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The Smartest Advice I Ever Got: Personal Finance - iseff
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/105452/The-Smartest-Advice-I-Ever-Got;_ylt=AqdvGb618aD7ChQv7OYbDP67YWsA
======
byrneseyeview
"Tom held some shares in Disney, and while he liked the company, he thought
its stock price was a bit rich at the time, so he sold the Disney stock to
fund the purchase of the piano. Tom never got back into Disney and instead
watched it rise and rise. Years later Tom would walk through his living room,
see the piano and mutter to himself, "That's the most expensive damn piano on
the face of the planet!""
I have heard this story about Intel, Microsoft, Yahoo, kitchen floors, new
cars, and masters degrees. I bet at least 50% of the US GDP has been
attributed to selling great growth stocks too soon -- or rather, to a friend
of a friend doing so.
Sadly, we don't have any great stories about people cashing out of leveraged
positions in Enron ("Have I ever told you about my negative four hundred
thousand dollar house?").
~~~
smakz
Not enron, but close:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Sykes>
~~~
byrneseyeview
I'm afraid I don't see how that is relevant.
------
aardvarkious
Best advice I ever got: all money does is give you freedom (to do what you
want and to get what you want). Therefore, it is absolutely pointless to give
up freedom for money.
~~~
DaniFong
That informs one other axiom:
Much of modern life involves trading freedom of one form for freedom of
another.
------
cperciva
_if you purchase nonperishables when they are on sale, the return on
investment is enormous_
Only if you have space to store them. If you could buy nonperishable consumer
staple _futures_ at similar discounts, it would absolutely be worthwhile; but
if you make a practice of saving $10 by buying a dozen boxes of cereal when
they're on sale and then having them sit on your shelves for the next six
months... well, you're probably paying far more than $10 for the larger
apartment/house which gives you the space to store said cereal boxes.
~~~
Retric
With good shelving the loss in square footage is vary minor. Let's say you add
a shelf that's 6'x1' and 8' tall. Giving you ~6'x7' = 49' of linear shelf
space. Your boxes take up 3 linear feet but I go though 2boxes of cereal a
week so that's ~1month = $10 3/7th of a square foot a living space. Or
~230$/month per square foot.
------
jobeirne
"I know a bunch of really rich guys, and they're no happier than anyone else."
Yeah, but I bet they're a hell of a lot less miserable.
~~~
run4yourlives
I'd take that bet. I'd wager that there are slightly more unhappy rich guys
that non-rich guys.
Not sure how you would prove that, but I figure you take average happiness
rates and add a bit because of the increased stress the money brings.
~~~
aardvarkious
Sure, money brings stresses. However, it also eliminates many sources of
misery. For example, a trip to the ER is only going to be stressful for
health, not financial, reasons.
~~~
run4yourlives
Only if you live in the US. Most of us do not.
------
__
"[My father's] most adamant instruction was that I should never under any
circumstances go into debt."
Now _that's_ a dangerous heuristic. Never purchase a house, car, education, or
medical treatment, except with cash?
~~~
dominik
A better rule might be:
"Never go into debt unless your benefit from whatever you buy using the debt
exceeds the cost of the debt."
Examples:
A house generally appreciates in value. Usually worth going into debt.
A new car. Unless you gain somehow from having a brand new car (e.g. you're a
movie star), you can get most of the value from a used car and avoid the
massive value decrease.
A computer. As a hacker, you need your computer to create. Having a computer
lets you make wealth that wouldn't be possible without one.
An education. Hopefully improves your ability to create value by teaching you
new and interesting things :)
~~~
byrneseyeview
Most financial assets gradually appreciate, but borrowing to buy financial
assets is a good way to eventually go bankrupt.
Maybe a better rule: borrow so your consumption fluctuates less than your
income, but always save twice what you think you should and borrow half what
you think you can, to account for how stupidly optimistic people are in the
presence of easy money and compound interest.
~~~
nazgulnarsil
_always save twice what you think you should and borrow half what you think
you can_
pithy, I'm going to steal this if you don't mind. I like it a lot.
~~~
byrneseyeview
Thanks!
------
wallflower
I knew a talented graphic designer who volunteered his services to a non-
profit organization that he respected, and he did an awesome, bang-up job and
from that got referrals for well-paying corporate work (annual reports).
"I started working as a freelance makeup artist in 1980, and I worried that I
didn't have enough money. My father told me I'd just have to figure out a way
to make more money. So I started looking through the Yellow Pages and calling
agencies, magazines, photographers - anyone I could offer my services to. I'd
work for free until I proved myself."
-Bobbi Brown, CEO of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics
~~~
seregine
I recently encountered the "no spec" campaign, which argues against doing
preliminary design as a proposal before getting paid. More here:
<http://www.no-spec.com/>
Your example illustrates why I find their position unreasonable. Designers can
get away with refusing to do spec work when their portfolio speaks for itself
and they want to keep doing the same kind of things they've done before. But
encouraging less experienced designers to refuse spec work is holding them
back.
------
ced
Greenspun on shorting:
_It is 1986. You buy yourself an IBM PC. You are using MS/DOS and say "This
sucks. It isn't even as good as operating systems from 1960." You're a
computer expert so you know that the technology is pathetic. You do some
business research and find that out that the company making this MS/DOS
product didn't even have the in-house expertise to build it itself. They
bought it from another company!" You call your broker and find out that this
"Microsoft" company is publicly traded and selling for a very lofty
price/earnings ratio. You smell blood and say "I want to short 100 shares of
Microsoft."_
I sure hope _he_ didn't do it, but he seems to have such bad karma, who knows.
<http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money>
------
sdpurtill
1\. Spend less than you earn 2\. When there's blood on the streets, invest 3\.
Use other people's money 4\. Class is dismissed
~~~
Tichy
What is a "blood on the streets" situation? Surely investing in a revolution
is not a good idea, because usually all property will just be taken away from
you anyway?
~~~
sdpurtill
Read this: [http://www.fool.com/investing/small-cap/2007/03/28/buy-
when-...](http://www.fool.com/investing/small-cap/2007/03/28/buy-when-theres-
blood-in-the-streets.aspx)
Baron Rothschild was big on it :p
------
cypress-hill
always have enough money in the bank to live your current lifestyle for six
months. unexpected unemployment may be rough, but it need not be inhuman
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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The Problems with the FBI’s Email Investigation Went Well Beyond Comey - OliverJones
https://www.propublica.org/article/problems-with-fbi-clinton-email-investigation-went-well-beyond-comey
======
OliverJones
The IT screwups in this slow train-wreck of a story are fascinating (to me,
anyhow).
email messages stashed on laptops? Why? decently secure web mail was at least
five years old at the time in question. WTF?
using Microsoft Outlook for conducting public business? (It's unlikely "Carlos
Danger" was using Thunderbird or Eudora, right?) Aren't that program's
vulnerabilities well known? It's improved since then, but still. WTF?
email servers in residential cellars? Really? In rich peoples' residential
cellars, people who can surely afford to pay a service provider and buy a TLS
certificate? Bizarre. It was bizarre ten years ago; that's not hindsight. WTF?
The FBI putting legions of investigators on a thing like this and still taking
many months to sort it out? WTF?
(You may remember that former CIA director Brennan had his AOL email account
pwned by a teen. [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/teen-
hackers-a-5-...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/teen-
hackers-a-5-year-old-could-have-hacked-into-cia-directors-emails) CIA
DIRECTOR??? AOL??? WTF?)
I wonder whether people in the public eye have gotten any better at this
stuff?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Forget Academia. Startups Are the Future of Knowledge - z0a
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/12/165191/
======
thelambentonion
The actual title of this article is "Let's Bring The Polymath - and the
Dabblers - Back". Much more grounded, and much less linkbait-y.
~~~
z0a
Believe it or not, "Forget Academia. Startups Are the Future of Knowledge" was
the original title. I believe the author changed it because of the
controversy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: Best OS X Utility for programmers who use the command line - weaksauce
I don't know how I have lived without it for so long: http://www.decimus.net/dterm.php<p>Fast access to the shell that defaults to the working directory of the currently used file from say xcode and you can paste in the current working file(s) as arguments to whatever you want to run. There is an option to run the command in the overlay app or in terminal.<p>I recently found out about it because I was looking for xcode git integration and this makes accessing the shell git stuff quick. It's free too.
======
andrewtj
I'm going to be slightly flippant and say the the bundled tools and little one
liners built with them. A few examples from my .profile follow:
Eject a volume:
alias eject='hdiutil eject'
Copy the working dir to the clipboard:
alias cpwd='pwd|xargs echo -n|pbcopy'
Show current airport status:
apinfo='/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -I'
Use spotlight to search for a file:
spotlightfile() {
mdfind "kMDItemDisplayName == '$@'wc";
}
Use spotlight to search file contents:
spotlightcontent() {
mdfind -interpret "$@";
}
Display a man page in Preview:
pdfman () {
man -t $1 | open -a /Applications/Preview.app -f
}
I've a few others but they're less generic than the above. Also although the
above were sitting in my .profile I probably yanked them from random parts of
the inter-webs; in other words, I take no credit for them.
EDIT: One more generic one I use fairly regularly:
google() {
python -c "import sys, webbrowser, urllib; webbrowser.open('http://www.google.com/search?' + urllib.urlencode({'q': ' '.join(sys.argv[1:]) }))" $@
}
~~~
aschobel
pbcopy is a great little utility
another neat trick is dragging and dropping a file to the terminal and having
the filename pasted to the terminal
------
po
Not really a command line utility, but rather a programming utility used
through the command line:
<http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew>
I've replaced my MacPorts install with Homebrew and have been pretty happy
with it. It's relatively new so not everything is in there yet.
~~~
jmatt
If they didn't have those insane installation instructions that said:
sudo chown -R `whoami` /usr/local
I'd check this out. But I just can't bring myself to do it when they still
have that as their default install instructions.
~~~
illumin8
A lot of developers have no idea how UNIX permissions and mode bits work. I've
witnessed this countless times, when a developer can't figure out why his code
won't run, and just tells me to "chmod -R 777 /programdir/*"
I've had to sit a few developers down and teach them how to use commands like
strace and truss to show them exactly which file they are trying to f_open and
why it fails (usually trying to open a file in read/write mode that is not
owned by them and 644 permissions).
Shouldn't this stuff be taught in basic CS101 courses?
~~~
joevandyk
Why would stuff about a particular OS's filesytem be taught in a beginning
computer science class?
~~~
nvoorhies
It's akin to "here's where the computer lab is" rather than in the "this is
what a stack is"
------
mgrouchy
pretty cool, a tool I have been using for quite some time that I find
incredible useful is <http://visor.binaryage.com/> . Not quite the same thing,
but still awesome.
~~~
woid
hey I'm also working on TotalFinder. in 0.9 I plan to add Terminal+Finder
cooperation mode: when you press hotkey you may slide both Visor Terminal down
and Visor Finder Up. You may tab between terminal and finder as it would be
one app and their views will stay synced. You get the idea ...
------
moe
That's really awesome, thanks for the link.
One of my best finds so far would be butler:
<http://www.petermaurer.de/butler/>
It's basically quicksilver but with less obscure configuration dialogs and
without the crashes (quicksilver would crash a lot on me).
~~~
vl
I use Butler to remap Home and End keys to have PC-like behavior. Can't live
without it!
~~~
ube
Does your mapping work well across most/all applications? I've tried mapping
via keybindings file and messed up my account (this is snowlepord)
~~~
vl
I had to exclude iTerm (you can exclude apps in Butler), everything else
(Firefox, Eclipse, Parallels, TextWrangler, Thunderbird) works fine.
Obviously, Shift-Home and Shift-End should be remapped as well so selection
would work.
------
weaksauce
Clickable: <http://www.decimus.net/dterm.php>
------
icodestuff
That solves one half of the terminal/GUI interaction disconnect, but I'd
really like something to do the opposite too... keep a Finder window synced to
my current working directory, preferably that floats above everything else* .
Why? There's a few things that you can't do with a Terminal, such as seeing
and easily editing all the info from Get Info at once, or most things
involving the use of a contextual menu - especially seeing what programs are
in the Open With list (there may be a launch services related command, but you
still can't pick one without typing another command (open -a Application
file). Multi-file drag and drop is easier than multi-file cp, especially if
you don't need a particularly named group of files that you can use a wildcard
with - it's easier to shift-click or command-click than to type each one out
individually, even if you can use tab completion.
* aliasing cd to end with an open . won't do, because that brings Finder to the front (which you can work around in bash), along with all the other open Finder windows (which you can't), and worse, it opens a new window every time instead of reusing the same one (another can't work around). The last two are because you can't, as far as I know, get a handle on a particular Finder window. I wonder if an AppleScript can get the job done. Hmm...
------
aeontech
I use quicksilver [<http://github.com/andreberg/blacktree-alchemy/downloads>],
more than anything else. (still like it better than launchbar, even with it
being not updated in a few years).
~~~
ctcherry
I used to be a quicksilver user, I now use this
<http://www.google.com/quicksearchbox/> basically the same idea.
~~~
nkm
Actually, the main developer of QSB is also the creator of Quicksilver, whom
made it an open source project once Google hired him.
That's why Quicksilver has no official site, by the way.
------
canadaduane
I use LaunchBar more than I use the Dock:
<http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html>
------
godDLL
DTerm is awesome, and since it went free there is no reason not to try it out
even if you're a Quicksilver/LaunchBar user – you probably will find it serves
you better in many scenarios.
And here's a nice tidbit – TextMate comes with `mate`, a proxy utility you can
call with DTerm like so: `mate ./new_file_here`. But XCode doesn't, and won't
create a file for you if one doesn't exist. So for XCode I have an
function/proxy in my `~/.profile`:
function edit { touch "$1"; open -a Xcode "$1"; }
Bash can be very usefully augmented, for instance you can have a git repo
status in your prompt, like so:
function wgit_dirty {
git diff --quiet HEAD &>/dev/null
[[ $? == 1 ]] && echo "◆"
}
function wgit_branch {
REF=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD 2> /dev/null) || return
echo :${REF#refs/heads/}$(wgit_dirty)
}
export PS1='\u \W$(wgit_branch)\$ '
~~~
andrewtj
For anyone interested in having Git, SVN and VirtualEnv status in your prompt:
<http://pastebin.com/f79a9af51>
------
fragmede
Slightly different and finder only: <http://code.google.com/p/cdto/>
'Open a terminal window here'
------
Dobbs
I have to say this tool made me consider getting a mac for a second. Still
wont but it has done more good for the argument than any other I've sen
before.
~~~
dasil003
Interesting. What sold me on OS X almost 10 years ago now was the simple
combination of a first-class UNIX OS w/ support for the major consumer and
professional creative apps.
------
alagu
Not really a commandline tool, but when I am writing code or on terminal I
heavily use MegaZoomer - <http://osx.iusethis.com/app/megazoomer>
Gives total real estate for the terminal (works in other apps too)
DTerm is a great tool.
------
oldbrownshoe08
Semi command line, icalBuddy + GeekTool for displaying calendar items and to
do's on the desktop is awesome.
[http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-show-ical-tasks-
events-o...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-show-ical-tasks-events-on-
the-desktop-mac-only/)
------
wrinklz
OnMyCommand is a UNIX shell script and AppleScript executor. You can build
your own Contextual Menu Item or GUI application. Sweet.
<http://free.abracode.com/cmworkshop/on_my_command.html>
------
stevelosh
Rupa's 'z' makes working in a command line so much nicer:
<http://github.com/rupa/z>
------
Groxx
dterm, eh? That looks awesome... gotta give it a try now.
------
sabat
Awesome. I can't believe I lived without this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Skype for desktop is available - woofwoofwoof
https://blogs.skype.com/news/2017/10/30/the-new-skype-for-desktop-is-here/
======
FBISurveillance
I tried this Skype via insiders and it's... unusual. Things have been much
more customizable but Skype has been a battery hog.
It looks more like Snapchat to me now instead of a business tool to hold
meetings. My colleagues are mostly on Meet and Zoom now, Skype is barely used
in my circle.
Do not forget to backup your history before upgrading in Library/Application
Support/Skype! It's not compatible.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kay on the Meaning of "Object-Oriented Programming" - fogus
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay_oop_en
======
raganwald
I like the notation "<-" instead of "." Here's why: "<-" looks like sending a
message. "." looks like a scoping construct.
Thus, to my brain, "." implies synchronicity: Invoke this function and
continue with the result, it's just that the language implementation will do
some fiddly stuff to look up the function's implementation in an inheritance
hierarchy at run time.
Whereas "<-" implies asynchronicity: Send this message to this independent
entity that has its own memory, processor, whatever. If you need a reply, send
a continuation along with it, a'la current Javascript style.
~~~
arethuza
I've felt for a long time that the tendency to equate "sending a message" and
"calling a function/method" has caused a lot of problems - one is more like
IPC/RPC and the other is something that happens within the local context
(process/thread/etc.).
~~~
pacala
sending a message = piping
sending a message with callback = continuation passing style
~~~
arethuza
I think the Transputer/Occam and Google Go have a better approach where they
were influenced by Hoare's CSP:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_proces...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_processes)
------
russell
Kay mentions the Burroughs B5000. Boy you have to be an old timer to have
worked on that. I did some Algol programming on the B6500, the next
generation. They were stack machines, but what was interesting was that the
memory words were typed in the B6500 and on. IIRC, the add instruction was not
typed as it is in nearly all other machines, but it did a integer add or
double add based on the tag bits of the operands. Wikipedia has a good
article, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems>
~~~
arethuza
I think the Burroughs CANDE shell was by far the worst user environment I have
every used on _any_ system - the only nice thing (at least for Tron fans)
being at least things were being fed to the MCP:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_MCP>
~~~
russell
In those days everything was terrible. We had to deal with 360 JCL an similar
abominations. You couldnt dignify them with the term shell. It was timesharing
and ultimately Unix that liberated us.
------
cconroy
What does Kay mean by late-binding? ... not the dynamic binding of overriding
methods in a subclass or virtual functions (C++)? The last paragraphs compared
smalltalk with lisp in this respect.
~~~
igrekel
Not being in his head, I'll try to guess from what I know of smalltalk. It
means the actual binding of a message to the method to execute is done only
when the message is received. TOo give you an idea, you may associate some
code to specific messages to an object at runtime, you may also implement
doesNotUnderstand and decide how to handle messages who don't have
corresponding methods (forward it to another object, have some special
behavior, create the method on the fly as needed).
~~~
IgorPartola
Foo.counter = 0;
Foo.prototype.handle = function(message, data) {
if (message == 'bar' && Foo.counter < 3) {
return this.bar(data)
}
else {
throw "I forgot about 'bar'."
}
Foo.counter++;
}
~~~
igrekel
Not too sure about what the point is, or maybe it is just my limited knowledge
of javascirpt that's playing me tricks. In any case I didn't know of a
prototype.handle function and can't figure out any way for it to intervene in
the usual way of calling functions on an object.
var f=new Foo()
f.bar() //Just says that f.bar is undefined and therefor not a function
//If I add
f.bar=function(something){return "nothing"}
//Calling
f.bar("ABC") //Many times always answers "nothing"
~~~
gliese1337
There isn't such a function built-in, though something like it (a
doNotUnderstand functionality to call a default function instead of throwing
an error if the requested field isn't found on an object) has been proposed as
a future addition to the JavaScript standard.
IgorPartola's example code won't intervene in the usual function-call process;
rather, it provides a tacked-on means of simulating message sending behavior
that _ought_ to be included in the language's syntax under Kay's definition of
OO. With this convention, you'd never call bar(), or any other method,
directly; you'd call handle to send a 'bar' message to the object instead.
Then, if you send a message the object doesn't understand, handle() can route
it properly.
~~~
justincormack
Lua has this, with metatables that can set methods to handle undefined stuff.
It is actually very useful and you can do a lot with it.
------
rickmode
Sounds like Erlang is close to Dr Kay's notion of OOP - though my Erlang-fu is
not strong enough to know if it has polymorphism.
~~~
thesz
Yep.
I should note that OO means "objects having state".
You can send identical messages to different processes and they can respond
with (structurally) same answers, so Erlang is polymorphic enough to be OO.
_"Erlang might be the only object oriented language because the 3 tenets of
object oriented programming are that it's based on message passing, that you
have isolation between objects and have polymorphism":_
<http://www.infoq.com/interviews/johnson-armstrong-oop>
~~~
rudiger
Erlang also has support for _extremely_ late binding method dispatch. It's a
bit tongue-in-cheek to call it a lightweight object-oriented programming
language, though. I wouldn't use processes as objects in practice. My
successful Erlang programs usually use fewer and more long-lived processes
than I use objects in C++, Java, and Objective-C.
~~~
thesz
>My successful Erlang programs usually use fewer and more long-lived processes
than I use objects in C++, Java, and Objective-C.
I think I could attribute it to lack of tools in C++, Java and Objective-C.
You basically forced to use objects for almost everything (especially in
Java).
In Erlang, however, you have tuples, higher-order functions and pattern
matching, among with process creation and message send/receive. They are
different from processes (and objects) and that's where your feeling come
from.
------
seles
What is wrong with data?
~~~
cousin_it
Nothing! The extreme opposite to Smalltalk in this respect is the APL/J/K
family of languages where everything is expressed as mathematical operations
on multidimensional arrays of data. For example, a K programmer wouldn't use
an array of rectangles, preferring to have separate arrays of widths and
heights. It's a very eye-opening programming style in its own right, and a
curious programmer would do well to get acquainted with both.
Here's a nice page of "K finger exercises":
<http://kx.com/technical/contribs/eugene/kidioms.html> . To someone who grew
up on modern OO languages, it's unbelievable how much K manages to accomplish
in one line of code.
~~~
silentbicycle
There is a trial version of q (a newer k variant) at the Kx website, and a
couple of us are also working on Kona, an ISC-licensed k-like language, at
<http://github.com/kevinlawler/kona> .
The k way of doing things is indeed eye-opening. There is some documentation
for Kona on its github wiki page, and Hakan has an extensive set of k
resources at <http://www.hakank.org/k/>.
------
lepton
We should really link to <http://www.purl.org/stefan_ram/pub/doc_kay_oop_en>
which is still valid and may outlast fu-berlin.de.
~~~
hercynium
Nope, that's down for me, too. However, I managed to snag something on Coral:
[http://userpage.fu-
berlin.de.nyud.net/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81H...](http://userpage.fu-
berlin.de.nyud.net/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay_oop_en)
~~~
InnocentB
I get a 403 from that link too...I've actually never seen that from Coral
before, anyone know what's going on?
------
elcron
aeohu
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Voters Decide - tortilla
https://stratechery.com/2016/the-voters-decide/
======
dzdt
Ben Thompson of Stratechery consistently puts out some very insightful stuff!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Learn to Code Ethereum DApps by Building Your Own Game - alanfalcon
https://cryptozombies.io/
======
tomasien
There's a lot of hate on here for blockchain gaming/rare digital art so I'd
like to clarify two points.
1\. Blockchain games are best when only the necessary work is done on chain,
such as transfer of ownership or enforcement of critical rules at run time.
This tutorial may not show that so as to demonstrate the power of the
blockchain, but most people in the space are building only the components
players want to not be controlled by a central entity into the blockchain. It
works fine.
2\. The lack of digital scarcity is a real problem for artists. Blockchain art
is a real solution. Artists I talk to are extremely excited about the ability
to issue limited/special editions of their art on the blockchain that can
owned and traded by their biggest fans. It's not about hiding the source art
(image, music, etc) from the public, it's about having "signed" and
"authentic" editions folks can collect and trade. They've lost that ability in
the digital art world and this gives it back to them.
~~~
jmduffy
One of the CryptoZombies creators here. This comment is spot-on.
In the realm of gaming, digital ownership of in-game assets is one area we're
really excited about. Economies have already sprung up in many online games
around selling items for real-world cash. With something like ERC721 tokens on
Ethereum, you would truly own your items outside of the company's web server.
No one could take them away from you, the items could be provably scarce, and
you would have full control over selling or trading them on decentralized
marketplaces (in a secure way).
Or take collectible card games like Magic the Gathering — these types of games
are an ideal fit for the blockchain for the same reasons as above — rare,
collectible, and tradable assets with a real-world value.
You could even have multiple games or apps that read the same crypto assets.
This means you could build a new game, but use the assets of an existing game
with a large user-base. You would be able to tap into a large community of
players who could instantly jump into your game world with their existing
characters. This lends itself to some really interesting new possibilities —
imagine a World of Warcraft type game, where players were playing in the towns
and worlds created by players of a totally different MineCraft or Sim-City-
like game. Two sets of players playing entirely different games, but they
could be playing in the same game-world where their actions have real effects
on the other game through decentralized shared data.
As you mentioned, there are currently serious limitations for how much can be
done on-chain. Our solution to this scalability problem is have DApps run on
their own sidechains. So the in-game tradable assets would be hosted on
Ethereum, while the heavy game logic and the rest of the client would live on
a sidechain. This way the entire game would be running on a blockchain instead
of only a small part on chain and the rest on a centralized server.
One of the huge benefits of a game running on its own blockchain is
forkability. There have been plenty of examples in games where the developers
released a change that nerfs a favorite character or spell, or the creators
shut down the server entirely and stop supporting it.
If the game were running on its own blockchain, the users running nodes could
reject the software update and hard fork. They could continue running on a
legacy version of the client indefinitely, so long as there were still nodes
running it. Basically the entirety of the game data is stored on the
sidechain, so both sets of nodes could go their separate ways and play the
version of the game they prefer. And no one could shut down the game server as
long as there were nodes willing to support it.
For those who are interested in more info, here's an article that outlines
some of the motivations behind sidechain-based games and community sites and
what we're building: [https://medium.com/loom-network/million-user-dapps-on-
ethere...](https://medium.com/loom-network/million-user-dapps-on-ethereum-an-
introduction-to-application-specific-sidechains-c0fdc288c5e5)
CryptoZombies is just intended as an intro to building apps on Ethereum to get
more developers in the space. Up until now the focus on blockchains has been
on financial apps, but we think the potential is much bigger than that. We're
betting on games being one of the first areas to bring blockchain tech to the
mainstream, and we hope CryptoZombies inspires developers to get onboard!
~~~
Cyberdog
> No one could take them away from you
The DAO fork.
Sorry, but the Etherium team/chain/community has no credit when it comes to
irreversibility.
~~~
t3chn0SchO0lbus
The hackers still have their assets as Ethereum Classic. The fact that ETC
lives on is a testament to how nobody could 'take away' what is listed as
theirs on the blockchain.
But I don't buy this argument for video games. Most of the game code ought to
live outside of the blockchain and that non-blockchain code/art would be
difficult to reproduce let alone subject to copyright claims or closed source.
Another random video game thought: Would item storage on blockchain mean that
every player could see the inventory of every other player?
~~~
alanfalcon
The "no secrets on the blockchain" aspect has already played out in subtly
interesting ways in Cryptokitties. I have a tool that lets me see in a moment
whether a given account has gained or lost money, and how much, and how much
they were willing to spend. The marketplace is a completely open book, with
real time sales data and a full history. You can't breed kitties in secret in
pursuit of a particular breed. You can't (easily) buy out all of a given trait
on the marketplace to create a false sense of high demand. And yes, you can
see the entire kitty inventory of any other CK player.
~~~
AdamSC1
That's based on one current implementation of a gaming DApp.
It's worth noting that you can achieve semi-privacy through either on-
chain/off-chain hybrids, as well as some other emerging efforts.
One example I've been playing around with is to use the multi-address
approach:
In your database each "player" consists of multiple addresses each which are
OR-multi-sig wallets, for various inventory elements and stats.
When they log in via a system like metamask, their main wallet (PlayerID) is
unlocking an account which in your games database (off-chain) ties together
another set of "master wallets" together with you've given the player private
keys for - for each item, or each set of X items, in the players inventory you
are setting up a new smart contract that is a OR-multi-sig wallet.
For this wallet, which holds the item, there are two possible signatories the
first being the game's main contract, so that the game can add/remove items
from players based on game events, and then one of the players private keys.
While you'd likely need a custom fork of metamask to handle the multi-key
environment, you've made a system where:
* Player's inventory cannot be know from one private address.
* Player's retain full control over the items.
* Player's have private key access to the items in case the service goes down.
* You store player data off-chain, but in a way that your service is not crucial to the game.
* Player assets can be traded off-game without updating the game service.
* Data about individual items is still public, and does not need to be obscured, oraclized or stored off chain.
The current blocker isn't any specific blockchain technology, but just having
a good multi-key management UI for users.
~~~
alanfalcon
Brilliant. Definitely interested to see how this space evolves! Metamask is a
great first step to helping bring wallets to the masses in the web browser,
and it continues to improve, but it certainly isn't what a mainstream web
wallet extension will look like in a couple years.
------
runeks
In all seriousness, who would want to build a game on top of a platform that’s
currently limited to ~15 state changes per second? And where each of these
state changes cost money?
I get the interesting aspect of creating a game with a limited supply of some
virtual good, but how much energy does it make sense to put into a game of
this nature when the underlying platform prevents your game from becoming
successful (because it can’t handle that kind of load)?
I suspect there’s a genuine use case for limiting the supply of virtual goods
in games, but I doubt the solution involves all games performing state updates
using on-chain transactions in a single, shared blockchain.
~~~
disko
Better to do this on NEO instead. Their tech is better than ETH in every way;
it can handle up to 10.000 transactions per second (whereas ETH can handle
~15) and it supports almost all mainstream coding languages. What's more,
transactions are free.
~~~
tstyle
Is there a downside or trade off? I’m a little skeptical that NEO is strictly
better in all aspects.
~~~
Cybourgeoisie
Cryptokitties is possible because of ERC 721, which allows for unique tokens
to represent individual assets (having an indivisible kitty with its own dna).
As far as I'm aware, NEO doesn't yet provide the ability to create
individualized tokens that can be stored on the blockchain in a similar way.
~~~
zeroxfe
ERC 721 just an API standard for non-fungible assets. There's nothing special
on inherent to Ethereum that makes Cryptokitties possible.
You can totally build something Cryptokitties with NEO -- the only difference
is that because there isn't a standard, there isn't a third-party marketplace
for these assets. (i.e., there's nothing inherent about NEO that prevents
something like Cryptokitties from being built.)
------
arkad
I had birthday yesterday. , Statistically by the life expectancy in my
country, I'm now closer to death than to the date of birth. And yet, what
makes me feel old is the idea of writing games on top of ethereum.
~~~
hmate9
Hahahaha this has to be the greatest comment ever
~~~
shobith
Really?
------
alanfalcon
I'm little afraid of all the CryptoKitties clonies that this will cause to
come into existence, but it's pretty easy to spot the low effort cash grab
ponzies and to see that CryptoKitties itself has a ton of thought and effort
(and talent/money) behind it [I'm obsessed, feel free to ask me all your CK
questions, like "why did you use all your Ether buying pictures of cats
instead of a used car?].
Anyway, this is incredible.
~~~
geraldbauer
Big fan of CryptoKitties too. Adding my notes to the Awesome CryptoKitties
(and CryptoCopycats) [1] page @ Open Blockchains. PS: Launching CryptoCopycats
soon - lets you play for free (without gas or ether) an (open source)
CryptoKitties unchained version, that runs off the blockchain :-) still using
a hyper ledger and a peer-to-peer network (but built from scratch) though. [1]
[https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-
cryptokitties](https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-cryptokitties)
~~~
julius
What is a "hyper ledger"? (google tells me it is a linux foundation
project...)
~~~
nsomaru
Corporates who missed the blockchain boat building their own boats.
------
xerophyte12932
I have almost no idea about the Ethereum system, but don't you have to pay to
have your code executed on the global ethereum machine? Does that mean I have
to pay to test run my code? or maybe after I deploy it?
~~~
edf13
You can run your code on a test network:
[http://ethdocs.org/en/latest/network/test-
networks.html](http://ethdocs.org/en/latest/network/test-networks.html)
------
DougN7
IMHO, this reflects all that is bad about blockchains. So many systems around
the world having to forever track nonsense like who owns a fake kitty. This is
bloat.
Throw it in a database that is owned by a virtual-kitty-selling company. Yeah,
it's not decentralized. So what? It's a game! IMO the blockchain should be for
important (financial/legal/real estate/?) transactions.
~~~
zilian
"I don't like it so it shouldn't exist" ! I think this tutorial is very cool,
I introduced programming and dapps to my 15 yo niece with it and she liked it.
~~~
DougN7
It doesn't matter that I don't like it. Every addition to the blockchain
imposes costs in storage, backup and transmission - forever. Nothing gets
removed, so it just keeps growing. For property records that's a cost worth
bearing (we had to record who owned what anyway). But how long and how much
will it cost to forever record that Bob owned Kitty XYZ and then sold it to
Allen? Multiply that by 50,000 other apps, and (millions?) of frivolous
transactions. Just because we can doesn't mean we should.
~~~
t3chn0SchO0lbus
It doesn't have to be like that. We could rely on periodic snapshots of the
blockchain for future validation. We could even selectively include specific
data in the snapshots to be preserved. Maybe some group might need to store
the entire history of the blockchain but there is a lot of room for innovation
to solve this scaling dilemma.
------
indescions_2018
With the usual caveats about putting real money into risky speculative assets.
Blockchain technology could very well prove to be the missing link in
providing a way to cryptographically "sign" a digital art work. And publicly
verify its uniqueness and provenance.
If you wish to experience the hype first hand. There's a show, perhaps the
first of its kind, happening in NYC this weekend. With the founders of
CryptoKitties, RarePepes, DADA, Cryptopunks, Decentraland in attendance.
Rare Digital Art Festival, Rise New York, 43 West 23rd St, NYC, Sat Jan 13,
9am
[https://raredigitalartfestival.splashthat.com/](https://raredigitalartfestival.splashthat.com/)
~~~
tomasien
Wow thanks for sharing the event! It's going to be something else, I can't
believe how excited folks are for rare digital art. The movement does feel
like something special not just in the blockchain world but in the tech world
in particular.
------
crack-the-code
I can't imagine how immensely powerful it would be to have a game like Diablo
leverage block chain for its items. This would eliminate the risk of dupes and
ensure a fair system.
~~~
dangero
The risk of dupes meaning that the company that created the game may release
duplicate items? A centralized database can eliminate that risk as well.
------
thisisit
I wonder if there are any tutorials for building ERC-20 or 71 tokens?
And also is there a tutorial on how to download the whole ethreum blockchain
and parse it to a databse for analysis purposes?
~~~
viach
Here is the tutorial:
[https://www.ethereum.org/token](https://www.ethereum.org/token)
There is the BitcoinTalk forum for announcing your new super token
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0)
Voila!
------
gcb0
anyone found the tutorial (or a similarly recommend one) in text?
------
decorator
(Disclaimer: I hold some Enigma).
I'm (self)-interested in learning about Enigma[0]. It's an off-chain solution
for scalability & privacy with regards to systems of blockchains (blockchain
agnostic).
It also has the capacity for its own dapps. The Enigma product isn't
completed, yet there is a working product on top of the protocol called
Catalyst[1] (I've not personally tried Catalyst, yet). Catalyst is a trading
app for quants.
Enigma is supported by MIT, & has Alex Pentland as an advisor.
There's more to Enigma than what I've just outlined. 1) There's the data
marketplace component. 2) It could also conceivably become a secure data
processing layer for the Internet. I think it can be used with different
protocols. I've yet to figure that out.
[0] [https://www.enigma.co](https://www.enigma.co) [1]
[https://enigmampc.github.io/catalyst/](https://enigmampc.github.io/catalyst/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open source and the ability to modify code - NickLarsen
http://cultureofdevelopment.com/blog/2013/02/28/open-source-and-the-ability-to-modify-code/
======
vog
The auther gives a very important advice, but takes it to an unhealthy
extreme.
I fully agree that you should always try to contribute the changes you make to
a Free Software project. This has not only the advantage of less maintainance
work in the long run. It also means that your changes will be reviewed - by
people who know the code you're modifying very well. So contributing also
means to get a good quality assurance.
However, it makes still a lot of sense to keep a local fork _in addition to
contributing_. And here the author argues too one-sidedly when he recommends
that you should do that only for security fixes. There are many other
scenarios in which this makes sense:
1) The change may be important for you (e.g. to make the code compile on some
strange OS), but not be accepted by upstream (e.g. they don't want to support
that strange OS in the long run).
2) The review process, as well as the next release, may take some time. And
you certainly don't want to make your own release schedule totally depending
on other projects' release schedules.
In the first case, you have no choice but to keep a local fork as long as the
project maintainers don't change their mind or provide a better solution.
But even in the second case you'll have a long-term fork, at least if you are
contributing regularly. But that's not a bad thing, because everytime the
upstream project releases a new version, you can remove some of your
(contributed) local changes from your fork. So yes, you'll have a long-living
fork, but it will only differ from upstream by the last few patches not yet
accepted by them.
~~~
cpressey
I agree. Local forks are often valuable. And a project can't be expected to
accommodate everyone's vision for how the software should be used.
The pain comes in when the upstream project decides to refactor the code in a
way which forces you to completely rewrite your patches.
~~~
NickLarsen
This is exactly the pain my advice helps you avoid. The implicit cost of
creating a fork is that future changes higher up the chain could either cause
you to be stuck at this revision or give you an additional bulk of work in
order to update. Of course anyone can update and run a custom build for their
project, but the cost is often not worth it.
It should be noted that the situation where you intend to fork and maintain
the project, this does not apply, and by all means make your changes. In the
case where you intend to update, this pattern will help you avoid the pain.
~~~
cromulent
So, where you intend to fork and maintain, then fork and maintain.
If you do not intend to fork and maintain, then do not fork and maintain.
Is that what you are saying?
~~~
NickLarsen
Yes, with a strong bias to not forking and maintaining. Stale project, well
you gotta fork and maintain. Active project, avoid forking with the intention
of using a custom build in your system.
------
cromulent
Not according to some:
"The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or
organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall
job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the
developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user's
purpose that matters, not the developer's purpose; you as a user are free to
run the program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else,
she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to
impose your purposes on her."
The Free Software Definition <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>
------
jrockway
As an upstream maintainer, I prefer that people contribute rather than
maintain their own forks. It just makes it easier for other users; what if
they want a feature that's in user A's repository _and_ a feature that's in
user B's repository? It's not their job to figure out how to merge them: I do
that so they can focus on adding features instead.
But with that in mind, there are plenty of cases where you do need to maintain
a proprietary fork: testing new ideas, integrating with internal
infrastructure, and so on. This is certainly more difficult than letting
someone else maintain the project, but less difficult than being the
maintainer yourself. You basically miss out on big refactorings, but it's no
different than being a regular user of a library that makes incompatible API
changes.
------
fuzzix
I've managed this with a couple of projects. With one, it was C source, pretty
discrete set of modifications so used git to do the leg work - one remote was
our own repository, the other was upstream. I can't recall seeing a conflict
when rebasing from upstream branches.
The other project explicitly allows for code modifications and accomodates
them in a separate directory you can keep in revision control. Again, no
memory of major conflicts _in stuff we did correctly_ \- i.e. used the
provided overlays or callbacks.
So, when is it a bad idea? When you step outside certain constraints (like our
callbacks example above) and override or replace or modify directly the
project's own code in some significant fashion.
So, modification of open source for your own needs is a major plus if the
project accomodates it sanely or the scale and nature of the changes are
controllable.
_edit_ Removed "and only if" in last paragraph, attempts to preclude people
from providing better ideas.
------
csmatt
This brings up a good point. The two companies I've worked for have used a ton
of open source software and have contributed nothing back. It kind of disgusts
me. Am I wrong to feel that way?
~~~
NickLarsen
Were they actively making changes to the project and running custom builds? If
not then they just had nothing to contribute to the project and there is
certainly nothing to feel disgusted about.
~~~
cpressey
Even if they were making local changes, I personally couldn't fault them,
really; they're playing by the rules.
If they want to give up the intangible benefits they would get from sharing
those changes (at least the non-business-strategic ones), that's
disheartening, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
~~~
pasbesoin
That doesn't mean we don't get to question the rules. And... to consider our
individual choices.
In my case, I started feeling like I was working for a parasite. And... I
didn't particularly want to continue working for a parasite.
------
reidrac
I agree that, in general, you don't want to maintain a fork because that's a
lot of work (or more work than contributing the changes so they're included
and maintained upstream), but I don't like the idea of losing the benefits of
open source customizability because upstream don't want your changes
(sometimes it happens, for different reasons).
So yes: avoid forking when possible, but don't be afraid of maintaining a fork
if the benefits are worth the effort.
------
jahewson
I don't find it _that_ hard to maintain forks with git, even ones in which
thousands of lines of code have been changed locally.
My usual reason for having a fork is Solaris support, or removing code which I
don't need for performance reasons, or replacing the CMake build system with
something sane. These aren't the kinds of changes which many maintainers are
willing to accept.
Another frustratingly common case is that the original maintainer has gone
AWOL and I need to fix a few bugs and maybe add a couple of features, but I do
_not_ want to become the de facto maintainer of a public fork.
------
ef4
This is precisely one of the areas in which Git shines. It _used_ to be a pain
to maintain your own patches on top of an open source project. But with Git
it's easy.
~~~
takluyver
Git helps with keeping track of your patches, and can deal with simple
structural changes, like if a function you've modified is in a different
position in the file. But it's still up to you to deal with real functional
changes coming from upstream, and I think that's the author's main point.
------
mwcampbell
It is well known that distributed version control systems make it easier for
developer soutside of a project's core team to contribute to the project. But
it seems to me that package managers are counteracting this, because they
encourage a sharp division between user and developer. I'm talking about both
OS-level package managers like APT, and programming language/VM-level package
managers like Maven, NuGet, RubyGems, npm, and the various Python package
management tools.
One solution might be for applications to pull in all of their dependencies as
subrepositories in their version control systems. But then where would we
stop? At the implementation of the application's main programming language or
managed runtime? At the C library? At the operating system itself (assuming
the OS is open source)? This would also seem to encourage a single dominant
version control system.
So I have no definite answers.
~~~
takluyver
To play devil's advocate: do compiled languages have the same effect? They
create a separation between developers (who use the source) and users (who use
binaries). Especially for projects with a long/slow build process, like
LibreOffice, this can be a considerable barrier to development.
By contrast, even the biggest codebase you use in a language like Python, you
can dive into the code directly. Well, unless it's Software as a Service.
------
EGreg
Well, that's why a good framework should be built in a modular and extensible
way. For example, the way we build our Q framework (previous open source
version is here: <http://phponpie.com>) is that you can override the core with
plugins, and plugins with your apps. There is a cascading file system, that I
learned from Kohana. Very useful!
~~~
camus
symfony is so modular you dont even need to fork it , just write plugins.
~~~
EGreg
yep, that's what I am talking about
------
hawleyal
ಠ_ಠ Y U no understand how free software works
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Pomodoro Technique advice? - pook
http://zipwith.blogspot.com/2010/06/pomodoro.html describes how I'm trying to integrate a Pomodoro-based todo.txt with Dropbox.<p>I'm going for as easy and simple as possible. All plaintext, all sync'd across boxen, and accessible through the CLI.<p>Does anyone have advice on either the technique itself, or good formats for recording their own time data? Good tools they either hacked or found?
======
_corbett
I use pomodoro.app on my Mac, the timer function on my iPhone, and may
download a dedicated iPhone app at somepoint.
I personally don't currently use the history feature of pomodoro (what
previous tasks were, how many were completed, etc.). Just defining a task,
focusing for 25 minutes, and tracking break time are the things most important
to me.
I'd ideally like to have many pomodoro "time jars", which track how many
pomodoros I complete for a particular larger goal over some time period. When
the time jar is full, for some personal definition of full, you've completed
the goal. Haven't found a good app for this, so pointers would be appreciated.
Might hack up something simple for the iPhone this summer...
To the commenter about time optimization wasting time, if that's all you do
instead of Actually Working, sure. But to never profile your work flow, and
never experiment with new methods... not only is that boring, it's inefficient
over the long term. My personal productivity philosophy definitely includes a
meta step for reflection and experimentation
<http://cosmicrays.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/productivity/>
------
_corbett
I recently started using freckle (letsfreckle.com). The timer is great, as is
the freeform project creation and logging.
------
ddemchuk
just keep a small pad of paper in your back pocket. the longer you spend
searching for faster/fancier/more efficient/cooler ways to track things, the
more time you're simply wasting.
Just start doing it and write down your progress.
~~~
sidmitra
can't agree more. All these techniques focus on knowing what to work on....
but not actually working. And pretty soon your task list is way too long to
even look at.
I did take the timer from pomodorro, that too in a very flexible way.
~~~
peter01
The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach
us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration
that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more information about
the topic, perhaps from personal experience. Whereas comments like "LOL!" or
worse still, "That's retarded!" teach us nothing.
~~~
sidmitra
You are absolutely right, see the comment directly above this one for an
example of commentary without any substance.
In any case, did i say LOL, or it's retarded? I just shared my personal
opinion/experience.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Leap Motion: Orion [video] - tiagobraw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnlCGw-0R8g
======
thenomad
I've just been testing this out.
It works.
Not perfectly, for me, so far - it's a little wobbly, and I heartily recommend
clearing your desk before beginning. With a headset-mounted Leap the close
distance isn't particularly close, and it DOES work fine at arm's length.
Unless what's sitting at arm's length is an expensive condenser mic, in which
case you will a) fail to grab the block you're reaching for and b) punch your
microphone.
Also, calibration is about as much fun as it is with most optical devices. For
anyone who has never had that particular joy - it's not much fun. Tip if
you're doing this - _rotate_ the Leap, don't just move it around. Also, I had
to iterate through about three allegedly reflective surfaces to get one that
worked - ironically enough I ended up using the screen of my Surface Pro.
But it's orders of magnitude better than the last time I tried the Leap, and I
suspect with a darker room it'd work even better. No latency I could feel, and
I could throw blocks around and build towers in VR fine.
Very impressed indeed.
This evening I'm going to give it another go once the irritatingly persistent
IR emitter in the sky goes away, and I'll also be trying their Warlock Battle
game, which looks like lots of fun...
~~~
hobo_mark
Is this "just" new software compatible with current devices or new hardware
altogether?
~~~
thenomad
I've got an original Leap and it worked fine for me.
It makes reference to needing a mount for the VR attachment, but elsewhere on
their site they teach you how to DIY the mount with duct tape :)
~~~
mchahn
> I've got an original Leap and it worked fine for me.
Interesting. What did you use it for? I got one and couldn't find a single
useful application.
~~~
thenomad
Sorry, poor contextual phrasing.
I have an original Leap. When I tested it with the new software they've just
released, it still worked fine. The new software doesn't require new Leap
hardware, and will work with the original hardware.
As for what I used it for when I got it - I bought it for motion capture. It
wasn't good enough. The new "Orion" software, on the other hand, might be.
------
adamwong246
While it's very neat to see these Johnny-Mnemonic style demos, what I'd really
like is a realistic replacement for Apple's Magic Trackpad. I'd buy one if it
were able to replace my trackpad on an ordinary desktop environment. I don't
need to manipulate cubes in 3d space (who does?!) outside of video games. But
I'd love to replace my flat trackpad with a skeletal gesture motion-tracker
for more mundane tasks.
~~~
zminjie
May I ask what exactly are you looking for in the replacement?
We are actually building a wearable that gives you full hand tracking without
the need for line of sight. It's intended for AR/VR applications since it's
just as precise as vision based products without all the downsides. But one
thing that's personally important to me that we are incorporating into the
product is the ability to turn any surface I touch into a trackpad. It
basically gives me a portable trackpad anywhere I go and I can sit 10 feet
away from my computer and use my leg or arms of the chair to control my
computer. I'm curious what kind of usages you need from a product like this.
~~~
adamwong246
Well, I don't want to turn arbitrary surfaces into trackpads. I'd just like to
be able to perform hand gestures _in the air, above my keyboard._ I don't need
to perform them from across the room or anything like that. So that, to me, is
the MVP- simply replacing my trackpad for gestures like pointing, clicking,
dragging, zooming in MacOS.
But beyond that...
1\. I don't want to wear anything on my hands.
2\. I'd like to be able to program new gestures easily. Sort of like American
sign language, I want to easily map a gesture to an action.
3\. After replacing a trackpad, I'd want to be able to use my hands to
manipulate a 3d environment. This requirement is pretty low on my list,
because I never do anything in 3D. But it's necessary in the long run, once 3D
applications become popular.
------
freewizard
Have to say this amazed me that they are still selling a four year old device
and evolving it by upgrading software.
------
killa_kyle
Glad to see they improved the software. Here's a video someone uploaded
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhBaY1UMOJs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhBaY1UMOJs)
------
hugozap
I'm interested in ways devices like this could be used for everyday work,
automate some IDE task / editor macros. Subtle Gestures could add another
dimension to data input without leaving the keyboard.
------
rkangel
There was a slightly worrying bit of latency visible here:
[https://youtu.be/rnlCGw-0R8g?t=32](https://youtu.be/rnlCGw-0R8g?t=32)
~~~
StavrosK
I've had a Leap motion since very early on, and it's been working very well.
Especially the software update where they upgraded to a skeletal hand model
has made many glitches go away. Both latency and accuracy have been great, so
maybe the latency there is because of the animation? I'm not quite sure, but
based on how good my experience has been with the first Leap, I doubt this one
is worse.
~~~
killa_kyle
Here's another video: GEOMETRIC -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLEEVGxu_k8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLEEVGxu_k8)
------
soylentcola
A while back (maybe a year or so) I played with the early alpha/beta support
for the whole "stick your Leap on the front of your Rift" thing. It was really
cool and seemed like something I'd expect to see in future VR headsets.
I'll have to check out this new software since it seems they've continued to
develop it.
------
bossx
The tracking is an order of magnitude better, using the original device.
Impressed.
------
baldfat
What is happening on the Augmented Reality technology that Leap was originally
showing?
I am much more interested in Augmented then Virtual and was hoping to see Leap
move more in that area. I haven't seen anything since July 2015.
~~~
zacharypinter
You're probably thinking of Magic Leap, which is a completely different
company from Leap Motion.
~~~
guelo
Well that seems like a big trademark problem.
~~~
baldfat
Both formed in 2010. Leap Motion is also doing some Augmented Reality. Hard to
fight the over $1,300,000,000 in funding that Magic Leap has been able to
raise.
------
otoburb
The demo shows intricate and precise hand and finger joint tracking, seemingly
knowing precisely how both hands are positioned in a small volume of space.
Maybe we may soon finally be able to push past the current non-vocal computer
input speed barrier imposed by physically typing on a keyboard. The spoken
word is roughly around 225wpm[1], while few can claim accurate typing speeds
of more than 150wpm for extended periods of time.
Example of smaller motor movements that can be performed are finger twitches
or trilling piano keys.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute#Stenotype](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute#Stenotype)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bruce Perens quits Open Source Initiative amid row over new crypto license - jrepinc
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/03/osi_cofounder_resigns/
======
bdowling
I find this line in the CAL problematic:
> You also agree that either the Licensor or a Recipient (as an intended
> third-party beneficiary) may enforce the terms and conditions of this
> License against You via _specific performance_. (emphasis added)
CAL, section 2.3.
This line about specific performance may make this “license” into a legally-
binding contract, because specific performance is a contract remedy. Usually,
if you fail to meet a license condition, you just lose your license, which
might make you liable for infringement (e.g., of copyright). Here, this line
may mean that a court could force a “licensee” to comply with the condition
instead of just paying monetary damages.
~~~
matthewheath
In UK law (I am not familiar with any other legal jurisdictions), that licence
agreement isn't a contract at all — even with that line about specific
performance included — because no consideration (something of value) has been
given by the developer intending to use the software, the licensee.
If such a licence were to be subject to the jurisdiction of UK courts, I don't
think the licensor (or the recipient as a third-party beneficiary) would win.
~~~
bdowling
Re consideration, a promise to do or forego something in the future can be
sufficient consideration to form a binding contract. In fact, most contracts
are an exchange of promises (e.g., any sales contract where goods and payment
will be delivered in the future).
Here, the CAL contains additional language indicating that the author intends
for the CAL to be not just a license, but also an enforceable contract
including the license conditions:
> In order to receive this License, You must agree to its rules. The rules of
> this License are both _obligations of Your agreement with the Licensor_ and
> conditions to your License. You must not do anything with the Work that
> triggers a rule You cannot or will not follow. (emphasis added)
CAL section 2.
~~~
matthewheath
Ah, thank you for clarifying this for me. I'm aware that promise to do or
forego something can be sufficient consideration but clearly I did not read
the CAL sufficiently to identify what the licensee was going to do or forgo.
------
carapace
FWIW...
[https://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html](https://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html)
> In the United States, once you own a copy of a program, you can back it up,
> compile it, run it, and even modify it as necessary, without permission from
> the copyright holder. See 17 USC 117.
> Once you've legally downloaded a program, you can compile it. You can run
> it. You can modify it. You can distribute your patches for other people to
> use. If you think you need a license from the copyright holder, you've been
> bamboozled by Microsoft. As long as you're not distributing the software,
> you have nothing to worry about.
~~~
bitwize
Also in the United States, you usually do not own a copy of the software you
used, you are merely licensed to use it and are subject to the terms of the
EULA. Most EULAs expressly forbid reverse-engineering, decompilation, or
modification. And yes, they are binding contracts; see _Vernor v. Autodesk_.
~~~
carapace
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc).
IANAL, so I won't comment.
~~~
tzs
HN’s link detection has trouble with URLs that end with a period. Here it is
with that period encoded.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc%2E](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc%2E)
------
zozbot234
Interesting stuff. I think the CAL proposal shows that one can have all sorts
of reasonable requirements around public performance of one's software, and as
long as basic use cases remain "free" and there's no discrimination by field
of endeavor (e.g. "only cloud companies" must do X, or whatever) or otherwise,
there is a case that the conditions are still FLOSS. I wonder how the FSF
would treat that license.
~~~
yarrel
The FSF would note correctly that the license is burdensome and would declare
it non-free.
This is a license that bakes in a _lot_ of assumptions about who should be
running the code and how. If you can afford to comply with them, you are
probably a corporation.
There's a trend towards two(-or more) tier proprietary software licenses that
formalize the difference between economic exploitation and consumer usage of
software but that still want the cachet of being called "Open Source".
The CAL falls very clearly under this category, for all its apparent good
intentions.
------
eesmith
I have some limited experience with Lindberg, which lead me to the tentative
conclusion that he was more interested in the legal aspects of open source
licenses than the social contract issues of open source and free software.
I also got the feeling he was using rhetorical techniques to change the topic
or blunt a inquiry, rather than as methods to resolve disagreements.
Consider the paragraph 'I don't think that's an appropriate characterization
.. You'll see a lot of people jumping onto any pretext they can find in order
to oppose it.' It starts off implying there are multiple sides to the issue,
which puts you off-guard, then characterizes the opposition in stark black-
and-white terms.
That sets up a sort of false dichotomy by leaving out those people who oppose
it for non-pretextual reasons.
------
jsjohnst
> He believes just three are necessary, AGPLv3, the LGPLv3, and Apache v2.
He being Bruce Perens.
I respectfully disagree, those licenses all have some negative component to
them which make them not applicable in all cases. MIT/BSD do not have those
same negatives (different of their own) and definitely are needed as well
imho. Not saying those three aren’t important, just they shouldn’t be the only
three.
Edit: clarified MIT / BSD are not without their own issues, just not the same
as the other three.
~~~
kibwen
> MIT/BSD do not
MIT/BSD do have some legal drawbacks for certain use cases; see the Boost
license as an example of a reaction to perceived negatives of MIT/BSD. In
particular Boost does not require a copy of the license to be distributed with
a binary. Have you ever shipped a binary containing MIT-licensed code, but
didn't also explicitly ship a copy of the MIT license along with it? If so,
you're technically in violation of the license.
~~~
utopian3
> MIT/BSD do have some legal drawbacks for certain use cases
Sure I think the OP you're replying to isn't implying that MIT/BSD is
insufficient. He/she is saying that the three "AGPLv3, the LGPLv3, and Apache
v2" are insufficient but these five "AGPLv3 + LGPLv3 + Apache2 + MIT + BSD"
would be more sufficient.
~~~
jsjohnst
> but these five "AGPLv3 + LGPLv3 + Apache2 + MIT + BSD" would be more
> sufficient
Correct, I’m saying you need at least all five for something like sufficiency.
The three Bruce points out aren’t enough imho.
------
h2odragon
> "[The debate] has proven contentious enough to prompt OSI co-founder Bruce
> Perens to resign from the organization, for a second time,"
I also recall when he proudly announced he'd GPL'd a copy of the Public Domain
TIGER data files.
~~~
kick
That's good, actually. The public domain doesn't apply everywhere, so a U.S.
citizen licensing a public domain piece under a free software license allows
people in countries with different approaches to the public domain to use it.
~~~
h2odragon
Yes, and Mr Perens is making a valid point here too. In such a way as to be
regrettably easy to dismiss. I watched him instruct Linus Torvalds in how "the
kernel project should be run" in 1998; he wasn't wrong but I'm sure I wasn't
the only one who wanted to smack him rather than hear him out.
I say this in deepest sympathy for the man, I'm similarly non-charming but
much much more repellent.
~~~
lallysingh
He's an anchor holding open source firmly attached to the ground, not letting
immediate passions (in this case, crypto) get us lost.
------
jnwatson
Does anyone care what the opinion of OSI is anymore? If you care enough about
whether an agreement is "open source", you probably care enough to read the
agreement itself and make your own opinion.
~~~
skybrian
I care that "open source" doesn't become a watered-down, meaningless term like
"open" or "agile". Having a well-defined and well-understood meaning is
valuable.
~~~
chrisseaton
They should have picked a term that they could trademark if they wanted to do
this! Rather than reusing an existing term and having to try to persuade
people to use your definition.
~~~
skybrian
This usage is over 20 years old and was uncontroversial for most of that time.
I'm not sure there are many people around who even remember previous usage.
It seems like the problem these days is new people learning it from context
and not knowing there is an official definition that was settled a long time
ago.
~~~
chrisseaton
In what sense is it ‘official’? The trademark office think the term is generic
and didn’t allow the OSI to make any claim on it.
~~~
skybrian
In the sense that there is a standards organization that published a standard
definition. There isn't any legal basis for it, but we should support them.
~~~
chrisseaton
I think official means endorsed by some authority. There’s no authority here
at all - just some private people making up a definition and attaching it to
an existing term.
~~~
dec0dedab0de
authority does not necessarily mean with the threat of violence. It could mean
influence. The OSI are an authority as demonstrated by every major tech
company using their definition of opensource.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Short History of Women at Los Alamos National Laboratory - celias
http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-stories-archive/2018/March/0322-history-of-women.php
======
killjoywashere
LANL has the best science museum I have ever been to.
------
itronitron
nice article, although I think the title is a bit dismissive... An Incomplete
History of Women at LANL would have been better
------
ianai
It takes a special kind of “intellect” to pigeonhole women into the computer
role, with math degrees. That must have been one of the most difficult jobs
and generally not in line with the sexist mindset. It really was a different
time.
------
ryanx435
Meta comment: I have never seen a front page HN post go this long (4 hours)
without a single comment before. Interesting. I wonder what the record is for
longest time on the front page with no comments? Does anyone know?
And yes, I know I just broke the streak :/
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New in Node.js v0.12: Running Multiple Instances in a Single Process - jguerrero
http://strongloop.com/strongblog/whats-new-node-js-v0-12-multiple-context-execution/
======
mattschmulen
Now you have my attention - "Or Node embedded in a phone or network switch
where it is performing routing logic for multiple connections, but in a single
process and you’re not far off". I would be interested in seeing what the
performance impact is on ARM architectures since the above are strong use
cases.
------
macavity23
Does an uncaught exception still kill the process? Because I'm really growing
to like node, but this is a very strange design decision. Yes, you can
mitigate it with forever or pm2, but you really shouldn't have to.
------
rmgraham
Is this the C++ accessible side of vm.createContext() and vm.runInContext()?
Seems like it would help with sandboxing.
------
rpedela
Is the long-term goal thread safety? Having a native threading mechanism in
Node would definitely be helpful.
~~~
rmgraham
Thread safety in this case I think would mean running multiple instances of
node embedded in your app, each in their own thread and with their own event
loops.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are good resources for learning hacking? - NinjaX
books, blog, video, community like HN.
======
mindcrime
[http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-
questions.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html)
------
mtmail
"Ask HN: How can I learn computer security?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15986100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15986100)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Generic Machine Learning Fails - yarapavan
http://metamarketsgroup.com/blog/machine-learning-in-wonderland/
======
oakenshield
> I get pitched regularly by startups doing “generic machine learning” which
> is, in all honesty, a pretty ridiculous idea.
Learned this the hard way. As an academic who used to think you could solve a
problem (e.g., spam filtering) using a single model --- something we routinely
do in academic papers --- I had to wait until I went to an industry internship
to realize how "ugly" a real spam filtering algorithm has to be. Large mail
providers see so many diverse patterns of spam that they need a complicated
mix of ML models, datasets, labels, and sometimes even plain old blacklists to
keep their spam under control.
~~~
tensor
Coming from a background of bioinformatics, my experience of academia was
quite different. Combining multiple sources of data and results from different
prediction algorithms is quite common.
As for generic machine learning being a ridiculous idea, I don't see why he'd
think this. Nearly all specialized systems use generic machine learning
algorithms as a submodule. They can very much be commoditizable like EC2. Even
google has an upcoming framework for this. Although I would agree that by
themselves they are not sufficient.
edit: I also think you miss the point of academic papers. The goal is not to
build a product, but rather to understand algorithms. Testing algorithms in
isolation of other boosters is crucial for this. If you are testing a
particular combining framework, only then does it make sense to include
multiple approaches within the context if the proposed idea.
In bioinformatics, you additionally have the researchers who actually want an
applied answer for their studies and work. Thus, in that area you _do_
routinely get something more like a product being produced in an academic
setting. The combined systems are often, but not always published.
~~~
alextp
The issue is that generic machine learning algorithms work ok enough as black
boxes, but to squeeze top performance out of them you need to do feature
engineering, architecture/model structure futzing, method selection, etc, and
in practice there are far too many of these meta-hyperparameters to tune with
cross-validation or something similar.
While the generic ML tools work really well, it takes domain knowledge to find
the best way of applying them to the problem at hand, specially since it
almost never fits into the classification/regression from IID training
training data model that most algorithms are designed based on. At first this
might seem counter-intuitive to you, but I've seen dramatic reductions in the
error rate just from picking good features or a reasonable model structure in
a way that's not easy to automate. And while deep learning or structure
learning tries to address these problems, there are issues with nonconvexity
and really long training times that make these algorithms unrealistic in many
situations (and, consequently, make them underperform simpler methods with
clever domain engineering).
~~~
tensor
Absolutely. In light of your comment, perhaps I am misunderstanding what the
original article means by a generic learning algorithm?
The points you make are well understood in academics. There are probably
hundreds of papers on feature selection and domain specific modelling in
bioinformatics, for example.
In terms of boxed learning algorithms, I would assume that such a thing would
provide for a way to supply models and inputs in a variety of formats. The
latter allowing for users to do their own domain specific feature selection or
other types of data reduction before applying a particular learning algorithm.
In that sense, I could see things like Google's prediction API being useful in
principle, even though it won't eliminate the large domain specific portion of
the work.
------
tansey
I appreciate the practical aspects of the author's post. Too often on mailing
lists for various machine learning groups, a novice will ask if they can "just
apply [technique] to [big problem]"; usually something like stock trading or
DNA analysis. The obvious answer is "Sure! Now go spend years understanding
how your domain really works in context of the algorithm you're trying to
use." You can't just feed in stock prices to a black box and get rich, sorry,
doesn't work that way.
As for the idea of "general machine learning" not being feasible, it's worth
noting that the No Free Lunch Theorem [1] applies here.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_opt...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization)
------
joe_the_user
I just want to note that article's main point is _that_ generic machine
learning fails.
Why?
"The Netflix prize is a good example: the last 10% reduction in RMSE wasn’t
due to more powerful generic algorithms, but rather due to some very clever
thinking about the structure of the problem; observations like “people who
rate a whole slew of movies at one time tend to be rating movies they saw a
long time ago” from BellKor."
That's kind of hand-wavy in the sense that you haven't produced the factor
which prevents a generic machine learning algorithm from "being very clever"
or determining the specific useful observation. Sure, there's an intuition we
have about this but that's it.
And that is kind of inevitable - if we could get an exact measure of why
current machine learning algorithms fail, we could probably build new one that
succeeded.
~~~
bermanoid
The “people who rate a whole slew of movies at one time tend to be rating
movies they saw a long time ago” example is wonderful, actually: it indicates
_exactly_ the reason that humans can guide choices of algorithms in a way
better than machines can: the data that a human uses to to come up with that
hypothesis is quite literally unavailable to the machine. It's completely
outside the dataset that's under analysis, and comes from a human's experience
dealing with humans, and his assumptions about how they act. Most humans would
probably mark that statement as "probably true" without even investigating the
data, and that's an _extremely_ valuable prior that a ML algorithm has no
access to (unless we explicitly program it in).
Sure, you might argue that the hypothesis is implicit in the data set, and
(though I'm not familiar with the actual Netflix data, so I'm not sure) that
might be true - if it's in there in some form, then it's even conceivable that
some algorithm might eventually pick it up. But a human would likely never
even dream of advancing that hypothesis without at least some vague sense that
other humans would probably act that way, and in many cases, without that high
prior probability that comes from our knowledge of psychology it wouldn't be
proper to consider that factor. So in a sense, we're cheating every time we
use our external domain knowledge to push our ML algos to a better spot in
hypothesis space.
This doesn't say that generic ML fails; it merely says that "the sum total of
human knowledge + ML algo applied to data set" > "ML algo applied to data
set", especially when "data set" has something to do with shit that humans
know very well, like ourselves.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How OpenGL works: software renderer in 500 lines of code - gregorymichael
https://github.com/ssloy/tinyrenderer/wiki
======
sclangdon
This is great and so concise, but I'm surprised that the author didn't
implement OpenGL's interface (obviously not all of it), if the goal is to show
how OpenGL works.
Another good example of this is Trenki's software renderer for the GPX2[1],
which implements a shader architecture if memory serves. I haven't looked at
it for many years, but I remember it being a useful resource when learning
this stuff.
Other useful resources are, of course, Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming
Black Book[2] (despite it's age, is still a great read filled with useful
information), and for a really deep dive into the graphic's pipeline, ryg's
(of Farbrausch fame) A Trip Through the Graphics Pipeline[3].
[1]
[http://www.trenki.net/content/view/18/38/](http://www.trenki.net/content/view/18/38/)
[2] [https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-
book](https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book)
[3] [https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-
the-...](https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-the-graphics-
pipeline-2011-index/)
~~~
sclangdon
It turns out that Trenki implemented the OpenGL ES-CL 1.0 interface on top of
his software renderer (link [1] above), which should serve as an even better
example of how OpenGL (may) work.
[http://www.trenki.net/content/view/39/48/](http://www.trenki.net/content/view/39/48/)
------
8bitpimp
I wrote a software implementation of OpenGL with the only goal of being able
to play Quake3 using it. I can vouch that it is an amazing learning
experience. The tutorial here doesnt seem to aproach the issues of performance
however, which really are another learning experience entirely.
~~~
gnarbarian
Holy crap. If you could reimplement OpenGL you should be able to buy a video
card. I think I had a tnt2 Ultra back then.
~~~
cmrx64
"being able to play quak 2" as a goal for validation of effort and to have
something concrete to strive for is completely different than "none of my
software or hardware on my system can play quake 2", and I suspect grandparent
meant the former and not the latter.
------
exDM69
The title is a bit misleading, this is boilerplate code for a graphics
programming course and it hasn't got much to do with OpenGL.
The articles describing the operation are much more interesting than the code
itself.
It's just an inefficient triangle rasterizer. All it does is loop over the
pixels in a rectangle covering a triangle, and for each pixel inside it calls
a "shader" function. All the beef is in these 40 lines [0].
I don't know how they've done the texturing in all those pretty pictures (it's
in the "shaders", not included here), but they don't calculate the partial
derivatives required for correct, mipmapped texturing. Simple non-mipmapped
perspective correct texture mapping can be computed in the shaders, with the
usual caveats.
OpenGL is much more than a rasterizer, there's texturing, depth-stencil
operations, blending, compute shaders and efficient memory management.
[0]
[https://github.com/ssloy/tinyrenderer/blob/master/our_gl.cpp...](https://github.com/ssloy/tinyrenderer/blob/master/our_gl.cpp#L42)
edit: Someone in reddit pointed out that this is a translation of a Russian
language course. The original Russian version looks to be a bit longer than
the English translation (but I don't read Russian, so I can't tell if it is
better):
[https://habrahabr.ru/post/249467/](https://habrahabr.ru/post/249467/)
~~~
fsloth
You need to look through the short course notes in the wiki of the page to
understand the full quality of this repository.
~~~
exDM69
Yes, I did and that's much more interesting than the code itself. But the
title is still misleading and emphasizes the code, which isn't terribly
spectacular.
~~~
fsloth
If it's looked purely from educational point of view it's quite hard to find
graphics code that is this clear and concise.
The author modifies this short code to implement various shading techniques
with code that is as pithy and understandable as any.
You have to recall that 40 years ago even texture mapping was a scientific
publication quality material.
This code makes several non-obvious things obvious - and simple! I don't think
that's a light achievement.
------
fsloth
Wov, this is so elegant, short and sweet. It's the most beautiful code I've
seen in a while - because it's pithy, to the point, but yet retains enough
critical detail to be educationally valid. Thanks for sharing.
------
leni536
I remember once I needed to macro up a software that needed an X server with
OpenGL to run. (Like really dirtily hack it up, with xmacro and stuff like
that). I wish I could set up a headless X server with a dummy OpenGL renderer
(witch doesn't actually render anything), so it doesn't bottleneck on
rendering that isn't used anyway. I guess it's even easier to write such and
OpenGL implementation.
edit: Now I see it doesn't implement the OpenGL API though, the goals are
obviously different.
~~~
jre
Mesa has an offscreen rendering implementation that allows you to do OpenGL
without an X server :
[http://www.mesa3d.org/osmesa.html](http://www.mesa3d.org/osmesa.html)
------
speps
Related but more efficient (includes a rasterizer) :
[https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/optimizing-sw-
occlu...](https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/optimizing-sw-occlusion-
culling-index/)
------
stop1234
I just went through the lessons and all the code compiled and worked as
expected. Nice and simple. As things should be.
Thank you for posting this online.
------
theoh
Stanford's past notes on polygon rasterization are interesting for historical
background and algorithmic elegance:
[http://www.graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs248-98-fall/Lectu...](http://www.graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs248-98-fall/Lectures/lecture9/slides/)
Edit: Also this
[https://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs248-08/scan/scan1.ht...](https://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs248-08/scan/scan1.html)
------
jahnu
[https://github.com/ssloy/tinyrenderer/blob/master/geometry.c...](https://github.com/ssloy/tinyrenderer/blob/master/geometry.cpp#L3)
What's going on there with the template<> template<> ?
~~~
sclangdon
The struct vec takes a template parameter T, and it's constructor takes a
different template parameter U. Therefore, you must specify both template
directives when defining the constructor; one for the class type, and one for
the constructor's argument.
~~~
jahnu
Edit: re-wording this reply.
I guess what surprised me is I would almost expect it to look something like
this...
template <> vec<3,int> ::vec(template <> const vec<3,float> &v) :
x(int(v.x+.5f)),y(int(v.y+.5f)),z(int(v.z+.5f)) {}
I can tell that is silly but still.
------
erichocean
If anyone has a link that shows the Vulkan equivalent (e.g. how pipeline
states might be implemented, etc.) I would really appreciate it.
In particular, I'm very curious how tile-based deferred rendering wound
interact (positively!) with a Vulkan software rendering implementation by
keeping all tile buffers for a render pass in the on-chip cache of a modern
Intel CPU. It seems like Vulkan provides a better API for a software rendering
than OpenGL for that reason, and I'd like to see that confirmed one way or the
other.
------
riazrizvi
OpenGL is partly these widely available graphics algorithms. Thank you for
explaining them so well here. OpenGL also has a particular architecture that
provides concurrency and extensibility among other things. If we are talking
about OpenGL specifically vs other Rendering Engines, then it would be good to
explain the architecture to help folks understand the reasons why OpenGL is so
widely used.
------
lbenes
Will this teach you how shader-based OpenGL works or the older fixed function
pipeline rendering method?
~~~
joeld42
"OpenGL" is a bit of a misnomer here, there's nothing directly related to
OpenGL. This will not teach you how opengl works, but is an example of a
software rasterizer. Knowing how that works will help you understand what is
going on under the hood of your graphics API.
This renderer does do lighting per-fragment, so it's more akin to the newer
shader-based OpenGL.
------
valine
I would love a section on anti-aliasing. It seems to be the big thing missing.
~~~
yoklov
That's probably because OpenGL doesn't do antialiasing by default. When it
does it, it does it by rendering everything at a larger scale and downscaling
it (well, actually MSAA allows the GL to avoid having to do this to
_everything_ , and only do it for some buffers)
FXAA and similar antialiasing algorithms fake it as a post process effect.
~~~
psykotic
> (well, actually MSAA allows the GL to avoid having to do this to everything,
> and only do it for some buffers)
MSAA is faster than supersampling because the GPU generates subsample coverage
but doesn't individually shade each subsample. And, this is absolutely
critical, there is a compression scheme for depth and color transmission
between the DRAM and texture cache which is a massive bandwidth optimization
in the common case where a sample tile (usually 8x8, which for 4x MSAA
corresponds to only 4x4 pixels) is covered by only one or two triangles.
------
latenightcoding
This looks amazing, I wish it was in C, but I will check it out.
------
sklogic
Somewhat related:
[https://github.com/a2flo/oclraster](https://github.com/a2flo/oclraster)
------
billconan
repost of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11260507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11260507)
~~~
dang
Reposts are ok if a story hasn't had significant attention yet.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What should I say to a colleague who just got laid off - rainmaker
So I got laid off y'day, and received amazing advice from the HN community, and been acting on it. I've spent all morning calling up colleagues that I worked closely with and realized that their responses varied with the amount of experience they had.<p>1) My younger inexperienced colleagues were pissed off with the company because they thought we'd just had our biggest qtr ever, so why I was being laid off. They were genuinely upset and felt bad for me.
2) My senior more experienced colleagues were polite, thanked me for the time we had worked together, and offered me contacts of recruiters who they know are hiring, and offered to help me with a recommendation.<p>I'm wondering if there is an ideal way to do this because I could be in a different boat at a different time.<p>Thx, Startup Sales Guy
======
eru
Could you please help me understand your question better?
Your headline says you are asking for advice on what to say to your colleague,
but you do not mention that question (or the colleague) again in the body of
your text. I am a bit confused. In what position is your colleague in?
------
wendroid
K, tnx, bye
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Russian Government's agency exploits overlooked browsers vulnerabilities - Shamar
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1487081#c16
======
Shamar
It's worth noticing that while they didn't target specific people or made the
attack undetectable through cache control trickery, the tools they are looking
for can be used to detect such evidence removal.
So they are probably building a Government database of IP/people using such
tools!
This target mainly Russians, but you know, as Mozilla use to say... "this is
the Web functioning as designed"!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Louis C.K's email to his Beacon Theater Show customers - danso
http://danwin.com/2011/12/louis-c-k-thanks-his-fans-for-buying-his-5-beacon-theater-show/
======
mxavier
Like this email, I've noticed Louis' personality permeates the whole
experience. An interesting little tidbit: the password emailed to me after
purchasing to access my content didn't work. I clicked the button to reset my
password. I received an email with the text:
Apparently you forgot your password? Ok, so here's your new one, stupid:
My generated password was prefixed with "idiot.THENEWPASSWORD". It's little
touches like this that I find really nice.
Also, needless to say, I would buy one of his specials in a heartbeat should a
similar offer come up in the future. I watched the special last night and it
was outrageously funny.
~~~
brightsize
I did the same thing, but my password was prefixed by "stupid". Your insult
may vary.
~~~
dspillett
"moron" here.
I wonder if the first passwords are deliberately wrong so that peope will
request a new one (if they revisit instead of downlaoding/streaming
immediately and never going back as they have no need to) in order to be
insulted. Its the sort of thing I'd do...
------
dmix
Whats most interesting is that this whole release is notable because hes
treating his fans like _humans_.
Making content easily accessible, being very hesitant to be invasive with
emailing, not pushy at all with marketing. Being honest about how much he made
as well as the costs and process of creating it, etc.
This experiment is detached from all the bullshit about "social media
marketing". It shows that effectively selling on the internet comes down to is
a) be interesting b) have great content and c) be accessible in as many
channels as possible as a human being not corporate PR speak.
~~~
adamdecaf
Which is exactly the reason I bought it. Sure, I like his comedy, but I wasn't
going to buy his live show. That is, until I read his appeal and found out how
humble he really is. It's great to finally see humans treating each other like
humans and still make money.
~~~
Natsu
Yeah, I hope more artists follow this example, because it's very successful
for the artists and far more satisfying for the audience. Another person like
that is Howard Tayler (author of Schlock Mercenary, among other things) who is
a very, very clever author/businessman who is very inventive in how he
interacts with his audience. For example, Howard holds parties to get people
to help him ship out his books. They manage to mix fun with work and come out
ahead.
------
hendrik-xdest
Does anybody else get the feeling there might be some clever marketing agency
behind all this?
Louis persona seems so well thought out and is applied in every aspect. I
never met the guy but it is astonishing how well he is following his known
character in every public appearance.
Maybe he is just a well organized micromanager of himself. But if you think
about the slight change of tone from his "Louis C.K." show on to his "Louis"
program that brought him all his success. I just can't believe that this is
all him on his own.
~~~
jonbro
I think that when you write for yourself for that many years, you generate a
really strong character. If there is an agency involved, then they have really
good writers that understand how to write for his voice, which is in itself a
huge challenge.
Louis CK is also famous for his work ethic. This amount of copy may seem like
a ton to someone that is used to working with clients that always deliver late
(not saying you do, but that was my experience when I did web work). I don't
think this amount of copy is that hard for a working comedian, especially one
as hard working as Louis.
------
emehrkay
Even the email was funny. Great five dollar experience all the way around.
------
jtgeibel
From the email: 'And i know that now you are thinking "aw shit. Why'd i let
this guy into my life this way?". Well dont worry. Because i really swear it
that i wont bug you.'
Yes! this was exactly my initial reaction when I first saw this in my inbox so
_soon_. The whole experience has been so honest, genuine and fun.
------
dicroce
Imagine if he keeps doing this... One day I'll have a pretty bad ass directory
of comedy mp4's... :)
------
stfu
_The development of the website, which needed to be a very robust, reliable
and carefully constructed website, was around $32,000._ What? Oh well,
probably including traffic & hosting etc pp?
~~~
mattmanser
Didn't he say he'd made like half a mill?
That means it had 100,000 downloads in 5 days, each d/l 1/2 gig maybe (I have
no idea of the bitrate/size used)?
You need someone who's done that before, plus all the other stuff like
actually designing it and that's going to cost you.
It might look a little high, but I think it was probably worth it.
~~~
sangaya
For anyone that's curious, the file is a 1.2GB MP4 encoded with H264.
~~~
mikescar
The lower-quality one is 340M, and is plenty of definition/quality for a
standup special.
------
MikeMacMan
Gmail flagged it as spam...
------
funkah
Man, he is like the best person. I'm a huge fan of all the stuff he actually
performs for the public (standup, TV shows, movie work), but I also love how
he writes in situations like this. So good.
------
ck2
Look, I am glad this is successful because he was smart about it and listened
to the right advice.
But let's not pretend Louis C.K. is not a millionaire, because he is, and
we're essentially giving him promotion for free.
I'm okay with that, just be aware of what we are doing.
He's not some poor independent artist that needs help to be discovered.
~~~
drcube
The whole point is that he IS a millionaire. It wouldn't be surprising if it
was some poor college kid putting his work out there for cheap and refusing to
treat fans like criminals.
This guy is one of only a few millionaires doing anything remotely like this.
And it's important, because we need popular, revenue-generating artists like
this to break the backs of the anachronistic, parasitic publishing industry. I
hope in ten years -- no, five, maybe less -- this sort of thing is the norm,
RIAA and MPAA are just some irrelevant alphabet-soup organizations people have
never heard of.
~~~
earbitscom
Ask Stephen King what he thinks of the "parasitic publishing industry". You
forget that they used to be, and in many cases still are, a good creator's
path to fame and wealth. For that they take a portion of the revenue. Same as
VCs, same as a lot of things.
If, in 5 years, there are no big publishers, labels or production houses to
help artists bring products to market, it will be similar to when there is no
VC funding available. Creativity and innovation will be stifled. You will get
only the content made by people who also have the wherewithal to distribute it
and do a phenomenal job marketing it themselves, who do not need a real budget
to do so. There are a lot of good artists who do not fit that description. Try
not to wish away their means to an end.
~~~
vidarh
The majority of creation in many fields happen without a promise of getting
paid.
Only a tiny minority of authors ever manage to sell their novels. Even a lot
of successful published novels only gets out there because of the sheer
persistence of the author in question in getting past rejection, not because
of writing quality (a favorite anecdote of mine is how John Irving attempted
repeatedly to get one of the short stories attributed to the fictional Garp
published, only to get rejected over an over; in The World According to Garp,
the short story in question was rejected, and John Irving had written a
rejection letter for it. In the end he substituted one of the _actual_
rejection letters for it. The short story went on to win a price in its own
right)
Only a tiny minority of musicians ever get a record deal.
If anything, the current system is so focused on promoting the "big ones" that
a _lot_ of great creative works goes unknown because the big money goes
towards building a culture focused on the top few.
It might not be the case in all fields (I happen to _like_ a lot of the
expensive effect-laden Hollywood movies, for example, and I have a harder time
figuring out how the economics would work for that), but it is most decidedly
not a given that creativity and innovation would be stifled in every fields.
Some are likely to flourish.
~~~
earbitscom
Sure, but the same as your thoughts on expensive movies can be said for many a
great album. I know some of my favorites would not be what they are if they
had to be self-financed.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Would you use Coda for iPad - Judson
I don't know why, but I just think a "Coda for iPad" type app would be an awesome. I wrote an article describing some of the things I think you could distill the app down to, most of the parts are very complex, but seem simple when executed in a great app.<p>The article is here: http://judstephenson.com/2010/04/23/idea-coda-for-ipad/<p>But the real question is, would anyone use it?
======
cpr
This is the perfect app to port to the iPad. It's an all-in-one that seems a
bit overkill on the Mac, since most of the pieces are available separately,
but on the iPad, easy tabbing between functions without leaving the app would
be ideal.
I'm convinced that Panic is working on this.
------
raimondious
There are a couple of discussions on the Coda Users list about this:
[http://groups.google.com/group/coda-
users/browse_thread/thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/coda-
users/browse_thread/thread/c1aff684fe928a0c#)
[http://groups.google.com/group/coda-
users/browse_thread/thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/coda-
users/browse_thread/thread/3e65f362fa3a0d30/c57f186a14b064e1)
I have a feeling Panic is working on it. They have already been beaten to the
punch somewhat by Gusto, however this app is not as full featured as Coda
(e.g., no SFTP) <http://horseandtherook.com/gusto/>
------
MaysonL
Clickable: <http://judstephenson.com/2010/04/23/idea-coda-for-ipad/>
------
st3fan
I would totally use it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apps are Dead. Long Live Experiences. - linuxcoder
http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/11/26/apps-are-dead-long-live-experiences-powered-by-buddy/
======
ontheotherhand
My brain is what creates the experience out of the sensory input and its
current state, memory etc. Therefore at best you may contribute to that
sensory input -- the experience is still of my own making, thank you very
much. At worst you prove to be a shallow thinker and a goosestepping torturer
of language and get ignored. _goes on to have a bunch of wonderful
experiences, none of which any author or app maker is a part of_
------
ekianjo
Mmm. Nothing really new there. "Experience", "Holistic Design", are all very
widely known concepts in marketing. It is all about consistency between the
different services/faces you show to the public. What was the point of this
post?
~~~
cek
Original author here.
I wonder how many of the commenters so far read the Experience = post that I
linked to in this post? [1]
Maybe you are smarter than the average bear, but I regularly engage with big
brands and publishers, who just want to "build an app". They do not see the
bigger picture that, to be the most effective, they need to build something
beyond an "app". The point of this post (and my other posts regarding
Experience) is to help them gain a broader perspective.
I've found it works well.
[1] <http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/04/02/experience-stuff-time/>
~~~
ekianjo
Maybe this is just that we are dealing with different businesses? I am sure
there are indeed some businesses like the ones you describe where "building
the app" is the only thing they care about. I was just saying that the idea of
"Experience" instead of "Product/App" has been floating around for a long time
in many different fields. When you book a trip somewhere, the travel agent
does not go into describing each particular aspect of the trip, they try to
make you imagine what it's like to be there. When you go in Disneyland,
everything is made to make you feel like you step in their world. Advertisers
know this very well and their whole business is about creating experiences out
of products.
So, my point is that this narrative is very, very well known and I think this
was already described in marketing books from the 60s-70s but this is just out
of memory. So, that is why I said this is nothing really new.
------
hayksaakian
At least you admit that your title was link bait.
~~~
mercurial
I stopped reading after "apps are dead"
------
jeffehobbs
Experiences are dead! Long live brandcuffs!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
South Park Season Premier Sets Off Everyone's Amazon Echo - gridscomputing
https://www.maxim.com/entertainment/south-park-season-premiere-sets-off-amazon-echo-units-2017-9
======
5_minutes
These creators are just great guys. Not only is this again a sign of them
being on the edge of healthy creativity, but they're also the only show that
just has all episodes for free to watch.
There's a documentary on how they make each show "a la carte" each week, and
never missed its deadline except once, but it's often been a close call of
just a few minutes.
Edit: "6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ-
Un8JjUwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ-Un8JjUwo)
~~~
ethbro
I thought the only reasons they offered their content for free (ad supported)
was that they were competing with a major piracy site dedicated exlusively to
streaming their episodes.
~~~
leephillips
I read years ago that they explained that they placed the episodes free online
because they were tired of going to pirate sites to get convenient access to
their own stuff.
------
cjlars
Audio is a terribly insecure channel to accept commands through. You presume
no one else has access to the device because it is physically locked in your
house, but sound travels through walls and through speakers. Heck, you can
even make a window pane into a speaker with some simple gear.
It's no big deal when the worst case scenario is being served up a search
result you don't need or listening to a song you didn't request, but you
definitely wouldn't want to link voice recognition tech up to anything non-
reversible like a stock trade or the lock on your front door.
~~~
nomel
In case anyone missed it, the commands don't have to be audible:
From
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf)
> DolphinAttack ... modulates voice commands on ultrasonic carriers ... to
> achieve inaudibility. By leveraging the nonlinearity of the microphone
> circuits the modulated ... commands can be successfully demodulated
~~~
sogen
Yes, scary indeed, deactivated Hey Siri.
~~~
stephenr
Hey Siri is keyed to your specific voice. A random person can't activate it.
------
jp57
They should add a character named alexa, and have everyone address her by name
and order her around.
~~~
mkempe
Don't forget Siri.
I still don't understand why these companies cannot let us choose a name for
our listening devices. Computers can be named, phones too.
~~~
Taek
My understanding is that these devices have ASICs which listen for their
names, the actual pattern for the name coded into hardware, meaning that you
can't easily select a new name.
Voice recognition takes more CPU power than the devices have, especially if
you are trying to prolong battery life, and I think the more complex commands
are relayed to a server instead of parsed locally.
~~~
makomk
Low-power DSP chip, I believe. For more complex tasks like voice recognition
it generally makes sense to use something that at least resembles a general-
purpose CPU.
------
derekp7
The fact that these voice response devices don't lock into a particular set of
users' voices is a major problem. In fact, multiple times I've had a Google ad
cause the phone it was playing on go do a web search triggered by that ad.
Totally insane.
~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
For Google Now that demand is reasonable but Amazon Echo is designed to be
triggered by anyone in the room, not just a specific owner.
~~~
mejari
The demand can still be reasonable for the Echo, if you believe that it is
terrible design to be triggered by anyone.
------
mgiannopoulos
Tim Cook's voice (or someone else from the presentation) enabled Siri on my
phone during the iPhone X event (watching over YouTube). I thought it was
supposed to be locked to my own voice though?
~~~
brianwawok
Apparently you have the same voice as tim cook to a robot?
------
zaroth
I wonder if there is a low-pass filter on Alexa's microphone? Triggering your
Alexa with ultrasonic commands outside of normal human hearing would be even
more entertaining. Ads already embed ultrasonic chirps to some extent for
tracking purposes.
~~~
satysin
Check out DolphinAttack
Demo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HjF4A3WE4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HjF4A3WE4)
Paper:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf)
------
DonHopkins
I sure wish I was one of the lucky bastards who was selling Gomphocarpus
Physocarpus on Amazon. They really hit the jackpot!
[https://www.amazon.com/GOMPHOCARPUS-PHYSPCARPUS-PLANT-
HAIRY-...](https://www.amazon.com/GOMPHOCARPUS-PHYSPCARPUS-PLANT-HAIRY-
ANNUAL/dp/B01HDSSNGO)
------
koolba
I feel like I should get a writer credit for this episode:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11724174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11724174)
~~~
psyc
I don't have a link, but an implementation of your project did make the rounds
on YouTube and/or Twitch a while back.
------
s73ver_
Didn't Google have this issue with a Burger King commercial? Shouldn't Amazon
have learned from that, and tried to cut this kind of thing off?
------
Steko
The underlying problem is not being able to rename assistants.
~~~
eric_h
Indeed - but it's a much more difficult problem than it seems at first glance
(unless you're okay with an always on, always streaming to the cloud
microphone).
~~~
Steko
Should be done locally anyway, assistant should have some functionality
(alarm, timer, calendar, etc.) when you're completely offline.
Other comments indicate the assistant names are hard coded in ASICs but they
certainly don't have to be.
------
microcolonel
Countdown to Stone and Park enduring a lawsuit under the CFAA.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stick Them With The Pointy End: Apple Files ‘Active Stylus’ Patent - neya
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/02/stick-them-with-the-pointy-end-apple-files-active-stylus-patent/
======
corporalagumbo
Of course they did.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Salesforce.com CEO's head is still in a 'cloud' - gibsonf1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/02/BU5C13RBT5.DTL
======
theoneill
"his idea of 'software as a service'"
hardly
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Feedback on our website http://www.transparentitsolutions.com - vkkan
We revamped our website http://www.transparentitsolutions.com to help entrepreneurs to build their webapp in 7 days.<p>Would like to receive your valuable feedback about our offering and website .<p>Thanks for taking time to help us to serve my customers better.<p>Regards,
Vijay
======
abcd_f
Domain name is a bit too edgy, it is quite easily misread as "transparent tit
solutions". This certainly needs fixing, because this unintentional innuendo
set a completely wrong tone for anyone clicking the link.
Site-wise - two things.
1\. Where is your portfolio? You can explain how great you are all you want,
but it's all just empty words if I cannot see what you have done in the past
and if it lives up to my own standards.
2\. Every page is a "wall of text", i.e. long lines, plenty of text = visually
boring and requires an effort to stop clicking and start reading. You will
loose quite a few visitors over this. And since you have no examples of your
work, your site _is_ your portfolio and looks fairly bleak.
------
hluska
Hi Vijay...
Thanks for posting your site - for the most part it is quite good, however, I
also have some helpful criticism. Before I get started, I'll tell you a little
bit about my environment. I am using Ubuntu 11.04 and Chromium.
Good stuff first:
\- your site seems quite fast.
\- I like the 'what/why/how' in your main menu.
\- I like your contact form.
And now onto some things that I think you should fix:
\- when you hover over the main menu, it changes the size of the text. This
causes the items to shift to the right. Personally, I find this quite
distracting.
\- if your goal is to serve North America, you should check your copy. Please
don't be insulted, but there are several grammatical errors. Unfortunately, I
find it quite hard to understand, to the point that I would be nervous to send
you a requirements document.
\- the site is a little monochrome - if I were you, I would add a little more
colour.
\- your call to action is in the bottom right hand corner of the page, if I
were you, I would make this a little bit more prominent. I am also almost
positive that if you did a round of A/B testing, you would find that 'Get in
Touch' is not the most optimal phrase for your call to action.
\- The phrase to the left of the call to action is not formatted very well.
Not only is it two separate blocks (when it should be a paragraph), but the
word 'talk' appears just below the #9bb8b9 box
\- You should pay a little more attention to your subpages. Personally, I
don't think the MVP item belongs in your main menu. And 'what', 'why' and
'how' look like walls of text. Frankly, I didn't read them.
My email address should be in my profile - send me a message if you would like
me to check if you have resolved any of the interface problems that I noticed.
It is entirely possible that they are just a quirk of my particular
environment.
Best of luck
Greg
~~~
vkkan
Greg ... Thanks for taking time to provide your valuable feedback and will try
to work on those changes and get back to you
~~~
hluska
Thanks Vijay!
~~~
vkkan
I have made changes to content layouts and bought new domain as well please
take a look <http://www.ileanapp.com> let me know your view
------
pbreit
Sorry, but I really don't like it, especially because you are pitching web
site building services. Everything about the site looks very amateurish. You
don't even have to get to fancy, just much higher quality. For example, here's
a very well respected similar type of company: <http://www.zurb.com>
Also, any information about what this might cost? I've seen people post
similar services on HN before for $5-10k.
~~~
vkkan
pbreit,
You don't like the website or the service we are offering, I have started this
venture in Jan 2010 to build on demand IT Cost Transparency software which
helps CIO's to manage the business side of IT but we run out of cash thats why
we moved to offering web app building service since as a fellow entrepreneur I
love to build things and I will try to rebuild the site with quality and get
back to you.. regarding cost it will be less than 5K thanks for your valuable
time to provide feedback
------
keeptrying
Webapps have to be easy to use and pleasing to the eye. By not having these
features as part of your homepage, it sends a bad signal to prospective
buyers.
Your website is the most important advertisement of your company's abilities.
Its very important that you fix it.
~~~
vkkan
I agree that I am doing rework to reflect what you are saying
------
vkkan
First of all I would like to thank you for all to make my website cool, I have
fixed all the issues you guys reported and bought new domain
<http://www.ileanapp.com> please share your views now
------
Pointsly
Vijay - good idea - but i am not sure anyone is going to take you up on this
offer. Good luck though.
------
MostAwesomeDude
You appear to have made a domain name mistake; "transparen _tit_ ". The site
looks fine.
~~~
hluska
I'm pretty sure they mean Transparent IT Solutions.
~~~
vkkan
Yes we meant Transparent IT Solutions
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
automatic plant watering with voting continuation in different place - cdoern
the creator of Please Take care of my plant has been missing for almost a month now. I know he posted on here about 1/2 year ago informing you guys about his project and you all liked the idea so I though I'd let you know about this update. The community has taken it into their own hands to create a separate subreddit r/takecareofourplants in which the project can continue.I have uploaded my version of the project to this site and since the title is take care of OUR plants, I am encouraging others to upload theirs to the subreddit for voting as well. My system is a combination of arduino and raspberry pi. the people decide if the plant lives or dies and so far everyone has been extremely supportive. the link is below, let me know what you think. if you visit and vote please subscribe!<p>(sorry this submitted twice the other one was not in the format I wanted it to be)
======
cdoern
[https://www.reddit.com/r/takecareofourplants/](https://www.reddit.com/r/takecareofourplants/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What book are you reading? - Sealy
I recently discovered a book from Jessica Livingston, one of the Y Combinator founders. I'm finding it to be a great source inspiration (especially when I get frustrated with coding).<p>I thought I'd to share it with the hackers on here and also ask:<p>1. What books are you currently reading?<p>2. Which book has helped you the most?<p>Jessica's book is called "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days"<p>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590597141
======
mindcrime
>> 1\. What books are you currently reading?
Well, I'm one of those people who has a bookmark in about 15 different books
that I'm "currently reading" but some are higher priorities than others, and
some will never be finished (probably) and others I'll have to start over
since I've forgotten what was happening when I sat it aside, etc. But offhand,
I can think of:
_Crossing The Chasm_ \- Geoffrey Moore - re-reading this one
_The Prime Solution_ \- Jeff Thull - 3rd Jeff Thull book on selling that I've
read lately, and I'll probably reread the entire series when I finish this one
_The New Solution Selling_ \- re-reading this - can you tell I'm starting to
try and move into sales?
_Selling to VITO_ \- more sales stuff.
_How to Create A Mind_ \- Ray Kurzweil
_Godel, Escher, Bach_ \- Douglas Hofstadter - set this aside over a year ago;
about halfway through, will probably finish it, but FSM only knows when
_A New Kind of Science_ \- Stephen Wolfram (see above about GEB)
_Madame Bovary_ \- Meh. May finish one day, may not. Would have to start it
over at this point.
REAMDE - Neal Stephenson - set this aside a while back, but intend to finish
it eventually. Will probably restart from the beginning.
_The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ \- Stephen Gary Blank - I'm kinda in a
perpetual state of reading and re-reading sections of this book.
_The Dispossessed_ \- Ursula K. LeGuin - sat this aside quite some time ago,
will have to start over at some point.
_The Man In The Moss_ \- Phil Rickman - another one that I sat aside for a
while, and may or may not ever bother finishing. Weird, because I usually
really enjoy Rickman's work and just tear through his books, but I got stalled
out on this one for some reason.
>> 2\. Which book has helped you the most?
_The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ \- Stephen Gary Blank.
Also, _The Art of the Start_ by Guy Kawasaki and _Crossing the Chasm_ by
Moore.
Of all these sales books I've read lately, I'm really starting to buy into
this "Diagnostic Selling" stuff by Jeff Thull, so I'd endorse _Mastering The
Complex Sale_ , _Exceptional Selling_ and _The Prime Solution_ by Thull. Also,
_The New Solution Selling_.
------
nekopa
Hacking - The next generation. I'm in the middle of developing my first web
app, so I'm desperately trying to get up to speed with security. I find that
there is a lot of 'I don't know what I don't know' for me with regards to
security and crypto, so I'm using this book as a springboard to get a feel for
the different areas of security I will need to dive into to make some informed
decisions about the tech I use. (I already know not to roll my own security,
but I am sick of making cargo cult decisions re sec, so I am trying to get a
good foundation set up, any recommendations will be appreciated, I may even do
a ask HN post about it)
------
Sealy
Other books that I've found helpful are the many socioeconomics books out
there:
Malcolm Gladwell - Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers Tim Harford - The Undercover
Economist Nassim Taleb - The Black Swan
I enjoyed the Steve Jobs book too, I liked the fact that he believed in what
he was working on (no matter how crazy or disruptive) and saw so much beauty
in perfection. There's a lot we can learn from his persistence and attitude
towards persevering in the face of failure.
And for entertainment, I like profound books: The Alchemist, The Little Prince
------
decasteve
I'm on this Buckminster Fuller:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller#Bibliography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller#Bibliography)
kick lately. Reading everything of his that I can get my hands on. Pretty
insightful and prescient stuff considering he died 30 years ago.
His insights from the 1930-70s seem to apply more to the world we live in
today than the way things were in his time.
------
pg
Cipolla's _Before the Industrial Revolution_ (again).
~~~
Sealy
Hey Paul,
Do the lessons economic history that these books teach still have relevance
today?
Technology (as a term to describe innovation) back then would have a very
different meaning to technology today.
~~~
pg
See the last section of
[http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html).
~~~
Sealy
Thats an interesting read. Getting a technical developer to think as
holistically as you laid out in that essay is a challenge. Its a challenge
that I find very difficult, when I just want to dig into code, I have to
continually tell myself to step back and see the bigger picture.
------
garduque
Finished James Altucher's _Choose Yourself_ over the weekend.
Currently working on _The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness_
------
jlengrand
Currently, the old testament.
I am not church-goer or anything, and still I find it quite impressive the
amount of surprising stuff (good and bad) you can find in there. It's actually
as cool as the Iliad, and you may even find some good advice in there :).
Hey, who said everything had to be around software/startups.
~~~
gadders
I've read some Plutarch, Seutonius, Tacitus (in translation) and always
wondered how the Old Testament measured up as a work of ancient literature.
~~~
jlengrand
I read lots of old greak and roman records too (among others, Sun Tzu was
chinese :)). I am amazed every night how much the old testament can be
different from what I was taught back in school.
Like the "eye for an eye" saying for example. Never taught it would be cited
in the book.
------
auslegung
Currently: 1\. Javascript: The Good Parts 2\. Eloquent Javascript 3\. The New
Testament and the People of God by NT Wright
------
mkhDev
I'm currently reading these books:
1\. Journey through Genius
2\. Principles of Uncertainty by Kadane
3\. The Golden Ticketprint
------
mehmehshoe
Taking a break from tech books and stumbled across...
This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It.
------
alexrson
Code Complete second edition
------
rbkillea
1\. Axiomatic Set Theory by Suppes 2\. Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick
------
dome82
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
------
emansim
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
------
cosmc
Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
------
jeromesalimao
Moonwalking with Einstein.
------
Noel_V
The Great Gatsby
~~~
mindcrime
A woman next to me on the plane yesterday was reading that. I vaguely recall
reading it (or at least being assigned to read it) in 11th grade, but I can't
remember a damn thing about it now. Is it any good?
~~~
jeromesalimao
Yes.
~~~
mindcrime
Cool. Maybe I'll go back and re-read it. I'm pretty sure I actually _did_ read
it back then, but I'm drawing a blank on the story.
That reminds me, I started _For Whom The Bell Tolls_ in 12th grade and never
got around to finishing it. I guess I need to revisit that as well, at some
point.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Just got sued by patent troll – what should I do? - angkec
Hi fellow hackers, I could use some help here. We developed an simple location sharing app 3~4 years ago, and got sued yesterday along with Apple, Google, Verizon, Sprint, T-mobile[1], Glympse[2] by some company called Remote Locator Systems LLC in Texas. They claim that we infringed their patent called "Method and Apparatus for Locating Personnel and Objects in Response to Telephone Inquiries". Any one know what we should do about it?<p>[1] Apple being sued: http://www.macrumors.com/2013/08/28/apple-number-one-target-for-patent-trolls-with-171-cases-in-five-years/, last paragraph.
For everyone being sued, just search for the patent name "Method and Apparatus for Locating Personnel and Objects in Response to Telephone Inquiries" and look at the top 10 results from Google.<p>[2] Us getting sued along with Glympse and 5 other companies: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9alxrfqg8iwcnpa/aries%20app.pdf
======
billybob255
Talk to a lawyer
Here's an article from Monday with some advice.
[http://www.fastcolabs.com/3016290/how-startups-should-
handle...](http://www.fastcolabs.com/3016290/how-startups-should-handle-
patent-infringement-lawsuits)
~~~
adestefan
This is the only answer that is needed for this question. Everything else are
people playing arm chair lawyer.
~~~
Miyamoto
> _Everything else are people playing arm chair lawyer._
Preemptive rudeness. Classy.
~~~
kjs3
The ignorant often confuse direct honesty and factual statements with
rudeness, often to their detriment.
------
FurrBall
Patent law needs to be overhauled. It's getting ridiculous. If you are
successful you WILL be sued by a troll for infringing their "breathing air"
patent.
I don't have advice, only sympathy.
~~~
angkec
Thanks. Funny that we are not even remotely successful with the said app.
Monthly sales of $150 range and it is strictly a hobby app since maintenance
costs around $10/mo.
~~~
salahxanadu
Sell it to them for a million dollars then.
~~~
angkec
Is this remotely possible? Just interested.
------
purplelobster
Just as a curiosity, do these patent trolls mainly target US companies? What
is the environment like for patents and trolls in the EU for instance?
------
epeus
This EFF site is a good resource:
[https://trollingeffects.org/](https://trollingeffects.org/)
------
kjs3
Might want to send your story to Ken White, et. al., at
[http://www.popehat.com](http://www.popehat.com). If they get sufficiently
interested/outraged, they can help set you find an appropriate lawyer in your
area and can publicize your case. I'd also contact www.chillingeffects.org.
~~~
angkec
Thanks buddy! Will give them a try.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Recent Hacks and Two-Factor Authentication - jonstuebe
http://jonstuebe.com/2012/08/25/recent-hacks-and-two-factor-authentication/
======
lutusp
A typical sentence from the article:
> However, I’ve noticed more and more that friends who I know practice good or
> even excellent password practices have had there [sic] logins compromised
I wish people would learn to write in advance of posting articles, not
afterward.
> friends who I know
That would be "friends". Yes? Unless you have friends you don't know.
> practice good or even excellent password practices
"Practice ... practices". Yes, I think we get it.
> have had there [sic] logins compromised
People who only hear words, who never read or write them, famously cannot
distinguish between the homonyms "their" and "there". A similar problem comes
up with "site|sight|cite" and a few other common words -- but apparently
they're not common enough to learn the difference.
And why point this out? Because learning to write _before_ posting articles
online is a sign of respect for the reader. It's identical to sloppy
programming -- the originator rushes the job and saves himself a few minutes,
but the program then wastes the time of thousands of users.
Ironically, pointing out bad programming methods is perfectly acceptable, but
pointing out bad grammar is almost universally disparaged. To me, the two
cases seem perfectly symmetrical, but this is a minority view.
~~~
jonstuebe
Thanks for the criticism. While I definitely should have caught some of the
errors, you obviously had no trouble understanding the meaning of the article,
which in my opinion is why you were there in the first place reading. I'm not
condoning bad grammar, but at the same time, I never called myself a
professional writer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lousy web design trends that are making a comeback due to HTML5 - choult
http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/62335-14-lousy-web-design-trends-that-are-making-a-comeback-due-to-html5
======
cscheid
Aside from this being about design and not HTML5, is anyone else not surprised
they didn't include "550 social +1, like, tweet, twat buttons"?
Look at that website: there's a social banner, a social footer, a social
sidebar, animated gifs for ads. Make that 15 lousy web design trends.
~~~
moe
I keep wondering: Does anyone actually use these social buttons?
I tried a few times but the experience has always been so terrible and
inconsistent that I've long reverted to simply sharing the good old copy/paste
way.
~~~
Cthulhu_
> I keep wondering: Does anyone actually use these social buttons?
The suppliers of said social buttons do; every time you see one while you're
logged into FB / G+ / Twitter, a hit of you visiting that site is registered
at said parties, and they can all, thanks to the prevalence of these sharing
buttons, track your internet usage.
~~~
jakub_g
This should be regulated somehow (yeah, I know, I sound like an 19th century
guy). But probably lobbyist won't give up on that easily. I have disabled all
that crap in my adblock, but there are millions of people who are not that
savvy / aware etc.
My friend from Germany told me that in some (but not all) the pages, there are
dummy social buttons loaded by default, you have to "enable" them. Try any
article at [1]. It actually displays grayed placeholders only [2], and things
are fetched from G/T/FB only when you click it - you can see in HTTP console.
[1] <http://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de> [2] <http://i.imgur.com/hkQXEiX.png>
~~~
networked
>there are dummy social buttons loaded by default, you have to "enable" them
Neat. This looks like a very reasonable way to go if you decide to have social
buttons.
Is there a ready-made solution for this?
~~~
tomkinstinch
> Is there a ready-made solution for this?
<https://github.com/filamentgroup/SocialCount>
I'd be interested in learning about good alternatives.
~~~
pserwylo
Another is <https://github.com/mischat/shareNice>. They look like they do
pretty much the same thing: Serve the icons themselves, and just make them a
link to the respective services.
For example:
\- <https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=[Url> to share]
SocialCount looks like it also cares about how many times a link has been
shared, and uses a server-side script to figure that out. That seems like a
nice approach if you really want that info, because it doesn't let the social
service track the end user.
shareNice seems to have a wider range of services that it supports.
------
pkorzeniewski
What strikes me most is how websites are visually getting more and more
minimalistic and at the same time they're loading and working slower. For
example The New York Times [1] layout is as simple as possible (basically text
only with some images), but it loads 20 JS files, 13 CSS files, makes ~200
requests and uses ~14 MB of memory on load.
[1] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
~~~
STRML
It's hard to believe that a site with that kind of traffic & resources hasn't
even bothered to concatenate and minify its JS & CSS. Most of the JS files
still have comments. Bizarre. They should know better.
~~~
jedahan
I like to think they are trying to preserve the spirit of being able to right
click->view source and learn a thing or two. Geocities + view source did spark
early interest for myself in coding.
Maybe sourcemaps will help with that in the future.
~~~
robmcm
Perhaps adding a commented link in a minified file to a full version? Wouldn't
be hard to automate.
~~~
ChrisLTD
I've added that to a site I'm about to launch. Seems like a good compromise.
------
ericcholis
So many issues with this article.
What on earth does a 404 page have to do with HTML 5?
Hidden navigation on <http://orangesprocket.com/> is a design decision. Is it
HTML 5 related because it uses CSS3 animations? This effect could have been
achieved in any Javascript framework for quite some time.
~~~
whatshisface
_"Hidden navigation on<http://orangesprocket.com/> is a design decision."_
Auto-playing midi music is also a design decision.
I agree, calling it html5 is a bit off, but the complaints are justified.
------
Wintamute
Who are these people that want the web to be some sort of sterile, perfectly
conformist, UX's wet dream? Flash is still warm in its grave, and people are
already blaming it for crimes that HTML5 hasn't even really made yet. Don't
get me wrong, when the function of a website is to perform a task or convert
users into paying customers then by all means streamline the crap out of it.
The sites that do that well will succeed, the ones that create an unusable
mess will fail, simples. But don't go around pointing fingers at everyone
trying to make something innovate or different. Make no mistake, a lot of the
well accepted web2.0/native app tactile/animated interface elements we take
for granted now were birthed during the frenzied experimentation of the mid
2000s Flash era. I for one am occasionally delighted to visit a site with an
off the wall animated interface, tiny fonts and crazy navigation. It's food
for thought, sometimes inspiration. Yeah, maybe they got it horrible wrong,
but its creative.
And besides, this guy is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. 404 a
"HTML5" problem? Auto-playing vidoes a "HTML5" problem? Low contrast colour
schemes a "HTML5" problem? Has he even got the slightest clue what "HTML5" is
as opposed to other HTML versions? All the examples in that article are just
shit sites, nothing to do with "HTML5". Gimme a break, this is just link bait,
what a joke.
~~~
anigbrowl
I want the web to provide access to a wide variety of information. I would
much prefer the option to consume that as I choose, not to have everything
gift-wrapped by force. An awful lot of design is a distraction from the
content it is supposed to present.
Look, you wouldn't like it if every different document you opened or site you
looked at took it upon itself to restyle your desktop and rearrange all your
Photoshop preferences to suit the author, would you? Likewise, you don't think
that Wikipedia would be improved by allowing every editor to restyle pages in
Myspace or Geocities fashion, do you? Of course not, once you've configured or
become familiar with a particular environment, consistency supports
productivity.
Some of us want to navigate the web for content, without all the branding and
UI inconsistencies. I read a variety of specialist web forums, for example,
not unlike HN except that they're mostly running PHPbb or something along
those lines. They all look different, with different layouts and so on, many
of which are UI catastrophes. I would _love_ to just download the semantic
information and have a nice consistent UI _of my choice_ that ran on the
client side instead of consuming far more bandwidth than the content I am
there to read.
~~~
Wintamute
When you hit somebody else's server, use their bandwidth and download their
stuff I'd say its only fair that they at least get total control over how it
displays and behaves by default in a browser. You're totally free to not hit
that server if the presentation of the content offends you, or alternatively
use a RSS reader or similar.
I'm not arguing against a semantic web, but I will argue in favour of people
being able to present and serve their content in any way they see fit. One
page JS web app? Fine. 100% Flash microsite? Fine. Crazy Chrome only
WebGL/NativeClient art experiment? Fine. Streamlined standards compliant site
conveying great semantic value? Also fine. We need all of these. People can
vote with their feet and we achieve progress. Like humanity the beauty of the
web is the freedom and variety it offers.
------
fdej
The trend that annoys me most right now is that image thumbnails never just
point to the large image: instead they pop up some JS-based overlay that
obscures the whole page. There are several issues with this:
* Quite often, for whatever reason, the overlay takes seconds to load (much longer than just loading the image)
* If the image takes long time to load, I cannot just put it in a background tab and continue browsing the page with the thumbnail while I wait.
* I cannot open several images simultaneously
* To close the overlay, I have to hunt down an 'x' button (for example pressing Esc usually does not work). The 'x' is likely camouflage dark grey in order to look good against the dark grey background, and placed creatively to make it difficult to find. Sometimes, the 'x' loads two seconds later than the overlay itself, to make sure the browsing experience becomes as frustrating as possible.
* Not uncommonly, the JS is so poorly coded that the overlay half-loads in my browser and cannot be closed at all without reloading the page. With JS disabled, trying to open the image might not work at all.
* If I react instinctively to the overlay by pressing backspace, it doesn't close the overlay; I get sent back to page before the page I was on.
At least the web designers who do this overlay crap are increasingly using JS
for it, which is an infinite improvement over Flash.
~~~
apendleton
At a bare minimum, people using lightboxes for images should have the link
actually point to the image, and have the click handler both open the lightbox
and suppress the default click behavior. That way, opening the image in a new
tab (with a middle-click or right-click+context-menu) still works as expected
for users that want to do that.
------
lakey
Author here. Thanks for all of your comments.
To clarify:
1\. The article clearly isn't an attack on HTML5 itself, but of designers who
happen to be building HTML5 sites with a lack of concern for the user
experience. The gap between design and UX has hugely narrowed in the past
decade, and I don't want to see it open up again. It is a plea of sorts, and I
apologise if I've mislabelled the headline.
2\. The article is a response to the many posts I see that hold up these sites
as being "inspirational examples of HTML5 design". I'm afraid that I don't
think many of these sites are inspiring, given the UX issues. And yes, they
could have been built in HTML4, but they're using HTML5 / CSS3. Hence the
headline, though no doubt I could have chosen a clearer one.
3\. Yes, our site has all manner of issues, though I've yet to see it in a
compendium of 'inspirational' sites. The roll-up is there because sometimes
business goals sometimes kick UX goals in the face. The roll-up should not
appear immediately and should not obscure all of the screen (please suggest a
more elegant solution).
4\. 404 pages. A lame point. My bad.
<returns to bunker>
------
mnicole
Ah, yes, the infamous "trend" list that only shows one example per anti-
pattern and it's some random never-before-seen website where clearly they
couldn't afford a better designer. Outside of the whole part where HTML5 has
nothing to do with any of these, nor are they "comebacks".
Trends I'm waiting to be over: people without a clue about the web writing
about the web and people who upvote articles without reading them.
~~~
mdaniel
As a small aside, I often upvote the HN submission if the discussions are
valuable -- independent of the actual linked content.
------
chimeracoder
How about forcing keyboard shortcuts that are impossible to disable?
The two biggest offenders of this are Google Groups (the new layout) and
wired.com. Both have mappings for "H" (capital), which I use to go back a page
(via Vimium).
However, they decide instead that this should _hide_ all the content and leave
me on the page.
In the case of Wired.com, it sends me to a random article.
Worse, Google Groups refuses to load at all if I disable Javascript, telling
me I _must_ activate Javascript in order just to load a mailing list archive.
~~~
KaeseEs
I hate sites that intercept '/', which I normally use for searching text on a
page. If I wanted to use your search function I'd click in the box. I'm
looking at you, Gmail and Bitbucket!
------
charonn0
I really hope the trend of using lightbox-like login popups (e.g. [1]) goes
away very soon; they tend to break Firefox's password manager and add
absolutely nothing of value.
[1]:
[http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f351/charonn0/vtlogin_zpsb...](http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f351/charonn0/vtlogin_zpsbd44ed4c.png?t=1363194084)
~~~
marssaxman
Hate those things. Just when we finally got popups squashed dead, asshole web
designers found a way to reinvent them, and now they're even harder to kill.
------
dizzystar
Under the "Contrast Fail" is my single largest pet-peeve of form design. Once
you click over that form, the text goes away and you may not know where you
are.
Please use labels, people. I have no idea why he didn't include that in this
article.
~~~
muglug
This. Unless your form is incredibly simple (e.g. signup or login) you
shouldn't just rely on placeholder text.
Apple has a nice solution to this issue on their checkout pages - labels
placed on top of inputs, only disappearing once text is entered.
~~~
peterjmag
I still think inline labels are a bad idea, regardless of placeholder
behavior. To quote myself: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4642146>
------
jplur
Was hoping to see my biggest pet peve, altering the browser history. So many
big news sites have image slideshows embedded into an article that do this.
It's a horrid experience to hit the back button 15 times to go to the previous
page.
------
grimtrigger
How are any of these (except maybe the autoplay) due to HTML5?
~~~
damoncali
Replace "HTML5" with "increasing use of facny JavaScript and CSS3". It's just
a generalization for the benefit of the semi-technical.
~~~
yuhong
Personally I consider even the buzzword a misnomer:
[http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/07/why-html5-buzzword-
is-m...](http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/07/why-html5-buzzword-is-
misnomer.html)
------
tokenadult
"A decade ago the rise in popularity of Flash steered many web designers down
the wrong path. It wasn’t the fault of the technology, but of the people using
the technology. The same thing applies to HTML5: just because you can do
something doesn't mean you should. I'm all for innovation, but innovation
should not be regressive."
Yes. The first job of someone putting up a website new design or redesign is
to do usability testing. Can a user who reaches your site by a search engine
result or some friendly inbound link accomplish a relevant task upon reaching
your site? If not, why not? As Steve Krug says, "this isn't rocket surgery,"
[http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy-
Yourself/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Surgery-Made-Easy-
Yourself/dp/0321657292)
and if you aren't investing in making your website usable for users, related
to some purpose you had when putting up the website in the first place, you
might as well do without having a website.
~~~
iron_ball
On the other hand, most of this rogues' gallery is digital agencies or sites
made by digital agencies. Sadly, those businesses market to unsophisticated
customers on the basis of flash and dazzle, and usually any attempt at user
advocacy is met with requests _for_ flash and dazzle. The target audience of
this kind of site is not the end user who visits the site; it's the manager
who signs off on the invoice. Those managers very seldom have long-term
engagement growth as an evaluation metric.
~~~
th0ma5
Thank you for posting this. I both always wondered what I was thinking about
such sites, and also had problems capturing the mindset of the audience when I
wanted to make sites like this!
------
wladimir
I especially agree with regard to loading screens. For example some blogs have
this "gears" animation before they display their text. I'm not sure who ever
came up with thinking that might be a good idea... even if the site is slow
that it required a few seconds of loading, just showing text and images
incrementally means that you can start reading immediately instead of waiting
for the "funny" animation.
~~~
acqq
Not "some" but first and foremost Blogger from Google. Awful.
------
gallerytungsten
This bit alone makes the article worth reading.
"Make no bones about it, HTML5 design is a massive, musty elephant in the
room, and it is about to charge. In its path lies a flailing, unarmed Jakob
Nielsen, backed up with legions of user experience professionals, who are
gently sobbing."
------
cshenoy
A lot of these are just poor UI/UX considerations that aren't necessarily
HTML5 related.
It's funny how this article is featured on a site that has a fixed container
at the bottom taking up almost a quarter of my viewport.
------
LandoCalrissian
I have a design trend I would like see go away, how about the "Join FREE as a
Bronze member" bar at the bottom of this website.
------
pseut
I can ignore the auto-playing video well enough, but jesus, why anyone decided
to bring back auto-playing video WITH SOUND is beyond me.
------
joshuasortino
These trends are not because of HTML5. They are because of poor design
decisions.
------
ebbv
Decent criticisms but I could make a list about 50 items long of the problems
with their own website. Glass houses, etc.
------
lutusp
It's ironic that this article about terrible Web designs is hosted on a site
with a terrible Web design.
------
anigbrowl
There's money to be made in an open design platform coupled with low-cost
curated data feeds. I like being able to customize and tweak how things look
on my machine; I loved running Enlightenment on my Linux desktop 10 years ago.
And I love and am prepared to pay for good content because I'm a bit of a news
addict. But I can't _stand_ the amount of junk on most news websites. Not just
adverts - sidebars, useless statistics about which stories are most popular,
social buttons, comment dungeons, pictures of journalists, and about ten other
varieties of cruft...to say nothing of the poor quality content that I'd like
to filter out. I envision something midway between NNTP (the protocol, not the
usenet community) and a Bloomberg terminal, but at reasonable cost and with
high standards of currency and curation (which is where Wikinews fails
currently).
Users choose (and may pay for) the presentation layers that make most sense to
them; one person may choose something redolent of newspaper, another person
likes their news with Star trek theme, a third inexplicably likes their news
delivered by Clippy, the office assistant. Designers offer a wide variety of
different presentation and navigation tools to suit the whims of consumers
instead of suffocating in an unwinnable race to discover the one format that
rules them all from within the bowels of of a media conglomerate; serious
journalists get to concentrate on information-gathering, reportage and quality
of references, without having to fill an onerous fluff quota ('It's daylight
saving time again, and that means rewriting last year's rewrite on daylight
saving time!')
_grumble grumble get off my lawn etc._
------
tterrace
Here's a throwback to the bad old "best viewed in 640x480" days from pcmag:
<http://i.imgur.com/TJEMjvy.png>
------
antidaily
Bad contrast. Right. That contrast attribute should never have been approved
in the spec!
------
Peroni
Back when I worked for a digital agency the number of requests I used to field
from non-technical clients asking us to 'update' their sites by creating a
carbon copy of their flash animations in HTML5 was staggering. That in itself
wasn't really the issue, the issue was the misconception amongst non-techies
that the role of HTML5 is a universally accepted flash replacement.
~~~
purephase
While accepting that it is not appropriate for every situation, I believe that
the HTML5 canvas/video/audio/svg/dragdrop/storage elements are specifically
targeted at replacing flash/silverlight so I can see how non-technical folks
might get confused.
------
thehigherlife
His best point is "Don’t use technology for the sake of it." This sentiment is
true for design, but its core idea can be applied to pretty much anything. It
is important to think about what you're trying to accomplish and use the
technology to aid in that, not the other way around.
------
tiredoffps
"But animations are a distraction and should be used with caution"
Agreed. It's like designers found out they can move things and are animating
the crap out of everything.
They're forgetting what's important. The call to action button is the main
focus and animating some random pictures get's the user distracted.
------
just2n
The complaint about "images for text" is only valid if the developers behind
the site didn't actually think about the problem. You can have this cake and
eat it too. Provide the same content in text as you do in images, and Google
will be happy to show that in search results, even if it's not visible to your
average desktop user. If you care about accessibility at all, you've already
solved the problem.
One thing that's horribly annoying, though, is searching for text, landing on
a site that has the text you searched for in images or otherwise mutilated
with CSS, and having no way to highlight it for copy/pasting. For pulling that
one, there's a special place in web hell for you, right next to IE 6.
------
Kronopath
> ...I’ve never used this site before, so immediately asking me to create a
> free account is absolutely pointless...
Kind of ironic when the very website this article's on has a bright red rising
banner asking me to "Join FREE as a Bronze member".
Relating to the content of the article, I find it interesting and rather
frustrating how these days pop-up windows are making a comeback. These were so
annoying that every major browser at the time came with a pop-up blocker, a
trend that continues today. Except nowadays the pop-ups are little
HTML/Javascript doodads built into the webpage itself, which means pop-up
blockers don't work and will likely never be able to.
------
okamiueru
What does the 404 error have to do with HTML5?
~~~
bjudson
Or using images for text? Many of these have very little to do with HTML5.
Unless it's really about people abandoning Flash and bringing bad design
habits to HTML. But even that doesn't explain the 404 "trend."
------
JungleGymSam
I didn't know you couldn't make small fonts before HTML5. Very informative,
this.
------
pyalot2
I agree with a lot of the points, but I'm taking a limited exception to
loading screens.
Sure, most of the time in ordinary websites there isn't a point. On the other
hand, there is now a class of "website" (such as games, demos, productivity
tools etc.) more broadly in the category of "web application" that do need to
load a bunch of resources, they can't run before they don't have them, and
they will include a loading screen, for good benefit, too.
So the answer to loading screens is really: it depends, and not by default no.
~~~
wladimir
Eh, sure, a loading screen is perfectly OK if you have a game or demo or
something. But that's the exception not the rule. For forums, blogs and news
sites and such it's absolutely a no-go.
------
SonicSoul
here is some timeless web design advice that i wish did make a comeback in
html5
<http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html>
------
dennisbest
This guy has ads all over his page. Pointless social icons. A fixed footer.
Captcha. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
------
Yhippa
How about the absolute "use our other stuff" bar at the bottom of their page
which shrinks the viewable page content?
------
mgcross
"Images used for text" - Ok, what am I missing here? I see fewer and fewer
sites using image text every day. And the linked example (weesociety.com)
appears to use images only for photos. SVG logo? Is that a problem? Even SVG
for the SM icons.
"...but most people do not use iPads to visit websites" Hmmm.
------
aw3c2
On the left, text as rendered on the submitted url. On the right, text as
shown as example for "Tiny fonts" in it. <http://i.imgur.com/H6gDIZz.png>
Both are perfectly readable and big on my screen.
------
kabdib
Warning: Some of the linked-to sites are hosting malware.
Huh . . . is this another bad HTML5 trend? :-)
~~~
eksith
Confirmed it happened to me as well..
Specifically on the "Dubious animation" section kikk.be ( DO NOT CLICK ) :
<http://kikk.be/2012/home.htm>
------
Meltdown
The web design feature I hate the most is when a site freezes the right or
left hand column, after I begin to scroll the page...ggrrrrr!
------
peachananr
Although some of the points aren't really related to HTML5 but these are
annoyance that we all can agree on, should go away.
------
sujeetsr
This website looks like Guy Fieri designed it.
------
seivan
I am still waiting for marquee to be trendy :)
------
gesman
Most of these lousy designs were invented and successfully used to irritate
countless users way before HTML5 :)
------
danielhunt
"Lame popups" - interesting how this is mentioned mere seconds after I dismiss
a lame popup.
God, how I hate those things
------
aakash
Add to this- websites unnecessarily sticking table headers, navigation menus,
sidebars (gmail!).
------
CHsurfer
Speaking of lousy web design trends...
This page is unviewable on my Opera Mini browser.
------
countessa
dodgy popups that encourage you to "join Free as a Bronze member" :/
------
jQueryIsAwesome
Linkbait in its maximum expression... plus "Get our free", is-this-a-
link?-game, "Social buttons", "Get our free", "Follow us in timewastter"...
now those are some lousy web design trends.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Five.js gives you five - orf
https://five.js.org/
======
vmasto
Please can you make the async version return a Promise. It's 2017 for cryin'
out loud!
five.asPromised?
~~~
Uberphallus
Yes, please, it's 2017, nobody wants to block all I/O waiting for an int.
------
shizcakes
So, I realize this is a joke, but there's a small silver lining here IMO. This
is potentially an interesting way to illustrate to new or non-programmers just
how many ways there are to slice any problem. If 5 can be creatively
represented so many ways, imagine how many ways a more complex business
problem can be implemented?
------
daw___
I did not know you could get an [https://<your-project>.js.org](https://<your-
project>.js.org) address for free, thanks! `high ${five()}!`
~~~
jackdcrawford
You could have used five.high() here ;)
~~~
throwanem
five.tooSlow();
------
gregjw
Finally, a worthwhile JavaScript library.
------
madeofpalk
related:
[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-
anchor](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-anchor)
[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-100](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-100)
[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-
clap](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-clap)
[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-badminton-racquet-and-
sh...](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-badminton-racquet-and-shuttlecock)
[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-black-left-pointing-
doub...](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-black-left-pointing-double-
triangle-with-vertical-bar)
...I'm sure you get the idea
------
lozzo
I know some people who write excellent JS libraries, submit their work on
GitHub, post their work on HackerNews and others and get either unnoticed or
collect a handful of stars. It's sad to see that five.js has more than 800
stars on GitHub and it's documented like if it was of any value
~~~
taneq
It's got 800 stars because it's funny. And it's documented seriously because,
if it wasn't, it wouldn't be as funny.
~~~
fiatjaf
You are right. People tend to think of these unfunny things as funny. That's
why 9gag and other services are crowded with people making and sharing mostly
idiot jokes.
~~~
krapp
>People tend to think of these unfunny things as funny.
Humor is entirely subjective. If someone thinks it's funny then, by
definition, it's funny.
------
throwanem
"Elvish" is Quenya; Sindarin is unrepresented. This must not stand.
[https://github.com/jackdcrawford/five/pull/332](https://github.com/jackdcrawford/five/pull/332)
------
fiatjaf
Ok, this is a joke. But why? Why would someone waste so much time just to make
a stupid joke like this? The left-pad as a service joke at least had some
context.
~~~
pivotal
IMO you don't need a reason for something like this, it's just fun. We all
spend a lot of time solving problems with software and I believe most of us
neglect that you can make stuff just to make stuff. I wrote an angular
directive that prints out ascii butts: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/pw-
butts](https://www.npmjs.com/package/pw-butts), I doubt anyone will use it for
anything, but I enjoyed making it and it's fun that it exists. If it helps,
think of it as "Art".
------
jmkni
Are there Typescript definitions?
------
cjCamel
How come
five.english() // Five
But
five.french() // cinq
(lower case)?
------
Existenceblinks
I'd name it a polymorphic five?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Window management for Mac - paolomaffei
Ok, I feel dumb.
I've put many hours into this and found nothing, yet.<p>When i was using Windows I had this little tool called WinSplit Revolution.<p>What it did was letting you divide your screen into how many and of how much size you choose "virtual monitors".
You set one time of you want to divide your monitor, then everytime WinSplit is opened the monitor is automatically divided into Virtual Monitors.<p>Screenshots: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=winsplit%20revolution&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1045&bih=499<p>I'm now using a 30' which i want almost always divided into 4 equal size "virtual monitors" (plus my mbp 13' those will be 5 1280x800 virtual monitors)<p>Now I've switched to Mac OsX and can't find anything that does just this efficiently.<p>I tried Divvy but I found no way to divide my screen into arbitrary "virtual monitors", i need a couple of clicks to select a 3x3 space on a 9x9 grid.<p>Before starting coding something like this can you tell me if you already know of some software that does window management like this?
======
pietrofmaggi
Take a look at Window Flow:
<http://mostadvantageous.com/optimal-layout/>
or may be Mercury Mover:
<http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/>
------
signa11
using a proper window-manager e.g. xmonad might be helpful, personally i use
fvwm2.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
California's Insurance and Land Use Regulations Make State's Wildfires Deadlier - Bostonian
https://reason.com/2019/10/30/californias-wonky-insurance-and-land-use-regulations-make-the-states-wildfires-deadlier-and-more-destructive/
======
tomohawk
> California legal doctrine that holds utility companies wholly liable for
> fires caused by their equipment, even when they weren't negligent and
> followed all state safety regulations.
This is the case that established unlimited liability for PG&E regardless of
any determination of negligence on its part or staff.
[https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-
appeal/1223894.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-
appeal/1223894.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zelle users are finding out the hard way there’s no fraud protection - deegles
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/16/zelle-users-are-finding-out-the-hard-way-theres-no-fraud-protection/
======
ghshephard
Most of the article was pretty good up until the close:
_And as word gets around that Zelle and the banks are not helping people who
were scammed, it will ultimately damage Zelle’s reputation and send users back
to PayPal, where buyer protections exist._
This isn't "damaging" Zelle's reputation - you should _never_ use Zelle (or
Venmo) for this type of transaction. Asking your bank to "help" is like asking
the US government for a refund when you mail an envelope full of cash to some
anonymous person.
~~~
zuminator
On one of Zelle's site pages, it states: "EASY. FAST.SAFE. DONE. Forget
running to the ATM or mailing a check. With Zelle, there’s a new way to move
money. Backed by the nation’s leading banks and credit unions, you can send
and receive money with peace of mind and without the hassle."
So, two problems here. It's not "safe." It safely arrives at its destination,
but for most people, a safe money transaction is one that's protected from
fraud somehow, which this is not. And it's not "backed" by banks so much as it
is backed by your bank account. Again, backed by banks sounds like fraud
protection. I don't think there's anything wrong with Zelle. It sounds like a
useful service. But unless they are sanguine about these kinds of problems
occurring then they ought to make it very clear to not send Zelle to a
destination you don't 100% trust. That the only guarantee here is for
guaranteed delivery of your cash and nothing else. So that's not quite the
same as mailing an envelope of cash, which I know from personal experience as
a lad is inherently unsafe even if the destination is your best friend's
house.
~~~
ghshephard
Safe in the sense that me sending money doesn't expose my bank account to
being ripped off. We have a huge problem in the office right now in that we
don't have any mechanism to pay each other digitally for things like lunch -
seriously! A lot of the office feels really weird about giving their banking
credentials to Venmo (even though it's pretty popular here in Ann Arbor, MI)
and a bunch of people think paypal is shady (I use both of them, but I'm
probably a little more open to risk).
Zelle sounds like it will be exactly what we've been looking for - a safe way
to send cash to each other, with the exact same risk profile of _cash_ \- that
is, I give you my cash, and you have my cash, but nothing else.
I 100% agree with you though, that the banks need to make it clear that this
is to be used to send money to friends, and family - not strangers - unless
you are okay with strangers just taking your cash. Poor communication on their
part.
~~~
tzs
> We have a huge problem in the office right now in that we don't have any
> mechanism to pay each other digitally for things like lunch - seriously!
Have you considered running an internal credit system? Those who pay for
other's shares of a given lunch get credits for those, and those whose lunch
is paid for get debits.
When a group of people go to lunch, the person with the persons with high debt
should pick up the tab.
Once a week or once a month or something, people should bring cash to settle
their debt, with the cash then distributed to those with credit.
We almost did that at an office I worked at...but got bogged down in
bikeshedding other features. In particular, our biggest lunch problem was not
settling the bill. It was agreeing where to go to lunch. So some people wanted
the lunch manager to also handle that, and wanted to do it in a way that was
fair.
How to do it fair is not obvious, and no one could agree on the solution.
~~~
helper
We used splitwise to do this at work for while. Its designed for splitting
roommate expenses, but ended up working pretty well for accounting for who
should pay for the next lunch.
When someone would leave the company we would settle up with cash.
------
djsumdog
Zelle exists because the US government hasn't mandated free person-to-person
transfers like nearly every other country on the planet. It tries to be a
private initative to allow for electronic transfers.
That being said .. it's still just a virtual check. If you write a real check
to someone and they cash it and then don't give you what you ask for, you do
have to get that person or entity arrested or take them to court somehow.
Even if Zelle was an official US federal reserve system (which it really
should be and not this hacked together bank program), I think you'd still have
the same exact issue.
Judging from the comments even Venmo appears to have the same issues, even
though it's owned by PayPal. Their parent company PayPal has some protection
because there's that buffer that exists in the PayPal account before it goes
to your bank account (although I though Venmo had this too?) so they can
recover money from that layer, but not always when it gets transferred all the
way out.
~~~
sitharus
It’s also a difference of expectations. I live in a non-US country where
escrow services never took off and consequently nobody expects fraud
protection from financial service providers. The banks cover unauthorised use
but not authorised transfers for fraudulent reasons. That is dealt with by the
police.
PayPal has set some interesting expectations for what a service provider
should cover.
~~~
ltrcola
I'd argue that it's not just PayPal though, although they've played a part for
sure. Credit cards in the US are ubiquitous and offer a very high level of
fraud protection that consumers are used to.
Of course, that fraud protection (and the multiple points & cash back systems)
are all covered by overhead in the system. Merchant fees are quite expensive,
although the consumer never usually sees them except for small things like
cash discounts or minimum transaction amounts at small businesses. There have
been some interesting court cases about the ability for merchants to pass
those fees onto their customers.
------
ikeboy
I've been scammed in reverse by the precursor to zelle, quickpay. I accepted a
transfer and released goods, then the transfer was reversed.
I was told multiple times by chase reps that transfers were not reversible
once initiated, but they never reimbursed me even after I filed a complaint
with the CFPB. It wasn't enough to be worth suing over.
------
otakucode
Well, no fraud protection other than, you know, the law. It's still quite
illegal to defraud anyone, especially "over the wire". Since Zelle is all cozy
with the banks I'd expect there wouldn't be too much pushback when the police
ask who was responsible for some fraud...
~~~
guelo
Most police departments or prosecutors are not going to spend any time on your
$200 concert ticket.
~~~
eadmund
Perhaps they ought to spend time on actual crime (e.g. a $200 ticket) rather
than non-crimes like which particular natural substances someone chooses to
burn and/or ingest? It seems to me that police departments could earn a good
return on investment simply by, y'know, chasing down criminals who defraud
others. Maybe I'm a starry-eyed optimist.
------
refurb
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I send a scammer money through Venmo (which
Zelle is competing with) the money is gone.
How is this different?
~~~
detaro
You are wrong, which is why Venmo is used to scam sellers instead of buyers:
[https://www.thebalance.com/venmo-
scams-315823](https://www.thebalance.com/venmo-scams-315823)
~~~
refurb
_The user agreement specifies that the service is for “payments between
friends and people who trust each other,” and that there is no buyer or seller
protection._
That sounds the same as Zelle, with the exception that Venmo _might_ help you
if scammed. Sounds like you're very unlikely to get help on the Zelle
platform.
------
klipt
Zelle is _great_ for things like splitting rent. Just don't use it to buy
things from strangers.
~~~
HedgeSparrow
This makes sense to me as a Venmo equivalent, but doesn't Chase have a
QuickPay feature that uses Zelle? Is it more secure from there or corner-
cutting?
~~~
JoshGlazebrook
Their quick pay is literally called "Quick Pay with Zelle". Seems to be the
same thing.
~~~
rexf
That's interesting. They can include anyone that uses Chase Quickpay in their
"Zelle" metrics. Mind you, I'm referring to people who use QuickPay in the
Chase app and not those who have downloaded the newer Zelle app.
------
DrScump
PayPal... which has long been the standard for these sorts of anonymous transactions
No sane seller would use PayPal for such a transaction. PayPal offers _no
seller protection whatsoever_ for items that are not shipped via a common
carrier and with tracking.
~~~
paulie_a
Except if you sell on eBay. I have a friend that is routinely ripped off and
eBay and PayPal basically tell him to fuck off. He does a 500k in revenue
through them and just has to suck it up. Both those companies are scum in my
opinion
~~~
DrScump
The only eBay difference is that eBay effectively forces you to accept
"returns".
------
mirimir
It strikes me that Zelle is basically repackaging of wire transfers. And banks
have always been reluctant to reverse wire transfers. Because, I think,
they're _intended_ to be irreversible, and executed between knowledgeable
parties.
~~~
sizzle
I believe it's ACH payments
~~~
mirimir
OK, but aren't those just as readily reversible as checks? I've read that
banks readily reverse even cashier's checks. Which was the basis of a common
Craigslist scam. Maybe it's just the Zelle doesn't care to be bothered.
~~~
sizzle
Every transaction you make with a credit card is an ACH payment behind the
scenes, so yes they are readily reversible. The banks are hands off with Zelle
though, any payment is like giving call, they have no duty to reverse funds
over disputes between you and receiver unlike PayPal type services. You have
to trust who you are giving money to.
~~~
RodTheHotShot
Zelle is for PERSONAL payments only. It's for sending money to friends and
family and people you trust and know. It's free for both the sender and
receiver BUT you won't get any protection. Once it's sent, it's sent.
Don't people read? It's on Zelle's website "send money in minutes to your
friends and family". I also asked my bank about that and got told there's no
protection unless somebody hacked into your account. Yet, if you sent the
money, it's your responsibility.
Nonetheless, I do accept Zelle for payments and also pay for goods BUT I know
the people I deal with and it's mostly below $100. You can check out this link
below. [https://www.zellepay.com/support/im-unsure-about-using-
zelle...](https://www.zellepay.com/support/im-unsure-about-using-zelle-to-pay-
for-goods-or-services-from-someone-i-dont-know)
BTW: PayPal really sucks if you receive a lot of personal payments. I got my
account frozen because PayPal got nosy and wanted to know more about 15
transactions. It took me a while to get my account unlimited. So, that's why I
use Zelle for personal payments and use PayPal only for purchases. I would
ditch PayPal but I don't have any option for now.
------
gesman
Banks don't care about customers but care a lot about being compliant with
plethora of regulations. Non-compliance for a bank means the lights can a will
be turn off by a governing bodies, of which are many.
Hence - offering a money transfer service within the bank infrastructure and
services without consumer protection - is highly likely is a violation of some
regulation. Or more than one even.
Supplement the complaint with a proof of "misleading marketing practices" \-
and this adds couple extra zero's to potential damages.
Someone just need to dig it deeper and then push the button where it hurts.
Problem solved. Regulators will be on consumer side.
~~~
imajes
Except that'd probably fall into the CFPB remit, which has just been
significantly reduced in scope and veracity due to the current
administration... :(
~~~
gesman
Sending bank fails to disclose irreversability of a transaction implying that
typical consumer protection takes place.
Receiving bank fails to detect simple fraud pattern: Within short period of
time: New account opened, Zelle transfer received, Money withdrawn.
Let it rinse and repeat for long enough - and class action will take place.
------
paulcnichols
I guess its all about expectations. If this were cryptocurrency we'd be
blaming the victims.
------
ryanferg
Funny story. Someone, let's call him Mr. Unlucky, sent me $1700 via zelle a
few months ago. I called my bank and asked them about it and they had no info.
About a week later, a guy emails me saying he meant to send the money to his
land lord [email protected] but instead sent it to me, [email protected].
Both me and this unlucky dude called the banks, called Zelle, etc trying to
get the charges reversed. No luck.
So lucky for this unlucky guy, I had been receiving John.D.Doe's email for
about a decade on and off. I had sent the guy mistaken emails and sort of had
a dialog with him. I knew he was in real estate. I emailed him and he
confirmed that this unlucky guy was indeed renting from him, and his rent was
this $1700 amount. So I took a leap of faith that this guy hadnt been playing
a long con on me and forwarded the money. It was reckless and probably stupid
but it wasn't my money and I felt bad for Mr. Unlucky. Zelle was no help, had
no protection, and allowed this silly mistake to be made. Mr. Unlucky sent me
a nice note and we both commiserated about the flaws in Zelles systems. I
don't think I would use them.
------
mancerayder
People below are rattling off lists of alternatives, PayPal (fees), Venmo
(requires another account setup), Google Wallet, Apple Pay, and so forth.
I'd hate to be that guy, but the cryptocurrency blockchain technologies have
some potential for something none of these other technologies have, which is
elimination of vendor lock-in. It's annoying to have such a variety of places
where I have username and passwords to apps which store my account
credentials. I forgot LevelUp which I use for (it turns out) just ONE
coffeeshop. I have accounts on all the others (linked to my bank account)
minus Venmo because I guess I decided, enough is enough.
The account proliferation due to inefficient competition and lock-in of
vendors is absurd. So in comes Zelle, perfectly positioned to solve that
problem, but for 'friends and family' only? My tenant pays me through it, and
I don't think we're related.
Banks are slow, conservative dinosaurs allowed to constantly play CYA with
consumers.
~~~
tzs
You don't need a username and password to pay by PayPal. For Apple Pay you
only need to use your username and password when setting it up, if I recall
correctly. When you use it to pay you only need your fingerprint (or face if
you have a phone with FaceID?).
Cryptocurrencies (at least the currently popular ones) only sort of match what
Venmo does from your list. The rest do things that cryptocurrencies do not do,
and that most consumers want.
PayPal (if you pay with a credit card), Google Wallet, and Apple Pay provide
you the protections that a credit card provides. Seller doesn't provide the
goods? Call your card company and they reverse the transaction. If you have a
PayPal account as a buyer and pay through a balance on the account, I think
you still get protection.
With Bitcoin and I think the other popular cryptocurrencies in actual use for
real world purchases you don't have protection. Like Venmo (and Zelle) they
are like sending cash, except unlike Venmo and Zelle cryptocurrencies are
essentially a foreign currency which adds some headaches to using them.
Zelle doesn't say it is for friends and family only. What they say in their
FAQ is:
> Zelle is a great way to send money to family, friends, and people that you
> are familiar with such as your personal trainer, babysitter, or a neighbor.
> If you don’t know the person, or aren’t sure you will get what you paid for
> (for example, items bought from an on-line bidding or sales site), we
> recommend you do not use Zelle for these types of transactions.
Presumably your tenant is familiar with you, and so Zelle is fine for him to
use.
It's essentially equivalent to paying in cash. They should say that somewhere
prominent on their site. That would probably clear up a lot of confusion, as I
think most people in the United States have a good intuitive understanding of
when you should and when you should not use cash.
------
amluto
I don't know enough about this to comment authoritatively, but I would expect
KYC/AML rules to apply here. If I send money via any means to a bank account,
I think the bank should be able to produce information about the identity of
the account holder in response to a subpoena. If they can't, regulators might
be rightfully annoyed.
Also, shouldn't Regulation E apply to Zelle?
------
sametmax
So some people use a payment platform that looks like using cash, don't use
any of the common sense they would using cash, get scammed and complain ?
It's PEBCK in it's purest form.
Zelle is secure, as way to wire money. People can't put a gun in your face and
still it while you send it.
It's exactly what it advertises.
I don't see how anybody could be confused by "easy, fast, secure, done" here.
------
valuearb
The last time I looked the iOS app had the worst user reviews I’ve ever seen.
When I looked at it a few months ago it had a 2 Star average, but I just
checked and found its shot up to 4 stars. Curious, I read the user reviews and
...
Just as bad as ever. Can anyone say “gaming the app ratings system”?
Specifically to Apple?
------
forkLding
So Venmo doesnt have real fraud protection either? Any stories of Venmo users
being scammed?
Interesting to see that the only real form of fraud protection offered by
Venmo is a warning in their copy.
~~~
analogmemory
Oh yeah they've been having the same problems.
[https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16681292/venmo-scam-
ipho...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16681292/venmo-scam-iphone-
payment-fraud-andy-mai-paypal)
------
dragontamer
Zelle is basically a thin wrapper over ACH transactions. In fact, my
understanding is that Zelle is basically just "One-day ACH". I never really
considered the fraud aspects, but clearly a modern payment processor needs to
have a proper escrow involved somehow. ACH and Zelle don't look like they'd do
the trick.
Dwolla was a good middleman for this sort of thing, but it seems like Dwolla
pivoted to different services unfortunately.
Overall, this is why the USA has credit cards. A Credit Card company is the
middle-man that you trust to handle these issues.
~~~
loeg
Even ACH has a clawback mechanism for fraudulent transactions. It's ridiculous
Zelle does not provide the same protections.
~~~
dragontamer
I don't think its "ridiculous". Cash, Wire-transfers and Checks (especially
Cashier's Checks) do not really have a reversal mechanism IIRC.
Once a Cashier's check goes into someone's account, there's basically no way
for it to come out.
But the thing is: we all know these details already. When working with
Cashier's checks, we know its insanely dangerous and to keep track of those
little paper-slips. It seems like the general public doesn't know that about
Zelle yet.
~~~
ianburrell
Checks and cashier's checks can be reversed. It is common scam to send forged
cashier's check, have victim deposit, and send some of the money by
irreversible wire transfer. When the bank, or account holder, discovers the
fraud, it will be reversed and the victim is out the money.
~~~
djrogers
A _forged_ check yes, but not a valid one. That is not a direct comparison as
these stories are not about forged Zelle transfers.
------
deftturtle
I've never used Zelle and was quite annoyed when they were injected into my
banking data. Very shady nonsense from the big banks. I ended up closing my
Bank of America account for other reasons, but suffice it to say BofA is
horrible. All major banks are engagd in rampant thievery with their high fees
and perverse incentives. The Wells Fargo scandal demonstrates that perfectly.
------
microcolonel
Federal Reserve Note users are finding out the hard way that there's no fraud
protection.
------
trophycase
LOL Zelle. Never heard of it until a month ago until a massive market push
bythr massive banks started shoving it down my throat. I've never wanted to
avoid an app more
------
ravenstine
Whoa, whoa... people use Zelle and Venmo to buy things??? Everyone I know uses
those to send money to friends.
Banks not protecting mah fraud... better switch back to Western Union for my
Nigerian prince money!
------
adamsanders
Zelle's biggest hurdle will be growing their community. Currently, there's
insufficient feature differentiation from Venmo to warrant migration. None of
my friends are on Zelle, so there's no reason for me to be.
~~~
briankirby
Alternatively, I never started using Venmo because I never trusted a third
party to have my banking data. Now I use Zelle because it's backed by my bank,
and since basically everyone I know now has it by default from their bank, I
have seen pretty high adoption rates with my friends.
~~~
majormajor
> I never trusted a third party to have my banking data
How do you pay bills? I know some banks offer their own bill pay services, but
I've never tested them out, and use the utilities' sites.
~~~
deecewan
Reading this makes me realise how good Australia is in this regard.
We have 'BPay', which every* bank supports from within their apps, and almost
all bills support. We have instant intra-bank transfers and next-day inter-
bank transfers.
Additionally, the big 4 banks (yup, we have just 4 big banks) have mobile
payments, so you can link your mobile number to an account and receive
payments into it. It's painful if you're with different banks, but the net
result is that no-one* here uses PayPal, et. al, to transfer money to each
other.
And now, we've just had PayID roll out, which is instant payments based on
email or phone number to any of the banks (I think most banks in AU are
participating, but it's backed by our Reserve Bank), which is a huge game
changer and pretty much negates the need for a third-party to do this for us.
~~~
henrikschroder
> Reading this makes me realise how good Australia is in this regard.
I'm from Sweden, I started paying bills through my internet bank over 20 years
ago. And it was never difficult or a big deal, because the existing giro-based
bill system that _every_ vendor uses and has been using since the 1960's,
slotted right into it, with zero technical integration required from the
payees.
Moving to the US was like stepping into a time machine when it comes to
dealing with banks and bills, it's ridiculously backwards. And Americans
generally have no idea how behind they are. It's so fucking frustrating having
this discussion every single time.
~~~
briandear
LOL. Spend some time dealing with French banks and then we can talk about
American banks. France is a place where people actually write checks for
things and you have to physically visit your specific branch to accomplish
certain transactions. The concept of “branch banking” hasn’t made it to France
yet. Even withdrawing cash from a bank requires an appointment (if you want to
withdrawal over a few hundred Euros for instance.)
French banks are a nightmare conpared to American ones.
------
rhizome
I think it's a little odd that they chose a name so close to the name of the
Nazi in the movie "Marathon Man."
~~~
JumpCrisscross
Zelle roughly translates to "cell," as in a room or a component or a group of
people. (It's also a town near the Austrian border.)
~~~
rhizome
It's not the same, no, but visually it's close.
------
toomuchtodo
Just like there are no “buyer protections” with checks or handing someone
cash.
It’s an expectations issue, not a technology issue. Can’t get your money back
with Western Union or TransferWise either if you’re not making intelligent
decisions.
Edit: _Do not send payments to a stranger unless it’s through a payment system
that offers you protection. That is not the role of person to person money
transfers._
~~~
scribu
> It’s an expectations issue, not a technology issue.
Nobody said it was a technology issue.
~~~
toomuchtodo
I believe my point is Zelle can’t fix users doing stupid things.
~~~
shkkmo
Yes, they can. They can make the correct use case clear on their website and
in their UI. A warning could be added when sending payment that there is no
fraud protection.
I blame both the banks and Zelle for implementing this poorly.
~~~
majormajor
Why wouldn't "add in fraud protection since that's many people's reasonable
default assumption" be the most desirable thing for them to do?
Why do we let people get away with such crappy ideas, and then just blame
users or implementers (UI designers, in this case)?
~~~
scott00
Because fraud protection costs money, and it's useful to have an electronic
payments medium that doesn't have it, and therefore avoids those costs.
~~~
majormajor
So if Paypal can give it to me for free, per the article, the answer just
seems to be "we should tell everybody as loudly that we can that this is a
shit product."
~~~
toomuchtodo
PayPal takes 2.9% and change off the top. Banks do not charge for person to
person transfers. There is no skim for expensive fraud prevention to come out
of.
~~~
majormajor
PayPal doesn't take that off the top for person-to-person. They haven't in...
five years? I don't know. It's been a while. You used to have to do some sort
of "it's a gift" thing, but I haven't seen that in a long time.
[https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/What-are-the-
fees...](https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/What-are-the-fees-for-
PayPal-accounts-FAQ690)
> There are no fees within the U.S. to send money to family and friends when
> you use only your PayPal balance or bank account, or a combination of your
> PayPal balance and bank account.
~~~
ianburrell
Paypal doesn't provide fraud protection for free friends-and-family payments.
There is scam where sellers will request select friends-and-family payments
both to avoid the fee but also to avoid the protections.
~~~
majormajor
Ah, thanks, that's not obvious from the original article. Or from Paypal,
either, to me. Very obnoxious, that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Apps Status Dashboard - mkuhn
http://www.google.com/appsstatus
======
snprbob86
I love the transparency! As far as I am concerned, the more of this, the
better.
~~~
mkuhn
Yeah I think the transparency is a big step for Google and they are countering
a lot of criticism with it. The other question is if it will help to get
people confident in the stability or if the currently three incidents
displayed for the GMail Service are more of a turn off.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New MacBook Pro Taken Apart by iFixit - tech_h
http://www.geek.com/tech/new-macbook-pro-taken-apart-by-ifixit-found-to-contain-not-very-repairable-computer-parts-1678141/
======
grzm
Why not just submit the iFixit article itself? The submitted post doesn't look
like it adds any value.
[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Function...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Function+Keys+Late+2016+Teardown/72415)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Gossip’s Cafe - A Cafe on the Internet - cookingoils
http://gossips.cafe
======
hans1729
That's cute! I like that emojis can be links :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tiny Frogs and Giant Spiders: Best of Friends (2015) - yummypaint
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/tiny-frogs-and-giant-spiders-best-of-friends/
======
yummypaint
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKgQj9b0b2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKgQj9b0b2w)
video starts around 16 seconds in
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
When The Drones Come Marching In - perlino
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/29/drones/#comments
======
alexwestholm
Decoupling criminal, crime and consequence is truly a scary proposition. It's
pretty obvious that lowering the risk and emotional consequences of committing
a crime makes it a lot easier to commit to committing. Just look at Anonymous.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Good place to publish a security model - Yoric
Dear Aunt Irma,<p>We've been working for a few years now on a very nice web development platform with a considerable array of security defenses. It's now high time to document & publish the security model. Any thoughts on <i>where</i> to do this? Project Blog? Academic Journal? OWASP Project Page? etc.<p>With coding love,<p>Yoric
======
tptacek
How are your security defenses different from those in OWASP's ESAPI project,
or (even simpler) in Rails?
Where you should publish depends on how interesting your contribution is.
Your contribution would need to be very interesting indeed to make it through
peer review. Given the odds, I probably wouldn't spend the time writing a
formal paper.
~~~
Yoric
Parts of the defenses implement the ESAPI project. But some address very
different attacks and/or application scenarios.
~~~
tptacek
OK... keep going...?
------
yid
I've been wondering the same thing. Journals are mostly out of the question
unless you've got time to spare. Conferences might be better if you've got
something novel that can get through peer review, _and_ have a few months to
spare.
Perhaps consider writing it up from a generic point of view, adding references
where necessary, and post a link on HN and security mailing lists? Or submit a
paper to arXiv?
~~~
Yoric
In this case, I believe that there's enough novel stuff to make it a
conference paper, but not the time to make it through peer review.
> Perhaps consider writing it up from a generic point of view, adding
> references where necessary, and post a link on HN and security mailing
> lists? Or submit a paper to arXiv?
I'll think about it, thanks.
~~~
tonyarkles
My experience with conference papers (albeit limited) is that it doesn't
actually take that much effort to make it through the peer review process, so
long as you've got something novel and interesting, and you've taken the time
to find the correct context for it (correct conference, correct related work,
etc).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Study: High Frequency Trading reduces volatility, enhances price discovery - yummyfajitas
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CBoQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.futuresindustry.org%2Fptg%2Fdownloads%2FHFT_Trading.pdf&rct=j&q=%22High%20Frequency%20Trading%20and%20its%20Impact%20on%20Market%20Quality%22&ei=5oqLTNKFMoSdlgf2rIVi&usg=AFQjCNG8fXG9NBOKYcEPysY_-pzF07zS4g
======
pasbesoin
FYI: It links to a PDF.
EDIT:
Google Docs Viewer URL:
[http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.futuresind...](http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.futuresindustry.org%2Fptg%2Fdownloads%2FHFT_Trading.pdf)
Front page:
HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING AND ITS
IMPACT ON MARKET QUALITY
Jonathan A. Brogaard ∗
Northwestern University
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University School of Law
July 16, 2010
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Website design builder - rocgf
The website trend nowadays seems to be multiple horizontal sections, starting with a large photo as a header and continuing with various sections like "Who we are", "3 easy steps", "Pricing" etc. The only example I can think of is https://www.pagerduty.com, but basically pretty much every website that's presentation-focused looks like this.<p>I am absolutely convinced that I saw a tool on HN (one of the "Show HN"s) that would allow you to easily create such a website/template. You could interactively add rows and, for each one, you could specify what type its content should be: 3 icons, 2 icons, two tabs, whatever. It looked pretty neat and I could really use it right now. I think I spotted it around 1-2 months ago.<p>Can anyone remember what that was, please?
======
anngrant
When it came to building my own website, I was surfing the web in search of an
ideal solution for me. And I was lucky to discover this article -
[http://www.beautifullife.info/web-design/10-best-
ecommerce-b...](http://www.beautifullife.info/web-design/10-best-ecommerce-
builders/) . I personally opted for Bigcommerce as a constructing tool for my
online store. It perfectly met my needs.
------
philiphodgen
[http://launchaco.com](http://launchaco.com) possibly?
Edit:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13126228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13126228)
~~~
rocgf
Precisely! Thanks a bunch!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Modern text editor like Acme? - Philipp__
Text editors have always been fetish for me. Currently I am on Emacs 25, but prior to it I used Vim for few years. So I was reading about some old Unix text editors, and then I saw Acme which looked pretty interesting to me. Is there any modern text editor that is inspired by Acme, very minimal, with the same UI? Or is plan9port the only option to go (macOS).
======
brudgers
Link to Acme editor: [http://acme.cat-v.org/](http://acme.cat-v.org/)
I'm not sure what 'modern' means in the context of a text editor...unless it
means IDE...and I don't think that's what it means here.
Anyway, I doubt that there is an Acme knockoff that's about as good as Acme
for the same reasons that there are not Emac's knockoffs that are about as
good at being Emacs as Emacs. With text editors, the improvements tend to be
extensions of the platform [and thinking about Eclipse, I suppose that's the
case for at least some IDE's: which I suppose means that thinking about IDE's
as text editors might have some merit].
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best guides (books/talks) on best practice web app security in 2018 - noir_lord
I'm curious what resources you folks have found.<p>I'm not talking about low level (but still ridiculously prevalent) stuff like simple SQL injections.<p>The reason I'm asking is I have an itch I want to scratch but it requires handling medical data (in the UK not the US) and I want to think very carefully about whether I want to do it.
======
petra
you could go fully high-level and use a low code application platform that
gives you regulatory compliance(HIPPA for US for example):
[https://www.appian.com/industries/hipaa-
compliance/](https://www.appian.com/industries/hipaa-compliance/)
There are others of course.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: Successful Impromptu Chat on Drop.io w/ Customers - spencerfry
This may interest some people. About an hour ago I posted on our Twitter account (twitter.com/carbonmade) for people to come chat with us using drop.io’s new chat functionality. I just threw up a simple drop and invited people to come join. We got ~30-40 or so people throughout the session.<p>We invited people to share information about themselves, share their portfolio, asked them if they had any questions/comments/concerns, etc. We chatted it up with them for a good hour or so. Everyone loved it. It was really fun and people seemed to have a good time being able to get real-time responses from us.<p>Give it a shot and I think you’ll enjoy it!
======
amoeba
This would be considerably more useful if you would write up your motivations
for doing this and follow it with what you learned from the users and why you
think this may or may not be an effective tool.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hackers Are Abusing a Bug in Firefox to Take over Computers - fortran77
https://www.pcmag.com/news/372978/hackers-are-abusing-a-bug-in-firefox-to-take-over-computers
======
vstuart
"... To stay safe, Firefox users should update to version 72.0.1; enterprise
users on Firefox ESR should be on version 68.4.1. Update by going to the
"About Firefox" option in the browser, which is under the "Help" tab for
Windows users and the "Firefox" tab for Mac users. It's also possible the
browser may have already initiated an automatic update."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google PageRank explained as a Ruby function - adelevie
http://www.rubyinside.com/google-pagerank-in-five-lines-of-ruby-3313.html
======
jrockway
What's the legality of firing someone over unsubstantiated rumors?
~~~
adelevie
What do you mean?
~~~
jrockway
Hmm, I clicked a few links from that page and ended up at an article about
Giles Bowkett being fired because someone said he was a child molester.
~~~
adelevie
Maybe you should start a thread on this topic. I honestly have no idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which is the best OS for programming? - hello-coders
======
arkj
It depends on what you are programming. If you are a student look no further
than Linux. It is open, it is free, has a lot of documentation and it has the
liveliest community.
------
kurinj
Most popular Linux distributions, MacOS, and the major BSDs support QEMU & the
tools you'll need.
Use whatever you're most comfortable with.
------
PaulHoule
I sit in front of a Windows machine, I usually deploy to Linux.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Encrypted UDP? - pjungwir
Is there any way to use UDP for private, authenticated messages? Suppose your use case is like statsd, where you can tolerate the occasional lost message, and you don't want to block on network activity--you just want to fire off the message and keep going--but you <i>do</i> want your messages encrypted, and you want to make sure the receiver can trust the message is from you. Someone else should not be able to replay your message and have the receiver accept it. An attacker should not be able to break the encryption after sniffing n messages. Is there any existing protocol that provides such a blend of features? I've seen DTLS, which is close, but has poor support on Windows and in scripting languages. Is there anything else out there? Thanks HN!
======
Bino
DTLS is probably one of your best options. Protecting UDP is hard. It more or
less requires you to implement "all" the features DTLS has (like sequence
numbers). Depending on the application, one could argue that your protocol
maybe shouldn't implements encryption (wouldn't be the first protocol not to
do so). And it should be left to the user to protect the traffic in their
network. In some sense it's better not to try (and be open about it) than to
fail.
~~~
pjungwir
Thanks for your opinion! I sort of agree. I'm trying to understand the DTLS
RFC, and it sounds like DTLS (and maybe anything else that avoids replay
attacks) requires you to set up a "conversation" initially, which sort of
reduces the appeal of UDP. So lifting that work out of the protocol into an
outside context, which the user could set up or not, might be best.
------
ahazred8ta
Variations on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-
time_Transport_Pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-
time_Transport_Protocol) \- mainly used as ZRTP, or DTLS+SRTP, or SRTP with
manual key setup. Related: port knocking utils use encrypted/authenticated UDP
datagrams; there are secure chat / instant messenger libraries using UDP; VoIP
uses secure UDP. a minimalist approach is [http://www.the-control-
freak.com/ClntSrvr/AES/AES.htm](http://www.the-control-
freak.com/ClntSrvr/AES/AES.htm)
~~~
ahazred8ta
"poor support on Windows and in scripting languages" Try the libsodium / NaCl
/ pynacl family of crypto libraries, which handle UDP, work on Windows, OS X
and *nix, and plug into any scripted language that can talk to a C api.
------
conductor
DTLS -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Secur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Security)
------
kogir
Just use IPsec, and then use UDP normally.
~~~
Bino
"IPsec" doesn't always protect you against replay attacks for encapsulated UDP
packets (unlike TCP which protects itself).
~~~
kogir
I thought that was the point of the Authentication Header Sequence Number and
the sliding window? If you can tolerate occasional lost packets you can
require they only increase and achieve complete protection, no?
~~~
Bino
Yes, you're absolutely right about the existence of Seq. Numbers in IPsec.
However, it might not always be enabled, that is if you're using manual keying
(and not IKE).
[http://www.ietf.org/mail-
archive/web/ipsec/current/msg05871....](http://www.ietf.org/mail-
archive/web/ipsec/current/msg05871.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hyperloop Would Cross Entire State in 30 Minutes - ry4n413
https://news.thomasnet.com/featured/hyperloop-would-cross-entire-state-in-30-minutes-
======
IntronExon
It had better cross in a straight line, or it will arrive filled with vomit.
I’m so tired of hearing about hyperloop, or “Vac-Trains” as they were known in
the 1800’s. Like Magic Leap’s original claim of FSD it sounds good to people
who don’t understand the physical and physiological limitations. If you do
understand them, it’s just a terrible joke.
Drawing a vacuum deep enough to confer benefits in this case? Not easy,
energetically expemsive, and requires extreme engineering.
Safety. So many aspects of safety.
Remember that fine tolerance engineering you did? Hope it wasn’t somewhere
seismically active...
Cost. Oh god the cost.
Your turning radius is going to be _huge_ unless you want to see what people
look like after 30 minutes of projectile vomiting in a small space.
And more.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I Sleep In Late, And I’m Tired Of It - tommaxwell
https://medium.com/pursuit-of-happiness/720a7d173812
======
anigbrowl
Get a dog. You could also consider a cat, but they're more complicated.
~~~
dylangs1030
I'm going to go ahead and confirm that a cat will not help. I have 2, have had
up to 4 at one time, and when I've slept in, they're helpless.
A dog on the other hand is substantially...well, bigger.
~~~
anigbrowl
I have 10, and yes I meant the number between 9 and 11. This is equivalent to
an alarm with a short snooze function, albeit one that involves scratching and
sandpaper-like abrasion from feline tongues, and which can actually result in
sleep deprivation instead of excess somnolence.
Dogs fortunately come in a variety of sizes, but IME they're a bit more
regular than cats, plus they're more prone to express gratitude than merely
issue demands.
~~~
dylangs1030
Haha, that was funny. I can't believe you have 10! Do you breed them? I'll
have to defer to your experience then.
I've never had any of mine (I've had 6 total) scratch me to wake me up. They
also fail to wake me up by making noise. The worst that ever happened was my
kitten biting my nipple.
I have found that younger cats like to play at the most inconvenient times for
_falling asleep_...but once I'm there I've never found a mewing or even
fighting cat to wake me.
I've only had one dog, and they definitely do seem to appreciate people more,
but cats are much more interesting, I think.
~~~
anigbrowl
No, I had a crazy cat lady neighbor that abandoned 9 of them (in stages), and
#10 was an impossibly cute kitten that showed up because there were other cats
here. I've recovered several lost cats for neighbors, they tend to gravitate
to my yard since it has a bunch of contented cats.
It's a long story. My wife and I are trying to turn it into a children's book.
~~~
dylangs1030
Impossibly cute kittens are the best. I just recently got a purebred
ragdoll...beautiful coat and bred to be extra affectionate. If you're ever in
the market to buy/adopt another kitten on purpose, you might check out
[http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragdoll](http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragdoll) \-
they're more hyper, but they have these piercing blue eyes and a white/gray
coat. They also don't mind how people pick them up...they'll pass out stomach
completely exposed in your arms, for example.
But on the flip side, you could make a cool Kafka-esque horror story in which
you awake one day to find that you had inexplicably become, to your terror, a
_cat-lady_...with mewing cats around you and all.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Redesigning the Windows Logo - llambda
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/02/17/redesigning-the-windows-logo.aspx
======
ender7
I've actually grown to like the monochrome treatment of the Windows 7 logo:
[http://www.seeklogo.com/images/W/windows-
logo-C2E55C2526-see...](http://www.seeklogo.com/images/W/windows-
logo-C2E55C2526-seeklogo.com.gif)
It looks quite nice on the back of monitor screens, for example.
The extreme fake parallax in the new logo just ends up making it look
unbalanced to me, like it's about to fall off my screen. I understand if they
want to go all "Swiss" on the next logo...but if so, they shouldn't have had
any parallax at all. When I see it, I don't think "Metro", and I don't think
"Windows", I just think...apartment building.
Also, see commentary on Brand New:
[http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/with_win...](http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/with_windows_like_these_who_needs_enemies.php)
~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Yeah, they're going somewhere nice with it but it's just not there yet. It
actually looks like the logo hates its font and is turning away from it. It's
not an iconic symbol by itself and is too plain, boring, and generic to become
one later on. If they decide to use it I'm sure it'll stick eventually, it's
just right now, it doesn't look done.
------
m0nastic
I've never seen the original Windows 1.0 logo before (or maybe it's just been
so long that I've forgotten), but I actually think that's far and away the
best logo they've ever had.
~~~
nirvana
Interestingly that logo accurately represents the way "Windows" worked in
Windows 1.0. It didn't have overlapping windows. So the lines within the
windows represent the dividers of the UI between the window areas. You could
make one window bigger by moving a divider over, making all the windows on the
other side of that divider smaller. There was no concept of windows being in
front of or behind each other (like there was on the mac from the beginning.
Microsoft obviously started on windows late compared to the mac, and was quite
behind at the 1.0 release.)
~~~
literalusername
You speak about tiling window managers as if they were already an anachronism
in 1985. Yet today, some of us continue to prefer them, and they remain in
active development. What good is a window that's partially covered? I either
want to completely see it or I want it to be completely hidden from view. The
parlor trick of overlapping windows is useless to me.
~~~
seldo
I constantly use overlapping windows.
If I'm tailing a continuous log, I don't need to see the full text of each
line, I just need to see when the pattern changes, which I can get by having
the first 10 characters peeking out from behind the left of my active window.
My to-do list is big but really the first three words or so are enough to
remind me of what each item is; it's behind and to the left of the tailing
log.
Finally, I have a few corners of various other apps I'm using poking out all
over the place. It's much easier to switch to the window I want by grabbing a
corner than alt-tabbing or any other method.
~~~
literalusername
Fair enough. It's important to have different paradigms for different work
styles. You use whatever works best for you. My point was just that tiling WMs
were not anachronistic back in '85.
~~~
moe
Part of me hopes Windows will rediscover tiling, considering their new-found
love for tiles.
In the unlikely event they execute on that I might actually be tempted to try
windows again - for the first time in 10 years.
~~~
gcr
Will this be how Metro works?
------
RomP
Hmmm, I think I've seen it somewhere. Indeed:
<http://stocklogos.com/topic/past-and-future-famous-logos>
~~~
joedev
The GAP one is especially funny.
~~~
Roboprog
Yeah, but not as good as the 2015 Nokia.
------
MartinCron
_2\. It was important that the new logo carries our Metro principle of being
“Authentically Digital”. By that, we mean it does not try to emulate faux-
industrial design characteristics such as materiality (glass, wood, plastic,
etc.)_
This is in stark contrast to everything Apple has been doing lately with
address books and calendar on iPad trying to look like cartoonish versions of
real materials. I prefer "authentically digital"
~~~
r00fus
This logo also ties in with the Metro minimalist look.
------
zaidf
_Paula asked us a simple question, “your name is Windows. Why are you a
flag?”_
I have never really asked myself that question as a consumer. I have never
felt "confused" that the logo is NOT a window. I have just generally liked
Windows, the operating system, and have become fond of the brand after 15
years of use.
This assumes that your logo MUST be a _literal_ representation of your name.
I'm curious to know why. Without it, it just seems like an opinion of someone
named Paula.
~~~
artursapek
It's a stupid question. Logos aren't depictions. They're icons meant to
represent something, not describe it. I never questioned the old logo. I
actually liked it a lot more than the sad attempt at modernism they're
announcing in this article.
It's disappointing that Microsoft doesn't seem to understand this essential
design rule. They should read Paul Rand.
_“Should a logo be self-explanatory? It is only by association with a
product, a service, a business, or a corporation that a logo takes on any real
meaning. It derives its meaning and usefulness from the quality of that which
it symbolizes."_
~~~
george_morgan
The design was by Pentagram, not Microsoft. They are certainly more than
familiar with the work Paul Rand…
~~~
rbanffy
Your designs can be only as inspired as the pointy-haired boss who approves
them.
------
gfodor
Let's put tons of effort in to make a clean, simple, beautiful logo. And then
let our lawyers stamp a honking (TM) on it to ruin it.
~~~
Zirro
It annoys me too. Is there anyone here who knows if they are required to put
it there to protect their brand, or if it's entirely optional?
~~~
culturestate
There are some legal advantages, but it's largely optional. Note, for example,
that Apple doesn't use it anywhere other than their written materials.
------
joezydeco
_"By that, we mean it does not try to emulate faux-industrial design
characteristics such as materiality (glass, wood, plastic, etc.)."_
Is "materiality" code for "skeumorphism"? Either way, it's a big middle finger
to Apple.
~~~
literalusername
Ever since Windows 3.1, I viewed the faux 3D window decorations as an
insulting waste of my processing time. The Windows logo was merely an
extrapolation of MS's attitude that "Now that we have such powerful computers,
we can merrily waste all that power with this increasingly bloated but
supposedly impressive OS."
That attitude was not unique to them, at all. Apple has been equally guilty of
it for longer than Microsoft. It's that attitude that (in part) led me to move
to Linux a decade ago, where I could merrily work without suffering the
overhead of a GUI.
This new Windows logo is, in my view, the sexiest thing I've ever seen come
out of Microsoft. I stopped caring about Windows long ago, except to note that
minwin sounded awesome (but never shipped?), Windows 8 Server could run
headless (What an innovation!), and PowerShell actually does seem brilliantly
innovative (although it's unfortunately integrated with all that .net crap).
Now if this logo accurately reflects their change in attitude, to a minimal OS
that stays out of my way, then I've got to say I'm a fan. They're unlikely to
win me over from Arch Linux, but for once Microsoft seems to be on the right
track. At least with respect to that logo.
Edit: I'm amazed that this post is bouncing between 0 and 1 points. In a
discussion of the new Windows logo, I described why I like it so much. If you
disagree, feel free to comment. Down-votes should not be used to express
disagreement.
~~~
icarus_drowning
I'm upvoting just for your edit, as I think disagreement via downvotes is a
bit childish and all too common.
Having said that, I doubt Microsoft is moving in a direction an Arch Linux
user would call "minimalist".
~~~
literalusername
Thanks, icarus_drowning. Having reread my post a day later, I realize that it
could have been a lot better written. I suspect you're right, just based on MS
history, but that logo certainly looks like a fresh mentality. It's simpler
than the Arch logo, fwiw.
------
flyosity
Hey there, Shetland Islands: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_Islands>
~~~
tripzilch
IT'S NOT A FLAG
------
icarus_drowning
What makes the new Windows logo appear so weirdly revolting to me is the fact
that it is minimalist, but not distinctive. Contrast this to the simplified
Apple logo that one sees upon booting OS X-- minimalist, but entirely
distinctive.
The new Windows logo is a weirdly parallaxed set of rectangles. Nothing
specifically diacritical at all.
EDIT: I think this is why the monochrome Win7 logo that has been posted here
is better. It is distinctly _Windows_ , building on decades of brand identity,
and a truly unique and iconic. It is almost as if the "flag" shape that
Microsoft seems so eager to drop is perhaps their greatest asset.
They've missed the point: minimalism for the sake of minimalism isn't
"better". Simple is simple. Beautiful is beautiful.
------
Ryanmf
"Your name is Windows. Why are you a flag?"
I wonder how much they paid to listen to an expert ask that question when it
was likely asked, and ignored, internally for years.
~~~
aggarwalachal
not really a flag... i guess they look at something like this for "window"
[http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs15/f/2007/113/9/d/Old_Window_by...](http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs15/f/2007/113/9/d/Old_Window_by_ofeliq.jpg)
~~~
bitwize
It was a flag.
I guess it's supposed to connote triumphalism. As in "yay, it finally
shipped!" The NetBSD logo, itself based on a cartoon of daemons hoisting a
flag like at Iwo Jima, has many of the same connotations.
Back in Windows 3.1, by going to ProgMan's About box and Ctrl-Shift-Clicking
the Windows logo X amount of times, you could trigger an "easter egg", one
screen of which was a flag waving with the Windows logo on it. Another of
which was a credits scroll with a cartoon figure that had one of four faces:
Gates, Ballmer, the Windows dev lead at the time (I forget who but he had a
beard); and a creepy looking teddy bear (some sort of internal mascot for the
Windows division).
Good times.
------
Too
> We have evolved from a world of rudimentary low resolution graphics to
> today’s rich high-resolution systems
...but we still haven't learned to not save single-colored pictures as jpeg.
Aaa my eyes!
------
aggarwalachal
I actually like the Windows 1.0 logo...
------
cschmidt
The Pentagram blog also has a writeup on the new logo:
<http://pentagram.com/en/new/2012/02/new-work-microsoft.php>
including a nifty animated logo
~~~
Corrado
I really like the video as it actually gives some "context" to the window and
its relation to the text. I just wish this view was more transparent in the
static version.
------
martingordon
And here's Apple's rendition of the Windows logo (used for Boot Camp):
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanchao/127292839/>
------
cpeterso
I think they should have retained the distinctive red/green/blue/yellow colors
of the Windows logo. And skipped the parallax.
The Metro look has lots of flat, colorful squares that are just crying out to
become a Windows logo. See this Windows 8 screenshot, for example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_8_Developer_Previ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_8_Developer_Preview_Start_Screen.png)
~~~
polshaw
Agreed -- it would have been to metro what the windows 1.0 logo was to it's
tiled windows. If the colours were deemed too garish, then perhaps varying
lightness of one colour.
------
demione
Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely
reimagine" their OS every time they iterate? We're talking about an OS, not a
video game. I get that they're trying to innovate, but it comes across as
self-deprecating.
I love how Apple has maintained uniformity in their UI across the past few
iterations of OSX. It's just one less thing to worry about relearning,
allowing me to get my work done easier.
~~~
untog
_Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely
reimagine" their OS every time they iterate?_
They don't, though. Vista was, cosmetically, a big leap from XP, but in terms
of actual UI it barely changed at all. Start button is still in the same
place, maximise, minimise, etc. All still there.
I do really appreciate the little touches MS add, actually. Drag a window to
the top of the screen to maximise, to the left to use 50% of the screen, shake
the window to minimise all the other ones... I use that stuff every day, and
miss it when I go home to OS X.
~~~
doublextremevil
I use better touch tool to do pretty much exactly that on OSX (along with
multitouch gestures) <http://blog.boastr.net/>
------
alanfalcon
This is great. Not the logo itself, that's just... Something. But it's a very
good idea for the clean break from previous Windows logos which were getting
more and more complex. And now if you see any of those colorful logos, you
will think "oh, that's old", so it's a subtle push to upgrade. Unlike Vista
which was like, "oh that's the same old OS wrapped in a fake Apple-like
shell."
------
lwhi
I think the metro UI is genuinely interesting and (dare I say it) exciting.
The logo redesign fits with our times - but it's incredibly safe .. verging on
dull.
Large corporations have so much ubiquity .. we encounter them so many times
throughout our day. Daily exposure ensures familiarity and this familiarity
eventually leads to acceptance; in one sense the logo could be virtually
anything and would still serve its purpose (e.g. Pepsi redesign).
The age of the logo is over in my opinion .. these days the prominance of a
logo has been supplanted by a fuzzier, more Machiavellian concept - the
ability for a brand to connect with its audience on a personal level. In that
respect a logo is sometimes simply fodder to for the latter; ensuring the
brand and company are spoken about socially (e.g. the gap redesign / 2012
olympics).
It pains me to imagine how much Pentagram were paid for this.
------
jheimark
trademark symbol really ruins it for me. Windows 1.0 is much better for that
reason alone.
------
sjm
This is far better:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/36724189@N05/6892887709/in/phot...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/36724189@N05/6892887709/in/photostream)
~~~
grandpoobah
OOo an opening window. I like it. That's re-imagination right there.
------
tripzilch
Yeah! Let's use the flag of Shetland so ... people won't confuse our logo with
.. a flag?
Um?
Granted they didn't pick the flag of big country like Sweden or anything, and
if Shetland, Calais and Pärnu, Estonia, as well as Iceland in the past, were
already using it, why couldn't Microsoft?
On a more serious note, there's lots of valid criticism on this logo, the TM
and (R) are clutter, their "Metro style" is not supposed to have perspective,
and the font isn't particularly anything either.
But then, it's not _my_ logo :)
~~~
sixothree
Not to mention the dot on the i looks misplaced and misshapen.
My first emotional reaction to that logo was 'ewwww'. It's not a good sign
when the best word I can find to describe it is gross.
------
kibwen
Other than the color, it's a decent new logo.
There is, however, one huge flaw: separated from the wordmark, the icon is
flaccid. It looks like they were aiming for Apple-like minimalism in both
color and form (which isn't to say that Apple is the only company allowed to
practice minimalism), but "a skewed, doubly-bisected square" simply isn't
distinctive enough to be iconic. I really hope they iterate on it for Windows
9.
------
chrislomax
In the nicest possible way, I'm actually bored of this metro look already and
it's not even released yet.
I find that logo boring, some squares with a warp on it. I know it doesn't
have to be over complicated but I don't think there is any imagination there
at all.
The blue is not very strong either, the branding it quite weak.
Just my opinion, which I am entitled to before anyone starts giving me grief!
~~~
drewrv
Boring can be good, from a usability perspective. Metro seems to be their big
selling point now and I imagine they want the branding to reflect the
usability of the product.
Not trying to give you grief. I agree it's kinda boring, I'm just thinking
that maybe it's boring by design.
~~~
chrislomax
I think I know what they are trying to achieve, they are hoping to get the
Apple simplicity, I think.
I didn't think you were giving grief, sounded like constructive criticism, I
don't mind that. I just don't like mindless comments that are biased.
I hope this product gets them back in the game, they been a bit behind in
innovation lately so I'm looking forward to something radically different.
------
vacri
_Using bold flat colors and clean lines and shapes, the new logo has the
characteristics of way-finding design systems seen in airports and subways._
Bold colors? As in _plural_ colors? That's the first place they've failed. And
trying to emulate an airport's system for moving people around is bad from the
outset - those things are meant to be simple and boring. They do their task by
being unambiguous, uniform, simple... and bland.
Sure, make your logo work in monochrome for places where it has to be (like
the plastic moulding mentioned above), but in both print and digital, a single
flat pale blue is pretty tepid. It also doesn't evoke the multitude of colour
panes that they're trying to push in every screenshot - why not simply move
their four colours to the new 'window'?
~~~
politician
Well, really, why shouldn't an operating system be "simple" and "boring" and
"bland"? I don't need an exciting OS -- it needs to be dependable.
~~~
vacri
It doesn't matter how simple, boring, bland and dependable your _product_ is,
your _logo_ should not be bland, especially if you're marketing to the general
public.
------
lupatus
If it didn't say "Windows 8" next to it, I wouldn't have known that it was the
Windows logo.
Frankly, it is kind of a let-down. The Vista & Windows 7 "pearl" logo is cool
- it is flashy and is artistically impressive with it's lighting effects on
the rounded semi-reflective surface. It draws the eye to itself. The new logo
is a bland blue monochrome square whose slight tilt causes the eye to
passively move right over it without notice.
Is this the first hint that Windows 8 is an operating system to "pass" on
instead of adopting?
If Microsoft wants this operating system to grab market share, a bland
Germanic logo that tells the user "don't mind me, but your next exit is in
half a mile" is a poor first step at grabbing the market's attention, IMO.
~~~
mikemaccana
Really? I bought the shiny blue liquid vista pearl looked a lot like a poor,
and very self conscious, attempt to imitate their competitors.
------
peterfschaadt
I'm curious to see when/if they update the Windows key on laptops and
keyboards.
~~~
bgarbiak
I think they won't mind leaving it the way it is for some time. It could be
used as a sort of a subconscious metaphor: keyboards/old logo is the thing of
the past and touch screen/new logo is "the now".
------
dkrich
Microsoft's main failure for the past decade or so is that they have
repeatedly enacted a flurry of short-term strategies in reaction to whichever
direction the industry winds happened to blowing, and did so for just about
every consumer tech industry.
Xbox to Playstation, Bing to Google, Zune to iPod. In the process they did
very little leading along the way and hemorrhaged money from all of these
businesses.
I still like and respect Microsoft as a company and think they can still
produce great things, and I hope that the next decade sees them develop some
leadership and return to innovation.
------
tikhonj
Heh, the phrase "Authentically Digital" neatly sums up what I like about the
Metro UI. If Windows Phone wasn't so locked down, I would get one just because
it's the best looking option by far right now.
As for the logo, I think a flag shape would be better than the window shape
they have. It feels a little bit generic and almost self-parodying. That said,
I definitely see where they are coming from, and it does fit in with their new
Metro UI aesthetic.
------
artursapek
It's rough times when a rectangle split into four is newsworthy and people
suddenly realize they prefer something that was designed in 1985.
------
some1else
The article and shape reminded me of the logo I did for Compiz before they
merged back with Beryl:
[http://forum.compiz.org/viewtopic.php?f=135&t=236&p=...](http://forum.compiz.org/viewtopic.php?f=135&t=236&p=1811)
It's by no means a perfect philosophy and account, but designers might enjoy
the story.
------
pwpwp
Now it really looks like the Swedish flag.
------
redthrowaway
Does the kerning in the new logo look wrong to anyone else? That 'o' has an
awful lot of space around it.
~~~
cpeterso
The kerning immediately irked me, too, but I was thinking the 'W' and 'i' were
too close.
~~~
pvarangot
The way the W sort of points at the dot in the i makes me feel like if someone
is poking my eye.
------
sabret00the
Is it really legal to Trademark such an image? There must be a thousand prior
iterations of such a thing.
~~~
cbr
A thousand prior iterations in the Operating Systems market? Trademarks are
specific to markets; that's why UPS can have the color brown but non-shipping-
companies can also use brown.
------
brudgers
The fierce reduction at the root of Metro's design allowed me to fairly
accurately envision the new logo as soon as I read, "It’s a window… not a
flag."
One color, simple shapes, simple text - MicroSoft clearly has a design vision.
------
efsavage
If I had to picture "windows logo for metro" something more akin to the Black
Flag logo comes to mind. Not this disaster that looks like some shareware
multi-monitor utility.
------
molecularbutter
Microsoft seems confused, but I am genuinely interested in Windows 8 and
Metro. Hopefully they ditch their legacy stuff though and make a clean break a
la iOS/OS X
------
altrego99
"Microsoft and Windows are all about putting technology in people's hands to
empower them to find their own perspectives."
This line could be avoided :)
------
heydenberk
This gets worse with each iteration.
------
jagjit
An ode to friends in Finland? The logo looks very much like flags of Finland,
Sweden etc.
------
baby
Okay, so I've read the comments here and I am the only one who really likes
the new logo.
------
functionform
This is the first logo I haven't liked honestly. It looks unbalanced and
unfinished.
------
run4yourlives
Sorry, not feeling it. I think the Vista one was the best, to be honest.
------
bostonpete
I checked the Windows 8 wikipedia page b/c I was curious whether someone had
already put this image there and I was astonished to find the page has 74
references! By comparison, the page for the Civil War has 31 references -- 22
of them from the same book.
------
sniperjoe
well, it's well crafted, elegant, and minimalistic. however, deep down I just
feel microsoft is far too sophisticated a company to be monochrome.
------
georgieporgie
I'm really not feelin' it. It looks like some sort of industry association
sticker that I might see on a window or glass door at Home Depot. I agree with
others here, too, that the 3.1 logo seems to be a better example of the clean
look they're going for.
------
Alind
As for today, in my opinion, windows 1's logo is such a fashion.
------
lurker14
Giving the blog a name that is easily confused with "Window Steam Blog" says a
lot about the team's understanding of how to build user-friendly interfaces.
------
publicus
Interesting that they'd choose the Greek flag as the next Windows logo...
~~~
tripzilch
It's the flag of Shetland, Calais, a historical flag of Iceland and some place
in Estonia, but the Greek flag looks different.
------
boubountu
Too much space between "windows 8" and the actual window.
------
gubatron
The new logo is an homage to the BSOD
------
kruhft
> very short list of agencies that we wanted to work with on the redesign of
> the logo and were thrilled when Pentagram agreed to join us in the project
Pentagram. Sounds like an appropriate company name to work on the logo
redesign.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Alternatives to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone - maudlinmau5
http://www.techhive.com/article/2031515/four-alternatives-to-android-ios-and-windows-phone.html
======
JVIDEL
Yeah, no: I live in Argentina and nobody, NOBODY here is going to get a
FirefoxOS phone. The deal with emerging markets is that people here still
cares about personal image which is the only reason why iPhones are still
being sold despite being several times the price of Android phones due to
import taxes. Couple that with Chinese Android phones that are getting better
and cheaper every month and why would anyone get a phone that due to volume
won't be cheaper and that will have only a fraction of the support?
UP's achilles heel is the lack of proprietary hardware, 99% of the users out
there can't even root their phones let alone install a completely different OS
on it. Couple that with the innability to run Android apps and the horrible UX
that is unity and you have a package nobody wants.
Sailfish has no chance at all of growing beyond a very small niche of people.
Tizen is basically Samsung's attempt at getting Google out of the picture now
that is the biggest fish in the phone sea.
BB10 is a better option than most of these OS', even WebOS should be in this
list and yet for some reason it was left aside.
------
npsimons
Glad to see Tizen and Sailfish mentioned. As an N900 owner, I'm currently torn
between them; I've always loved the sleek shininess of Enlightenment, but
Sailfish is the obvious upgrade path. Or maybe I should just roll my own:
<https://wiki.debian.org/pkg-n900>
Ah, so many fun options, so little time :)
------
networked
Don't forget about Open webOS [1]. At the very least the progress of its
Galaxy Nexus port is curious to watch [2], though I wonder how the recent
acquisition of rights to webOS by LG might influence the project.
[1] <http://www.openwebosproject.org/>.
[2] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XelmomAq91o>
~~~
Zigurd
I believe LG's licensing WebOS will have as much impact as their licensing of
SavaJe had at the time.
------
Zigurd
Of these, Sailfish has the most serious and experienced team behind it. It
won't leave the shop unfinished. It is do or die for Jolla. For everyone else
phone OSs are a hobby.
Everyone else is learning by doing. Even Samsung. Samsung's feature phones run
RTOSs licensed by Samsung, and, of course, while Samsung has made some
impressive modifications to Android, that's far from showing they can make a
complete modern phone OS.
~~~
fingerprinter
I don't know if/how you can say that Ubuntu Touch is a "hobby". And outside of
Apple and MS, there is literally no other company as experience at creating an
operating system as Canonical and the Ubuntu community.
Based on the early revs, Ubuntu is by far the most polished.
Canonical is also led by someone with a driving vision, very deep pockets and
an absolute want to make a mark on mobile.
So, Ubuntu has the most experienced team, the most polished early rev product
and a focused founder. No way that Ubuntu Touch isn't the front runner here.
Frankly, it isn't even close (or fair) to compare the rest to Ubuntu.
~~~
MatthewPhillips
I agree with the grandparent. This matters more to Jolla; it's literally their
company. If Sailfish doesn't catch on they will go out of business. I'd feel
better if I knew in advance that everything they are working on is open
source.
While Ubuntu has experience bundle's open source software and to a smaller
extent creating their own, they don't have any experience in mobile, which is
a different ball game entirely. Early progress is impressive though, I will
agree.
------
dholowiski
I'm not sure how these are actually alternatives, if you can't actually get a
phone with any of these OS's on them.
~~~
josteink
Both Ubuntu Touch [1] and Firefox OS currently has ports to numerous models of
phones which you can flash if you unlock it (albeit most highly unofficial).
Usually these are Android-phones, already open-source friendly and easy to
build for. You will find all the relevant details in the appropriate sub-
forums on XDA. If you want to try them today, you can.
This should definitely not be confused for vapourware.
[1] <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices#Work_in_progress>
------
melling
Blackberry? How do the new models rate? From the couple of reviews that I
read, their new products seem good.
~~~
HorizonXP
I've been using a device for several months, and have been developing on
BlackBerry 10 for even longer. It's a joy to use and develop for.
I write most of my apps in Python, and they work beautifully. I'm able to
rapidly prototype and make changes as needed. Having done a lot of Android
development, I can say the BlackBerry development tools and methods are
actually easier and better to use. I think iOS dev is still more mature
though.
Sales for my app have been decent. I need to push out an update soon, and do
some more marketing to help it out though.
As a user, the device is great. I'm running the release OS on a Dev Alpha B,
but I'll be getting a limited edition device once I ship this prototype back.
It's smooth, fast, and works the way I expect it too. Again, having several
Android devices, I can say that that OS never worked quite the way I did.
~~~
candl
Could you give more details as to how you develop with Python? Is it done via
PySide? My impression was that you could only use C++/Qt, HTML5/JavaScript or
Adobe AIR for BB10. I plan to get a Z10 soon with the intention to port an
application from Windows Phone along the way. I was mentally preparing for
C++, but if Python works good enough then I may skip C++ altogether (I did
some small PySide apps in the past, but this time I'd like to learn QML).
~~~
shawn-butler
There are two approaches to using any interpreter. One is to using python
wrappers and existing python GUI toolikits simply by using the "official"
QNX/Python hook entry point into the app lifecycle. [0]
The other is to go deeper and integrate with cascades UI and process messages
between the QML/Qt framework and a python event loop. [1] Project going this
route can be found at <http://hg.microcode.ca/blackberry-py/src/>
Other "semi-supported" interpreters include Lua and Erlang. [2] I'm sure
someone has a ruby vm by now.
[0]: [http://peterhansen.ca/blog/bbx-python-direct-entry-
point.htm...](http://peterhansen.ca/blog/bbx-python-direct-entry-point.html)
[1]: <http://peterhansen.ca/blog/blackberry-tart-preview.html>
[2]: <https://github.com/blackberry>
~~~
HorizonXP
BlackBerry-Py is the project I'm currently using. More specifically, the Tart
branch.
(Disclosure: I'm one of the lead contributors.)
------
apunic
You forgot BB OS 10
~~~
recoiledsnake
Interesting that if you count iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BB OS 10 as the
top four mobile OSes, they run four different kernels, BSD/XNU/Darwin, Linux,
WinNT and QNX. The four new competitors all seem to be using Linux (five if
you count WebOS).
~~~
untog
I suspect that's a cost-saving measure as much as anything else. If you're a
scrappy small project, reusing the existing Linux kernel is probably a good
move.
~~~
MatthewPhillips
And if you're an entrenched BigCo you carry a lot of NIH belief along ;)
~~~
Guvante
Actually it is more leveraging your existing experience. I don't know about
Blackberry, but the common kernel between your desktop OS and the mobile OS is
a good thing.
~~~
shawn-butler
One of the drivers in making the purchase of qnx for RIM apparently was the
integration play in the embedded space. Automotive for example.
Have seen not much fruit of that other than the QNX car project [0]. I
remember seeing a Porshce at CES a year or two ago that had the system in it
and it integrated with the Blackberry Playbook pretty well.
[0]: <http://www.qnx.com/products/qnxcar/>
------
ryanSrich
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the sticking point for mobile the
availability of apps and not the actual hardware/OS?
------
berntb
My plan is:
For my next phone, I'll leave iOS and get a garbage feature phone (Symbian, or
something). This will be when I get my next iPad, which will have 4G (I'll
also need a small iPod for music).
I will just suffer adding phone numbers and writing SMS the old fashioned way
-- along with the week of battery life...
~~~
gurkendoktor
If you are on a Mac, you could check if the emitSMS dashboard widget still
works. That's what I used to do in the OS X 10.4 & Nokia dumbphone days :) -
write SMS from my Mac whenever I had it running.
~~~
berntb
Thanks for the tip, but nothing will happen until at least the next iPad is
released, since my present iPad only has wifi.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What problems can techies solve to help world? - marmot777
I'm using the term techie to be more general as clearly one could use a variety of skills to solve problems, not just coding.<p>Sure, there are all kinds of domains that the market will pay for and even more that investors will fund. I'm for the free market.<p>That said, I think that there are a lot of problems in the world that are barely noticed much less focused on by techies. First of all, why is that? It seems like more and more it's stuff like _Beerme,_ an app that connects people with beer with thirsty people or whatever. Is it because there's no money to be made in solving more important problems?
======
p333347
Techies can only assist the scientists in bringing their successful lab
experiments into the real world. I expect scientists to solve problems in two
fields - agriculture and water resources (especially drinking water) - before
tackling fancier things like interplanetary exploration, brain computer
interfaces etc. I understand not all scientists (or their domains) are equal
but I expect science to solve basic problems first. Science created the
problem by making people live longer, so science must solve the problem as
well (half kidding). Once a solution is in beta mode, the techies can go crazy
building software and gadgets for it, which is what they do well.
~~~
IpV8
This is an underrated point. I believe that as an average techie, your highest
social impact is in building the tools required to solve these problems. We
don't need better phones and advertisements, we need better tools for out
scientists and doctors. I currently build research devices for applications in
marine science and water quality research. Though my day to day is a bit
removed from the social benefit, it is uplifting to hear about the companies
and universities that but these products to good use.
~~~
marmot777
Yes, agreed, strangly underrated, as perhaps most people have their awareness
of tools running in the background. We already see the importance of tools so
it's not a hard leap to understand EVERY domain needs better tools to be more
effective.
Your day is close enough to the action. My dad, a mechanical engineer, worked
on part of the breathing apparatus used in the Apollo program. That's a part
of that problem, small and perhaps not glamorous but close enough. I'd say
you're damn close. Closer than I've ever been to anything real unless you
count buying a programmable robot vacuum cleaner kit instead of the normal one
so I could in theory program my vacuum cleaner to do cool stuff, not to
mention at modules!
------
mtmail
Have a look at
[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team).
You can help by adding streets based on satellite images from home (armchair
mapping). Or you can work on tools. Almost any tool used for openstreetmap can
also be used to help areas (before and) after a major disaster happened.
~~~
marmot777
I took a look at these again and will again later. A friend of mine who does
web dev showed me some pretty cool and powerful stuff he's done for some well
known non-profits. It was good stuff. One cool thing about my quest for
knowledge is I've learned more about the good things.
~~~
marmot777
When you say your quest for knowledge ended up with you seeing some good stuff
was it because you were asking around or you put the intention out in the
universe or what? It's awesome when someone says something like, "one cool
thing about my quest for knowledge is that I've learned more about the good
things" but it leaves you wanting to know exactly what it was that you were
seeking, why, and where did you look?
------
dhruvkar
The free market skews towards quicker gains. Most __important__ problems will,
almost by definition, take longer to solve than less important problems.
Non-profits often fill this gap by solving an important problem until it's
profitable to solve, at which point the free market can take over.
One problem that (in my view) is important, solvable, hard and profitable is
rural electrification. There's ~1.2 billion people without access to
electricity [0] and more with intermittent access only. The problem is,
there's no one solution fits all. It needs to be chipped away methodically
[1], building products and finding traction in different locales that allows
the free market to work.
0:
[http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/resources/energydevelopmen...](http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/resources/energydevelopment/energyaccessdatabase/)
1: I worked at a solar NGO in Tanzania.
------
maramono
IMO, first we need to solve the smaller issues, most importantly to have
developers start making high-quality software _consistently_.
There is nothing that will get solved with the current "bugs are unavoidable"
mentality, which is simply a mediocre and unprofessional attitude.
The way I see it, if mediocre developers try to "solve" world issues, the
solutions will be mediocre as well, just like their software.
More of my thoughts here: [http://ortask.com/why-your-mindset-might-be-
setting-your-sof...](http://ortask.com/why-your-mindset-might-be-setting-your-
software-for-failure/)
~~~
bbcbasic
I agree that we need to aim higher in quality.
However bug-free software may be prohibitively expensive to create. You would
need military-style controls on every line of code, every change.
Specifications going to the n-th degree to be ratified and signed off by all
of the stakeholders, who need to be highly engaged and quite technical. No
vague requirements allowed. If no one makes a mistake in this process then
maybe it will be bug free.
Yes bugs really are unavoidable. That will never change because bugs (other
than silly errors) are usually an artifact of translation of user
requirements, system requirements etc. into a working system.
However I agree it is feeble to use that as an excuse. It's like saying I
won't exercise because I can't ever run 100m in 1s, no matter how I hard I
train.
Tooling is definitely an issue. I'm reading "You don't know JS" for fun and
learning a lot about why JS is a really horrible language to write bug-free
code in. If you are stuck with languages like this (and all languages have
their respective problems, if not as bad as JS) then it is hard to write bug
free software.
~~~
marmot777
I learned it finding that the feeling I get from it is slightly overwhelmed,
mostly because there seems to be so many new things coming up and so much is
in flux. I found it worthwhile nonetheless as it's useful for some things and
Node is kind of cool actually.
I get a fragmented energy from JS and a more integrated energy from, say,
Python.
------
pesfandiar
As a techie, you can just help the economy by making/providing whatever
widget/service the market needs. That creates employment and keeps people's
retirement funds afloat. If the growth stops, many people will suffer.
If you actually want to make a huge difference, get into economics, politics,
policymaking, etc. to affect the way markets work.
~~~
marmot777
I don't really think affecting how markets work is something I think's a good
idea nor do I think it's an optimal path for me anyway. God bless those who do
it. The thing is I don't even see fundamental changes to the way the market
works is even a good idea to attempt, however incompetently or well, it's
going to be a buggy mess.
I'm not advocating anything at all right now, I'm just listening and
expressing my own opinions, all provisional.
------
HeyLaughingBoy
There are important problems being solved by techies every day all over the
place. Transportation, medicine, funding, housing, clothing. Why are you
choosing to ignore all those areas and the businesses that are involved with
them to focus on BeerMe?
~~~
marmot777
I want to reiterate that this question wasn't meant as a criticism or
lecturing or to diminish the tremendous accomplishments thus far. I genuinely
think we live in times of great change and serious problems that need
addressing. I don't I even grok the problems much less the solutions at this
point so that was my goal to increase understanding to be able to particate in
a more meaningful and useful way myself. I've not exactly spent my years in
the tech industry doing work that I think was anything more than services that
helped business people accomplish some of their goals. That's something but
not exactly the most important problems. Any side projects I've worked on I've
done so simply because it was something that caught my interest. So god knows,
many if not most of people who read HN are probably contributing more than I
am.
------
Axsuul
Solving important problems take a lot of customer research, domain knowledge,
and years of developing product and finding product-market fit. You won't be
able to come up with a MVP over the weekend. Naturally, the lower hanging
fruit is first picked. But these services and products that first get built
will become the shoulders that startups solving more important problems get
built on.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If My Classmates Are Going to Cheat on an Online Exam, Why Can’t I? - Kaibeezy
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/magazine/if-my-classmates-are-going-to-cheat-on-an-online-exam-why-cant-i.html
======
Kaibeezy
_“But everyone else is doing it!”
You won’t be surprised that the Ethicist takes a dim view of this argument._
~~~
Libeste
What about the Moralist?
~~~
Kaibeezy
_chacun à son goût_
------
aurizon
This is a true problem, unless it is open book? Possibly the prof wants the
writers to draw on online resources, notes etc - more or less a way to
administer assigned work?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US considers cabin laptop ban on flights from UK airports - k-mcgrady
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/25/us-considers-banning-laptops-on-flights-from-uk-airports
======
no1youknowz
Was already posted earlier:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192644)
------
devurandom_
My chief concern with this situation is that when these rules are applied
you're essentially moving li-ion batteries into the hold of the aircraft.
Laptops that are accidentally left on could overheat in suitcases, tablets
could get impact damage during turbulence etc. Surely this is a huge fire
risk?
I recently flew and was asked if I had spare batteries or e-cig devices in the
bags I wanted to check in since they aren't allowed in checked luggage -
presumably for this reason. In fact, I just did some searching and found this
article: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-07/laptop-
ba...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-07/laptop-ban-spurred-
by-terror-concern-raises-warning-of-fire-risk)
Are there fire suppression systems in modern airliners? Would they be able to
stop a laptop battery that's combusting?
~~~
iaskwhy
My girlfriend just went through an airline training course and, yes, they can
stop electrical fires, like batteries, on-board. On a surprising note, they
might be even able to handle bombs if these are detected before an explosion.
They have procedures for most dangerous stuff, had no idea.
------
Symbiote
So where could one carry a laptop, and have it covered in case of loss? Not in
checked baggage:
British Airways conditions of carriage:
8f) Fragile or perishable items must not be packed in baggage checked into the
hold
You must not include in your checked baggage fragile or perishable items or
items of special value such as:
money
jewellery
precious metals
computers
personal electronic devices
share certificates, bonds and other valuable documents
business documents or
passports and other identification documents.
15e7) We are not liable in any way whatever for damage to or loss of items
which you include in your checked baggage although you are forbidden from
including them under clauses 8c, 8d or 8f, or in the case of permitted
firearms you have not complied with the conditions for including them under
clause 8d, except as provided for by the Convention. These items include
fragile or perishable items, items with a special value, such as money,
jewellery, precious metals, computers, personal electronic devices, share
certificates, bonds and other valuable documents, business documents, or
passports and other identification documents. In the event of any claim for
damage, delay or loss, we may avail ourself of all defences of contributory
negligence specified in the Convention.
[https://www.britishairways.com/en-
us/information/legal/briti...](https://www.britishairways.com/en-
us/information/legal/british-airways/general-conditions-of-carriage)
~~~
pavel_lishin
> _So where could one carry a laptop, and have it covered in case of loss?_
In a box, to your local Fedex office.
------
k-mcgrady
Is this ban just typical security theater? Surely a device which does have
explosives in it is going to be problematic in the hold too. Why not fix the
actual problem and upgrade the protocol for checking devices when going
through security. They already go through the X-ray machine and are often
dusted for chemicals. Is anybody really comfortable putting a $1k laptop in a
hold bag which far too often gets lost/stolen/broken? Also seems like a very
easy way to have lots of people's data get stolen (most people aren't
encrypting their devices).
~~~
StavrosK
Who the hell puts explosives in electronics? Even more so, who puts explosives
in electronics that will have no other option if laptops are forbidden?!
~~~
EGreg
I always wondered: what is the point of taking laptops out of your bag and
putting them in a _separate tray_?
~~~
vilya
It's so the scanner operators can tell there's nothing hidden underneath your
laptop. I'm not sure whether the laptop case (or just the battery?) can
actually block the scanners, or it just makes the output image harder to
interpret. Either way, I guess they want to be sure...
------
r00fus
And so we go down the slippery slope. Next it'll be worldwide.
And what happens to your laptop in your checked baggage? Why essentially
security will have console access... some might even forget to shut off
instead of sleep their device.
The whole notion that laptops are safer in the hold as opposed to the cabin is
backwards.
~~~
angry_octet
The cabin is has more sensitive cargo than the hold. Whereas an explosion or
explosive deflageration in the hold is contained in engineered luggage bins,
buffered with clothing padding, and placed in a random location, in the
passenger cabin it could be placed at a specific point. Also, the
environmental system pumps to the hold sections can be turned off to cut fresh
air to any fire.
Comparatively, the notion that some passengers will act meaningfully to put
out a fire in the cabin is laughable, it would be a mass panic and everybody
and dying.
However, with 200g of high explosive, and an aluminium laptop to form an
explosively formed penetrator, there is going to be a big hole in the plane no
matter where it goes off. Compared to the stuff being used against coalition
forces in Iraq a few years ago, no particular technical challenge. So quite
worrying.
------
pavel_lishin
Meanwhile, whatever companies provides in-flight movie rentals are dancing a
happy little jig.
~~~
k-mcgrady
Isn't this always free to the passenger? I've never had to rent a movie on a
flight that has an entertainment system.
~~~
mikeash
Depends on the airline and on the flight. This past weekend I took a United
flight where DirecTV was available, but you had to pay for it past the first
few minutes. Really pissed me off too, since it was a night flight and nobody
paid for it but all eleventy-hundred seatback screens stayed illuminated the
whole time showing ads.
I've seen other flights with pay-per-view systems for on-demand movies and TV
shows. Good airlines make them available for free, but not all airlines are
good.
As to the grandparent comment's point, smartphones are still allowed, so I
imagine people will watch their movies on that. It's not the best experience,
but still better than those craptastic seatback screens.
------
nikon
What happens when I arrive and my MacBook is gone?
~~~
Johnny555
You have to buy a new Macbook and if you don't have your own insurance, you'll
be paying for it out of your own pocket.
Here's United's liability clause, showing that their liability is around $500
if they lose your entire 50 lb bag, but if you lose just a laptop, good luck
proving that they are liable... and if you do, maybe they'll give you $18 for
your 3 lb laptop:
_For international travel to which the Warsaw Convention applies (including
domestic portions of international travel), United 's liability is limited to
approximately $9.07 USD/CAD per pound up to $640.00 USD/CAD per bag for
checked baggage and $400.00 USD/CAD per customer for unchecked baggage._
[https://www.united.com/web/en-
US/content/travel/baggage/liab...](https://www.united.com/web/en-
US/content/travel/baggage/liability.aspx)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den - benbreen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
======
knodi123
> "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." is a
> grammatically correct sentence in American English, often presented as an
> example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated
> linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in
> literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri
> Borgmann's Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo)
~~~
jpatokal
The big difference is that in Chinese, the written form of the poem is clear
and unambiguous (if not terribly sensible), whereas in English that makes no
sense without a detailed explanation of how you're supposed to parse it.
~~~
coldtea
Yeah, I doubt anybody in real life (as opposed in an academic setting, or
after having read this) ever actually knew more than 2 or 3 of those contrived
definitions of buffalo (basically the animal and the place) needed to make
this work...
~~~
hammock
There are only 3 meanings used in that sentence.
~~~
coldtea
Looked it up and you're right, I remembered it as having more, but those (what
was more) where the roles played by each of the repetitions of the 3 basic
meanings (noun, verb, relative clause, verb phrase -- "buffalo", "buffaloed"
(bullied), "from Buffalo", "to buffalo", "that's a bufallo (bully)", etc)
------
nwatson
I'd like to hear this poem recited ... found it at YouTube link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vExjnn_3ep4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vExjnn_3ep4)
------
tvphan
Similar to how Singaporean English have dropped a bunch of ending consonants
from English, Mandarin dropped a bunch of ending consonants from Middle
Chinese. If you recited this in Cantonese (which is a bit more conservative
dialect), the words would sound differently!
------
tanilama
Worth noting, that this poem only makes sense in its written form, not spoken
form.
Had Chinese gone full Romanization, or some kinda phonetic written system, the
trick would be lost.
~~~
aasasd
Wikipedia doesn't have the text for fear of copyright, but you can see a
phonetic/romanized version here: [https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-
language-tonality-lion...](https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-language-
tonality-lion-eating_1526691.html)
Or in a different system here: [http://www.fa-
kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML](http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML)
And there's a link to a reading in another comment.
While a part of the effect is that each hieroglygh is read the same, I'd say
another part is that it still comes out making sense.
Seeing as modern English approaches being logographic, with its _“spelled
‘Manchester’, pronounced ‘Liverpool’,”_ I wonder how many homophones and
oronyms can be jammed into a phrase.
------
peterburkimsher
That's a fun poem for making your Chinese-speaking friends laugh. For English
speakers, a similar kind of tongue-twister is The Chaos (Dearest Creature in
Creation):
[https://www.hep.wisc.edu/~jnb/charivarius.html](https://www.hep.wisc.edu/~jnb/charivarius.html)
I'm (still) trying to learn Chinese, using my own web app to split words,
romanise them, and translate them separately.
[https://pingtype.github.io](https://pingtype.github.io)
The hardest challenge for Chinese NLP is word spacing. I'm amazed that they
still haven't welcomed the space character. English without spaces could be
really confusing! Consider what happened with URLs:
"thepenismightierthanthesword", "expertsexchange", "psychotherapist". That's
amusing for single words, but I wonder if we could go longer.
If there's any poets here, I'd like to hear your best examples of English
sentences that make sense, but with a different meaning, if spaces were added
in different places.
~~~
haskal
You wrote Pingtype? I _love_ Pingtype! It is a pinned tab on my browser
because I come across Chinese words so often (fellow learner here!)
I think not spacing Chinese is a problem that gets solved through experience.
The word groupings will be of 2-3 characters max unlike English where words
can be 1-12 letters long (unless it is for nouns like 喜马拉雅 = xi3ma3la1ya3 =
Himalaya).
The examples you gave are edge cases but I am sure you can read
"butishouldstoptypingnow" just fine. You never though to segment the word as
"bu-tish-ould..." because you have an expectation of sentence and type of
words that fill positions in the "<conjunction> <subject> <aux verb>
<verb>..." format.
~~~
peterburkimsher
Wow, really? I have a user?! You seriously just made my day!
I've wasted so much time on that side project, to finally hear that someone
else cares about it is so encouraging. Please email me - I've got lots more
Pingtype data that I collected and parsed, but didn't upload yet.
------
canjobear
Where’s the text of the poem? This article used to have the text, along with
transcriptions in Mandarin and Cantonese.
~~~
hammock
As the wikipedia article explains, the Chinese text is unremarkable. But
here's the poem spoken - it's actually pretty good.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vExjnn_3ep4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vExjnn_3ep4)
And an English translation:
In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had
resolved to eat ten lions. He often went to the market to look for lions. At
ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market. At that time, Shi had
just arrived at the market. He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty
arrows, caused the ten lions to die. He brought the corpses of the ten lions
to the stone den. The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions. When he ate,
he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses. Try to
explain this matter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ReBreakCaptcha: Breaking Google’s ReCaptcha v2 Using Google - edwinksl
https://east-ee.com/2017/02/28/rebreakcaptcha-breaking-googles-recaptcha-v2-using-google/
======
maxmcd
From previous recaptcha discussion[1] it seems like the going rate for solving
recaptcha's is $2 for 1000 solved, or as low as $1/1000\. This method would
actually be more expensive than that at $6/1000[2]
1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11453697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11453697)
2\.
[https://cloud.google.com/speech/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/speech/pricing)
~~~
hedora
Similar to my other comment, as a normal user, I'd happily pay 1/10th a cent
(as long as it went to the grey market, and not the website or google) to
bypass a recaptcha.
~~~
dsacco
That incentive only works if a website's primary captcha use case is spam
avoidance. Most websites that use captchas have a vested interest in
preventing you from being able to bypass them by tossing money around. Paying
to remove captchas is fundamentally unlike similar proposals (like paying to
remove advertisements) that are designed to make innocuous users' lives easier
because captchas aren't solely designed to prevent spam, nor are they designed
as a passive revenue stream.
For example, one common use of a captcha is, essentially, rate-limiting in a
non-spam prevention context. It's arguable that rate-limiting should be
implemented _differently_ , but captchas are actually fairly effective for
rate-limiting regardless. Websites that feature things like gift card numbers
typically put captchas on lookups and validations to prevent people from
simply brute-forcing them (especially if they do not use gift card pins). In
scenarios like that, you don't _want_ spammers to be able to bypass captchas,
but if they fundamentally can, at least it costs them money.
On the other hand, explicitly supporting captcha avoidance as a revenue
stream, however, presents malicious users with the same opportunity that
parents get if you offer to fine them for being late to pick up their children
from daycare. You've just implicitly given them a choice that was not really
allowed before, and they'll happily pay you directly instead of the shady API
they have to use to get rid of the captcha.
So to sum up - captchas aren't fun, but in principle you really don't want
there to be a consistent method for cheaply bypassing them (whether grey
market or officially supported) if the expected value of doing so is
significantly higher than the cost.
------
tyingq
Found something mildly interesting playing around with this. One of the
network requests when you ask for audio is this:
[https://www.google.com/js/bg/Kv2WsNzHE5GULL-
TmjqX5N4dnwt4D3c...](https://www.google.com/js/bg/Kv2WsNzHE5GULL-
TmjqX5N4dnwt4D3cPVKm_UbfMct4.js)
Which presents this, in a comment at the top of the returned js:
Anti-spam. Want to say hello? Contact (base64)
Ym90Z3VhcmQtY29udGFjdEBnb29nbGUuY29t
That decodes to: [email protected]
~~~
dabber
Some background on the code:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21762076/why-does-
gmail-u...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21762076/why-does-gmail-use-
eval)
------
spullara
When I was at Yahoo we had a HackDay where there was one team that used Flickr
data to make a captcha that asked for tags for an image it displayed. Another
team used Flickr data to look at images and automatically tag them...
------
hedora
Wow. I want this as a browser plugin. The image recaptchas are extremely time
consuming (maybe I click the wrong images, or they're just punishing me for
logging out and clearing cookies...), and I don't want to futz with the audio
ones.
~~~
problems
Yeah, it's really brutal. I find the new recaptchas which I hit almost every
time are much more exhausting than the old text-based ones, and probably much
easier for a machine to solve to boot.
~~~
zodPod
The worst are the questions like "Click the images with a store front" what
the hell is a store front? Especially in today's world.. Is a garage a store
front? Is a hot dog stand a store front? Same with like "Click the images with
cars" but there's a crossover. Is that a car? Is a station wagon a car?
~~~
Ajedi32
I've found it's best to just not think about it too much. CAPTCHAs are, after
all, designed to "tell Computers and Humans Apart". You're a human, so just
pick whatever seems reasonable and move on. If the system doesn't accept your
answer, that's _its_ fault, not yours.
------
cavanasm
Is this a PoC bug bounty type of deal, or "here's a neat tool that can beat
reCaptcha" type of deal? Seeing a bunch of comments about wanting a browser
plugin that exploits this, but I'm wondering if that would be legal or not
after reading (from HN several weeks ago) about the ticket scalpers who
automated TicketMaster's site and were charged with fraud. The case isn't
exactly analogous, but it's close enough to make me wonder.
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-man-who-
broke...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-man-who-broke-
ticketmaster)
~~~
tyingq
They did, indeed, get charged with wire fraud, and entered guilty pleas[1].
The EFF and others were pretty dismayed with this, and felt it should have
been a civil, and not criminal matter.
Since that time, Congress also passed a "Bots Law" that specifically spells
out gaming online tickets as _" treated as unfair or deceptive acts or
practices under the Federal Trade Commission Act."_ [2] I suspect this opens a
door for larger fines as well.
[1] [https://www.wired.com/2010/11/wiseguys-plead-
guilty/](https://www.wired.com/2010/11/wiseguys-plead-guilty/)
[2] [https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-
bill/318...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/3183)
------
amenghra
Maybe they should have dubbed this ReNotBreakCaptcha?
> I’ve testing in 3 examples, and none had the correct answer: first one only detected 3 out of 6 numbers, the seconds had 10 digits, one of them wrong, and the third couldn’t recognise.
> Also, it seams that google implement a max number of retries for audio challenge."
------
hippich
Captcha-replacement - [https://hashcash.io/](https://hashcash.io/)
~~~
foobiekr
this is not a captcha replacement at all. the constraint on proof of work
functions is that they are compatible with mobile users which puts an upper
bound on the approach.
custom work (even in the presence of scrambled approaches) and servers instead
of mobiles both make this approach problematic.
------
appsec1485
It was already prooved in 2012:
[https://arstechnica.com/security/2012/05/google-recaptcha-
br...](https://arstechnica.com/security/2012/05/google-recaptcha-brought-to-
its-knees/)
But, it is not exploitable - when Google identified high volvume attacks, the
voice captcha is changed into a more complex voice which cannot be identified
via this tool.
A Proof of Concept was already created by AppSec Labs, in Sep 2016:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yec-
vxN0BY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yec-vxN0BY)
------
chatmasta
What success rate have you seen? Google intentionally fuzzes parts of the
audio and tries to induce false positives.
Also, does google offer an audio captcha every single time? Even for very high
risk profiles?
~~~
lmkg
> Also, does google offer an audio captcha every single
> time? Even for very high risk profiles?
It might be a legal requirement from the ADA.
------
captchaz
You can automatically bypass ReCaptcha v2 using a captcha solving service with
[https://www.captchasolutions.com](https://www.captchasolutions.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startups Swarm to Build Bee-Based Businesses - DigitalVerse
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/startups-swarm-to-build-bee-based-businesses/
======
pseudolus
These bee-centric start-ups are a pleasant surprise, especially given the
importance of bees in agricultural production. Perhaps some of them will
venture overseas to countries such as China where, due to pollution and loss
of habitat, bee populations have been decimated to the extent that pollination
has to be carried by hand using sticks and feathers [0].
[0] [https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-plants-blossom-without-
bees/av-...](https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-plants-blossom-without-
bees/av-43465235)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HP gets into the tablet business, Windows-style - andrewljohnson
http://www.slashgear.com/hp-elitepad-900-tablet-means-business-01249752/
======
veermishra0803
am not sure if it will help them.. i mean the only competing point they will
focus on is Price.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Computing the optimal road trip across the U.S - rograndom
http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/08/computing-the-optimal-road-trip-across-the-u-s/
======
chiph
9.33 days worth of driving time -- that's a fair bit!
You'll want to do this in a car. Some of the cities and routes will not allow
an RV. For example, Washington DC and NYC don't allow RVs on their streets
(just too congested for a 45 foot Class A, with or without a towed car).
Getting into NYC in an RV would be difficult anyway, as the Port Authority
doesn't allow them through the tunnels because of the on-board propane
commonly carried.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Keep Freelancing - jdbentley
http://jdbentley.com/keep-freelancing
======
iends
There comes a point where the tax advantages of forming a company outweigh
doing a sole proprietorship. Based on my circumstances, my accountant informed
me that that number was less than 100k of taxable income. Certainly this is in
the range of a reasonable freelance salary in my area (because it's in the
range of a reasonable developer salary).
Dissolving your LLC and going to a sole proprietorship could end up costing
you a lot of money and doing so without consulting an accountant would be
foolish.
...and that's not even talking about liability issues (which your LLC may or
may not protect you against), so it's best to talk to a lawyer too. Both will
pay for themselves.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
True, False And Nil Objects In Ruby - askorkin
http://www.skorks.com/2009/09/true-false-and-nil-objects-in-ruby/
======
stcredzero
It's a bad idea to put methods on nil willy-nilly. I see stuff like this in
Smalltalk projects all the time. People like to put < and > on nil and think
they're clever because they fixed their little routine that does a sort. What
they don't realize, is that they've possibly broken something else that
depends on the Does Not Understand exception as part of its normal operation.
(Yes, remember there's only _one_ nil object, and you have no comprehensive
list of what implicit contracts it has to fulfill in the rest of the code
base. Certain proxy mechanisms can break. I know of another mechanism in one
Smalltalk's streams that would break as well.)
The correct way to replace your nil checks with polymorphism is with the
MissingObject pattern. Languages with explicit types should give you this for
free. I think that even duck-typed languages should do this. (Every time you
define a class Foo, you get MissingFoo automatically.) They can often be
provided by libraries.
~~~
jerf
Another option that I'm really warming to is to put it right in the type
system whether or not you might have "Nulls". You can sort [Int] and you can
sort [Maybe Int] if you provide the correct sort functions, but either way,
there's no surprises. There simply will not be a "null" in an [Int].
While I'm using Haskell's notation, it seems likely that pretty much any
strongly typed language could do something like this, at least ad hoc. (That
is, Haskell hasn't actually written this into the typing system, it's just a
direct use of the type system that it already had. But even a C++-like
language could probably put this in there if it was written that way from day
one; arguably, it's allowing the nulls to exist in the first place that is
actually the hack.)
~~~
masklinn
> it seems likely that pretty much any strongly typed language could do
> something like this
No. Or more precisely, in a dynamically typed language (which may or may not
be strongly typed) there's no point in doing so, it won't buy you anything
expressivity or correctness over nullable references.
Pretty much any _statically_ typed language would benefit from making
names/references non-nullable by default and moving nullability into the type
system yes.
> it's allowing the nulls to exist in the first place that is actually the
> hack
How is it a hack? It's trivial to implement, but there's nothing hacky about
it.
~~~
jerf
Type system hack, not code hack. Certainly the implementation is trivial, yes.
Even under the weaker type systems of C++ or Java, having this magical,
undeclared value that is _also_ a Circle and a Car and an Account and so on is
pretty dirty from the type point of view.
Haskell of course has its own troubles with bottom, and I note some people
think we should be doing away with that, too.
~~~
masklinn
> Type system hack, not code hack.
It's not either. Types are simply implicitly defined as nullable, as they are
in SQL.
~~~
jerf
And I call that a hack, especially when I don't think it was done on purpose
or with thought, but simply because "that's how it needs to work". The fact
that it wasn't intended as a hack doesn't make it not a hack; I'm sure that by
2050 we'll be looking back on types that could be magically NULL in much the
same way I currently curse at SQL every time something generates "SELECT *
FROM blah WHERE value IN ()". ("Damn it, SQL, it's just an empty list and
always false, what's the damn big deal?! So very 70s...") There's a whole slew
of things like that from older technologies; someday I really ought to make a
list.
------
KevinMS
Rails does what he mentions ...
[shell] ./script/console
Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.3)
>> nil.blank?
=> true
>> "".blank?
=> true
>> [].blank?
=> true
>> {}.blank?
=> true
It lets you write cleaner code in situations when you don't care if an object
is empty data or a nil. Avoiding the "whiney nils" ruby has a reputation for.
instead of
if myobj && myobj.size == 0 then :blah end
you can write
if myobj.blank? then :blah end
makes me miss perl though
------
ianbishop
> Now if your code is playing with objects that quack like a duck and you end
> up with a nil instead of a DuckLike object, your nil object will be able to
> quack a sensible default value (or raise an error if you prefer).
I never knew this but it will definitely come in handy.
~~~
bhousel
Because NilObject is actually an object, it is possible to add some methods
that take some of the pain out of dealing with maybe-nil objects..
My favorite is the andand gem:
<http://github.com/raganwald/andand/tree/master>
It lets you turn code like this..
entry.at('description') && entry.at('description').inner_text
..into code like this..
entry.at('description').andand.inner_text
~~~
masklinn
Why not stick to EAFP and go with something along the lines of:
begin entry.at('description').index_text
rescue NoMethodError; end
?
~~~
raganwald
What happens when you write:
begin
entry.at('description').indx_txt
rescue NoMethodError
end
? With the generic rescue you will always get nil back. With #andand you get
nil from nil and a NoMethodError from objects, which is usually what you want.
Also, if #index_text is correctly spelled but _it_ raises a NoMethodError,
you're silently discarding it again. For this reason, I avoid silently
discarding exceptions even when I think I know what I'm doing. If I'm wrong,
I'm in a lot of trouble...
------
KevinMS
Didn't read, too wide!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Selling My Papers - ascertain
https://theamericanscholar.org/selling-my-papers/
======
Riegerb
"... one can either live life or curate it, not both."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Inspiring website built in HTML5, could you do this in Flash? - vondip
http://www.kulu.lu/devunplugged/
======
T-zex
Too heavy for my mac mini :(
~~~
vondip
Html 5 features powerful gpu hardware acceleration. If you really want to
enjoy the new power of html 5 websites, upgrade to IE 9 or Firefox 4.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Firebase Database as back end for your Android/iOS app - floryan2oo7
http://iosapptemplates.com/blog/mobile-programming/firebase-database-backend-ios-app
======
ericand
Take a look at Cloud Firestore.
The author talks a lot about scalability but Google recently posted [0] that
Cloud Firestore is similar to Firebase Realtime DB and more scalable.
[0] [https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/rtdb-vs-
firestore](https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/rtdb-vs-firestore)
"Cloud Firestore is Firebase's new flagship database for mobile app
development. It improves on the successes of the Realtime Database with a new,
more intuitive data model. Cloud Firestore also features richer, faster
queries and scales better than the Realtime Database."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
VM escape vulnerabilities patched in VirtualBox - emptysands
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/10-new-vm-escape-vulnerabilities-discovered-in-virtualbox/
======
mirimir
The title should really say that they've been patched.
Edit: The first sentence:
> Oracle has released patches for ten vulnerabilities in VirtualBox which
> allow attackers to break out of guest operating systems and attack the host
> operating system that VirtualBox runs on.
And at [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/security-
advisory/cpujan20...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/security-
advisory/cpujan2018-3236628.html#AppendixOVIR)
> Supported Versions Affected ... Prior to 5.1.32, Prior to 5.2.6
The current version being 5.2.6
[https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)
~~~
dang
OK, we s/discovered/patched/ the title above. Since something can't be patched
before it is discovered this seems strictly more informative.
~~~
mirimir
Thanks. The article didn't say when the vulnerabilities were discovered.
Depending who discovered them, it could have been months or more. I brought it
up to clarify that these aren't unpatched vulnerabilities.
------
krylon
I am definitely not complaining, but I wonder why Oracle continues work on
VirtualBox at all?
When they acquired Sun, they seemed in a hurry to kill off all the other open
source projects Sun had been running.
Do they use it as the basis for their cloud-infrastructure[1] or what? I do
not see how VirtualBox generates any revenue for Oracle, and they have a
reputation for being very ... focussed when it comes to revenue.
[1] That seems pretty unlikely
~~~
userbinator
They have a closed-source "extension pack" with a bunch of quite useful and
even necessary features (e.g. USB 2.0) so that could be their revenue source,
but looking around it seems that others have been rather unsuccessful at
actually trying to pay for it --- the response Oracle has given them is "you
can use and redistribute it for free".
~~~
krylon
Huh. Next thing you know Microsoft is going to host all Windows and Office
development on public github repos, IBM begins lobbying against software
patents, and GNU/Hurd reaches 1.0... These are interesting times we live in
for sure.
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Tangential related, didn't I see recently that IBM has a patent on patent
trolling?
~~~
pgeorgi
Business methods and legal theories are exempt from patents, but OTOH, so was
software once upon a time.
~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Business method patents are certainly a thing.
------
snowpanda
What is the alternative to using Virtualbox besides buying a separate
computer? I'm assuming there's more vulnerabilities to be found.
~~~
krylon
On Linux, qemu/kvm works well enough for most purposes, on FreeBSD you have
bhyve. OpenBSD's vmm is a thing, but I do not know if it can host other
systems than OpenBSD, yet.
On Windows, there is Hyper-V. I have only very little experience with it, but
in my short time, I did not encounter anything I would like to complain about.
I am not sure, however, if it comes with the client editions of Windows.
Microsoft Virtual PC still exists, too.
Xen is also a thing - run Dom0 as your desktop system, and run the VMs in the
background.
None of this is perfect, but if you need them, there are alternatives.
~~~
bdcravens
> Microsoft Virtual PC still exists
Not updated in almost 10 years, not supported on Windows 8 or 10.
~~~
Splines
I'm pretty sure the Virtual PC product went on to become Hyper-V.
~~~
emptysands
Some of the Xen technology went into Hyper-V. Microsoft had a partnership with
the Cambridge labs.
------
omgbananas
Do any of these affect the host when it's Linux?
I run several VMs at the same time, occasionally one will freeze. I think it's
just the video/display that freezes while the browser/whatever in the guest VM
still operates normally.
~~~
emptysands
[https://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/3649](https://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/3649)
"The vulnerabilities found in the core graphics framework (VBVA subcomponent)
and affect all host operating systems."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft proposing $10B program to bring broadband internet to rural America - rmason
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-proposing-10b-program-to-bring-broadband-internet-to-rural-america/
======
rbanffy
Where no ransomware has gone before...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Oracle Cloud Dedicated Customer Regions (AWS/Azure comparison starts 6:22) - singhkays
https://www.oracle.com/corporate/events/live/new-autonomous-services/?bcid=6170019844001
======
singhkays
Product Page - [https://www.oracle.com/cloud/cloud-at-customer/dedicated-
reg...](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/cloud-at-customer/dedicated-region/)
Announcement - [https://www.oracle.com/news/connect/announcing-dedicated-
reg...](https://www.oracle.com/news/connect/announcing-dedicated-region-cloud-
at-customer.html)
Nomura Research Institute (NRI) Announcement -
[https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-nri-
ded...](https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-nri-dedicated-
customer-070820.html)
Disclosure: I work at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
------
znpy
Remember kids: Oracle has no customers, only hostages!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Poll: 62% of Americans Say They Have Political Views They’re Afraid to Share - mrfusion
https://www.cato.org/publications/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-they-have-political-views-theyre-afraid-share
======
mrfusion
To be fair, I almost never trust polls. So much is dependent on how the
questions are phrased and the context.
------
totony
The rise is expected imo. The US politics are highly polarized and mob
movements are very common. Mix this with a highly connected society and that's
what you get.
The generational discrepency also suggests this, with older people not as
tightly connected as younger.
------
h2odragon
let's have a test here then. Posit: The US Constitution outlines a pretty good
system of representative government. We should try reimplementing system again
in the USA.
My bet is that if you disagree with either statement, saying so wont worry
you. If you agree, where would you feel comfortable saying so? Here? Church
group? Drinking party / orgy / porch chat?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Brian Eno: Composers as Gardeners - GuiA
https://www.edge.org/conversation/brian_eno-composers-as-gardeners
======
hosh
Tangent:
I've been reading about Christopher Alexander's work, particularly his keynote
for the 1996 OOPSLA conference. Alexander introduced the idea of pattern
languages to architecture in the 70s, and it has influenced computer science.
However, reading further, it doesn't look like Alexander's deeper work ever
caught on: his follow up work (in The Nature of Order) speaks about things
that makes architecture more like a gardener.
Alexander talked about it in that OOPSLA keynote, how he and his collaborators
discovered pattern languages that guarantees cohesive design. By iterating it,
a design would emerge that is in harmony within context. He likens it that use
of pattern languages to DNA. (He then found 15 'deep patterns' in which all
pattern languages that guarantee cohesiveness in design shares ...) I
understood this to mean, the architecture is in the DNA, the "deep patterns",
while at the same time, the design are grown like a gardener. At that point,
there is no dichotomy of architect vs. gardener.
Ironic, I think, one of the most influential architects and philosopher was
speaking on things that got co-opted into reaffirming that dichotomy.
"Patterns" came to be used as a way of creating rigid, dead designs. I don't
know of many people practicing this in fullness in either building
architecture or software architecture.
------
badmadrad
As someone who makes music from the bottom up. I find its not really a black
as white as bottom up vs top down. Sometimes I go into a composition with an
idea of what I want to do and the sound I want to create. However, I find in
the execution small nuances and details present themselves somehow completely
alter the creative direction. In short, unlike building a physical building
music is fluid enough to react to the the chaos and randomness of creativity
very elegantly.
~~~
thirteenfingers
Fellow composer here - I completely agree, and I suspect the great classical
composers often felt as much, that their own musical ideas led them in a
totally different direction than they originally intended.
My personal feeling about Eno's approach is that it almost deserves a
different label than "composing" \- maybe "incubating" (you know, like a
startup incubator). For me, and I suspect for a great many music lovers,
"composing" implies a process that may be evolutionary to some degree but is
still overseen and directed from beginning to end by a particular artist.
Contrast that with the case of traditional music from $REGIONAL_CULTURE where
the process is more truly evolutionary as songs are passed from one generation
of bards to another.
(I don't mean to say that Eno's approach to making music is somehow less
legitimate than any other. It just seems better described by some other word.)
~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Coincidentally I was pulling apart a generative music app when I saw this
post.
I think you make a very good point - which is that in the bigger picture,
music is inherently evolutionary in a way that generative music isn't.
Having some experience with generative apps, I know that they absolutely do
not make music spontaneously. You have to invent them, build them, and tune
them - all by hand/ear.
It's more like building an instrument - i.e. a machine - and tuning/debugging
it than cultivating a garden.
Music as a whole is much more free. When it's loose in a culture, it can
evolve in weird, unexpected directions that no individual composer would ever
be able to imagine, and no app today would come close to copying.
~~~
fenomas
What were you pulling apart?
I'm a couple of years into playing with generative music, and one of my big
problems is finding prior art to imitate...
------
DonHopkins
Sauce Faucet is my all time favorite Heavy Metal Brian Eno Cover Band. (Well
actually, they did one cover album, and I don't know of any other Heavy Metal
Brian Eno Cover Bands, but it's uniquely awesome!)
[http://www.saucefaucet.com/tiger.html](http://www.saucefaucet.com/tiger.html)
30th Anniversary remake of Brian Eno's 1974 Classic!!!
Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy)
This is a heavy handed recreation of Brian Eno’s 1974 masterpiece. Oddly
enough, Eno was one of the first people to hear it, and commented "I am deeply
moved by your versions of my songs". "I like it very, very much!"
We were just making this cd for ourselves for the fun of it. We're big fans.
It's amazing how it's all worked out, and now you can hear it too!
These versions lack some of the finesse and subtleties of the original, but
retain the arrangements, and add a joyously aggressive rock edge.
It's as if we remade the whole album with me playing everything and Caroleen
singing. Yay!
It sure was a lot of fun to make. I hope you enjoy it too.
Please listen to Brian Eno's music.
Thanks to Mr. Eno for creating such a great collection of songs that have
endured the test of time, still great today.
A phone call from Eno:
[http://www.saucefaucet.com/enomessage.mp3](http://www.saucefaucet.com/enomessage.mp3)
Liner notes:
[http://www.saucefaucet.com/dug_notes.html](http://www.saucefaucet.com/dug_notes.html)
------
beat
As an improvising musician, I think "composition" is viewed very narrowly,
through a classical lens. In classical music, the performer's duty is merely
to interpret the piece as closely as possible to what someone perceives to be
the composer's intent. But in improvisational music, the composition isn't an
explicit instruction for performance, but rather a framework within which the
performers are free to move. It's a set of constraints, agreed upon.
I don't think that's either architecture or gardening. It's more like
community-building.
~~~
thirteenfingers
Classical composer and performer here. You just hit upon the one aspect of my
chosen genre that drives me batshit insane.
I've had countless arguments with other performers about how rigid one has to
be when performing any given classical composition. I'm told over and over
again that, for example, Glenn Gould's unorthodox interpretations "aren't
musical", but when I press my interlocutors for a justification of that
statement, all they can offer is "it's not what the composer intended", which
only begs the question. Composers aren't infallible, and they definitely don't
always see or hear all the possibilities inherent in their own music.
The whole division-of-labor between composer and performer is, I think, both a
strength and a weakness in classical music. It's a strength because it's
allowed composers to concentrate on exploring the possibilities of musical
ideas and working out something marvelously and intricately crafted in
advance. It's a weakness because it encourages this hard-set absolute-textual-
fidelity mentality among performers, and discourages them from really leaving
their individual mark on a performance (unlike in jazz). The great classical
composers are among my heroes, but they weren't gods, and performers shouldn't
treat them as such.
~~~
Neeek
Weren't most big name composers from all "classical" periods prolific
improvisers also? Stories of Bach's fugue battles come to mind so I don't
think the two have to be mutually exclusive. I think it's more that
transcribed music is as close as we have to recorded music from periods before
vinyl which inevitably draws a certain crowd of purist. To me it feels like a
subculture within the classical space.
------
smnscu
My favourite piece on Brain Eno from my favourite music reviewer:
[http://starling.rinet.ru/music/eno.htm](http://starling.rinet.ru/music/eno.htm)
> If there is anybody in this world who could really penetrate into the very
> nature of SOUND itself and analyze it with the sharpest scalpel, yet leaving
> no traces of rude treatment upon its delicate soul, it is Mr Brian Eno.
------
nicklaf
I recently came across an improvement to a Frank Zappa quote that Butler
Lampson included in slide from a 2014 presentation titled "Hints and
Principles for Computer System Design".[1]
_" [Data is not information, ] Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not
wisdom, Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love, Love is
not music and Music is THE BEST” --Frank Zappa_
I find it interesting that some of the greater computer architects decide to
spend their later years immersed more in music than in programming (L Peter
Deutsch comes to mind here).
[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/6-butlerlampson.pdf)
------
centrinoblue
This echo's some thoughts I've had about application development lately
especially wrt TDD.
My preferred style of app. development is much more about exploring what is
possible and what works as opposed to implementing a fully fledged concept of
the finished application.
I find the application begins to take on it's finished state only after I have
had time to explore new ideas and techniques that I don't necessarily
understand completely when I begin.
TDD seems to be tailored towards the architectural / fully conceptualized
application whereas the gardening metaphor seems more appropriate for the way
I tend to approach app development. I find it counter-productive to try to
write tests for code before I even figure out what it will do yet. YMMV.
Thanks again Brian.
------
swayvil
The #1 "gardening club" (generative art forum) on the planet if anybody's
interested : [http://reddit.com/r/generative](http://reddit.com/r/generative)
~~~
stevehiehn
nice link, thx
------
smrtinsert
I agree with this statement. Whereas previously composers had to conceptualize
layering in their minds prior to hiring the orchestra to play it, composers
these days can select from an unlimited supply of synthesizer presets for
instant timbre and mood.
On one hand I think it contributes the diversity and range of modern music,
but at the other end it definitely enables some lazy music making.
------
stevehiehn
I can relate to this. I often think musicians of the past looked to the future
for inspiration. It seems that many now look to just recreate the past. I
really believe that interactive procedural music is around the corner. I
predict once you can interact with music in settings like VR/AR it will render
pop bands as we know them nearly obsolete.
------
nyolfen
here's my favorite eno quote that i break out at any opportunity:
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium
will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital
video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated
as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art
is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits
and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too
loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked
voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that
releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white,
is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned
to record them.”
― Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices (1996)
~~~
hammock
I would add that the distortion, the voice crack, the grain of the image -
these bring the medium itself to light. Without them the medium is (more or
less) invisible. These defects represent the interaction, the connection
between a metaphysical work of art and the physical reality.
~~~
miceeatnicerice
Also - the glistening of jewellery.
~~~
DonHopkins
The spectacular blooming of a vidicon tube.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs9wuaVV33I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs9wuaVV33I)
~~~
miceeatnicerice
Chastisement and reconfirmation in one glittering, bulging codpiece
------
big_spammer
The relevant quote from this article is:
"we're so used to dignifying controllers that we forget to dignify
surrenderers."
------
swayvil
My favorite Brian Eno song ever :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K50nzcEhPKg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K50nzcEhPKg)
It's 3AM in fairyland
------
bitwize
Ah, Edge.org, the Medium of the late nineties.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Drone and Docker, Open Source CI - daker
http://blog.drone.io/2014/2/5/open-source-ci-docker.html
======
rubiquity
Wow just yesterday I was visualizing and dreaming about what a containerized
CI system might look like after realizing:
1) I don't want to pay for hosted CI
2) Setting up your own CI is a pain in the butt currently
Well done. I'm gonna have a look through this!
~~~
avelis
Here here! I saw a demo as well and what he has built as well as what he has
planned on the roadmap is great. Love where its going.
------
nickstinemates
I had the chance of seeing a demo of this yesterday; it went really, really
great. Brad is a great guy with a ton of passion.
Drone combined with some of the features upcoming on docker.io will be an
_incredibly_ compelling usecase for Continuous Integration going forward.
------
michaelmior
I haven't really looked closely at Drone yet, but you might also be interested
in Strider. [http://stridercd.com/](http://stridercd.com/)
One of the things I like is that it's dead simple to get running on Heroku.
Language support is a little weak (Python, Ruby, node.js), but we're working
on that.
Another nice feature that's currently lacking which it looks like Drone does
well is the ability to provision external services (e.g. DB servers) for
tests.
------
ucarion
So is Docker really a safe alternative to VMs? I was under the impression that
you can't run untrusted code in a Docker container yet.
~~~
pekk
Why do people keep pretending this is the purpose of containers?
~~~
wmf
Because PaaSes use containers to isolate customers from each other.
~~~
pekk
Why not use VMs for isolation, and containers for their own distinct reasons?
~~~
wmf
Overhead.
------
henrikbrink
This looks great! Looking forward to bitbucket integration.
~~~
bradrydzewski
Thanks! We posted our go-bitbucket api today as well.
[https://github.com/drone/go-bitbucket](https://github.com/drone/go-bitbucket)
The Bitbucket patch should land next week
------
fallingmeat
So I can run this locally, ensure my test system is dialed in, then
scale/automate it with the hosted service? If that's true, it certainly beats
having to guess what my test system is actually doing remotely and would
definitely help bring some alignment between my prod/test infrastructure.
~~~
bradrydzewski
yes! there is a CLI that let's your run your builds locally, on your laptop.
Navigate to the root directory of your repository and run `drone -v build .`
you need Docker installed and the .drone.yml file in the root. it's a great
way to test locally without having to push to the CI server. As an added
bonus, you could even setup a pre-commit hook
------
tomburke
There's an article on VentureBeat posted today with some more info about
Drone.io:
[http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/07/droneio](http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/07/droneio)
------
steveklabnik
I saw a demo of this a week ago, and it looked really neat. Kudos for
launching!
------
avelis
Having seen a demo with Brad @ Geekdom SF. Drone.io is to jenkins what
IntelliJ is to Eclipse.
What I see as a benefit is how all the features of this CI system work for you
out of the box. Definitely worth a look.
------
nodesocket
Extremely well done Brad. With Drone, we can finally ditch Jenkins. Going to
setup Drone open source for [https://commando.io](https://commando.io) right
now!
------
freddavis
Great work from a great Geekdom startup! Yay!
------
wraithmonster
Very excited about the Docker integration!
------
tksfz
This is exactly what I've been looking for, docker + CI, and I'm excited to
see the scala 2.10 image!
------
cpsaltis
It was about time to see an alternative to Jenkins.
Does it provide the fine-grained workflows Jenkins does?
~~~
bradrydzewski
The workflow is pretty basic right now, however, we plan on adding matrix and
parallel builds in the near future. Could you elaborate a bit more on your
workflow? I definitely want to make sure Drone supports more than just simple
use cases.
~~~
oblio
From my experience with Jenkins, as a build/deployment/release engineer the
past 6 years, you probably want to:
\- chain jobs - needed for larger projects; ideally this should even allow
composing jobs to have nice, modular jobs which can be launched standalone or
chained
\- some kind of powerful templating system - needed for reducing configuration
duplication; ideally this would keep track of all the "children" in case of
updates
\- you also probably need enterprisey features later on, like SSO using
AD/LDAP, fine grained ACLs based on groups, etc
But job chaining and job templating should be higher priorities for the
workflows since they affect the overall architecture. Jenkins has been
struggling for a while to re-architect to allow this, not entirely
successfully.
You also want a plugin system if you don't have one, especially one with
dependencies (i.e. the Git plugin can server as a dependency for the Github
plugin).
My 2 € cents :)
~~~
cpsaltis
Chaining jobs and parallel ones are both very important. Especially the last
one since it saves you a lot of time waiting the tests to complete. Also a big
plus is to be able to run certain set of tests only when a specific event is
fired eg ran test A when somebody pushes to branch X
------
fallingmeat
so I wonder how this impacts the circleCI funding. Looks like some pretty
steep competition. [http://blog.circleci.com/we-
raised-a-6m-series-a/](http://blog.circleci.com/we-raised-a-6m-series-a/)
------
tmbo
Love seeing an alternative for jenkins, it's about time!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's the most beautiful code written in Python you have ever seen? - pedrodelfino
======
git-pull
SQLAlchemy:
[https://github.com/zzzeek/sqlalchemy](https://github.com/zzzeek/sqlalchemy)
[http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/latest/](http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/latest/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vunIDi9Z-_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vunIDi9Z-_8)
( _Introduction to SQLAlchemy_ , 2014, 2:52:50)
[http://www.aosabook.org/en/sqlalchemy.html](http://www.aosabook.org/en/sqlalchemy.html)
(Overview in _The Architecture of Open Source Applications_ )
------
sharmi
This was back in 2005-2006. I was working with a guy who loves to code. His
favorite way to spend the weekend was to figure out ways to make our services
more robust and optimized. He had one major disadvantage.
His forgetfulness was legendary. He could barely remember what happened in the
morning or what code he wrote. He made this his strength by writing the
cleanest and well-structured code I have ever seen. So, not only him, but
anyone, without any prior knowledge, can jump into the code at any point in
time and immediately understand the flow and be productive. Obviously, it
helps that the code was in Python, but being in python by itself does not a
great code make.
------
navbaker
I once programmed a complete chess board in four lines of code:
>import chess
>import chess.svg
>board = chess.Board()
>board
I'm pretty sure I'm a genius.
------
RUG3Y
I've said this in other threads recently - The Flask source code is really
awesome and reading helped me learn Python better.
------
tcbawo
I've enjoyed reading a lot of Peter Norvig's python code. There is his Lisp
implemention ([http://norvig.com/lispy.html](http://norvig.com/lispy.html)).
He also created a spell checker that was an informative and interesting read.
------
svisser
Earlier thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9896369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9896369)
------
teapot01
Go to python repl
> import this
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Soylent: A Word Processor With A Crowd Inside - MaysonL
http://code.google.com/p/soylent/
======
MaysonL
See also Bruce Sterling's take on it (with a video of it in action):
[http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/09/soylent-a-
wor...](http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/09/soylent-a-word-
processor-with-a-crowd-inside/)
~~~
nezumi
The scariest thing about that video is how easily they refer to Soylent as
'it', as in 'it cuts down your text', 'it fixes grammar errors', even though
when Soylent is in use it's clearly a 'they'. Or perhaps that distinction is
as nonsensical as referring to the bundle of neurons in your head as 'they'...
------
aidenn0
Remember in the 80s how AI was going to allow computers to do all sorts of
things that only humans could do well?
Just a few decades down the line, and now computers can get humans to do all
sorts of things that only humans can do well.
------
shiftb
Soylent Green is made of People[1]! At the very least it's a clever name.
Really smart, interesting concept. I'm not sure I trust other random people to
correct my grammar though.
[1] Thanks to Mr. Kenuda, 11th Grade Physics teacher, who convinced me to
watch that movie.
------
motters
On one level it's quite cool to see human intelligence pipelined as a service,
but on another I worry that this may represent a new form of slavery with the
turkers being paid at such a low level that other social problems may arise as
a consequence.
~~~
akozak
While I'm sympathetic to this worry about crowdsourcing (which Jonathan
Zittrain has been writing and speaking about for years), I'm still optimistic
that the architecture of ecosystems like Mechanical Turk can protect people
from exploitation. And hopefully the market will set fair compensation per
task (although I don't think it has yet).
------
scottyallen
This would be really useful for programming, particularly refactoring. Imagine
being able to quickly apply a relatively mechanical refactoring that still
required human judgement (pretty common), and have other programmers do it for
you.
I imagine it would work something like this:
\- Select the files/directories/blocks of code that you want the refactoring
applied to.
\- Describe (in english) what the refactoring work should be, and do an
example on one piece of the code.
\- The work gets split (by file?) and distributed via a mechanical turk-like
interface (extra points if it opens tasks in your favorite editor with syntax
highlighting). As workers submit their work, the code is automatically built
and tests are run (could be a callback to your local development environment,
so you don't have to worry about shipping all your code up to the cloud and
figuring out how to build it there).
Could be pretty awesome, particularly if you could enlist an army of freshman
CS majors, bored programmers, and eager overseas engineers. I wonder if
intellectual property concerns would be too high for people to actually use it
though.
EDIT: If I still worked at Google, this would be a fun project to try
internally as 20% project. There are lots of mechanical refactoring tasks that
need to be done across large portions of the codebase, good build/test
infrastructure to easily verify success/failure for a given task, and lots of
bored/eager engineers that feed off of reward-based systems:)
------
RK
Here's my human macro for all you high school/college students:
"Expand these bullet points into a 5 page paper"
Even though it mentions things that are along the lines of correction, this
could pretty easily be moved into the realm of crowd-sourced cheating.
------
wtracy
I guess you need to be careful not to use this on any confidential documents.
------
aberkowitz
I wonder if shortn could be used to turn regular Wikipedia articles into those
fitting of simple Wikipedia[1].
[1] <http://simple.wikipedia.org>
------
Groxx
Mechanical Turk has been the brute-force behind a lot of unique concepts, it
seems. Really cool use of crowd-sourcing, and you've gotta love the name.
"Soylent is people" indeed.
------
mitko
wow! At 4pm today I was giving a talk in my lab about how cool this work is.
What really impresses though is not that it works. It is the Find-Fix-Verify
design pattern which tries to set some good practices in crowd-sourcing. For
example in GUI/web engineering MVC is considered good practice.
Refference: Bernstein, M.S., Little, G., Miller, R.C. et al. Soylent: A Word
Processor with a Crowd Inside. UIST '10, ACM Press (2010)
------
collint
Heck, I want this in my hacking. Grep for all the TODO/FIXME and run it
through MTURK....
hmmm
Might work better if you write a test for the code.
------
byoung2
This would be very useful as a Wordpress plugin.
~~~
aberkowitz
It would be amusing [and expensive] if it was enabled for comments.
------
Luyt
Soylent is made of People!
------
yters
So will there be a programming language with human powered functions?
~~~
john_horton
In some sense, this is what TurKit already is:
<http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/turkit/>
And I think TurKit is part of the back-end for Soylent.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Used Iphones? - aitoehigie
Hi all, i am really interested in developing applications for the iPhone, but the snag i have here is that i am a developer living in west africa, where there are no Iphones sold at last legally by Apple or Telco's. I would like to know where an unlocked iPhone can be bought, or if anyone here has a used/ new iphone for sale. I would really appreciate your help.
Thanks.
======
NonEUCitizen
If your app is not GPS-related, you can try getting an iPod Touch, which is
like iPhone minus the phone and GPS hardware.
I had also read that in HongKong you can get an unlocked iPhone, but for $700.
You will need a Mac for the SDK. First, get the Mac, download the free SDK,
and get your app working in the Simulator (part of SDK). THEN, get the iPod
Touch.
Code first. Buy hardware as late as possible.
~~~
SingAlong
I don't think there's 3G in his location (africa). So if he's buying an iPod
Touch, he might as well go for a used-non-3G version of the iPhone (refering
to the first version) which are cheap now. I guess those old iPhones (non-3G)
have unlocking software that's freely available.
I've seen sites selling sim-cards that unlock locked phones. So he can use
something like that too.
P.S: I don't own an iPhone (coz I can't afford it) nor used one. So my
situation is pretty close to his :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Problem with #DeleteFacebook - alistproducer2
https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/dont-deletefacebook-thats-not-good-enough.html
======
alistproducer2
>Deleting Facebook is privilege. The company has become so good at the many
things it does that for lots of people, leaving the service would be a self-
harming act.
It's hard to believe this was written with a straight face
>I’ve lost touch with friends. I don’t go out much anymore and don’t know when
cool things I might like to go to are happening. I’m pretty much not a part of
any scene anymore. I don’t know when old friends are in town I’d love to see.
These people aren't really your friends
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Go: Good For What? - neya
http://www.lessonsoffailure.com/software/google-go-good-for-nothing/
======
tptacek
From a previous Go blog post by the same author:
_Go decided to use a foreign syntax to C++, C and Java programmers. They
borrows forward declarations from BASIC (yep, you heard me right…BASIC),
creating declarations that are backwards from what we’ve been using for close
to 20 years_
"Yep, you heard me right... BASIC". Consider carefully how seriously you want
to take this blog.
~~~
mseepgood
Go's declaration syntax has some benefits:
<http://blog.golang.org/2010/07/gos-declaration-syntax.html>
And they didn't borrow the declaration syntax from BASIC, but from Pascal:
<http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#ancestors>
At the time Pascal was invented BASIC distinguished variable types via name
postfixes like % and $.
Also, a "forward declaration" is not what the author seems to think:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_declaration>
~~~
snogglethorpe
What really annoys me about Go's declaration syntax is that they _left out the
colon_.
Like Pascal/Ada/etc, Go uses a postfix type declaration syntax, but the former
languages separate the variable from the type with a colon. This is both more
readable—the colon acts as a highly visible marker for the type, whereas with
the Go style, the variable and type end up sort of smudged together—and
because of its long history, much more familiar.
Go-style: var foo, bar int
Pascal-style: var foo, bar : int
My suspicion is that Go originally _did_ use a colon in declarations and they
got rid of it at some point for some reason, because Go's "auto-declaration"
syntax actually does use a colon, only without an explicit type: "x := expr"
makes much more sense if the normal declaration syntax is "x : type = expr"
("just leave out the type and it will be deduced")....
There doesn't seem any particularly good _reason_ to omit the colon, it's
neither onerous to use nor particularly space-consuming. Neither is it likely
it simply didn't occur to them, as the declaration syntax is probably
consciously based on that of Pascal-family languages. Given that it seem to
yield obvious benefits without any obvious problems, I'm mystified as to why
it was omitted.
Unfortunately for all its obvious goodness in some areas Go also seems to have
a number of these "WTF were they thinking" areas as well. The impression it
leaves is of a rough draft, not something polished. Sadly, these quirks are
pretty much set in stone now...
------
wglb
Ok, I will do this one more time.
The authors of go come from my generation. Back in those days, the term
"Systems Programming" meant something different than what wikipedia, and
probably most everyone today thinks of it.
Systems Programming in those days meant writing compilers, text processors,
unix command line programs. It did not then mean programming an operating
system, or anything near hard real-time.
Not a very high quality article.
~~~
thirsteh
Go also isn't described as a systems language anymore, but rather as a
general-purpose language, although this article predates that change.
------
hevyw8
It's worth noting that this post is from December 2009.
~~~
nicolas42
This is often the most important thing about an article and often overlooked.
Second _scruffy_ <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggRLVdOoNGI>
------
JadeNB
Did the author change the title? It now reads "Google Go: Good for what?",
although the article (or, for that matter, the link) still quite clearly
suggests (and explicitly says at the end) that the answer is 'nothing'.
~~~
thirsteh
The conclusion is that "Go is good for absolutely nothing."
------
thirsteh
Somebody criticizing a language he freely admits to never having used.
Nothing interesting to see here.
~~~
slurgfest
By that token, there is nothing interesting to see in most of the language
advocacy posts on HN.
~~~
zellyn
Yes.
------
klrr
"I’d say there are plenty of non-starters to keep Go out of the application
programming space."
God, I've got tired of all desktop applications written in python, they're soo
slow. I hope Go gets used both in the application space and system space, so
not just our systems are fast, the applications too.
------
jasonmoo
Go is a young language with a growing community that should only get better as
more minds come to it.
For me it's very accessible for rapidly developing heavy-lifting tools, in
particular networking tools. It's not the only language but it's served me
well when I've reached for it.
------
sidcool
A gross and incorrect generalization. It should have been:
Go: Good here, bad there.
------
melling
How good is the Go optimizer? I would guess that there's still a lot of room
for improvement because that's not something you'd spend a lot of time on
early in the life of a language.
~~~
theatrus2
Basically, not much (depending on which compiler chain you are using). The
Plan9 based compilers (which compile at light speed) don't produce great code.
~~~
aaronblohowiak
They don't produce great code because they are optimized for compilation
speed. IIRC, the plan is to have your quick to compile compiler and your fast
execution time compiler..
~~~
thirsteh
It's not the plan; they already exist: gc is the default, fast suite of
compilers; gccgo is a Go front-end for GCC.
~~~
aaronblohowiak
I should have been clear: it is the plan to maintain this dichotomy
~~~
thirsteh
Yes.
------
davidpayne11
I'm genuinely curious - Scala is faster and better performant, what is there
in GO that there isn't in Scala? I mean, if you were to build a highly
scalable web app, why would you choose one over the other? Any thoughts??
~~~
430gj9j
Ask what isn't in Go that is in Scala. The Go authors deliberately left out
certain features to focus on what they call "clarity of design". I don't see
them ever adding XML literals for instance!
~~~
wonderzombie
It's worth reading [http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-
exponentia...](http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-
exponentially-more.html) to get some idea of the motivation behind including
less.
If you believe that our software systems are increasingly complex _and_ that
some aspect of the problems we're solving are essentially complex, then the
strongest path towards simplicity lies in minimizing complexity incidental to
the problems we're solving. One facet of programming which routinely
introduces complexity is our tools, particularly our programming languages.
I believe both Rob Pike (and the Go authors) and Rich Hickey are both
motivated in part by this impulse or a variation on it. They chose very
different ways of addressing the problem, but Clojure and Go are a lot more
similar than you'd think.
~~~
chc
> _If you believe that our software systems are increasingly complex and that
> some aspect of the problems we're solving are essentially complex, then the
> strongest path towards simplicity lies in minimizing complexity incidental
> to the problems we're solving. One facet of programming which routinely
> introduces complexity is our tools, particularly our programming languages._
That is true, but I'm not sure the correlation you seem to be suggesting here
— that complex tools breed complex programs — is realistic.
A lot of the time, complexity can either live in your tools or in your
program. For example, garbage collection requires a more complicated toolset
than manual memory management, but in return it removes the complexity of
memory management from your code. Similarly, ASM is simpler than C, and
Whitespace is simpler than Python, but most people will agree that a program
written in the latter tends to be simpler than the same program written in the
former.
~~~
wonderzombie
GC is an abstraction which, although complex in implementation, is something
which makes your program simpler. So the correlation has less to do with _how_
our tools are implemented, but the properties of the tools as we interact with
them.
Also, simplicity, like security, is a trade-off. When performance is
paramount, people will reach for C or assembly, and rightly so. Conversely if
performance is not the #1 priority, developers feel free to use higher-level
languages like Java or Ruby.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We’re lucky Mark Zuckerberg is in charge - mooreds
https://medium.com/swlh/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-stock-drop-shouldnt-step-down-a4277737152e
======
woodandsteel
This is a version of the argument, "He got us into this mess, so only he knows
how to get out of it"
The problem is that he is the sort of person who would get us into the present
mess, and that doesn't seem to have really changed much.
But the real problem is not who is in charge of the world's largest
centralized social network, it is that the world is on a centralized social
network. The solution is not to hope that Zuckerberg somehow saves us, the
only solution is decentralization.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Coders at Work - Interview Snippets online - lupin_sansei
http://www.codersatwork.com/?a=b
======
oscardelben
?a=b ?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817235>
------
andhapp
It's a must read.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub forking has one big flaw (2011) - tutuca
http://zbowling.github.io/blog/2011/11/25/github/
======
jondubois
I think it's only fair that the original repo should be the most promoted one.
Usually, the original author has put a lot of thought and effort into coming
up with the idea and turning it into a popular open source project.
You don't want to create an environment in which forkers can easily steal
credit from the original author(s). It takes a lot of passion and goodwill for
someone to start a new open source project. I think they deserve some credit.
If an 'owner' no longer feels up to the task of managing their project, GitHub
lets them transfer it to someone else. That's what happened with ExpressJS and
it worked out fine.
~~~
tessierashpool
_I think it 's only fair that the original repo should be the most promoted
one. Usually, the original author has put a lot of thought and effort into
coming up with the idea and turning it into a popular open source project._
OP brings up the example of a project where the original repo shouldn't be the
most promoted one, because it's been abandoned, while plenty of other repos
are still alive. I blogged about the same thing earlier this month and used
the same example.
if you haven't encountered this problem, you will. it is absolutely a problem
every developer __will __encounter. it 's only a matter of time.
somebody starts a great project, doesn't have time to keep it alive, and the
community fractures because GitHub has no way to differentiate between
"original repo" and "canonical repo."
not going to rant about this because I already did in a blog post:
[https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20150610-thought-
experimen...](https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20150610-thought-experiment-
github-community-view)
_If an 'owner' no longer feels up to the task of managing their project,
GitHub lets them transfer it to someone else. That's what happened with
ExpressJS and it worked out fine._
this is a ludicrous statement. the Express.js transfer of ownership was a
ridiculous fiasco full of angry drama, hurt feelings, and core developers
resigning from the project.
documented here: [http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-bizarre-
bazaar-...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-bizarre-bazaar-who-
owns-expressjs.html)
also, the idea that you can solve this problem by having the original owner
transfer ownership doesn't make any sense. the whole problem is that the
original owner isn't paying attention at all, doesn't care in the first place,
and wouldn't know who to transfer ownership to, if they did care.
it happens all the time.
~~~
jondubois
>> this is a ludicrous statement. the Express.js transfer of ownership was a
ridiculous fiasco full of angry drama, hurt feelings
True, I should rephrase; from the consumer's point of view it turned out fine
:p The project is still healthy.
About ExpressJS, I did read something about one of the main developers not
even being aware that the transfer was happening until the last minute. I also
heard that there might have been money involved and it probably wasn't a fair
process. There are a lot of ethical dilemmas there. A transfer of ownership
doesn't have to be this nasty though.
------
tenfingers
Also, of note, is that currently if you "fork" using git and push it into a
github repository, there's no way to re-attach/hint github about the original
ancestor.
The problem is compounded by the fact that doing _anything_ related to the
ancestor, such as pull requests, or even just diffs, will not be possible.
I submitted a feature request to the github folks years ago, but nothing has
really happened (I was just suggested to delete and fork the repository
again).
Not that it's hard: you could determine the ancestor and different lineages
just using the hashes of the commits upon the first push to github. You could
also do it completely offline, it wouldn't matter.
There's also quite a number of forks available on github which aren't really
visible because of that. I know that for some of my own projects and smaller
projects that I checked, a code search would actually reveal _many_ non-linked
repositories. And I also know why: I often don't fork on github (why would I
if I know nothing about the project yet?), I just shallow clone locally.
Forking on github doesn't serve any purpose until you actually change the
code, which oftentimes has already been done locally.
~~~
kpcyrd
git clone [email protected]:original/repo.git
# make some commits
git remote rename origin upstream
# fork the repo on github
git remote add origin [email protected]:your/repo.git
git fetch origin
git push -u origin master
~~~
zimbatm
This would be perfectly fine if all the project data was stored into git.
Unfortunately github issues, comments, project metadata, webhook setup, team
membership, ... are not part of the repository.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Not to mention past and outstanding pull requests.
------
nathankleyn
Amusingly, Bitbucket has since removed a lot of their useful fork information
after a redesign that took place between now and this article's publish date
(2011) [1].
One approach to this problem, as the article mentions, is to list by
popularity - however what would this mean? If it's by the number of "stars",
not many people curate their list to keep them up to date. It would have to be
some kind of rolling popularity measure, perhaps number of unique users who've
cloned a repository in the last month or something.
[1]: [https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issue/5009/list-of-
project...](https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issue/5009/list-of-project-
forks-gives-very-little)
------
qznc
It affects only one part of the rant, but I wonder why Github considers it
necessary to publically fork a project. Often, I want to push a single fix. I
would like to
git clone [email protected]:foo/bar.git
# fix locally
git commit
git push # creates pull request
~~~
ghthor
While that would be convenient,I have no idea how it would work. You're asking
to push to something you don't have rights to modify.
Git evolved with a pull workflow because the problem it was made to solve was
a the pull workflow of Linus and the kernel. This inherently means you must
self host your changes while they're being reviewed and accepted.
~~~
carussell
... which GitHub totally messes up, by the way. You have to go ahead and
create a (superfluous) on-GitHub fork to file a pull request. Not a problem if
the maintainers know how to use git and are willing to pull from you without
using the GitHub UI, but there are tons of people whose only exposure to git
is through GitHub and stops there.
As I wrote to an acquaintance earlier this week while venting about GitHub
(and the condescending remarks you're liable to get from people who equate it
with git and will assume that a tendency to stay off the former means you're
unfamiliar with the latter):
"Coming from a background where wiki pages would be hosted on wikis and
submitting [code] changes for review is as simple as a) creating a patch and
b) attaching it for review, as I look at all the unnecessary (>3x) overhead
that GitHub imposes and all the people who don't have a problem with it and
feel that it's good and proper and normal, I feel like I'm in crazytown."
Further reading: Mozillians'comments on Gregory Szorc's post "Please Stop
Using MQ"[1]. Pay particular attention to everything that Gijs has to say.
1\. [http://gregoryszorc.com/blog/2014/06/23/please-stop-using-
mq...](http://gregoryszorc.com/blog/2014/06/23/please-stop-using-mq/)
------
caboteria
Github can make some changes as administrative actions even though there's no
UI to do it. For example, I have a project that was originally a fork but
became the upstream when the fork went offline. Github was able to "break" the
link from my fork to the dead upstream so mine became the upstream.
It's not as easy as DIY but it's just a support request.
------
IshKebab
I've noticed this too. Loads of github projects have dozens of forks with
identical Readmes. The only way to work out the difference between them is to
look at the commit messages on the Network tab.
------
musically_ut
I wrote a Chrome/Firefox extension to address the problem of finding "notable"
forks of original repos. These often are community supported version of the
original which would have been hard to find otherwise: Lovely Forks ~
[https://github.com/musically-ut/github-forks-
addon](https://github.com/musically-ut/github-forks-addon)
------
ryanbrunner
I agree with the idea that "not all forks are considered equal" insofar as
GitHub should do a better job of surfacing notable forks, rather than a fork
that fixes a small environmental issue specific to a single person, or ones
that don't make notable changes at all.
In terms of not elevating the root to special status, I disagree. Recognizing
one particular repository as canonical is a feature, not a bug. As much as git
itself doesn't place any special significance on a particular repository, the
culture of open source development does. Linus Torvalds can certainly say that
his Linux repository doesn't hold special status, but that's just not true
beyond a technical level. It's useful to be able to say "this is the _main_ ,
supported version of this library"
~~~
MereInterest
It is good to have a canonical version, but the canonical version and the root
version may be entirely different. The author brought up this point, talking
about a project that he had started, which was later forked. That fork has
many more features, and should be considered the canonical version, but isn't.
~~~
lsaferite
So, what are your choices to elect the canonical one then?
First project pushed is canonical and can pass the baton?
Seems better to drop the idea of a root or canonical version totally. Linking
forked projects together with hashes for the network graph seems like a good
idea personally.
------
amelius
> I want to add a feature or fix a bug but I want to share the changes
> upstream or with other people that may find it actually useful. I fixed a
> bug for my own environment. These changes may break everyone else and so no
> body should probably use this fork. I want to lock a version of a project
> away in a safe place that I know won’t change or break later and may use it
> as a point to send changes back up later. (This partially due to some design
> issues with git submodules.) I want to experiment. My changes are probably
> interesting but not ready for primetime, but if it works out it maybe come
> something fruitful.
Isn't that what "branches" are for?
~~~
IshKebab
You can't make a branch on a projcet you don't have write access to.
------
btown
Solution: Just make sure your fork has better SEO than the root! Work hard at
promoting your fork, have blogs link to you as the best thing since sliced
bread, etc. After all, since SEO is all about grassroots efforts, it's not at
all like you're kowtowing to a central entity's policies and trying to work
around their ridiculous restrictions. Because that would be counter to the
distributed nature of Git and FOSS in general, right?
Oh, wait.
/s
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
At Facebook, Creating Empathy Among Cyberbullying - mikeleeorg
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/fashion/Facebook-Arturo-Bejar-Creating-Empathy-Among-Cyberbullying.html
======
diminoten
I find it difficult to believe the number of people who claim to be "just
making a joke" were honestly doing just that, and had no offensive motives.
Isn't that the _classic_ response to offense? "I was just kidding!"
I'm guessing these folks were in CYA mode when they responded to these
surveys. "Oh shit, Facebook is going to discipline me if I tell them I was
being mean on purpose!"
~~~
chipsy
In general, people experience an emotion first, take action based on the
emotion, and then their brain covers up self-harmful reflections on the action
by building a rationale for their action being appropriate. We can do this
astonishingly quickly, enough so that other people will also believe that it
was a reasoned action and not just an emotion.
------
kelukelugames
I can't believe there is a team of 80 people at facebook to help people act
nicer.
~~~
swalsh
I believe i read once that facebook has highly correlated people's engagement
when interactions are more or less positive. So it might make sense to have a
team work on creating mechanisms that improve the interactions so they trend
more positively. Though i'm sure its sold as facebook "just trying to make a
difference"
~~~
pyrocat
Also: why there is no "dislike" button
~~~
tannerc
Related: No down voting (for 90%+?) on HN.
------
anigbrowl
_Interestingly, more often than not, the posts were not meant to hurt, but
were jokes lost in digital translation. When Facebook asked people why they
shared a post that hurt someone else, around 90 percent of respondents said
they thought their friends would like the post or would think it was funny._
Even my dog knows the limits of that particular excuse. It's nice that
Facebook is throwing some resources at this problem, but giving people
stickers, really? Why not call in a linguistics expert like Deborah Tannen, or
do some epidemiology-type modeling of meme transmission to see whether
differently-freighted transmissions take different vectors around the network?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Momentum Grows for Jack Dorsey of Square to Also Run Twitter - coloneltcb
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/29/technology/momentum-grows-for-jack-dorsey-of-square-to-also-run-twitter.html?_r=0
======
ogezi
I really think that jack will be the best person for Twitter; sometimes a c
company just needs it's founder's vision.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lambda School is SV big bet on reinventing education but students say is a cult - lhuser123
https://www.businessinsider.com/lambda-school-coding-bootcamp-y-combinator-cult-2019-10
======
manigandham
>> _" then locks them into an intensive program that ultimately leaves them on
the hook to pay back thousands of dollars in their future wages."_
So like any other student loan? Lambda school is offering an alternative to
help those who don't have funds or can't qualify otherwise. Nobody is forced
into it but of course it's not free.
>> _" when a white male student wore a Mexican sombrero to a presentation in
front of the class."_
What? That's not racist nor even a problem in the slightest. People who bring
up these kind of perceived faults will usually find offense in anything they
can and are better removed from the program for the sake of everyone else
who's actually there to learn.
Complaints like these make it clear this is a targeted hit piece with
anecdotes rather than a hard-hitting investigation.
~~~
klohto
Spot on. If anything, it makes me much more supportive of what is Lambda
doing.
Shortage of good SWE will always be there, so I’m pretty happy it’s Lambda
making money of this with actual results rather than leaving it expensive
universities who don’t deliver.
------
pixelperfect
> According to the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting, 60.9% of Lambda
> School students were employed 90 days after graduation, going up to 85.9%
> within 180 days. Graduates earn a median annual base salary of $60,000,
> according to that same study — although a Lambda School spokesperson puts
> that figure at $70,000, and notes that many graduates are in rural areas
> where average pay is lower.
This is one of the only paragraphs of the article with data rather than
anecdotes. The article only focuses on students with negative experiences, but
if this data is correct, it looks like Lambda School is objectively
successful, and I bet only a small fraction of its students regret attending.
~~~
tempsy
Unclear if these figures account for students that dropped out...I’m guessing
no. Per the ISA terms you owe 40% of the ISA after 5 weeks of the 36 week
course (<14% complete).
My issue is the incentive that would create to enroll students you in
admissions know would likely not complete the program, and then still collect
40% of the value of the ISA.
It becomes a Survivor-esque learning environment where a significant number of
students might be dropping out and you’re left with a much smaller number of
students who do graduate.
~~~
pixelperfect
Graduation rate would be a good figure to publish on their site. I searched
for it out of curiosity, and according to the CEO they have ~85% graduation
rate.
[https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1140636581679624192](https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1140636581679624192)
~~~
pixelperfect
That said, .15 + (.85 * .15) = 0.2775, the proportion of the student body who
either didn't graduate or didn't find a job within 180 days of graduating. So
there is a significant fraction who might regret attending the program. But it
still compares well with universities.
~~~
throwawayjava
Which isn't the right point of comparison. How does it compare with University
CS departments?
~~~
tempsy
Usually a big component to these programs are weekly exams to make sure you’re
on track. I’ve looked into some of the local ones and usually if you fail a
few you will be dismissed from the program.
85% means little if Lambda has a low bar to dismissing students that are
struggling and not keeping up with the material.
------
tempsy
I think it would be tough to comment on any of this without having gone
through the program myself, though I do wish there was an “undercover” senior
software engineer who would sign up for the part time program and do maybe a
month or more of the curriculum and write about it.
Knowing nothing else about the program the biggest red flag For me is that you
owe 40% of the ISA after only 5 weeks of the 9 month program (e.g. less than
14% complete). That seems really excessive, and would seem like it would drive
employees to “accept” students even if they knew there was minimal chance
they’d be able to complete the entire program.
~~~
fossuser
The ISA is highly restricted though.
Only kicks in if you're employed in a _software_ job making more than 50k/yr.
ISA stops after repayment or ten years whichever happens first.
My favorite part of it is the ISA structure, it aligns the incentives between
the school and the students. Universities don't have skin in the game, charge
outrageous tuition fees and provide primarily signaling (even in the best
cases). If Universities had to switch to an ISA model we'd see which ones were
actually valuable - if they'd even be capable of adapting.
~~~
tempsy
Doesn’t matter in my opinion. 40% after 5 weeks is a joke. If the student felt
the need to drop out due to any reason so early and then ended up either
completing another program or becoming self-taught and then finding a job it
is silly that Lambda would still collect up to $12k from the student for very
little value.
If Lambda were extremely confident in their program and who they select they
would at least move it up to 25% of the curriculum complete, not 14%, or lower
the 40% to something actually proportional to the time spent in the program.
~~~
lacker
_40% after 5 weeks is a joke._
This makes sense to me if their capacity to admit students for a particular
class is fixed. If someone starts the class and later drops out, they can't be
replaced. So once you have started the program, Lambda School is paying for
your instructor for the whole class no matter what.
Don't you still have to pay for the whole semester if you drop out of a
regular university after 5 weeks?
~~~
tempsy
If I drop out of college in a given quarter, I only owe tuition for that
quarter. This is like dropping out my first quarter in college and owing my
university 5 quarters of tuition.
It’s an online course. There’s minimal cost to adding one person in a massive
Zoom session.
~~~
dack
9 months is 3 quarters, so it seems more like they are charging 1.2 quarters
if you drop out after 5 weeks.
~~~
tempsy
A four year university is 12 quarters. 40% of the total quarters is about 5
quarters.
------
lhuser123
I know one current student of Lambda. I kind of disagree with much of what is
said in the article. The student and family are very grateful for the
opportunity. My only concern is that, in their website they could be more
specific as to the fact that you need to already have some of the skills.
There’s just not enough time for beginners. To their credit, they give plenty
of opportunities and alternatives for the ones that get behind. It just going
to take more time than anticipated.
------
mikekij
I'm confused by this article's complaint that the instruction was so poor that
it requires students to "self-teach", and use materials outside of the
coursework to learn.
In my experience, and sufficiently technical topic will require a ton of self-
teaching. Should LS be expected to teach computer science in a way that
prevents their students from ever having to use Stack Overflow? If that is the
case, they are not preparing their students for solving problems in the real
world, where there are no clear answers. (except the ones you find on Stack
Overflow.)
~~~
wmf
FWIW I went to college long before Stack Overflow and it was definitely
possible for them to teach CS without the Internet. Obviously teaching
techniques should adapt but that's not an excuse for lazy teaching.
------
dataminded
I am married to a current lambda program student. I also regularly interview
and hire developers which I believe gives me a good sense of what the market
wants.
Lambda is a good program with meaningful room for improvement. I’m excited for
where they’ll be in a few more iterations and believe that they are worth it
today.
------
ng12
> However, current and former students say that they've been disappointed that
> Lambda School's teaching staff isn't diverse, in turn: most of the school's
> instructors are male or are not from underrepresented groups.
Is this like all the eggs being angry there's no chickens yet? Where do you
think qualified teachers are going to come from, if not the existing pool of
professionals?
------
acjohnson55
This reminds me a lot of Teach For America, a program I was a part of. It has
very similar complaints, and very similar defenses. The truth is, there's a
lot of truth to go around. Teach For America is not perfect. It's not for
everyone. There's a lot of hype on the outside and Kool-Aid to go around on
the inside. It inarguably has done harm to some people.
But for a lot of people, it works as designed. And I know a lot of people who
did become great teachers.
My own story is somewhere in the middle [1]. It changed my life immeasurably,
even if I never became a great teacher.
My guess is that the same broad spectrum of real stories and real outcomes is
true of Lambda School.
[1] [https://acjay.com/a-former-teachers-story/](https://acjay.com/a-former-
teachers-story/), if you care to read about it
------
brownbat
"If you're keeping up, you either already had a foundation or you're self-
teaching. The actual school is not effective at teaching. People are going
outside to get what they need."
That sounds like a lot of technical education.
More than maybe any other discipline, classes have such a wide curve of
expertise, they become almost impossible to teach to everyone at once.
On the need for outside study, I guess I've heard similar things about, of all
things, tough music schools. You just end up in a race to see who can practice
every waking hour.
Maybe there's an analogy there. We talk about computer science in terms of
concepts and problem solving, but undersell how much muscle memory is
involved. There is a ton of training your brain to reflexively handle certain
common problems.
------
Cedricgc
[https://outline.com/fSVvSB](https://outline.com/fSVvSB)
~~~
fourthark
Reader view worked for me! (FF/iOS)
------
SamReidHughes
I read feedback about any bootcamp or any CS program with the background
understanding that there must necessarily be loads of dissatisfied customers,
people who can’t handle CS or software development. It is illuminating to poke
through the article to the source material.
~~~
allthetime
In my experience (went to a bootcamp 5 years ago, taught at a few since)
bootcamps are amazing for people who have the drive and interest, and ideally
some prior knowledge. They give you a place to meet like minded people, and
really focus on learning/implementing your knowledge. The quality of the
education is generally less important than the quality of the people. People
who are just expecting to get a quick job and don't actually give a shit about
the internet and programming should not be in bootcamps, but often are, and
are probably the source of most negative feedback.
------
UltimateFloofy
The data is consistent with most other bootcamps, though. There is a standard
for reporting student outcomes here:
[https://cirr.org/data](https://cirr.org/data)
Hack Reactor, now Galvanize, was one of the founding organizations of the
CIRR, circa 2014:
[https://www.hackreactor.com/blog/tag/student+outcomes](https://www.hackreactor.com/blog/tag/student+outcomes)
------
michannne
I can't fathom why someone would go to a school that takes 17% of your
paycheck for 2 years. I went to Western Governors University to get my
undergrad, it costed 6k for 2 terms and I breezed through and got a paper that
will help me for life, and I'm planning on heading to Georgia Tech for a
Masters. There are better options out there, there is no need to go to a shady
school such as this, even if they promise 0 tuition up-front. Additionally, as
tech companies become more lax on their degree requirements, there is less and
less value you gain from having a degree in Silicon Valley versus spending a
few months grinding leetcode, which definitely pays off.
On a side note: it took literally 1 minute to hide the modal window and find
the div containing the actual content and expand it, and turn the overflow
back on. Did they design it this way on purpose? Otherwise, I think they have
to find some new UI developers..
~~~
fossuser
There are huge advantages to the way Lambda School is structured compared to
other American universities.
I've written about this in more depth [1], but while ability is evenly
distributed, opportunity is not - and aligning the incentives of the students
with the institution is a much better model.
If your choice is risking 100k up front for a college education that doesn't
guarantee a good job (and has non-defaultable loans) or paying 30k only if you
end up with a software job making more than 50k a year it'll be an easy choice
for most people.
[1] [http://zalberico.com/essay/2019/04/08/lambda-
school.html](http://zalberico.com/essay/2019/04/08/lambda-school.html)
~~~
adrr
College education doesn’t cost $100k. In-state tuition at a public university
in California is $15k. You can save money by going to a community college and
transferring. With $30k you could do two years at community college and
transfer UCLA to get your final degree and that doesn’t include financial aid.
------
shay_ker
There does appear to be a contingent of Lambda students that have had a poor
experience. IIRC they were mostly related to a certain set of instructors.
I guess this is the issue of a popular startup - you get everyone talking
about you, good and bad. Every startup has the problems listed in this
article. It's pretty much the reality of startup life. But Lambda gets the
microscope treatment.
In the end, though, it'll make them better for it. It's still interesting to
note that this type of criticism will _never_ exist of any education system.
Public dialogue here is good!
~~~
tempsy
In fairness, the only reason I know about Lambda is because the founder, some
employees, and some of their VCs are really active on Twitter and write
incessantly about it in a “too good to be true” way.
Literally a few weeks ago their Chief of Staff wrote “if you don’t believe
Lambda School is a $100B company then you don’t understand American History.”
Really?
------
munherty
Honestly I don't understand the complaints.. For almost any technical career
you will need to do some form of self study.. Also this program is aiming to
compete with 4 year comp sci students. So yes you're going to need to grind to
make up in <1 year what took someone 4.
However I do think they could do better with diversity.
------
pl0x
Thinkful has been doing what Lambda is for the past decade. What makes Lambda
different from the rest of bootcamps, absolutely noting.
Not to mention Austen Allred always came off like a snake oil salesmen.
------
iamasoftwaredev
Why does hacker news allow paywalled content?
------
codesushi42
Yet another PR story from Lambda School spun as news on HN.
Fake news.
~~~
neonate
The story is obviously negative toward Lambda School. With PR like that who
needs hit pieces?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Ashley Madison hack ruined my life - T-A
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/21/technology/ashley-madison-ruined-lives/index.html
======
TrevorJ
Not to mention, apparently the site did not verify email addresses so
theoretically you could use anyone's address to create an account.
------
thesagan
To my ears she proactively caught her husband cheating on her.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Groupon Brazil confirmed that the majority of the deals are not real - phreanix
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/28/brazil-groupon-clubeurbano-fake/
======
BoppreH
As a Brazilian I can say that I have never heard of this "Clube Urbano"
before.
But it's not like their offers say anything. The current one being displayed
is "Beautiful smile for half the price!," mentions that it costs R$ 200 and
you are saving R$ 200 and among the benefits "Everybody will love!," "Modern
techniques." It also bears no mention to any business name aside from their
own.
Their registration page seems to be working, but it doesn't even mention any
charges. Actually, credit card info is not part of the form.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
2 Hours of Standing at Work May Boost Your Health - kungfudoi
http://www.livescience.com/51819-sitting-standing-health.html
======
smt88
700-person sample size monitored for 1 week, and they didn't change their
behavior during the study.
This is totally meaningless. You can't even draw meaningful correlation from a
sample size and time period this small, and causation is absolute fantasy.
Maybe healthy people stand more on their own? (Probably, actually)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fonts extracted from BIOSes and VGA ROMs - luu
https://github.com/spacerace/romfont
======
theandrewbailey
Over the past few weeks, I've been setting all my command prompts and terminal
emulators to old-school fonts. I've settled on PxPlus IBM VGA8[0] with color
#FFB000 (monochrome amber) on black. If font antialiasing blurs things, I use
Nouveau IBM[1].
[0] [https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
fonts/fontlist/#ibmvgamcga](https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
fonts/fontlist/#ibmvgamcga)
[1] [https://www.dafont.com/nouveau-ibm.font](https://www.dafont.com/nouveau-
ibm.font)
~~~
remlov
For years now I've set the font in various IDEs and terminals to Px437 ATI
9x16 at font size 16 from int10h as well: [https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
fonts/fontlist/#ati_gfx](https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
fonts/fontlist/#ati_gfx) I love the pixel perfect goodness.
~~~
acheron
Same. It’s very comforting to be using that font.
~~~
mrslave
Reminds me of Space Quest.
------
stragies
From the nice article this little hint about a (possible) problem with Qemu:
"qemu seabios 8x8 and 8x14 are exact matches to IBM's VGA and XGA fonts. These
files are in fntcol16.zip from simtel. VGA-ROM.F08 and VGA-ROM.F14. qemu
source comment claims this is public domain. I doubt IBM would release a font
to public domain. Does this mean, qemu relied on claims by package creator and
now they use a illegal copy?"
~~~
rbanffy
I don't think font geometries are copyrightable, only names.
In any case, the IBM PC fonts are horrendous. They should have gone with the
sans-serif they used in their mainframe terminals.
~~~
willis936
Honestly, I would find it extremely limiting if someone was able to copyright
1664 bits of information. Bitmap 8x8 fonts are absolutely trivial. In one
afternoon anyone could make every human readable variation.
~~~
willis936
Thinking on it: 1664 bits is 26 * 8 * 8, which is a little low. ASCII uses
indices 32 to 127 for visible characters, so this would be 95 * 8 * 8, or 6080
bits. It's still a trivially small amount of information and there are very
few ways to make unique English fonts out of it, so I still don't think it
should be possible to copyright it.
Looking at the actual IBM_VGA_8x8.bin file: the file size is 1024 bytes (8192
bits). I calculated the entropy of the data to be only 638 bits of
information.
MATLAB code:
fid = fopen('IBM_PC_BIOS_1981-04-24_HALF_8x8.bin','r');
ibmVga = fread(fid);
fclose(fid);
p = histogram(double(ibmVga),255);
E = -sum(log2(p.Values(p.Values > 0)).*log2(p.Values(p.Values > 0)));
~~~
perl4ever
Counterpoint, 2^638 is a large number. So a particular 638 bits is very
particular.
~~~
willis936
This is meaningless. Information is information. Specifying a size has
virtually no information. The number "638" stored in uint16 has two bits of
information using any word size between 8 and 15 bits.
------
Sharlin
Incidentally, the font images ([1]) should be usable as Dwarf Fortress
tilesets [2] with very little work (just change the background color from
black to transparent).
[1] [https://github.com/spacerace/romfont/tree/master/font-
images](https://github.com/spacerace/romfont/tree/master/font-images)
[2]
[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Tilesets](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Tilesets)
------
blickentwapft
I don’t know why but I love VGA text mode fonts. This project is awesome.
Are there pictures of the fonts? I didn’t see any.
~~~
UI_at_80x24
My first computer was a Commodore64. My only real complaint at the time was
how the "!" was displayed. It was a straight line with a square dot. It felt
incomplete somehow and IIRC looked too much like another character (can't
remember which one, maybe "i"??).
Then I got my first VGA output with a 386.
The exclamation mark was now curvy and sexy! Thick at the top, curving down to
a point, finished with a round dot. I thought everything was right in the
world.
I miss that font.
I've tried reusing bitmapped fonts that give me my desired output but I find
it just doesn't work in enough places that it's too annoying. Maybe it messes
up curses output, or UTF-8 incompatibilities?
~~~
Someone
You have to give Commodore (or whoever designed that font) some slack.
VGA (in typically used character modes) had more bits per character, and its
fonts didn’t have to be designed to be legible when displayed on a television
set (screen not designed for text display, and signal converted to antenna
signal and back)
Also, are you sure about that “round dot”?
[https://github.com/spacerace/romfont/blob/master/font-
images...](https://github.com/spacerace/romfont/blob/master/font-
images/zoomed/zoomed_IBM_VGA_8x16.png) doesn’t show it, and any non-squareness
would require a width of at least 3 pixels (more likely 4) to draw.
~~~
UI_at_80x24
I guess I was wrong about the dot. But I also remember the taper on the
exclamation mark being finer and less blocky. Obviously I remember through
rose coloured glasses. Wolfenstien3D didn't look as bad as modern screenshots
show either! =)
I don't doubt the C64 designers did the best with what they could; but I was
absolutely impressed with how good the "!" looked on that VGA screen.
------
bluedino
For those who are interested, how the fonts are stored/accessed:
[https://wiki.osdev.org/VGA_Fonts](https://wiki.osdev.org/VGA_Fonts)
~~~
jaclaz
And some related info on bitmap VGA fonts (used in DOS and in grub4dos),
paticularly the 8x16 sizes:
[http://reboot.pro/topic/19076-grub4dos-menu-font-
type/](http://reboot.pro/topic/19076-grub4dos-menu-font-type/)
------
JonathonW
Isn't this missing the 9x16 font that was the actual VGA text mode default?
That variant allowed a few characters to be slightly wider and cleaner
(noticeable on W, M, and X).
------
blickentwapft
Sadly I just sold an old z80 sign making device from long ago and it had about
10 add on rom font cartridges. Would have been good to give them to this guy.
------
khm
Dmitry Bolkhovityanov has led an effort to extend the VGA BIOS font to cover
much more unicode space:
[http://www.inp.nsk.su/~bolkhov/files/fonts/univga/index.html](http://www.inp.nsk.su/~bolkhov/files/fonts/univga/index.html)
I've made upscaled versions for high-density displays and a truetype version,
with contributed postscript:
[http://sciops.net/downloads/vga/](http://sciops.net/downloads/vga/)
------
throwaway2048
Worth mentioning in UNSCII, an oldschool bitmap font inspired unicode graphics
and drawing font
[http://pelulamu.net/unscii/](http://pelulamu.net/unscii/)
------
richard_todd
I assume if you want good results actually using these today, you need to be
careful to select a VGA font that was originally on square pixels. Is there an
easy way to tell which those are?
------
VikingCoder
It's a tedious, manual process, but I have used
[https://fontstruct.com/](https://fontstruct.com/) to make TTF fonts from
bitmap fonts before.
~~~
aasasd
There was a post just recently on this topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129434)
If the Fontstruct thing is better or easier, the author might benefit from a
pointer to it.
Also it was mentioned that the [https://int10h.org](https://int10h.org) site
has its own article on the method they used, but I can't find the link now.
~~~
VikingCoder
Every time old fonts come up, I have to mention Cool Retro Term:
[https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-
term](https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term)
Sorry for the music in this video, but cool-retro-term really is a thing of
beauty:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWx7REAQ2MY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWx7REAQ2MY)
~~~
aasasd
Btw, the proper use for that app is firing it up on someone's laptop in full-
screen if they leave the machine unlocked.
Also iirc the authors went to some lengths to accurately simulate the effects
of phosphor—which is also a topic in game emulation (in the spirit of
[https://pics.me.me/what-indie-developers-think-what-retro-
ga...](https://pics.me.me/what-indie-developers-think-what-retro-games-
actually-retro-games-9561656.png)).
------
m463
I would love to have a console with vector fonts.
like _real_ vector fonts, like those found in old arcade games like Omega Race
[https://www.arcade-
museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8920](https://www.arcade-
museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8920)
it would look like this:
[https://www.arcade-
museum.com/images/118/1181242142159.png](https://www.arcade-
museum.com/images/118/1181242142159.png)
------
cerberusss
Can these be used on macOS in some way? Like in iTerm or some such?
~~~
bluedino
You'd have to convert them, but you could try a truetype version available
here: [https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-
fonts/readme/#px437](https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/readme/#px437)
~~~
cerberusss
Oh boy that's fantastic, thanks for the pointer!
------
thewebcount
This is really cool! When I was in college in the early 90s I used an IBM AIX
machine in terminal mode, and it had what seemed at the time to be a really
crystal clear serif font. I suspect that it was antialiased, but am not sure.
I would really love to find that font somewhere. If anyone knows what it was,
I'd love to learn more about it.
------
acqq
I remember looking/using at the different non-PC terminals decades ago,
produced by different companies, which had significantly nicer fonts than any
PC fonts I watched later.
Of course, it's not only the font, but the whole technology (analog devices
have analog responses etc). But some looked really nice.
Is there any resource with non-PC terminal fonts?
~~~
anthk
Get the TTF version of the IBM 3270 fonts (Google 3270 TTF github) and copy
the TTF files into ~/.fonts (or whatever method you use in your OS).
------
jedberg
I have a similar collection of fonts that I use in presentations. I like to
use the old school VGA fonts for emphasis on chunks of code.
It draws the eye and usually I get at least one person commenting on the
nostalgia factor of the font, which means they will remember that part of the
presentation.
------
clord
a clade diagram of these would be fascinating.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Most common “Y2K-style” bugs today? - DanWaterworth
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63131/most-common-y2k-style-bugs-today
======
westbywest
Daylight Savings Time issues, and other time-sensitive code snafus like one,
will likely rear their ugly heads periodically for the foreseeable future:
<https://issues.apache.org/SpamAssassin/show_bug.cgi?id=5852>
Especially since the SA bug was patched to "match 2020 and onwards..."
------
yoshiks
When Unix time overflows...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Do You Have Asperger's?) - georgecmu
http://www.questionwritertracker.com/index.php/quiz/display?id=61&token=Z4MK3TKB
======
jdietrich
Prediction: The average HNer will score significantly higher than the general
average.
I hypothesise that the social issues geeks experience are predominantly caused
by hypersensitivity to the emotions of others, rather than insensitivity; In
keeping with the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis we tend to underestimate our
ability to empathise, thereby causing us to overanalyse social situations,
leading to anxiety and paralysis.
~~~
dageshi
Spot on. 30 out of 36.
~~~
david55475
35 out of 36. I've often thought I was hypersensitive about things/people, and
I'm always concerned with what other people are feeling, even more than my
(female) partner :)
------
philh
As someone else points out, without standard deviations it's hard to know how
indicative this score is. I got 23, which is consistent with previous tests
I've taken (on which I score somewhere between "autistic" and "not autistic").
For some of them I felt like I was doing it "in software", using rules that I
know consciously instead of intuitively recognising the emotion. But I don't
know to what extent that's actually true (or if it's even a particularly
meaningful distinction).
I definitely felt like I had an easier time with some emotions than others.
That's not surprising, but it would be interesting to see statistics for each
individual face.
------
glhaynes
As always, it should be noted that it seems likely that people who got high
scores would be more likely to post theirs (few people like to show off as
below-average!), which is one reason taking an average of the scores posted on
this page isn't indicative of an HN average score.
(Me, I got 26. They don't call me Mr. Average for nothin'.)
EDIT: If I'd gotten 25, do you think I'd have included that last line?
~~~
Nogwater
26 here too. I felt like on some of them I would project a choice onto the
eyes. Some where easy (only one choice made sense), and some seemed completely
arbitrary.
~~~
KoZeN
27 here. I thought I would do better to be honest. I make a pretty decent
amount of pocket money playing poker and I consider my biggest strength to be
my ability to read people in an incredibly short period of time. Then again, I
am a bit of an arrogant git.
~~~
snes
26 for me
------
m-photonic
It would be nice if they'd tell us the standard deviation in addition to the
averages. I got 19, which puts me below the mean for the Asperger/HFA
population, but I'm fairly sure I'm not in that category. Really, the two
averages are barely more than four points apart, which is a rather modest
interval compared to the range of scores that's been reported in this thread
so far.
Edit: It'd also be cool if they gave us more data than just the total number
correct. Like, which emotions was I the best at recognizing? How well did I do
with male faces as compared with female faces? Etc.
~~~
rprospero
I'm also a little curious about the gender data from a different perspective.
I don't know whether the eyes were randomized, but, when I took the test, all
of the "romantic" emotions (e.g. flirtatious) in the test were displayed with
female eyes. If that's the same way for everyone, I can't help but think that
that would skew the results.
------
BoppreH
People who made the test software, please, _please_ , don't resize my browser,
send my info without telling me or redirecting to the site that built the
test.
Other than that, I enjoyed the test. Simple, quick, painless and intriguing.
I'm intrigued, can you see?
29 point something. I was expecting a lot less.
~~~
aruvam
My feelings exactly. Got 29 points - in the ones that I got incorrect, it was
usually the alternate that I had narrowed it down to that was the right one.
------
vessenes
I found that test extremely stressful, although I was on track for 33 / 36
when I stopped. Intriguing! Other HN'ers -- did you find it stress-inducing?
The first Turing test I've gotten nervous doing.
~~~
shib71
33, which surprised me as I'm extremely introverted. I got the sense that the
expressions fell into different categories based on where the tension around
the eyes was, and the matching word had been randomly chosen from the
category. The "1000 yard stare" category, the "happy" category, and so on. By
the end I was enjoying this new match-the-category puzzle.
~~~
PixelRobot
I'm also extremely introverted, and I got a 34. Asperger's and introversion
are very different.
A lot of people get Asperger's, introversion and shyness mixed, but they are
three completely different things.
~~~
newobj
The people I know with Asperger's are anything BUT introverted or shy. They
overshare. They overtalk. They're oblivious to social norms. Shyness and
introversion, if anything, to me, seem like an oversensitivity to social
norms.
~~~
PixelRobot
Well, you're more likely to know the sociable people with Asperger's than the
antisocial ones, right? What you describe is not the case with all the people
who have Asperger's. Some avoid social interaction because they know they
don't understand the norms and prefer to avoid potential conflicts. You can't
make a generalization there.
Shyness is all about anxiety about social interaction. Oversensitivity to
social norms can cause it, yes, but also bad experiences or low self-esteem.
Introversion/Extroversion is about where you focus your mind. Introverted
people are more focused on their own thoughts and mental processes, and
extroverted people are more focused on interacting with the mental processes
of other people. If something, introversion would imply caring less about
social interaction and social norms, not oversensitivity. That doesn't mean
introverted people don't care or follow social norms, or that they're not
sociable. They just need more time with their own thoughts and feel less
stimulated by petty social interaction like small talk. That doesn't mean
introverted people are not sociable. Some introverts are very sociable and
good at conversations, because they try to make their conversations
interesting and stimulating. Some other are not interested in being sociable
at all.
------
makmanalp
Is it only me who finds it difficult to label expressions _just_ in eyes, when
it feels like an image of the overall face would be much clearer?
~~~
techiferous
Weird bit of trivia: in photos of faces, the eyes carry most of the emotion,
but in cartoon faces, the mouth does.
~~~
lwhi
In cartoons - eyebrows are used to express a great deal of emotion.
------
jessewmc
33/36. Found it stressful.
I felt like I was picking the desired answer, not reading an actual emotion.
An artifact of the test maybe. The expressions read artificial to me--like
pictures of actors or models. Not sure what that says.
------
amadiver
I'm amazed the message their eyes sent was so clear and nuanced.
~~~
lmkg
When humans see a face, we apparently focus on the eyes and the lips. Once,
for a summer job, I worked with our school photographer retouching the scanned
images of the incoming freshman class. For efficiency, we just blurred the
images to obliterate any scanning errors, and then restored and hand-retouched
only the eyes and lips. Subjectively, the difference between blurred and
blurred-with-original-eyes-and-lips was astonishing, while the difference
between original and BWOEAL was comparatively rather small. I would assume
that human expression and human vision evolved in parallel, in a complimentary
fashion.
This also explains why humans so easily find faces in inanimate objects, or in
three-character sequences like :-) and ^_^. We're just highly tuned to
recognize and parse very particular physical features.
~~~
jey
Yup, and this "built-in" face-reading circuitry can go wrong in interesting
ways:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcher_effect>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia>
------
cb33
I got just about average (26) but I would be interested to see if HN has an
inordinate amount of people coming in around the low 20's.
~~~
endlessvoid94
I also got a 26. Apparently I'm not as good at reading people as I thought...
~~~
ratsbane
Also 26. The average on HN seems a bit higher. I wonder if there's some
selection bias towards reporting higher answers.
~~~
msbarnett
Quite possibly. The test is also long enough that I probably would have bailed
out long before finishing if I had felt I wasn't doing well enough to be
curious about the end result.
------
tcskeptic
34/36 I did not find it stressful. I think that was because of the instant
feedback, though if I had been getting questions wrong, that would have made
things much worse than just finding out at the end.
~~~
silvertab
Same here (34/36)... I was kinda surprised because I felt some of them were
really wild guesses and it usually turned out I guessed correctly...
------
dahjelle
Does anyone else feel like the questions were strangely distributed? I'm not
exactly sure why. I guess I would have expected many more suspicious or
confused faces, and I don't think I found very many. (Ended up with a 27.) I
also saw the word "puzzled" as a potential answer, but I don't remember
choosing it as an option. For that matter, puzzled seems like an emotion in
which one would rarely see the subject's eyes.
Or is this perhaps a part of the test, in which is is intentionally testing a
subset of possible emotions rather than a wide gamut?
------
muloka
23 over here.
Of the ones I did get the majority were calculated guesses. I would have
scored a lot lower if it wasn't multiple choice... or as my roommate pointed
out if there was a fifth option: None of the above.
------
duckrank
I got a 24. As someone diagnosed with Asperger's Spectrum Disorder (Nonverbal
Learning Disorder to be exact), this surprised me. I expected it to be lower.
Granted, I've done some reading up on facial expressions so that might have
helped.
@makmanalp asked a very good question about why they tested only looking at
the eyes and not the res of the face, or the rest of the body. While looking
at the rest of the face would have been helpful, much of the way we express
ourselves is done just in our eyes.
Psychologist Daniel Goleman in his book "Social Intelligence" says that the
eyes are, "...something akin to the poetic idea that the eyes are windows on
the soul: the eyes offer glimpses into a person’s most private feelings. More
specifically the eyes contain nerve projections that lead directly… neuron to
neuron, [to] three major regions of the brain: the cortex (or “thinking
brain”), the amygdala (the trigger point for many emotional reactions), and
the brain stem (the “reptilian” zones for automatic response) (63-64)."
I highly recommend Paul Ekman's "Emotions Revealed" if you're interested in
this sort of thing. It's about reading facial micro-expressions - not about
Asperger's. I recomend Goleman's books as well, but you'll probably find
Ekman's more interesting.
I've done quite a bit of personal research on this stuff, and while I'm no
expert I'd be happy to try and answer any questions that people have.
------
dp7531
19\. I thought the test was a joke until my wife took it and got 31.
------
JoshCole
I've been diagnosed with apsergers and got a 32, nice!
~~~
lotharbot
Also a 32 here, and (at least when it comes to reading social cues) I've got
all of the classic Aspergers symptoms. For example, my wife had to train me to
make eye contact during conversation.
I think that training boosted my score a lot. You might say I've studied for
this test...
------
spazz
Ah 26, always a bit disappointing when you get the average score. One issue
for me was that since english is not my native language I had to look up quite
a few of the words describing different emotions.
Even so I was actually a bit amazed by my own ability to read the different
emotions quite quickly since I'm worthless at reading people in real life.
------
wtracy
For the first half of the test, I was kicking myself over the number I got
wrong, but my final score placed me as above average.
Actually, after I started mousing over the images to see full-size, and
spending several seconds studying each face, I was almost always correct.
Yay for me.
~~~
rue
I think I did "better" with the small images, the large ones leading to
overanalysis perhaps?
------
rleisti
I got 21. I have a feeling that if I took this test a bunch of times (with
different faces) that I'd probably get better at it.
------
mickdarling
30 with several of the wrong answers being my 50/50 choices with the actual
correct answer. Nearly all of the ones I got correct, I was instantly certain.
One, I think "ashamed", looked just like the expression on a character in a TV
show, SGU colonel young, and I realized he nails the mood perfectly.
------
rograndom
I have aspergers, but I got 30. Strange. The ones I had difficultly with were
the "flirty" female ones.
But then again, I've been working on "hacking" by aspergers for past few
years, working from the ground up to figure out wtf facial expressions mean
among other things.
------
bradfordw
21/36 - high functioning autism. Should I go see someone about this perhaps?
Weird.
------
dgordon
22...I think I got five or six wrong by second-guessing my first instinct.
------
tremendo
31\. The only stress was that at a point I was alarmed because I felt I was
misreading too many.
------
sliceof314
23 here, i'm off to watch jeopardy at 5 o'clock! and then it's judge Wapner...
------
SageRaven
I scored 29. Not stressful, but kinda odd all the same.
------
Eddk
31
------
jhrobert
26
------
klinquist
31 here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hello Firefox! Mozilla's browser gets built-in WebRTC video chat - walterbell
https://gigaom.com/2014/10/16/hello-firefox-mozillas-browser-gets-built-in-webrtc-video-chat-through-telefonica-partnership/
======
arnaudbud
This project is known as Loop:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop/Try_Loop](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop/Try_Loop)
a free full-stack WebRTC solution, with backend servers, clients, API.
* Mozilla provides the OAuth 2.0 authentication, the signaling server, and the clients
* Tokbox (Telefonica) provides STUN/TURN server [http://tokbox.com](http://tokbox.com)
* Nexmo provides SMS service / MSISDN gateway [http://nexmo.com](http://nexmo.com)
~~~
cpbotha
Thanks, your mozilla wiki link answers my group video calling question: Loop /
Hello is primarily meant for 1-to-1 video calling.
Although this is an awesome development, group video would have made it a
killer application.
(for now, you can use [https://opentokrtc.com/](https://opentokrtc.com/) to
try out OpenTok's group video calling support)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It Looks Like Netflix Is Cracking Down on VPN 'Pirating' - reuven
http://gizmodo.com/it-looks-like-netflix-is-cracking-down-on-vpn-pirating-1677277648
======
reuven
I have to assume that Netflix is weighing the cost of a potential lawsuit, or
having content pulled, vs. the income that they receive from overseas
customers.
I live in Israel, and bought Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions so that my
family can enjoy video. In our case, that was made possible thanks to
Unlocator.com. I know that many other VPN and/or DNS services exist, too.
The moment that Unlocator ceases to work, I'll have no incentive any more to
pay for Netflix or Amazon Prime. I assume that I'm not the only non-US user of
these services who will cancel under such circumstances.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gitstats - cool stats about your git repo - wesleyzhao
http://gitstats.sourceforge.net/
======
mdehaan
Cool. Here's another take on this, which doesn't produce quite as nice output,
but produces some different stats and is Ruby based and a bit more objecty (if
that matters). It doesn't like being fed the kernel but was fine on some very
large software projects.
<https://github.com/mpdehaan/lookatgit>
~~~
lucisferre
There is a joke in here somewhere about Chuck Norris and parsing the Linux
kernel.
------
moe
Hosted on Sourceforge... seriously?
~~~
wesleyzhao
Haha exactly what I thought. Looked like some people forked it on Github
though <https://github.com/trybeee/GitStats>
------
pronoiac
Aw, there's some sanity checking missing. The Linux kernel example report has
commits from 1970 & 2037, which really screws up the graphs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: (1KB) JavaScript library for building fast and feature-rich web apps - jbucaran
https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp#hyperapp
======
tonyarkles
Not much to add here, other than I'm super happy with ultralight "frameworks"
like this.
------
adamleithp
simple and elegant! handles state simply, handles JSX and seems quite vanilla.
What’s more to want?
------
snow_mac
Does it perform fast?
~~~
tonyarkles
If nothing else, I bet it loads fast!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The 17 Best (And Worst) SEO & Marketing Strategies - spiredigital
http://www.ecommercefuel.com/ecommerce-marketing-strategies/
======
spiredigital
It's getting harder to "game" the search engines, especially with updates like
Google's Penguin. So a lot of the old methods that might have been effective a
few years back (article marketing, reciprocal linking) won't work, or will
event be detrimental moving forward.
A colleague of mine said it best a few days ago: "You can't fake it anymore
when it comes to SEO. If you want to rank well, you're going to have to put
out / do awesome stuff." I totally agree.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: slicehost-like providers outside the US? - abstractbill
We're running into a bunch of issues at Justin.TV that would be much easier to test with IPs outside of the US. I've tried looking for free web proxies, but those seem to be hard to find, and not very reliable.<p>I'm thinking of getting us a few accounts with slicehost-like providers outside of the US, which we could use to run any kind of proxies we want. Can anyone recommend some good providers?
======
jbyers
<http://www.gplhost.com> / <http://www.gplhost.co.uk>
Singapore, Australia, Israel, Spain, France, UK
------
joao
<http://gandi.net> \- totally recomended, located in France
~~~
mjs
Seconded.
------
astrec
I've been using RimuHosting (<http://rimuhosting.com/>) for years - they're in
a few data centres around the world and the service is A1.
~~~
kragen
I strongly recommend against RimuHosting for reasons that should be released
in a few weeks.
~~~
danw
Care to elaborate on that now? The only reason I can think of that you
wouldn't is if there was an unpatched flaw in their security
~~~
aaronsw
Kragen was referring to my nasty experience with them, which I haven't
published yet since I wanted to get all my data off before criticizing them.
------
jwilliams
Amazon EC2 is available in Europe now, so that might suit.
An EC2 pay-as-you-go model (opposed to a Slicehost one) might be a more
economical option for testing as well.
~~~
lux
Not that this helps the original poster, but Slicehost is pretty much pay-as-
you-go as well now that they don't charge the first 3 months up front. They
still charge a full month at a time, but if for example you create a slice for
just a couple minutes, they automatically pro-rate it and refund the unused
time.
Coupled with their API that lets you instantiate new slices just like EC2
instances, they're definitely the closest thing to EC2 I've seen going.
~~~
ntoshev
They pro-rate based on days of usage, it's not hourly billing like EC2.
------
ralph
<http://www.bytemark.co.uk/> Sterling's cheap at the moment! "Darling, why
don't we sell up in the UK, move to France, and buy a croissant."
They've been doing virtual machines for years using User Mode Linux.
------
jonny_noog
Australia:
<http://www.netlogistics.com.au/>
<http://www.crucial.com.au/>
------
dhess
I'm also looking for a UK-based virtual host for occasional proxy testing.
Does anyone here have experience with <http://flexiscale.com/> ?
Alternatively, even a simple UK-based, non-root shell account with the ability
to run Squid would probably suffice. I manage a few servers in a San Jose colo
and would gladly provide an equivalent service if anyone wants to swap. Feel
free to contact me (see my user page).
~~~
pierrefar
On a hacker mailing list I subscribe to, there is a long thread going on about
how crappy Flexiscale is. Regular downtime seems to be the issue.
A rep from Flexiscale did come on the thread and state they've found the bugs
and will be updating their virtual server software soon.
I can't comment beyond this, but hope this helps.
Pierre
~~~
dhess
Too bad, they looked great. Thanks for the data point!
------
matthall28
SuperBytes.net is in Canada and they are really good for VPS hosting
------
nreece
Have a look at: <http://vpschoice.com/> They have a list (page bottom).
------
mikeyur
<http://futurehosting.com/>
They're a US company but you can get a VPS in London through them. A basic VPS
can be had for like $10/month if they have a sale on.
------
liangzan
<http://frro.net/> from singapore
------
mstevens
I use <http://clustered.net/> for a VPS. Pretty good, but not quite as
automated as providers like slicehost.
They're in the UK.
------
dbc
I'm also interested in offshore VPS hosting, but I want the servers to be
located in a country without police state laws surrounding Internet traffic
and/or speech, so this excludes the US, UK, EU, Canada, and Australia.
Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland would be acceptable, and I'm willing to
consider other countries.
I've been using RimuHosting, and they've been pretty good, but their servers
are located in jurisdictions that are problematic for true online liberty.
------
galactus
I use myself dedibox.fr (France). I certainly recommend it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Official North Korean News Agency - graeme
http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm
======
graeme
I found this site around 10 years ago. Still going strong.
One reason I don't think the Sony hack is by North Korea is that whenever they
oppose something, they usually talk about it loudly, and clumsily, through
official channels such as this.
I may have missed it, but I've seen no reference to any official statements
recently on the subject. Perhaps their M.O. has changed of course.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why do HN users still obscure their e-mail addresses? - ddod
I've been noticing that just about everyone on HN uses some form of e-mail concealment (e.g. [myusername]@gmail.com), and I'm wondering why.<p>The fear of spam crawlers seems very 1997, especially if you're using a modern e-mail provider. I've had my e-mail address public and mailtod on multiple high-visibility sites for about 5 years now, and I can't remember the last spam e-mail I've gotten. Is this practice just a vestige of Internet-past, or is there some other reason I'm missing?
======
gvb
1\. Modern e-mail providers do filter out most spam, but it doesn't hurt to
help lighten their load.
2\. My pet theory is that the people making money out of spam are not the
spammers, it is the people _selling lists of email addresses._ Hey, I just cut
their total of email addresses by a vanishingly small fraction.
3\. I lived through 1997. It wasn't pretty. Old habits die hard.
4\. I consider my obfuscation to be the signature of a hacker. :-P
P.S. Your email is not visible in your information (the email entry in your
account registration is not publicly visible, you have to put it in your
"about" box to make it visible).
------
patio11
I have been asked, personally, why I don't make my email address clear on e.g.
my about page before. I use discovery of my email address as FizzBuzz for my
attention. If you're insufficiently invested in wanting to talk to me to find
my email address, we will both be happier if you don't email me.
~~~
sbierwagen
?
Perhaps I am deaf to the joke, but your email seems pretty trivially
discoverable. The way you had phrased it, I went to your about page expecting
a devious puzzle, and was disappointed.
~~~
wikwocket
His email is trivially discoverable in the same way that FizzBuzz is trivially
programmable.
The point is not that it is hard; the point is that even a very very low
barrier to entry may weed out a surprisingly large number of unsuitable
applicants.
------
kylec
I agree. I asked about this a while ago on Super User:
[http://superuser.com/questions/235937/does-e-mail-address-
ob...](http://superuser.com/questions/235937/does-e-mail-address-obfuscation-
actually-work)
The top answer links to a study done a few years ago that showed that
revealing your email in plain text did result in increased spam, but I don't
think the study went into how effectively that spam was handled by modern spam
filters.
In my own person experience, I've had my email address on my HN profile,
Twitter page, personal website, Stack Exchange profiles, etc for years without
any problem. I do get the occasional rare piece of spam but I think that it's
more than offset by providing a no-nonsense way for people to contact me.
~~~
FaceKicker
Regardless of the effectiveness of spam filters (unless they are literally
perfect - 100% precision and 100% recall), doing something like the "Building
with Javascript" method seems strictly better than doing nothing based on the
linked study - it reduces spam by 99.3% and adds no work for humans who want
to email you. Except for humans who have JS disabled by default, I guess...
~~~
nickknw
That's exactly why I use a combination method on my personal website[0].
By default it uses the JS method for a clickable link, but if someone doesn't
have JS enabled it degrades to "Email: nick at this domain (For a clickable
link, turn on javascript)".
It relies on the assumption that 'someone not using javascript' == 'someone
computer-savvy enough to figure out what that means', but for the people that
are likely to be reading my site, I think that's a pretty safe assumption to
make.
[0] - <http://nickknowlson.com/contact/>
~~~
weinzierl
'someone not using javascript' == 'someone computer-savvy enough to figure out
what that means' || crawler
~~~
nickknw
Are you saying:
'someone not using javascript' == ('someone computer-savvy enough to figure
out what that means' || crawler)?
If so, yes that's the point. I don't want to give crawlers my email address.
------
citricsquid
The current shit I'm dealing with is people using my email address to send
spam to others (fake headers etc) and then I get the "you can't send here" or
"this email address is dead" responses... _that_ sucks, I have thousands of
them and I read every email so it gets old fast.
~~~
bri3d
I had the same opinion of your parent poster, so I tried my unobfuscated mail,
and now I've got the same issue as you.
While I've trained Gmail to mark delivery status notifications as spam
automatically, it's frustrating to go from maybe 5-10 real, actual emails a
day and no spam at all to over ten thousand delivery status notifications a
week (spammers have started using thousands of 8-character hex@domain
combination addresses, and everything from my domain directs to me to catch
real people I meet making typos).
I also sometimes worry that I may have to deal with some form of poorly-
orchestrated vigilante retribution and/or potential blacklisting even though
it's clear that the mail is not actually coming from me.
~~~
sejje
I had someone forge my AOL email address into the headers somewhere around
1999 and send out lots of spam.
A "vigilante" confronted me on AIM, we chatted about it, and he's now one of
my best friends.
Not that you want it happening, just an anecdote.
------
swalsh
It's for the same reason my cousin flinched every time he heard a soda can
opening after returning from Iraq. We've learned a way to protect ourselves,
and though the threat isn't biological... self protection mechanisms take some
time to fade away.
------
flipstewart
I don't do this, but if I did, it would be to prevent tech recruiter spam,
which is the only kind of spam I've seen in a long while.
~~~
omarchowdhury
How is that going to prevent tech recruiters? They can read and parse... I
think.
~~~
flipstewart
Oh I wish tech recruiters were people, but they're not. I get emails for jobs
in other countries involving abilities I simply don't have. Tech recruiting
emails come from people scraping sites like this and then sending mass emails
hoping the contents will apply to some of the recipients and maybe they'll
even get a response.
------
SCdF
Interesting.
I've never gotten spam before (actually never, not once), until I put my email
address-- obfuscated-- into HN. Now I get one every week or so (the horror!).
I guess the reason we obfuscate is the general horror that once your email
address is in a list there is no way of getting it out, so it's better to be
safe than sorry.
~~~
sbierwagen
_Never?_
Was your first email address @gmail.com, or something?
~~~
SCdF
Nope. I'm in my late 20s, so admitedly I've only been active on the Internet
for 10-15 years. I've had email addresses at my (NZ) ISP, my uni, Operamail
(really), hotmail and yes, gmail.
Basically, I think I just didn't publish it raw anywhere, and I wasn't part of
any user groups or anything that forces raw email addr publication.
I also have never got any viruses or anything like that either. I guess I'm
cautious.
------
gojomo
Supposedly the Gmail filter is the best. I still see it make an annoying
number of errors.
I have my Gmail account as a secondary, occasionally used address, and looking
at it right now, of the 23 messages it displays "above the fold" in my inbox,
_7_ are spam.
Currently I don't see any false-positives in the Gmail 'spam' folder, but in
the past, I've even seen legitimate messages from Google's own lists there
(!).
It's not that my spam filters elsewhere are any better. But, at least they
don't cause me to lose forever false positives that I neglect to notice within
30 days. And, there is a definite correlation between how much spam you get
and how many places your naked address appears. So if you _ever_ review your
spam folder for false positives, that process is easier if you've bee
protective of your address (and thus get less spam).
~~~
prophetjohn
Do you mark spam email that you get as spam? I rarely get spam in my GMail,
but when I do I mark it as spam. Of course, maybe our habits are just
different, but I like to reassure myself that I'm helping the system chug
along.
~~~
gojomo
I do, but only on the occasional times I check Gmail at all. It's possible
it'd become better for me with more intense use/training, but I'm not ready to
leap into even more dependency on Google services based on the experience so
far.
~~~
prophetjohn
Ah, well in that case it's probably partially explained by a lower volume of
legitimate email that you get there if you don't really use it much.
------
evoxed
Years ago I wasn't too careful with my email address. After using the same
accounts for some time and eventually moving on to something a little more
memorable (presentable, etc.) I decided to try and take care of it by not
posting it anywhere without at least minimum obfuscation, and not signing up
for anything I didn't explicitly trust. Four years on, and my spam folder gets
at most 2 messages a month. A couple are some stupid pharma-spam, but most of
them come from when my grandmother's email list got scraped. So hey, it's not
bad. I hardly even have to check the spam folder for false positives, and may
even turn it off completely.
------
sejje
I think it becomes extra-silly when you think about how easy it is to
circumvent most people's additions.
I get phone call solicitations, I think from posting my phone number on
Craigslist. I thought about obscuring it, and then started thinking about how
most of them are so easy to decode--so I tried it for fun. Filter parentheses,
whitespace, change "six" to 6, etc. See if you end up with ten digits.
Phone numbers are easier than email addresses, but I was able to scrape 95%+
of them properly, and would have gotten higher with any real effort.
I'd post the code if I could find it. It was trivial.
------
tsuyoshi
I never have hidden my email address, and I've never used a spam filter. I
used to get a lot of spam, maybe 50 messages or so a day. Back when I got that
many, I was sort of motivated to set up a spam filter... but I still never got
around to it. These days, still unfiltered, I only get 2-5 a day, and I think
(for me at least) setting up a spam filter is a waste of time. I guess all the
cracking down on open relays and filtering SMTP etc. has done the trick?
------
orionblastar
I don't my email is [email protected] I don't think I hide it anymore.
Only problem I get are from trolls not spammers. Gmail filters out spammers
very well.
~~~
orionblastar
Apparently some troll sent me an email faked from hacker news that my password
had changed. Nice try trolls.
------
joeco
I think a better question may be why don't people use an alternative to e-mail
to manage inbound solicitations.
And I'm [email protected]. But I'd prefer gramicon.com/itsjoeco.
------
sbierwagen
I don't obfuscate my email on HN, but I do on bbot.org, where I can use markup
trickery to obfuscate it in source, but not on the rendered page.
------
bpatrianakos
HN users seem to be very anal and paranoid. That's my theory. It's not a
knock, just an observation. Hang around the comments long enough and it's
pretty clear. Better safe than sorry I suppose. Just look at the answers here.
You have to admit they show tendencies toward being anal and paranoia.
------
whalesalad
I don't really conceal my email address anywhere online. I also don't get
spam. Gmail has solved that problem for me, thankfully. Like a Ronco
Rotisserie oven[1]... "set it and forget it!"
1) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5s1jY1Nwl4>
~~~
gmail2
check your spam folder with gmail, they started to have false positives for me
(they used to be really good)
~~~
espyb
I had as much legitimate mail going to the spam folder as I did actual spam,
though I had entirely too much of that too. It's pretty useless IMO.
------
RollAHardSix
Old habits die hard, but bad habits kill.
------
bavidar
I recently posted about this problem and created a solution for users who dont
want to get spammed.
Take a look here: <http://leoreavidar.com/email.php>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Beat SMEP on Linux with Return-Oriented Programming - coreyrecvlohe
http://falken.tuxfamily.org/?p=115
======
jeffreyg
A good paper came out a few years ago that defeats ROP by adding protections
to ensure that returns/calls/jumps are only taken if the function was entered
at its entry point, and rearranging register allocation if the compiler
creates unaligned instructions that can be used to ret/jmp. They say the
performance penalty isn't huge, but I guess it must be enough if people aren't
implementing it.
[1] G-Free: Defeating Return-Oriented Programming through Gadget-less Binaries
(<http://iseclab.org/papers/gfree.pdf>)
~~~
scott_s
_They say the performance penalty isn't huge, but I guess it must be enough if
people aren't implementing it._
There are other, social reasons why it may not be used. Academics are usually
evaluated on published papers, so papers are often their end goal. Their code
is usually proof-of-concept quality, not production quality. So it's not
realistic to be able to take code written by academics and directly integrate
it into real software stacks. And the people who are in a position to
integrate new features into open source software stacks often have dozens of
other features that are also important, so why work on this one? There really
needs to be a champion for the idea in the already-existing community for that
project.
This work also has the secondary problem of cross-cutting concerns. In order
to provide better security in the kernel, they're modifying the assembler. So
now you need a champion who works in the assembler, but cares a lot about
kernel security.
Good paper, by the way. I've only read the intro, but I'm going to read the
rest later. It looks to have a good primer on ROP.
~~~
onars
I am the author of the paper on G-Free.
G-Free does not modify the assembler, or any other component on a system. It
is a completely independent layer between the compiler and the assembler. And
its performance overhead is indeed surprisingly low.
Even then, there are numerous reasons I can think of why it won't immediately
be included in a production environment (as won't most cutting edge research).
The first reason being, by definition, G-Free is a compiler based solution.
You need the source code in order to build gadget free software. This may not
be the best fit for an already established production system. However, I can
imagine this system being easily adapted into a binary loader, so that it does
its trick when loading a binary into the memory.
Then, you have the issues of compiler verification. You are right in saying
that research quality code does not equal production quality. We do have a
prototype implementation that works nicely, as described in the paper. But who
am I to say it is perfect? Well, we compiled a full system with it, and have
been running it without problems since then. But you never have the assurance
unless you do some formal verification. I would not compile a critical piece
of software (something running on an aircraft, for example) with just any
implementation, without having solid ( = formal) proof that the implementation
is perfect.
~~~
scott_s
Calling G-Free an independent layer between the compiler and the assembler is
a semantic distinction, not an implementation distinction. The step needs to
live in either the compiler (as a post-processing phase) or the assembler (as
a pre-processing phase) to be automatically integrated into the software
stack.
~~~
onars
Using your terms, it _is_ an implementation distinction as well. You install
G-Free, call 'make' to build any software, it comes out gadget free. You
delete G-free, call make, it comes out with gadgets. With our prototype
implementation for Linux and GCC, you don't need to touch gcc or gas or the
linker or anything else. This is explained in the paper.
If you have a build system where the assembler and the compiler are bundled as
a monolithic binary executable, then your argument may or may not hold.
EDIT: Just to clarify, 'make' was just an example. You can also directly call
"gcc program.c" or "as anotherprogram.S" and G-Free does its job.
------
rwmj
"kernel symbols hiding" ... I always find that to be funny. Once your code is
in kernel space, searching for kernel symbols by name is easy. Proof is in the
program I wrote called virt-dmesg which uses heuristics to search for the main
symbol table, and also for kallsyms if available
<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-dmesg/>
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Before Food Trucks, Americans Ate 'Night Lunch' from Beautiful Wagons - extarial
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/night-lunch-wagon
======
tsunamifury
This is a gold standard for what a platform should be. An individual sells a
product at a one-off price to a entrepreneur who then is able to make a living
off of it. There is no 30% take in perpetuity with regulations that slowly
chip away at margins. It's just one person selling another an honest
opportunity to make money. And as they scale, everyone in the consumption
chain benefits -- more sales, more businesses and more places to eat easily
for the end customer.
~~~
Eridrus
This is nonsense. By what criteria, besides "I like it" is "An individual
sells a product at a one-off price to a entrepreneur who then is able to make
a living off of it." the ideal form of business?
Adobe went from this model to SaaS, and their user growth has taken off,
because it turns out paying the full cost of the software in a front-loaded
fashion is really expensive.
I remember pirating visual studio when I was a child, because it cost
thousands of dollars that I could not afford, but these days it is free
because platform providers have realised that increasing developer share is
more important, and now finance their platform via the 30% take.
~~~
Digit-Al
You are very much mistaken in two ways.
Firstly, Visual Studio is not free. There is a free version that can only be
used by learners, hobbyists, and those creating free software. This is a cut-
down version from the commercial product, which offers more features and is
required if creating commercial software.
Secondly, Microsoft do not finance VS from a 30% take. As I said above, if you
want to develop commercial software you have to buy the commercial version.
Instead, the free version is a "hearts and minds" exercise. Get people used to
the free version when they are learning and when they are creating free
software. If they then want to create commercial software their first instinct
will be to plump for paying for the commercial version.
On the other hand, some of those replying to you are also mistaken as VS is
also available on subscription as well as standalone.
~~~
Eridrus
You can use the community product to make commercial software:
[https://www.quora.com/Can-startups-use-Microsoft-Visual-
Stud...](https://www.quora.com/Can-startups-use-Microsoft-Visual-Studio-
Community-for-development-of-commercial-applications)
The windows app store store does take a cut, though it seems to be reduced to
15%: [https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-
micr...](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-microsoft-
store-revenue-share-is-coming/)
But even if it was just a hearts and minds exercise - why do you want hearts
and minds? As a strategic play to support other parts of your business, i.e.
Windows, even if it's not the Windows store.
In any case, it doesn't really matter the specifics are at MS now, you could
look at Android or iOS instead, where the dev tools are free and they are
definitely taking a 30% cut, and contrast that to a few decades ago where you
had to shell out a few thousand dollars if you wanted MS' dev tools at all. Or
take a look at Unity which has a subscription, which people are pretty happy
with.
------
kbrosnan
Worth checking out Haven Bros. in Providence, RI for an example of this still
in operation. Open from ~16:30 to ~27:00. It is driven in to down city every
evening.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haven_Brothers_Diner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haven_Brothers_Diner)
~~~
robotmlg
27:00?
~~~
AdamJacobMuller
A weird way of writing 3AM, I presume.
~~~
zdw
Fairly common in the UK and Asia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_clock#Times_after_24:0...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_clock#Times_after_24:00)
~~~
NeedMoreTea
"used occasionally in some special contexts such as broadcast TV" is not what
I'd call fairly common!
Never encountered it in half a century here, just military time "0 3 hundred"
as used on the shipping forecast, or simply 3am.
~~~
foobarbazetc
It’s extremely common in Japan. Literally everywhere.
Never seen it in the UK.
------
quickthrower2
The use of "Night Lunch" as opposed to "Dinner" reminds me of the Randall
Munroe's "Thing Explainer."
~~~
minikites
"Dinner" might imply that the restaurant is open earlier?
~~~
wmf
I suspect in those days "dinner" implied a large meal while "lunch" is
something smaller and simpler, like the sandwiches mentioned in the article.
~~~
WorldMaker
My reading of it is also that many of these were used for what a lot of food
trucks are still used for (depending on the city of course): late night food
cravings (especially for the "afterparty" crowds). "Night Lunch" seems such a
decent descriptor for a "Midnight Snack", that I might adopt it for that
purpose.
------
swingline-747
Hey zeitgeist, bring this back. There's barely anything open past 9 pm and
almost nothing with power-plugs. How is one supposed to work afterhours? At
home? (yeash)
There's a 24 hour cafe called Happy Donuts however it's anything but:
unheated, decrepit and must've been remodeled last in 1967.
~~~
princekolt
I smell an untapped business opportunity around you.
------
GBond
A version of these will likely come back. Autonomous vehicles tech will enable
on-demand, self-driving restaurants that park in front of your door.
------
crench
There’s one of these in Portsmouth, NH: Gilley’s.
~~~
QuinnWilton
And they also serve the best poutine I've had outside of Canada!
------
m3kw9
Looks amazing inside, I’m sure many has tried to replicate such decor
------
cryptozeus
Really nice, good find ! Thanks for sharing.
------
laserBro13Fcali
Was this submission inspired by yesterday's comment?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17972163)
It sure feels like it. :)
------
wallace_f
What's more American than the entrepreneurial spirit which drives self-owned &
operated businesses like this? You have individuals who are self-responsible
for their product/service. It's neat to see the historical precedent.
Yet across America police are shutting down lemonaide stands. Even ones run by
kids. Food trucks and stalls are ticketed and confiscated in other cases.
Developers might be wise to speak up before you need an expensive license or
medallion or charter in order to sell apps or other tech services. It's no
less likely to happen, it just hasn't had time to yet.
~~~
RangerScience
I mean, to be snarky -
> What's more American than the entrepreneurial spirit which drives self-owned
> & operated businesses like this?
Clearly, lobbying the government to make your competitors illegal.
/snark
It's super cool that a guy with a basket turned into night lunch wagons turned
into diners.
It's also then pretty interesting that it took nearly a century for a
comeback. (Not that roach coaches haven't been a thing, but, food trucks took
it to another level).
Any indications for the intervening slump?
~~~
GW150914
I think the broadening palette and recovering from WWII and processed food had
a lot to do with it. You can only make so many things in a truck, but if
you’re able to draw from worldwide traditions it represents real variety.
Everything from ramen to falafel is doable and delicious in a car or truck,
but for a long time Americans weren’t interested in it. Americans seemed to be
satisfied with dirty water hot dogs, re-warmed pizza, and things like
pretzels. They also weren’t about to spend a serious wad of money for more
upscale versions.
Braden tastes, the foodie culture, the idea that even if you just want a hot
dog there are good ones to be had for a bit more money changed things, but it
took decades. You can chart a similar peak-trough-peak in bread in America
actually. It used to be nice stuff, then post-war it was mass produced, pre-
sliced crap for decades, and now... it’s back to some version of fresh. WWII
didn’t have quite the impact on the American palette that it did on the Brits,
but it did have an impact, as did modern “convenience” food.
~~~
bobthepanda
IMO the bigger issue was the massive, government-funded suburbanization of
America. Food trucks work best in a scenario where people need to walk to get
food, and driving to another food establishment; when everyone with money is
leaving the big city and spreading out over miles and miles, this business
model with small/no seating doesn't really work. This business model never
really died in, say, New York, where there has always been enough constant
foot traffic.
Postwar, people were also much more about modernity and convenience. The drive
thru is new, modern and sanitary, and you can drive right up; the food truck
is for the poors, is in the dirty city, and you need to find a parking space.
But today suburbs are culturally deadening and cities are the hip place to be.
We've had a flight back to the cities for a while; this coincides with more
food truck uptake.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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