~~
moate
Yes, and it's too bad because the irony of pointing out that the 20's were
part of the so-called "Progressive Era" despite having robber barons and such
horrible inequity is really too good IMO.
------
Brass
Actual study: [https://www.epi.org/publication/the-new-gilded-age-income-
in...](https://www.epi.org/publication/the-new-gilded-age-income-inequality-
in-the-u-s-by-state-metropolitan-area-and-county/)
------
xamuel
For those who just want the list (which is buried annoyingly deep):
* New York
* Florida
* Connecticut
* Nevada
* Wyoming
------
stvswn
The Gilded Age refers to the last several decades of the 19th century, and yet
the article compares today's data to 1928. That would be "the Roaring
Twenties."
~~~
frockington
Misusing the term Gilded Age is becoming more prevalent recently within the
inequality narrative. I'm guessing The Gilded Age was shown to produce more
clicks and why let facts get in the way of clicks
~~~
jimbofisher1
Yeah bro Buzzfeed is totally doing AB tests on Article Headlines about Income
Inequality.
~~~
the_watcher
They almost certainly are. Buzzfeed didn't become synonymous with clickbait by
random chance. It literally spun out of a research lab studying the viral
spread of online content.
~~~
jimbofisher1
Why don't you go find out how many articles they have written about inequality
and tell me how the statistical power of their AB test looks. lol
------
foxhop
We should have a billion dollar networth cap. If you pass it, it gets taxed
extremely, like 95%.
~~~
mbesto
Ugh, this again. Net worth != income.
I get the spirit of what you're saying but you can't tax net worth, you tax
income.
~~~
kungtotte
You can absolutely tax net worth. It's not difficult at all.
You can add/increase property taxes. You can tax wealth above a certain
amount. You can add/increase taxes on stock market speculation and holdings,
and other financial instruments.
Whether you'd want to is a different matter, but saying you can't do it is
factually incorrect.
~~~
moate
right. The story told is that the money in the market (stocks, shares of
companies, holdings, real estate, etc) is playing a part in creating wealth
for everyone, and therefor better served by being left where it is.
there's 0 reason you can't say "this person is reporting holding, assets and
liquid wealth of 2 billion dollars, so he owes X% back to the state." The
issue is that typically the wealthy have the most influence over tax code, and
they use net worth as a way to keep their money out of play.
But, like, you know, Amazon being worth so much money is really helpful to
_everyone_ because...reasons.
------
Kilonzus
As someone living in one of those top places, I think the usual consensus is
that cities like New York and San Francisco and Washington DC are the most
expensive cities to live in yet I live in a relatively conservative state tax-
wise and people out here are still getting killed by the house prices. Rent
has doubled in almost 3 years as well as many low-income families being pushed
out of areas that used to formally inhabit.
------
dsfyu404ed
The pairing of places associated with business and leisure should come as no
surprise. The super wealthy do their business in and primarily live in the
former while maintaining vacation properties in the latter. Then when they
just want to coast on the returns they primarily live in the latter and
charter a flight or spend a few days a week in the former as needed to for
business.
------
the_watcher
I'm pretty sure the map at the bottom is wrong, at least in CA. The 5 CA
metros listed are San Jose, San Francisco, Napa, LA, Santa Barbara, but the
map shows 4 Southern CA dots (including one that looks like it's in the
southern Central Valley of all places)
------
hnburnsy
I was shocked when in an interview yesterday David Rubenstein, The Carlyle
Group co-founder and co-executive chairman of the private equity firm that
owns 275 companies, mentioned that he worries about 3 things:
1) National deficit and servicing entitlements 2) Tariffs 3) Income inequality
and possible social disruption
1 and 2 were not a surprise, but to me 3 was.
Here is the full interview.
[https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/07/18/carlyle-group-
rubenste...](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/07/18/carlyle-group-rubenstein-
dont-see-recession-near-term.html)
------
pmoriarty
Money is power, and some people are much better at getting their hands on
money/power than others. Regardless of whether such money/power is "deserved"
(which can be argued endlessly either way), we as a society really have to
question whether we want a society where the overwhelming majority of people
are screwed, and a tiny minority gets to own everything/everyone, call the
shots, make the laws, and order the rest of us around.
We and our children are going to be shining these people's shoes for
generations to come. Is that the future we want?
------
xyhopguy
interesting that Seattle isn't anywhere to be found. I've always "felt" that
the PNW had less old money. Anyone wanna feed my confirmation bias some more?
~~~
wgerard
Eh, I'm not sure I would read into this as "Seattle is super egalitarian".
Microsoft has made a lot of people (relatively) extremely wealthy, as has
Amazon.
Seattle's probably catching up quickly to some of the cities on this list.
Washington is just a much younger state.
~~~
xyhopguy
Not really what im getting at. The pnw was developed later so I'd expect it to
have less old money -- look at Oregon. The tech industry has certainly done a
lot for the upper middle class in Seattle but the article is talking about
people making 400k+ a year..
------
avar
This article doesn't discuss the elephant in the room. If there's this
discrepancy in the 1% between states, and that's seen as a problem, presumably
some correlation can be found where the bottom N% are less fortunate in say
West Virginia than New York.
Is there any indication that that's the case?
~~~
metalliqaz
What's the elephant in that metaphor? That the rich make the poor better off
by proximity?
If so, I think you're missing the point. It's not a particularly good thing to
have lots of people in "tolerable poverty" rather than total squalor. The
slight reduction in suffering isn't enough.
The real elephant in the room is the long term result of massive inequality.
Social unrest, violence, revolution. History is littered with these outcomes,
and many of those examples end with public executions.
~~~
avar
No, the elephant in the room is what supposed issues income inequality
creates. Surely if there's such a discrepancy in this number between different
states that's going to be measurable in some way.
My biases align with the sentiments of the article. I think that income
inequality is bad, but that doesn't make me immune to recognizing lazy
journalism.
The article does nothing to question that assumption. If an increase in income
inequality makes the difference between "tolerable poverty" and "total
squalor", isn't there going to be more of the latter in New York than West
Virgina?
The map in this article is almost the exact opposite of the one in the
article, showing an inverse correlation between income inequality and the
poverty rate:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_poverty_rate)
So what exactly are the negative effects? I'm sure there's some, but the
article isn't helping us talk about those.
------
emodendroket
Wyoming is the surprise entry here.
~~~
bilbo0s
Why would Wyoming be a surprise?
Serious question.
Out here in Wisconsin we think of Wyoming as a state with a lot of wealthy
landowners. But that's based mostly on seeing huge farms, (ranches), that
aren't actually farmed. (When you see a huge farm that's not being farmed in
Wisconsin, you just KNOW the guy's richer than Crassus.)
~~~
logfromblammo
To be fair, the opportunity cost of not farming land in the Mississippi river
valley is a lot higher than not farming land in the rain-shadow of the
Rockies.
Not farming some of the most fertile land in the world makes you richer than
Crassus. Not ranching on land that can barely grow enough to support a
smallish herd just makes you sensitive to the wholesale prices for grazing
animals.
~~~
LyndsySimon
It depends on how much land, doesn't it?
A quick search shows that the largest ranch in Wyoming is Q Creek Ranch, at
560,000 acres. That's 1/60th size of the entire state of Mississippi.
Even if the land yields 1/10th as much as the rich farmland of Mississippi
delta, if it's 1/10th the price and holdings are 10x larger, then the same
value is being left on the table.
~~~
logfromblammo
...discounting the scaling operational costs due to vastly increased distances
to everything.
If you operate a small dairy farm in Wisconsin, with pastures near the barn,
and a more remote hayfield that is mechanically harvested, you can definitely
raise 20 cows with 40 acres, including plenty of margin for error. You would
only have to reduce herd size in a region-wide, multi-year drought. The rest
of the time, you're selling hay to your more-risk-tolerant neighbors. That's
200 short tons of milk per year, or 50000 gallons, with likely revenue between
$150k and $200k, or $3750-$5000/acre-year, discounting the excess hay, culled
beef, and veal calves.
If you're just sitting on the land, not even growing hay, you're leaving
heaping piles of money on the table.
If your land has 1/10 the yield, you now need 20 acres per animal instead of
2. You can't put up just one, convenient dairy barn, so you're just growing
meat. If you can get 200 pounds of beef per acre, that's maybe $1500/acre-
year. That's significant, but not as significant.
The actual ratio is likely much worse than 1:10. With normal rain, a Wisconsin
herd could potentially allocate 0.5 to 1 acre per cow. Out west, without
irrigation, it can be 35 acres per cow, or more. So if the Q Creek Ranch could
raise a herd of 16000 on 560000 acres, a Wisconsin farmer might be able to do
the same with 1.5% the land area in a wet year. That's a lot less distance for
the cows to walk, especially if the hay is trucked in from remote fields.
As it happens, Q Creek grazes from 6000 to 10000 cattle in any given year, and
they also maintain a herd (of unspecified size) of elk, deer, and antelope for
hunting. I'll estimate 2500 head of them, and call it 45 acres/animal.
Rosendale Dairy, the largest in Wisconsin, keeps 8400 cows, with 2800 acres
for hay. 1/3 acre/cow.
------
andrewla
This article, at least, talks about income, rather than wealth. Income we have
a concrete measure for, at least, rather than attempts at estimation with
giant unknown error bars. But income isn't a stable metric either. The IRS has
been continually changing rules over time. Most notably, there has been a
consistent push to crack down on "fringe benefits" and make them taxable.
"Company cars" and things like that are essentially dead.
To some degree the changes in the income characteristics here reflect changes
in the nature of compensation, from various tax dodges to just cash
compensation. It was once easier to give executives a car for their exclusive
use, rather than pay them the value of the car, since it was an allowable
business expense. That is no longer the case (unless the car is intrinsic to
their job) so rather than giving them a car and paying taxes on it, they just
give them the money and let them buy their own car.
To what degree does this inform the changing characteristics of income in the
top percentiles? That's an unknown question, but the best answer we have is
just to assume that nothing has changed in the actual income distribution
except the switchover from fringe benefit based compensation to taxable
compensation. But that, unfortunately, renders moot the entire point of
articles like this, about "worsening disparity", which is a convenient
bogeyman to point to about the dangers of unchecked capitalism. So instead, we
just pretend that this doesn't exist, and we continue to use made-up numbers
to try to make a social point.
~~~
weberc2
"Wealth" isn't a very good metric for other reasons as well. Notably, lots of
people who make median-ish income save every penny for retirement and
accumulate a lot of wealth, but they are often categorized as "greedy top X%".
In our zeal to find someone to lay blame on, we often pick the wrong targets.
~~~
zajd
> Notably, lots of people who make median-ish income save every penny for
> retirement and accumulate a lot of wealth
Not even in the same ballpark. You're not getting to $100mm in wealth on a
$50k salary. But you can be born in to it overnight. Or make that in one day
in the market if you're Bezos.
~~~
frockington
This is precisely why my goal is to set up my children better than I was and
teach them to do the same. As long as I am constantly improving and can share
that with my children I am happy. Comparing yourself to others, specifically
to the super rich, is not a healthy strategy long term.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Friends' photos lost in your Instagram feed? Here's a fix suggestion - josefrichter
https://www.iphonedesign.info/blog/instagram-friends-vs-famous-filter-ux-concept
======
bartcobain
The thing with this suggestion is that ATM Instagram is trying to fix how
people are getting addicted to the Instagram popularity contest and instant
feedback from the likes. Recently said that is testing the possibility to hide
the like count _. This suggestion IMO is another kind of feature for that
popularity contest to be on the Famous side of the app.
_ [https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/instagram-hidden-like-
coun...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/instagram-hidden-like-counter/)
~~~
josefrichter
Interesting to see IG running tests on seemingly counterintuitive features
like that. The addiction and instant gratification is what generates their
profits, after all. That's why I also believe the feature I envisioned
wouldn't match their business interests - they basically want your friends'
content to be mixed with all the other content, including paid posts.. But
"ethical design" is becoming a big topic, so maybe we will see changes like
this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Announces a $5B Investment in IoT - LyalinDotCom
https://www.thurrott.com/hardware/155799/microsoft-announces-5-billion-investment-iot
======
randomerr
I thought they were getting out of IoT because of how bad they did with the
Raspberry Pi.
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/21/first_look_windows_...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/21/first_look_windows_10_iot_core_on_raspberry_pi_2/)
~~~
tbyehl
I feel like they missed the boat in not supporting ARMv6 (Pi Zero) in .NET
Core and Windows 10 IoT.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US Study Projects How 'Unequivocal Warming' Will Change Americans ... - newacc
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/06/17/17climatewire-us-study-projects-how-unequivocal-warming-wi-29186.html
======
pragmatic
Just in time for one of the coldest summers on record.
It's hard for people to fathom the thought of global warming while their local
weather is in fact colder.
Jared Diamond's Collapse is a good reference.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_(book)>
What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last tree and doom the island
think as he used his stone axe?
While I remain skeptical about global climate change, I can also appreciate
the fact that polluting less and taking care of the environment is a good
thing.
The problem is that even as America becomes cleaner, China, India and the rest
of the third world are burning trees and coal like crazy.
~~~
lilsis
I do not believe that human contribution to global warming is significant.
Water vapor is responsible for 95% of the greenhouse effect, yet somehow it is
never brought up in global warming discussions. Why is this?
We've raised CO2 concentrations 100 ppm to 370 ppm... a concentration that's
tiny in comparison to the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere... after
all, we're on a giant ball of water.
I subscribe to the theory of giant ball of nuclear fire leads to warmer
temperatures -> increase in ocean temperatures -> release of dissolved CO2 &
increase in water vapor -> greater greenhouse effect
I don't hate the environment and obviously we should be reducing our impact,
but cleaner air and water should be cause enough.
If anyone can explain to me why my reasoning is flawed I'll be happy to
champion the idea that global warming is primarily driven by man... it would
actually make my life easier to embrace it as fact. However, as it stands now,
it seems to me a rather arrogant proposition.
~~~
lutorm
It doesn't matter if 99.9% of greenhouse effect is not caused by humans, if
the extra 0.1% is. The gross heat fluxes in and out are enormous, but because
they precisely balance they're not noticeable. An extra 0.1%, while very small
compared to the total heat flux, is a purely net flux because it's not
canceled out (until the Earth has warmed). It's simple conservation of energy.
Think of it this way: If you have a gallon of water and you pour it back and
forth between two containers, you will eventually run out of water even if you
lose only a few drops each time.
Another example: If you trade your assets back and forth between different
stocks (and they don't change value), it doesn't matter how much money you
start with, if you do it for long enough you will eventually run out of money
due to the transaction cost.
A small effect can have a big impact if it's allowed to accumulate over time,
and that's precisely what's happening with the greenhouse effect.
~~~
lilsis
This is a good argument assuming that the Earth's heat fluxes are in balance,
but I don't believe this to be the case, what with ice ages, etc.
------
anon-e-moose
On the other hand, a lot more people die from cold, so if you decrease that,
it could be a net win...
[http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/global-warming-the-
grea...](http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/global-warming-the-great-
lifesaver)
Let me be even more sarcastic and snide... maybe people who are afraid of
global warming are close minded and afraid of change...
~~~
jshen
Wanting to avoid death, disease, and destruction is not the same as a general
fear of change.
~~~
pj
I read the post you are replying to as a jab at those who believe change leads
to death and destruction. We could move the cities inland. We could optimize
buildings to keep people cooler. We could find more efficient forms of energy
to enable more indoor climate control.
The current stress right now is to _stop_ climate control. We humans believe
we can stop climate control, but what if we can't? What if it actually _is_
due to sun spots and beyond our control? It seems like it would make sense to
_adapt_ to the change rather than try to stop the change.
~~~
jshen
Sorry, had to reply again.
"I read the post you are replying to as a jab at those who believe change
leads to death and destruction."
What I was saying is that global warming will lead to death and destruction.
"We could move the cities inland. "
I love how people say this like it's no biggie. Let's hire some contractors
and bam, city moved. LOL. I'm guessing it's a lot easier to reduce are use of
fossil fuels than it is to move a few major cities. what do you think?
~~~
pj
China moved hundreds of millions of people away from the lake formed behind
the three gorges dam. That's ultimately what _will_ happen. Either we'll build
levies around the whole continent to protect coastal areas or the people will
move. It'll probably be a combination of both.
~~~
jshen
China doesn't have the same level of infrastructure as we do. Imagine trying
to move large chunks of Los Angeles. That's a completely different animal
isn't it? Doesn't it seem easier and cheaper to reduce our energy use than to
move multiple cities like Los Angeles?
I personally think it's a better idea to avoid serious problems than to accept
the enormous pain that will come with ideas like "hey, change is normal".
~~~
pj
I don't believe reducing our energy consumption is going to have much effect
on global warming. I think the sun is way more powerful an influence on our
climate than humans.
~~~
jshen
I don't understand your point of view. The sun certainly can affect climate in
large ways, but that does not mean that all climate change is due to the sun
or that human activity can't cause climate change.
"But even if solar forcing in the past was more important than this estimate
suggests, as some scientists think, there is no correlation between solar
activity and the strong warming during the past 40 years. Claims that this is
the case have not stood up to scrutiny (pdf document).
Direct measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall
over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend .
Similarly, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet
output and in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct,
reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been
no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity."
source: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650-climate-myths-
gl...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650-climate-myths-global-
warming-is-down-to-the-sun-not-humans.html)
------
anamax
I measure how serious someone is about CO2 and global warming by their
enthusiasm for nuclear power.
A govt that claims to be concerned about CO2 that isn't pouring concrete for
dozens of reactors isn't worried about CO2, it's worried about something else.
It's porkulus II, bigger and badder.
------
mildweed
Ask YC: How will 'Unequivocal Warming' provide new opportunities? Technology
is our hammer, so what can we start making now?
A weather aggregator and tracker (and projector)?
Information services that decrease carbon emissions? Ex:
<http://neighborhoodfruit.com>
Let's brainstorm right here.
------
gabeybaby
Let Carl Zimmer sort it out for you:
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/02/27/unchecked-...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/02/27/unchecked-
ice-a-saga-in-five-chapters/)
------
swombat
Please fix the URL to the NYTimes URL, since this is a NYTimes article...
------
TrevorJ
I still haven't heard convincing arguments for global warming as fact. Climate
change, yes, but warming as a result of human activity on a global scale no.
Chief among my concerns is the fact that Mars seems to be warming as well.
[http://www.dakotavoice.com/2009/06/nasa-study-shows-sun-
resp...](http://www.dakotavoice.com/2009/06/nasa-study-shows-sun-responsible-
for-planet-warming/)
------
mynameishere
Not sure why it would lower crop production.
Also not sure why maple syrup is worth mentioning.
~~~
Alex3917
"Not sure why it would lower crop production."
The conditions that crops need aren't based on average temperature, but rather
they're based on the minimum temperature, the maximum temperature, and how
long it takes to go from very cold to very warm and vice versa. With global
warming the climate zones don't just shift north, but rather you get these
situations where certain crops just won't grow at all. For example, grape
vines have certain mechanisms to protect the buds during winter, but these
mechanisms get disabled as soon as you get the first warm snap. The problem is
that if it then gets cold again you lose all the buds, so no grapes.
With global warming what happens is you still have very low minimum
temperatures in winter, but the average temperature is warmer and so you have
these temporary warm snaps disable all the natural protection mechanisms that
have evolved over thousands of years. So if you just move the vines north then
they all die because their cold protection mechanisms get disabled and the
buds freeze, and you can't keep them where they are because it's too hot in
the summer so they die also. So what happens is that you just can't
successfully grow good wine grapes anymore. Now obviously this is a pretty
trivial example, but there are similar things going on for a lot of our major
food crops. You can't just move them north, so we're just going to have major
food shortages.
Another good example is wheat rusts. Every winter our top scientists go down
to Mexico and create new types of wheat based on whatever rust is currently
spreading. The only reason they have time to do this is because the wheat
sprouts later in the US than it does in Mexico. But with global warming all
the wheat will come up much closer together, so what may happen is that we
just don't have wheat anymore.
(And believe me, wheat rust is pretty much the scariest shit you can imagine.
There's a reason it was one of the biblical plagues.)
~~~
randallsquared
_For example, grape vines have certain mechanisms to protect the buds during
winter, but these mechanisms get disabled as soon as you get the first warm
snap. The problem is that if it then gets cold again you lose all the buds, so
no grapes._
But in fact, we know that grapes were grown at more northerly areas in the
British Isles in warmer historical times. If it has been done, it's too late
to suggest it's impossible.
~~~
Alex3917
"But in fact, we know that grapes were grown at more northerly areas in the
British Isles in warmer historical times. If it has been done, it's too late
to suggest it's impossible."
That's vitis labrusca, I was talking about vitis vinifera. I have no doubt it
can be done to some extent, but there's a large difference between being able
to do something in theory and having large quantities of good wine for
relatively cheap.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AirBnB for Experiences - Designed for Failure? - coolestcool
http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/24/dead-pooling-gidsy-acquired-by-getyourguide-in-a-berlin-insiders-deal/
======
coolestcool
I've always loved the concept of an AirBnb for experiences and even considered
using a model similar for my own business. That said, overtime, I realized
there were several issues with the business model - The founder of Skyara (one
of the first AirBnb's for experiences) was the first that realized the model
didn't work.
The founder @stevenou shared this a few months back:
"While in theory it sounds like a great concept, the key to realize is that no
"AirBnB for Activites" can ever be an "AirBnB for Activities." What I mean by
that is: the part of the "AirBnB for X" business model that makes it work is
the part where you have a very low marginal cost to renting out an existing
resource that, presumably, is getting very low utilization. I.e. a car sitting
in a garage, an empty couch. The marginal cost of renting those out... is
basically zero. However, with Activities, the resource at play is actually
time! A person needs to take two hours out of their day to offer a walking
tour, cooking class, etc. Arguably, time is the most scarce resource we have.
People value their time highly, which means the marginal cost (in this case
the opportunity cost) of them offering an activity is very high. Add to that
the fact that individuals do not benefit from any sort of economy of scale,
and that most likely means that they cannot compete with businesses on price
(which is arguably where AirBnB is winning in its biggest market, NYC).
So of course, I'm not saying an "AirBnB for Activities" is not possible, but
some fundamental problems make it significantly more difficult than one might
initially expect. Personally I think Vayable is doing a great job, but time
will tell..."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Terry Fox - jkuria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Fox
======
elsurudo
We were taught about him in Canadian elementary school (it feels like every
school year). I guess I assumed he was known just in Canada for this reason,
but didn't realize he even had reach outside of Canada.
~~~
kenned3
Pretty much every city in Canada has a "Terry Fox" public school as well.
~~~
garyrichardson
I grew up in his home town of Port Coquitlam.. I didn't go to his high school
(The Terry Fox Senior Secondary), but my library was the Terry Fox library.
Annually there are "Terry Fox runs" this time of year. I haven't heard
anything about dates etc this year. I suspect the funky start of the school
year and COVID19 will overshadow it. I sure hope this doesn't kill it into the
future.
------
ainar-g
I actually learned about Terry Fox relatively recently when I was binging
through J. J. McCullough's YouTube channel. He touches on the subject in his
video[1] about historical events and people mentioned on the background of the
pages in the Canadian passport. Do watch it if you're interested in Canada.
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=astJLpEVa9c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=astJLpEVa9c)
------
dblohm7
Here’s a 1981 documentary about Terry Fox:
[https://youtu.be/xtrUHkACvO4](https://youtu.be/xtrUHkACvO4)
------
cuboid
I live in Thunder Bay myself, I may go see the monument sometime.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Games on GitHub - nodivbyzero
https://github.com/leereilly/games
======
unsignedqword
Many companies in the games industry have settled on using Perforce or SVN (or
more recently Plastic DVCS) internally as, out of the box, it can handle both
code and non-code assets (i.e. large binary files) well in tandem. Git has
problems with the latter - people have tried to correct this with solutions
like git-annex and git-LFS but these have failed to catch on thus far.
~~~
kirushik
The problem with non-code assets in git is (or at least it was for us) not
with such assets being large blobs with weird in-git storage model, but with
such assets being _unmergeable_ in case of two parallel edits of the same
object.
Since merges are not generally possible (except for some special usecases),
one would expect version-control system's help in avoiding parallel edit
situation at all. This is where svn's centralized server helps, allowing
"pessimistic locking" of certain files and folders. AFAIK, Plastic also offers
such a feature, when git cannot do anything like that by design.
~~~
rmc
> _The problem with non-code assets in git is (or at least it was for us) not
> with such assets being large blobs with weird in-git storage model, but with
> such assets being _unmergeable_ in case of two parallel edits of the same
> object._
I tried storing large images in git once. And one problem was when git would
try to do garbage collection every now and then. And start diffing all the
images against each other to repack them to use less space. This was very CPU
and memory intensive.
~~~
ido
git lfs was buggy/clunky for a while but it now seems to actually be pretty
stable and usable.
We've been using it pretty much since it was integrated into github.
------
oneeyedpigeon
Quite a few (well, 2 out of 3 or 4 that I've tried) of the project's off-
github websites are either domain-squatted or, worse, result in "your computer
has been infected" popups. Obviously, that's going to happen with projects as
they get abandoned, but I think the compiler of a list such as this one has a
responsibility to make sure everything's legit.
------
gcatalfamo
I don't know if this was reason it was posted for, but looking at how the code
is structured in some of hose projects is extremely insightful for game
making.
Too bad that, at least in the games I looked at, all the non-game code (e.g.
Google play integration, analytics, etc..) is missing.
~~~
ewjordan
And when you're actually taking games to market, all that non-game code makes
up a huge percentage of the development cost. It's highly predictable code
that most game devs have done many times before (which is why I always argue
that once the gameplay is locked and loaded, which it should be before you go
into large-team production [if there are still big changes to make, you should
stay in prototype and _not_ have a full team doing production quality art, UI,
sound, servers, etc that might need to be replaced], mobile game dev projects
should always be waterfall, not agile), but it's still a lot of work, and it
can't ever be 100% reused.
Speaking just to mobile, you need to add, on top of "the game" itself:
- scalable persistence that handles play on multiple devices and platforms (add load testing to this if you're "Doing It Right")
- in-app-purchase integration
- metrics instrumentation, collection, analysis, etc.
- social integration: authentication, sharing, invites, leaderboards, etc., often with backend components, not to mention the hell that is integrating with social SDKs and keeping them all up to date
- dynamic content loading, if your game is too big to fit in the ipa/apk
- TOS, legal, COPPA compliance dialogs/data filtering
- a proper audio integration (chances are your initial approach, whatever it was, won't work for a full game)
- dynamically loaded variables system (can't do an App Store push every time you need to change something about the game tuning)
- A/B testing
- customer service mechanisms
- ads
- push and local notifications
- user acquisition attribution (to know which ad networks are effective at pushing users)
- landing page optimization
- platform nonsense (a carrier just pushed a new version of Android to one of their phones that has a crappy GPU driver whose bugs are only fully exposed in the latest OS version? Congrats, now half of your shaders draw black squares, have fun tracking that one down, esp. since that particular driver/chipset combo only exists in phones sold in Canada and eastern Europe!)
- and so on, when I was in this field we'd end up with lists 40-50 items long of basic stuff that every game needs, along these lines
It gets _really_ messy, "the game" is really just the barest start. All the
stuff I listed above can easily take 50%+ of total man-hours in a dev cycle,
even if you have well-factored code from other games to work off of, just
because it all requires game-specific UI and design (both of which always have
some non-zero code cost).
I imagine single-player premium desktop games are quite a bit simpler, but
I've never had the pleasure.
~~~
NTripleOne
Jeez, can't remember the last time I saw... well, anything relating to COPPA -
it was probably when signing up for a forum in the early 2000s.
------
harryjo
Got a DMCA hit pretty quick:
[https://github.com/FullScreenShenanigans/FullScreenMario/](https://github.com/FullScreenShenanigans/FullScreenMario/)
------
da4c30ff
What, no id[1] in the major companies?
EDIT: Nevermind I found it way down the list, but still, id is pretty major
company when it comes to games.
[1]: [https://github.com/id-Software](https://github.com/id-Software)
~~~
ComodoHacker
>If you'd like to add a repository to the list, please create an Issue, or
fork this repository and submit a pull request.
------
SticksAndBreaks
[https://github.com/spring](https://github.com/spring)
[https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K](https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K)
are missing in strategy
------
kzrdude
Here's another nice once, if you'd like faithful remake of Settlers II
[https://github.com/Return-To-The-Roots/s25client](https://github.com/Return-
To-The-Roots/s25client)
------
INTPenis
How on earth could they miss OpenRTS?
------
edem
Very cool idea. I've just added my library to the list of libraries (opened a
PR).
------
Endy
I never knew how much I need this. Thank you.
------
ronny2
Opensource things are always good.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
China's Largest Base Has Replicas Of Taiwan Presidential Building, Eiffel Tower - ycombonator
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33591/chinas-biggest-base-has-huge-replicas-of-taiwans-presidential-building-and-the-eiffel-tower
======
Simulacra
A couple of footnotes: This has been known since 2015,
[https://multimedia.scmp.com/2017/graphics/ZhuriheBase/index....](https://multimedia.scmp.com/2017/graphics/ZhuriheBase/index.html)
Coordinates from Wikipedia FYI: 42° 15′ 35″ N, 112° 45′ 22″ E
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Elon Musk's high-speed Hyperloop train makes more sense for Mars than California - allenleein
http://thetrigger.io/share/trends/55a3b1b6d2b47ffd74622f8a
======
27182818284
As I understand it, the idea was put out there because of how incredibly
underwhelming the high-speed train plans were for California. Musk noted that
even after a decade of work they wouldn't have one of the fastest trains in
the world, but instead a mediocre-at-best train with enormous expense. Then
something happened and the "nudge" became more real when the press started
asking Musk about it and taking it much more seriously. So now they're doing
the correct thing and building a space track.
>This idea is not new; it has existed for decades. But while a vactrain sounds
like a good concept, it's relatively unfeasible to actually build.
>This idea is not new; it has existed for decades. But while an electric car
sounds like a good concept, it's relatively unfeasible to actually build.
>This idea is not new; it has existed for decades. But while a commercial
space company sounds like a good concept, it's relatively unfeasible to
actually build.
------
thomasrossi
Everytime I read of Mars settlements and I think of eventual childs born
there, I feel there is something wrong. It's a strange feeling. Nonetheless,
the chance of visiting Mars is super cool and I'd take it!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New social network to help startups with their promotion launched - startuppers
http://www.startuppers.org
======
startuppers
Dear all, I would like to announce, that after some months of work, we have
just launched new network for startups - www.startuppers.org. We would love to
have your startup featured on our site, so do not hesitate to submit. Any type
of feedback - negative or positive, is highly welcome. Thank you very much.
Marek Novotny, founder of Startuppers.org
~~~
krishkash66
It's a very good link Mr. Startuppers. Thanks For sharing your valuable info.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Something is wrong with Connecticut - johan_larson
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2017/06/something_is_wrong_with_connecticut.html
======
nxsynonym
CTs main problem is that it has no identity or culture of its own. It's
biggest draw is that it's close to other cultural hubs (BOS and NYC).
Why pay crazy taxes to live in a place where the only thing to do is leave?
I guess if you like soul-less cities, shopping malls, highways, cheap chain-
restaurants and identical suburban neighborhoods then it's a good place to
live.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Modern C, Second Edition - matt_d
https://gustedt.wordpress.com/2019/09/18/modern-c-second-edition/
======
k_sze
How does this book compare with "21st Century C"?
I know that, unlike "Modern C", "21st Century C" can't possibly cover C17
because that book was released in 2014.
But otherwise, what would be notable differences? In terms of style,
correctness, idiom, depth, and breadth?
~~~
AlexeyBrin
C17/C18 is a minimal "bugfix release" to C11, mostly standard clarifications.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C18_(C_standard_revision)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C18_\(C_standard_revision\))
------
syphilis2
Is there a place to report errors? I've just skimmed through and the pdf has
some possible formatting bugs: tables inside code blocks, page breaks
splitting the tops of code blocks, small things like that.
~~~
bloodytux
[http://modernc.gforge.inria.fr/bugs.html](http://modernc.gforge.inria.fr/bugs.html)
~~~
Jedd
Which just redirects to this:
[https://gforge.inria.fr/tracker/?group_id=6881](https://gforge.inria.fr/tracker/?group_id=6881)
But the 'Bugs' link is literally on the first page of the book.
------
skocznymroczny
I'd love a language that feels like a more convenient C. C as it is, with some
niceties like built-in containers with some nice syntax sugar. Maybe someday
Zig will get there.
~~~
gnode
Why would conservative use of C++ not meet this mark? It's highly compatible
with C, has container types, ranged for-loops, operator overloading which
makes use of container types more sugary.
~~~
DagAgren
"Conservative use" introduces a massive cognitive load of trying to figure out
what you are and what you aren't using.
And the ergonomics of modern C++ look absolutely horrid compared to actual
modern languages.
~~~
humanrebar
How is it a massive cognitive load? Use clang libraries and error out if there
are any operator declarations, for instance.
~~~
AndrewGaspar
"How is it a massive cognitive load? Just write a bunch of tooling to enforce
your rules!"
~~~
humanrebar
It's simpler than the tutorial example for python-clang. It's strictly less
work than a responsible unit test suite, and there's not much downside to
getting some details wrong on this particular application.
~~~
heinrich5991
>tutorial example for python-clang
Do you have a link? Your comment is the highest Google result for that quote.
------
fxleach
I guess no pre-ordering, the link is broken:
[https://www.manning.com/books/modern-c](https://www.manning.com/books/modern-c)
~~~
arthurcolle
PDF is here:
[https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/?group_id=6881](https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/?group_id=6881)
~~~
markdoubleyou
Wow, I wish more technical books used LaTeX for typesetting like this.
Beautiful.
~~~
mikece
Since you mention typesetting: I am working on a volunteer project that is
transcribing old, out of print books from the 1700s through early 1900s (all
public domain). For now the plan is simply to make them available online
formatted for web, e-readers, and PDF, but thought is being given to
formatting for print-on-demand. We've never done the latter so we have no idea
what tools would be best for that: is there a good reference for free
tools/software for doing page layout for physical books?
~~~
photojosh
Any connection to
[https://standardebooks.org/contribute/](https://standardebooks.org/contribute/)
or if not, are you online yet? Wouldn't mind having a look. (And also
interested in the print typesetting question.)
------
Santosh83
On a related note, do we have any fully complaint C11 compiler for MS Windows
or is using gcc under WSL (or a VM) the best option? I take it there is no C17
compliant compiler yet?
~~~
jeremyjh
You don’t need WSL to run gcc on windows. You can use the mingw distribution
to get a GNU tool chain that compiles a standard windows EXE.
~~~
Gibbon1
Stuff people 'just know'
mingw: For native build and execution. A lot of Windows IDE's will just work
with mingw.
msys2: For posix compatible build but native win32 targets. Useful when your
project uses autotools. Like when trying to build someones library. msys2 just
tends to work. Trying to get autotools to work under windows tends to exceed
my patience, time and brain cells.
cigwin: for a posix compatible build and runtime environment.
Also gcc can be built as a cross compiler. The two times I tried it is was
more straight forward that I would have thought.
~~~
badsectoracula
Note that msys2 isn't just for building programs, it provides a full bash
environment with many unix tools and a package manager (pacman, same as in
Arch Linux) to install more. The build environment is unixy enough to be able
to build more tools from source using the classic ./configure; make; make
install route (more or less, may need some modifications in the code).
For me my main use of msys2 is as a shell where i run scripts and command-line
utilities with the build stuff being a distant secondary use.
------
ausjke
The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook
- is arguably the best C programming book nowadays if you code in Linux/Unix,
the rest C books are most for ANSI C, that might be more useful for bare metal
embedded system that does not run a full multi-task POSIX OS?
------
sys_64738
Do people still use K&R these days?
~~~
Gibbon1
If someone tells you to use K&R take that as license to ignore their advice
from that point on.
~~~
valacmur98
I am using it to study C. Can you tell me the reason why you wouldn't
recommend it?
~~~
ufo
K&R is a well written book, and is very pleasant to read. IMO, it is one of
those books that everyone should read one day or the other.
The main thing to watch out about it these days is that K&R is a bit carefree
about the numerous ways where you can shoot yourself in the foot using C. For
example, K&R famously implements strcpy as `while( _dst++ =_ dst++);`. These
days, most people would say that code is excessively terse, and that you
shouldn't be using strcpy in the first place (because it can potentially
overflow the dst buffer).
~~~
einpoklum
You meant:
while ( _(dst++) =_ (src++))
I believe.
~~~
Gibbon1
while ((dst++) = (src++));
~~~
billforsternz
Both of these replies are missing the asterisks to indicate pointer
indirection. Probably HN is eating each asterisk, treating it as emphasis or
something.
Also terse it may be, but this (assuming the missing asterisks are restored)
is a good, idiomatic implementation of strcpy. Whether strcpy is good or evil
is a separate discussion.
------
aportnoy
Is this a good book, can anyone comment?
~~~
torstenvl
I'm not a fan so far. Lots of deliberately bad C code. Using uninitialized
variables, etc.
Explanation of jargon seems to take priority over explanation of the language
- the term "string literal" is explained before the concept of a function.
~~~
tym0
What book would you recommend as an alternative?
~~~
AlexeyBrin
_C Programming: A Modern Approach_ , 2nd Edition by King is a good beginner
book.
_21st Century C_ by Ben Kelemens is also a good book.
~~~
afroisalreadyin
I would second 21st Century C, it's an excellent book. It has a very pragmatic
approach, skipping features like unions that are not used in modern C, but
going into great detail on the important things like memory management.
~~~
flukus
Thirded, especially on the pragmatism, this by far the most pragmatic
programming book I've ever read. I fell in love with the C as a scripting
language parts
([https://github.com/RhysU/c99sh](https://github.com/RhysU/c99sh)), now I
don't have much of a use for a scripting language to sit between bash and
"proper language" (apart from some occasional awk).
~~~
RhysU
Glad it has been of use!
------
mobilemidget
[https://www.manning.com/books/modern-c](https://www.manning.com/books/modern-c)
Gives me a 404?
------
big_chungus
As long as he's publishing under a CC license, it might be nice to release the
LaTeX source as well. PDF is usually good enough, but sometimes needs to be
converted to other formats; you usually get best results going latex->epub
than pdf->epub. Some devices it's a lot easier to be able to change attributes
to better fit the form factor.
~~~
compressedgas
If the source was available, we could fix all the formatting errors.
------
jakedub4d2
Where is the Holy C edition :) (PS. I know about his rants on ycomb) If you
can get past his rants, some of his concepts end up pretty neat. To experience
it, just download the ~12mb OS and run it in VM Virtual Box pretty quickly.
Choose 64bit alternative OS. [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj43x/gods-
lonely-progra...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj43x/gods-lonely-
programmer)
------
vymague
Link for the code examples on
[http://modernc.gforge.inria.fr/](http://modernc.gforge.inria.fr/) is broken.
Should be .../5298/code.zip instead of 5297, I think.
------
hasahmed
Cool stuff!
Typo in first paragraph of
[https://gustedt.wordpress.com/category/c/](https://gustedt.wordpress.com/category/c/)
(mayor instead of major)
------
ukyrgf
Scandalous language on page 3!
> printf("element␣%zu␣is␣%g,␣\tits␣square␣is␣%g\n",
------
mister_hn
love it, thank you for giving the PDF out for free
------
nullbyte
A little off topic, but that is some terrible art on the book cover.
~~~
Etheryte
To be fair, I don't think I've ever seen a serious, hardcore programming book
that looked nice. They're either neutral, or just downright weird [1].
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs#/media/File:SICP_cover.jpg)
~~~
wutbrodo
Aw man I was gonna hold up SICP as a counterexample
------
mrspeaker
Damn it, two giant gross "toenail fungus" ads taking up most of the page -
shocked me a bit and I closed the page really quickly (and probably now
associate this book with fungal diseases - choose your ad providers
carefully!)... Is there a non-fungus-y link to this book somewhere?
~~~
boring_twenties
I was theoretically aware that there are people out there that don't use ad
blockers, but I sure as heck didn't expect to find one on hackernews.
I'd recommend uBlock Origin.
~~~
dlivingston
That's an ethical question that I've weighed a decent bit. I don't use ad
blockers personally, as ads are truly the reason most of the internet is free.
If ads are too intrusive, I will 'vote with my clicks' and avoid that
particular website in the future.
There are privacy concerns with this, of course, but DuckDuckGo and modern
Safari (with cross-site tracking prevention) helps mitigate a bit of it.
~~~
iamnotacrook
"If ads are too intrusive, I will 'vote with my clicks' and avoid that
particular website in the future."
They'll never even notice, and in the meantime you're at risk of all sorts of
trackers, malware etc. Plus...you're seeing adverts all the time. I used
chrome on android the other day and I couldn't believe how many there were, or
how annoying. If you're not clicking on them it means nothing anyway, as far
as I can tell. I remember back in the day sites saying "click on the ads - it
helps us" but I don't think that's a thing any more. Perhaps I should knock up
a script to visit random sites with ads and maybe click on a few, in a
container/vm. Would that help?
~~~
zten
> Perhaps I should knock up a script to visit random sites with ads and maybe
> click on a few, in a container/vm. Would that help?
Don't worry, there's enough publisher-side fraud already doing that for you!
------
ncmncm
Contradiction in terms.
~~~
saagarjha
There’s a lot of new things in C since the K&R book came out.
~~~
ncmncm
Half of them cribbed from C++.
~~~
saagarjha
Not really; C has a number of things that C++ never adopted such as restrict
and partial structure initialization (although this might be coming to C++).
~~~
ncmncm
Half does mean some are, some aren't.
"//" comments, function prototypes, const, atomic, inline, complex, mid-block
definitions are.
Runtime variable local arrays, designated initializers, restrict not. C++
cribbed designated initializers from C, coming in '20\. Restrict was cribbed,
late, from Fortran.
~~~
wahern
> C++ cribbed designated initializers from C
AFAIU C++ will require that you initialize the members _in_ _the_ _same_
_order_ as defined. It also won't permit you to exclude any definitions. Why
even bother?
Somewhat controversially, C permits you to define members multiple times, with
the last definition taking precedence. Compilers sometimes warn about this,
but I've _personally_ found the behavior useful--I'll write an API that
provides a macro with default values yet which allows the user to override any
particular definition. I don't think I've ever had a bug in an initialization,
at least not involving multiple definitions. That seems like a very easy and
superficially useful diagnostic to write, but which prevents useful behaviors;
behaviors that named initializer's were deliberately designed to provide.
~~~
ncmncm
In a C++ designated initialization, members _may_ be omitted. (You were told
wrong.)
There is probably no reason to enforce order unless unmentioned elements have
a non-trivial destructor, so that could be relaxed in a future Standard.
Members that need destruction would need to be destroyed in the opposite
order; enforcing order allows reusing code already generated for the
containing-object destructor, but in many interesting cases (e.g. C structs)
there are no destructors to run anyway. In the others, there is no reason why
it would need to re-use the class destructor.
~~~
wahern
I stand corrected, thank you.
For posterity (I like to leave breadcrumbs for myself):
[https://github.com/cplusplus/draft/blob/dc2bff0/source/decla...](https://github.com/cplusplus/draft/blob/dc2bff0/source/declarations.tex#L4614)
[https://github.com/cplusplus/draft/blob/dc2bff0/source/decla...](https://github.com/cplusplus/draft/blob/dc2bff0/source/declarations.tex#L4693)
[https://github.com/cplusplus/draft/blob/dc2bff0/source/compa...](https://github.com/cplusplus/draft/blob/dc2bff0/source/compatibility.tex#L586)
------
sigjuice
IMHO, the phrase “C is a compiled programming language” is super confusing.
Edit: there are many languages that have both compilers and interpreters.
There are several C interpreters as well. The classification of languages as
“interpreted” or “compiled” does not appear to be a sound concept, IMHO.
~~~
KevinEldon
What about the phrase do you find to be super confusing? It is a short summary
(even labeled as takeaway 0.1.2.1 in the text) of the first paragraph of
section 1.2. That paragraph explains how C source code is just text and that
it is turned into an executable program with a compiler. In context the phrase
seems more than clear.
~~~
sigjuice
The explanation of what a compiler is and what it does is perfectly fine. A C
compiler is how most of us do C. But going to “C is a compiled programming
language” is quite the wrong generalization IMHO.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon allegedly stealing tech from startups under the pretext of funding them - vvpvijay
https://androidrookies.com/amazon-allegedly-stealing-tech-from-startups-under-the-pretext-of-funding-them/
======
merricksb
Big discussion about this topic a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23929044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23929044)
(1085 points/349 comments)
------
smart_jackal
Why bother investing and prying when you can simply buy those companies off
once they become large enough?
~~~
fredley
Cheaper to make a small investment, take everything you want and let the
company fail. Simple economics.
~~~
smart_jackal
That's true but on the other side, ideas are sold dime a dozen, only their
successful implementation proves in hindsight that the idea was worth
something. Stealing ideas doesn't mean much as they are available aplenty but
a startup which successfully implemented that idea is worth something.
~~~
starfallg
Ideas can be promising but implemented sub-optimally. Using this method, they
get inside information on where things can be improved. Then they have the
financial clout, the data analytics and the resources in place to create a
successful final product.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
VITALS PRO That Can Alert Before Heart Attack and Strokes - seextrpmaw
VITALS PRO is the first device who works on EIS Sensing Technology and detects Troponin (T and I) micro particles presence in users body. Through this innovative validated technology it can alert users before any future Heart Attacks, Strokes or a Cardiac Arrest. Read More at - https://goo.gl/TOHXM7
======
seextrpmaw
A start-up company named Vitals Pro announced the launch of their wearable
cardiac health monitoring device which is available as smart-watch and
wristband. This device is specially made with many unique features, and
enables users to easily monitor their cardiac health in modern lifestyle. The
company has said that it is the first device, which can provide real-time
medical grade heart health insights and it could save millions of lives every
year from stroke, heart attack, and cardiac arrest. Also, it's the first
portable and user-friendly medical device that can give real-time alerts
before a cardiac arrest and stroke will occur, it will also notify family
Doctor of client situation anytime-anywhere.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The dumbest ad ever. - gr366
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/06/01/theDumbestAdEver.html
======
sbierwagen
It's always nice to see Dave speaking knowledgeably on a topic which he knows
nothing about.
You'll never see an interchangeable lens camera with a cell phone in it,
simply because high quality lenses have big elements, which gather lots of
light. As I am sure you will be surprised to hear, big pieces of glass result
in big lenses.
Optics is, more or less, a solved problem. We hit hard physical limits long
ago. You'll never see a _compact_ full frame 35mm sensor digital camera. It
just can't happen.
Can you imagine talking into a pro DSLR? Using it as a every day carry phone?
The D700 masses 995 grams, and that's just the body! Add another 500 grams for
the lens; is that something you're just going to slip into a pocket? How are
you going to use it, by holding it to your head by the lens barrel, then
terminating a call by pressing the shutter release?
It's generally a good idea in consumer electronics design to not make your
users look like fools. Nokia forgot this when they made the N-Gage, to their
detriment.
(And, of course, he misspells Lumix as Lunix. That's pretty funny, though,
I'll give him that.)
~~~
abstractbill
Certainly I agree pro cameras won't have _actual_ cellphones in them, but I'm
pretty sure they _will_ soon all have data modems that connect to the existing
cellphone network. I think that was the point the article was trying to make.
~~~
potatolicious
But what would be the point?
Pro cameras - where you shoot in RAW mode, and do post-processing later at
home on your gorgeous widescreen IPS display, curate it, and then upload to
your favourite hobbyist sharing site (Flickr, SmugMug, etc). That doesn't
really lend itself to requiring a wireless modem.
I can see integration of GPSes into DSLRs - geocoding is a hotly requested
feature particularly by hobbyists, but modems?
The absolute top-end Canon cameras have WiFi dongles that can wireless upload
photos as they are shot to a storage unit. This is really to facilitate quick
review in a studio setting - you aren't tethered by a wire, but can review the
photo on a big screen very quickly after a picture without popping the memory
card.
But while you're out and about? It seems pointless. The uses of a pro camera
do not include "hey guys I'm at a pizza place. Look at the size of this
sucker!", which is really where a 3G modem seems useful.
~~~
neilc
A 3G modem for backup would be pretty useful: I'd feel more secure while
traveling to know that all my photos were wirelessly synced with my desktop PC
or the cloud, so that if I lost or damaged a memory card I wouldn't lose
anything. And as you say, avoiding the need for a cable to sync photos would
be very useful.
But I agree, this isn't a huge deal.
------
julius_geezer
I trust my friends to organize an intervention if they ever find me sending
them pictures of pizza joints (especially real time) or calling them "peeps".
------
handelaar
Dave seems to have kneejerked his way into misunderstanding the ad.
Their sale point is "phone cameras are shit and our camera is better". They're
not saying that cameras are bad if they're connected to the world. They're
saying that cameras are bad if they take shit pictures.
Having held an HTC Hero and an iPhone, I'm here to say that they're not wrong.
Those cameras _suck_ as cameras.
~~~
MrRage
> Having held an HTC Hero and an iPhone, I'm here to say that they're not
> wrong. Those cameras suck as cameras.
I disagree. There are two sayings about photography I've heard a few times. 1)
The best camera is the one that you have with you. 2) The novice photographer
wishes he/she had a better camera, but the experienced photograph wishes
he/she had better lighting.
Re #1, I have a high end point and shoot that's really nice. But I almost
never use it now because my iPhone 3GS is always with me. I find that some of
the best photograph opportunities come when you least expect it.
Re: #2, most of photography is lighting and and composition. If you have
crappy light (that includes using a flash) it doesn't matter if you have some
$10,000 camera and lens. If you take photos with good light and have an eye
for composition it won't matter to much which camera you use.
Now saying that, some phone cameras really do lack in resolution. My iPhone
3GS has decent resolution, but iPhones before that take washed out looking
photos. Of course there's other limitations like no zoom, you can't print out
a huge poster version of your photos, and it can't do more "advaced" things
like long exposures. But I and many others have taken decent looking photos on
iPhones. It's Good Enough.
Edit: One more thing. I like the challenge of taking photos on a simple
camera. You don't get distracted by messing with features and have to kinda
learn what makes a photo good.
~~~
natemartin
I think you made the same points as me, but put it much better.
The purchasing jump for consumers is going to be cameraphone -> dslr, not
cameraphone -> point and shoot
------
turnersauce
I'm not really sure if the author is correct about what's happening. That all
depends on exactly how much of Panasonic's revenue comes from selling
professional quality SLR cameras versus its cheaper point-and-shoot models.
Anyway, I don't think that sales of the former are in any kind of jeopardy
because of cell phone cameras.
~~~
potatolicious
Even point and shoots aren't really threatened by cell phone cameras - they
cover two completely separate contexts. In fact, there are few use cases where
the cell phone has really stolen the show from point and shoots.
Don't get me wrong, imaging capabilities on cell phones are important and
useful - but IMHO they've largely carved out _brand new_ use cases for
themselves rather than stealing from other camera products.
I think Panasonic's positioning isn't too bad. They're saying "we're not your
crappy, blurry cell phone camera. If you want memories that last, buy our
stuff" - which seems like a wise enough stance to differentiate themselves.
After all, the really cheap point and shoots do resemble cell phone cameras in
terms of quality - being above that certainly helps.
------
natemartin
I saw this ad in SF a few days ago, and had similar thoughts.
The ad is specifically showing a point-and-shoot camera, not an SLR.
Point-And-Shoot cameras might be better than most cell phone cameras now, but
I'm not convinced they are better enough to justify carrying around an extra
device. For most people a cameraphone is _good enough_ , and if you want
better quality, the step up to a point-and-shoot isn't really worth it. If you
want better quality, go for an SLR.
There's a saying among photographers that "The best camera is the one you have
with you." I have an iPhone, a point-and-shoot, and an SLR. I can't remember
the last time I took out the point-and-shoot. I use the SLR when I know I'm
going to be taking a lot of photos. And I use the iPhone camera constantly.
I think panasonic is mistaken if they think cameraphones are a fad, or that
this advertising will make people jump to using their point-and-shoots.
Instead, why don't they embrace the trend, and work with the phone
manufacturers? Why not talk to Nokia, or HTC, and say "You guys concentrate on
the phone part, leave the camera to us." Put in quality optics, and advertise
the phone with "Camera by Panasonic"
------
starkfist
He could have at least taken a picture of the ad...
~~~
gr366
This looks like an LA billboard version of the campaign...
[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GIchwvJ-
aNk/S_xoQsYK1kI/AAAAAAAAQ6...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GIchwvJ-
aNk/S_xoQsYK1kI/AAAAAAAAQ64/P-VT_UoHpCs/s1600/Lumix+camera+billboard.jpg)
Note to another comment thread on this post that they are advertising a point-
and-shoot camera.
Edit: and I noticed the copy along the bottom advertises a touchscreen —
that's getting very close to smartphone territory, no?
------
ams6110
All in one gadgets are convenient but will never replace single-purpose
devices for serious use.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introducing Zapp: Continuous integration testing for iOS and KIF - puls
http://corner.squareup.com/2011/11/ios-integration-testing-2.html
======
JackDanger
KIF+Zapp is awesome, it lets our iOS engineers and Rails engineers keep up our
testing culture. Recommended.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
InstaSource: On-demand tech magicians at your service - pearlsteinj
http://instasource.co/splash/hn
======
minimaxir
No, you can't just do a "Magic for X" and get away with it.
Skilled labor is not something you want done "Insta."
~~~
pearlsteinj
Hey Max, founder here. While we don’t deny that we believe a no interface
interface is a delightful way to receive services, we do believe that certain
people have use for a immediate technical assistance for everything from SSL
installation and word-press tweaks to writing a query for a large data set or
quick app debugging
~~~
minimaxir
And what happens if there's a server wipe while installing SSL? How can you
accurately recommend improvements to query data in a data set if you don't
know the schema/scale?
Magic is fine for a no interface interface since no human interaction is
necessary. If a random faceless person on the Internet was touching _my_
technical property, there had better be sufficient assurance of liability in
play because there is no element of trust.
~~~
sarreph
> there had better be sufficient assurance of liability in play because there
> is no element of trust
_This_ is the most powerful counter-point against such a service. The reason
why Magic works so well is because your take-out or flowers order being 20
mins late is not the same as losing business data.
That said, I'm not _completely_ against the idea if the outsourcing method is
made more transparent and it turns out there are both high levels of quality
and liability assurance.
------
amelius
I want a system that can build an API and corresponding UI for any labor of my
choice :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
L.A. podcasting festival is this weekend. This year, there's a live stream - MichaelApproved
http://lapodfest.com/
======
MichaelApproved
The events start tonight. It's at the Sofitel Hotel, near the Beverly Center
mall.
If you stream it, you'll have access to shows for up to 3 weeks after.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How do you show that you're a great group of founders? - throwaway_19361
Hey Hackers I’m using a throwaway partly because I feel I may come off as naive but also partly because I think a lot of great start ups are facing the same problem I am.
I’ve been reading a lot of the posts on HN and have read through some of the articles that YC has and I was delighted to see how important a great team of co-founders is to the success of a startup. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been working non-stop for the last 6 months on an awesome website idea with two of my best friends from college and I couldn’t be happier. The work is impossible, the hours punishing but goddammit if we don’t love every minute of it. I came up with the idea but with every day I feel dirtier putting that in writing. I had a thought and some ambition but with my co-founders we’ve got something completely different and much much better. Every day we think of new directions to take ourselves in, bouncing ideas off each other, nurturing our original plan, but always thinking of some new opportunity for the site we didn’t think of before.
Anyways let’s get to the bare bones of the matter. We love our product, but we love our group more. We’ve been getting ready for a release in a few months time (shorter than a year, we have a date but I’m trying to keep this general) and have been looking into some funding options and some help guiding us through the quagmire of the startup world. In YC we found the potential for both so we put together an application and sent it off. We thought it was strong but there’s this nagging feeling in the back of my mind. We had plenty of room to describe our product and space to talk about ourselves as individuals but our company is much more than the sum of its parts. So my question is this HN, how can I convey this through an application form? How can I convey the way we all perfectly compliment each other’s strengths to form a singular thinking entity, how can I show how well we can support each other when things go wrong or someone messes up? Thanks for your time guys!
======
ShawnJG
if you dig deep on this site you will find examples of written applications
and video submissions that were successful. That should give you an idea, just
an idea mind you of what YC is looking for. While it seems you're coming up
with a multitude of ideas for your project I will concentrate on producing
some limited scope of what you have to show. This is not a Hollywood edition
so razzle dazzle will not get you far. Substance is the key. If your idea was
well articulated and got your point across, PG and the rest of the team will
be able to evaluate application properly. You have until October 10, so look
over your application and be concise and direct. if you've already
accomplished that way and hope for the best, if not edit your application and
resubmit. Good luck excavation!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hall of api shame: boolean trap - agonzalezro
http://ariya.ofilabs.com/2011/08/hall-of-api-shame-boolean-trap.html
======
gregonicus
Interesting article. I would help if all of the links worked. I found 3 that
did not, returning the message "This domain is registered for one of our
customers" (CloudDNS). These were the links under qt.nokia.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Mobile analytics aggregator? - llaxsll
I've been driving myself nuts this past couple of weeks going back and forth between mixpanel, google analytics, bit.ly stats and my custom reports.<p>Most of my time I'm on my mobile .. I refuse to believe that there aren't people out there that haven't been facing the same issue as I am for much longer time. So I surely must be missing something.<p>Is there a good analytics aggregator that stitches all this data into a unified dashboard for mobile out there? I did a quick search, but didn't come up with anything interesting.
======
neuromancer2600
Ego (<http://ego-app.com>) does something like it on iPhone and iPad. Maybe
it's worthwhile getting in touch with Garrett to figure out how easy/hard it
would be to integrate bit.ly and mixpanel.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The best way to nab your dream job out of college? Be born rich - known
http://qz.com/399115/the-best-way-to-nab-your-dream-job-out-of-college-be-born-rich/
======
paulhauggis
"The qualities most commonly used to sort applications, in descending order,
are school prestige, extracurricular activities and grades. Well down the line
are standardized tests, previous employment and diversity"
The funny thing is that all of the companies that are put on a pedestal here
on HN do exactly this: Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Many silicon valley
startups and companies focus more on education and school than actual work
experience. I thought it was one of the most 'progressive' places in the US?
Instead, it seems like your are looked down upon for not having the right
education.
I've worked for many companies large and small (none in Silicon Valley) and
the only think we looked at was work experience and outside related
experience. An employer just wants to know if the person can do the job. I
think the writer of this article is stuck in the silicon valley bubble, which
doesn't represent the rest of the country.
"movement from the very bottom to the very top of the economic ladder has
become exceedingly rare,"
I think it's always been rare. Even if you start out at the bottom, you can
make it to the top. But most people aren't willing to put in the effort.
When my friends in college were out partying, I was working on my career and
learning new skills. 10 years later, I've had great jobs and now run my own
business. Most of them are in the same spot they were 10 years ago: in debt
and little job prospects because they never worked on their skill sets.
All of the people I know that are successful have the same thing in common as
me: we all worked our butts off and sacrificed our free time to get ahead. If
you don't have the connections, this is what it takes.
------
mtuncer
It is similar to saying "money does not make you happy, but lets you seek it
at more places"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened? - cjauvin
https://blog.growthbot.org/chatbots-were-the-next-big-thing-what-happened
======
chatmasta
Chatbots were never the “next big thing” by any measurable metric other than
artificial hype created by the companies trying to create a new platform for
extracting revenue and data from users.
For this argument to make any sense, there would need to be data that showed
growing usage of chatbots, followed by a plateau and then a drop off. I’m not
sure what that data looks like, but I’m pretty sure there was never a high
growth phase where users were actually interacting with the chatbots. It was
all hype created by Facebook and a few idiotic VCs who wasted money on what
they thought would be the “next App Store.”
I, and many others, were saying around the time of this hype that chatbots
would never become a category defining product, simply due to inherent
usability flaws in their design that have been discussed ad nauseum.
The only people surprised that chatbots failed to become the “next big thing”
are the people who mistakenly thought they ever would be. This assumption was
never grounded in any real data of user desires or real problems. Chatbots
were then, and are now, a solution looking for a problem. I’m not surprised at
all.
~~~
qznc
I fully agree with you. I also dismissed Google Glass and other hypes. I feel
smart about that.
On the other hand, if someone would have pitched Facebook to me, I would have
also dismissed it. I keep that mind to stay humble.
For any trend/hype there will always be people dismissing and praising it.
Thus, if it is successful or not, there will be people who say "I told you so"
afterwards.
It does not matter what a comment on HN says. You personally have to decide,
if you want to speculate/invest in some hype or not. You have to decide which
new technology you learn and which ones you ignore. In hindsight, it would
have been great to learn machine learning five years ago.
~~~
jandrese
Eh, Facebook was a natural evolution of social networks going back to MySpace,
Friendstr, SixDegrees. Each one fixing mistakes of the past and becoming the
next big thing until their own mistakes caught up to them.
The one that I dismissed was Twitter. In fact I thought it was a joke when I
first heard about it, something making fun of how long winded boring blog
posts on services like Livejournal tended to be. I also thought Vine would be
doomed to fail.
~~~
captain_perl
I also thought twitter was a joke until I realized most Americans are too lazy
to write a blog post, or even read one.
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American
public.” - Mencken (paraphrased)
[http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/09/no-one-ever-went-
brok...](http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/09/no-one-ever-went-broke-
underestimating.html)
~~~
dboreham
Twitter is the weird thing it is because it began with an SMS interface (hence
140 characters). It took off originally because you didn't need a smart phone
or a data plan or a PC to use it.
~~~
vilmosi
I thought it took off because they managed to get celebrities on it.
~~~
TheKarateKid
This. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore were amongst the first celebrities on
Twitter to actually post the content themselves rather than by a manager/PR
agent. This got a lot of media attention and many other celebs followed
shortly after.
I still remember finding it strange to see how Ashton and Demi personally
wrote short messages, since every form of communication from famous people at
the time were formal statements released via the press.
------
dchuk
It’s just like why all voice interfaces are shitty: no one has any idea what
the thing can or cannot do. They have a hidden user experience but the
interface makes it feel like you’re talking to a human, but it’s so far from
being a human.
These interfaces are almost like a dark pattern because of how bad they are.
~~~
degenerate
The audio interfaces are so bad I resort to one-word answers to every
question, to get me to a human as fast as possible.
_" Hi, in a few words, what can I help you with today?"_
> "billing"
_" It sounds like you have a question about your bill. I can help you with
that! If you can give a few words to describe the reason you are calling, I
can help you with your bill."_
> "billing"
_" OK, let me get you to a representative who can help!"_
... instead of spending 10 minutes wrangling with the vapid AI, I can actually
move on with my day after speaking to a human. Was this the future we
envisioned in the 90s? I think not. Some systems let you spam 0 (zero) and it
transfers to a human, but more and more are requiring you to interface with
the system in some way, even if disabled or impaired.
~~~
lostcolony
'Agent' or 'representiative' will usually do it faster.
But I hear you. I recently wanted to change the ownership of my cellphone
account. "Change ownership", "It sounds like you want to change cellphone
plans, is that correct?", "Agent", "Okay, let me get you to a representative".
The only tasks these things are equipped to do, are the tasks that I can do
via the company's online portal, and in a much less frustrating manner. I
wonder who is actually using these things.
~~~
gear54rus
It's likely that these are for company itself. Ain't no one got time to deal
with questions that are already explained on the website. This is made to
filter mindless or lazy drones who don't want to search and its totally fair.
~~~
Bartweiss
I've noticed that companies without IVR lines have switched from hold music to
recordings that repeatedly list all the things you can handle online instead.
It's annoying when my issue isn't on the list, since I'll have to hear it 50
times. And it's incredibly aggravating when my issue _is_ on the list, but the
website doesn't actually work right. But it's not hard to understand why it
happens.
~~~
lotyrin
I was on hold with my insurance to file a claim, the IVR loop said for the
third time "Did you know? You can file your claim online!" so I gave in, hung
up, went online and all the form asks for is my contact information (phone +
email) and my preferred method, so I enter email.
I get an email "Hey, I need to contact you so we can proceed, what method
would you prefer?" I reply "Email, please" provide the information I assume
the rep needs and which the online form should have been able to ask me and
offer "What else do you need".
"Is there a time I can call you and [go over the script and fill out a form on
my computer, as if you'd just stayed on hold hours ago]?"
10/10
~~~
behringer
I see you too have had to deal with AAA.
------
wjoe
I always found the chatbot idea odd, it felt like a step backwards in terms of
interaction. We started out with very basic input methods to computers, like
punch cards. Then we moved onto a command line interface where you could type
in words. Then we eventually got GUIs, graphics, websites, all sorts of
complex and nuanced ways to interact with a computer.
To go back to interfacing with a program using written language seemed like an
odd step. It's never been the most efficient way of doing something, and it
requires very advanced technology to accurately understand what people are
trying to say, in whatever slang, shorthand, or bad spelling/grammar they use.
Besides, it's not really dead, the tech just moved to "voice assistants"
rather than "chatbots" \- really just spoken word rather than written word.
And I'm not convinced that's the "revolution" most people are expecting
either. I'll stick to clicking buttons and typing things into my terminal.
~~~
jhbadger
Yes, it kind of reminds me of those old text adventures where you had to guess
what the computer would understand
>get sword
I don't know what "sword" is.
~~~
esolyt
Yes. There is a reason why we don't have text based adventures anymore.
Because we can have new ones with beautiful graphics and interfaces.
~~~
astrobe_
The human-machine communication issues are the same in both cases. When a
video game doesn't understand what you're trying to do, nothing would happen
or you get a negative, non-specific feedback. You think it is better because
you get distracted by the colors, lights and sounds but the communication
channel is as narrow, if not narrower actually.
By the way, what OP says may be true of a game like Dunnet. I don't know if it
is no more maintained or if it is kept that way because nostalgia, but more
recent text-based games (that is, one that could have been programmed by your
father instead of your grandfather) do way better than this. Just try some
popular MUD (the MMO version of text adventures), I'm sure you'll be
surprised.
------
gwbas1c
Whenever a company's phone is answered by an AI, it never does what I ask it
to do.
At that point I just push 0 and repeat "speak to a human."
Why, oh why, would any rational person think that this kind of technology was
about to suddenly take over everything?
This is a typical example of groupthink delusions.
~~~
scrooched_moose
Unintelligible grunting works too. After a few "I'm sorry, I didn't get that"
it always transfers me to a human.
The most annoying part of the experience to me is the menu items are always
~25 things I can trivially do on the website. No, I'm not calling to check my
balance, pay a balance, update payment information, etc. I'm calling because
your website specifically said that function isn't available online and I need
to speak to a representative.
~~~
raverbashing
My guess is that most people call for stuff that's easily doable in the
website, but they can't or won't use it
~~~
duderific
My father in law, who at 71 is fairly tech savvy, still defaults to calling
when he needs help with something. He's always saying "I was on the phone with
Apple for 3 hours yesterday" or "I was on the phone with Xfinity all day
yesterday."
I think if you're from a certain era, you just pick up the phone first and
want to talk to somebody, even if it might be pretty easy to find what you're
looking for online.
~~~
cpmouter
Must depend on eras, yes, because personally I avoid using the phone at all
costs. I'd rather take my eyes out with a spindle gouge than talk to someone
over the damn phone
------
mikesabat
1\. "Chatbots" is horrible branding. Especially with the hype coming near the
unfortunate timing of Russian bots interfering in the US election.
2\. "Chatbot" makes me think the user is leading the conversation. The bot is
interpreting what the human says, and then the bot tries to respond
appropriately. This leads to customer service or operations (like calling a
car) use cases. These specific use cases are hard to pilot, hard to get right
and really tricky to show value to the user or the company. I've never seen a
compelling problem/solution/use case for customer service chatbots. The math
doesn't work.
3\. Messaging is a real channel. It has advantages over phone calls, email,
direct mail and even face to face conversations. Chatbots just aren't the
right concept for the messaging channel. Dentist reminders work great for
instance.
4\. If you like thinking about this stuff, I do a podcast all about messaging.
It's called The Chat Bubble, and this episode is a good place to start if you
want to go deep on FB Messenger. [http://thechatbubble.com/2017/11/edit-
content-the-playbook-o...](http://thechatbubble.com/2017/11/edit-content-the-
playbook-overview-the-4-top-marketing-use-cases-for-facebook-messenger/)
~~~
ntsh34nteu09
I'm curious about #3. I've done some online chats with tech support where I
was chatting with a real person, and I found them infuriating. First there was
the very fake small talk the reps are required to do. Then there are the long
pauses between when I input information and when they react to it because
they're clearly chatting with 4 or more different people at the same time.
Then they don't really read what I wrote carefully and give answers that make
no sense or that I've already said don't work.
Like anything, it depends on how the person on the other end acts, but in my
experience, they're set up to make the interaction repulsive.
------
michaelbuckbee
I think it's equally wrong to just write off chatbots. They are a User
Interface tool that works in some areas and doesn't in others (and recently
has been dramatically misapplied).
Chatbots work well as an input when your hands are otherwise occupied:
\- driving/directions (Google Maps telling you where to go)
\- cooking (reciting a recipe)
They work well when you're requesting a specific thing:
\- "Play Everlasting Light by the Black Keys"
\- "Add Eggs to my shopping list"
\- Responding to Answers in Jeopardy: "What is Syracuse?"
They can work as an alternative CTA in certain narrow areas where they
function like a traditional "wizard". I've seen some ecommerce stats for
things like "Are you shopping for a Fathers Day Gift? Does your dad like
sports? Does your dad like gadgets? Want to see some popular gift ideas?"
Where they don't work:
\- complex NLP dependencies
\- data entry
\- when there is an expectation set that you're talking to a human.
~~~
wepple
I’m curious, are there any good Alexa/ghome apps that do recipes _well_
As in, not just reciting but allowing me to ask how much of X is needed or
what the next step is? That would be great
------
untog
Users never wanted chatbots, really. But platforms wanted them because it
meant yet another way to ensure content is locked away inside their platform.
So, platforms shout to the high heavens, and everyone rushes to adopt they
realise there is no audience.
~~~
bsbechtel
And customer service costs for companies could be reduced to basically zero.
------
bpicolo
> An oversized assumption has been that apps are ‘over’, and would be replaced
> by bots
That was never going to be the case for sufficiently complicated tasks with
enough decisions to make. Same reason Google Home/Echo are awkward interfaces
for almost anything other than getting music to start playing.
GUIs on phones/desktop are tremendously productive because they're information
rich and trivial to use. I can search, choose, customize, and purchase an item
on Amazon in like 15-30 seconds flat. A bot isn't going to beat that for the
general case.
~~~
rahoulb
> GUIs on phones/desktop are tremendously productive
They used to say that GUIs were toy interfaces and only CLIs could offer real
productivity. I don't know where chatbots are going but I wouldn't expect the
current state of the art to be anything like where they end up.
~~~
niftich
The reason the productivity of CLIs was often extolled is because throughout
most of interactive computing's lifetime, CLIs and scripting have been
intertwined.
It was possible and commonplace to invoke parameter-oriented CLIs from another
process, and use the CLI as a perfectly adequate API, while other interface
paradigms like TUIs and GUIs never quite achieved such ease of programmatic
manipulation.
~~~
yoz-y
CLIs are still vastly more productive for repetitive tasks and are quite
passable as an API. For one-off things GUIs are usually better.
------
neya
For me, Chatbots felt like almost a violation of my privacy. Many marketing
industry related sites would get your permission to send you an eBook, but
would slowly after a couple of days drop you a random message about an upsell
to their event/conference/webinar/coaching (some random high ticket value
item) and it's terrible than email spam because email is not intrusive, but
chatbots are VERY intrusive. Suddenly, my phone would buzz, my chrome would
send me a notification and my watch would vibrate all at the same time only to
find out that this shitty marketing firm had sent me something I don't care
about. And the worst ones are the ones that keep sending you stuff with no way
to opt out unless you resort to blocking them. These should be made illegal.
Another case study - I worked with a large pizza chain to implement chatbots
onto their site. In the end, I (although I knew I'd lose money) told them that
their basic add to cart, checkout experience on their e-commerce site was far
better than a chatbot asking you 101 questions to make a f __g pizza. I didn
't advice them based on just intuition, we actually setup Google analytics and
saw that the conversion rates were far better on the E-Commerce site and that
it was impossible for the IT team to keep up with the marketing team that kept
running promotions which led to tons of edge cases for their ordering flow.
So, another example of great technology, great potential, but destroyed by
greedy marketers, poor implementations and businesses that simply want to ruin
an otherwise perfectly customer work flow.
~~~
mikesabat
To your first point, Facebook has clear policy against sending a marketing
message more than 24 hours after a user messages in. They just haven't been
enforcing it. You can definitely report them in the app.
With SMS, in the US, it is illegal if a company is sending unwanted texts.
Covered in the TCPA - Telephone Consumer Protection Act ~2015. Any legitimate
provider will automatically opt you out of the campaign if you reply STOP. You
can also copy the text and forward it to the number that spells SPAM (7726).
They will send a bounceback and ask you what number sent the message.
It's super cludgy, but the carriers do seem to act on complaints, although it
can happen slowly.
------
floatingatoll
Chatbots have no ability to interpret unexpected responses, and are very
infrequently trained correctly. My electric company has a good chatbot,
because when I said:
"The electric pole outside my apartment looks like it's going to fall over"
It ended up using that sentence to determine that I should go to emergency on-
call, which is all it needed to do; further parsing was irrelevant. But then I
called Fedex this morning and told their chatbot:
"My package has a delivery exception."
And it simply couldn't wrap its head around the problem at all — apparently
Fedex doesn't train it to recognize terms displayed to shippers! — and so I
had to battle through the usual "operator, domestic, 1234" route.
If you have a chatbot, be absolutely sure to train it on every word your
company uses for official purposes. The electric company clearly recognizes
"pole" \+ "falling" as an emergency, but Fedex doesn't recognize "exception"
because their mindset is "which division of Fedex Multinational Conglomerocorp
do you need", even though they directly asked "why are you calling".
~~~
JackCh
I bet the electric company probably takes all instances of "electric pole" to
be a probable emergency report, since that is probably the most frequent
reason for somebody to be mentioning an electric pole and it's safer to
default to assuming an emergency.
I bet if you said something like _" This electric pole isn't good for the
aesthetic of my neighborhood, please bury your wires."_ it would assume that
to be an emergency too (or maybe mentioning buried wires would take you to the
"call before you dig" department...)
~~~
floatingatoll
Yes! Precisely correct, and as it should be. If I’m calling to discuss an
electric pole, no computer system is going to react properly, no matter how
many phone tree options it has. Better to risk a false positive of an
aesthetic complaint now and then, than to have someone give up and hang up and
then their house burns down later.
------
p3llin0r3
We've had a better alternative to "chatbots" for a long time, it's called a
command line.
All of this obsession over "natural language processing" is annoying to me.
I have a Google home, and it can't do even the most basic things and struggles
to understand whenever I tell it to do something.
It would be nice if I could just talk to my Google home as if it was a command
line, with very explicit and specific commands that do powerful things.
"Google take a note. Do the laundry." "Google play spotify on the living room
speaker" etc. Instead the interface is an unhelpful mess that doesn't know how
to help me get it to do what I want.
I feel that it is the same with chatbots. Stop trying to process natural
language, and give me a command prompt with good documentation and user on-
boarding.
~~~
ryandrake
Actually I could see chatbots being useful if they behaved more like command
line applications, with functionality known ahead of time and a language model
that doesn’t change. Then I could just prepare a script and do something like:
cat cancel_service.script | /use/bin/comcast_dialer
and let the bot talk to my script and execute the needed task.
------
erikb
I think all people with some technical insight could've told you that 3 years
ago. But still I'm happy the world finally realizes it. Now it only(!) takes
another 5-10 years until my employer figures it out. Some of these bigger
companies just start to bet on chat bots, but of course will fail at the same
hurdles as everybody else.
------
madeofpalk
'Next big things' are never the next big thing.
What happened with Chatbots was the result of some very very poor 'ui
translation' from Asian apps. The product designers and managers of the
western world looked at 'mega chat apps' like WeChat and Line that have all
these built in apps and interfaces and tried to replicate that. Instead
somehow they thought they were textual chat interfaces (buy plane tickets in
natural language) when in reality they all had their own GUI with buttons and
things to press.
Then all the businesses and agencies and consultants that thought they could
cash in on this opportunity saw it and started pushing it even harder.
There was never any real user problem that this was solving - just businesses
trying to cash in.
~~~
darzu
> 'Next big things' are never the next big thing
Counterpoints: web, mobile, cloud
~~~
Bucephalus355
Countercounterpoint:
cloning, the semantic web, and fog computing
~~~
larkeith
That's not really a counterargument when the original claim was "never" and
parent provided examples of times it did occur.
------
olavgg
Disclaimer, I work for a chatbot startup that is doing really well in the
Nordics. In two years we have grown from 3 employees to almost 100. Chatbots
are a real big thing, our business is stronger than ever, end-users and our
customers are engaged in this! We solve real business problems, we integrate
the chatbot with existing business systems. With this is mind, chatbots are
not perfect, but most end-users are forgiving and accept this.
Chatbots are not a fad, its a real thing, and you will only see more of them
in the coming years.
~~~
darzu
Out of genuine curiosity, what real business problems do chatbots solve? The
only ones I encounter are "customer support" bots, but I'm wondering if there
are other uses that businesses and customers find value in.
~~~
olavgg
Good question! Some things a chatbot excels at:
Finding information quickly: no menus, no clicking around, no more searching.
Customer facing chatbots are one alternative, but many of our clients also
have internal chatbots for either HR stuff, or for finding internal
information. One good example we see is onboarding new employees who benefit
from a chatbot as they ask a lot of questions. Also they are not afraid of
asking too many questions as they no longer fear that they are nagging nor
asking "dumb questions".
Automating processes: for example filling out the insurance form. Or filling
out tax returns. Placing an order, getting status of an order. There are also
a lot of HR tasks that gets automated. How many days of vacation there is
left, business travel, arranging meetings, company benefits and so on.
Think about it this way, a chatbot is a very advanced full text search engine
that excels at filtering out most of the noise. That is also why they have
another name, virtual assistants.
------
haylem
Actually, they may not be the "next big thing", but they're still a pretty
huge deal. Especially for IT and ecommerce support. The support sector is
estimated to a value of a few trillions of USD / year in the coming years,
because of the progressive shift of large cohorts of customers to the cloud.
The point is not to have chat-bots handle all cases, but if they can handle
80% of cases, which are generally trivial, then it'll good enough.
Of course I hate talking to a bot just like anyone else, and being cornered
into a dead-end discussion with one, or to be in an infinite loop, or in a
situation where the bot has no answer and does not offer another path to
resolution. But, from a business perspective, it's a rather sound approach to
have people go through a bot first rather than have every single complaint
clog an inbox. It doesn't scale so well.
~~~
pidg
HR support within organisations, too. I'm aware of some large organistaions
currently investing in chatbots right now to help people find out how many
vacation days they have left, find policies relating to their job etc.
Though this issue might equally be resolved by intranet search engines no
longer being painfully bad (e.g. ones powered by Microsoft Graph).
~~~
megaman22
Why does that need to be a chatbot, though?
That seems like it should be something that could be a trivial CRUD website,
with far less complexity.
------
pjc50
I seem to remember these were the objections that were made at the time.
The basic tech dates back to SHRDLU and ELIZA. In some ways this is similar to
the partially-self-driving-car problem: if it's a mechanical interface where
the human is in control it's fine, and if it's a hypothetical human-equivalent
AI it's fine, but in the middle people forget to adapt to the limitations of
the system. And the limitations are very severe as soon as you go outside the
lines.
~~~
MarkMMullin
AsI recall, Terry Winograd later claimed SHRDLU was the beginning of the end
of the strong AI trajectory, at least at that time. I believe he, or someone
close, said the central weakness of the system was that when it failed, it did
not have any understanding that it had failed, much less why. Seems this is
the current SOTA in chatbots now, given the somewhat snarky examples in the
article.
------
jonathankoren
There are/were two main problems with chatbots.
1) There’s a huge consolidation around Siri, Alexa, and Google. No one wants
to download an app, and you’re never going to win against wake words.
2) Doing the NLU and intent modeling is really hard to get right. All too
often, someone comes along, thinks all they have to do skis throw together
some regexps or toss the neural net du jour over some text and it will all
just work. It won’t. It doesn’t. It’s just really really embarrassing.
Intelligent back off is a thing. Understanding when you don’t understand
something is a thing. Conversation management is a thing. UX matters.
Also, trying to fake chatbots with people, and then saying “We’ll just train
up a model and get rid of those folks” was never going to work, because you’d
always have to have people, because you set your bar at hard AI then. Sure,
that’s a decent strategy of you already have a call center that you’re trying
to cut costs on, but for a startup, that’s just hubris.
------
geekjock
I'm the creator of a Slack bot (Pull Reminders). I ended up building a web UI
to configure the bot rather than using slash commands. The main reason for
this was that Slack's platform is still evolving and I thought it'd be
difficult to build an intuitive experience/interface within Slack. I've seen
other Slack apps do a pretty good job at this though. Check out Eventbot or
GitHub's official Slack app.
It's been fun figuring out how to tackle UX problems like onboarding and
engagement with Slack as the primary channel (versus email). I think chat is
replacing email for many teams and so there's a big opportunity to rethink
traditional workflows with a "chat first" user experience.
------
cphoover
Recently built a chat/comms. system for my last company. I think key to this
user experience is automatically routing to a human when AI systems cannot
determine intent. Most cloud products in this space now provide some way to
determine a confidence measure. IE the default should be human interaction,
unless an intent is certain and a simple remedial action can be taken. This
kind of workflow does have the ability to increase efficiency, and improve
customer experience if done correctly, but it can easily go wrong.
For example, with my bank, automated telephone banking is often much more
efficient and quicker, than talking to a human CSR/Banker, for moving money
around in my accounts.
------
kyleperik
> On the input side, it’s easier and faster to click than it is to type.
I disagree with this. It may be easier, but it is in no way faster. For those
who don't use computers very often I can see it being slower. But for people
who use computers on a daily basis, for mice to still be a commonly used input
device is disappointing. With constant context switches, moving an object
across the desk with you wrist, while keeping your fingers in the same place
to click, and carefully putting the cursor just in the right place isn't
nearly as fast as the same interface using typing. Or comfortable for that
matter.
I'm not saying I disagree with the article as a whole.
_EDIT: typo_
~~~
mbowcutt
The GUI makes a computer easy to use, while the CLI makes a specific job quick
to execute.
~~~
kyleperik
I think that a combination of GUI with a keyboard can be great too. I think
CLIs have stuck around for so long for their consistency. You type something
and press return. The web on the other end of a spectrum is full of surprises
and therefore requires something to be able to handle it's unpredictability.
Who knows what is really going to happen if I press Tab here? Will it really
bring me to the next field or some random link in the other side of the page?
I wouldn't doubt that once the web finally settled down from this hype, people
will find ways to get the full potential out of both GUI and the keyboard in a
consistent way.
The web is the only reason I need a mouse during work anymore.
~~~
rahimnathwani
"I think that a combination of GUI with a keyboard can be great too."
Yup. Spreadsheets proved this many years ago.
------
ankurdhama
Hype is nothing but unrealistic optimism and thats what the current world of
tech is filled with. People see staged demo and the media start throwing wild
speculations. I never ever get excited by any demo and thats what I suggest to
people but I guess the whole stupid idea of "be optimistic" is so rampant in
current culture that people just blindly start following anything.
------
jbuild
I think we set the goals way to high. It seems like everyone expected
"chatbots" to be in their final form right away. Currently, the best
"chatbots" aren't really chatbots, but act of as sort of human backed, virtual
assistant in a narrow but widening domain. For example, real estate. Most real
estate companies have an insides sales agents that does lead qualification,
sets appointments, etc. There's a company in the space doing this now and
judging from their website, they are doing alright.
[https://structurely.com](https://structurely.com)
I don't see one mention of "chatbot" on their page, it's always virtual
assistant. Even just checking out their marketing material it looks pretty
compelling.
[https://research.structurely.com/customers](https://research.structurely.com/customers)
~~~
njoens
Im the CEO @ Structurely.
We made a deliberate decision not to call ourselves a chatbot, as the stigma
around them is poor and didn't want to get lumped into that category.
We decided that an A.I. assistant is more aligned with our product - which is
backed by humans - but a very vast majority of our conversations are handled
entirely by A.I. only.
Every conversation here was 100% A.I.
[https://research.structurely.com/customers](https://research.structurely.com/customers)
Good chatbot companies have to deliberately not call themselves chatbots. X.ai
is another good example who calls their "chatbots" A.I. assistants on purpose.
------
tartuffe78
When every tech journalism outfit is saying "<X> is the future." you can be
sure it won't be.
~~~
gitgud
Kind of like when your taxi driver is giving you stock market advice.
The most obviously useful technology, usually is only obvious in hindsight.
------
dragondar
To my mind chatbots are the great way to improve your marketing strategy. For
example, our company provides different AI data analysis API’s for businesses,
such as multilingual summarization, news aggregation, sentiment analysis, data
extraction and etc.
We are using chatbot
[https://www.summarizebot.com](https://www.summarizebot.com) as a part of our
marketing strategy. And this works. Potential clients in Slack and Facebook
are using our chatbot and after getting interested in our SaaS solutions. The
conversion rate in Slack is quit good since a lot of businesses are using it.
The strategy is being successful since out potential leads are able to see and
use our main technologies in the bot. Chatbot for us is like smart demo of our
existing technologies and features.
------
osrec
Having a chat with someone can be enlightening because the conversation can be
engaging, can grow organically and the ensuing organic path can lead to
insight.
Chatbots, to me, just don't feel very organic - it's very much a
request/response paradigm, often with a limited set of useful responses
(perhaps I have just encountered the basic ones). If that's all we're getting,
I'd much rather just hit buttons on a screen, than type an entire question in
the hope that the bot understands it (when it doesn't, it's just an annoying
guessing game).
Plus, as other comments have mentioned, it's very hard to see what the bot is
actually capable of. With a good screen based UI, the capabilities are much
more obvious. If it's not fit for your purpose, you can just quickly move on.
------
muzani
I think for the most part, chatbots are just stupid. They're like the
untrained outsourced call center employee, except that the untrained call
center employee at least has 20 years of experience interacting with humans in
a non laboratory environment.
It's in the uncanny valley where it seems almost human like but a major turn
off because it doesn't act like one.
It's probably just better to have the bots act like robots instead of
"chatting".
------
krmmalik
I'm one that's not easily swayed by hype usually.
I haven't jumped on the crypto bandwagon even, but I was working on a project
midway through last year. It was a concept that would help people over come
anxiety and depression so they could self-actualise and live a better life.
The thing with many people -- from out experience -- was that they don't
necessarily always want to speak to a professional but they do want to share
what they're feeling with someone they can trust. That's often a friend, but
unfortunately friends aren't always in the best place to advise and sometimes
inadvertently can make the situation worse. So we decided to build a bot that
was anonymous enough to create enough abstraction but friendly enough to help.
The content was driven by experts in the field.
Anyway. The whole concept just kept failing. We could barely get people past
the first stage of questions. We tried so many different platforms, we did so
many user studies and we kept trying to iterate but it just kept failing and
all this time I did wonder in the back of my head if an app would have been a
better idea. Now I know it would have probably at least been a better idea
than a bot.
------
0x445442
IMHO the thing to get excited about is the potential for a somewhat ubiquitous
UI to get my stuff done; not the NPL. Hopefully NPL will continue to improve
and be leveraged more in the UI. But right now, the prospect of ditching the
seemingly infinite number of GUIs I have to deal with between the web and
mobile apps for tasks/bots in the messaging platform of my choice is what's
peeked my interest.
~~~
wmeredith
I agree completely.
Side note: It's "piqued" my interest... [http://www.dictionary.com/e/pique-
peak-peek/](http://www.dictionary.com/e/pique-peak-peek/)
------
cirgue
Chatbots solve the same problem as a search interface, but in a way that is
lower bandwidth, less intuitive, and mildly personally insulting (the attitude
from the company using the chatbot seems to be 'our users totally will not
mind wasting time trying to interact with a really shitty set of canned
responses'). The bigger question for me is 'why did anyone think this was a
good idea?'
------
matte_black
Chatbots are an infantilization. Just give me a list of commands I can type
straight in and quit with the fake human bit.
Chatbots are basically command lines with some guidance for non expert users.
Convenient when you don’t want to build a bunch of custom GUI for new features
but often gives a worse user experience when the commands are dreadfully
buried in long winded conversations.
------
billybolton
Chatbots are the next big thing. The reason they didn't take over is because
NLP and AI sucks (and "sucks" is putting it very lightly). Current AI is stuck
in a rut, and they don't even realize it. True innovation in AI will come, and
surprise everyone, and like all innovations before, it will come from cutting
edge scientific research.
------
imagetic
I'm unable to recall a single instance in my life where an automated system
was more useful than talking to a human or having great documentation.
From phone directory systems to automated help-desk responses, I've spent more
time in recent years trying to get around an automated hurdle to talk to a
human than waiting on a forum response in 2004 or sitting on hold back in the
days of 1-800 help numbers.
Chatbots were a predictable failure.
Maybe I'm just older now. Settled in my ways so to speak. But I've dedicated
my professional life my tradecraft of media production and publishing. At some
point the technology tools stopped focusing on improving life or solving the
problem.
\- The first VR movement was WAY too premature. \- 3D TV's were DOA. \- 4k+ /
High resolution is a drastically misused/misunderstood medium and technology.
\- The current VR movement just simply doesn't have a platform that can
support the level of processing and bandwidth needed to be worthwhile. \-
Apple has lost it's way. \- I don't even know what Google actually does now,
but I cared more when the search engine was amazing. \- There's too much
media, not enough curation. \- Blogs and personal websites were the golden age
of great information \- RIP copy editors \- Social Media is a game of smoke
and mirrors \- WHO IS CLICKING ON ALL THESE ADS?!? Nobody I know, yet the big
players are making billions? Are the ads worthless? Are we going to wake up
one day to see the internet crashing and burning the same way cable television
is? Don't get me started on newspapers. \- AR is back? Why?!? \- I'd love for
RSS to make a comeback, if there was anything left to subscribe to. \- AI
seems to be the future but I've yet to be impressed. The things that are
promising are far out of reach from everyday users that it just seems far far
away at this point. \- Fortnight seems to have hit the nail on the head.
------
niftich
With the chatbot hype, there was a healthy number of skeptics throughout:
people who wondered about the technical realities of delivering satisfying UX,
ones who worried about unanswered questions about business models, and ones
who figured out that this future would be most beneficial to gatekeeper-
platforms who'd then act as discovery facilitators for users to select from
among competing bots, rather than for botmakers themselves.
It's no accident that Amazon and Google are currently leading in the consumer
voice assistant market: they had large, pre-existing base of users and enough
intrinsic first-party functionality to bootstrap their assistants into
rudimentary usefulness, but then they built platforms where third-parties
could compete for users the same way it happened for apps. In the app boom,
aside from a few runaway hits, the only ones who reliably got rich were the
platform-owners.
------
CM30
Probably people realised that in many cases, a chatbot simply wasn't a good
choice of interface for the product/service they were building. Yes, they can
work well in some cases, like with help desk type support, sales, general
gimmickry on chat rooms and forums, etc.
But in a lot of cases, a traditional UI (whether visual or command line
focused) is simply far more usable than a bot, and people/companies realised
that. As much as it may sound old fashioned, talking to everyone is not
necessarily better than using a keyboard/mouse/controller/whatever, and having
a bot that has to figure out what you want with far less sophistication than
an actual person makes it even worse.
The technology isn't there yet for chatbots to be as useful as they need to
be, and in many cases, bots and chat interfaces and what not simply aren't a
good solution for the problem at hand either.
------
pmart123
Chatbots are a feature, not a product. I'm not a customer, but I would say
Lemonade seems to have successfully used a chat-style bot as the main feature
to onboard new customers. To me, I see context-driven "Google" searches such
as WolframAlpha as more valuable than holding a text-style conversation with a
bot.
------
cocktailpeanuts
Chatbots were the "next big thing" just like how "Blockchain but not Bitcoin"
is supposed to be the next big thing.
It's just bunch of people who look at existing phenomenon that's working
(people use chat a lot on the phone), and then trying to turn it into
something completely different (if people chat a lot, that probably means
people want to buy stuff over chat a lot!), powered by dumb money (stupid VCs
in case of "chatbots", and stupid ICO crowds in case of "blockchains")
The reason these things don't work is because the people who build these
things don't truly understand why something is working, because the original
product they tried to replicate was not easy to understand.
Same reason why it's so hard for dumb electronic companies to copy Apple. They
think they know, but all they're copying is the superficial stuff, and they
never work.
------
zby
A part of the job of a call centre operator is negotiation with the client -
this is hard to do with a bot. Even more so that this is kind of hidden spec,
because companies don't want to admit that the role of the call centre is to
make it hard to get something from the company while pretending to enabling
it.
------
ankit219
Chatbots can only work if they learn to communicate in the millennial language
using emojis and acronyms - basically more urban dictionary than dictionary.
The older generation, preferred talking to people over searching, or typing a
message even if the talking meant they were on hold for 20 mins. Alexa solved
for those with a voice based interface, as did google, and people realized
that talking to a bot is better than typing. With the voice to text conversion
equaling human capabilities, chatbots went down simply to be replaced by a
newer and more easy to use technology. Only difference being that they did not
get the time to be ubiquitous or become the next big thing as predicted. The
evolution of the service, and CX was ultimately slower than what was expected
and hence they are replaced/not popular anymore.
------
mnm1
Do you really have to ask? This AI merry-go-round has been spinning for
decades now. I can't imagine people don't know the drill by now. We've all
been riding this around, some of us our entire lives. The people who thought
this was going to be the next big thing were just the latest fools to be
fooled by this merry-go-round into thinking that AI is once again, just barely
out of reach and reachable within a few years. As usual, they are proven wrong
again and again because AI is so far from being useful for such tasks like
having a conversation with humans. The bottom line is AI isn't there yet and
probably won't be the next time the hype rolls around. Or the time after that.
Or the time after that ... I should just write a loop here that likely won't
break in our lifetimes or possibly anyone's.
------
korovyevski
Chatbots basically killed a startup I was working with a couple years ago. We
had really nice apps, with a realistic exit strategy. Then came "The Pivot",
and we were all working on chatbots. Didn't take long for me to leave that
company, who went out of business not long after.
~~~
freddie_mercury
Sounds like the company was dead anyway and you are mistaking causation.
Companies that are "alive" don't pivot. Companies that are dying people to
avoid death. That the company had to pivot suggests the owners decided the
exit strategy wasn't actually realistic.
~~~
rspeer
> Companies that are "alive" don't pivot.
They can pivot into being a company that is alive, though. Remember that Slack
was a pivot from an online game.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
I did not know that, any good rendition of that story available online?
~~~
rspeer
I found this: [https://mastersofscale.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/11/13-the...](https://mastersofscale.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/11/13-the-big-pivot-with-slacks-stewart-butterfield-.pdf)
You can also see a piece of the game on Slack's 404 page!
[http://slack.com/404](http://slack.com/404)
------
pweissbrod
I for one would LOVE to try a spoken UI for an email client. My thinking has
always been that compromising sacrificing plain english with a more
strict/limited set of mnemonic keywords would introduce a learning curve but
with a bigger payoff in reducing confusion.
Also emails delivered from this sort of interface need some means of
indication that they were a spoken format, not typed such that the reader
properly understands the context.
To me, a verbal UI seems attainable by lowering the bar of what we expect from
the AI. Lower the need for AI to interpret your requests from general english
to limited keywords. Allow for an adjustable vocabulary for spoken word
recognition to accomodate a smaller dictionary with less mistypings. Make it
clear the produced content is dictated and not hand-written quality
------
dangrover
I called this like 2 years ago. I am still waiting for better apps.
[http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/04/20/bots-wont-replace-
apps....](http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/04/20/bots-wont-replace-apps.html)
------
thewhitestguy
I think everyone has called their bank or cable company at least once or twice
and found themselves lost in a Kafkaesque loop of not being able to get done
what they needed and have subconsciously written 'bots' off as incapable of
helping them perform a task, and/or an executive excuse to put tens of
thousands of call center employees out of work. Just because it's on a website
and the dialpad is replaced with words doesn't mean it's different.
Whether or not anyone wants to admit it, the whole "talking to robots"
thing... I mean, the world is already empty and lonely enough without adding
another layer of "inexorability" to the processes we engage in, in order to
accomplish pretty basic tasks.
------
intrasight
The discussions here (at least what I've read so far) have been about customer
service bots. That's not where chatbots are going to be fun and interesting.
Fun and interesting is the "expert in your ear" that we'll soon have.
------
whoisstan
I agree with the article in general when it comes to NLP, AI and the dull hype
machine. But in certain domains well understood usage patterns in
conversational interfaces have advantages over custom UI's. Conversational
interfaces with micro UX elements, maps buttons images selectors ..., rather
then text input. They advantage is a universal timeline. Be it booking a table
in restaurant, ordering a car, searching for an article, all conversational
interface allow you to go back in time in a uniform well understood way. By
scrolling back. Also your interaction history is searchable. No need to
introduce a new UX element for that.
------
throwawayqdhd
Chatbots were the next big thing before VR was the next big thing before 3D
printing was the next big thing before...
You get the point.
Crypto is the next big thing right now and like all these "big things", it's
going to fall flat on its face as well
------
Myrmornis
Chatbots represent an extremely and unnecessarily pessimistic view of
humanity. We are interfacing with a machine, that has a certain API. Now, we
have two choices:
(1) Assume humans are too stupid to be able to adapt their communication and
learn something about what that API is capable of and what commands it
understands.
(2) Credit humans with the ability to do it; perhaps even evolve their
communication abilities a little to go along with this brave new world
populated by AIs.
No intelligent human wants to talk to an API in natural language when they
have some idea of the capabilities of that API and the commands it
understands.
------
orb_yt
There's a lot of discussion here about hype, but I think many are overlooking
exactly why expectations were so high.
Downloads of new mobile applications have been decreasing in growth steadily
for years now[0]. Instead, user's spend more time inside their existing
applications, particularly messenger applications. Take a look at just a few
of their user bases:
- Facebook Messenger - 1.2B+ [1]
- Whatsapp - 1B+ [2]
- Kik - 300m [3]
Considering that writing a single bot that was capable to connecting to all of
these platforms was trivial, it gave the developer access to a new and very
significant user base.
Add to this the fact that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Slack and others, with
a combined market cap in the trillions, were simultaneously contributing to
the support of chatbots in one way or another.
It's a classic rendition of the Hype Cycle[4]. We're probably somewhere in the
_" Trough of Disillusionment"_, but give it a few years and we'll get to the
_" Plateau of Productivity"_, and chatbots will probably make their way to a
more useful purpose.
[0]: [https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/29/forget-apps-now-the-
bots-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/29/forget-apps-now-the-bots-take-
over/) [1]:
[https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/12/messenger/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/12/messenger/)
[2]: [https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10889534/whats-
app-1-billi...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10889534/whats-
app-1-billion-users-facebook-mark-zuckerberg) [3]:
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/11/kik-already-has-
over-6000-...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/11/kik-already-has-
over-6000-bots-reaching-300-million-registered-users/)
[4]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle#/media/File:Gartner...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle#/media/File:Gartner_Hype_Cycle.svg)
------
sriku
With most advanced interfaces or tech, people adapt their interactions to the
tool as well. If the tool is capable of evolution, then there is perhaps an
equilibrium point where people can be productive with the tool in an
idiosyncratic way. This doesn't seem to be considered by people proposing AI
agents. "Enactive cognition" \- where cognition is compared to the way a cell
and its environment mutually define the boundary between each other - is
perhaps the model to pay attention to here.
------
mellamoyo
My city went to one to pay for water, trash pickup, etc. It's a horrible
experience to use. It takes longer and is less efficient than just logging
into a modern website and paying.
------
tw1010
Perhaps even more worrying then that nothing came out of it: now all that
money has flowed into the hands of short-term opportunistic thinkers who might
amplify or incentivize even more hype driven companies in the next iteration
of this mechanism. Sure, by no means are all of them bad apples (some just
jumped on the bandwagon but will long term perhaps become the next Elon Musk),
but I think a strong argument could be made that there are enough people of
that ilk in the cohort to be worried.
~~~
jabgrabdthrow
If the chatbot revolution didn’t happen then did those people make a return?
Or are you saying it’s the employees getting paid (who also piled onto the
dad) who are now the ones with capital?
~~~
tw1010
The chatbot revolution didn't happen but there were plenty of companies sold,
with founders who've now gone on to become investors (of the, I claim,
possibly hype-jumping kind).
~~~
le-mark
Were they not all hype jumping before, as you say?
------
5DFractalTetris
I have someone to chat to and they're aren't a bot, and maybe they have like a
lifetime of experiences from a nation I will never really know and cannot
really imagine. It's cool and I have utmost respect for it. I've worked with
humans from places where food is considered sacred and given away for free,
places where the Volkswagen is almost the only auto to be found, and humans
who have survived genocides. They are worth a premium, sirs!!
------
deegles
The two biggest flaws with building chatbots are a) the lack of good tools to
express chat flows at a higher level (no, modeling it as a graph isn't good
enough) and b) no Natural Language Generation that's good enough to trust in
production.
The first one leads to subpar bots that can't respond to most things, the
second means humans have to fill the 'long-tail' of potential responses by
hand, which is impossible.
~~~
tootie
I think the biggest flaw is chat is just a black hole of a UI. Until the
machine is a full AI, you have to be able to put boundaries and parameters on
expected inputs. Otherwise, it's like putting a casual user in front of a
Linux terminal and asking them to use a website via curl. Unless you give them
very visible paths to interaction, you're done. The fact is, we have had that
kind of thing for ages and it's called IVR.
~~~
jonathankoren
One of the best insights we had at Ozlo was putting prompt bubbles on our UI.
They served two main purposes. First they showed what type of questions you
could ask; and second, they showed how to ask a question.
They provided guard rails so to speak. If you don’t really strong hints about
what you can do — and at least recognize intents you can’t handle — you’re
screwed. There is always some asshole who sees “Hi, I can tell you about
restaurants and entertainment. What are you looking to do?”, and answers
“What’s the atomic weight of boron in nanofirkins?”
------
scottlocklin
I think the only way you could think this was "the next big thing" is if you
never did M-x doctor in an emacs buffer.
LSTMs do reasonable cocktail talk if you want someone to answer your emails
for you as an agent, and expert systems shells are actually useful for
navigating legal documents and insurance forms (with a ton of human
intervention). Otherwise, it ain't really a problem that needs solving.
------
clevergadget
The people that I know that heavily use chatbots are teens on discord and they
use them a lot. They are more versatile than the old bots on irc, use them to
play games, stream audio, images, access wikipedia... one bot we use actively
translates between different languages across different channels. And they are
popular! I think this is a case where the media sees possibility but adoption
takes time.
~~~
ealhad
Sure, but those are usually not chatbots _per se_ , but rather simple
commands. The Wikipedia bot, for example, only performs a search on the
website (and is less useful than the actual search when it does not directly
find a page).
~~~
clevergadget
Oh, I guess since I was interacting with a bot in a chat I got confused. So in
this case I guess it's just kids continuing their time honored tradition of
mirc style bots...
------
techsin101
Just like many other here, I feel very smart now :D.
My friend was all neck deep into hype. Yet never could explain how would he
train the chatbot to learn all the facts about the business(es). And in end
all chatbot could do is act like decision tree with some NLP to extent it
could understand few variations.
Which is great but very few limited business use cases, and poor use case for
support unless you want your users to hate you.
------
k_vi
I actively use chatbots on Telegram, but not so much on messenger. Telegram
bots are predictable compared to messenger which relies heavily on NLP.
------
jmull
Well, any and every promising new thing gets overhyped.
(because the press, and experts -- whether real or just self-claimed -- and
enthusiasts have plenty of incentives to hype new things and few reasons not
to)
But that's independent of whether or not the new thing actually has merit.
Even when the new thing really _is_ the next big thing, the hype almost
invariably runs far ahead of schedule.
Personally, I think the jury is still out on chatbots.
------
DannyB2
Like self driving cars freeing humans from the tedium of driving while they
could be doing productive things; applying AI to chatbots could free humans
from ever having to chat online. Ever.
Imagine how humans could do more useful and productive things. More time for
study and contemplation. AI powered chatbots could relieve us from the burden
of ever having to chat online.
------
funwie
Airplane is not a bird Ship not a fish Car not a horse .... Computer is not a
smarter human AI will never have human intelligence Chatbots will never be
humans ... These and many other inventions are useful. They extend human
capabilities. But will never be humans, unless we create a human (as opposed
to giving birth).
------
curo
Chat bot was terrible UX to begin with, because while you're at the screen,
why not have a visual interface to show you all your options?
Voice interfaces hold the promise of releasing us from the tyranny of screen
time. I imagine walking the dog and replying to emails with my headphones.
Might seem silly now, but would love that. NLP/NLG just isn't there.
------
kesor
Slack stopped promoting their "thing" as much as last year, which is why you
don't hear much about chatbots anymore.
------
bennetthi
I'm surprised how most chatbots focus on a 1:1 interaction with the user and
the bot. I find chatbots most productive and novel when you allow the one bot
to interact with a group of users. For example, deploy bots, where each user
can have the bot deploy as well as they can see the chat history to get
context on what has been deployed.
------
dyeje
It was painfully obvious to anybody who's used conversational UI in their
daily life that this was not going to happen.
------
jabagawee
To me, chatbots were nice because:
\- I could navigate them much faster than I could navigate a phone tree.
\- They were very accessible in the sense that I wouldn't have to install a
custom app but instead use a platform that I am very likely to be on already.
As a developer, this also allowed me to set up an unlock-my-door app for my
friends much easier.
------
docmars
They're awkward, and they often don't do what you expected or hoped.
I think millennials especially are used to getting things done themselves
since they're so accustomed to UIs that walk them through getting tasks done.
There's a sense of finer control in user interfaces that chatbots have a hard
time solving for.
------
xg15
I wonder if, if someone released a study showing that using rainbow colours in
your marketing emails increases your perceived humanness by 40%, we'd see a
phase where all marketing emails come in bright rainbow colours and I could
create a simple filter rule to get rid of them.
------
goombastic
I think the big issue really for me personally has been that I know that these
interfaces are clunky/inaccurate and I don't want to be talking out loud and
giving out info in public spaces etc.
If there is an option to type, I got for it the first thing. Anything else
feels gimmicky.
------
notadoc
There just aren't compelling use cases yet, though eventually the technology
will improve and they'll resurface. This happens frequently in tech.
On a similar note, I suspect in another few years we'll be reading an article
titled:
> "AR was the next big thing: what happened?"
------
lazyjones
It quickly became obvious that they were the most annoying and pointless UI
feature since Clippy.
------
LyalinDotCom
Chatbots were always a technology looking for a problem to solve and lets face
it those of us reading HN knows exactly how that always turns out. There will
be lots of chat bots in our future and already are but there is nothing "big"
about it.
------
white-flame
Any time a HN discussion gets as big as this, it's because he content is
controversial and people are arguing.
I don't think I've seen this many replies in unison. It's an amazing testament
to how poorly these systems work at all levels.
------
tjpaudio
This is crazy, people actually believed chatbots were going to catch on? My
employer developed chat bots, but only so we could grab the associated PR from
a few press releases to ride the hype. We knew no one was going to use them.
------
eurticket
For the longest time chat bots were a nuance, if you didn't need it it was
there and if you did need it, it was there and it would take all day. Those
unnecessary pauses to make it seem more human is such a waste of time.
------
selljamhere
In perfect timing, Bank of America released Erica, "your virtual financial
assistant."
[https://promo.bankofamerica.com/erica/](https://promo.bankofamerica.com/erica/)
------
debt
The AI winter is upon us and its first casualty is the chat bot.
After all, if AI is as ubiquitous and threatening as many are claiming, then
why has the literal least complex implementation of it, a chat bot, failed
completely?
------
marban
First thing I do when I encounter a chatbot is to type 'Live Agent'
------
listentojohan
Thank god. Too often, they just work as a hindrance to get the help you need.
~~~
castlecrasher2
>Sorry, I didn't understand that.
~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
It's a common scenario: you want to solve a problem by reading online help or
contacting customer support and a window pops up "Hi it's Brian, can I help
you?" Of course you know it's not Brian, it answers by spiting out some pieces
of badly-prepared script, can't answer any specific question, and sooner or
later you realize it's worse than useless as it only took your time you could
use to actually solve the problem.
~~~
ealhad
>Sorry, I didn't understand that.
------
xtiansimon
This article sets chatbots as endangered, and then works very hard to reset
their context.
I'm don't work within an industry where chatbots were a solution.
From this naive position, what are the exemplary examples of chatbots?
------
pX0r
Yet another tech that nobody wants. They are the next worst thing after the
"allow notifications" pop-up that every landing page seems to be infested with
these days.
------
rajacombinator
Chatbots, like most tech buzzwords, were always a scam. The only question was
if you (investor/exec/“researcher”) were dumb enough to fall for it.
------
l4chong
conversation ui developer here and I know I might be biased. For sure there is
a hype. People seems to think that chatbot/voice assistant will be the new
platform. But really chatbot/voice assistant are meant to augment the current
platforms.
We can already see this with voice assistant integrated to mobile devices and
in the near future VR's and robots.
It will be interesting how it works out once everything gets standardized.
------
ourcat
Nobody likes being duped by a non-human when you're looking for help. Rather
like nobody likes to hear a recording down a phone line.
------
megamindbrian2
"humans like talking to other humans" lmftfy, should be "humans don't like
talking to computers all that much"
------
kumarvvr
They flunked the Turing test.
In a serious vein, they were more of an annoyance than help.
Similar to the Paper Clip from Microsoft. (Sorry, don't remember the name)
~~~
pg_bot
Office Assistant aka Clippit aka Clippy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant)
------
elvirs
every 2-3 years a certain buzzword gets hot among silicon valley circles to be
on its way to become the next big thing. usually after it mostly dies down in
less than a year another buzzword will be propelled to the top. thats how
silicon valley works, thats how they keep investor money flowing into the
industry.
------
sethammons
Chatbots, just like Alexa, OK Google, and Siri, are just terrible. Last night,
"Alexa, show me new releases." Nothing. "Alexa, show me new movies." Nothing.
"Alexa, what's new." "Today's news from NPR....". Damnit. In the time I spent
trying to discover the hidden menu of voice control, I could have manually
gone through known menus including typing with arrow keys.
~~~
anderber
I've found Alexa to be much, much worse than Google Assistant.
------
kerng
Depends how you look at it, Siri, Cortana, Alexa,.. all are chatbots and they
all are doing pretty well.
------
curioussavage
Hah chatbots. What a joke that trend was... I’m just surprised the hype lasted
as long as it did
------
acct1771
Multiple bots were accused of racism, surely one reason for pumping the
brakes.
------
averageweather
David Cancel will probably still sell yet another company for 7+ figures eg
[https://www.drift.com/](https://www.drift.com/)
------
dboreham
Probably because you need real (strong) AI.
------
JoeAltmaier
Aren't they alive and well on Twitter?
~~~
fenwick67
I think what you're referring to are distinct from chatbots. Chatbots are
meant to take input from a user and do a wide variety of tasks like a customer
service representative would do, Twitter bots usually do just one thing.
------
slifin
Feels like they moved to blockchain
------
jaequery
I hate talking to a bot in general.
------
m3kw9
News coming from a bot oriented site
------
rehemiau
they just weren't
------
alexmorse
no, no they weren't
------
megaman22
The typical thing where a seemingly cool technology that is really hard to do
correctly outside of a few toy examples gets overhyped.
------
tzahola
Chatbots are the Juicero of user interfaces.
------
jacksmith21006
The best one I have seen is going to start beta testing later this summer.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bd1mEm2Fy08](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bd1mEm2Fy08)
Google Duplex Demo from Google IO 2018 - YouTube
------
dwringer
On the other hand, I can think of at least two prominent elected officials
(one at my state's level and one at the national level) who no longer speak in
sentences that I can parse with my own mental model of English. The one from
my state released a statement yesterday that seemed identical to the kind of
thing one would get from a late '90s IRC chatbot that was trained on a big
dataset of energy company press releases.
~~~
tw1010
Care to name them? I'd be curious to read what they've written.
~~~
dwringer
I was trying to keep this as a discussion about the technology and not about
the politicians involved, but it apparently didn't stop most of the thread
from ending up dead anyway, so the statement I had in mind (you can find more
on the source if you're interested) was:
> "Our electric grid system is not stable. If it can be down or you have
> rolling brown outs or black outs and we know that is possible. If you don't
> have base load that means something, some type of energy that will run 24/7,
> rain, shine, no matter what happens is uninterruptible. The only two things
> you have that does that on a uninterruptible basis is coal and nuclear"
This isn't the first time I've wondered at the applications of natural-
language processing software in political [speech]writing. I'm not sure where
best forum is for people to discuss these ideas, but I apologize if this was
too political, regardless, for this site.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Returning to Facebook after living off the grid - kmerlini
http://sophmoric.tumblr.com/post/69075741968/my-return-to-the-dark-side-facebook
======
lizlemon
Nice post. I would be the same...don't want to be there, but I am because it
makes some social aspects a little better. And I think FB is very clever at
detecting that a lot of people don't want to be on it...but are, just because
all of their friends are there. They have all of these algorithms to ensure
you only see so many posts from only people of interest.
Whatsapp is a great substitute for groups chats though. I would highly
recommend it. It lessens the dependency for FB.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Iptable: An Introduction - cyberomin
http://cyberomin.github.io/devops/2017/01/25/iptables.html
======
LordWinstanley
The similarly named 'iptables' is also good.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Unified API for Facebook Google+ Slack Twitter GitHub and More (Android) - cr-si
https://github.com/CloudRail/cloudrail-si-android-sdk
======
cr-si
We've released an update to our Android Library to add social networks. So
besides Cloud Storage, you can now integrate eg Facebook, Twitter, Slack,
GitHub and many more via a unified API. Any feedback?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you store the key or emergency kit of 1password - kureikain
Hi Hacker,<p>Once setting up, 1password generate some kind of master key and store into an emergency kit. We will either need an existing 1password installation or this emergency kit to set it the account on another computer.<p>But given I'm storing my secret in 1password, how can I save this file(emergency kit is just a PDF file) securely?<p>Emergency kit seems not store on 1password cloud, only store locally I think.
======
warent
I have two places. Digitally I store them in an encrypted file that is backed
up in the cloud (Google Cloud Storage). Physically I own a safe in which I
have various recovery keys printed on paper.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
California replacing 200 polluting diesel school buses with all-electric buses - towndrunk
https://electrek.co/2019/07/17/california-electric-school-buses/
======
towndrunk
This maybe a way to pick up a cheap bus and convert it into a camper.
------
java-man
Mail delivery vans and garbage trucks should be next.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Would you consider an online education? - aik
There has been so much talk lately about online education. I'm wondering what the hacker crowd thinks here.<p>If you could redo your education in today's world, would you spend a ridiculous amount of time and money on a formal college education, or do you think you could mostly self-teach yourself using mostly the web? Would you allow (or prefer) your children to educate themselves online before/after high school?<p>Second question: Is anyone here working on an online education technology? Website?
======
yannis
I was the owner for a number of years of a private College. One thing that
became obvious to me was that the student population could be divided into two
general classes. Students that 'needed to be taught' and students that were
self-learners. I personally fall into the latter part and although I attended
University up to Ph.D, I hardly attended lectures. Whatever, I learned, I
learned on my own from books. You can self-teach yourself if you want but at
the moment the web might not provide you with the correct structured
education.
I am also currently working on a prototype for an online education site.
Current problems that we have not resolved include things like how much
interactivity with teachers we should provide and recognition of
qualifications. Open courses by traditional means and mix media are almost
offered by all Universities. However, the one element which is so difficult to
replicate on the web is the College vibe and the real interaction with people.
Any ideas how to inject such vibe into a website would be very much
appreciated :)
~~~
aik
"One thing that became obvious to me was that the student population could be
divided into two general classes. Students that 'needed to be taught' and
students that were self-learners."
Is this a fair classification? I have a theory: A lot of or all 'needed to be
taught' students simply are that way because of lack of interest or trust in
themselves. Once they find inspiration, they would become a self-learner. A
"natural self-learner" is as such because they have found their learning
method and it WORKS. Schools tend to these people, while others who don't
learn from the similar method become discouraged when they try the same thing
and aren't as successful. At this point they become 'needed to be taught'
students. What do you think?
"Current problems that we have not resolved include things like how much
interactivity with teachers we should provide and recognition of
qualifications."
Could you describe what you mean by "interactivity with teachers"? Will your
site follow the student-teacher classroom model? Are you trying to figure out
how to create the interaction between teachers and students?
"recognition of qualifications." For teachers?
~~~
yannis
Yes one of the problems sometimes is lack of interest and self-confidence.
This second group of students even tend to study for exams with a 'buddy' or
perhaps they are more social animals than the rest of us and their 'mimicry'
genes are stronger!
We've been thinking to follow the student/teacher model partly and also allow
teachers to enrol their normal student class for an online course. I am also
hoping to add some method so that students can earn 'karma' for completing a
course as well as helping and or answering questions from other students.
The intention of the 'qualification part' is that once you have amassed 10000
karma points the student will get a diploma that is equivalent to a BSc. The
recognition part comes from the job market accepting this as a proper
qualification.
------
tokenadult
_Would you allow (or prefer) your children to educate themselves online
before/after high school?_
My oldest son is about to be a senior (twelfth grader) in an online high
school. We were just online for the school's orientation to this school year.
He was a member of the founding class there, so we have a LOT of ideas about
the trade-offs in online education.
One way he gains satisfaction for his social drive is by taking most of his
eleventh grade and twelfth grade classes as a dual enrollment student at our
friendly state flagship university. The university offers courses that would
be quite impracticable to offer online.
He is looking forward to a RESIDENTIAL college experience, where he has much
face-to-face interaction with classmates throughout all hours of each week.
Neither he nor I would consider an online college environment--that would be
missing out on too much. Please note as a response to the premise of your
question above that some students attend some colleges at HUGE discounts from
list price, and at some highly endowed colleges list price for any student is
still less than the actual expenditure per student on instruction.
_Is anyone here working on an online education technology? Website?_
I am. It's very early stage, so I can't describe it with exactitude (because
we are still making up our delivery model), but the idea is to scale up my
current face-to-face math teaching and build a community among learners who
can't travel to my town for the community I'm already building up with my in-
person classes.
Life is all about trade-offs. Some trade-offs fit one learner, and some
another.
~~~
aik
"The university offers courses that would be quite impracticable to offer
online."
Which classes exactly would you classify as impractical?
Is this about right?
Practical: Math, Physics, Sciences (minus lab), History, Humanities,
Government, Politics (possibly?)...
Impractical: Art, speech, debate, PE...
~~~
tokenadult
The "minus lab" is a severe problem for science classes.
------
simonsarris
I think that the hacker crowd believes that a large part of the spirit of the
internet _is itself_ an online education.
And HN is a part of that.
That being said, I wouldn't discount college education. I felt it was an
excellent choice for myself, both academically and professionally, but I am
one anecdote of many. It's a very situational thing and I would hate to try to
make the decision for anyone but myself.
I would prefer that my children learn as much as possible online about what
kind of career they want before going to college. _Of course, I would let them
ultimately decide._ Even if they wanted to go to the most expensive college, I
would mortgage the house just so they could go, if that was what they felt was
right for them.
Let me also point out something: _College isn't just about academics, strictly
speaking._ One meets a lot of friends and professional contacts that one may
keep for life. One learns a great deal about society. And of course, the
proximity to hundreds of innovative peers can really spur creativity.
~~~
aik
"College isn't just about academics, strictly speaking. "
Good point. Regardless of in what form you attend college, interaction with
others with similar interests/studies is a necessity no doubt.
The main thing that bothers me about college is the lack of focus and care of
a majority of the students at most colleges. Most students just try to pass
and don't go far beyond that. They clearly have no inspiration, but are there
mainly for the purpose of finding a job (which they often aren't excited about
either)
------
plinkplonk
"Would you consider an online education?
No. I am an autodidact and learn mostly by working through books and papers
and so on. So in that sense I "educate" myself "online", partly. That said, if
I ever decide to go back to college for that PhD I've been planning to do for
a while now, I'd do so to work with the people who _define_ the fields I am
interested in. Even for my undergrad, I wouldn't do it online if I could. The
people you meet and befriend are a good part of an under grad education.
------
fburnaby
I think it matters a great deal on the specifics. I'm not aware of anything
out there so far that I would accept as a replacement.
~~~
aik
Well could you IMAGINE something so great that you could see as a possible
replacement (at least for part of the school experience)?
~~~
fburnaby
I have a good imagination. That's too easy, and of course I can imagine an
online degree that I would be willing to do.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft - SREinSF
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/28/zoom-taps-oracle-for-cloud-deal-passing-over-amazon-microsoft.html
======
scott00
Some useful context: Zoom also runs 17 of their own data centers in addition
to using AWS and Azure[0]. This deal is to run their "expansion" on OCI. Hard
to say what that means exactly, but it doesn't sound to me like Zoom is making
a big bet on OCI.
[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/zoom-cfo-explains-how-the-
co...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/zoom-cfo-explains-how-the-company-is-
grappling-with-increased-demand.html)
~~~
latch
This just doesn't pass the smell test. Running your own data center is a huge
capital and operational investment. While there are hundreds of companies
world wide that do this, they tend to be core telecommunication companies
(infrastructure), dedicated data center operations, dedicate hosting companies
or companies with billions in revenue.
A google search confirms that they colocate, apparently with Equinix. This is
as far as running a data center as living in an apartment is to building and
managing apartment buildings.
(Fun Fact, while Amazon does own and run its own data centers in most places,
they're also colocating with Equinix in some regions (though I assume their
level of colocation goes beyond traditional colocation)).
~~~
kelp
When they say "running a datacenter" they almost certainly mean "buying
servers to put into rented colocation space".
Just about anyone who has significant network connectivity has a footprint in
an Equinix datacenter. In the Bay Area you want to be in Equinix SV1 or SV5,
at 11, and 9 Great Oaks, San Jose.
If you're there, you can order a cross connect to basically any telco you can
imagine, and any other large company. You can also get on the Equinix exchange
and connect to many more.
But, Equinix charges you a huge premium for this, typically 2 - 3x other
providers for space and power. Also they charge about $300 per month per cross
connect.
So your network backbone tends to have a POP here, and maybe you put some CDN
nodes here, but you don't build out significant compute. It's too expensive.
On the cheaper, but still highish quality end you have companies like
CoreSite, and I'm pretty sure AWS has an entire building leased out at the
CoreSite SantaClara campus for portions of us-west-1. (Pretty sure because
people are always cagey about this kind of thing.)
I also know that Oracle cloud has been well know for taking lots of retail and
wholesale datacenter space from the likes of CoreSite, and Digital Reality
Trust, because it was faster to get to market. This is compared to purpose
build datacenters, which is what the larger players typically do.
In the case of AWS, I know they generally do a leaseback, where they contract
with another company who owns the building shell, and then AWS brings in all
their own equipment.
But all these players are also going to have some footprint in various retail
datacenters like Equinix and CoreSite for the connectivity, and some extra
capacity.
Zoom is probably doing a mix of various colocation providers, and just getting
the best deal / quality for the given local market they want to have a PoP in.
Seems like they are also making Oracle Cloud part of that story.
~~~
KorematsuFred
So many people forget that running data center is a super complex business not
just in point of technology but also in terms of operation.
I have known people who tried to setup a data center in India and it took them
around 2 years to have the first rack installed. Biggest hurdle was to get a
license to store fuel in large tanks for their generators. Not to mention many
of those permissions have to be renewed annually and if you fail to renew it
which can take months, you are not in compliance and hence can't use the
generators.
In India you can not start your own power generation plant and you can sell
electricity only to the government. Depending on many situations you have to
technically register a separate entity, get licenses as a "power company" then
on paper sell the electricity to government and then buy it back from
government for your own use.
~~~
blueblisters
You can get around some of these operational constraints with technology. For
example, Google had a server design with its own in-built backup battery
supply, which incidentally could be cheaper than diesel generators. So backup
power for your servers is solved but you still might need to figure out backup
power for other parts of the datacenter.
~~~
freepor
Batteries don’t have anywhere near the energy density of hydrocarbons.
Batteries are good for a few hours, but if you want to be able to run for days
off-grid you will need hydrocarbons.
------
ram_rar
I worked in a startup that was eventually acquired by cisco. We had the same
dilemma back then. AWS and GCP were great, but also fairly expensive until you
get locked in. Oracles bare metal cloud sweetened the deal soo much, that it
was a no brainer to go with them. We were very heavy on using all open source
tech stuff, but didnt rely on any cloud service like S3 etc. So the transition
was no brainer.
If your tech stack is not reliant on cloud services like S3 etc, you're better
off with a cloud provider who can give you those sweet deals. But you'll need
in house expertise to deal with big data.
~~~
matt_heimer
Most cloud providers, Oracle included, have an S3 compatible object storage
API - [https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-
us/iaas/Content/Object/Task...](https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-
us/iaas/Content/Object/Tasks/s3compatibleapi.htm)
Even the few that don't, you can use something like Minio.
I wouldn't consider S3 something that requires lock in.
~~~
skuhn
Imagine migrating 100 PB from S3 to Oracle's object store. First of all, the
egress fee will cost you $5,000,000 (no joke). Second, it will take months.
Don't think your early stage startup will ever have that problem?
That's exactly what a lot of other people thought 5-10 years ago, and now
they're stuck in S3 which means they need to use EC2 to manipulate that data
which means they may as well put it all in AWS because egress fees will eat
their lunch.
~~~
1stranger
At that scale you're talking about millions in storage cost a month so I'm not
sure $5 million is that scary.
Also for that amount of data it'd be faster to transfer as a stationwagon full
of backup tapes
([https://aws.amazon.com/snowball](https://aws.amazon.com/snowball)).
~~~
matt_heimer
For 100PB they actually have a semi-truck option
[https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/](https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/)
------
cmauniada
Why? Is it because of cost? Perhaps nepotism? I don' see a reason why Amazon
or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender
either? Something seems fishy... someone from Zoom care to chime in?
Maybe they are afraid that Amazon or Microsoft with their tradition of copying
competition would pose a threat? Even then, Microsoft is already competing
using Microsoft Teams and if Amazon wanted to it wouldn't be hard for them at
all to come up with a product.
~~~
partiallypro
My guess is simply, they don't want to fund their own competitors. Microsoft
is a direct competitor already (so is Google,) and who knows what Amazon will
do. That really only leaves IBM and Oracle. I've always been baffled when
someone hosts on their competitors' platform. Like Netflix hosting on AWS, and
Grocery Stores hosting on AWS. Microsoft & Google rarely have that problem
(except on this one.)
~~~
ViViDboarder
I’ve been impressed by what I’ve heard about Walmart. They apparently won’t
even use a SaaS tool if it’s hosted on Amazon.
~~~
STRiDEX
I worked at walmart labs for 3 years and that is correct. We had one, on
premise, service that phoned home for license information to an AWS address
and our request to whitelist the ip address had to go up to the CTO.
~~~
empath75
That’s changed hasn’t it? I remember going to a Walmart labs talk 5 years ago
where they were all in on aws.
~~~
shanemhansen
No. I don't think so. They really don't like AWS. It's all
openstack/azure/gcp/vmware depending on the use case.
------
MattGaiser
I suspect Oracle is giving good deals as nobody ever considers them as a cloud
provider, so they need to gain market share to stay relevant. They wouldn’t be
in the top 10 lists of ones I would think of.
How many here even knew they had a cloud you could use?
~~~
Havoc
I did. Tried their free credit stuff. Was seriously unimpressed. Felt like a
beta test
Unless it's way cheaper I don't see the point
~~~
laughyy4
Oracle and cheap.
Thanks for the laugh.
~~~
lucianf
That's not fair, this is about OCI not the larger Oracle. It's like bashing
Azure for what Microsoft has done in the past (funny how we're not hearing
much about that anymore).
OCI is cheaper than AWS on pretty much every metric. In this particular
context:
"The Reuters article helpfully points out that Zoom has 217,000 terabytes a
month of traffic flowing through it. If we assume all of that is from inside
of Zoom’s environment out to the internet (it absolutely isn’t, but it’s a
fine worst-case data transfer scenario) and all of it is moving to Oracle now
that the deal is signed (certainly not happening, but work with me here),
according to public pricing that data transfer would cost, per month:
$11,186,406.55 on AWS, nobody knows on Azure because the pricing calculator
thinks I’m screwing with it when I put that big of a number into it, and
$1,843,630 (hat tip to Jeffery Lyon on that; I moved a decimal in an earlier
version of this post) on Oracle Cloud."
[https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/why-zoom-chose-oracle-
clo...](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/why-zoom-chose-oracle-cloud-over-
aws-and-maybe-you-should-too/)
(disclaimer, I work at Oracle)
------
btown
For those who may think Oracle may have moments of nuance, it's always worth
listening to Brian Cantrill's epic rant on Oracle and lawnmowers:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=34m7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=34m7s)
~~~
breischl
Wow, that is an impressive rant.
>Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison
That is just brilliant comedy. :)
------
AndrewKemendo
A lot of "they must be crazy" in this thread and I admit I had the same
reaction seeing the headline.
However there are some options here other than "Zoom management is
incompetent."
1\. As others have pointed out, Amazon Google Msft all have competitive
products and Zoom doesn't want to give them any more insight than they already
have.
2\. Oracle finally has a set of cloud products that are on par with AWS, GCP
or Azure from a cost, availability, license perspective
3\. They got a great deal to help Oracle change the way they do business so
they can become competitive in Cloud
I don't know if any of these are true or not, but none are implausible imo
~~~
amalter
Additionally - I don't know if Zoom's backend is Java, but if it is - Oracle
has a sweet deal on getting the Enterprise version of Graal for free if you
run on Oracle Cloud.
I think this could be a smart move for a company to be the "big fish in a
small pond" \- even if that pond is owned by a shark with freaking laser
beams....
------
yellowapple
RIP Zoom's devops team.
Having experience with AWS, Azure, and OCI, I wouldn't voluntarily touch OCI
with a 29½-foot pole. One of my company's software vendors uses OCI for the
cloud-hosted version of their product, and we've had all sorts of random
issues that make me really really really want to install the "on-prem" version
on some Windows instances in our own AWS account. Maybe we're just an outlier
and Zoom will have better experiences, but something tells me that given
Zoom's scale the issues will only be amplified.
Given that it's an Oracle product, I can't imagine it being cheap in the long-
run, either, so I seriously don't know what the value proposition is there.
Sure, maybe Zoom got a good introductory price given their scale, but... eek.
------
DevKoala
Do people questioning the intentions of this move, have actual experience
using Oracle cloud?
It seems that people really eat the marketing that AWS/GCP/Azure are the best
cloud provider for every single product.
Oracle Cloud's perception is in the gutter, and it's all press. It's very
possible that they have a competitive cloud service. They were making some
decent offers for talent last time I checked.
~~~
jedberg
From what I've heard, the top talent they are hiring are not being allowed to
actually do anything useful. They are getting paid to be in the PR.
Maybe someone who actually works on Oracle cloud can jump in here and clarify.
~~~
alpha_squared
> Maybe someone who actually works on Oracle cloud can jump in here and
> clarify.
I'd love to, and I'm sure others would as well, but I'm not sure what can be
said that wouldn't run afoul of legal.
~~~
jedberg
The fact that you're afraid of what legal might think of your response says
volumes in and of itself.
~~~
enitihas
Which company employees aren't afraid of what legal might think?
~~~
jlgaddis
Pretty much any HN comment thread even tangentially related to "cloud" usually
has comments from employees at AWS, Azure, and/or GCP -- you know, Oracle's
three primary competitors. -- not to mention many other big tech companies
(Facebook, Netflix, IBM/RedHat, and so on).
~~~
grogenaut
Amazon updated their guidance to employees a few years back that we could
share our own opinions freely online. That was after the but article and many
happy amazonians pointing out they were hamstrung from posting their
experiences online. It just seems smart from a customer trust and recruiting
standpoint.
Don't leak material information or customer data tho. Which can make it hard
as some of the best stuff is secret or customer related. Filters abound.
It was weird moving to twitch which was default open before this switch as the
two policies were in conflicts.
I think this is better overall. And I enjoy the insights from aws folks and
gcp, and the sparring that goes on.
I don't know anyone who went to Oracle cloud and was happy, but apparently
they can't share their opinions
------
kraavi
“We chose Oracle Cloud Infrastructure because of its industry-leading
security, outstanding performance and unmatched level of support.”
Zoom stressed security first, Oracle's executive team has a close relationship
with the current administration. I wonder if this is a lobbying play in light
of China centric security concerns.
Oracle isn't exactly known for its security, that would be Microsoft or
Google.
~~~
lucianf
Care to support that comment please? Mind you, talking about cloud platforms
here not parent companies.
Not a salespitch, but Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is built with pretty
serious enterprise-grade security in mind. Couple of resources:
[1] [https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/oracle-cloud-
infrastructu...](https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/oracle-cloud-
infrastructure-security-architecture.pdf) [2]
[https://www.oracle.com/assets/oracle-inf-cloud-security-
wp-3...](https://www.oracle.com/assets/oracle-inf-cloud-security-
wp-3840537.pdf) [3] [https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-
us/iaas/Content/Security/Co...](https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-
us/iaas/Content/Security/Concepts/security_overview.htm) [4]
[https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/the-four-
pilla...](https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/the-four-pillars-of-
oracle-cloud-infrastructure) [5] [https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-
infrastructure/core-to-edge-s...](https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-
infrastructure/core-to-edge-security%3a-the-oracle-cloud-infrastructure-edge-
network)
------
notyourday
For businesses that actually have users the biggest cost is not instances, it
is the per byte billed network cost, including cross-AZ cost.
AWS cross zone traffic within the same region is not free:
[https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-cross-az-data-
transfe...](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-cross-az-data-transfer-
costs-more-than-aws-says/)
and I distinctly remember getting bitten by the same kind of a bill at Google
for traffic between their AZs within the same region, which makes me guess
that Azure has the same business model.
If Oracle offered Zoom free traffic inside the region between different AZ's
then it demolished AWS and GCP pricing.
------
baggy_trough
Why the hell would any business get into bed with Oracle if there is any
alternative to it? That sales team is merciless, and the money will be
extracted to the point that the victim is half dead, once the hooks are in.
~~~
caseyf7
Are you sure you're not talking about Google Cloud?
~~~
baggy_trough
I wasn't, no. Is their reputation as fearsome as Oracle? I have personal
experience with both; only Oracle was regrettable (so far).
~~~
caseyf7
The last few years Google Cloud sales reps have been much more aggressive.
They walk in wearing Gucci loafers, talking about their MBAs, and telling us
we need to spend 50% more this year. With the new GCP head from Oracle, I
wouldn't expect it to get better, but glad to hear others are getting better
treatment.
------
zentiggr
Well, here you go, Zoom disruptors - they just tied a lead weight around their
neck, time to go to and eat their lunch.
~~~
rrmm
Who do I root for?
------
hasperdi
Unless Oracle is doing it for free, I see little reason to go with them
~~~
mmastrac
Totally guessing here but I imagine this is a super cheap deal for Zoom.
~~~
bitcharmer
At first :)
------
president
Oracle was one of the first major enterprises that converted to Zoom for all
their internal communications. Maybe there was already some sort of connection
or special relationship between the two companies early on?
------
lowdose
Are the same people saying don't do GCP because Alphabet kills all products
now commenting Meet is a valid excuse for Zoom to migrate to Oracle as a first
choice?
Cognitive dissonance anybody?
------
node-bayarea
Remember Salesforce is a big investor in Zoom. And they have a big partnership
with Oracle. Most of Salesforce DB runs on Oracle DB. They might have
influenced.
------
sanguy
Somethings as fishy as Zoom's encryption here....
------
bearcobra
My understanding is that they already use AWS and Azure, so this probably
isn't the case, but I wonder if the fact that the other major vendors have
competing services influenced this decision.
------
byteQualia
A more realistic perspective on why Zoom chose OCI:
[https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/why-zoom-chose-oracle-
clo...](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/why-zoom-chose-oracle-cloud-over-
aws-and-maybe-you-should-too/)
------
bosswipe
Somewhat off topic, but I've found Zoom to have such better video quality then
all the other big players I've tried that it leaves me wondering why, do they
have some secret sauce for streaming that other don't?
------
blackrock
At some point, it’s gotta be cheaper to just buy your own servers, and build
your own cloud. Or at least rent some colocation space.
Why keep renting expensive resources, when you can just own it outright.
------
geogra4
Oracle seems to be pushing OCI really hard to Oracle DB customers.
------
cczizou
We need some more competition. Maybe a real-life Pied Piper.
------
Jonnax
Is Oracle cloud any good? Is it like the other providers where you can take a
credit card and use?
Or do you need to give your soul to oracle?
~~~
ganstyles
No, it is really trash. It's down there with IBM cloud. I've worked with it
(and IBM) extensively, and with AWS/GCP (but not azure too much yet,
interestingly). Depending on what you want AWS/GCP/Azure are largely fungible,
Oracle and IBM are really lacking just about everything you could want, and I
would be hesitant to call them "cloud" except by the barest definition of the
word. Also worked with another one, who I won't name, but scaling your
instances required filling out paperwork and sending it in. Oracle wasn't
quite that bad, but they're down there.
~~~
lucianf
That's really unfounded, unless you're talking about an experience you had
years ago when the platform was still in the early stages.
The current Gen 2 cloud (OCI) is very much capable. I would strongly suggest
you either have a high level look at the products available (start here [1]),
peruse the documentation [2], or have a go yourself with a free account [3].
Happy to continue this chat about actual products you thought were lacking, or
your experience.
[1] [https://www.oracle.com/cloud/](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/) [2]
[https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/](https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/)
[3] [https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free)
~~~
ganstyles
Last worked with it maybe a year ago. I have a lot of SRE experience so deal
with this stuff directly, and I'm giving you my experience and the experiences
of my colleagues. It's anecdotal of course, but not unfounded.
------
ABeeSea
Another red flag in regard to Zoom’s security.
------
SXX
I guess Zoom have choosen Oracle cloud for it's horrible UX. Both give me the
same chills when I look at their UI.
~~~
tpetry
They have no secret sauce. Every other service favors bandwidth savings over
video quality, zoom did the reverse.
------
m3kw9
At a time like this $$ matters a lot. Must be a sweet sweet deal.
------
killjoywashere
Paint me paranoid, but I think this is a move by Beijing to get closer to
Oracle, which provides support for (and thus has access to) many US Government
databases.
------
abledon
first times a tragedy (security), second times a farce
------
gameswithgo
oh no
------
alephnan
In the article:
> Zoom selected Oracle to expand its cloud, bypassing major industry leaders
> Amazon Web Services, Alphabet’s Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft’s Azure
> Cloud.
I guess GCP isn't significant enough to be in the headline
~~~
king_magic
... huh?
"Alphabet’s Google Cloud Platform" __is __GCP.
~~~
adrianmonk
In the headline. The headline is "Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing
over Amazon, Microsoft". Which doesn't contain any of "Alphabet", "Google", or
"GCP".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introduction to Moose, Perl’s OO system - lelf
http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose-class/
======
MichaelBurge
Moose is a killer library for Perl. I really miss roles when working in other
languages. I often feel like I'm fighting the language if I can't split out
some common program logic into a separate module and compose it in.
I can get by in C++(using multiple inheritance and the CRTP), and Haskell(with
typeclasses).
D has some interesting features - like template mixins - that look promising,
but I haven't been gutsy enough to use it for any new project.
~~~
csirac2
I'm glad I'm not the only one! Explaining why I'd possibly miss anything from
the Perl world can sometimes be like pulling teeth.
~~~
TheDauthi
I'm a heavy Rubyist these days, and Moose is one of the very few things I miss
from the realm of Perl.
Here's a fun game: the next time someone asks you what technologies you work
with or languages you prefer, somehow work in that you like Perl, at least
Modern Perl with Moose. Count which one occurs most frequently: people backing
away like you've begun frothing at the mouth, people asking if you've ever
heard of ANOTHER_TECHNOLOGY (usually Ruby, sometimes Python), and people who
assume you're a sysadmin who occasionally scripts something (they'll ask if
you've ever used Puppet or Chef).
~~~
rurounijones
[https://github.com/peczenyj/MooseX](https://github.com/peczenyj/MooseX) may
be of interest to you then, there was a reddit post about it a few days ago.
To be honest, as a ruby person, I don't really see what benefits it brings to
ruby but maybe I am just missing something.
------
swuecho
The talk is great. For those who do not have the patience, this is the doc of
Moose [https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose](https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose)
This is the Moose Cookbook
[https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose::Cookbook](https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose::Cookbook)
I think this is pretty much everything you need to start using Moose.
------
autarch
I should point out that these are slides from a full day class where people
also do a lot of exercises. You can see the whole thing at
[https://github.com/moose/intro-to-moose](https://github.com/moose/intro-to-
moose)
------
lightblade
The JavaScript library Joose was inspired by moose.
[http://joose.it](http://joose.it)
------
lelf
Notice that they are all just libraries, dedicated changes in Perl’s core: 0.
~~~
peteretep
I see that as a feature, honestly; what other languages have an OO system so
massively flexible that you can easily build stuff like this on top of it?
Perl's OO system is often derided as "bolted-on", but once you thoroughly
understand `bless` and `->`, your imagination is the limit.
~~~
lispm
See the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) and its Meta-Object Protocol (MOP).
~~~
kbenson
Moose is back-ported Perl6 objects, which borrows heavily from CLOS and the
concepts introduced in the Smalltalk traits paper. This is a bit of a
simplification of the history, but the ancestry is present, documented and
obvious.
------
hernan604
[https://github.com/hernan604/Tutorial-Joose-JS-
PT](https://github.com/hernan604/Tutorial-Joose-JS-PT)
Joose js tutorial in portuguese =)
Its possible to have all the moose power in javascript
------
mkadlec
Why not just use Ruby, all of this is already built in?
~~~
RVuRnvbM2e
This was my first thought too. Can anyone elaborate on features Moose has that
Ruby doesn't?
~~~
csirac2
Did you read the linked article? It's not the prettiest intro I've ever seen,
but for perl users its benefits can be seen on
[http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose-
class...](http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose-
class/#slide27) vs [http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose-
class...](http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose-
class/#slide28)
Ruby code wouldn't be as verbose as this, but still once you're used to
building classes with Moose accessors, types, traits etc. in a mostly
declarative manner, going back to hand-rolling checks and exceptions on bad
attribute values, not to mention accessor methods and so on definitely feels
like a step backwards.
In fact now that I'm doing a lot of Python these days I've come to the
horrible realization that it's Moose which has made me yearn for a language
with stronger emphasis on typing and correctness than Python can provide!
Edit: and I don't mean "like java", where it only ever seems to get in your way...
Moose does useful things and gives you stuff "for free" once you've told it what
type something should be. And allows you trivially inherit/override type
declarations, rather than jumping through hoops as in Java.
It's a full about-face compared to the liberation I felt going from C/C++/Java
to Ruby back around 2006-2007.
Slowly working through Learn you a Haskell, but doubt I'll get a chance to use
Haskell professionally.
~~~
RVuRnvbM2e
Do you mean the optional type enforcement? Admittedly it's not built-in to
ruby, but it's easy to replicate.. and a lot less verbose:
# Implementation:
module TypedAttrs
def attr_accessor_type name, type
define_method name do
instance_variable_get "@#{name}"
end
define_method "#{name}=" do |value|
raise ArgumentError unless value.is_a? type
instance_variable_set "@#{name}", value
end
end
end
# Example:
class Foo
extend TypedAttrs
attr_accessor_type :bar, Integer
end
a = Foo.new
a.bar = 5
p a.bar
a.bar = "hi" # ArgumentError
~~~
csirac2
Sure. And just for attributes, there's also delegation, read-only attributes,
builders, lazy init, roles, modifiers which are enforced at construction time
(if `required` is true).
Moose isn't hard to implement, it's actually had quite a few alternate
implementations even in Perl. Python has enthought's traits package, and I've
just been pointed to
[https://github.com/frasertweedale/elk](https://github.com/frasertweedale/elk)
as well.
BTW it sucks to nit-pick, but the Moose version isn't any more verbose than
yours:
package Foo;
use Moose;
has 'bar' => ( isa => 'Integer' );
------
tmaly
Great presentation. I have not used Moose much, but I have started using a
lighter weight version of it called Moo.
------
victormx
¿it's hard to put a next/previous button?
~~~
esaym
bottom right if you have js enabled...
~~~
ben0x539
If you have js disabled, you get the whole thing as a normal document with a
scrollbar.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Outrage about PRISM spying is wearing off already - Baustin
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043777/the-outrage-about-prism-spying-is-wearing-off-already.html
======
neilk
This is from July 7th. Almost a month ago.
Maybe I suffer confirmation bias because I'm following the story, but it seems
to be picking up steam to me. A few days ago, the US House of Representatives
almost passed a law which would have curtailed the NSA's activities, and now
we have the XKeyScore revelations which are still playing out.
From the release of the Pentagon papers, to Nixon's resignation, took three
years. The incident which ultimately led to the president's resignation was a
side issue, buried in the back pages of the A section, for most of that time.
I'm not sure if the US government is still capable of policing itself in that
way. But however it plays out this isn't going to be over in a few weeks.
~~~
diminoten
Failing to pass the law but coming close to passing the law means literally
nothing. That is not a victory.
And have you talked to people outside of the Internet about it? _Plenty_ of
people didn't ever care, and are now upset with Snowden for even having leaked
what he did.
This is not going to "pick up steam" any more than it already has, short of
non-spying related leaks (Obama killed a guy with his laser vision, for
example).
~~~
neilk
I think you're being unnecessarily negative. I like the metaphor Wyden had:
"The side of transparency and openness is starting to put some points on the
board." All-or-nothing thinking is not helpful.
But you have a point. Snowden didn't come to the public with revelations about
how these programs were persecuting anybody in particular. So the objections
one might raise are more theoretical, about "turnkey tyranny", or that
panoptic surveillance is itself an offense against the people. I have a
feeling that if a more specific case came to light, it would change
everything.
~~~
diminoten
It's not all-or-nothing thinking re: failing to pass the law. A vote count's
closeness has very very little to do with how close the outcome actually was.
It literally means nothing that the vote count was so close.
I also don't think one case will do it. It'd have to be a trend (people
literally snatched up in the night), a policy shift ( _all_ copyright abuse
starts being enforced because now they have that data), or some kind of tragic
action leading to the deaths (yes deaths) of people on US soil.
~~~
neilk
You may be right. But in my opinion it's not the severity of the action that's
brought to light, it's who gets hurt. The elites of the US are usually fine
with extraconstitutional shenanigans and human rights violations when they
only affect foreigners, or relatively powerless people within the US.
When it affects the domestic balance of power, then you start to see elite
consensus building against it, and the wheels of reform start turning. This is
how a hotel break-in is more serious than a secret war in Indochina.
It's possible that US elites will perceive surveillance as a threat to
themselves. If they don't, you're probably right and then everyone just gets
used to it, and any reckoning is kicked down the road for a few more decades.
~~~
diminoten
No one's actually _gotten_ hurt because of the NSA's surveillance, so that's
the problem. All of these potential consequences are theoretical. We're trying
to string the NSA up on what amounts to pre-crime.
------
LoganCale
There is a follow up protest to Restore the 4th, 1984 Day, planned for this
upcoming Sunday, August 4. If there is one being held near you, please
consider attending. Keep checking if there isn't one nearby, as they have been
adding a few more locations in the past day.
[http://1984day.com/](http://1984day.com/)
~~~
jamesbritt
Do all of these rallies insist on using Facebook for organizing their privacy
protests?
The irony is stunning.
~~~
LoganCale
Yeah, I find it stupid as well. I have the Facebook domain blocked at the
/etc/hosts level and generally won't go there, period.
------
JonSkeptic
It's not surprising. The Zimmerman trial was an excellent distraction to get
everyone's mind off of privacy and on to racial divisiveness. Now that the
trial's long over, all that NSA stuff seems so distant in the memory of the
average American. It was a brilliant move by the administration.
~~~
JonFish85
Are you saying the Obama administration set up the Zimmerman trial just to
distract people from the NSA stuff?
~~~
smky80
No, the people who tell the Obama administration what to do, told the media to
make a circus out of the case.
~~~
adestefan
I can't tell if you actually believe this or if it's just sarcasm.
------
regis
I am still outraged but I don't know what to do about it. I don't think the
restore the 4th/1984 day stuff is the right way to go about it. That is a
great way to spread a message but has about a 0% chance of shutting down the
NSA etc...
This stuff has recently caused me to fall into a bit of depression because I
feel totally helpless.
Does anyone else feel this way? What could we do?
~~~
verandaguy
The distressing part about all this is that there is, in fact, very little to
be done about this. For now, the best thing anyone can do is to keep the issue
from dying. Raise awareness. Find reliable data to back up claims against
PRISM and XKeyscore (data of which, I'm sure there are respectable amounts).
The more people know, the more can be done about the issue. Protests,
speeches, walkouts, boycotts, and, should worse come to worse, riots can be
organized. Maybe more people working on the projects can be convinced to
defect or sabotage the project.
Just fight to keep this relevant.
~~~
regis
Definitely.... However, I have been working to keeping this subject alive but
at a certain point people don't want to hear it and even more disturbingly
I've found that many people don't think that our government would really do
something like that even after reading about it.
------
ck2
The way the average american thinks, if the police slowly came every other day
and disappeared one of your neighbors, they'd shrug it off and say "oh well
what can you do, we need to be safe".
Until it was their turn and there was no one to protest.
This is why we still have the TSA grabbing your genitals and the NSA grabbing
everything else. "oh well what can you do, we need to be safe".
Meanwhile congresspeople would write in exemptions for themselves and figure
out how to do insider trading to profit from the activity (btw, they gave
themselves back the right to do the insider trading).
~~~
regis
Whenever I fly I request a hand screening and it seems that more often than
not the person screening me is more uncomfortable than I am. In the past I
have literally walked a TSA employee through the procedure because he was to
shy to touch me like he was "required" to.
It's not only passengers who struggle with this stuff but also the employees
of the companies that require this kind of behavior.
~~~
MattBearman
I flew out of Newark twice last month, and both times I was the only person
who requested a hand screening, and both times the TSA employee doing the
screening just seemed pissed off with me for making them do it.
It does seem that sadly most people will just accept what ever ridiculous
rules are forced upon them,
------
aleprok
I would right away move from Google, Microsoft, Apple, products if I had good
alternatives.
Basically I do not use any Apple products, but Skype is the only Microsoft
thing I use.
Duck Duck Go as search engine works, but still I like my personalized search
results, they get me faster where I want to go. Though my search results
should be secure and not spied upon. Duck Duck Go is also missing image search
and some other problems like 25 Mb / 25 MB does not give me 0.125, but instead
Provincial Trunk Highway 25, Brandon, Manitoba
Then comes the problem of phone operation systems. Ubuntu Unity, Firefox OS
could be nice, but they are long way to come here. Only mobile operation
system options for me are iOS, Android or that damn Windows currently.
It's pretty damn hard to stop using Facebook, Google+ or Twitter just for the
reason of spying, because everyone of your friends is in one of them.
If I decide to stop using these systems where I can be spied upon I most
likely will lose ability to contact most of my friends who are not technically
skilled to use something like torchat or does not care that much to learn to
use it.
If I leave these systems I can no longer easily inform my friends about the
dangers of the systems they are using.
Thing is walled gardens are walled gardens and they are hard to compete with.
Do I wait that people create better and secure services or go offline and
never come back?
------
pearjuice
Like any other outrage in the past few decades. We have become soft and there
is nothing you can do about it. Instead of writing intellectual comments on
the matter, we should go down the street, burn some tires, overthrow the
government; stuff like that. Yet here I am,thinking that no one will be brave
enough to initialize or follow me if I would. They made us soft and we obeyed.
Don't tell me there is a civilized road to solving this because the stakes are
way too high for anyone to turn in what we have become.
~~~
astrodust
Americans don't know outrage. They've been trained from a young age to be
apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been
systematically beaten down.
When's the last time they've had to mobilize the National Guard because there
was a protest?
The entire American economy could collapse because of a giant banking scandal
and people wouldn't even raise a fist in anger.
~~~
pearjuice
The best part being these downvotes only proving the point.
~~~
res0nat0r
People aren't protesting because like the article says...they really don't
care. NSA spying doesn't directly affect them in any tangible way, so there is
no reason for the average person to be upset. If people were being physically
yanked from their homes and interrogated related to NSA spying intel, then it
might be a different story I believe.
------
mladenkovacevic
For the average citizen it's all about reward and risk. A large population of
the US is middle class and the risk of being detained, alienated or whatnot is
far greater than the reward of complete liberty. And besides the surface
illusion of liberty seems to be doing an alright job anyways.
Now if the majority of US population sinks into poverty then the elite will
have something to worry about. A far more likely scenario for the near future
is that smaller countries become affected by citizen outrage, at which point
they cut US political and economic influence out of their governments'
decisions. You know how America imposes sanctions on Cuba? Well imagine that a
large portion of the world imposes sanctions on the US. That might have some
meaningful effect although an ongoing relationship with China alone might be
enough to keep the US going for a while.
------
tehwalrus
Elected officials don't have a reason to action _any_ concern unless you're
willing to change your vote over it (indeed, if _lots_ of people are willing
to change _all their votes_ over it.)[1]
Something like PRISM doesn't even get the requisite majority support (well, it
does for email, not for phone records), let alone high enough priority to make
people vote for some third "privacy party" candidate in the next presidential
election, or to vote out legislators based on their support for it. It doesn't
stand a chance of being changed.
(except by a ruling that it breaches the 4th, which is rather unlikely,
sadly.)
[1] example from the UK; leaving the EU (most people would say yes, but
wouldn't change their vote over it). House of Lords reform, too. If we ever
get a referendum on either, boom!
------
wonderzombie
Most people in the US probably assume that:
* the agencies performing surveillance by and large have good intentions
* surveillance has or will have no practical impact on their lives, because
* _they 're_ not doing anything wrong, so they're probably fine, and anyway
* they can't really do anything about it.
As for the first, it reminds me of this Onion article: "Smart, Qualified
People Behind The Scenes Keeping America Safe: 'We Don't Exist'"[0]. We have
ordinary people, people with flaws and cognitive biases. They're hyper-
sensitized to threats, convinced we're all in imminent danger unless we
institute mass surveillance For Our Own Good. This is essentially a flawed
premise (the road to hell, etc).
The second is more or less correct. It makes no difference in one's daily
life.
In the third, I chose the word "wrong" deliberately. Most people incorrectly
assume they've not done anything _illegal_ , but most people don't have
nefarious plans and therefore assume they've nothing to worry about.
The third is also more or less correct, but it's a flawed premise that you,
personally, have to be able to do something about it.
I really think more people should be educated along the lines of "Don't Talk
to the Cops"[1]. Even if you have no nefarious plans, the justice system's
incentives are all aligned against you; they want convictions, not the truth.
The adversarial nature of the system is predicated on you _not_ being
thoughtlessly compliant.
[0]: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/smart-qualified-people-
behi...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/smart-qualified-people-behind-the-
scenes-keeping-a,17954/) [1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik).
edited: formatting. wish I knew how to do bulleted lists.
------
codersquare
i haven't lived in America long enough, I'm Asian. I lived in Australia for
long enough to know what democracy feels like, at least on the surface.
But this incident is really something that I can't comprehend. What's
happening to all those crouching potential heroes in American movies? The only
hero I've seen so far is Snowden. Where have all those American brave cowboys
gone? Where has the American dream gone? The dream of liberty, freedom, of a
Fair country?
Haven't lived in America myself, but from the self-confident, open-minded
Americans I met, from Hollywood movies, I just can't understand why people are
kinda OK with this incident. Why are people so tolerant to such a pretty big
lie.
------
mathattack
I think privacy is already gone. I remember Geraldo Rivera going on a "Privacy
is gone forever" rant after 9/11, and I was ashamed to admit that I actually
agreed with him.
------
tshtf
Not sure why this article has been flagged, but here's an anecdotal
counterpoint. I run a public XMPP server listed on [1], and since the PRISM
revelations the number of new user registrations has increased significantly.
I've seen no sign so far of a downturn in new registrations.
[1] [http://xmpp.net/](http://xmpp.net/)
------
null_ptr
_" There's some hard evidence that all this privacy stuff just doesn't alarm
us all that much."_
I wish all these articles would stop the reinforcement of apathy in every
spying article's opening paragraph. It sets the tone for the entire piece.
------
arh68
Wow, what a crap article. I've got a more to-the-point headline, if Mr.
Vaughan-Nichols has trouble coming up with another: "World Doesn't Stop On A
Dime To Fix Problems: Must Mean Nobody Cares". Classic spin-down.
------
hankScorpi0
Why is this surprising? This happens with every single item of news worth
getting up in arms about. You are just seeing the receding area under the bell
curve of social interest...
------
motters
Relax. The Party is everything, knows everything. There are no spies, only
brave members of the inner committee doing their duty for the empire.
------
hoggle
FYI this entry was just still among the top 30 stories on HN and is currently
listed at #169. Can somebody explain this please?
------
rasur
*The Outrage in the USA about PRISM spying is wearing off already.
The rest of the world however..
------
rambojohnson
says "PC World" ...
------
VladRussian2
denial, anger, bargaining, depression, accpetance
------
northwest
_" [...] the ten most searched terms, according to Google Trends, were: iOS7,
PS4, Tim Tebow, Mac Pro, Kingdom Hearts, Miami Heat, IGN, Chad Johnson, NBA
Playoffs, and the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference ( WWDC)."_
Probably the most important cause of this is the fact that the mass media are
tightly controlled by a couple of extremely rich people. And they don't like
change as they fear the loss of power. The current system works very much in
their favor.
Free and unbiased media is the basis for democracy.
~~~
JonFish85
Another way to look at it would be to say that people care about things that
directly affect them. The NSA stuff isn't something that really affects
anyone's day-to-day life, whereas in the US there are just HUGE portions of
the country that play PS4, watch sports, buy phones, etc. No conspiracy theory
necessary.
~~~
northwest
> No conspiracy theory necessary.
This is a saddening statement. What I'm saying has nothing to do with
conspiracy. (When I say "controlled by a couple of extremely rich people", "a
couple" might even be "a few hundred", but that's still "a couple".)
~~~
rayiner
You suggested that a few rich people control the media and tell people what to
care about. That's pretty much the definition of conspiracy theory.
Alternate hypothesis: you're in a tiny minority of people who think the
internet is really important. Like, foundation of society important, as
opposed to a convenient place to buy shit and message your friends and look up
the release date of the latest Madden game. Surveillance of the internet seems
more important to you than it does to other people, and you can't understand
why and have to resort to an explanation involving the shadowy elite.
------
GhotiFish
But do you really care? Or are you more like my dogs, who
can be distracted at any moment by a rustling in the
leaves. "Oh, look, a squirrel!" their alert little faces
seem to say.
mmm hmm... Is all Stevens work this misdirected?
------
EGreg
The problem of centralization, and its solution:
[http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21](http://myownstream.com/blog#2011-05-21)
------
rorrr2
Outrage is useless. Protests won't stop shit. Did they stop the wars? Nope.
It's what you do with that situation is important.
I'd say an independent party should use privacy as an opportunity, a platform,
name the responsible for the spying. Name the politicians who voted for it,
name the judges to let it happen.
Another good thing that will come out of it is the awareness of the
encryption. More people will start using it. Assuming NSA doesn't have a
magical anti-crypto algorithms, and it's a pretty solid assumption, NSA can
spend trillions of dollars on hardware and still not be able to decrypt just
one message.
~~~
northwest
> Outrage is useless. Protests won't stop shit.
I don't see it that way, b/c this is just 1 out of tons of measures that will
be needed. Each measure will stimulate other measures, it's an interactive
thing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hey everyone, do you have some spare time to do my survey? - hkuhl
https://www.surveymonkey.de/r/D5QLLXP
======
hkuhl
I hope it's okay to post this here, but I'm running a Developer Happiness
Survey at the moment and will publish the results in an index. If you have a
few minutes spare, it would be so helpful to have your input! Thanks heaps,
and let me know if this shouldn't be here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show:Tot – Convert any text into trello task - mhrnik
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tot-convert-any-text-into/ahbnljonnejlldcfccaklgpcblpodfeo
======
mhrnik
My friend came up with an idea and we made this chrome extension (our first)
which can help to convert any text in the task.
Check here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoYb1ol_Sp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoYb1ol_Sp0)
Please give it a try and let me know if you want to integrate other task
management tool like clickup or asana etc
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The backdoor file named man.cy in Linux mint - cujanovic
https://gist.github.com/Oweoqi/31239851e5b84dbba894
======
elcano
Where I this file supposed to be located in an installed system, if I wanted
to check?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors - rms
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html?_r=1&hp
======
eli
So... what's it translate to?
~~~
tokenadult
It's a close pun for a Chinese phrase that would be taken to mean "_____ your
mother."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Makes for a Good Blog? - gasull
http://www.43folders.com/2008/08/19/good-blogs
======
YuriNiyazov
One of the best blogs IMO is Steve Yegge's. One of the qualities that makes it
really good is that he doesn't post often, each individual post is very long
and discusses some particular thing in great detail. Incidentally, this is not
mentioned in the OP. As a metaobservation, this particular post is neither
very long nor does it really discuss the target topic in great detail.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company - nickb
http://www.jasonnazar.com/2008/07/10/10-incredibly-awesome-documents-to-help-you-start-a-company/
======
jl
I don't think these samples are incredibly awesome for starting a company. I'm
not a lawyer, but I have helped a lot of startups with incorporation
documents. My first bit of advice is to be skeptical of documents posted on-
line, unless they are from a very trusted source. An LLC is an impractical
choice if you hope to get funding. We've had several startups come to YC as
LLCs and it has been costly and distracting for them to change their company
to a Delaware C-Corp (most common for startups). Be sure your legal paperwork
has proper IP language-- you want to be 100% certain that your company owns
all the IP. Also, if there is more than one founder, have vesting.
~~~
ph0rque
Jessica, what happened to YC's plan to open-source some of the legal
paperwork?
~~~
pg
It's coming. We're just waiting for some startups to test it out on investors.
~~~
ph0rque
Thanks.
------
pierrefar
As the comments on the post say, be careful with the legalities. In the US,
there are state-specific variations, and internationally, the laws can be very
different.
Some of the documents though are useful all over the world, so the collection
is definitely awesome!
------
auston
... Not so great.
------
Mistone
i think the financial docs are pretty helpful - i was looking for some
templates recently and these look decent.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The quest to crystallize time - jonbaer
http://www.nature.com/news/the-quest-to-crystallize-time-1.21595?href=
======
dimillian
Any of you saw the movie "Arrival"? Without spoiling anything, it drops an
amazing concept, which is also exploited in the novel in a much subtler way,
and it's bugging me ever since.
In the movie, the "alien" are not perceiving time like us, they experience it
in a circular way, they also write in a circular way. There is no beginning
and no end to what they write, it just happen. The main character, after
having studied them for a long time, start to think like them, and she start
to experience time like them. So she merely exist in the present, past and
future, she just exist. You can take what you want, but for me it's like we
maybe simply exist, at any given time, we can remember or/and live our past
but also our future. We just exist, at any given moment of OUR time; You can
BE at anytime between your birth and death. We're maybe just stuck in our
current concept of time, like we maybe don't perceive other dimensions because
they are "hidden" to our way of experiencing our world.
Enough talk anyway.
~~~
ep103
Sounds like Philip K Dick's take on time. IIRC he had a mental breakdown at
one point, and believed this is exactly how time works. That at any moment,
you could be walking down the same street in 2000 AD, 4000AD, and 0 AD, and
the same stories would be or could be unfolding
~~~
orless
Actually based on a short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life)
~~~
wavefunction
Not from what I know. PK Dick towards the end of his life believed himself to
be living both in 1974 and as an early Christian named Thomas in the Levant
sometime in the first century CE contemporaneously.
~~~
orless
It's easy to check:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/)
Writers: Eric Heisserer (screenplay), Ted Chiang (based on the story "Story of
Your Life" written by)
------
jonbaer
Much of it was better explained a few years ago at
[https://www.quantamagazine.org/20130425-perpetual-motion-
tes...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20130425-perpetual-motion-test-could-
amend-theory-of-time/)
------
zamalek
I am not a physicist, but I'm seeing a similarity between time crystals and
the vacuum, as the vacuum results in quantum fluctuation - which is also a
form of activity at zero-point energy. This point of view means that the
vacuum could be contrived to be a time crystal. I'm clearly drawing an
incorrect conclusion, but why?
~~~
xelxebar
I think the crystal part is more about the symmetry breaking than the non-zero
energy part.
~~~
zamalek
Thanks, what an obvious miss.
------
daveguy
Crystallization of time seems like a misnomer to me. Aren't they continually
adding laser energy to the system to maintain the "crystal" state? Doesn't
crystallization imply a stable state resistant to external energy sources
rather than dependent on them?
~~~
reptation
I tend to agree, but had a lot of trouble understanding the article (I studied
different branch of physics). I think this is the key:
"The recipe was incredibly complex, but just three ingredients were essential:
a force repeatedly disturbing the particles, a way to make the atoms interact
with each other and an element of random disorder... More than that, the
researchers found that even if they started to flip the system in an imperfect
way, such as by slightly changing the frequency of the kicks, the oscillation
remained the same."
------
GnarfGnarf
Time doesn't exist. It is simply an abstraction to measure the comparative
rates of the movement of matter.
All our measurements of time refer to the movement of matter: the rotation of
the Earth, the orbit of Earth around the Sun, the swinging of a pendulum, the
vibrations of a cesium atom.
Time travel is not possible. It would require the re-arrangements of atoms
into exactly their former position, which is precluded by entropy. Too bad.
There is no past or future. There is only the forever "now".
~~~
krapp
> Time doesn't exist. It is simply an abstraction to measure the comparative
> rates of the movement of matter.
You can't claim time doesn't exist, then offer a definition of time, which
_requires time to exist._
Also, general relativity would like to have a word with you after class.
~~~
nickpeterson
The point boils down to, is time invented or discovered?
Most science (I think) presumes that time was discovered (before recorded
history for obvious reasons).
Critics argue that it's invented to help orient our perspective of events.
------
lngnmn
Bullshit. Whatever they think they have crystallized, according to an
interpretation of reading of their instruments, which uses statistics and
probability, is not time.
Time is a derived characteristic of an observed process and requires an
observer, so it does not exist as an independent phenomena. Whatever they have
convinced themselves it was, it is not time.
~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Yes, the scientists are full of bullshit, but your quasimystical
interpretation of requiring an observer is insightful.
I think your post is just nonsense. Particularly because you used the phrase
"crystalize time" rather than "crystalize matter in the time direction", which
makes me wonder if you even know what a time crystal is.
~~~
lngnmn
Yes, some "modern science" is no different from astrology or metaphysics,
nothing extraordinary here. Same dogmatic, unproven theological sectarian
arguments about abstract concepts and fancy theoretical models.
~~~
SomeStupidPoint
This is literally a case of someone performing a test because the community
thought the concept couldn't happen (after some debate).
That's pretty much exactly the _opposite_ of dogmatic.
Let me ask you this, though: do you have a better idea of how to do science?
Because it sounds like you're just whining science isn't perfect and modern
science is hard/confusing.
~~~
lngnmn
The case of performing a computer simulation, or an empirical experiment?
~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Empirical experiment.
Did you even read the article before ranting at the concept?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Living With a Computer (1982) - atestu
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/issues/82jul/fallows.htm
======
grellas
I went through my undergraduate and law school years, as well as the first
couple of years of my career, during the typewriter era.
A few random thoughts on the early era:
1\. I paid to have a freelancer type my college thesis in 1974 (I routinely
used a typewriter but for 35 pages it was worth paying $.50/page to avoid
having to slog through and manually format all that material when cut and
paste literally meant taking a scissors, cutting pre-typed text into little
ribbon strips, and pasting them on to a fresh sheet of paper where you would
manually "insert" them between other portions of text).
2\. By the late 1970s, Wang was king of word processing in larger companies,
at $15k a pop for its dedicated word processors. Very impressive in
appearance, it was a bulky piece of hardware that made it seem like you were
using a giant, specialized machine to automate working with text. Only large
companies could afford them; the rest of us drooled while continuing to use
typewriters with "magcart" memory tapes (I think that is what they were
called) that could keep a few lines of text in "memory" for a typewriter for
standard re-use in legal documents.
3\. IBM Selectrics were ubiquitous - every office had them in abundance, and
they were the standard tool for secretaries of the day.
4\. Young lawyers like me at the time couldn't wait for computerized systems
to do our work more efficiently. Partners would not touch a computer. That was
"secretary's work." The system used at my big firm (circa 1980) was based on a
Wang minicomputer system, with dumb terminals dispersed throughout the firm,
mostly for the use of the secretaries. Every week a memo would circulate
(carried by hand) telling us to give our secretaries a list of documents that
could be deleted from the central system because storage was so expensive.
5\. When I set up my small office around early 1984, we used WordStar on a
dual-floppy IBM PC. For a long document (e.g., 20-page bylaws), you would give
the program a command to go from the start of the document to the end, and it
would literally take the cursor some 10 seconds to get there. Printing was
also slow, and very loud, as "cartwheel" printers would manually rotate and
clank very loudly as each key struck the page while the document printed out
in a manner that simulated what an "automated typewriter" would do.
6\. Document redlining was not possible in that era for a little operation
because it simply was not cost effective. In that era, a "redline" consisted
of the original document being marked up manually by a live person who would
lay the drafts side by side, read them through by comparing one against the
other, manually hand-write "inserts" into the redline version by using little
carrots and writing the new text above the line, and manually striking through
deleted text, all done laboriously line-by-line. Imagine the human labor
involved in doing this repeatedly with a 50-page document.
7\. The only way to get a same-day communication in that era was by hand
delivery or via faxes sent on machines costing thousands of dollars. Most
companies did not have fax machines because they could not afford them. Thus,
getting a message across town to someone who didn't have a fax machine (i.e.,
to most people companies) would typically cost you $40 or so if you wanted it
to go "same day." It was unthinkable in that day that an _individual_ would
own or have access to a fax machine outside of a big-company environment.
Slow and clunky as the early computers, etc. seem today, we truly marveled at
them in the day. What I love about this article is how the author captures
that sense of wonder (wow, you could watch the characters appear on a
screen!). This piece brings back a lot of memories and makes me appreciate all
the more the vast progress that has occurred since that time.
~~~
MikeCapone
Wow. For someone born in 1982, this sounds like a whole other era. But I have
to remind myself that my kids will probably think the same of the technology
that I'm using right now ("Oh dad, you mean your 'Mac Pro' only had 8 cores
and 8 gigs of RAM?").
~~~
_delirium
Weirdly, as someone born in 1981, it starts sounding eerily familiar around
#4. It's very hazy, but I remember using _Apple Writer II_ (word-processing
software) along with an ImageWriter II sometime in the late 1980s to do my
elementary-school homework, which sounds vaguely like that description.
I think my parents were pretty pleased that I had managed to find a productive
use for the home computer they bought, in an era when my dad was still using
pen-and-pencil and the occasional mainframe terminal for his day job with a
big engineering firm.
------
noonespecial
_Isaac Asimov recently complained in Popular Computing that his word-processor
didn't save him much time on revisions, since he composes at ninety words per
minute and "95 per cent of what I write in the first draft stays in the second
[and final] draft."_
Whoa.
------
mnemonicsloth
This has got to be the grand champion of it's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature:
_There is even an editing step possible only with the machines. When I think
I'm finished with an article, I set the print speed to Slow. This runs the
printer at about 100 words per minute, or roughly the pace of reading aloud. I
stuff my ears with earplugs and then lean over the platen as the printing
begins. Watching the article printed at this speed is like hearing it read;
infelicities are more difficult to ignore than when you are scooting your eye
over words on a page._
------
alexgartrell
In a perfect world, everyone who had a home computer would also have
an Osborne to travel with. According to dealers, Osbornes are selling
so fast that many people must have decided that it makes sense not
just as their second computer but as their first.
Wow, this guy really nailed the laptop thing.
~~~
sp332
And we might still be using Osborne-brand laptops today, if it weren't for the
whole Osborne Effect thing.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Computer_Corporation>
~~~
idoh
It turns out that the Osborne effect is a myth:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myth>
------
ebiester
<http://www.theatlantic.com/james-fallows/> \-- the author's current blog.
He ended up as a program designer for Microsoft for a while, so perhaps that
BASIC experience on a tax program didn't go to waste.
------
osipov
"many people suspect that IBM will wage a counteroffensive with a DOS of its
own"
little did the author know how that will turn out...
------
j-g-faustus
"When I sit down to write a letter or start the first draft of an article, I
simply type on the keyboard and the words appear on the screen."
I suppose any sufficiently advanced technology actually _is_ indistinguishable
from magic.
~~~
sp332
<http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081205> "Any sufficiently
analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!"
------
philwelch
"When I want to know how many prime numbers there are between one million and
two million, or how quickly my mortgage payments would bankrupt me if interest
rates rose to 35 percent—that is, when I don't want to do my work—I can kill
ten minutes writing programs to tell me the answer. Getting down to business,
I use the computer to do my income tax. My economic life is a mess of $2.75
parking-lot tickets and $13.89 lunch receipts, which used to pile up like fall
leaves until I spent a week burrowing through them at income-tax time. Now all
I do is sit down at the machine for five minutes every few nights and type in
all transactions of interest to the tax man—so much in from my employers, so
much out to the credit-card company. At the end of the year, I load the
income-tax program into the computer, push the button marked "Run," and watch
as my tax return is prepared. Since it took me only about six months to learn
BASIC (and the tax laws) well enough to write the program, I figure this
approach will save me time by 1993."
Somehow I think we have failed, if writing basic programs like this is now
outside the realm of most computer users.
~~~
mechanical_fish
You've got it backwards. In 1982 only the people who could write basic
programs like this would put in the enormous investment of time and money to
become computer users.
The fact that the electronics industry has managed to make it's products so
much cheaper and so much easier to use that even (e.g.) the illiterate and
innumerate can usefully enjoy them is a big triumph.
~~~
philwelch
And in the process, much of the promise has been lost. I suppose it should be
no surprise--television was hailed at its invention as a medium for education
and culture even though within years it degenerated into an endless stream of
fixed quiz shows and formulaic sitcoms. And now personal computers are for
most people more of a distraction and an impediment to creativity than they
are any help.
Maybe it's right to be cynical--new technology can't reach a mass market
without turning into just another form of television, because the mass of
people won't create no matter what. I just wish that making computers
accessible to more people meant giving more people the creative potential that
this guy had in 1982, rather than just giving them another television with 500
channels of cute kitty pictures with amusing subtitles.
------
rm-rf
The article describes home computing of that era quite well.
64k of RAM.
Cassette vs floppy.
Dot matrix vs daisy wheel.
Makes me want to get the old DECmate II down from the attic & boot it up one
more time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Anti-Gmail Ad - andr
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TDbrX5U75dk
======
beshrkayali
It is pretty funny, but the ads makes it seem as if there are real people
snooping into your emails when it's actually just some bots that are trying to
serve you ads (which is inevitable) that might relate to you, isn't that
better than just having random stupid ads show up on your page?
I appreciate it when Gmail tells me that I'm missing the attachements or when
it asks me to add the event written in text in the email to my calendar.
I'm not saying Google is not evil, but it's hypocritical of Microsoft to say
this while they're actually doing the same thing reading people Facebook
statuses on bing and so on.
------
atomicdog
As crap as Hotmail is, I found this pretty funny.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unholy Rails: External Scripts, jQuery Plugins, and Page-Specific JavaScript - DanielKehoe
http://railsapps.github.com/rails-javascript-include-external.html
======
ScotterC
I've been using this technique with great success.
[http://viget.com/inspire/extending-paul-irishs-
comprehensive...](http://viget.com/inspire/extending-paul-irishs-
comprehensive-dom-ready-execution)
You still have to load in all your js but at least you can execute exactly
what you want per controller and action and have it documented all in one
place.
~~~
DanielKehoe
That's the so-called Garber-Irish technique that I briefly mention in the
article. I want to investigate it further. I'm not sure whether to use classes
or ids in the body tag or try the data-* attributes he suggests.
Also I'm a bit reluctant to use page-specific CSS selectors. It seems to be
accepted practice (Modernizr and other libraries) but still seems like a hack.
After all, there is never more than one body tag so it seems inconsistent with
the HTML spec to apply a class or id to it.
~~~
pault
CSS selectors should describe visual design, not content. Selector chains like
.landing-page #buy-button are a CSS code smell. Unfortunately this seems to be
more common than not, in my experience.
~~~
eurleif
What? IDs and classes are part of the HTML, not the CSS, and as such, they
should specify semantics, not presentation. If a class or ID specifies
presentation, like .red-button, you have to change the HTML when the design
changes, not just the CSS.
~~~
pault
Sorry, just generally ranting, not in your direction. :)
My personal (strong) preference is to use semantic IDs as JS hooks (or just
for markup readability), and keep all class names content-agnostic. Obviously
there will be cases where you need to use (CSS) classes in your JS as well, so
a good practice is to prefix them with js- and not base any style definitions
on them. Separation of concerns and all that. You should be able to refactor
your CSS, markup, and JS independently and not have anything break.
Additionally, you should be able to copy paste a chunk of markup and have it
look identical no matter where you put it, which definitely won't be the case
if you are using long, content-referencing selector chains. Keeping your CSS
flat, low level, and generic increases reusability and prevents CSS bloat,
which can quickly get out of hand even in a medium sized app. Of course, all
this is probably overkill if you are making small, static sites.
------
DanielKehoe
I wrote the article to explore what to do when your application is not wholly
Rails. I got a lot of help and advice but I don't think there's full agreement
on recommended practices yet. I've seen a range of opinion but a lot of advice
doesn't hold up to analysis. The article reflects the best advice I've gotten.
~~~
dchuk
Well thank you for compiling all of this together because about to deploy a
new version of my product that has a significant amount of fairly complex JS
and I found it very frustrating to not have any goto resource in regards to
structuring and optimizing the code. I'm going to try and incorporate some of
your tips and will report back if you'd like
~~~
DanielKehoe
You're welcome. Take a look at the link (in the article) to Ken Collins’s
"Secrets Of The Asset Pipeline" slide deck. It's got some great
recommendations about organizing your JS code. Let me know how it goes (you
can leave comments).
------
Finbarr
I dislike the approach described where one concatenates every single
javascript file into application.js and then tests for the presence of
particular dom elements or classes within each file. This taxes the creation
of new scripts somewhat as you must ensure you're not accidentally creating a
dom element or class which is going to enable some undesired scripts. Another
possible option with "require_tree ." is to use a framework like
<http://requirejs.org/> and then use in line script tags within pages to
require a particular module.
I also think it's a bad idea to enable asset compilation in production. From
the Rails asset guides
([http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html#live-
compi...](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html#live-
compilation)):
"This mode uses more memory, performs more poorly than the default and is not
recommended."
My advice would be to use application.js to concatenate scripts you're highly
likely to use on every page, e.g., jquery, bootstrap, etc. Then organize the
rest of your page specific scripts into
app/assets/javascripts/<controller>/<action>.js<.extensions> and add a
`javascript_include_tag "#{params[:controller]}/#{params[:action]}` in any
views that rely on page specific scripts (within a content_for(:head) block).
This way you'll likely have 2 local scripts loading for each page - the
application.js file and any page specific script. The upsides are that you
don't need to worry about undesired javascript running, the application.js
file will be cached and reused across all pages, and your lightweight page
specific js file will be served the first time a user loads the page then
cached with every subsequent visit. The potential downside is that you either
need to specify a precompile array by hand in your environment specific config
file or automatically glob files to be precompiled.
Note that you can also use the manifest declarations inside of your regular
javascript files, e.g., `//= require 'backbone'` at the top of one of your
page specific javascript files.
~~~
DanielKehoe
I like your suggestion of using RequireJS. I'll add that to the next revision
of the article.
Your strategy of using two JS scripts per view, one site-wide and one page-
specific is interesting. I wonder how to test the performance to really
determine the value. Maybe look at time-to-render?
~~~
Finbarr
Yes I guess that would be the right metric. You'd need to look at average time
to render over a number of deploys with both strategies. I'm pleased to see
articles approaching this subject as there's definitely not enough solid
discussion around this.
One other optimization you may want to talk about in your next article is to
use a gem like the asset_sync gem to upload your assets to S3 or CloudFront
(or similar) at compile time.
~~~
DanielKehoe
I'd like to look deeper into this option. I didn't mention it in the article,
but @jo_liss suggested hosting all assets on CloudFront in production. She
points out that you can set up CloudFront and get your own content-delivery
network in five minutes. Once you have your own CDN, there's no advantage to
using any 3rd-party JS host.
~~~
jwilliams
That's somewhat true. However, using Google does have an advantage over your
own CDN -- it's more likely to already be cached in someone's browser.
On these occassions the hit to download JQuery (or something big like
JQueryUI) is zero.
This is more a consideration for a landing page than a heavy-use application
though.
------
purephase
Good article. Through trial and error, this is the approach that we've taken.
My only gripe is that it appears (to me) to be the only way that works, as all
my earlier faltering efforts were not successful.
Asset pipeline is great, but it is a pain to get going initially with
disparate assets/gems etc. Which, I assume, almost every Rails project has.
------
railsjedi
Awesome writeup! Rails asset management can get pretty complex for newbies,
but with a few good strategies like described in the article, it can be tamed
and managed without too much trouble.
------
christopherscot
I'm suprised no mention of RequireJS...the part labeled "JavaScript’s Missing
Directive" seems to be specifically gearing up for it.
Good overview though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lisp Web Templating - dualogy
Yay, after my first week of playing with Lisp I built something that I really like but for ye olde advanced hacker this is probably kiddy stuff.<p>http://www.roxority.com/roxbase/<p>Still, I'm so fond of this whole new world I have to announce this small step and (proclaim 'im-on-a-natural-high)<p>Back to more scientific/biz news / work! ^^
======
gibsonf1
Nice work. We've ended up working the other way with our application by
generating the html from lisp. The advantage for us being that we can use
macros (including extensive nesting) to build entire complex webpages from a
very small amount of code dynamically.
~~~
dualogy
Yeah I've seen this method around with CL-WHO and similar approaches. I like
the fact that this is one of the many things you can do with macros / s-exprs.
However, for HTML for some reason I wanna keep this out of my code base.
Artificial distinction, granted, and now my way I have "code" inside the
"template" rather than the "template" inside the "code". I guess I'm just used
to doing things this way. Even though I'd never hand over my HTML to an
external designer or even edit it in a visual design tool I wouldn't like
(with-html (:body (:head (title "Hello World" etc as my "GUI layer". I haven't
quite figured out why :)
Anyway, this was fun to write and for the time being will be my preferred way
of designing my web apps... ^^ thanks for stopping by though!
------
nertzy
It seems to me that Lisp-generated websites tend not to have valid HTML. I've
often wondered if there is something about Lisp that makes people averse to
valid HTML.
Are there easy ways in Lisp to make sure that you are outputting valid HTML?
Like good libraries for escaping text and making sure the proper tags are
closed the right ways?
Anyway it's not such a big deal since the sites work fine in browsers. It's
more of a passing observation, that really probably extends to other
programming languages as well. I just think that something about the structure
of Lisp makes HTML/XML feel sloppy and thus there is an unspoken bias towards
not worrying about it.
[http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.roxority....](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.roxority.com%2Froxbase%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)
[http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombina...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fitem%3Fid%3D197019&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)
~~~
dualogy
Nope, at least in my case the HTML is not Lisp-generated, but hand-written. I
use the templating way where occasionally I insert server-side Lisp code in
what is otherwise mostly mark-up.
Of course it is not "something about Lisp". The HTML is always generated by a
human, either "manually" (as in my template library) or automatically (as in
CL-WHO or home-grown s-expression-to-HTML macros).
But you're right, it's not a big deal. What matters is the browser and the
user, not the W3C :)
------
gills
Good Work. I have to second that what attracts me to Lisp/Scheme/Arc for the
web is being able to generate the page as s-expr's which are easily converted
to html.
------
gutzofter
Declaritive web programming. Works for me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FBI launches eFOIA System for faster FOIA requests - dan-silver
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2015/november/new-efoia-system
======
hodwik
Glad for the FBI. Getting something like this in place is a massive
undertaking.
These organizations are all clamoring to get this sort of thing in place, it's
a serious game changer, but it's frankly hard as hell.
I hear a lot of people suggesting these guys are dragging their feet on FOIA
requests because they don't want to release their documents. So wrong. Anyone
who has worked with large government or private sector document management
knows the problems here.
No one (except really young organizations) has the centralized infrastructure
in place to make this easy. They're looking at huge amounts of legacy systems,
decades worth of warehouses filled with paper records, millions of new e-mails
created daily. None of these systems are effectively integrated.
The company I work for has one of only a handful of FOIA systems being shopped
to the government right now, and after seeing the hurdles going on here I can
tell you first hand that these backlogs aren't because people are dragging
their feet. We've been doing ECM stuff for 30 years now, and whenever we come
into an organization like this it takes us ages just to help them sort out how
to connect this stuff together.
But it's totally worth it. Every organization so far that has managed the move
to an electronic FOIA system, despite the slight uptick in requests, has taken
a huge bite out of their FOIA backlog just because electronic centralized
systems make the FOIA response process so much easier.
Again, congrats to the guys over there. I'm sure this was incredibly hard to
put in place.
------
tristanj
They're trying to spin this as a "good" thing but I believe the reason they're
doing this is more selfish: they're trying to stop people from making
multiple, slightly different FOIA requests on the same topic and getting back
different censored results. On one request, some parts might be censored, but
on another that part may be uncensored. By making multiple requests you can
open more and more windows on the actual document.
Here is a 2013 article on someone cleverly abusing this tactic [1]. With the
new system in place they'll be able to spot and prevent these tactics more
easily.
[1] [http://motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapiro-
fb...](http://motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/foia-ryan-shapiro-fbi-files-
lawsuit)
------
danso
The FBI is surprisingly responsive and "human" for FBI file (e.g. dead people
records) requests, at least for the non-controversial ones. For example,
MuckRock sent a records request for "Leslie Nielson" with no proof of death
and yet the FBI (as far as I can see in the message chain) didn't give them a
hard time about it: [https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-
america-10/fbi...](https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-
america-10/fbi-file-of-leslie-nelson-278/)
I recently sent in a request for Paul Newman and got nothing back (which was
both very disappointing and surprising, given Nixon's well-known hatred of
Newman, and Newman being an all-around big name and businessman)...the only
hold up was that they required a snail mail address to send things to. I
thought they had dropped my request but realized they had sent the "no records
found" letter to my mailbox well before the required deadline.
~~~
bradleyjg
My dad put in a FOIA request for my grandfather's FBI file back in April and
has gotten nothing but a form letter with a case number so far.
The FOIA law requires agencies to ordinarily respond with twenty business
days, thirty business days in "unusual circumstances" and longer than that
only in "exceptional circumstances".
However, as bad as the FBI's disrespect for the law is, it doesn't hold a
candle to the State Department which has been sitting on a FOIA request of
mine since July of 2013. Their attitude seems to be that they don't have to
comply with duly enacted laws until and unless compelled to do so by a federal
judge.
~~~
threatofrain
That's exactly how we should think of things too; mechanically. Even if the
FBI today were morally ideal and responded to serious requests within the
limits of their bureaucratic ability without stonewalling, that's not
something we should depend on.
We should depend on levers and mechanisms.
------
morisy
You can also just email FOIA requests to [email protected]
Emailing also doesn't require uploading a scan of your driver's license or
limit you to one request a day, which the new system does.
------
trollian
"eFOIA is currently closed. Typically, eFOIA operates Sunday through Saturday,
8am to 10pm Eastern time.
Please try again within those hours."
_sigh_
~~~
mc32
Eh, you know, I wish more businesses would actually do this with their online
activities. This kind of inconvenience, would force people into doing other,
perhaps more fulfilling activities and remind them of the physical aspect of
life -things begin and stop. I'm not saying a FOIA isn't fulfilling, but if
Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, could "close down" for given times zones during a
wee hours window, it might not be a bad thing. If nothing else, I'd like to
see the outcomes.
Now, of course, no one is going to jeopardize sales and do that... but I'm
glad some of the gov't tries to keep it's business hours based on human labor
concepts. A kind of skeuochron.
~~~
Natanael_L
Why should _their_ schedule decide?
------
awqrre
"If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need to
upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100 years
old."
The FBI doesn't know who is dead?
~~~
toomuchtodo
They could _easily_ allow you to specify the SSN in the request, and verify it
against the Social Security Death Index [1]. They just choose not to make it
that easy.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Death_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Death_Index)
Disclaimer: One of my projects TODO is to crowdsource the funding of obtaining
the SSDI quarterly from the SSA (its expensive [2]), and then provide it as an
open API.
[2]
[https://www.ssdmf.com/FolderID/1/SessionID/%7B67E8C06C-025F-...](https://www.ssdmf.com/FolderID/1/SessionID/%7B67E8C06C-025F-4655-B580-317A322A30C3%7D/PageVars/Library/InfoManage/Guide.htm)
~~~
awqrre
They don't need to request the person's SSN... they could just choose not to
release the data that is tied to a non-dead citizen since they already have
their SSN, probably.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Their page specifically says if its not a first party request (you requesting
information about you), you must submit a copy of the Social Security Death
Index showing the person is deceased. Instead of the requestor needing to
provide that page, they could simply verify the SSN you're providing, in
combination with the person's name, against the Social Security Death Index
file internally.
"If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need to
upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100 years
old. Acceptable proof of death includes obituaries, death certificates,
recognized sources that can be documented, written media, Who’s Who in
America, an FBI file that indicates a person is deceased, _or a Social
Security Death Index page_."
Emphasis mine.
~~~
apaprocki
Requests for information about living people are covered by Privacy Act (PA)
requests, not FOIA requests.
[https://m.fbi.gov/#https://www.fbi.gov/foia/requesting-
fbi-r...](https://m.fbi.gov/#https://www.fbi.gov/foia/requesting-fbi-records)
~~~
toomuchtodo
The original post I replied to asked:
> "If you are requesting information on a deceased individual, you will need
> to upload proof of death unless the deceased individual is more than 100
> years old."
> The FBI doesn't know who is dead?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10660342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10660342)
I'm simply showing a) they do and b) they could make it much easier for
specifying this in your request and verifying it.
------
barney54
Only now in 2015 the FBI fullfills FOIA requests electronically? That is
incredible backward. I thought the Department of Interior was bad because they
couldn't do global email searches on even global searches within a specific
Bureau, but Interior is light years ahead of the FBI.
~~~
jedberg
If you're the FBI, what motivation do you have to implement the system? No one
ever use an FOIA request to get info about something good to praise them. It's
always to get info to smear them.
Why would they want to make this easier?
~~~
ant6n
Believing in this kind of argument is accepting corruption.
It's kind of like saying "why should the parties in power fix the electoral
system if they benefit from it".
~~~
x1798DE
I don't think the point of the argument is that it's a good state of affairs.
The point is the incentives are wrong, so obviously this will happen. Hoping
the FBI's heart grows the sizes won't get you anywhere.
------
lsh
I don't see the FOIA Machine mentioned anywhere:
[https://www.foiamachine.org/](https://www.foiamachine.org/)
Kickstarted and now doing amazing things.
------
mystique
How is this different than
[http://www.foiaxpress.com/](http://www.foiaxpress.com/) ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
10 great WP plugins - bbelderbos
http://bobbelderbos.com/2010/11/10-great-wp-plugins/
======
dibarra
#11. W3 Total Cache. Wordpress is CPU hungry.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LASIK 6 months later - bemmu
http://www.bemmu.com/lasik-6-months-later
======
jgrahamc
I had wavefront-guided all-laser LASIK
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasiks#Wavefront-
guided_LASIK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasiks#Wavefront-guided_LASIK)) 6
years ago and the 'problems' I have with my eyesight are completely comparable
to 'problems' I had when I wore glasses and/or contact lenses: that is, I have
minor 'problems' that aren't worth writing a blog post about.
I go see the eye doctor once a year for a regular check up. My vision remains
6/3 (UK scale) which is 20/10 on the US scale.
I was about to recommend the doctor who performed my surgery. I Googled him
only to find that he died a few months ago of cancer.
RIP Professor Joseph Colin:
[http://www.aao.org/member/obituaries.cfm](http://www.aao.org/member/obituaries.cfm)
~~~
bemmu
Yeah, actually I agree with you and the point of this blog post was there is
no reason not to do the operation based on this 6 month experience.
~~~
outworlder
There is, the halos!
If you are a software developer, as many of us, you really don't want that.
Nor do you want dry eyes, specially when staring at a screen under air
conditioning.
If someone really wants to do the operation anyway, then get a LASEK. This
won't create the never-healing flap, with all its complications. Recovery time
suffers a bit, but that's a minor issue, considering the long-term benefits.
Less dry eye.
Halos might still be present though.
~~~
redidas
I had LASIK done and had the halos, but they are now gone 1.5 years later. I
also had bad dry eye in the morning for a while - that's also gone.
------
simonswords82
I live a pretty active lifestyle, I swim, skydive, go running, box, play
squash (not all at the same time). I had LASIK about 7 years ago and having
wore glasses and contact lenses for 8 years prior to that I still tell anybody
who will listen it was the best £2,000 I ever spent.
There was one downside to the operation and that was if I stared at a screen
for a long amount of time, or worked too many late nights, I suffered from
_really_ dry eyes. It was almost painful. Fortunately some drops that I kept
with me for about six months took the edge off of it and now I don't suffer
with this anymore.
The Halo thing is definitely a side effect. As other people have pointed out,
it's no worse than contact lenses/glasses.
I now no longer have to worry about looking for my glasses first thing in the
morning. I can play any sport without fear of losing or breaking my glasses.
Wearing non-prescription sun glasses is something I now take for granted and a
complete joy.
I genuinely do believe that my overall quality of life has improved as a
result of the operation.
------
ek
Honestly, basically all of the upsides that he lists can be gained from using
contact lenses, which are amazing. Also, with plain old American vision
insurance (VSP), I get a year's worth of contacts for free, every year. As a
longtime glasses wearer I switched to using primarily contacts a while ago and
it's amazing. Contacts have their share of (mostly minor in my experience)
issues, but as long as LASIK continues to have bugs like the halo thing OP
describes, I'll stick with them.
~~~
ojii
Agreed. My quality of life got a lot better once I switched to (monthly)
contact lenses. Half a year ago I switched to dailies which was again a
drastic improvement to my everyday life. I've been toying with LASIK but to be
perfectly honest the surgery just scares me. The idea of cutting open my eyes
and shooting lasers at them isn't to appealing to me.
~~~
jules
What made the daily contact lenses better than the monthly contact lenses?
------
babas
What gets me the most about LASIK naysayers is that you also get the same or
even much worse artifacts when using glasses or contacts. I had Femto-LASIK 2
years ago, after using glasses for 6 years and contacts for 6 more. I have
very slight haloing around bright lights at night (Not as bad as described in
the post though). The freedom of not having glasses or using contacts is
FANTASTIC!
~~~
outworlder
I have both myopia and astigmatism and I see no halos at night.
You are not supposed to see halos if your prescription is correct. You might
get some artifacts if you look through your glasses at an angle, but that's
it.
Halos are an artifact of LASIK, usually when the pupil is large enough that it
expands past the area of the cornea which was "corrected".
------
ggreer
To anyone who is nearsighted and considering corrective surgery: _do it_. If
you look at the stats, the vast majority of patients are glad they got the
surgery.
I started wearing glasses when I was 9. I got contacts at 16. It was a great
improvement, and I was quite happy with contacts. Two years ago, I got
wavefront-guided epi-LASEK. It is without a doubt the best money I've spent.
Glasses have obvious problems, but even contacts come with significant
disadvantages. They can dislodge unexpectedly. Doing anything in the water
risks losing them. They can trap particles or chemicals against the cornea,
causing irritation.
Corrective lenses also tax your mind with more logistics. An overnight trip
requires saline solution, extra lenses (and/or backup glasses), a storage
case, and some way to clean your hands. This sucks some of the fun out of
camping and other activities.
Meanwhile, people who've had corrective surgery wake up and _see_. It's
miraculous. Their eyes just work.
~~~
unwind
There are plenty of modern contact lenses that can be worn for longer periods
than just a single day without issues. As far as I understand it, this comes
from enhanced materials, letting through more oxygen while retaining more
moisture.
I use Air Optix ([http://www.airoptix.com/safety-
information.shtml](http://www.airoptix.com/safety-information.shtml)), they
say up to 6 nights is fine for their baseline version, with up to 30 nights
for the Night & Day product. Not affiliated in any way, just a customer.
~~~
stephengillie
I got a _blister_ on my _eye_ from Night & Day contacts. Then in got LASIK.
That was in 2005, best choice of my life.
------
cmalpeli
I wore glasses from age 16 to 25. I've never once worn contacts - couldn't
deal with touching my eyeballs every morning.
Got LASIK at 25 (i'm now 36). BEST DECISION EVER. I had it done in Manhattan -
cost was about 4500 but I paid it via an FSA which reduced the costs further.
I did have the "Halo" effect for about 6-8 months - especially on traffic
lights at night, but it eventually went away.
The only downside is that my eyes can feel dry from time to time - not sure if
that is due to LASIK or just from being tired [I have 5 year old twins;)].
I am curious/nervous that the effects will wear off - but even if they do and
I need to go back to glasses the last 10 years have been more than worth it.
------
lewispollard
I get similar halos in the dark and I have no vision problems at all, maybe
it's exaggerated by LASIK but it's certainly not something that 'normal'
vision is immune to.
~~~
bemmu
I was wondering about this and asked someone born with 20/20 vision before and
they claimed no halos. Would be interesting to hear more opinions on this.
So people born with "perfect" vision. If you stand outside on a dark night and
stare at a street light, is the separation between darkness and the light
completely crisp, or is there a halo or a starburst of some sort?
~~~
BetaCygni
I have (as far as I know) perfect eyes. Around bright objects there is a
slight halo, best compared to the one you see in video games around
streetlights at night. It's much smoother than the one in the illustration in
the article and slightly less bright. Bright stars show as dots with tiny
lines coming from it with different lengths. Really tiny but still visible.
Less bright stars show as infinitely small dots.
~~~
bemmu
OK, so I guess this is just normal and somehow wearing glasses actually
changes your vision by removing those artifacts.
~~~
outworlder
Ask a doctor about that. Preferably, not the one who performed the surgery.
As far as I know, there are no halos if you really have perfect vision.
Cataracts and minor vision problems (such as a small amount of astimatism)
will cause halos, even if the subject claims to see fine otherwise.
If you are doing such a poll, it would be helpful to ask, along with the
presence of halos, when it was their last visit to an optometrist. If you
believe you have perfect vision, you are not going to see one (even though
periodic visits to an eye doctor are indicated, for checkups).
~~~
BetaCygni
Exactly, I can't remember the last time I've seen an optometrist, horrible
things could be wrong with my eyes.
------
darkmagnus
The halo effect took a lot longer to go away for me then a few months, but it
eventually did go away. Same with the dry eyes, it took maybe a year for me to
get over the dry eyes. I am going on 10 years now and I have no lasting side
effects, and I would no doubt do it again.
~~~
bemmu
That's great to hear, so there still is a chance it might go away. I had more
trouble with eye dryness with contacts actually and never really noticed such
a problem after the surgery.
~~~
jules
That's interesting. I've had problems with dry eyes with contacts, and took
that as a reason not to do eye surgery for fear of making the problem
permanently present even when not wearing contacts because dry eyes is one of
the side effects. So perhaps I should reevaluate.
------
davidy123
I had quite bad vision and had wavefront LASIK as well. I was told my large
pupils and bad vision wouldn't be a problem "with the newest techniques," but
on the morning of the surgery after I'd psyched myself up they dropped a
special waiver in my lap.
I'm generally happy with it; it's a bit of a miracle. But my eyes are often
fuzzy in the morning, they stream tears when it's windy (and they're
correspondingly dry afterward), I see halos, and most distressingly my night
vision and contrast are worse. I notice "floaters" a lot more, which can be
really annoying. I also wonder what I've forfeited in future correction
possibilities. So it's really a mixed bag.
When I go in for tests they claim I have 20/20 vision, but that test is very
limited, and due to issues above I simply cannot see as well as a person with
20/20 vision (though I can see better than many people who don't bother to
wear glasses).
To be honest, I quickly took for granted the miraculous "waking up and being
able to see." The main reason I got the surgery is I couldn't decide what
style of glasses to get, and I hated what they were doing to my nose bridge,
and finally I wanted to try something transformative for my life, which it
hasn't really been, though it has certainly made it a bit simpler.
------
rottyguy
Had mine done in the late 90's and it's the best money I've ever spent.
Period. I find in conversations with folks on the fence that it's mostly
psychological (fear). To that I say, spend the extra money on the doctor that
has such and such credentials using such and such latest laser and get over
the hump if that's what it takes. Totally worth it in my book.
~~~
bemmu
I also had that fear, which almost stopped me from going through with it. But
fear is treatable.
------
scrumper
Your haloing looks like keratoconus, which I have. It makes driving at night
quite challenging, since oncoming headlights are 'smeared' over quite a wide
area instead of appearing as point sources.
~~~
robin_reala
Keratoconus is one of the reasons I haven’t had LASIK myself; the process
itself weakens the cornea, and when it’s weak already it can lead to serious
complications.
------
runarb
I can't really see any halo in the O picture even how hard I try. Is it
supposed to be photo manipulated?
Anyone having a link to the original?
~~~
bemmu
Yes, it has been manipulated to add in a halo that corresponds to my post-
lasik halo.
It is not that strong, but you can check with a color picker app or with a
paint program that yes there really is one there.
~~~
runarb
I tried to add another O into the picture with Photoshop:
[http://bbh-001.boitho.com/div/halo.png](http://bbh-001.boitho.com/div/halo.png)
I can't see any different. Maybe I am affected or my ~3 year old lcd monitors
are failing to display the colors correctly.
~~~
bemmu
They look very different to me. Check your monitor settings if they look the
same to you :)
~~~
runarb
The font is different because I was not able to find which one was used here.
But except from that; do you see this halo effect?
------
honopu
I had LASIK done about 6 months ago. My right eye ended up 20/15 but my left
eye ended up being +1 and has some astigmatism that it never had. I suspect
they screwed up and gave me the wrong correction in my left eye.
Good news is it can be corrected, the bad news is I had to live with an eye
that is useless for small text on a monitor. It has been very aggravating but
not aggravating enough to go buy a prescription pair of glasses just for the
correction in one eye.
Also keep in mind all of the follow-up visits you need to do to keep your
"lifetime correction" warranty so get your Lasik done at a place near your
house.
~~~
honopu
It sounds like I am being way too negative here. I would do the process again
but I would insist on getting full pupil dialation before the procedure. With
this correction I will be extremely satisfied but all told it took at least 40
hours for follow up visits including travel time and getting everything set up
ahead of time. With my right eye doing all the work and looking at monitors
all day it gives up at about 8pm where I can't easily read a 15" laptop
without eye strain.
------
chrisreichel
I had the PRK surgery
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorefractive_keratectomy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorefractive_keratectomy)).
The first two weeks were the worst of my life. The recovering was painful and
I could barely see... And during that time the irritation and the feeling of
having sand in my eyes...
Well, after this tough period all the irritation gone, my vision was improving
everyday and now, 3 years later I think that it was the best decision ever.
Specially if you like to ride motorcycles - and use helmets - it makes a lot
more practical.
~~~
chrisreichel
I forgot to mention that now I have this halos at night and a little bit of
light sensitivity as well.
In dry weathers I fell a little bit of dryness in the eyes _ I manage to hack
myself by forcing some tears. Sounds strange but it works.
------
ada1981
I had LASEK* 2 or 3 years ago and it's been nothing but incredible. I now see
20/15.
With LASEK there is no cutting of the eye, so there is no risk of halos or of
the flap coming loose later in life. Something like 80-90% of the
complications are from the flap, so LASEK is much safer. It takes a day or so
longer to heal, but the results are worth it. One of the coolest things I've
ever done, and zero negative side effects. Infact, for the first 6 months of
so I walked around NYC like I was on acid - just amazed at how clear
everything was and being able to see things like bricks on the top corners of
buildings 60 stories tall.
Also, the feeling of waking up in the morning without my eyes all f'd up from
sleeping in contacts is priceless. I literally found myself crying tears of
joy and gratitude on several occasions for how amazing this was. I was happier
simply from being able to see better. And it's helped a ton with my ultimate
frisbee game and helped me better deal with sand for beach sports.
If you want a laugh, google Dr. Emil Chynn -- he is a brilliant doctor but
also a bit eccentric. He was recently on Howard Stern offering $100k to help
him find a wife ;) and then book an appointment to see him.
If you'd like a personal introduction to him, feel free to email me
([email protected]) and I can help you get a free consult and friends &
family discount. He also has financing available.
Seriously, if you wear glasses or contacts get this done as soon as you can
and look into LASEK (no cut, no flap). If you are in NYC check out Park Avenue
Safe Sight (LASEK) and Dr. Emil Chynn.
EDIT: I should mention that with the "HD Upgrade" that I got you get a level
of clarity that is impossible to reach with glasses or contacts. It's supposed
to be 25x more accurate a prescription because they do a laser scan of the
entire surface of the eye, and then create micro prescriptions for every area
-- sort of like dimples on a golf ball vs. 1 lens like glasses or contects
which basically takes the average prescription for the entire eye. LASEK is
superior - more accurate, no halos (since no scar tissue), no flap to fall
off, better than 20/20 vision, less risk of infection.. Really an amazing
technology (oh and I got a DVd of my eyes being lasered ;) )
~~~
outworlder
Aren't the halos created by a large pupil reaching an area which was not
touched by the laser? That was my understanding, at least. If so, LASEK would
still carry the risk of halos.
But not dry eyes, and no flap dislocation. If that flap DOES dislocate
(usually, because of trauma), you are screwed.
~~~
ada1981
I thought the halo was from the edge of the flap having scar tissue - I could
be off on the cause. But to my understanding there isn't halo risk with the no
cut / no flap procedure.
------
kalleboo
I've been looking into getting eye correction done using a newer method than
LASIK/LASEK. The company that performs it in Sweden calls it "NoCut" but it
seems to have a few other trade names in different countries (seems to be
performed mainly in Sweden, Australia and the Netherlands).
It works similar to PRK/LASEK in that instead of cutting and reattaching a
flap of the cornea (which can heal in place incorrectly, or even come loose if
you rub your eyes) they remove a thin layer which then heals back cleanly.
It's better than PRK in that instead of removing the layer with alcohol and
manually marking an area, all that is dealt with a computer-controlled laser,
which supposedly increases the precision, minimizing the affected area and
makes healing much quicker and less painful. The biggest downside compared to
LASIK is you have to sit in a dark room for 3 days listening t audio books
while your eyes slowly and painfully heal, and then wear sunglasses outdoors
when there's bright sunlight for a couple months.
After spending a week reading in detail about all the different methods, the
possible side-effects or failure modes, etc. I think I'll stick to contacts
for now...
~~~
bemmu
Contacts aren't totally risk-free either. Not exactly sure what the issue was
(this was pre-wikipedia), but my doctor had me stop using contacts since he
was concerned my vision was getting worse due to them.
I looked into PRK and was on the fence about it, was unconvinced that there is
a big difference besides the psychological benefit of "no cutting". Lasik had
no pain either during the surgery, so I think considering the slower recovery
PRK would have just been more painful total.
~~~
kokey
My girlfriend can't wear contact lenses any more due to excessive use. She has
developed both scarring and corneal neovascularization.
------
formichunter
I have had horrible eye sight my entire life, about 20/2000 to be precise. To
give you an idea how bad that is, without my contacts, I could see my hand
clearly when it was 1 inch from my nose...basically I was blind without them.
I went from massively heavy glasses that put red spots on my nose from the
pressure to contact lenses about twenty years ago. That was a huge improvement
but you always had to worry about not falling asleep with them in. About 5
years ago I got LASIK surgery where Tiger Woods got his. The halo'ing was
unfortunately a price I paid but I expected this because my cornea was so thin
in my left eye that the surgeon needed to think about it before even saying if
they could do the operation. This is all about risks and rewards. My problem
was so significant that I will deal with the halo'ing even though Green Lights
at traffic intersections are a t-shaped mess and dry eyes is another
byproduct. This current situation is by far more pleasurable than the misery
of being dependent glasses or contact lenses.
~~~
Lewton
How good is your vision now? I imagine with that severe sight problems, they
weren't able to fix it completely?
------
bluedino
After 17 years of contacts, I had wavefront LASIK. My contact prescription was
-9.00, so my choices were very thick and expensive glasses or contact lenses.
Beware the advertised pricing. $2000 LASIK means 'per eye', and you have to
add another $1000 for wavefront and another $1000 for laser-cut flaps instead
of blade-cut. It ended up being $6,000 which wasn't said until the day of the
procedure.
I was told that they didn't expect to give me 20/20 vision, I ended up around
20/40, good enough to legally drive without glasses but I squint a bit. I
still have a slight astigmatism in one eye, and that throws me off quite a
bit.
The first 6 months during healing were bad - lots of halos, sensitive to
light, very poor night vision, especially when driving. But 18 months later Id
on't have those problems anymore. I did lose my very close (~6 inches) vision
which was very sharp before.
My biggest complaint is dry eyes. I'm not using eyedrops 4-6 times per day, it
doesn't help to be in front of a computer screen as much as I am, and it's
worst in the mornings and night.
------
npongratz
I've been very nearsighted since I was about 8-9 years old. I had glasses
exclusively for about five years, then contact lenses (monthly disposables)
for 15 or so. I enjoyed contacts well enough, but did not enjoy the hassles
with them - cleaning them and swimming without them were my biggest
annoyances.
I haven't been sold on LASIK because of the risk of permanent side-effects,
such as the light haloes, starbursts, night vision issues, and dry eye.
I tried orthokeratology - wearing a special prescription hard lens for eight
hours a night to gradually reshape the cornea. I liked the idea that it was
completely reversible, and the downside of wearing the lenses at night wasn't
a big deal for me (they were never completely comfortable, but they didn't
bother me after the first couple nights).
The problems I experienced with the ortho-k lenses were two-fold, which would
have affected me _permanently_ had I went with LASIK: 1) my cornea is too thin
for the large amount of correction I need, and 2) my pupils are too large.
1) Thin cornea: ortho-k and LASIK require material with which to work. When
there's not enough cornea to mold/burn, the procedure results in weak
correction. Solution? Wear contacts. Lame. We're back at square one.
2) Large pupils: my pupils are apparently freaky large in low light. The area
of the cornea that gets molded was large enough for normal-to-bright light,
but in low light the molded area was too small. That resulted in terrible
haloes. Solution? Take glaucoma eye drops that shrink one's pupils for 8-12
hours. I didn't like being dependent on a drug in that way. After three
attempts over many months to enlarge the molded area, we gave up. My cornea
was just too thin to be able to mold a large enough area.
My eye doctor said that because of my thin corneas and large pupils, if I got
LASIK surgery I would have suffered the same problems with weak correction and
terrible haloes and other vision artifacts in low light.
So I'm very glad I went the non-permanent route first. Luckily with ortho-k, I
just had to stop wearing the sleep shaping lenses for a week to revert to my
normal nearsighted vision. I'm back to my monthly disposable contact lenses,
and am happy I can see the stars clearly and be able to drive at night again.
I would definitely recommend checking out ortho-k, though - I wasn't a good
candidate, but I'm sure many people are.
------
gaker
I'd call glowing outlines around objects in the dark "glare" and not "halos".
From the reading I did before getting LASIK back in April, "halos" can occur
in people with very large pupils. So in the dark, your pupils will grow larger
than where the flap is cut. So you'd see this phantom circle in the dark all
the time.
The glare is annoying, but I purchased a new set of glasses (I know, right?)
with no correction and anti-reflective lenses. These help quite a bit when
driving at night or working on the computer when my eyes are tired.
Going into my surgery, I told the doc I didn't care if I needed reading
glasses (we all probably will), glasses to drive or to work at the computer.
Having gone from between a -5 and -6 to 20/15 vision, I am very very happy
with the results.
------
teekert
I never had eye surgery but (perhaps) as someone with a slight aspherical
deviation (astigmatism it is called I see now), I also see those halo's. I
didn't even notice anything about the white O on the black background until I
zoomed in a lot.
------
zokier
I'd love to get my eyes fixed. My vision feels not so great even with
glasses/contacts, so I'm kinda hoping that surgery could get me better than
glasses vision. I also don't know if it could (positively) affect my night
vision, which feels significantly worse than day-time vision.
Of course my expectations for vision are probably too great, and certainly I'm
currently in the "normal" range (with glasses).
Also I'm personally quite interested in IOL/ICL/Visian, their advertisements
make it look really attractive. But they don't afaik yet correct astigmatism,
so that's not an option for me yet.
------
a3n
The halos and similar issues would bug and distract me no end, especially
considering that I personally can get the same effect (improved site) by
wearing glasses.
I just bought a new set of glasses with progressive lenses. I hated them. Oh
nos! Oh, wait, I took them back and they replaced the lenses with single
prescription. Free. Problem solved.
Not at all to discourage anyone from getting lasik, but this is how I look at
the risk from that procedure, for me and my prescription. Possible permanent
issues vs just changing my lenses. People with worse prescription than mine
might think differently.
------
jheriko
those artifacts are not uncommon from what i know - especially star like
haloes around bright lights. part of it is down to how your retina works and
part of it down to the focusing of the light by the cornea, lens and through
the humours... its not reasonable to expect all of this to work perfectly, and
it has design flaws in terms of bleeds and blooms appearing in the final
image.
the halos are because of how the photoreceptors work everyone gets lingering
spots of 'colour' when you look at a bright light then look away - note that
these bloom out as well, and as they fade they spread for the same reasons.
its the surrounds of the 'correct' receptor sucking up the excess energy thats
been pumped into that area of the retina coupled with the impossibility of
consistently perfect focus
------
cadecairos
I have needed glasses since I was very young and started wearing contact
lenses about two years ago. I've always seen the halo around lights at night
with/without glasses/contacts. My thoughts have always been that it was
happening _because_ of my bad vision.
------
telephonetemp
Everyone in this comments thread seems to be comparing LASIK to contact lenses
and glasses but what about orthokeratology (overnight lenses)? Does anyone
here have experience with it? The idea sounds appealing but there's
comparatively little information about it.
------
huhtenberg
> _prescription swimming goggles_
And this is how you over-nerd nerds, ladies and gentlemen :)
~~~
bemmu
Well, I do swim around coral reefs sometimes, which I wanted to be able to
see.
------
bestest
I also heard about increased sun sensitivity after LASIK. does anyone else
experience this?
I am thinking about this surgery, but I'm afraid of the possible sideffects,
unless they're as described in the post.
~~~
sergiosgc
This was my experience (had LASIK in '06): On the day of the surgery, it is
enough to make you crawl into a closed room and shun all light. On the couple
of days after, it's uncomfortable to look at a computer monitor. On the first
few weeks you'll never forget your sunglasses at home. After six months, I'd
say it is nearly normal.
It is difficult to say. I used to never ever need to wear sunglasses, even in
the Portuguese summer. Now, I find them comfortable on very bright days -- not
that I can't do without, it's just comfortable. Might be psychological, might
indeed be somewhat increased sensitivity to sunlight.
I was on the fence for four or five years, until I decided to go at it. Best
3000€ I ever spent.
------
tomrod
Interesting issue with the halo. I started getting that when I developed
astigmatism -- I wonder if that is a common experience.
------
jesusthatsgreat
the thing this guy fails to mention is whether he had that halo effect BEFORE
getting eye surgery...
~~~
bemmu
Thanks. I'd like to think I was paying pretty close attention, since I already
had writing these blog posts in mind even before taking the surgery, so I was
taking notes and trying to observe what my vision was before. Of course memory
is fallible.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Now Personalizes Everyone’s Search Results (Even Logged Out) - pierrefar
http://searchengineland.com/google-now-personalizes-everyones-search-results-31195
======
barrkel
Google's core service, the simple page <http://www.google.com/> , has been
getting more and more borked and broken over the past year, and especially
over the past few days.
As it is, Google has been rewriting search result links so that they redirect
through Google before forwarding to the final destination. It causes a
noticeable delay, never mind the privacy implications. I've disabled this
through a Greasemonkey script called googlePrivacy.
Now (as of today, on Firefox), they have fiddled with their home page, so that
it gradually "fades in" when you mouse over it. Unfortunately, the
googlePrivacy script interacts poorly with this, effectively disabling the
fading in - leaving you with a very bare Google home page.
Also new behaviour, google.com keeps redirecting to google.co.uk, so much so
that I've had to change my Google shortcut to <http://www.google.com/ncr>
_and_ install a Google US country-specific search provider, since Google's new
behaviour essentially broke Firefox's built-in Google search provider. They
also lost my search settings (in particular, I prefer 100 results per page).
Some, or many, of my problems may be caused by poor interaction with
googlePrivacy, but the old ways worked, goddammit, and I am irked that I am
unilaterally being frog-marched to a new version of client-side Google that I
never asked for and don't want.
~~~
gradschool
One shouldn't fault Google for capitalizing on most people's low regard for
their own privacy when the opportunity exists. If it's giving you grief, why
don't you use a search engine with a better privacy policy?
<http://clusty.com/privacy>
~~~
drunkpotato
_One shouldn't fault Google..._
Why not?
------
teeja
I need 'personalized' search results like I need a hole in the head. I use
search a _lot_ and _I_ personalize it by using the search skills I've
acquired. I don't need some unknown algorithm making unsubtle decisions.
Making this opt-out is a PITA ... but it's their sandbox ...
------
labria
[http://www.theonion.com/content/video/google_opt_out_feature...](http://www.theonion.com/content/video/google_opt_out_feature_lets_users)
this will soon be a bit too real =)
------
yason
It seems I had had the history enabled, at least partially.
I looked at my history and it's pretty fucking scary. Even for myself. And I
don't mean porn sites or anything, it's just that pretty much anything I had
thought in the last few days was there, nicely listed and visible should I
choose to return to those thoughts.
I cleared the whole history and Google said it also made the history paused
for me until I manually resume it. I'm glad it offered that option by default.
But I still suspect they're there somewhere.
------
foulmouthboy
I don't understand why this is so bad. Google's trying to make sure you get
more relevant results. If you already know what you want to find, you don't
need a search engine.
------
budman
If you don't like it, like me, it is simple; use an anonymous proxy. Or use
google scraper: <http://www.scroogle.org/>
------
euroclydon
The kitty is sort of out of the bag with the original page rank algorithm,
right? I mean wasn't it partially funded by the government. I don't see why a
free and open sourced search engine can't emerge to compete with Google on
pure search. Now that they are a public corporation, there will be a
relentless drive toward growth, to the detriment of most of their casual
customers.
~~~
dmoney
Here's an idea for an open source search engine: If you could make the search
index small enough, only the crawler would have to be hosted. The actual
search engine would run on each user's machine and download the diffs to the
index regularly, and big brother would never see your queries.
This might be a pipe dream, as modern search indexes are probably much larger
than the plaintext of the whole of the web. Maybe it could be divided by
subject.. I guess that would have the same privacy problem: the server would
see which subjects you were requesting. Maybe you could download the whole
thing and only decompress locally the subjects and languages you wanted.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cloudkick (YC W09) raises another $2M - pquerna
http://deals.venturebeat.com/2010/04/28/cloudkick-funding/
======
andymoe
I find it really annoying that these tech news sites (read TechCrunch) never
link to the company. Always to crunchbase or in this case some silly twitter
search about Cloudkick.
Anyway, they do seem to have pretty good coverage for the major providers
(<https://www.cloudkick.com/providers/>) Anyone used their service in
production?
~~~
pg
Lots of YC funded startups use them. Everyone seems happy with the service.
~~~
andymoe
Cool. I am pretty excited about this idea: <https://www.cloudkick.com/hybrid-
cloudkick>
~~~
bretpiatt
They are doing a webinar with live demo tomorrow:
[https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/schedule/display.do?udc=5qtmfxkb...](https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/schedule/display.do?udc=5qtmfxkbz297)
------
pedoh
This is the first time I've seen Cloudkick, and it looks amazing. I love
watching companies that enable other companies to focus on their end product
instead of all of the technical operations surrounding their end product.
Congrats on your recent round, and it will be fun watching your feature set
grow.
------
EricBetts
Go Polvi!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Computer Programming is a Trade - julienchastang
http://on.wsj.com/1zLQhOL
======
andraganescu
This is so bad. I fail to believe that the world will get out of the paradigm
of social stratification in the next dozen years or so. Making computer
programming a "trade" is basically putting computer programmers on the same
social and intellectual level with locksmiths, plumbers you know the folk the
this definition of trade:
<< An occupation, especially one requiring skilled labor; craft: the building
trades, including carpentry, masonry, plumbing, and electrical installation.
>>.
Perhaps i push the snob alarm in some but i do not mean it like this. The
problem i am talking about is that we _should_ have higher education for being
a programmer. The reason to skip it now is because their academic rhythm and
notions are late and incomplete not because programming is not school worthy.
I really think that, at least for serious programmers and developers, this
trade business is a bad thing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Continuum - A javascript ES6 VM - ricardobeat
https://github.com/benvie/continuum/
======
TheMakeA
Fascinating. I was just thinking about something like this today because I
wanted to use generators. JavaScript is odd in that it's hard to make changes
to the language and get browser vendors to support them. Fortunately, all
JavaScript implementations so far are turing complete, and so we get projects
like this that let us keep moving forward, even while IE6 holds us back...
------
AntiRush
Another JavaScript VM in JavaScript (this one by Brendan Eich and Mozilla):
<https://github.com/mozilla/narcissus>
Narcissus is pretty cool - it's used as a testbed for new Harmony features.
It's more reliant on some Spidermonkey specific features than Continuum,
though.
~~~
salmanapk
There's also Caja by Google: <http://code.google.com/p/google-caja/>
~~~
Benvie
Caja and Narcissus are definitely comparable parallels, but Continuum is
unique in that it fully implements the ECMAScript object model, runtime, and
standard library (except for a few things which are still in progress). I
would say that Continuum is the only one that qualifies to be called a
"JavaScript engine" in its own right.
Narcissus is a meta-circular interpreter that puts a thin layer over the host
engine, and requires that host engine itself to have some ES6 features (it can
only actually run in Spidermonkey and V8 with the --harmony flag enabled).
Caja is more of a wrapper that protects access to capabilities than anything.
In fact it specifically avoids fully parsing source code itself in order to be
performant. Its goal is to sandbox code, not interpret it.
Continuum implements the ES6 Object Model and nearly fully implements the
internal algorithms of the ~450 page ES6 specification (aside a small handful
of things which are a bit out of date or remain to be implemented). In fact,
the only thing it does not implement itself is RegExp, which it currently
wraps the host engine's functionality to provide. It even fully implements the
Date internal algorithms ([https://github.com/Benvie/continuum/blob/gh-
pages/engine/bui...](https://github.com/Benvie/continuum/blob/gh-
pages/engine/builtins/%40date.js)).
Additionally, it self-hosts much of its own code. All of the ES6 standard
library is itself written in ES6
([https://github.com/Benvie/continuum/tree/gh-
pages/engine/bui...](https://github.com/Benvie/continuum/tree/gh-
pages/engine/builtins)) and is executed in the virtual machine each time a
realm is created. Roughly 25% of Continuum's code is written in ES6, while the
other 75% is written in ES3 (I plan to reverse this ratio in time).
~~~
Benvie
Also Tachyon is a full JS engine built in JS. It's incomplete but has the
ability self-host itself and JIT compile machine code (all written in JS), so
it gets bonus points to offset the fact that its implementation is incomplete
<https://github.com/Tachyon-Team/Tachyon>
------
snitko
Question: why is there such a weird screenshot of the code in a text-editor I
can't identify? What does it mean?
~~~
cristiantincu
It’s the “playground”. You can play with it here:
<http://benvie.github.com/continuum/>
As for the editor, it’s CodeMirror.
------
DanWaterworth
If you look at the TODO list, it looks like they want to replicate PyPy's
approach. I wonder, have they considered writing an rjavascript to rpython
compiler and just using the pypy infrastructure as is?
~~~
wyuenho
There's no need to have a restricted Javascript. All you have to do is to
write code in ES6 with the type annotations and the entire program will be
fully type-inferable (tho the inferring part may take a while because you
probably need to do something like a Cartesian product for duck typing). Once
you do that, you can do a lot of optimizations.
~~~
wyuenho
Actually, you need to not use a few more features too, like not dynamically
attaching properties to objects at run time, and dynamically creating new
clasess... but the point is, you don't need to define a new language when all
you have to do is to use only a subset.
~~~
Benvie
Well RPython is just that: a restricted subset of Python (hence the name).
Similarly, asm.js is a (small) subset of ECMAScript targeted at compile-to-js
code generators. It's just about specifying what the subset contains, not
inventing a new language.
------
nmcfarl
I'm gathering the goal of this is to be a polyfill, for older browsers, as ES6
comes online, allowing for a faster transition. If that's the case it seems to
be well ahead of the curve...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rust lifetimes: Getting away with things that would be reckless in C++ - dbaupp
http://www.randomhacks.net/2014/09/19/rust-lifetimes-reckless-cxx/
======
missblit
In C++ if the string is a rvalue reference you could std::move it into part of
the return value. Think a signature like
template<typename T>
std::pair<std::string, std::vector<std::string_view>>
tokenize_string(T &&str);
This would be efficient when the user passes a temporary, and it would be
safe.
Which isn't to say the Rust solution isn't totally cool. Being able to easily
check this class of errors at compile time is probably a lot nicer than
needing to learn all the relatively complicated parts that would go into a
easy to use / safe /efficient / still slightly weird C++ solution.
~~~
eridius
Sure, and then somewhere along the way you throw away the first element of the
pair, because you're not using it, but you're still using the views, and oops
you just reintroduced the bug you tried to fix.
Which is to say, yes, you can obviously write C++ code that _works_. But you
run the risk that one tiny mistake, or a change weeks, months, or years later,
causes memory issues. Being able to completely rule out this class of error at
compile-time is really amazingly useful.
~~~
ajross
That's a forest for the trees argument. The ability to introduce bugs ("make a
tiny mistake") in future changes is an _inherent property of software_ , and
you can't fix this in the general case. Rust just fixes this for the case of
free-memory-read bugs. That has value, but it's a much more limited scope than
you're implying.
Really I think this is the biggest problem with Rust. The stuff broken about
C++ isn't really its memory model, it's simply its complexity. And every time
I look at what's happening in Rust I see _the same kind of complexity being
introduced at every turn_. I mean seriously: "named lifetime parameters"? And
the syntax is a bare single quote? That's a joke, right? No one but Rust nerds
is going to grok this, and real code needs to me maintained by mediocrities.
Frankly Go seems to have this "don't introduce new nonsense" problem under
much better control, so if I need to pick a horse in the race, it's that one,
not Rust.
~~~
eridius
This comment is a joke, right? I find it hard to believe that any programmer
would say "the compiler prevents me from writing broken code? That's too
complex!"
Yes, a proper typing system involves more visible moving parts than a broken
typing system. But a proper typing system is vastly more powerful. C++ may not
have lifetimes, but every time I touch C++ I have to be really careful that I
don't accidentally introduce memory or threading bugs, because they're both
_really easy_ to do. Someone who's programmed C++ for a long time might not
even realize it, but then again, the vast majority of C++ code in this world
almost certainly contains numerous memory and threading bugs.
And why the comparison to Go? Go doesn't live in the same world as Rust. It's
not a systems programming language. At this point it's mostly a glorified web
server application language. And if you're going to pick Go because of the
lack of memory lifetime issues, you may as well pick any other garbage-
collected language out there.
~~~
ajross
Again, forest for the trees. Your laser focus on one particular type of bug
blinds you to the fact that complex systems lead to bugs in general. I'm not
interested in defending C++ (or Go, or anything else). I'm saying I see Rust
falling down the same "cool new ideas" rabbit hole as C++, and Haskell, and
Erlang, and Common Lisp, and... Of those languages only one has achieved any
notable success.
And btw: the idea of calling something a "systems programming language" that
can't even make a system call is laughable. Can I mmap a buffer to pass to a
hardware video codec or make an ioctl to an audio driver in rust? Guess which
language I _can_ do that in? If "Go doesn't live in the same world as Rust",
then Rust isn't in the same galaxy as C/C++.
~~~
pcwalton
I don't know where you got the idea that you can't mmap a buffer or call an
ioctl in Rust. You certainly can do those things.
~~~
ajross
I got the idea from the docs, honestly, which don't talk about system
interfacing at all. Though I do now see the "unsafe" page, which at least has
assembly hooks.
Serious question though: has anyone ever done this? I mean, are there kernel
header import utilities I can use to get the flag definitions and parameter
structs, etc...? You can sneer and downvote me all you want, but it seems that
the clear truth is that Rust has _not_ been used as a "systems programming
language" in the only regime where IMHO that term has any meaning.
Basically: drilling a hole through the compiler to the assembler (which I'll
state again is done in Rust as yet more complicated syntax users need to learn
and not as, say, a native library interface) is a valuable tool, but it does
not a syscall interface make.
~~~
pcwalton
There is rust-bindgen, which you can use to convert C headers to Rust FFI
declarations. This should be able to convert the kernel userland headers to
Rust declarations, so that you can call directly to the kernel.
(I didn't downvote you.)
------
svalorzen
Or, you know, instead of returning two C pointers which in modern C++ makes no
sense, return a vector of `std::pair<size_t,size_t>` with position and length
of each substring, and if needed use `std::string::substr` to extract the
parts you need.
~~~
expr-
I would say returning regular pointers is more C++-esque than your handmade
range implementation. Pointers are, after all, a kind of iterator, which is an
essential C++ concept. (std::string::iterator is a handful.)
(Furthermore, there is nothing "C" or wrong with regular pointers. Their only
"flaw" is that they can't manage an object, but they're still _the_ semantical
way to refer to one.)
~~~
svalorzen
Returning regular pointers which point to memory which is not managed by you
and that you by default know could disappear at any time is not the C++ way of
doing anything. Thing is, a class has a public interface for a reason, and if
you as an outsider want to start playing pointer games you know from the start
what you are in for.
I never implied that pointers are bad, just that this particular usage of
pointers is bad, and as such should not be used as an example of why we would
want something else over C++. If I ever saw a function with a signature like
the one proposed I'd be extremely suspicious of what was going on.
Note that this would happen in the same way if the function returned pairs of
iterators. It is a choice that depends on the documented and intended usage of
a function. If you feel your tokenizer will be used on temporaries (I fail to
see how that would ever be useful though) you could overload the function to
also take universal references or change the return parameters so that nobody
can get hurt. Otherwise you return whatever delimiters you are comfortable
with, with the assumption that they will not be used in some way. All code can
be broken if you actively try to, so it makes no sense to protect against
everything.
~~~
pcwalton
> All code can be broken if you actively try to, so it makes no sense to
> protect against everything.
That's not Rust's philosophy. Rust is memory-safe, period.
~~~
steveklabnik
I guess technically 'if you try to' means also abusing unsafe, so in theory
he's still sorta right. Every time I see someone ask a question about
transmute on IRC I shiver a little.
But yes, Rust is way, way, way better in this regard.
~~~
seabee
The difference is safe-by-default languages force you to turn off the safeties
before they will let you blow your own foot off. C++ doesn't believe in
safeties since (at the time the language was designed) it introduces an
unacceptable delay between you wanting to pull the trigger and your target
and/or feet blowing up.
------
bsaul
Which makes me wonder :
1/ could you build the same unsafe behiavor in Rust if you wanted to by not
specifying lifetime constraints ?
2/ If yes, shouldn't lifetime constraints be mandatory ?
~~~
dbaupp
The compiler will not compile code it cannot verify as safe (outside an
`unsafe` block), meaning it will complain about lifetime constraints that are
missing, e.g. it is a compile-time error to not propagate the lifetime
information out of the enum.
[http://play.rust-
lang.org/?run=1&code=enum%20Token%20{%0A%20...](http://play.rust-
lang.org/?run=1&code=enum%20Token%20{%0A%20%20%20%20Word%28%26str%29%2C%0A%20%20%20%20Other%28%26str%29%0A}%0A%0Afn%20main%28%29%20{})
------
asuffield
There's an obvious extension here for lifetime inference - the example given
doesn't need to be an error, it could compile correctly by increasing the
object lifetime to the outer block. I don't know offhand whether there is a
universally correct inference algorithm for that (if every other language
feature was static then unification would solve it easily, but the other
language features are not static and I don't know how it would interact with
rust type inference).
~~~
riffraff
wouldn't extending the lifetime in this situations lead to subtle hard to
trace memory leaks?
~~~
keeperofdakeys
No. Currently a reference in a struct or enum has no inferred lifetime, and
must be explicitly stated. Having it default to the lifetime of that
containing struct or enum would simply mean you don't need to specify it. The
danger is it could infer wrongly, leading to lifetime errors that might be
cryptic.
But at the end of the day, the Rust compiler will never allow a reference to
outlive the original object.
~~~
dbaupp
You've misinterpreted, it's not a question about reducing the annotation in a
struct/enum definition, but about postponing the destruction of the String so
that the later references are valid, i.e. currently we have
fn test_parse_unsafe() {
let v = {
let text = "The cat".to_string();
tokenize_string3(text.as_slice())
}; // `text` destroyed here
assert_eq!(vec![Word("The"), Other(" "), Word("cat")], v);
}
but the suggestion/question is about changing this to
fn test_parse_unsafe() {
let v = {
let text = "The cat".to_string();
tokenize_string3(text.as_slice())
};
assert_eq!(vec![Word("The"), Other(" "), Word("cat")], v);
} // `text` destroyed here
so that the references in `v` are valid.
This could lead to "memory leaks", where a destructor is implicitly postponed
to a higher scope, but I don't think it would be much of a problem in practice
(the promotion would only be through simple scopes, not through loops, and
maybe not through `if`s). In fact, there's an yet-to-be-implemented accepted
RFC covering this[1] (there's no guarantee that it will be implemented though,
just that the idea is mostly sound).
[1]: [https://github.com/rust-
lang/rfcs/blob/master/active/0031-be...](https://github.com/rust-
lang/rfcs/blob/master/active/0031-better-temporary-lifetimes.md)
~~~
asuffield
Ah yes, that RFC is roughly what I had in mind, thanks.
I believe that it's safe to promote through an if, although obviously not
through a general loop.
~~~
dbaupp
Yes, I agree that it should be safe, I've softened my original text. However,
it would require dynamically tracking if the destructor needs to be run, and
there's currently discussion[1] about Rust possibly moving to a static model,
for the highest performance.
[1]: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/210](https://github.com/rust-
lang/rfcs/pull/210)
~~~
asuffield
Consider this:
On a two-way if statement, then a given storage location is either set on
zero, one or both branches. If it is set on neither branch then the if
statement is irrelevant and can be ignored. If it is set on one branch, then
either it had an original value and hence can be treated as being set on both
branches, or it must be destroyed within the branch of the if (no null
pointers - think about it until it is clear that the type system guarantees
this). Hence we are only interested in cases which are isomorphic with the
location being set on both branches.
We can treat this as a phi node following the if: there is one output value,
which has been created in one of two different ways. In this case we don't
know statically which value has been constructed, but we do know statically
how and when to destroy it regardless of which one we get, because both
branches have the same type and storage location. We don't actually need to
know where it came from.
Any obvious problems? I think it works...
~~~
dbaupp
It doesn't work, the &str could come from completely different types in the
two branches.
I.e. one branch could be created by .as_slice() on a String, the other could
be created by referencing a global, e.g.
let s = if cond {
let some_string = create_it();
some_string.as_slice()
} else {
"literals are always-valid &str's"
};
`some_string`s destructor should only be run if the first branch was taken.
~~~
asuffield
I'm not sure that this particular example can ever use some_string outside the
if without hitting a type error, but I see what you mean.
That seems like a reasonable case to raise a type error. That defines the
cases quite neatly: if it's temporary on both branches then it can work, and
if it has different lifetimes then the values can't be merged and should be
rejected. If the programmer really meant for this to work then they need to
copy the global, and copies should be written explicitly.
~~~
dbaupp
There's no type error at all, we're talking about delaying the destruction of
some_string so that the `s` (which is a &str) is valid outside the if. The
string literal is a &str with a infinite lifetime, and so can of course be
safely restricted to have the same lifetime as the other branch (done
implicitly).
However, it's easily possible to have the &str come from temporaries of
different types in the two branches. This would restrict the static
destruction case to only working through an `if` when the "parent" values have
exactly the same types; which doesnt seem nearly as valuable and possibly not
worth the effort.
------
enjoy-your-stay
In C++, the best way to hand out pointers to anything where the creator may
not necessarily be the last one referencing that object or chunk of RAM is to
use reference counting, which would have solved the posters' problem.
It would mean that you would have to wrap the incoming string in a class, and
probably add the tokenize_string method to that class. Then you would also
have to wrap the results vector in a class that then addrefs the original
string wrapper class.
But after that, handing out pointers to the contents of the string would be no
problem as the results class would addref the string class and then release it
when done ensuring that the string wrapper class remains alive as long as the
results object has not gone out of scope.
Of course Rust's approach of alerting you when your code path causes dangling
pointers is also interesting, but I wonder how that would work if you were to
link against a static library that handed out references to internal objects
like that - could the compiler see the scoping problem?
------
keeperofdakeys
Just as an aside, the &str is not stored as two pointers, but a pointer and a
length.
------
shmerl
_> The function get_input_string returns a temporary string, and
tokenize_string2 builds an array of pointers into that string. Unfortunately,
the temporary string only lives until the end of the current expression, and
then the underlying memory is released. And so all our pointers in v now point
into oblivion_
So what stops you from returning a shared pointer in case of get_input_string?
Then take over that ownership and use it. It's still a potential problem that
v is logically disconnected from lifetime of that pointer, but at least you
could avoid the problem you described.
------
overgard
This seems like the kind of place where std::shared_ptr would really shine.
The author's point on the danger of pointers is well taken, but some of the
new pointer types get around a lot of these issues. You couldn't use it to
point into the middle of the string, but if you paired it with some offsets
you wouldn't have to worry about the ownership of the pointer anymore.
~~~
pcwalton
std::shared_ptr has (atomic!) reference counting overhead.
~~~
monocasa
Not to mention the issues with reference counting in general. Having to make
sure you don't have (even indirect) circular references means you have to
explicitly think about ownership anyway.
------
GoGolli
Rust is the best complicated language I have seen!!!!!!
------
linguafranca
I'm hearing an awful lot about Rust on HN, even though afaict it still does't
have a basic http package yet, limiting the main types of apps I would build
with it. Maybe I'm in the minority, but perhaps we can slow down on Rust news
until it's a little closer to usable?
~~~
Iftheshoefits
I understand there are a lot of people on HN with "web goggles" and a severe
case of "all development is web development" myopia, but seriously this is
just over the top. I'm a "C++ guy" (that is, I like writing programs using C++
and probably always will, even if I use others from time to time), but I would
never object to a language like Rust on the basis that it lacks an http
package. HTTP is a high level communication protocol. It isn't the only such,
certainly not the most efficient, and definitely not even the best. To bash on
a language for lack of "native" support for http is just a bit ridiculous.
------
Yardlink
Is there are reason this language exists? They're solving a problem that's
been solved many times over for at least 2 decades in the form of managed
languages.
~~~
ludamad
Actually, many people have been waiting long for such a language to come out,
and are very excited about Rust for good reasons.
Managed languages solve a large set of problems, but introduce two big
problems as I see it:
\- Cause nondeterministic overhead which is particularly problematic for
kernels, games, and software with heaps over, say, 10 gigabytes.
\- Limit ability to safely pass objects outside their ecosystem. How many
libraries written in managed code are worth using outside of the language they
are written in?
~~~
pjmlp
Actually it depends on what one understands by managed.
Strong typed languages with automatic memory management, having native
compilers and used for writing OS, exist since Mesa/Cedar (70's at Xerox PARC)
Back when C was UNIX only, no one talked about C ABI. The only ABI that
mattered was the OS ABI.
Amoeba, OS/400, Lisp Machines, Oberon are a few examples of having multiple
languages interoperate via the OS ABI..
~~~
ludamad
I was just alluding to the fact that garbage collection runtimes are quite
less than ideal if another system calls into them sporadically. It just
doesn't fit well for software libraries intended to be language-agnostic.
~~~
pjmlp
I just jumped the gun, because many tend to think stronger typing that what C
offers is a synonym for managed.
Regarding the interoperability, it really depends at what level OS, GC or RC
services are available.
If just on the language runtime, yes it complicates the distribution of
libraries. As it raises the issues how many copies of the runtime one gets and
version compatibility issues.
If the OS offers the services, then any language on that specific OS, can
enjoy exposing libraries that interoperate with GC or RC.
COM (now WinRT) is a possible example of such OS services.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The 5 foot ground rod and its use in the National Electric Code (2018) - turtlegrids
https://iaeimagazine.org/magazine/2018/07/30/the-5-ft-ground-rod-and-its-little-known-use-in-the-nec/
======
FiatLuxDave
Once I had a situation where the length of the ground rod mattered.
We were building a fusion reactor prototype, and as far as I am aware the NEC
code doesn't really have a section for that. I'm sure that much of what we did
was probably against best practices.
We had a number of high voltage power supplies running in one room of our lab,
and on days when the humidity in the air was low, the ionization in the air
would charge up all the metal surfaces in the room. So, even if something was
not connected to a high voltage, you would get a nasty shock when you touched
it. All these devices were connected to the normal, "third prong" wall socket
ground, but apparently the route through the building to ground was too
resistive to handle the large amount of ionization in the air.
When working in a room with 180,000 volt power supplies, random shocks rapidly
become more than annoying.
Spence, our electrical engineer, had the idea that the quickest way to fix the
problem was to run a grounding rod into the soil right outside the window. We
pounded a rod into the ground with a sledgehammer as far as we could, which
was about 5 feet, I guess. Then we ran a 1/4" copper cable from the rod,
through the window to connect to the main reactor chamber.
This worked great! At least for a couple of months. Our lab was located in a
swamp, and the soil was basically a few meters of dried leaves. You could
actually feel the soil move up and down when you walked on it. When August
came around, it had not rained for quite a while, and the water level in the
soil had dropped below the level of the grounding rod. The dried leaves in the
soil insulated it quite well. We started getting shocks again, and it took us
many hours of troubleshooting before we realized that the ground was not
actually ground anymore.
We went out and pounded the rod a few feet deeper, which was easier now that
the soil was dry. This reached the water table, and fixed the problem.
~~~
Scoundreller
Also helps if you dump a large quantity of salty water. The salt eventually
leaves too, but helps retain some of the water and makes it more conductive.
~~~
EricE
Exactly. We had the first generation color copiers in the California high
desert and whenever paper jams became frequent we knew it was time to pour
salt water on the building grounding rod!
------
Roark66
I was building a workshop last year and as I have few old 3-phase metalworking
machines and the power comes through a 50m (150ft) buried cable I had to
install proper ground for the building and another two independent ground
connections for the lightning protection. I have no bedrock, but my soil is
pretty much 100% clay plus a football sized stones here and there around the
building. The code around here is that the ground connection should be no more
than 4 ohms resistance. I was lucky with two lightning protection grounds. For
one a single 2.4m rod was enough and for the other two rods (I had the type
that screws into each other so you can make the rod longer and longer if
necessary) were required.
However, I wanted to locate the electrical ground few meters away to avoid the
possibility of a lightning strike raising my ground potential. I ended up
having to install 6 rods to get down to 4 ohms. The first two rods were 7
ohms, the next two 2 meters away were 15 and the final two were 25 if I
remember correctly.
The take away from that story is: always measure your ground resistance. Never
assume 8ft is enough if you have a certain type of soil.
~~~
kube-system
How exactly is that measured? If you’re trying to measure the resistance
between the ground rod and actual ground, how do you get the second reference
point?
~~~
Roark66
There are two standard ways to measure. The meters that do the measurement
usually support both. First method involves two mobile shallow ground
electrodes you place 20m away from your ground rod (so electrodes are 40m
apart and your ground rod in the middle). I'm not sure how exactly it is
possible to measure this when the quality of ground those two extra electrodes
is unknown, but it works. The meters cost few thousands $ so I assume it is
not trivial.
The second method involves an already known good ground - like for example one
supplied by the electricity company. Here they usually bury galvanised steel
thick tape along their ground cables. That tape is hundreds of meters long and
underground so it is assumed to be a really good ground. It is only used to
ground outside metal bits of the power delivery equipment that are likely to
be touched by people and it is separate from the ground connection supplied in
the cable itself although one is supposed to connect it to the delivered
ground when connecting the house cable to the electricity delivery point. Then
every house is supposed to have at least two lightning protection grounds and
an extra "electricity supply" ground that is again connected with the ground
in the supply cable. Please bear in mind I'm no electrician and all of the
above is based on me observing electricians at work when they were connecting
my house, my workshop and working on lightning protection for both. I may be
mistaken on some details.
------
robomartin
L.A. County made us drive FOUR 8 foot ground rods into the ground, no less
than 8 feet apart, for our ground-mounted 13 kW solar array.
This is ridiculous beyond description and it is NOT in the N.E.C. at all.
The problem you run into with places like L.A. County is that incompetent plan
checkers just want to play "cover my ass" and make up rules. There is no
practical way to challenge them. They are the absolute authority (unless you
have millions of dollars and YEARS to fight them).
I checked with contractors and the recommendation was "just do it and don't
complain or they'll make your project a living nightmare".
So, we did.
They still made the project a nightmare to complete. They added a massive
chunk to the overall cost and it took six months longer than it should have
taken to complete it. Their interference made it such that this solar system
will likely never recover the construction costs. Well, maybe in 30 years.
It's a shame. Had I known the nightmare it is to deal with this bureaucracy I
would have invested my money elsewhere.
California is sucking more and more with time. L.A. County is even worse.
~~~
ademup
A 5/8" x 8' copper grounding rod is $14 at Home Depot; 3\4 x 10 is $33. I'm
very confused on how the extra $100 would meaningfully affect the project in
either time or BOM.
~~~
bradknowles
With respect, this is like saying “but the hard drive on Fry’s discount shelf
only costs $100, why is your NVME-over-Fiber SSD storage system so expensive?”
Hint: what the consumer can buy over the counter, and what gets used in a
professional setting, are frequently two radically different things that may
only be tangentially related.
~~~
tomku
With respect, what you're saying is absolute nonsense in the context of ground
rods. They're hunks of metal clad in copper and driven into the ground with a
sledgehammer. They're so simple that there's literally no part of a modern PC
that's analogous. The ones you can buy from Home Depot for $15 are identical
to the ones I buy from a professional electrical contracting supplier for $15
- they come off the same factory lines from the same manufacturer.
There are other components used in contracting that have a bit more product
segmentation, but the whole "frequently radically different things that may
only be tangentially related" bit is wildly exaggerated. We use the
appropriate components for the job, and often that means the same stuff you
could buy at Home Depot. You're paying for that knowledge of what's
appropriate/necessary and the labor to do the work, not for super-special
premium contractor ground rods.
------
lutorm
What do you do for grounding if your house sits on bedrock?
We _barely_ had enough for the "buried in trench, 30" deep" option at our
house before hitting the solid lava everything here is built on. (And it's
buried in mostly gravel, there is practically no dirt.)
~~~
angry_octet
A ground driven into rock or buried in dry gravel isn't going to be of much
use. Typically electrodes are buried in a mixture of bentonite and gypsum,
which is pH neutral and provides low resistance. There are also chemical
(salt) earth fills which work well but require thicker copper electrodes to
deal with corrosion. Various conductor arrangements are used, but in shallow
trenches there is always the problem of the wires being cut. A radial or
cartesian mesh burial over a larger area would be typical. You can buy
electrical mesh and ground enhancement fill for this purpose. Note that you
still need it to be below the frost layer in your region -- which varies from
15cm (California) to 300cm (Canada) depending.
An earth connected via a distant cable isn't going to be effective against
lightning (transients are high frequency and hence conductivity is constrained
by the skin effect, and long wires have high inductance even if they have low
DC impedance), and additionally is poor practice as it is more lightly to be
cut without someone knowing in the future. I doubt any EE would approve it
when other methods are available.
[https://blog.nvent.com/erico/erico-what-is-soil-
resistivity-...](https://blog.nvent.com/erico/erico-what-is-soil-resistivity-
and-how-does-it-affect-grounding/)
Cf IEEE 80 & 81
~~~
arminiusreturns
Fun story, in the Marine Corps they pee on the rods to make them ground
better. (for mobile CoC's)
~~~
angry_octet
Let's hope they do that before they power up their gear. Ouch.
The mobile radar and HF guys have lots of tricks like this, but also spend
lots of time hammering spikes with a sledgehammer.
------
erobbins
Kinda like IBM, no one ever got fired for using an 8 foot rod in a situation
where a 5 foot rod was to code.
------
walrus01
I'm kind of surprised to read that entire article and not encounter the phrase
"ohm meter" anywhere in a search. Rarely does anything serious have only one
ground rod. Three legged telecom towers will have three rods, one attached to
each leg, linked together by a ring of 6 gauge copper buried outside the
perimeter of the concrete foundation.
Multiple 5 foot ground rods in the correct configuration bonded together could
offer much more conductivity to the earth than one 8 foot. The article seems
to be obsessing about the length of the rod and not the scientifically
measurable ohm resistance.
------
alextingle
Why do the US regulations specify the method and not the result? That seems
bizarre.
Here in the UK, most earth connections are provided by the power company, but
in rural areas you may be too far from the substation, so a ground rod is
permitted - as long as it provides an earth loop impedance (Z) of less than
200 Ohm.
So if you want to provide your own earth, you have to keep driving ground rods
deeper, or adding new ones until the "Zeds" are good enough.
It looks like the US regulations permit you to bang an "8 foot" rod into dry
sand, and walk away as though that's job done??
------
segfaultbuserr
As we are talking about grounding...
I think the greatest problem that troubles me personally is that the single-
point grounding required by lightning protection is _almost never_ implemented
properly in the vast majority of installations.
I realized the existence of this problem when I wanted to install a mesh
network in a school campus, so I started reading documents about lightning
protections, amateur radio publications have good resources on it, and all of
them indicate a correct installation should eventually bound all grounds,
including mains ground, telecommunication ground and lightning protection
ground at a single-point via low-impedance connections (even if they have
their own ground rods), also, all metallic objects and structures, such as gas
pipes, fire escapes, etc, should be bounded to ground as well. This is to
prevent a voltage gradient developing between different grounding points in
case of a lightning strike, and it's usually required or implied in electrical
or building code.
However, who ever obey this rule in practice? I've seen various installations
of outdoor/rooftop Wi-Fi networks, and all the lightning protection they have
is a gas discharge tube and a ground connection of unknown quality, I don't
think the installation is legal. Also, many buildings were in compliance of
the code when they were built, but even adding an extra metal frame or a
cable-TV box will invalidate the entire lightning protection, at least from a
technical or legal perspective.
I guess the reason behind the non-compliance is that the likelihood of a
lightning strike is already low, even if it does strike, it's possible that
even a non-compliant lightning protection system can work to an extent. And if
it doesn't work, most people would just accept the damage. As a result, it's a
concern for radio hobbyist only, whose antenna increases the likelihood
significantly.
But I was still shocked when I first understood the fact that most (low-rise)
buildings don't have a technically sound lightning protection system and bet
the safety of the building on luck. And its practical consequence is: if you
want to put a rooftop antenna for amateur radio, with good lightning safety
and in compliance with the code, in many cases, the answer is you can't - the
building often doesn't even have a technically sound lightning protection
system to begin with. I read many hardcore radio amateurs redo the entire
electrical wiring at their homes to the proper standards.
High-rise buildings are much better, lightning protection is serious business,
but you are not usually allowed to put a mesh network antenna on top of them.
But if you are allowed, I've heard that some people even got a chance to have
a friendly conversation with the civil engineer who's in charge of the
building's lightning protection system and work out a solution together.
~~~
airbreather
This is called equipotential bonding and a failure to implement or maintain it
leads to occasional but tragic or fatal outcomes, we had one recently locally
where a 12 year old girl was seriously brain damaged and needing life long
care because she touched an outdoor tap.
~~~
petre
That's probably why the two faucets in the UK are required to be electrically
bound with a counductor, under the wash basin or sink. If the mains is in
contact with a pipe and not the other, touching both faucets would result in
electrocution. Also an extra argument for a single combined faucet for both
cold and hot water.
~~~
gpderetta
Separate faucets for cold and hot water is one of those inexplicable British
things for an immigrant like me.
~~~
jdsnape
it was inexplicable for me as a native too - although I recently discovered
that it was specified by older regulations as they were worried about
contamination between the hot and cold-water supplies. The hot water supply
was traditionally fed from a header tank in the loft (attic) and so wasn't
safe to drink.
~~~
Gibbon1
A British coworker said he thinks it's because authorities were worried about
the water supply being intermittent. A rooftop tank solves the contamination
back flow issue via an air gap. And provides water when the mains aren't
working.
I also suspect the British would have found a old school US style water heater
to be somewhat frightening.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVK6bkj5Ug4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVK6bkj5Ug4)
------
watersb
Grounding, Bonding, and All That
I have been reviewing the Mike Holt NEC video seminars, just listening like
background music while I build some workbenches on the weekends.
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRNS1x1jcKbEgNJx26RWB...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRNS1x1jcKbEgNJx26RWB8O4Fm1Ny-
bxK)
~~~
wmblaettler
^ THIS - Go watch at least first video "Grounding - Safety Fundamentals" This
was a very eye-opening video. I totally misunderstood grounding before
watching this.
------
vidanay
For a great intro to grounding, check out this series of articles
[https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/grounding-dos-
donts...](https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/grounding-dos-donts-why-
part-1.335582/)
It's written from the perspective of a ham operator, but all the principles
are the same no matter what.
------
alkonaut
Are all domestic buildings grounded this way in the US? Here (Sweden) I
believe houses that aren’t far from transformers are only grounded at the
nearest transformer (where power is transformed from 10kV 3-phase into
230/400V 3-phase+neutral for distribution to each house.
~~~
mturmon
Yes, all domestic buildings in the US have their own earth ground, and this is
and has been required by the NEC (National Electrical Code).
Often this is a thick, 8-foot long copper rod pounded into the ground not far
from the electrical panel, connected to the panel by a ~1cm diameter copper
cable. (There are other allowed methods, including using a similar copper
electrode encased in concrete or in the building foundation.)
It looks like this (which shows a galvanized-steel rod rather than the more
canonical copper, and shows a further connection to a second ground rod, which
is not required everywhere):
[http://www.wireyourownhouse.com/panel/images/grndrodexample....](http://www.wireyourownhouse.com/panel/images/grndrodexample.png)
Also, certain sub panels (e.g., in garages) will need their own separate earth
ground, made the same way.
This "grounding electrode" is in addition to a connection ("bond") to the
domestic cold-water pipe, usually done where the pipe enters the building.
(That pipe itself may be a hunk of copper buried in the ground.) The
electrical bond to the water service is not a substitute for the dedicated
grounding electrode mentioned above, it's to ensure that the plumbing does not
become electrically charged.
~~~
mattrp
All except homes built many years ago where someone felt it was satisfactory
to clamp a single wire to the water line. I’ve seen this numerous times.
Not to mention the numerous instances of 20A breakers on 14awg. It’s simply
amazing what one will find in some homes... like the person who clipped both
ends of an extension cord to feed an outlet out of a junction box rather than
spend $20 on home wiring. Or the person who literally covered a chiseled-out
trench in plaster with painters tape to conceal wire. And on and on...
~~~
bcrosby95
> where someone felt it was satisfactory to clamp a single wire to the water
> line. I’ve seen this numerous times.
Our house was built in the 70's and that is what we used to have. After we
upgraded our panel though we got not 1, but 2 grounding rods.
~~~
mturmon
According to this thread [1], it was the 1978 code that required a dedicated
grounding electrode.
That's 40 years ago, but of course many houses have not been upgraded since
then, and some localities might not have adopted the 1978 NEC until later.
[1] [https://forums.mikeholt.com/forum/active-
forums/nec/86062-co...](https://forums.mikeholt.com/forum/active-
forums/nec/86062-code-year-for-ground-rods?t=135832)
------
fyfy18
I recently installed an IKEA kitchen hood, and was surprised that the power
connector only had two pins (IEC C17/18). The hood has a aluminium frame
(albeit painted) with metal pole switches. Can someone explain why this
doesn't need to be grounded?
~~~
lurquer
Perhaps the same reason toasters aren't. It is very likely that one will have
two hands on the toaster when one is shocked. You have two choices: ground it,
in which case the current races up one arm, through the torso, and down the
other arm (frying your heart in the process). Or, keep it ungrounded and let
the current race down your leg to the floor (sparing your torso and hopefully
taking advantage of the fact that your shoes will provide a little more
insulation that your two bare hands on metal in the first scenario.)
------
myspy
We're currently building a house in Germany and the grounding consists of a
couple dozen meters of thick (maybe 10mm) wiring which is laid out in the
concrete ground plate of the house.
~~~
petre
A couple of dozen meters? Wiring? Encased in concrete? Five to ten meters of
zinc coated 30x5mm flat bar steel bound to three to six 3/4" rods is usually
enough depending on the soil characteristics. And it's usuall buried directly
in the soil next to or around the bulding. I wonder what bulding codes you've
got there.
~~~
brazzy
The relevant code is DIN 18014. And it distinguishes between different kinds
of ground plate. Some are considered sufficiently "earth-feeling" to be
considered ground themselves, others require separate corrosion-resistant
grounding to be put in the earth around them. Zinc-coated steel is not
considered sufficiently corrosion-resistant.
Here's an article in German with some pictures of how it's done:
[https://www.elektro-
plus.com/elektroplanung/fundamenterder/a...](https://www.elektro-
plus.com/elektroplanung/fundamenterder/ausfuehrung-des-fundamenterders)
~~~
petre
Allright. This makes sense as it reduces the electro corrosion on the rebar
and also prevents other unfortunate accidents such as the hot wire coming in
contact an exposed metal part or a metal pipe which is itself in contact with
the rebar.
I have seen a scenario where ligtning struck a DHW solar panel installation,
skiped from the plumbing to the rebar and also melted hole in the plumbing
while doing so, draining all the antifreeze on the walls. In addition it
destroyed all the electronic appliances in the house. If the panels along with
the rebar would have been properly grounded, such as scenario would have been
mitigated.
------
segfaultbuserr
Note to readers: NEC is _National Electric Code_ , which is the regulation of
all electrical installations in the USA.
The NEC here is not _Numerical Electromagnetics Code_ , an electromagnetic
simulation program, commonly used for antennas, which often have a ground
connection as well. And it's obviously not the NEC Corporation, the Japanese
electric company, whose semiconductor department is now a separate company
known as Renesas.
When I first saw the title, it took me a few seconds in my mind to solve the
hash conflict here. I wonder how many people on HN know all of these entities
simultaneously.
~~~
namibj
You are not alone, at least.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SkyMall Lands in Bankruptcy as In-Flight Shopping Changes - tshtf
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-23/skymall-lands-in-bankruptcy-as-in-flight-shopping-habits-change.html
======
paulhauggis
I'm not surprised.
They are overpriced and never changed with the times.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Any site with pagination to subdivide content into 2 or 3... - nato1138
... needs to die
======
snissn
did ... needs to die really need to be on a separate page?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Math, chemistry, physics, and biology question classifier now on Mashape - ramjeetram
http://www.mashape.com/JakStatTutors/subject-classifier
======
ramjeetram
updated link
[https://market.mashape.com/JakStatTutors/subject-
classifier](https://market.mashape.com/JakStatTutors/subject-classifier)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I'm not good enough to work on open source software - davidw
http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/03/22/im-not-good-enough-to-work-on-open-source-software
======
antirez
I guess that in some way a lot of companies are taking from open source
without giving enough back. Open source is much cheaper than proprietary
software to produce, a team of a few guys do the work of what would be a much
bigger team in a proprietary software, and there is no need to have a profit,
paying the developers is enough, so... if companies using open source would
give back even a small amount of money...
But maybe some global "fund" should be used or something like that, I don't
think that giving to the project you use is going to scale (we don't want a
few guys rich, and nothing for all the rest, otherwise it's a company). But
then bureaucracy starts to be an issue, who selects the right projects? And so
forth. Not trivial.
Or maybe the solution is that if you are an enough large company, hire N open
source developers. Like charity there should be a non written rule that most
tech corps should follow. Like the 1% rule: hire 1% of your work force to
write open source (and probably this would end being a largere return about
branding than many ADs large companies run for more money than that).
~~~
ajross
I don't think resources are really the problem. There's a ton of money out
there that pays for full-time open source developers. Basically all the core
contributors of all the "serious" projects (i.e. things shipped in high-
revenue-producing contexts) are already on staff somewhere.
It's true that there's a much larger population of people (like me) who _want_
to work full time on open source and would take a job if it was offered. But
that just gets to what the linked article is talking about: companies don't
generally "staff" free software projects with new hires. They hire the
projects that already exist.
So basically the solution, if you want one of these jobs, is to get off your
butt and make something people want. Then give it away. :)
~~~
davidw
> There's a ton of money out there that pays for full-time open source
> developers.
I don't know... I'm not sure it's really a ton. And a great deal of it comes
from companies that derive their revenue from something else - in many cases,
proprietary software. Ubuntu, for instance, is all about Mark's millions made
from the sale of Thawte.
> So basically the solution, if you want one of these jobs, is to get off your
> butt and make something people want. Then give it away. :)
And then hope it's useful to someone who makes a bunch of money via
proprietary software or something else that's scarce, and that they hire you.
Why not just make something proprietary of your own to be more in control?
~~~
ajross
For some definition of "ton" anyway. Developers are cheap, comparatively. But
the point remains: all the major kernel developers are paid for. All the big
X.org people too; the Gnome people (though I'm told that investment is lacking
on KDE); virtualization folks behind Xen and kvm; Android obviously comes
right out of Google's payroll, likewise Chrome and Mozilla products.
Really, if you were handed a big check and told to build a team of open source
people, you'd have a hard time doing it without poaching from Red Hat, Google,
Novell or Intel.
And the final point was exactly what I was getting at. Getting yourself a free
software gig requires pretty much exactly the same things as getting yourself
a funded startup. In some sense it's a subset. Whether you want to make
proprietary things or not is, I think, a personal decision.
~~~
davidw
Anecdote time:
My last big open source effort, Hecl, weighs in at something like 100K lines
of code. LiberWriter, my first real "pay for it if you want to use it"
project, doesn't quite pay me enough to live on, yet, but earns decent money
at around 10% of the lines of code.
I did make some money consulting on Hecl, so it's not a total loss, and I had
fun with it, and learned a lot. But in terms of the money, there's simply no
competition: LiberWriter wins by a huge margin, even though it's simpler code
that doesn't do as much.
The big difference is with LW, people pay me directly. With Hecl, it was a
matter of hoping someone would come along and pay to have some work done on
it. It's just so much easier to deal with the former in terms of cash coming
in.
~~~
ajross
Isn't that just saying that LiberWriter is a more successful product than
Hecl? I mean, if Google or whoever wanted to base a service on Hecl, they
would have hired you, right? My analogy was to startup funding, not sales, but
I think it still holds.
Certainly if you make something people want, people will pay you to develop
it. I don't see a real problem with the model, though for obvious reasons the
incentives are going to drive more people to startups than to new open source
projects.
~~~
davidw
Several companies used Hecl code, including one that was later sold to
BlackBerry, so there was some demand for it commercially, just that apparently
the code was good enough or clear enough that they didn't need any further
involvement from me.
My point is that for people to start hiring you at a high hourly rate, there's
got to be a _burning demand_ , whereas with a product or app, the costs are
much lower, so it's easy to spread them around.
> Certainly if you make something people want, people will pay you to develop
> it
Only after a certain critical mass, that is a lot higher than what it is for a
proprietary project, where all sales feed back into the project. I mean, I
certainly don't pay people to develop Linux, Postgres, Ruby, Rails, gcc or any
of the other projects I use, although I do try and contribute back where
possible.
BTW, strange but true story: I probably made the most money off of Hecl doing
a BlackBerry port for... of all people, PASOK, the Greek center-left political
party. This was all before the country ran out of money, and I did get paid.
~~~
antirez
That's the problem IMHO. Company get sold for X, and did substantial business
with Hecl? Get x/200 or alike and give it to the Hecl developer as a donation.
It's not too hard... Open source coders are likely to write more open source
software, so it's a good investment for the collectivity.
------
davidw
I wrote this after the 'PG has lost the plot' thread. I didn't like the title,
but the content was fairly good. People really seem to have trouble
visualizing "that which is not seen":-)
~~~
eli_gottlieb
Bravo and bingo. These are the exactly the frustrations I tend to feel as an
unpaid, open-source coder.
And the next level of the phenomenon is that the _entire software industry_
has shifted its business model to avoid having to compete with piracy or open-
source. There are now, to my knowledge, _two_ major for-profit companies
building their own PC operating systems: Microsoft and Apple. There are four
or five building mobile operating systems: Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry,
Google, (maybe) Symbian. The number of for-profit IDEs and programming
platforms is still mostly healthy, but much, much smaller than it once was.
"That which is not seen"? That is, the effect of this privative of profits on
the real world? Almost whole fields have shifted over into the domain of
unpaid, spare-time open source work. Thousands, millions of man-hours are
expended for no salary and no equity.
Think what would happen if all the open-source programmers (paid and unpaid)
went on strike. _Now_ you're realizing the economic value of open-source code
that goes completely uncaptured by its producers.
Yes, the result is that _less gets done_ , because everyone has to find day-
jobs, and that the software industry has changed almost entirely from product
business models to service business models.
Now, another scary thought: what if someone stole the code and databases to
your web-service? You say that your contacts and relationships are what really
makes your web-app worth something, but frankly, that's a load of crap. I'm
sure there are some starving Chinese coders who would _love_ to steal your
code _and_ your data, bring up their own web-service identical to yours (but
in Chinese), get a few million users, and then translate theirs back into
English for North American and European usage.
The "relationships and business expertise" excuse sounds much like what
everyone said when America sent its manufacturing overseas: "We'll do all the
high-value services and design and development work here." Well, no, the
manufacturing was _itself_ high-value and the other high-value points in the
supply chain eventually followed it, and we're China's bitch now.
There is an imperative to enable value-creators to capture some portion of the
value they create as cash. Otherwise the entire foundation of not only
capitalism but _all_ possible market economies breaks down into mush.
~~~
bunderbunder
I think it might be instructive to think of what the world was like before the
idea of letting people who create intellectual products maintain some
ownership of (and therefore be more able to make a living from) their work:
\- Serfdom was still legal in most of Western Europe.
\- Professional artists occupied the same social rung as prostitutes.
\- An intellectual professional's primary option for making a living off his
(that pronoun being sufficient for the era) work was patronage.
\- The vast bulk of intellectual output served the primary purpose of
glorifying the political and religious Powers that Be.
Of course that doesn't imply that the current copyright and patent law isn't
enormously out of hand, or that it doesn't largely function to the detriment
of creative professionals thanks to the grotesque ways in which it has been
amended over the past three or so centuries. But the basic idea is admirable,
and it can and should be salvaged.
~~~
npsimons
I can play this game too: you know what the software industry was like before
Microsoft and Apple? EVERYTHING was open source. When you bought a program (if
they didn't throw it in for free with the bloody expensive hardware) you
ALWAYS got source code. People still sell open source software; I've never
understood why people think that commercial software is incompatible with open
source. It isn't.
~~~
bunderbunder
_I can play this game too: you know what the software industry was like before
Microsoft and Apple? EVERYTHING was open source._
And yet, computing professionals were much less free than they are now.
Because programmers almost universally worked at the King's pleasure.
The exception to that rule was small garage shops. Like Microsoft and Apple.
------
j_baker
As someone who _has_ been paid to work on OSS, let me say that it is
absolutely not about skill. Most notably, Google and Mozilla pay plenty people
to work on Firefox and Chromium. Even Apple has some OSS projects (Webkit and
Darwin come to mind).
~~~
gcp
Maybe its better to say that "there is no need to be a superstar programmer"
to work on OSS. The companies you list aren't known for hiring unskilled
workers :-)
~~~
j_baker
Indeed, but they're by far not the only ones working on OSS. They're simply
the most recognizable. I've worked on OSS for companies with far less stellar
track records when it comes to hiring.
------
crcsmnky
Interesting perspective but I have to say there are quite a few companies
working the whole "open source the code, charge for consulting, etc." thing.
Just in data alone, Cloudera, Data Stax, Basho, 10gen and Hortonworks come to
mind.
My point is that thousands of people get paid to work on open source projects.
The project might not be their original creation but they still get to give
back by producing something that everyone can use. Isn't that really the point
anyway?
EDIT: added a missing 'not'
~~~
falcolas
FIWI, I have personally not heard of a single one of those companies.
To continue the OP's concept, these are likely companies with employee counts
in the single or double digits, whereas closed source companies have employees
in the 5-6 digit ranges, reinforcing the "I'm not smart enough to get paid
writing open source" concept the OP presented.
------
SirDinosaur
For those interested in sustaining themselves by making open / libre software,
I plan on dedicating my next summer to starting a cooperative for hackers. The
basic idea is that if we can create a decentralized ecosystem for exchanging
currency, ideas, and goods in an open and cooperative manner, we can solve our
needs as hackers without resorting to non-free alternatives. You can find my
early planning here: <https://github.com/SirDinosaur/hackercoop>, and I'd
_greatly_ appreciate any questions, comments, critiques on how to make my /
our dream possible.
~~~
DanBC
How do you solve taxes?
~~~
SirDinosaur
Let's rephrase the question: how do _we_ solve taxes?
~~~
DanBC
In the UK: Taxes are complicated but mostly solved. Either your employers
deduct taxes before you get your money or you are self-employed and pay an
accountant to sort it out; and people you buy things from add taxes before you
buy stuff. If you are rich you get an accountant and practice various forms of
avoidance (legal, but those loopholes may close soon, and of dubious
ethicality) to evasion (not legal).
Missing from the above description are people involved in barter economies.
There are several barter economy systems in the UK. The UK tax collectors (HM
Revenue and Customs) are clear: barter trades can be taxable.
Suggestion: Find an accountant that would like to work as part of a co-
operative. The collective either has one big joint account (like a business)
or lots of individual accounts - either way good accounting will legally
minimise tax burden and help with other stuff.
~~~
SirDinosaur
Awesome, thanks for the suggestion. Do you suppose the accounting could also
be automated, with help from an accountant, as part of the system that
facilitates exchanges? My current thinking is to create a system that can be
used by anyone, not just those within a single collective.
------
jasonlotito
The article is confusing. He talks about intellectual property, copyright, and
open source. He seems to confuse intellectual property and copyright (or at
least, use them interchangeably), and seems think that open source and
copyright are at odds. That open source licenses rely on copyright indicate
this isn't the case.
Maybe I just misread the entire thing, but I honestly don't see the message
he's trying to get across. It feels like their is a massive amount of context
that is missing from this.
------
aliguori
I'm paid to work on Open Source full time and have been for the better part of
a decade.
I don't really agree with anything the article says. Open Source development
is a segment of the industry. Getting a job in Open Source is really no
different than getting a job in Game Development, Robotics, or any other niche
market.
You generally have to (1) be willing to accept less pay (2) be more flexible
about relocating (3) have specialized skills and experience or just get really
lucky.
------
kisielk
An interesting perspective. I too would like to spend more time writing open
source software. The main reason I do not, and something which I think holds
true for a lot of people, is that even if our company wanted to open source
some of our software it's fairly difficult to do so and of questionable value.
Many of the components and practices in our software are quite specific to our
business and environment. They'd just be useless or, worse, an impediment to
other people wanting to reuse the software in a different context.
Even if we were to refactor parts of our code base to produce some "clean"
components that didn't rely on the specifics of our business or other
processes, there are many cases where that would just add to the overhead of
maintaining the software for us.
~~~
riledhel
You are understimating the value of your software. You never know who can find
your work inspirational or educational, even entertaining.
------
billswift
Of course, another factor is how ending copyright might redirect a lot more
resources into open source. Without being able to benefit from rents that come
from keeping proprietary code, how many companies would switch to using and
improving open source alternatives?
~~~
davidw
It's very easy and simple to pay $100 to use some bit of software. It's _way_
harder to actually contribute to it meaningfully.
Software markets solve a coordination problem. Not perfectly, but reasonably
well. Same thing goes for many other kinds of information goods. No way would
I pay an author to sit around writing a book, but I'm happy to give them $5
for a copy.
------
jdost
Oddly, in the age of the internet, it is easier for someone to do open source
at least part of the time for their employer. With the internet, a lot of the
money for web based companies is not from the software itself, but the
services the software provides. This allows for the company to open source a
large chunk of the code base and still make money to pay the developers. (see
things like 37signals/RoR)
------
phrontist
This throws the absurdity of capitalism in our faces: Guido, a guy who
developed software that benefits hundreds of thousands even by conservative
reckoning, can't work on it full time.
------
kungfooguru
Why does this have a single up vote?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Adventures in reverse engineering Broadcom NIC firmware - jandeboevrie
https://www.devever.net/~hl/ortega
======
bri3d
Wow, I had a very similar LZSS related experience just a few weeks ago
reverse-engineering a VW ECU, although my process didn't end up being as
painful. Through luck (and no skill of my own, really), I chose to approach
the decompression process by analyzing the data rather than disassembling the
decompression routine. LZSS compressed data appears more compressed/garbled as
the file goes on as the previous contents of the file are used as the
dictionary for compression. LZSS basically works by encoding what I'll call a
"copy command" \- a series of bits which tell the decompressor whether to copy
subsequent bytes from the "dictionary" (which is an offset into the previous
content of the file) or to copy the bytes verbatim. Thankfully, the beginning
of my file didn't have much repetition for the first 20-30 bytes, so I was
able to recognize the periodically-zero bitfield "commands." Next I was able
to recognize as they became nonzero (as items were available in the
dictionary) and begin to see how the bitfield drove the decompressor. Doing
this again, I could spot LZSS from orbit, but having never seen it (and having
no versing or background in compression algorithms), I ended up putting
together enough Google terms around "dictionary compression copy bitfield" to
get exceptionally lucky (again!) and land on a page about LZ77, which took me
to enough example implementations to allow me to rapidly implement a
decompressor.
~~~
userbinator
A wide background experience on computing in general helps greatly for RE; in
this case the specific variant of LZ that's used is categorised by an old
document I have as "LZ 12/4" (4K sliding window, 16-bit match offsets split
into 12 and 4 for offset and length) which was _very_ common in the late
80s/early 90s. A decompressor for it fits in a few dozen bytes of x86, which
certainly helped its popularity, and the simplicity meant it was extremely
fast.
Unfortunately Google's forgetfulness is infuriating, since the only reference
to this variant name I could find is a previous comment I made here about
compression algorithms:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14965064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14965064)
------
samlittlewood
Fun fact - I wrote some customised firmware for the Tigon2 AceNIC ancestor I n
this tale - (video stream offload). The original MIPS firmware solved the lack
of mul/div ... by carefully writing code that never emitted those
instructions. That caused a few head scratching moments!
Also, an interesting feature of this architecture was that it had no interrupt
mechanism. There was a hardware ‘event’ bit register, and a special
instruction to convert that it a ‘most important event’ offset into dispatch
table. This made all race/concurrency issues go away - and the code was easy
to reason about.
------
voltagex_
[https://github.com/hlandau/ortega/blob/master/rtg-
spec.md#fu...](https://github.com/hlandau/ortega/blob/master/rtg-
spec.md#fucking-broadcom) is pretty funny/sad.
------
scoutt
>> _reverse engineering as a process tends to alternate between periods of
exhilaration and of feeling like it 's completely hopeless and there's no
prospect of ever figuring out what's going on._
Having RE'd even patching bugs in closed source firmware myself (mostly for
ARM), I can tell those words describe the process quite well.
Perhaps it's worst when you have to do it for _work_ and not for _sport_ ,
like most of the times that happened to me.
~~~
souprock
I do it for work all the time. Maybe that does take something away from sport,
like a car mechanic losing the desire to tinker with his own car every day.
One does need an income though, and IMHO you might as well do something you
basically enjoy. See "Who is hiring?" post at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19543995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19543995)
if it seems like your thing.
~~~
scoutt
Thanks. I have no complaints, on doing it either for _work_ or _sport_ ; just
wanted to say that nothing happens if you abandon and declare losing when
doing it for _sport_. Instead for _work_ , when reverse-engineering, options
are two: you either figure it out, or you figure it out.
------
ezoe
>I was also then able to figure out the origins of the compression algorithm;
it's called LZSS, and the particular LZSS format used here turns out to
originate from some public domain DOS code which someone posted on a Japanese
BBS in 1988.
Seriously. One of the latest high performance server grade NIC firmware from
very famous vendor still use the code originated from somebody's comment at
1988 Japanese BBS? We can guess the rest of the firmware quality with this
fact.
~~~
dfox
There is probably no reason to use anything other. You want small and fast
decompressor and do not care that much about compression factor. And it is not
that things like FastLZ or LZO are that much better to be worth the effort.
(Also one can assume that when this was originally written the only widely
used algorithm of this class was LZO, whose commercial licence IIRC is not
particularly cheap)
------
wiz21c
FTA :
>>> Since this entire reverse engineering project involved my extensive
exposure to reverse engineered, proprietary code, I can't exactly just go and
write FOSS firmware for this thing.
he's even good at handling the lawyer stuff :-)
~~~
simula67
Will the software produced using this documentation be legal to use ?
~~~
hlandau
Yes. That's the whole point.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design)
------
huxflux
What a hero! I would also love to hear about the tools/technique used in the
process.
------
saagarjha
> Actually compiling this turned out to be an amusing excercise, because MIPS
> cores without hardware multiply or divide support aren't officially a thing
> anymore, which means that neither clang or GCC support targeting such
> devices.
I'm curious what the demand is for a simple, non-optimizing C compiler that
translates code into the most straightforward assembly possible (i.e. a true
"portable assembler").
~~~
voltagex_
Define simple - what do you leave out? From the article, not having divide or
multiply is an anomaly.
~~~
stevekemp
All you need is `mov`:
[https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator/](https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator/)
Including the obligatory port of doom:
[https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator/tree/master/vali...](https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator/tree/master/validation/doom)
Note: The mov-only DOOM renders approximately one frame every 7 hours, so
playing this version requires somewhat increased patience.
------
xvilka
Would be interesting to read about tools used and more technical information
on RE process.
~~~
hlandau
There weren't that many off-the-shelf tools involved, other than things like
binwalk and disassemblers. My workflow can also be hilariously ghetto at
times: I like to output hexdump -C to a file, then annotate that in vim. For
example:
[https://github.com/hlandau/ortega/blob/master/notes/bcm5719_...](https://github.com/hlandau/ortega/blob/master/notes/bcm5719_talos.txt)
Lots of tools were written from scratch. I wrote otgdbg for probing the
device; this program has tons of subcommands to let me manipulate the device
in various ways, get/set registers, boot a program on the MIPS side from
memory, boot a program on the APE side from memory, copy a new image to flash,
etc.
otgimg examines firmware images and prints information about them, like the
MAC addresses in the configuration block, etc. apeimg shows information about
APE firmware images and can decompress them.
Since the image formats are custom, I had to use linker scripts to build the
images, but some fixups could only be done programmatically, like calculating
CRC fields. These fixups were done with small C programs which the build
system runs afterwards.
The APE used a more sophisticated image format with section headers, etc. The
fixup program for the APE had to compress some of the sections, etc. before
setting the CRCs.
These tools are all available in the repository, but most of them link to
small amounts of proprietary/reversed code which is automatically scrubbed
from the public release. It's not a large amount of code which would need to
be replaced, though, if someone wants a tool like otgdbg to probe Broadcom
NICs in arbitrary ways.
Oh, I should also mention that using clang and lld rather than gcc/binutils
made targeting different architectures a breeze. It's long been a bone of
irritation to me that you have to recompile gcc to retarget it; with clang, I
could target both MIPS and ARM without compiling a new toolchain.
[https://github.com/hlandau/ortega/blob/master/cc_mips](https://github.com/hlandau/ortega/blob/master/cc_mips)
[https://github.com/hlandau/ortega/blob/master/cc_arm](https://github.com/hlandau/ortega/blob/master/cc_arm)
~~~
markjenkinswpg
Great work Hugo. Thank you!
------
ignoramous
Related: Reverse engineering the Qualcomm baseband processor talk from 28C3
[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2011/Fahrplan/attachments/2022...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2011/Fahrplan/attachments/2022_11-ccc-
qcombbdbg.pdf)
[https://youtu.be/IWSCdpAeONA](https://youtu.be/IWSCdpAeONA)
------
delta1
BMC = Baseboard Management Controller (for those like me who don't know the
acronym)
~~~
ncmncm
I feel obliged to confess here that whenever I come upon "NVM" in text like
this I have to remind myself not to just skip to the next paragraph (because
"nevermind").
------
monochromatic
That was a wild ride. If he thinks he’s bad at reverse engineering, I wonder
who’s good at it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Non-Facebook version of my Numbrosia puzzle. No registration required. Very addictive. - amichail
http://numbrosia.com/
======
Tichy
I like the idea, although I must admit that like Sudoku, it does not really
motivate me. Ultimately, it just seems to be solvable by running a standard
search algorithm. Why that is not easy to do for human brains, somehow I don't
see why I should try.
On the other hand I like Minesweeper, so maybe the algorithmic solvability is
not the main criterion. Not sure :-/
~~~
amichail
I agree with you to some extent -- for me, chess is pretty pointless.
But all this doesn't matter. As long as I get traffic, that's what counts.
~~~
Tichy
Just curious, what are your main traffic sources? I still haven't found a good
way to get traffic for my erotic puzzle game...
As I said, I really like your idea, it wasn't meant as criticism. It could
easily become a very popular game, like Sudoku or Minesweeper.
~~~
amichail
I'm still looking for a good traffic source. For games, try submitting to
gaming.reddit.com.
------
amichail
BTW, if you play for a while without registration, you can register without
losing your progress provided that you still have the cookie that you played
under.
------
mmmurf
looks cool but i solved level 1 and it's not getting any harder... or giving
me a new level...
~~~
amichail
Which browser are you using?
How many cookies do you have from numbrosia.com? What is the path in each one?
You might try deleting cookies from numbrosia.com and try again.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
London black taxis plan congestion chaos to block Uber - sp8
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27317164
======
casca
The Black Cabs in London have a long-standing monopoly on picking people up on
the street and providing a metered journey. This is mandated by law. To become
a black cab (not always black in colour) driver, it is necessary to take an
advanced test called The Knowledge where you are expected to know every London
street and landmark along with best routes based on random street closures. It
takes about 3 years to study for The Knowledge and there is evidence[1] that
they have increased brain size as a result of memorizing all that information.
The other option for people wanting a car journey is the "mini-cab" which can
be booked to collect from any specific location but must offer a fare in
advance of the journey. In order to transport people for money, mini-cab
drivers are licensed and have a background check done.
Uber drivers in London must have the mini-cab license so this is a question
around the black cab monopoly. As with any government-provided monopoly, the
incumbents are keen to maintain the status quo while the newcomers are
fighting for change. Any advances that Uber makes will benefit all mini-cab
companies and most importantly, passengers.
[1]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/677048.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/677048.stm)
~~~
jgrahamc
One of the key benefits of The Knowledge is that I can jump in a black cab in
London and say "Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons" and have a driver who
can instantly decide which way to go...
1\. Without asking for any clarification
2\. Without typing a bunch of stuff into a GPS device
3\. And with knowledge of time/space specific optimizations
Yes, black cabs are not cheap. You are getting a very specific service for
that money.
~~~
prof_hobart
What if you don't want to pay for that specific service? I got a taxi home
(not in London) last week and the taxi driver used his sat nav to route me
home. It didn't bother me in the slightest.
Pretty much all I ask for in a taxi is get me from where I am to where I want
to go, as quickly, cheaply and safely as possible. I'm not against people
being licenced (that comes into the "safely" bit of my requirements), but if
they can achieve the "quickly" bit just as easily with a free app on their
smartphone as they could with 3 years worth of studying, allowing them to
provide the service more cheaply, then I'm all for it.
~~~
barrkel
London doesn't have a grid structure. When there's a closure or delay on one
route, it's not as simple as choosing the next road over. GPSes vary in their
quality for routing diversions, but in a maze of one-way streets, turning
restrictions and temporary / permanent rerouting in effect, a human is always
going to be better. GPS maps are often out of date as London is constantly
changing with rat-runs being closed down and new railway lines being built.
~~~
prof_hobart
And "The Knowledge" doesn't provide the ability for taxi drivers to
psychopathically become aware of delays in traffic on a given road. I've never
noticed any particular difference in the amount of time I've been stuck in
traffic when travelling in black cabs or in taxis with drivers using a GPS.
------
sheberight
Punter: traffic is bad today eh?
Cabbie: me mates are making a point about Uber
Punter: Uber? What's that? <tap-tap-tap> Cool! Let me out here.
Cabbie: tom tit! :-(
------
marksbrown
They also brought Southwark (near London Bridge, London) to a complete
standstill on Tuesday because TfL (Transport for London) is not ensuring
enough well placed taxi ranks. The Shard for instance has a space for a single
taxi.
Frankly this new protest and the former reek of an unwillingness to change.
Given the monopoly black cabs generally possess, it's not they're ever going
to be short of customers.
------
fidotron
If you think protectionism about Uber is bad just wait for self driving cabs
and trucks. This kind of thing is going to get a lot bigger.
------
brianlweiner
Ridiculous behavior. I'm glad the black taxis seem to have their customer's
well-being at heart.
"Uber, funded by Google, Goldman Sachs and others, has a stated aim of
challenging legislation that is not compatible with its business model," said
Mr McNamara.
"This is not some philanthropic friendly society, it's an American monster
that has no qualms about breaching any and all laws in the pursuit of profit,
most of which will never see a penny of tax paid in the UK."
Besides the ridiculous attempt to conflate Uber with evil bankers, it seems
strange to suggest "most" of the profit will never be taxed in UK. Aren't all
the UK drivers paying taxes?
~~~
kevingadd
The company's profits are far in excess of the employee salaries that are
taxed in most cases anyway. That's the goal. If the goal was to retain exactly
$0 in profit by paying your employees generously, then yes, the taxes your
employees paid would be enough.
~~~
Symmetry
Uber gives 80% of the fair to the divers. I'm struggling to see how it could
earn profits "far in excess" of of that 80% unless it invests whatever is left
of the 20% after overhead in some really lucrative City investments.
~~~
corin_
Presumably a chunk of that 80% gets written off by the drivers in expenses, so
not all of it will be taxable. Whether it's 10% or 90% that's nontaxable I've
no idea.
------
6d0debc071
I wonder how legal that is.
'If a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully
obstructs the free passage along a highway he is guilty of an offence and
liable to a fine not exceeding [F1 level 3 on the standard scale].'
\- Highways Act 1980
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/66/part/IX/crosshea...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/66/part/IX/crossheading/obstruction-
of-highways-and-streets)
~~~
ibmthrowaway218
The right to protest is also enshrined in UK law (within a huge number of
constraints).
Other (one-off or infrequent) protests such as Critical Mass certainly
obstruct free passage along the highway, but they are tolerated.
~~~
twic
Critical Mass isn't a protest, it's a procession, and it's not tolerated, it's
operating perfectly within the rights of its participants:
[http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldjudgmt/j...](http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldjudgmt/jd081126/metro-1.htm)
~~~
ibmthrowaway218
Fair enough, but there's enough stupid/aggresive behaviour on the London CM
for me (and a whole bunch of other cyclists I know) to stop attending it.
------
jcampbell1
I can't imagine a scenario where this doesn't backfire. This is going to put
Uber on the front page of every local London newspaper for a week. At most the
black cabs will force uber to make a minor programming change to the app, and
the most likely outcome is a massive expansion of Uber in London. I imagine
the folks at Uber HQ are giddy right now.
------
hobolobo
The impression is that Uber are somehow freeing customers from unscrupulous
and gouging taxi drivers. Taxi customers aren't being freed, they're simply
under new management.
~~~
LanceH
They're obviously getting something out of it or they wouldn't be customers of
the new service.
~~~
hobolobo
Just because they're getting something out of it doesn't mean it's a better
deal all round. Amazon saves individuals money but that doesn't ameliorate the
externalities that Amazon's business model create.
------
stuaxo
So - >> TfL told the association last month that it believed Uber's vehicles
were not strictly "equipped" with taximeters since there was not "some sort of
connection between the device and the vehicle".
Instead there is a device used for calculating how far it has gone, e.g.
"metering"... this is a bollocks distinction.
~~~
pjc50
It's correct, though; it's not attached to the drivetrain of the vehicle.
Ruling that any GPS device capable of tracking distance constituted a
"taximeter" and was therefore banned from private cars would be an unworkable
disaster.
(Hmm, I wonder how Uber's metering copes with the Blackwall tunnel and the
Woolwich ferry. My GPS directed me over the ferry once, resulting in a huge
delay. Note that on the ferry a GPS would count as "moving" but a taximeter
"stationary".)
------
bananas
Screw the black cabs.
I didn't realise what a rip off they are until I started driving around the
city myself regularly with Google Maps which to be honest with traffic aware
routing destroys "the knowledge" instantly. Black cab drivers know how to make
cash, not the most efficient journeys in time and money. That meter hurts you
badly.
So they'll cause some chaos; good for them but it'll raise more awareness on
the issue and hang them faster.
More competition is _required_ in this sector for the passengers.
~~~
stuaxo
Really ? It's not too expensive. And it seems the workers get a much better
deal than with Addisson Lee.
I make a point to use minicab firms if I'm not using a black cab, having
spoken to a couple of drivers about the working conditions under Addilee.
~~~
bananas
£19 each way from Waterloo to Barts. That's expensive.
------
tragic
Well, if the end result is I can travel a mile in a London cab without selling
a kidney, I can't say I'm too worried about Uber coming in.
~~~
JetSpiegel
If you want to travel a mile, you can just walk.
~~~
MRSallee
Rains a lot in London.
~~~
gmac
Luckily, humans are waterproof. :)
~~~
Dylan16807
Unluckily, they don't travel through rain naked.
~~~
JetSpiegel
Don't they?
------
aspidistra
Two other Black Cab app startups:
Get Taxi [http://gettaxi.co.uk/](http://gettaxi.co.uk/)
Hailo [https://www.hailocab.com/london](https://www.hailocab.com/london)
I believe these have faced some resistance in some cities even with a strategy
of working with licensed taxi operators.
------
switch007
I've used Climate Cars a few times and they're great. Mostly on time, their
drivers are courteous and well-dressed, and they have a fleet of nice cars
(I've mainly been in Prius and hybrid E-class cars).
Every time I get in a black cab, I wish I had booked with them. Most mini-cab
firms are atrocious - staff are rude and they have no idea where they're
going.
There's already good competition, but if there's more coming then I'm all for
it. Black cabs have a bad reputation.
(Edit: no, I don't work for them or have any affiliation.)
------
nakedrobot2
What a deplorable, luddite attitude.
The black taxis should be banned for some period of time for this behavior.
"The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association complains that Uber's drivers are using
a smartphone app to calculate fares despite it being illegal for private
vehicles to be fitted with taximeters." So using this website in your car is
illegal?! [http://www.worldtaximeter.com/](http://www.worldtaximeter.com/)
~~~
nodata
> What a deplorable, luddite attitude.
Well presumably you know their side of the story too?
Presumably (hopefully someone who actually knows can fill us in) the taxi
drivers have spent huge amounts of time learning The Knowledge and buying
their cars and keeping to the fairly strict regulations that exist, and don't
find it fair that another company can offer a service without a level playing
field. Presumably.
~~~
snitko
If their knowledge is of any value to consumers, consumers are going to choose
them over Uber. If not, then nobody should care. I can learn how to program
stuff for MSDOS, doesn't mean it'd be worth anything these days.
As for regulations and licensing, it shouldn't exist in the first place as it
only raises prices and prevents legitimate competition.
~~~
robryan
To what end? Anyone with a car can start their own taxi service? I don't think
it is in the public's interest to make taxi driving unprofitable which is what
would likely happen without regulation and licensing.
~~~
snitko
Where I live anyone can be a cab. You raise your hand on any street any time
of day and some car will stop. As a result, prices are normally 3 times lower
compared to the US. You negotiate the price with drivers beforehand and you
don't have to tip them because all of the money go directly into the driver's
pocket. I've never heard anyone complain about this system. Now tell me how is
this a bad idea?
~~~
nodata
Your argument is that cheapest must be best?
Try safety of the passenger, upkeep of the vehicle, all the other reasons
mentioned elsewhere on this page...
~~~
snitko
My argument is that market should decide. If some people want cheap and
unsafe, let them have it. If some people want expensive and licenced - let
them have it too. In Europe and the US you currently have a situation where
those who want a cheaper ride essentially subsidize those who value safety
more. That is in no way fair.
~~~
claudius
> My argument is that market should decide.
Or maybe, just maybe, the people should decide instead of random companies who
don’t pay taxes. And ‘the people’ usually decide by voting for their favourite
MP who can then implement their wishes. Laws regarding regulation of taxis did
not fall down one day and then were accepted as the god-given rights of taxi
drivers but were implemented because the general population thought them to be
a good thing™.
It’s not up to Uber to decide otherwise.
~~~
snitko
I just don't understand, how is it that in your mind voting is a better way to
let consumers decide than actually giving them choice? Alright, let me stop
right here. I know where this is going. You like state and regulations. I
don't. I think each individual should decide on his own with his own money he
spends or doesn't spend.
~~~
ZenPro
Feel free to hand back the medical care and schooling you received as a child
before you had money to spend.
Oh wait, you _needed_ the State then. Now it just seems inconvenient to you.
~~~
snitko
For those things you're talking about my parents paid their fair share of
taxes, not me. You have to realize, it's parents who pay for their children's
education and healthcare, not children themselves: this is true whether we're
talking about public or private.
But even if you were right and indeed it is me who is supposed to be paying
taxes now for my education in the past, then this sounds a lot like this:
\- Here, have a free sandwich \- Ok, thanks \- You ate it? Now give me $10.
in other words, a scam.
~~~
ZenPro
A scam that has halted rampant infant mortality rates.
I wish we had more scams like that.
Your naivete is breathtaking.
------
btbuildem
And you can laugh at the havoc, for the entire duration of your bike ride.
------
calinet6
You can't block progress.
------
raldi
Note that the rank-and-file taxi drivers aren't complaining; they'll all get a
chance to become Uber drivers. It's the incumbent taxi _organization_ that's
upset, because it's about to become a lot less powerful.
~~~
stuaxo
And we can all get a chance to swap our jobs for zero hours contracts, what a
wonderful world.
~~~
raldi
Taxi drivers' pre-Uber work arrangements are even worse; by and large they
seem to love switching from working for a taxi company to working as an Uber
driver. For example:
[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/01/15/with-ubers-comes-
stru...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/01/15/with-ubers-comes-struggle-for-
san-francisco-taxis/)
[http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/16/san-francisco-
ca...](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/16/san-francisco-cab-drivers-
migrate-to-uber-other-car-services/)
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/12/how-
lyft-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/12/how-lyft-and-
uber-will-raise-taxi-drivers-incomes-not-lower-them/)
In fact, for all the articles about taxi companies protesting _before_ Uber
comes to town, have you ever seen one about drivers complaining _after?_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Fairly Fast Fibonacci Function - olooney
http://www.oranlooney.com/post/fibonacci/
======
jfarmer
It's possible to use Binet's formula, too, if you implement the exact
arithmetic of ℚ(φ).
φ is the golden ratio and ℚ(φ) is the set of all numbers of the form a + bφ
where a,b are rational numbers.
So if you create a class like PhiRational where PhiRational(a,b) represents a
+ bφ then Binet's formula
Fib(n) = (φ**n - (1-φ)**n) / √5
becomes
Fib(n) = (PhiRational(0,1)**n + PhiRational(1,-1)**n) / PhiRational(-1,2)
I wrote up an implementation in Ruby years ago for some students, along with
the implementations listed in the blog post and benchmarking code:
[http://bit.ly/ruby_binet](http://bit.ly/ruby_binet)
Remember φ = (1 + √5)/2, so that the √5 in the denominator can be written as
-1 + 2φ (i.e., PhiRational(-1,2)).
When teaching I like showing all these solutions because it throws a wrench in
(beginning) students' ideas about how shallow/deep simple exercises can be and
the relatioship between math, recursion, efficiency, etc.
A lot of beginning students see the naïve recursive solution as mathematical-
but-inefficient and draw the conclusion that the math is nice, but ultimately
isn't practical. Then you show them an even-faster implementation using more
math and they're pretty surprised.
~~~
jacobolus
That works out to be the same arithmetic. The arithmetic of the “golden
integers” is identical to the arithmetic of the matrix described here.
For anyone wants to play with “golden integers” or “golden rational” numbers,
[https://beta.observablehq.com/@jrus/zome-
arithmetic](https://beta.observablehq.com/@jrus/zome-arithmetic) or see a
bunch of concrete uses in notebooks at
[https://beta.observablehq.com/@vorth/](https://beta.observablehq.com/@vorth/)
~~~
jfarmer
Of course. And if a student realizes that — or it's pointed out constructively
— a lightbulb might go off!
The (pedagogical) advantages of ℚ(φ) are that it seems like less of a trick to
the student and Binet's formula is more apparent. It also gives them more
surface area to explore.
A lot of students believe that mathematical know-how and practical problem-
solving are at odds (especially since recursion is inherently "mathematical"
to most beginners). IME exercises like this help prevent that false dichotomy
from forming.
So, algorithmically equivalent, pedagogically distinct.
(BTW, not saying that the matrix implementation is bad or anything, it's the
contrast in appearance and equivalence in computation together that makes for
the learning.)
~~~
daveFNbuck
> The (pedagogical) advantages of ℚ(φ) are that it seems like less of a trick
> to the student and Binet's formula is more apparent.
That seems very counter-intuitive to me, as the matrix form is a direct
expression of the Fibonacci function's definition, and Binet's formula follows
from the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the matrix. I guess this ties in to
the students you're teaching not liking math?
> A lot of students believe that mathematical know-how and practical problem-
> solving are at odds (especially since recursion is inherently "mathematical"
> to most beginners).
This is also counter-intuitive to me. I was under the impression that
beginners tend to overestimate the importance of mathematical skill to
programming. Do you have a more concrete example, or an explanation of what
you mean by recursion not being seen as practical for problem solving?
~~~
User23
The number of off-by-one errors I see in "professional" code suggests to me
that professionals underestimate the importance of mathematical reasoning to
programming.
~~~
daveFNbuck
I think this is a good example of what I'm talking about with people
overestimating the importance of mathematics to programming. Taking more math
classes won't help you avoid off-by-one errors.
~~~
User23
No, but learning how to program correctly using mathematical reasoning will.
See for example _A Discipline of Programming_. If you derive a loop using
those or similar techniques, you will never have an off-by-one error, among
others. And once you achieve proficiency it's no more difficult than basic
arithmetic.
There may be a lack of clarity here though. I am referring to the actual
technical skill of writing computer programs. If by "programming" you mean
"the activities you need to do to have a job as a software engineer" then I
can attest that no actual ability to write programs is required whatsoever, or
at least the walking proof by construction who showed me this provided no
evidence thereof and still maintains their position. Which is sad, since even
people with no real idea of how to write programs can be somewhat productive
via copy-paste cargo cult programming.
~~~
daveFNbuck
You don't need any special reasoning to know how to write a loop. This is just
a basic thing people get taught.
What does it mean to use mathematical reasoning to derive a loop, and what
error does this derivation prevent?
------
morei
It seems rather weird to use an explicit cache for the dynamic programming
exponentiation.
When computing x^n, n is either even or odd. If it's even, then the result is
(x^(n/2))^2, else it's odd and the result is x * (x^(n/2))^2. i.e.
def pow(x, n):
if x == 1:
return x
if (n & 1) == 1:
return x * square(pow(x,n//2))
else:
return square(pow(x,n//2))
Does ~ the minimum number of multiplies, no LRU cache required.
~~~
Someone
For those wondering about that ~:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addition_chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addition_chain):
_”There is no known algorithm which can calculate a minimal addition chain
for a given number with any guarantees of reasonable timing or small memory
usage. However, several techniques to calculate relatively short chains exist.
One very well known technique to calculate relatively short addition chains is
the binary method, similar to exponentiation by squaring.”_
~~~
morei
That's why I said "~ the minimum" :)
In particular, it does at most the same number of multiplies as the LRU cache
version in the OP
------
nightcracker
Here's a fairly slow obfuscated Fibonacci function in Python I wrote a long
time ago:
f=lambda n:(4<<n*(3+n))//((4<<2*n)-(2<<n)-1)&~-(2<<n)
As you can see it's a strictly integer arithmetic closed form. Bonus points to
those who can figure out how it works.
~~~
edflsafoiewq
Amazing!! I had fun figuring it out. My analysis:
[https://pastebin.com/8hzSmxBu](https://pastebin.com/8hzSmxBu)
~~~
nightcracker
You pretty much got it, although the analysis becomes a lot simpler if you
consider evaluating the generating function in base b by substituting x = b.
I'll use multiples of 10 here for visual understanding:
>>> import decimal
>>> decimal.getcontext().prec = 50
>>> b = decimal.Decimal(10**3)
>>> b/(b**2 - b - 1)
Decimal('0.0010010020030050080130210340550891442333776109885996')
For a large enough b we don't have to worry of overflow from the next terms.
So then we can shift k terms, mod b to get rid of the earlier terms, and floor
to get rid of (the infinite) later terms:
>>> k = 6
>>> b**k * b/(b**2 - b - 1)
Decimal('1001002003005008.0130210340550891442333776109885996')
^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
mod b floor
So for any sufficiently large b we have floor(b^(k+1)/(b^2 - b - 1)) % b. And
if we let b = 2^(k+c) for a sufficiently large constant c we use asymptotics
to find that this is a sufficiently large b for large k, and check the first
couple numbers to find that b = 2^(k+1) works.
------
nimish
There's a more fundamental way to derive the exponential form: linear
difference equations are analogous to linear differential equations, so we
should look at them in terms of actions on some vector space of functions.
Similarly, we should also look at eigenfunctions, which end up being of the
form a_i*C_i^n for some constants C_i, a_i and, where i=0..{dimension of the
nullspace of the overall difference operator}. You can then substitute that
form into the equation to find out the C_i and a_i using the initial
conditions.
It's exactly like solving a differential equation.
Another path is to look at formal power series, and a good book is
Generatingfunctionology.
Knuth Oren and Patashnik's Concrete Mathematics covers the basics very well
and goes into much more detail on finite difference calculus.
~~~
romwell
>There's a more fundamental way...
I'd wager to say there's nothing more fundamental about it. You are still
finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a linear operator. The matrix is
exactly the same.
~~~
nimish
It's more fundamental since you're working with the underlying vector space
and linear operator vs representing it as a matrix over R^n, running a
decomposition, then converting back. No need to change domains, but yes they
are isomorphic (which is the point).
------
nayuki
More succinctly: [https://www.nayuki.io/page/fast-fibonacci-
algorithms](https://www.nayuki.io/page/fast-fibonacci-algorithms)
~~~
make3
doesn't even mention the closed form O(1) solution..
~~~
jacobolus
It’s cheating (or at best misleading) to allow arbitrarily expensive
operations to be considered “constant time”.
Raising a very-high-precision approximation of an irrational number to a large
integer power will get slower and slower as you handle larger numbers.
You might just as well call the matrix version _O_ (1)
~~~
TheRealPomax
Not sure if you noticed that's literally what they did at the end of the
"Eigenvalue Solution" section, but it reads "So there you have it – a O(1)
algorithm for any Fibonacci number."
Although they do note that eigen_fib() completely breaks down once the numbers
involved are larger than fit in a 64 bit integer.
~~~
jacobolus
The previous commenter was criticizing [https://www.nayuki.io/page/fast-
fibonacci-algorithms](https://www.nayuki.io/page/fast-fibonacci-algorithms)
(for not mentioning the supposedly _O_ (1) solution) not
[http://www.oranlooney.com/post/fibonacci/](http://www.oranlooney.com/post/fibonacci/)
------
vortico
>In our case, the problem is no longer to calculate Fibonacci numbers – the
problem is now to find a way to multiply large integers together efficiently.
As far as I can tell, GMP is already state-of-the-art when it comes to that,
and tends to come out ahead on most benchmarks.
And actually, the best known method of multiplying large integers is achieved
with an FFT over the integers mod 2^n (which is what GMP does). So then your
task is changed yet again to optimizing a modular FFT algorithm...
~~~
remcob
Multiplication in decimal systems is inefficient. FFT multiplication works by
converting the numbers to and from a more efficient representation where
multiplication is O(n) and embarrassingly parallel (convolution vs pointwise
multiplication).
If I'm not mistaken addition is also trivial in this representation, and since
no other operations are required, the entire computation can be done in the
FFT space.
This definitely works in a residue number system, where a chinese remainder
transform is used instead of an FFT. (CRT and FFT are algebraically related)
In short, you can create a massive parallel cluster of computers computing
parts of the result without interaction, and then in the end combine the
results using a single huge pass of FFT.
------
taeric
This article was a lot more involved than I was expecting. It was quite
refreshing to see it go through pretty much every trick method I have ever
heard of, and then keep going for a long time. Well done!
------
noblestone
For students learning introduction to algorithms, I have implementations for
12 simple Bibonacci number computation algorithms at
[https://github.com/alidasdan/fibonacci-number-
algorithms](https://github.com/alidasdan/fibonacci-number-algorithms) . A
related paper is at
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.07199](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.07199) . Hope
they can be useful.
------
robinhouston
Something that people often seem to miss when talking about this sort of thing
is that _any_ correct exact algorithm to compute Fibonacci numbers must use
exponential time and space — simply because the size of the correct exact
output is exponential in the size of the input.
~~~
madcaptenor
No, the size of the output is linear in the size of the input. (The Fibonacci
numbers themselves grow exponentially, but the size of the output goes like
the log of the number itself.)
~~~
romwell
* linear in _input_ , not _size of the input_ :)
~~~
madcaptenor
You're right. I stand corrected.
------
subjoriented
This is one of my favorite forms of fibonacci, because it unwinds the
recurrence relation without having to apply some kind of relation/master-
theorem to it. Rather it describes it as a relation in a way that allows
square-and-multiply.
------
haykmartiros
The article claims the scalar exponential solution is O(1) - this is incorrect
because the exponential of a scalar is still O(logN).
~~~
contravariant
What N?
Floating point operations might be limited in precision (and range to some
extend), but pretty much any you'll normally encounter will be O(1). Unless
you require arbitrary precision.
~~~
umanwizard
By exactly the same reasoning, every algorithm is O(1) because your computer
is a finite object and so the size of the data is bounded.
------
jules
It may not seem like it, but you can generalise this to any matrix. Compute
the minimal polynomial of the matrix, that is, the least degree polynomial P
such that P(A) = 0 and the first coefficient is 1. Then, if you want to
compute A^n, first compute the polynomial x^n mod P, then plug in A.
In this case P(x) = x^2 - x - 1, and any polynomial Q looks like ax + b mod P,
so we only have to keep track of two numbers (a,b), instead of the four
numbers in the matrix A^n.
In general this allows you to reduce the k^2 numbers to k numbers.
------
QML
The fastest way to compute a Fibonacci number is to simply look in up on the
Internet -- not kidding. There was a coding challenge that I did a couple
months back which required the cumulative sum of powers of two and the
fibonacci sequence, and I just did that. We can talk about faster, general
algorithms but most of the time, we are bounded by resources. For example, for
the nth Fibonacci number, n will be bounded by some constant. So why not look
it up? It's good for playing with theory though.
Edit: Fibonacci may be a specific example, but I wondered how much wasted
computation has been spent on calculating the same problem on the same input.
~~~
majewsky
If you're wondering about wasted computation, consider how much energy is
expended when you look up a Fibonacci number on the internet.
------
rinchik
I believe Binet's formula is the fastest:
[http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-
sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci...](http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-
sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibFormula.html)
~~~
aprescott
The article mentions it.
> There exist several closed-form solutions to Fibonacci sequence which gives
> us the
> false hope that there might be an O(1) solution. Unfortunately they all turn
> out to
> be non-optimal if you want an exact solution for a large n.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SDCC – Small Device C Compiler - vmorgulis
http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/
======
msarnoff
SDCC is the only FOSS compiler for PIC microcontrollers. Microchip's XC8
compiler has a free version that's deliberately crippled (optimizations
disabled, garbage instructions added to slow your code down) and a license for
the full optimizing compiler costs $1000. SDCC does a decent job, though it
has its quirks, and may not support the newer architectural features of the
latest PICs.
One reason the Arduino project was so successful is that it was built on a
microcontroller platform (Atmel AVR) which, unlike PIC, has a fully open-
source GCC toolchain.
~~~
jeff_marshall
Is there any reason to use PIC instead of ARM these days? On the low end, 32
bit arm microcontrollers can be had for ~ 0.50 USD in modest quantities
(digikey minimum order quantity in the thousands).
It's not like there is a shortage of compilers for the various ARM
architecture revisions (though the BSP support may be lacking in the hobby
market).
~~~
sjburt
There's lots of other factors besides compiler support and cost. There are
some PIC devices with extreme low-power states that ARM can't really touch.
It's also pretty common for special-purpose devices to include a small general
purpose core. For example the TI CC2541 BTLE module includes an 8051.
~~~
jeff_marshall
Good point re: general purpose cores in devices whose primary purpose is other
things. I've been spoiled by the ability to choose parts that don't go quite
so retro for the CPU in my own designs.
Regarding power, is the difference all that great? some googling shows that
there are cortex M3 devices that use 0.3 uA in standby. Do the PICs have some
features that make standby mode more useful, or do they have significantly
lower power draw in sleep mode?
I've never had to deal with low power draw in standby/sleep mode outside of
FPGA-based designs, so I'm curious to know whats out there.
------
mappu
I recently used some version of SDCC as a part of the old GBDK. It did produce
working binaries, but only after some significant coaxing to avoid internal
compiler errors. It might be attributable to GBDK's old SDCC fork, but it
really wasn't a pleasant experience and took a lot of guesswork to get things
working (separate code into two functions? ICE! reorder two variable names?
ICE! nested conditionals? ICE!)
------
steaminghacker
Big thumbs up for this compiler!
I've been using it to develop my z80 trs-80 star trek game. I constantly check
the code output to ensure it hasn't done something silly, but it all looks
good. massively better than writing assembler by hand, and i would say better
too.
[https://github.com/voidware/trek14](https://github.com/voidware/trek14)
~~~
vmorgulis
I like a lot your "Precision doubler":
[https://github.com/voidware/dp/blob/master/dp.h](https://github.com/voidware/dp/blob/master/dp.h)
You gave me an idea for multiprecision numbers with variadic templates (like
tuple<> with head/tail).
Thank you!
------
archimedespi
What benefit does SDCC have over GCC for most embedded development? And if
it's the only FOSS compiler for PICs, why hasn't someone ported parts of
SDCC's backend over to LLVM or GCC?
~~~
sjburt
It has a few compiler extensions that are very useful for small embedded
development, but GCC won't add (eg an "at" keyword to let you place a symbol
at a specific address).
As for "why" nobody has done it, it's probably just because nobody has. The
targets are mostly 8-bit devices with limited resources and SDCC is good
enough. Typically the vendors have their own paid toolchains. I don't really
know how well GCC would perform on those targets (although AVR8 uses GCC).
~~~
archimedespi
Yeah, I can get that. When I was working with SDCC, I really would have
preferred GCC or clang - SDCC has some funky quirks that really pissed me off
and introduced some weird bugs.
And yeah, AVR8 (and IIRC 16 and 32) have GCC toolchains as well as avr-llvm,
which is pretty sweet.
~~~
aexaey
>AVR8 (and IIRC 16 and 32)
What's AVR16, may I ask?
------
jdblair
I used SDCC for a project that targeted an 8051 CPU. Its not fancy but it gets
the job done.
~~~
veli_joza
We also used SDCC for teaching embedded devices. We deployed the compiled hex
into simulation software called Proteus - it's a weird combination of
schematic capture / pcb design / realtime circuit simulator supporting analog,
digital and programmable components.
SDCC worked very well in this environment. Students could easily download it
to work from home without any environment dependencies or license issues.
Error messages were descriptive. Our customization needs were nicely solved by
some compiler flags. All in all it was a good choice.
------
jhallenworld
You can use it to hack old credit card terminals:
[http://jhallenworld.blogspot.com/2012/08/reverse-
engineering...](http://jhallenworld.blogspot.com/2012/08/reverse-engineering-
verifone-zon-jr-xl.html)
------
flohofwoe
I used SDCC to write C code for an 8-bit home computer that never officially
supported C, it was fun:
[http://floooh.github.io/2014/11/09/new-adventures-
in-8-bit-l...](http://floooh.github.io/2014/11/09/new-adventures-in-8-bit-
land.html)
It was a fun project, but for 'real world code' that needs to fit into a few
hundred bytes and needs to be fast, directly writing assembler code is the
only choice on 8-bit CPUs.
------
tluyben2
SDCC is also nice for dev on old (80s) platforms like Z80; that's what a lot
of retro machine C aficionados use it for.
------
csense
If it's a compiler with Z80 target, has anyone ported this to the Z80 based TI
calculators?
------
i336_
Remember those silly cheap <$5 picture frames you find in $2 shops, or as a
free bonus online sometimes? You probably have one lying around.
If it uses an AX206 chipset, you can flash _whatever code you like_ onto them
with an SDCC-based toolchain.
You get a color LCD with at least 128x128 resolution (some cool devices are
320x320), and MENU, LEFT and RIGHT keys for input. Perhaps best of all, they
have a bootloader, meaning burning the wrong code into Flash is completely
recoverable :D
There are a couple basic firmware images that come with the toolchain - one to
let you control the LCD from Linux, and one that dumps CPU registers in real
time (for debugging) - so it's very easy to get started.
Vague high-level overview:
[http://picframe.spritesserver.nl/wiki/index.php/DPF_with_App...](http://picframe.spritesserver.nl/wiki/index.php/DPF_with_AppoTech_AX206)
SVN repo: [http://sourceforge.net/p/dpf-
ax/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/src/](http://sourceforge.net/p/dpf-
ax/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/src/)
If you have a device and want to play with this, I recommend cloning the SVN
repo and pouring over the readme file inside, which covers backing up your
stock firmware, identifying your device model so you know which firmware to
build (and if it's an AX206 at all - moment of truth :P), and reflashing. It
only takes about 30 minutes to feel like you've read everything thoroughly
enough and execute a reflash.
There are some conflicting bits of information and link-rot here and there,
but I'll say this: I know zero about low-level device hacking, and I managed
to get this installed onto a cheap picture frame I had lying around within a
few minutes. I also managed to fully recover from a bad flash run too.
My DPF currently sits on my bedside table with the debug firmware on it (you
enable the debug code via a config file change); the sole reason I've done
nothing with it (tetris! breakout! space invaders!! :D) is that the buttons on
mine are on the back :( (why??? >.>)
So, the project and code actually does do what it says on the tin, and the
hardware is _very_ resilient. :D
Note that some picture frames are based on the ST2205u or ST2203u, which use a
6502 core (the AX206 uses a MCS-51 aka 8051 core). This is quite different,
with no SDCC toolchain; you'll need to know 6502 asm for these, I think. There
does appear to be some LCD-control firmware available for these which you
could work from but the AX206 is much easier to start with I think.
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