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As packages get hidden in pkg.go.dev, Go communit aim to keep godoc.org alive - soroso
https://groups.google.com/forum/
======
networkimprov
Already posted here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22241357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22241357)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Upcall - Non-AI Sales Assistant - leahcim
https://www.upcall.com/
======
mlevental
so this is a call center that has CRM integration? i guess it's a cute idea
but the problem with call centers isn't that they didn't have the list of
leads but that they're bad sales people.
~~~
sharemywin
Short term. no relationship building
~~~
mlevental
i don't know what you're trying to say but not all sales is relationship
building and you can still have good/bad single touch sales reps.
------
ggg9990
Google is going to kill this business with Duplex, because I’m in a few years
I’m going to assume that any call I get from a stranger trying to sell me
something is a robot.
~~~
zeronight
I agree with you, but for the foreseeable future this will remain easy to
test. Just ask the caller something out of it's domain. Get a call about life
insurance? Ask about ratios of trail mix.
------
givinguflac
So it's like a mancierge, but for your business.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
dm-cache: new caching method that operates within the Linux kernel - auston
https://github.com/mingzhao/dm-cache
======
sciurus
It's not exactly new, development started in 2006.
<https://lwn.net/Articles/211246/>
dm-cache is the project Facebook's flashcache is based on.
<https://github.com/facebook/flashcache>
I'm not sure if there's ongoing work to merge dm-cache or flashcache into the
upstream linux kernel. With bcache there is.
[http://www.redhat.com/archives/dm-
devel/2012-July/msg00155.h...](http://www.redhat.com/archives/dm-
devel/2012-July/msg00155.html)
~~~
black_kiwi
Yes, dm-cache is not new, but it just had a major new release. It now has a
feature to allow many vms to share one cache.
I can't speak for the flashcache team, but I do know that one goal of the dm-
cache team is to get it into the upstream for the linux kernel(I know this b/c
I worked with dm-cache team last year).
~~~
sciurus
That's great to know! Hopefully one of these projects will make it into the
kernel soon, since this is obviously a very useful feature.
------
nemilar
Not to spam, but hopefully this information is useful for some HN'ers. Our
startup, <http://velobit.com>, provides caching as well.
Alas, it is not open source, but it does have some differentiators over
bcache/dm-cache. The primary pro's of those two are that they are FOSS.
Major downsides are they they are kernel patches. DM-Cache is a little more
difficult as well, in the sense that it is in the DM layer, so you're creating
a new device when you apply caching. Contrast with our startup, where we
insert ourselves directly into the existing devices (so no need to modify
fstab, etc..). Of course, I like to think we have other major differentiators
as well, but I won't go on and on about them here..
That being said, this caching (especially SSD-as-caching) space is huge right
now, even though it doesn't get much attention in the hot-tech startup world.
~~~
nwmcsween
There's also hot tracking RFC patches floating around for the VFS layer.
bcache seems quiet nice, there are block layer refactorings going on right now
in order to get it merged.
------
wmf
I think bcache is supposed to be _much_ faster than dm-cache.
<http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/>
~~~
wtallis
bcache is specifically for using an SSD to cache something with much higher
latency, usually a hard drive (or RAID array), but possibly also a network
block device. Because of that, bcache is tuned to take advantage of the
strengths of current SSDs, and to avoid write patterns that lead to excessive
wear of the SSD, and to distinguish between random accesses (where SSDs excel)
and sequential (where a RAID5 might be faster). This makes bcache better than
the more generic dm-cache for the right workload, but it also means bcache is
more complex - at best, it is months away from making it in to the staging
area.
------
wtallis
Also worth looking at: hot-data tracking in the VFS layer.
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIwM...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIwMzY)
Should help btrfs catch up with ZFS.
------
auston
Additional info: [https://www.cloudvps.com/blog/cloudvps-activates-linux-
ssd-c...](https://www.cloudvps.com/blog/cloudvps-activates-linux-ssd-caching-
with-dm-cache/)
------
codex
Solaris has had this for years now with the L2ARC. I'm glad it is finally
coming to Linux. Now when is Linux going to get a better page eviction
algorithm, like ARC?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Exotic Cosmic Locales Available as Space Tourism Posters - yincrash
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=5052&1
======
csl
Previous discussions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11132713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11132713)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11104124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11104124)
The actual posters are at [http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-
future/](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/) — click on an image,
scroll down and you can even download a PDF (non-vectorized, unfortunately) or
a high-resolution TIFF.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is it possible in the future, viruses may appear that don't exist yet? - arjn
======
Blahah
If you mean biological viruses, it's not just possible, it's certain. In the
two seconds it took you to read this, hundreds or thousands of viruses
appeared that didn't exist before. Mutation happens at a very high rate, and
there are a lot of viruses in the world.
If you mean computer viruses, it's not just possible, it's certain. Just that
the rate is several orders of magnitude slower because it depends on human
ingenuity :).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Let strangers predict your salary - cagriaksay
http://salaryfairy.com/
======
cagriaksay
We built this site as a social experiment side project and would love to hear
your feedback.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Graph Convolutional Networks – Intro to neural networks on graphs - triplefloat
http://tkipf.github.io/graph-convolutional-networks/
======
kingennio
This is really powerful. As a use case I'm considering the graph of streets in
a city. A task would be to make predictions on the next nodes visited by a
vehicle given the history of the recent nodes. I'm not sure how you deal with
mini batches. Since you need the Adj matrix of the whole graph?
~~~
triplefloat
Mini-batching is indeed tricky, as you need the information of the complete
local neighborhood for all nodes in a mini-batch. Let's say you select N nodes
for a mini-batch, then you would also have to provide all nodes of the k-th
order neighborhood for a neural net with k layers (if you want an exact
procedure). I'd recommend to do some subsampling in this case, although this
is not trivial. We're currently looking into this. Otherwise full-batch
gradient descent tends to work very well on most datasets. Datasets up to ~1
million nodes should fit into memory and the training updates should still be
quite fast.
------
SubiculumCode
Does this classify whole graphs, or nodes into communities/classes?
~~~
triplefloat
Both graph-level and node-level classification are possible. Graph-level
classification requires some from of pooling operation (simplest case: mean-
pooling over all nodes, but there are more elaborate things one can do)
------
webyqop
How does this differ from graphical models like factor graphs ?
~~~
triplefloat
In a graphical model, you'd explicitly model the probabilistic assumptions
that you make with respect to the data. In this neural network-based approach
the goal can be thought of more like learning a function that maps from some
input to some desired output. But indeed the form of the propagation rule
resembles mean field inference in graphical models.
------
empath75
This looks really interesting, but I'm struggling to think of a practical
application. Any ideas?
~~~
SubiculumCode
I know little, but how about classification of neuro–developmental disorders
from network graphs derived from resting state fMRI?
~~~
singularity2001
Stupid question: can bayesian networks (graphs) be a useful input?
~~~
triplefloat
Currently the framework only supports undirected graphs, so directed graphical
models wouldn't be supported as input. I can't really judge how useful it
would be to take a Bayesian net as input, sounds a bit hacky to me. But in
principle you could train a neural net on any kind of graph, someone recently
suggested to take the connection graph of another neural net as input and try
to learn some function on that. But again, it's really hard to judge in
advance how useful such approaches would be ;)
~~~
singularity2001
"take the connection graph..." That is a brilliant idea!
Training such a net to learn and output(!) superior tensorflow graphs etc!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Long player - bootload
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/05/long_player.php
======
ralph
news.yc really needs the ability to add a descriptive sticky first comment
along with a URL otherwise the RSS feed, and this page, has bugger all on it
to know whether to click on the link or not. Yes, this is already on the
Feature Requests page. I'm just letting off steam.
~~~
bootload
_'... news.yc really needs the ability to add a descriptive sticky first
comment along with a URL otherwise the RSS feed, and this page, has bugger all
on it to know whether to click on the link or not ...'_
To expect the submitter to do this is ideal, but not scalable. (I know I've
tried to add comments in articles as I've posted them, but gave up because of
the number I submit. I do read them but now comment sparingly.) There is a
real problem with generating volumes of information quickly. If you want
speed, there is a limit on the amount of _meta_ information a user can
reasonably generate. If you want usefulness, this requires more time on behalf
of users submitting.
Newspapers have this problem and solved it by training news editors to create
_catchy titles_ that neatly summarises the entire article in a small sentence
- maybe even a few words. But not everyone writing articles on the web is
trained in Journalistic techniques, let alone people who read this site. There
is also the other problem when re-phrasing or changing titles of articles.
Mutilating them into something un-recognisable from the original.
This is where the software has to work harder. By supplying users with the
tools to classify, sort and value the submissions with tags, comments,
summaries (already have ranking). I'm thinking here of delicious where tagging
has allowed users to sort quickly by tag, then if they want to add more data
themselves (descriptions, summary). The other way is to gather meta data from
the source document (tags, microformats) where possible (un-likely as it takes
time to process documents to generate useful things like summaries - even
longer for meta data like microformats). Now the question is, _could_ "pg with
news.yc create some tools to help users or process new submissions extracting
meta-data"?
~~~
ralph
If I wanted volumes of information I know where to find it. This is news.yc.
I'm hoping for quality, not quantity, and if that means a 70% fall in
submissions, who cares?
Besides, having the ability to attach a comment to the URL does't mandate
putting anything in it. It's suggestive to the submitter that they should make
the effort though else their submission might not compare well against those
that do.
And if a submitter thinks "Oh, this article isn't really good enough to spend
my time on summarising" then that's a good test of whether they should inflict
it on the rest of us in the first place.
Rant over. :-)
~~~
bootload
_'... Besides, having the ability to attach a comment to the URL does't
mandate putting anything in it. It's suggestive to the submitter that they
should make the effort ...'_
I've tried now to add title + (summary) on the submissions resulting in a
_more_ descriptive subject line. It actually works at the expense of size & a
bit of time. So I have to agree with this bit and have changed my approach.
_'... If I wanted volumes of information I know where to find it. This is
news.yc. I'm hoping for quality, not quantity, and if that means a 70% fall in
submissions, who cares? ...'_
This is already automated by users in the _news_ link (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/news> ) and for the best articles in the _best_
link ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/best> ) As for me I'd rather more articles
submitted & gain the benefit of the long tail of submissions (lots), let the
brains filter submissions (users) and see the resultant niches of information
pop up instead of just the _hits_ ~
<http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/07/how_finely_can_.html>
_'... Rant over ...'_
It was a good one, because it made me think about this & in the process solved
a few problems I was working on :)
~~~
ralph
The _news_ and _best_ links don't help avoid the long tail. _best_ is too
static; it rarely changes. And <http://news.ycombinator.com/rss> presents too
much dross. Dross which is hard to for my brain to filter because each item
has too little info so I end up having to visit every thread and then often
each linked external article.
(Thanks for starting to add (comments) to the title.)
~~~
bootload
_"... (Thanks for starting to add (comments) to the title.) ..."_
Believe me it makes a difference & really solves the _crappy title_ problem.
But it can be improved. I haven't used the the rss feed much (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/rss> ) but doing so I found that there is a cut-
off on the browser I use (Firefox = toolbars = bookmarks ) toolbar cuts the
text off at 40 characters. So If the title contains the most accurate info in
the first 40 characters it even works in the RSS feeds (reader) with readers
truncating the rest of the message. The other problem I noticed with the RSS
feed is the transporting you to the direct link, not the news.yc feed which as
the original link in the title. So rule of thumb: good title in 40 char
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/587744795/>
~~~
ralph
It's unfortunate that some RSS readers limit the amount of displayed text,
e.g. Firefox's menu items.
As for the RSS linking to the external article, the feed has both that URL and
a "comments" URL. Some RSS readers appear not to show or give access to the
comments URL, others do. For those that give both, I choose the comments one
first to get more of a clue as to whether anyone bothered to comment.
There are posts elsewhere about some RSS readers ignoring the comments URL and
what if anything can be done.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Hacker forum or IRC? - jebediah
Is there a forum or irc channel aimed at all hackers? I have never managed to find a good one
======
decentrality
Why not just all jump into #hackernews? What does hackers mean again? Who's
definition?
If you're actually looking for HN people, why don't we just participate on
#hackernews on freenode.
~~~
jaekwon
I just logged onto #hackernews on freenode.
My god, it's full of avatars!
~~~
decentrality
Since my original comment about #hackernews on freenode, the room filled up
and got talking and so far it does not suck.
~~~
ld00d
I don't know about others, but I find IRC a little intimidating. So I get in,
but I never speak. I just hide out in the corner and sip my beer.
~~~
jebediah
I feel the exactly opposite way, I think IRC is the place where I am the most
open
~~~
decentrality
Lurking in IRC is fine, being extroverted is fine. The ability to even
remotely understand who HN actually is is weird enough without talking.
Otherwise all there is are single line headlines, terse often neckbeardy
comments, and no real-time presence -- no "moment" to figure out what even
some of these people here really are. So far whether you lurk or talk it's
better than just looking at the posts and threads.
------
izolate
Never found a good one either. I think it's because HN members stay in their
respective domain channels - #python #javascript for example.
#startups on freenode is supposedly made up of HN crowd, but I've never found
it a friendly place.
~~~
kimagure
freenode in general isn't a very friendly place :/
that said, i think #clojure and #reactjs are fairly friendly and helpful to
questions, even the most basic ones.
~~~
zkanda
#django is one of the active channels I've tried. Lot's of people willing to
help.
------
brooksgarrett
The biggest problem with this question is the breadth of the term 'hacker'.
Hackers tend to clump into whatever projects they are currently working on.
Try starting off in places like #ubuntu and other projects (that interest
you!) that are very newbie friendly. Master a topic and try helping other
newbies with that topic. It takes time but my personal experience is the best
way to be involved in the 'hacker' culture is to be recognized as someone who
brings value and contributions back to the group, regardless of the size of
those contributions.
~~~
jebediah
But the whole point is to have a general place with lots of people where all
things hacker could be talked about, I spend some time on topic-specific IRC
channels but I don't want to talk about python or arch all day, I wanted a
channel that was about the community
~~~
lozf
For s sense of community, perhaps your local hackerspace has a channel that
can help. If you don't have a local hackerspace, consider starting one, or at
least occasionally participating in something less local.
------
moepstar
Hm, if there isn't one already (and i know of none) i guess the only answer
is:
Set one up on a network that has a high # of hackers, tinkerers etc.
IMHO, this network could be chat.freenode.net
When you're done, let people know in this thread and i'm sure they'll come...
P.S.: There's a channel named #startups already on freenode which seems to
have a few people from HN already...
~~~
ffwacom
#startups is a terrible channel
------
bilalel
Slack [0] is a piece of beauty for community/team communication. I don't if
there is already a HN channel on it.
[0] [https://www.slack.com/](https://www.slack.com/)
~~~
jackweirdy
I really don't see the big deal with slack. I don't see what it does that any
other chat software doesn't?
~~~
jordsmi
It has a cool name
------
bussiere
look at irc channel of different hackerspace ... as that one :
[http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/London_Hackspace](http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/London_Hackspace)
~~~
spindritf
This is the best recommendation. Find a hacker space nearby. They also usually
have some sort of public mailing list which is like a forum.
------
a3voices
Why would you want to chat with hackers? Might as well just go into work and
talk to coworkers.
~~~
jebediah
Because I am 16
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I'm going to be on Mixergy today at 11am PDT - jl
http://ycombinator.posterous.com/im-going-to-interviewed-on-mixergy-tomorrow-a
======
e1ven
I tend to enjoy the Mixergy interviews, but I find that Andrew is often too
self-focused. It's somewhat jarring when he uses his access to people to say
"What do you think of My site, or My Style?"
I understand the temptation; I'm not saying I wouldn't necessarily want to do
the same thing, but when George Stephanopoulos interviews Obama or Putin, he
doesn't ask if they watch his show.
I also understand that it's reasonable to use your own site/startup/etc as an
example of the larger world, but it seems somewhat unslightly. This may be a
place where avoiding the appearance of conflict is best, even if it would
otherwise make sense.
~~~
AndrewWarner
I recently tried 99designs for the first time. They have an unusual model, but
every time I was about to get confused, I noticed that their UI cleared up my
issue.
I couldn't figure out how they made their site so intuitive.
Then, after I paid for my design, I got an email from them asking me to fill
out a Wufoo survey.
That's when I realized how they know their customers well because they keep
asking for feedback.
That's why I keep asking for feedback. I could do it off camera, after the
interview is over, but I'd much rather be open about my process than hide it.
~~~
e1ven
That's a great point, and I agree that it's always important to get feedback,
and that's why I'm glad that you're here on HN discussing the interviews.
One thing to be careful of, however, is making sure you're not disrupting your
primary user experience to gather the information.
In your 99designs example, it sounds like they did everything right. They
presented a clear, kick-ass UI that guided you through things without being in
the way, without cluttering things up with surveys while you tried to do it.
Sometimes I worry that you're in-interview questions are more akin to having
99designs offering a dropdown menu next to each UI element, asking for
feedback ;)
Best of luck, and thanks for doing these.
------
jakarta
Andrew gets a lot of criticism for how he interviews but I have to say,
interviewing people -- especially when you are new at it is hard.
You really have to strike a balance in the questions you ask and the small
talk you make to get a good flow going and make the person being interviewed
willing to talk.
I have a feeling that some people on here would rather him simply read a list
of 10 questions, but the problem with that is you often end up with really
mechanical answers. Some people will argue he is too nice with the people he
interviews, but if you press too hard you will sever relationships and reduce
future prospects for interviewing the same individual or people from their
network. Good interviewing is really an art.
So before you criticize, try doing interviews yourself.
And I don't quite understand all the hate Mixergy attracts. I mean all he is
doing is providing extra information for the benefit of everyone else via his
interviews. You might not find it useful, but I am sure other people do.
For the record, I don't watch most of Andrew's videos. I mostly skim the
transcripts. Some people complain about transcript quality but I know that
good transcription services cost money and what Andrew's interviews are
free... You get what you pay for.
------
faramarz
There's no question that Andrew is creating value with Mixery. No one can
dispute that.
Andrew, take all the criticism in stride. these are people who care enough to
even bother complaining. any criticism is better than nothing at all.
With that frame of mind, you'll get further in creating value for your peers.
Keep it up.
------
riso
Being an introvert, I find that there is way too much small talk than I am
interested in. I really think that most of the interviews could be trimmed
down to 15-20min.
Now only if there was a highlight reel of the interview...
------
sk_0919
Andrew, How about an HN-like board where people can up-vote any questions
posted by other users in the live chat room. You can have a section in the
interview where the top voted questions can be asked
------
Oompa
Am I the only one that doesn't like Mixergy?
~~~
brandon272
I watch some of the interviews. I would say what is best about Mixergy is that
Andrew Warner works hard on the site and does an excellent job at having a
steady stream of high quality guests. On the other hand, I don't particularly
enjoy his interview style because I find the questions to be too high-level
and "fluffy" most of the time. I'd enjoy the interviews a lot more if the
questions were more about specific operational issues that startups deal with.
But, that's just my opinion and the interview style is really a matter of
personal taste.
~~~
AndrewWarner
Brandon, are you free for a phone call to talk about what you think I should
improve in my interviews?
Since you don't reveal your identity in your HN bio, we could use a disposable
skype name to maintain your anonymity.
<http://mixergy.com/contact>
~~~
jjs
I saw the live interview and it was great.
It seems to me that the charges of fluffiness come not necessarily from
"softball" questions, but from the _impression_ that the questions are
strictly softball.
Seeing you interview, it's very obvious that you're a genuinely nice guy. You
couldn't hide that without changing yourself for the worse. But you don't have
to, because it's an asset.
Part of this interview focused on the question of _how do you make
interviewees comfortable?_ Comfortable enough to do the interview in the first
place, and comfortable enough to answer the questions openly, without fearing
that the interviewer is about to spring some trap on them.
I've also noticed you tend to apologize when asking someone a question you
think is tough, but it's interesting to see the reaction, almost a "No, no,
I'll answer it."
For questions that are particularly salient but awkward to ask, you should
continue to use that same technique to push just a bit further, both to
stretch your comfort zone, and to get a feel for the real boundaries of what
people are willing or even glad to answer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Popular Are Wix, Weebly and Squarespace? We Ran the Numbers - ekaln
https://www.ostraining.com/blog/general/wix-squarespace/
======
smt88
They didn't "run the numbers", they googled the numbers. I was expecting
someone to have resolved millions of domains and matched them up with IP
ranges for each company.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Newly Released Surveillance Orders Show That Spying Powers Are Misused - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/newly-released-surveillance-orders-show-even-individualized-court-oversight-spying
======
chopin
What I not understand (I am not a US person): Why is the FBI involved in
foreign surveillance? My (possibly naive) understanding is that the FBI is a
law enforcement agency. Here in Germany we have (for good reasons) a strict
separation of the two.
~~~
juliangoldsmith
The FBI doesn't have any good reason to be involved in foreign surveillance.
The agency currently seems to have no accountability, and to do whatever it
wants (see: Nunes memo).
~~~
chopin
That's what I understand. But why could they go to the FISC? This means to me,
they can do foreign surveillance _legally_. The German equivalent, the BKA,
could of course do foreign surveillance as well. However they can't get an
official approval to do so (that's task of the BND). It'd be outright illegal.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PayPal was not vulnerable to Heartbleed - fastest963
https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/PayPal-Forward/OpenSSL-Heartbleed-Bug-PayPal-Account-Holders-are-Secure/ba-p/797568
======
cynix
_When you login to PayPal using your user name and password these details were
not exposed to the OpenSSL vulnerability._
So they aren't actually denying that PayPal was using a vulnerable version of
OpenSSL. All they're claiming is that passwords were not exposed. Doesn't
inspire a lot of confidence...
------
rurounijones
A "why" would be good to add confidence.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Meadow is the Amazon of weed - piyushgupta27
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/02/buy-weed-online/
======
FearNotDaniel
Jesus Christ, what a hypocritical world we live in. Such Orwellian doublethink
to maintain the pretense that only 'patients' are receiving 'medical
marijuana' from 'dispensaries', otherwise the powers that be might shut the
whole thing down in a fit of 'reefer madness' paranoia about the collapse of
society. Maybe it'll take two or more generations of maintaining this
ridiculous charade, everyone admiring the Emperor's rather fine clothes (in
this case, an imaginary white coat and scrubs), before recreational use
becomes so normalized that everyone can just drop the game. I mean, I don't
live in the USA so I don't know what it's really like there on the ground, but
does anyone really believe this "medical marijuana" business at face value?
~~~
dumbneurologist
You are exactly right.
As a doctor who sees patients with a legitimate use for compounds that come
from the cannabis plant, the people who want recreational access just bog down
the health system.
I am strongly in favor of federal recreational legalization, if for no other
reason than to get it out of my office.
Prohibition has failed, and legalization is a far superior public policy
option.
Recreational use should be available through places like Meadow, and medical
use should come through conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing methods
(like you would want for any other medication you take).
~~~
pstuart
> Prohibition has failed
In a sad way, it's been very successful in the context it was enacted: as a
tool to oppress "minorities". It was never about actual dangers from cannabis
itself.
~~~
hapnin
You're correct. John Erlichman, convicted Nixon aide, said as much:
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two
enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We
knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by
getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with
heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those
communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their
meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know
we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
1994, talking to journalist Dan Baum, Legalize It All: How to win the war on
drugs, Harper's Magazine, April 2016
~~~
merinowool
Such revelation should cause heads to roll, people being released, pardoned
and being paid compensation beside the end of prohibition. But there is not
much happening. Why people are in such apathy?
------
Simulacra
This "article" feels more like a marketing pitch. Does TechCrunch run paid
content?
~~~
089723645897236
Yes. And so does every single other blog with any sort of popularity.
------
magissima
It's rare to see Amazon as a positive comparison these days, at least on HN. I
was expecting the article to be about how Meadow was strangling the life out
of its competitors or abusing its market dominance or something.
------
Edd314159
Was marijuana the blockchain of 2017? Where as long as you aligned your
product with weed, even if it was actually a pretty generic product, there was
suddenly extra interest?
~~~
darepublic
Blockchain was the blockchain of 2017...
------
laythea
Surely, companies will be able to use regular POS systems, as this becomes
more and more legal? And the more legal it becomes, the less market this
company has...
------
intopieces
I’m not convinced of the long term viability of this business model. Lots of
people buy pot from these places as a novelty, like when friends visit from
out of town or when the shops first open. Pot nowadays is so strong than your
normal 9-to-5, weekend pot smoker can make do with very small quantities that
last a while. The green rush seems like a very short boom and bust cycle,
maybe 2 years at best.
~~~
mylons
i think you underestimate how many people enjoy being intoxicated
------
908087
Does this mean Meadow sells counterfeit marijuana, pays such low wages that
many of their employees need food stamps, and fosters an environment where
employees feel the need to piss in bottles to avoid bathroom breaks?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: new app idea - xaine
Just finished reading techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/buywithme-16-million/ when an idea popped into my head. Not sure how original it is but I figured I would throw it out here on HN and see what kind of discussion it sparked.<p>Recently, I have been stumbling upon more and more of these Daily Deals type websites. However, there isn't really an easy way for consumers to keep track of these websites and check their daily deals without individually bookmarking and visiting each respective site daily. Imagine an app which consolidated all of the websites and listed each sites daily deal. Discuss!
======
troygoode
And maybe one day when there are multiple sites consolidating the deals from
the sites that consolidate deals, someone can create a new app that
consolidates _those_ sites. ;-)
On a more serious note, this would be pretty useful if it was smart enough to
filter out duplicates - a lot of those deals sites have overlapping content.
------
jamesshamenski
Too late :(
dailyD
yipit
~~~
ibmkahm
and Dealighted.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NSA chief: 'Nation state' intervened in presidential election - fish0398
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/16/1600424/-NSA-chief-Nation-state-intervened-in-election-to-achieve-a-specific-effect
======
sintaxi
Hypothetically speaking lets say that Russia did in fact intervene in the
election but Trump did not collude or have any part in it. Is there any
written law or established precedence as to what to do in that situation?
------
rokosbasilisk
Way too many weasel words. I could easily say that nation was ecuador because
they kept assange safe.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Darpa robotics challenge - organicelephan
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/12/8768871/darpa-robotics-challenge-2015-winners
======
melling
We need a consumer robot where Apple, Google, and Microsoft can throw their
vast resources into future development.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Front End Development Guide for Large Engineering Teams - yangshun
https://github.com/grab/front-end-at-grab
======
acconrad
I was hoping this would be a guide on managing architectures, common use case
traps for handling things like scalability and state. Instead this is just a
long-winded way of recommending an opinionated front-end tech stack with
resources to learn those stacks. Was not exactly what I was hoping for.
~~~
BigJono
Yep, this is just rehashing the same stuff you can find on any one of 1000
other blog posts, articles or pieces of documentation.
The current literature on front-end development in React is woefully short on
real world case studies. It seems like everyone is building 30k loc throwaways
with a 40 library boilerplate and slathering the internet with masturbatory
praise for all the tooling and architectural patterns involved. If you try and
Google for any actual details about said libraries, it's buried under mounds
of beginner tutorials and faux praise.
For example, we just made the decision to use ImmutableJS in a project.
Everyone else on the team seems to be happy enough just reading a few blog
posts about how great it is and then throwing it into the mix. I have a bunch
of questions though, where are all the benchmarks? The docs, and everyone
else, claims massive speedups from using immutable data structures, but it's
never accompanied by any actual metrics, at least as far as my Google-fu gets
me. All of our data lists are paginated server side, we're not doing any mass
inserts on large data structures anywhere, and I've never noticed a
performance problem on anything else I've written with similar requirements,
so I find the claim that ImmutableJS is somehow going to speed up our app to
be dubious at best. Moreover, every article under the sun craps on about how
great it is to "enforce immutability", but nobody seems to be able to tell me
when they last encountered a bug due to an inadvertant mutable update, how
much time it cost them, or why they're hiring people who make such elementary
mistakes in the first place; or if they do, it's some airy parable with no
code example of the bug or the ImmutableJS code that could have fixed it.
~~~
z3t4
You don't need a library. Just have a policy that everything should be
immutable by default and only turn into mutable objects when optimizing, for
example for-loops. The benefit with immutability is not performance (it's
actually slower) but manageability and debug-ability. It's easier to reason
about code when the variables doesn't change, and you'll get all the variable-
states when debugging. Example:
var foo = 1;
var bar = foo + 1;
~~~
didgeoridoo
The "Performance" section of Facebook's own React docs has this line at the
end:
"Immutable data structures provide you with a cheap way to track changes on
objects, which is all we need to implement shouldComponentUpdate. This can
often provide you with a nice performance boost."
What I don't really get is, if you've implemented PureComponent and
shouldComponentUpdate wherever possible, how can adding Immutable possibly
improve performance? I.e. if your components are ASSUMING their inputs are
immutable, how does throwing errors on mutation attempts actually speed things
up?
~~~
eyko
With immutable objects, you can compare them (obj1 === obj2) and assume that
if they're the same, none of the properties have changed. You don't have that
sort of guarantee with normal JavaScript objects, so you need to do a deep
comparison.
If your component's state and props are immutable objects, then
shouldComponentUpdate becomes a much easier problem to solve.
~~~
BigJono
That's not what GP was saying.
The standard, non-library way of handling state in React is to use plain old
mutable Javascript objects, and just pretend they're immutable (i.e never
perform any mutable operations on them). The popular claim is that Immutable
"enforces" immutability, leading to less "accidental mutation" bugs. (A claim
which is bogus IMO. 0 !< 0)
~~~
acemarke
No, I'd say it's a _fairly_ valid claim. You have to interact with
Immutable.js objects using its API, and every update API call returns a new
instance. So, it _does_ generally enforce immutability. As far as I know, the
only way to accidentally mutate stuff with Immutable.js is if you insert plain
JS objects inside an Immutable.js object, and possibly also use one of its
"update this using a callback function" methods and misuse things inside the
callback.
~~~
BigJono
The bogus claim is that it leads to less bugs, not that it enforces
immutability. It very obviously does that.
------
flor1s
Maybe I'm confused, but I always thought front-end development included
graphics design. It seems like this guide does not discuss graphics design at
all. I don't just mean Photoshop, but also subjects like when/where to use
which color, typography, etc. Also this guide contains no information about
other product design disciplines such as requirements gathering etc.
I was working for a Dutch company a few years ago and our front-end developers
worked closely with the graphics designers and the back-end developers to be
able to properly do their work. We also had a business analyst who was working
more on requirements gathering. In the end the entire team was however
responsible for creating a good product for the customer.
~~~
HappyTypist
I've never heard of front end development include graphics design.
~~~
stupidcar
"Front end development" didn't exist as a separate software development
discipline until a few years ago. Before that, you had "web developers" for a
while, and before that, "web designers". These latter two categories were
people whose primary responsibility was to translate Photoshop designs into
HTML and CSS, and for that they needed, at least, a strong eye for visual
design. Their use of JavaScript was limited to use of libraries like
Scriptalicious, Mootools and (later) jQuery to add "Web 2.0" enhancements.
Oftentimes they were simply designers who'd learnt HTML and CSS in order to
help accurately translate their own designs, either because there was nobody
else to do it, or because they couldn't entrust it to back-end programmers.
Although the roles of designer and front-end developer were gradually
bifurcating by around 2010, if you were recruited by an agency as a front-end
developer, you were still almost certainly expected to demonstrate graphics
design abilities, and would often be considered part of the design team than
the programming team. It was only really with the rise of Single Page
Applications that you started to see front-end development completely shed its
origins as a adjunct to a designer's role.
~~~
Silhouette
The picture was never quite as black and white as you're suggesting, I think,
though certainly there were plenty of the kind of people you mentioned around.
For example, some people working in web world have always just built stuff
directly in-browser rather than slicing Photoshop images. This wasn't a new
idea when responsive sites came along, nor when SPAs started to become a
serious business; those trends just provided more awareness to some people who
hadn't thought of working that way before. Some people expanded from a
programming background into making more interactive web sites rather than from
a design background, and it probably would never have occurred to them not to
at least consider building with the native technologies from day one.
It's true that as those front-end technologies develop, more substantial
programming work is being done on the browser side, and so there has been a
degree of specialisation in the roles involved, particularly in larger
organisations. Even so, I'm not personally a fan of trying to maintain too
strict a division between those roles. As with almost anything in a technical
field, if you don't have at least a basic working knowledge of related skills
and technologies, you're probably not going to be very good at whatever
specialist task you're trying to do either. Similarly, if some key decisions
and resources aren't managed by all of the relevant people collectively,
problems will inevitably creep in for those who weren't as involved as they
should have been.
------
acemarke
It's an excellent set of advice and resources. Good explanations of why each
topic matters and what it includes, with links to a few selected resources for
each topic and an estimate for study time. I've already added it to my
standard advice for getting started with React.
I'm _very_ pleased to note that the guide links to my "(R)Evolution of Web
Development" presentation [0] and my React/Redux links list [1], and that a
number of the other articles referenced are definitely based on my links list
contents too :) (Also, for good measure, I'll toss in a link to my "Intro to
React and Redux" presentation here as well [2].)
[0]
[http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/presentations/2016-10-revol...](http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/presentations/2016-10-revolution-
of-web-dev/)
[1] [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links)
[2] [http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/02/presentation-
react-...](http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/02/presentation-react-redux-
intro/)
------
graphememes
This is less for "Large Engineering Teams" and more for beginners who don't
know about the current landscape.
The second issue I have with this is that it is an opinionated tech stack
which can lead to poor choices.
------
darklrd
It's a great guide with excellent suggestions along the way. I would suggest
adding few links on React Optimization to it. A guide on how to break React
components and how to implement store/state once you start to scale would be
very helpful. :)
~~~
acemarke
This guide is meant as an overview of an array of technologies. My React/Redux
links list, on the other hand, has you covered :) See the "React Performance",
"React Architecture", "React Component Patterns", and "Redux Architecture"
sections:
[0] [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links/blob/master...](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links/blob/master/react-performance.md)
[1] [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links/blob/master...](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links/blob/master/react-architecture.md)
[2] [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links/blob/master...](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links/blob/master/react-component-patterns.md)
[3] [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links/blob/master...](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-
links/blob/master/redux-architecture.md)
~~~
andrewjrhill
Your list has been absolutely instrumental in my path towards mastering
react/redux. A big thank you for all the hard work. You are multiplying the
communities knowledge and we're all improving because of it.
~~~
acemarke
Thanks! Comments like yours are why I keep working on updating my lists :)
------
kuharich
Grab is the Southeast Asia rival to Uber. Their stronghold is in Singapore,
but they're the market leader in that region. Alibaba is looking to invest in
their $1.4 billion upcoming round led by Softbank. I know for a fact that they
are creating a technical, iOS development center of excellence in Seattle ...
~~~
flor1s
Or maybe the Southeast Asia rival to Didi Chuxing?
~~~
kuharich
Excellent point. My American bias is showing ...
------
dlwdlw
I've always disliked these top down plans that require so much setup and
upfront work. The best tools I've worked with are progressive in their
discovery and mastery of features without lowering the ceiling too much.
Sublime for example has a command palette to just fuzzy type your desired
command as a fallback, showing the shortcut key right next to the command as
well. Vue also markets itself as having this type of "progressiveness".
Reminds me of vim fans. There's always an undercurrent of elitism or hazing
where something "hard" must be done to be "worthy" of some sort of goodness.
------
sidhuko
"At Grab, we use ES2015 (with Babel Stage-0 preset) to enjoy the productivity
boost from the syntactic improvements the future of JavaScript provides and we
have been loving it so far."
You've not been using it that long then! Stay alive and stick with Stage-3
~~~
tracker1
Well, async/await and several other features were held up at stage1/2 for a
long while. I found quite a few things very valuable far earlier on...
async/await, object rest/spread, class (static) property syntax.
Now most of it is stage-3 or in-browser, so not a bad decision, but for a long
time, you really wanted to be at stage-0/1 and deal with a bit of pain should
things change.
~~~
sidhuko
Async/await was the pitfall for one project as they weren't just held up but
they changed API during experimental implementations. Less concerning now you
can write codemods to transform but if you don't own the code it's better to
keep your client a little behind and safer.
------
mstijak
For large apps and teams, I would recommend CxJS. CxJS is based on React and
offers a more streamlined development experience with a built-in library of
widgets and charts, themes (including Material), and other features such as
form validation, form layouts, culture-sensitive number and date formatting,
optional two-way data binding and much more.
Full disclaimer: It's a commercial product and I'm the lead developer.
[https://cxjs.io](https://cxjs.io)
------
partycoder
The wide adoption of Flow and TypeScript means that people are starting to
realize that explicitly typed code is easier to maintain than implicitly typed
code.
Hopefully a new EcmaScript version adds the ability to specify types. It's
either that or people opting out of JS in favor of wasm based tech in the near
future.
~~~
tracker1
I think it largely falls to the size and discipline of the teams doing the
work. I get by pretty well without them, but if I had to coordinate with over
20 other developers working in a single codebase, then I'd have a differing
opinion. I'd also be pushing for 100% test coverage as it's _FAR_ easier to do
in JS than it is in other languages. Of course, adding types makes it harder
again.
~~~
fedlarm
I used to share this opinion as well, until I started working on an internal
library that was created by a skilled developer. He had very good test
coverage and good quality tests, which turned out invaluable, once I got on
board. We tried to move to library towards being fully typed in TypeScript,
just to get some experience with TypeScript. Our first thought before starting
was, that it would help, but didn't expect it to have a significant impact.
During the port to TypeScript (and being strict on typing everything
possible), we soon found numerous unexpected behaviors in the code. Some of
the issues found, could have been found by a linter, but other things like
models changing over time was only found due to adding static types.
After this experience I changed my opinion towards the value of static types,
from being more than a nice to have feature.
------
mrisoli
This was a disappointing read, coming from such a large company, looking like
a disposable blog post.
It makes it sound like front end development is about knowing CSS, react and
redux, these are good options of tools for the job, not essential ones,
especially when Vue and Angular are still big in the scene.
Maybe I'm wrong about my own profession, as some other comments said, it is
often blurry and in the past it used to be more related to graphics design
even, but for me front end development is about programming, just as full
stack but without worrying about business logic that is supposed to rely on
the backend. This can include design(as in CSS, colors, grids, fonts,
responsiveness), but also worrying about the delivery mechanisms(some API
level knowledge, browser vendors), including performance(consider crappy or
inconsistent networks).
------
daliwali
There's nothing in this guide that couldn't be found on 1000s of other
introductory blog posts. This is just "What to Use With React 2017". I find it
almost disturbing that front-end jobs around the world have adopted a set of
opinionated tools that are so needlessly complex and churn at an amazing rate,
and devs themselves have such a cavalier attitude about it. The self-
congratulatory praise is deafening.
------
ng12
I'm surprised that Flow is recommended over Typescript. Flow's main strength
seems to be the ability to slowly integrate it into a large existing project.
Since this guide seems to be targeted at new applications I don't see why
Typescript wouldn't be the better choice.
------
kayimbo
and.... my eyes glaze over.
------
duncanmeech
Yawn....just another React/Redux fan boy blog.
------
smt88
EDIT: My mistake. I found it.
This is incomplete (to the point of being harmful) if it doesn't discuss and
assess compile-to-JS, especially TypeScript.
~~~
biggestlou
There is a section on TypeScript and Flow
~~~
smt88
I scrolled down and searched and didn't find it. Not sure why it didn't work.
------
CryoLogic
Funny, if you just suggested EmberJS you could cut out a large portion of this
guide. Good guide nonetheless for those looking to hack together their own
front-end stack.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is EF the New IQ? - edw519
http://www.newsweek.com/id/139885/output/print
======
gambling8nt
Like IQ, EF is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy with regard to success and
failure. IQ was used to justify the failure of some students relative to
others--so the students with a reason why they were allowed to fail did so,
and the teachers paid more attention to the students expected to succeed, so
that they did so.
EF, being a measure of "mental discipline" (read: obedience + creativity)
separates the students that teachers typically like to teach from those that
teachers typically do not. But the students that teachers like to teach are
the ones that they focus on, so those students do well academically. Presto--
instant self-fulfilling prediction.
Of course, this implies no correlation at all with what it takes to do well
outside of these sorts of environments.
~~~
demallien
I don't think that's what the article is saying at all. EF is not some
supposedly innate ability, such as IQ. It's rather a skill that can be taught,
and the actuall measured EF is just a way of examining how well the teaching
of the skill is going. This gives teachers another tool in the toolbox, to
work with those students that are difficult to teach - specifically, give them
extra training to improve their EF.
Of course, my fad detectors were going off big time reading the article. I
think I'd like to see some data on whether this produces longterm benefits
before jumping on the bandwagon. Otherwise it might just be nothing more than
showing that kids that get extra attention - such as those in a research study
- do better in the short term, something that we know already.
I think perhaps the most interesting aspect of the article is that this
potentially gives preschool teachers something actually useful that they can
teach to their students, something that could aid the students when "big
school" begins :-)
------
smanek
"Most people can recall a kid from grade school who couldn't stay seated, who
talked out of turn and fidgeted constantly, whose backpack overflowed with
crumpled handouts and who always had to ask other kids what the homework
assignment was. Those kids weren't bad kids, but they seemed to have
absolutely no self-control, no internal disciplinarian to put a brake on their
impulses, to keep their attention focused. Not surprisingly, they were almost
always lousy students as well."
Heh, I think I was that kid - but a pretty good student as well. My grades
were relatively poor (because I forgot or didn't want to do the homework), but
it wasn't uncommon for me to have the class high on exams.
Fortunately, I had one of the highest set of test scores (SAT/ACT/AP) of my
class and that more or less made up for the poor GPA and class rank.
~~~
lpgauth
I used to be exactly that kid, until school got challenging (university)...
Then I had less time to fuck around in class...
~~~
astine
I was that kid. When school got more challenging, I spaced out and did worse.
It's a source of frustration for me. I know, and always knew that I had the
intellectual acumen to to better, but I never had the self discipline to do
so. I tried every day to just buckle down and finish my work, but it is easier
said than done.
On the other hand, it was always those mandatory literature classes that hurt
me the worst.I always did better in the courses that required more thinking
than reading.
~~~
jward
I'm much the same way. For me it was the classes I didn't like that I did
poorly in, like marketing. The less interesting it is going in the worse I do.
~~~
dreish
So, it's settled, then? Entrepreneurs are smart people with ADD who learn to
channel their energies toward interesting enough ends? Seems like I've been
hearing pretty much that message for most of my life.
After all, if you excel at working within established institutions throughout
your life, you'll probably continue to follow whatever career path is expected
of you as an adult.
------
cia_plant
Funny. The research seems to show that an ability to quiet one's mind, listen
to others even if you're not interested, and follow arbitrary orders is
helpful in school. To me, this is obvious, and once again reinforces the fact
that school is a harmful institution based on conformity and obedience. To the
school researchers, this shows the fundamental importance of this "new
cognitive skill".
------
Tichy
I think AS is the new IQ: Academic Success has been shown to be the best
predictor of Academic Success so far...
~~~
pixcavator
Tell that to college admissions...
------
whacked_new
While executive functions are crucial in controlling primal urges, some of
which arguably trigger uncooperative behavior in group settings and blind them
from competing perspectives, I really dislike this buzzwordification of
something that isn't surprising nor new.
The whole principle of Diamond's education method seems to be teaching kids
how to inhibit their urges, or "think before your act" (I'm sure there's an
elegant quote/prophrase for this in English. Anyone know?). Big deal. I bet
you can achieve similar results or even better via dialectics a la Plato. Once
they have the patience, teach them and all their best friends Go/chess.
~~~
icky
> or "think before your act" (I'm sure there's an elegant quote/prophrase for
> this in English. Anyone know?)
"Look before you leap" comes to mind.
------
Alex3917
"New research shows that EF, more than IQ, leads to success in basic academics
like arithmetic and grammar."
This research is from the 60s. It isn't new, and plus we've already had better
stories about this same concept on news.yc before.
~~~
anewaccountname
We've already had better comments about that same complaint in this _thread_
before.
------
mattmaroon
Looked like an interesting article, but the phone rang so I never read it.
------
justindz
The corollary is also true. From what I saw in school, academic success didn't
really require or didn't often encourage high IQ.
------
jrockway
Focusing is good, but if you don't have any good ideas, it doesn't matter
whether or not you can focus on them.
I think ADD tendencies can be good. Having a lot of open ideas to switch
between is a good way to avoid getting burned out.
~~~
JacobAldridge
Q. How many ADD kids does it take to write good code?
A. Let's go ride bikes!
~~~
Xichekolas
Wrong.
The correct answer was "Code is hard! Lets go shopping!"
Bleh, I couldn't resist that, but now I feel like I have to go wash the troll
off me. Sorry.
------
byrneseyeview
Here's a study on the heritability of EF:
[http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/05/99_ge...](http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/05/99_genetic_individual_differen.php)
------
revorad
The printer-friendly version is much easier to read without all those annoying
ads: <http://www.newsweek.com/id/139885/output/print>
~~~
edw519
Yes. I tried to change the link to OP, but it wouldn't let me. Sorry about
that.
------
jonmc12
The state of mind required to execute on thoughts of course is different than
the state of mind required to abstract thoughts.
Maybe all the article is saying is that we still have not figured out how to
correlate creativity with academic success.
Me, bored HS student, good college student. Success as an entrepreneur has
been the ability to control how I switch between the two mindsets.
------
wenbert
It would be better to develop the personality of the child rather than judge
them by their IQ (or EF). Moulding children to become "practical" thinkers
would benefit them for life.
------
helveticaman
I think they're just talking about ADD (which I suspect is highly prevalent in
HN users. It doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you could get a lot
better at everything if you got it treated (ie got ritalin)...just a thought).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How can you program if you're blind? - rayvega
http://stackoverflow.com/q/118984/4872
======
gaius
I've sailed the open oceans with a blind man at the helm. Which sounds like a
line from PoTC but really: he used an audio compass that played a tone at
different points of the compass, higher or lower so he knew how to correct.
The rest was done by feeling the way the boat handled through the deck and the
wheel.
~~~
eney
I'm a blind programmer. I use a 80-character braille display which shows one
line of text at a time. My preferred language is Python although some blind
programmers dislike it for its syntactic use of indentation. I find that
scrolling with the braille display and feeling for the indentations on left
gives me a good feel for the shape of a program. I know another programmer who
prefers Perl because of its rich use of sigils, although he uses speech
synthesis. I prefer to use vim for all types of editing (I hate IDEs although
many blind programmers like Eclipse or Visual Studio). Why do you reckon the
feedback blind programmers use as non-tangible BTW?
~~~
random42
I was just thinking, before reading your response, that python would suck for
the blind, because of its strong preference of "beautification" of the code.
So your response actually surprises me.
Do you think having braces over indentation would have helped for
accessibility. Any other issues with the language syntax?
~~~
eney
Maybe one's preference depends on whether one uses speech or braille. Although
I known of some blind programmers who won't learn Python because of the
indentation, some like it. Some speech users use a piano scale to show
indentation. Some use editor settings that transform the source code on load
so that blocks are delimited and reformat on save. The EdSharp, developed by a
blind programmer, is one such editor.
------
rosejn
We had a blind classmate all through my undergraduate program in CS, and he
was a very capable hacker. He lived inside emacs using emacspeak with a high
speed synthesized reader voice, and you could often hear his terminal talking
to him in the front row if you listened carefully during class.
Blind people develop good memories because they are constantly building
detailed mental models of spaces they need to navigate, and I think this might
give them a leg up programming because they are used to working with mental
models rather than referring to maps, diagrams and documentation. Their are
obvious drawbacks, but I think programming is probably a pretty good choice of
profession for blind people.
------
samlittlewood
How similar is this to using a line editor (ed/edlin/edit/teco) on a slow
terminal? You have a model in your head, code in a buffer, and you use the
edit commands to update both - with occasional listing sanity checks to check
you are keeping the two in sync, or move to a new region.
I hear some guys wrote a pretty cool operating system like that!
~~~
Someone
It is somewhat similar, but to get the real 'feel', you should also limit your
line width to one to two characters. Braille reading typically is done with
both hands (with one looking ahead, and one doing the actual reading), so it
does 'show' slightly more than that, but you will still be faster at reading
those characters than a blind person would be.
Also, you would have to give up syntax coloring and style and font variations.
Finally, chances are that some characters (braces, asterisk, plus sign) from
your programming language take up more than one braille character. Real nerds
would hack their character-to-braille pattern translator to optimize that
translation table, but the price you pay for that is that you will have to
cope with multiple mappings. Actually, you would have to do that anyways, as
there is disagreement about the encoding to use, even for digits, and because
the U.S. frequently uses a contracted braille system (where, for example, the
single-letter word 't' must be read as 'the' where appropriate; that 'where
appropriate' is for the reader to guess at)
~~~
Avshalom
_Also, you would have to give up syntax coloring and style and font
variations._
I'm pretty sure ed was dead by the time those were invented, the wiki claims
the "one of the first" syntax highlighting editors was in 85.
------
silentbicycle
There's a guy on the Lua mailing list who has mentioned (e.g. <http://lua-
users.org/lists/lua-l/2008-09/msg00513.html>) that he appreciates how its
relatively small and keyword based syntax
(<http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#8>), makes it easy to program in
with a screen reader.
There's also Emacspeak (<http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/>). I haven't used
it, but there's a chapter about it in _Beautiful Code_.
------
jms
It's interesting how quickly the text to speech setup can be made to run. My
dad's computer talks so quickly I can't understand without slowing it down.
------
lukev
There's a lot of talk about line editors in this thread. From a quick scan of
Wikipedia, it seems that 40 cells is about the biggest braille display you can
buy.
WTF? Why has nobody invented a full-screen braille display? Is there some
reason it's massively more complicated than it seems?
~~~
hugs
Well, I'm working on a full-screen display. :-)
Software demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qnL7479fbU>
Source: <http://github.com/hugs/pinmachine>
Hardware demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUgbu0cE2-Q>
Biggest issues are cost and size. I'm currently at "1977 Apple" stage - a big,
expensive, hand-made prototype. But the biggest issue is cost per pin. Also,
resolution is an issue... I'm going for "big and expensive" first, then will
work on making it small and cheap overtime. I'm working with small dc motors
first, but there are plenty of electromechanical tricks to get this down to
braille-worthy stuff.
~~~
gsivil
This seems like a project that the MIT media lab would like to put its hands
on. Why do not you seek a collaboration.
~~~
hugs
I'd love to chat with the MIT media lab folks. If you're so inclinded, check
out my HN bio and have them contact me via email or twitter. ;-)
I haven't sought a collaboration yet, because "pinmachine" is my weekend
project -- my time is otherwise filled up working on my startup
(saucelabs.com).
------
skbohra123
I know a blind python programmer Krishna kant Mane[0], who works with pylon,
is a FOSS evangelist, leads a foss project GNU Khata[1] and an awesome
speaker[2]. I loved the way he uses all free and open source tools to work on
his laptop, program and deliver. Hats off.
[0]<http://www.blogger.com/profile/07891377863557367515>
[1]<http://gnukhata.gnulinux.in> [2]<http://gnunify.in/speaker/profile/108>
------
kyleslattery
A group of students from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and
Washington State University is working on a programming language for the
blind:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC1mOSdmzFc>
------
staktrace
Has anybody out there who's not blind tried doing a "blind for a day" thing?
Just wear a blindfold for 24 hours and see how much of your life it affects. I
haven't tried it but after reading all this I kind of want to.
~~~
kellishaver
I'm legally blind and have been since birth. I only have vision on my right
eye. My visual acuity is low (around 20/180) and my field of vision very
narrow (less than 20deg). Still, it doesn't really stop me from doing much. I
program-and I also design.
A couple of years ago I developed narrow-angle glaucoma, in addition to my
other problems. After several laser surgeries failed to resolve the problem, I
had a more invasive surgical procedure done. Afterwards, I was completely
blind for 48hrs. Aside from the fact that it was terrifying, because at that
point we didn't know how much of my vision would come back, I found that I was
able to adjust fairly quickly. In just a few hours, I was able to get around
the house, get dressed, shower, brush teeth, etc. unassisted. Eating was a
little more difficult. It's hard to fork food you can't see. I stuck to
sandwiches. I didn't attempt reading (I don't know Braille) or using the
computer.
I'm sure this was made easier by the fact that I'm very familiar with my house
and by the fact that my vision was already poor, so I'm more used to doing
more things by feel/sound/memory, especially at night.
Which, I guess, answers your question, but to finish off the story:
After a couple of days, my vision started to slowly come back, though it was
very blurry for a long time. I was able to start using the computer, via a
combination of the screen reader, enlarging, and inverting the colors on the
display. All I could see at that point were shapes, and, after about a week,
in order to read text, it had to be about 128pt and high contrast.
Fortunately, most of my vision returned. The first couple of months were slow
going, but after that, it got to the point where I could pretty much function
as I did before. It took around 6 months to recover completely, though. I did
end up losing some contrast sensitivity and as a result, I can no longer read
printed text. There's just not enough contrast. I mean, I can see the words,
reading for more than just a few minutes gives me a headache. So now I read
books on an iPad and with the backlit screen (a backlit display helps a ton)
and zoom capabilities, I can read without headaches.
------
smackfu
The answers seem to reflect the technical "how", but I still don't get how you
can efficiently program if it takes minutes to read a page of existing code.
------
learner4life
One of the lead programmers of JAWS is Glen Gordon. He is blind is one of the
smartest programmers I have known.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_%28screen_reader%29>
<http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw070204>
------
jim_h
There are plenty of 'impossible' things you can do blind.
For example, there are blind golf players. They have their own golf
associations and tournaments. One of my old co-workers used to assist blind
golfers by describing the location, distance, etc. The golfer does the rest.
------
dingle_thunk
I think the biggest thing for me would be living without
intellisense/autosuggest - I mean it'd be OK to code ifs and fors and whatnots
without them, but I can't imagine how I'd quickly navigate the large,
enterprise software libraries I deal with regularly...
------
dugmartin
The key is to use a good screenreader like JAWS. As I posted here its next to
impossible using Window's built in screenreader, Narrator.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1799588>
------
arnemart
Amazing. It's really hard to imagine programming blind and jumping between
methods/files/debuggers/browsers effectively, but it seems some people do pull
it off.
I was struggling with tendonitis in my right arm a year back and had to do all
my coding left-handed, and that made me feel crippled and annoyingly slow.
It's really impressive what people can overcome.
------
Dramatize
I always wanted to learn braille as a kid so I could read in the dark.
------
balding_n_tired
I worked with a programmer who was legally blind. He used speech-recognition
software plus some sort of display software that blew each character up to
about 10" x 6".
------
dekayed
Are there any other HNers out there with other disabilities that cause you to
modify how you interact with your computer or how you program?
------
signa11
<http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/resume.html>
------
cbo
A better question would be how can you program graphics if you're blind?
That's something I would love to find out and/or solve.
~~~
eney
I've used Graphviz to make relationship diagrams to aid my communication with
sighted people. There's an interesting Google Developer Podcast with T.V.
Raman where he mentions programming directly in Postscript while he worked at
Adobe. I've used LaTeX for my personal documents (CV etc.) and sighted people
have asked me how on earth I managed to produce such a nice document. I wonder
how feasible it would be to use Metafont for more intense graphical
expressions.
------
raquo
I wonder how useful would be a VoiceOver-optimized editor for iPad.
------
bch
I read this headline as if Agent Smith were asking Mr. Anderson...
------
jbronn
I suggest the person asking this question to watch "Sneakers."
------
lancebailey
with so much crappy apps out there I figured blind people where already
programing. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OpenBSD vmm/vmd Update [pdf] - fcambus
http://bhyvecon.org/bhyvecon2016-Mike.pdf
======
brynet
Reyk Floeter's paper explains more about the implementation of the userland
side, vmd(8), including its privsep design and the use of pledge(2):
[http://bhyvecon.org/bhyvecon2016-Reyk.pdf](http://bhyvecon.org/bhyvecon2016-Reyk.pdf)
OpenBSD's vmm(4) isn't related to FreeBSD bhyve, but Mike and Reyk were
invited to talk about it in Tokyo. :-)
------
medecau
vmctl(8) docs don't mention send/receive commands.
Curious what exactly those do.
[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD-
current/man8/...](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD-
current/man8/vmctl.8)
~~~
krylon
The way I understand it, it's not there, currently, more like something they
want to support eventually.
------
ams6110
With the current hype seeming to have moved from full VMs to containers, would
there be more interest in porting Jails to OpenBSD?
Historically chroot and systrace have been felt to be "good enough" but they
have in my experience been tedious to set up.
~~~
pyvpx
if there is one thing I've learned from being in the OpenBSD community for the
past 10+ years it's that current hype is of little to no interest to the folks
writing code.
------
gravypod
I know that this is somewhat off the topic, but does anyone have anything I
can read about implementing memory managers?
~~~
vmorgulis
OSDev is a very good resource:
[http://wiki.osdev.org/Memory_management](http://wiki.osdev.org/Memory_management)
~~~
gravypod
That deals a lot with theory, I am in need of some implementations that work.
I've found things that don't work, but I need something I can start and play
with.
Nothing really seems available which seems sad.
~~~
notalaser
UVM, the virtual memory subsystem in BSDs, is actually very nicely explained
in Charles Cranor's disertation. An abridged version was presented at USENIX:
[https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix99/full_papers/cra...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix99/full_papers/cranor/cranor.pdf)
, and if you google around, you can find the full thesis.
------
vmorgulis
"– Support advanced processor features, but don't require them"
I like that a lot but I'd like to know it can do emulation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
United Airlines takes seat away from child, forces him to sit on moms lap - fergbrain
http://m.sfgate.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/United-Airlines-takes-seat-away-child-mother-11267745.php
======
muggermuch
I haven't flown United since the David Dao incident. Anecdotally, most
international airlines are orders of magnitude better in terms of quality of
service, cleanliness, flight crew friendliness, and so on. As a person of
color, the latter attributes are quite important for me, since I'd rather not
get singled out for wilful mistreatment on a transatlantic flight.
Delta has been good to me so far over the years.
------
relaxitup
"We are providing compensation as a goodwill gesture."
As a "goodwill" gesture?? This makes it sound like she is lucky they might be
providing any sort of compensation at all to her. Seems to me that she is due
a full refund, since her son was not able to use the seat that she paid for. I
don't think the article reveals the age of the child, as I think that would
provide some bearing as to the airline's responsibility to provide full refund
or not? Once again, airlines (or is it just United) making boneheaded
decisions.
~~~
fergbrain
"Once again, airlines (or is it just United) making boneheaded decisions."
This is a United problem. I've refused to fly them for several years now (and
even paid more because of it). I'm not surprised this happened again. Their
employees simply do not care about passengers, period.
I suspect this is a cultural issue mixed with some self-preservation because
of the merger.
Needless to say: I will continue to not fly with them.
~~~
relaxitup
Article does mention the child is 2 years old; not sure if that changes the
scope of their refund policy/responsibility. However, I would imagine that if
this mother wanted to hold the child in her lap for the duration of the do
flight, she presumably would not have purchased an extra $1000 ticket. I
imagine they'll for sure give her a full refund and then some after the media
flack, whilst still making it seem like their actions were acceptable.
~~~
eeks
Parent of 3 kids that fly a lot here. Airlines force you to buy a full seat as
soon as your child turns 2. This woman was most likely forced to buy a full
ticket for her child.
This is properly inacceptable. I don't understand why this woman complied.
I would not have in her situation and would have made a terrible scene had I
been asked to relinquish a seat I paid for.
~~~
rlucas
Except, that mother almost certainly knew of the recent excesses of violence
played out on behalf of, if not explicitly the direction of, United Airlines,
and made a judgment call about reducing risk that her child would be beaten up
by a cop or air-steward (or that her child would be taken from her in a
strange city if she were arrested).
As much as United shed crocodile tears over the David Dao beat-up incident,
the more power-hungry / Milgram-normalized flight crews probably secretly
appreciate the implicit threat of violence that now accompanies their seating
suggestions.
------
EpicEng
On a side note...
> The FAA recommends havinga child strapped into a seat for the duration of a
> flight.
...have the people who wrote that _ever_ flown with a toddler? I mean, yeah, I
agree, but good luck with that!
~~~
ajarmst
If the child is 2 or more years old, the FAA doesn't merely recommend that
they have a seat, it requires it.
~~~
EpicEng
Oh believe me, I know; we visited as many family members as we could before my
son hit the cutoff. Doesn't mean they stay in that seat though, they're still
all over the place.
------
atesti
Back in 2009:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars)
"Rob Bradford, United's managing director of customer solutions, telephoned
Carroll to apologize for the incident and to ask for permission to use the
video for internal training. United claimed that it "hoped" to learn from the
incident, and to change its customer service policy accordingly"
Didn't help apparently
------
putsteadywere
In the last 30 days, I've flown international on 4 airlines... United, Alaska,
China Eastern, and Korean Air.
United was easily the worst, Korean was easily the best.
China Eastern wasn't great either - yet it still had better customer service,
amenities, and a more comfortable seat and landing.
~~~
zem
korean is also the only airline i've ever flown where i thought the food was
good (not just "good for airline food", which a handful of other airlines do
manage, but good as in i'd have been happy to eat it at any time)
~~~
shard
From my experience, Dubai Air has the best food I've ever had on an airplane,
bar none. Korean Air and Asiana also have good food, as long as you choose the
Korean meal. Their western meals are sometimes hit-or-miss.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fring: Cross Platform Mobile IM - terpua
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fring.php
======
dcurtis
Fring is interesting, but this article written really, really badly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paxos Explained from Scratch [pdf] - mzehrer
http://www.ux.uis.no/~meling/papers/2013-paxostutorial-opodis.pdf
======
csl
Happy to see my thesis advisor's paper on the HN front page! This paper really
helped me when I was implementing a simplified version of Paxos using
OpenFlow.
I also remember Hein recommended me to study Paxos before delving into Raft,
actually, even though Raft is supposedly easier to get started with.
------
rdtsc
This is a good resource.
If you feel like watching a presentation I recommend Joseph Blomsted's talk on
developing Riak Ensemble module.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITstwAQYYag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITstwAQYYag)
That is a module that added consistency to an otherwise AP system.
They did it using Paxos and it was interesting because it was during the time
when everyone was implementing consensus using Raft and there was, perhaps
undeserved, FUD regarding Paxos during those times.
He explains how Paxos is not that bad in certain situations -- such as
agreeing on a value (instead of say replicating a log). And then how it was
like implementing it in practice.
------
csl
These guys also made a slide deck for the paper:
[http://www.ux.uis.no/~meling/papers/PaxosTutorial-Meling-
OPO...](http://www.ux.uis.no/~meling/papers/PaxosTutorial-Meling-
OPODIS2013.pdf)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Flatpak – a security nightmare - stryk
http://flatkill.org/
======
vanderZwan
> _Sadly, it 's obvious Red Hat developers working on flatpak do not care
> about security, yet the self-proclaimed goal is to replace desktop
> application distribution - a cornerstone of linux security._
Sheesh, while the issues raised are all valid, this does not actually justify
such a conclusion about the intent of the Red Hat developers. Telling people
what their side of the story is for them in a dismissive fashion like this is
not going to make it more likely that they admit their mistakes.
A bit of Hanlon's Razor[0] goes a long way to resolve problems involving human
cooperation (of any kind) more smoothly.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor)
~~~
kilburn
> A bit of Hanlon's Razor[0] goes a long way to resolve problems involving
> human cooperation (of any kind) more smoothly.
I don't like the snarky tone of the article, but I really thing you're being
naive here. Let's examine the facts:
\- Flatpak's intent is clear and stated first in in their homepage [1]:
"Flatpak is a next-generation technology for building and distributing desktop
applications on Linux"
\- Red Hat is _the_ company other companies hire to manage their linux
systems.
\- In the flatpak homepage there's a huge quote stating "The Fedora
Workstation team are very excited about Flatpak and the prospects it brings
for making the Linux desktop easier to develop for. We plan to continue
supporting this effort going forward."
\- The FAQ page states "We are explicitly using many features of the linux
kernel (bind mounts, namespaces, seccomp, etc) to create the sandbox that
Flatpak apps are running in." ... and then it turns out that they aren't, or
at least they aren't enforcing it.
I don't think this is stupidity. This is flat out lying to try and get
mindshare.
~~~
gbraad
Fedora and Red Hat are not the same thing. Sure, there is a relation between
the two, but inclusion in Fedora is not an endorsement or guaranteed inclusion
in RHEL.
I just wonder why the author of this page does not disclose his name... And
even hides this from the whois info. This could have been written by a person
with a grudge for all I am concerned.
Sure, improvements might be needed, but haa the author tried to get this
happen in a different way, like a discussion? Creating a webpage and scream
fire is not the best approach in my opinion.
The issue raised about security updates for packaged apps is the same as for
container images and packages like .deb or .rpm in general. Generating a
runtime is a possible solution? Something like an automated way to regenrate
packages is needed, like flathub?!?
~~~
dpwm
> I just wonder why the author of this page does not disclose his name...
> And even hides this from the whois info.
The registrant country is listed as France and the registrar is OVH. They are
simply adhering to the GDPR. I have domains that have been like this since
May, even though I would be quite happy to have everything public.
> This could have been written by a person with a grudge for all I am
> concerned.
Your comment could have been written by somebody with a grudge against the
person you are claiming could have had a grudge for all I am concerned. A
vested interest can make a difference, but I don't really see how any of the
points are hard to verify.
Does this being written by a person with a grudge really negate the points
made?
\- Flatpak is claiming to be secure
\- Flatpak is sandboxing apps with full access to your home directory.
(What is the worst thing that an app can do? Nuke your home directory or run
malicious software. The sandboxing here does little to mitigate this.)
\- Apps are not being updated as quickly as their distribution repository
counterparts.
\- At some point in its past, a (presumably) privileged component with
permissions to setuid did not check that it wasn't blindly copying setuid.
It seems to me that this is more about easy delivery of software with a
security claim that is arguably pretty weak at the moment against likely
attack vectors. I can't see that changing without first thinking of what
you're actually sandboxing for.
There are already software delivery systems, such as 0install and appimage,
that do not make claims about being sandboxed and yet provide a similar (or
greater in the setuid case) level of security for the main threats.
I find it hard to understand who the project is for. If you're a developer on
your own machine then using your distro's package manager is probably more
secure. If you're a sysadmin, letting users use flatpak serves only to
increase the attack surface for privilege escalation.
~~~
toyg
The problem is that distro package managers are many and often complex to
satisfy, which is one of the reasons people don’t develop “real” desktop
software for Linux.
The new generation of installers (flatpak, snap etc) takes a cross-distro
approach that is supposed to result, more or less, in “package once, run
everywhere”: you build your app in a certain way and every distro should be
able to run it, regardless of package managers. It’s basically a way to
offload the compatibility headaches to flatpak developers and distribution
builders.
Obviously that approach works _only_ if flatpak _does_ actually get good
support in all distributions and becomes a de-facto standard, which is a
challenge because there are many competitors (Ubuntu Snap being the most
relevant one). If it remains just a glorified rpm (i.e. a redhat-specific
tool), then there is no point.
~~~
dpwm
> The problem is that distro package managers are many and often complex to
> satisfy, which is one of the reasons people don’t develop “real” desktop
> software for Linux.
If by real you mean the kind of proprietary {ad,spy,toolbar}-ware encrusted
"real" desktop software that Windows has become notorious for then I think we
may be better off without it. If you're talking about OSX, then I think you're
missing that it's a market skewed towards those with the money and will to pay
for proprietary software. Plenty of people are developing "real" desktop
software for Linux.
> The new generation of installers (flatpak, snap etc) takes a cross-distro
> approach that is supposed to result, more or less, in “package once, run
> everywhere”: you build your app in a certain way and every distro should be
> able to run it, regardless of package managers. It’s basically a way to
> offload the compatibility headaches to flatpak developers and distribution
> builders.
This isn't novel. 0install and AppImage have been around for a while now. What
is novel is that Flatpak combines this with sandboxing that doesn't really do
so much to mitigate against any vulnerabilities that aren't in the kernel. I
actually think they've got the sandboxing right, in that they are really
starting with minimum privileges and adding only what is needed.[0] The
problem, as they state, is that it is fine to drop all privileges for
something like a single-player game, but it sucks for a file manager. At least
according to their wiki, they're already doing most of what you could imagine
you could improve on the sandboxing. [0]
It's always this interaction with the outside world that breaks sandboxing.
It's rather easy to make a sandbox that runs as nobody and has no privileges
and no capabilities and no file access. It's a bit harder to make something
which has any of those things in a way which the user can grant sensible
permissions.
It sounds like in Portals [1] the Flatpak team have gone in pretty much the
only workable direction, although the Wiki is hopefully out of date and there
are more portals. The problem they will have found is that to package anything
useful and get feedback and validation requires that they implement the most
difficult bits first. So I suspect the situation is "secure file picker is
coming".
Sandboxing is a lot of work, not in the closing down but in the opening up.
One of the more innovative approaches is to be found in Sandstorm [2].
Although marketed as a way to run web applications on your own server easily,
it is actually a tight sandbox built on top of Cap'n Proto, which means that
E-style capability-based RPC is intrinsic.
Sandboxed apps have no access to anything, cutting down on kernel attack
space. The only connection to the outside world is through a UNIX socket file
descriptor opened by the supervisor. The capabilities-based security model
mean that a sandboxed app could request the ability to connect to
"drive.google.com", or even a specific URL. This could also be passed to other
apps through the supervisor, subject to user approval. Capabilities can be
stored on disk to be later restored from the supervisor.
In Sandstorm the UI for granting capabilities between apps is working, but
progress has slowed as the team have all had to find other ways to pay the
bills.
> Obviously that approach works only if flatpak does actually get good support
> in all distributions and becomes a de-facto standard, which is a challenge
> because there are many competitors (Ubuntu Snap being the most relevant
> one). If it remains just a glorified rpm (i.e. a redhat-specific tool), then
> there is no point.
I think the problem is that if your target is casual users, they're not going
to necessarily understand the nuances and limitations of the sandboxing.
[0]
[https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/wiki/Sandbox](https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/wiki/Sandbox)
[1]
[https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/wiki/Portals](https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/wiki/Portals)
[2] [https://sandstorm.io/how-it-works#capabilities](https://sandstorm.io/how-
it-works#capabilities)
~~~
TimJYoung
"If by real you mean the kind of proprietary {ad,spy,toolbar}-ware encrusted
"real" desktop software that Windows has become notorious for then I think we
may be better off without it."
You're ignoring a huge amount of business software that is created for, and
runs on, Windows. That's like judging Android or iOS based upon the consumer
crapware that gets sold/given away in their app stores, as opposed to the many
business apps that are used to automate and improve all sorts of tasks on
mobile devices.
I keep seeing this pattern repeated over and over again: someone (this has
been me, several times) mentions on HN that Linux needs a better way to allow
for binaries to be dropped on a system and run without requiring re-
compilation or overly-complicated containers/sandboxes, and the answers
invariably end up being "don't want it, don't care". But, the reality is that
there _are_ a very large number of people that would jump to Linux in a
heartbeat if they could target the OS for distribution in that fashion. It
just seems like a bunch of ideology run amok with zero thought given to the
actual needs of professional developers/companies. And, there's a lot of
evidence that this is one of the primary things holding back Linux adoption on
the desktop.
The rest of your reply was very informative, thanks.
~~~
dpwm
> You're ignoring a huge amount of business software that is created for, and
> runs on, Windows. That's like judging Android or iOS based upon the consumer
> crapware that gets sold/given away in their app stores, as opposed to the
> many business apps that are used to automate and improve all sorts of tasks
> on mobile devices.
Thanks for this. Indeed I was responding a bit flippantly to the whole "real"
desktop software, as if there isn't any on Linux. I appreciate now it probably
wasn't meant in that way, and so that aspect of my response was flippant and
unhelpful.
Indeed, it seems for every example we find of serious expensive proprietary
software that runs on Linux, there is another that doesn't.
We have Maya running on Linux, and Softimage. Both sold by Autodesk (albeit
acquired). And yet other Autodesk products, like 3dsmax and Autocad, do not
have Linux support. Asking about this on their forums appears to result in a
rather curt response to read the system requirements where it says "Windows."
These are tools that people learn and take with them between jobs, and I can
well imagine that these are people that could work on desktop Linux without
too many problems as long as those tools moved with them. Replying "but
blender can do that!" is completely ignoring the reality that people have
invested significant time into these tools and know them well. Whilst blender
is an amazing piece of free software, it's by no means an industry standard.
In the way that Gimp is quite phenomenal, it seems many professionals find it
lacks features that Photoshop has.
I don't think the "web browser" response cuts it in other areas either, even
if a lot of the less technically demanding software is going cloud-based.
> It just seems like a bunch of ideology run amok with zero thought given to
> the actual needs of professional developers/companies. And, there's a lot of
> evidence that this is one of the primary things holding back Linux adoption
> on the desktop.
I think you're right, and I'm probably in that category. I've also seen what
bad vendors can do to an ecosystem though. The windows ecosystem is still full
of dodgy vendors.
I'm quite convinced that package-once-with-sandboxing will happen, and I will
admit that Flatpak is probably in a prime position for that to happen. I think
they've probably got the most correct direction of all the attempts in the
space, it just doesn't seem to be there yet.
From a commercial vendor point of view, it's also not a problem if the user's
home directory is bind mounted and over a year ago there was a bug with the
sand-boxing that let malicious vendors install software that could run as
root. Let's not forget that most Windows apps don't go anywhere near a sandbox
in the first place and their installers need system-wide access. There's
plenty of low-hanging fruit still in this space.
Things have definitely got better in recent years. One of the biggest things
to improve this is that 32-bit x86 is dying off. There were a number of
vendors that did the "we can just build 32-bit, like windows" without
realising or caring about the horrors of multi-arch dependency hunting that
they were inflicting on the sysadmin.
So thank you for your comment. It made me realise that I was probably being
quite flippant about software which does fulfil a niche need and does it well,
and that you only need one piece of such software to tie someone to an
operating system they may otherwise have no affinity for.
~~~
TimJYoung
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, they are very much appreciated.
The thing that a lot of Linux developers don't seem to get about Windows is
that its binary distribution model is an opportunity/productivity multiplier,
and it all hinges on three major points:
1) Backward-compatibility is real, and, contrary to what most people say about
MS/Windows, this is _very_ pro-consumer. Just chucking code at people and
saying "but, you can just re-compile it" ignores a lot of realities, including
the fact that even developers don't want to be forced to recompile binaries
that they are not, themselves, working on as their actual work.
2) You can deploy 32-bit binaries on 64-bit systems and they work just fine.
It really made the switch to 64-bit versions of Windows a non-event, whereas
this is another issue that developers need to worry about when targeting
Linux. And, there are a _lot_ of applications that simply don't benefit from
being 64-bit because they don't need, or can't use, the increased address
space, so forcing developers to specifically target 64-bit is just another
unnecessary hurdle.
3) You can actually create binaries for Windows that don't require any
dependencies other than what is available in the OS. This means that you can
create binaries that work on tablets, laptops, desktops, and servers without
recompilation. This also ties in to your comment about the installers, but the
reality is that you really only need admin access for an installer to put
things into the "Program Files" folder tree, or to install services. Apart
from that, most professional software doesn't touch anything other than the
user-specific folders (if Windows doesn't delete them first ;-) ).
I don't think that this point can be overstated: if you create a neutral OS
platform where desktop developers can deploy their software with minimal fuss
and no gatekeepers, you will win the desktop space, period. More than anything
else, desktop developers want to make money, and an open OS that does its
thing and stays out of the way is the ticket to that money. But, in order to
do this, a lot of current Linux developers will need to get used to sharing
Linux with commercial vendors and proprietary software, and I think that's
still a hard sell. And, unfortunately, a large part of that mindset is wedded
to this bizarre idea that desktop developers like Windows because of Windows.
Desktop developers like Windows because a) that's where the users are, and b)
they can make money without being forced or required to expose their source
code. If the same can be done with Linux, then Linux will have no problem
taking the OS space away from MS completely.
Linux is stuck in "server/appliance mode" right now, and it's a shame because
if there was ever a time for Linux to take over the desktop, it's now. As you
say, web applications are just not a suitable replacement for all desktop
applications. MS keeps trying to lock down how development is done on Windows
and, if they succeed, then everything that I stated above will go away and
there will be a lot of developers looking for a new home. Any OS that starts
out with "you can only use our development tools/languages, and no others", is
going to whither away and die. It happened to Apple once, it appears to be
happening to Apple again, and MS has apparently decided that it should emulate
Apple. The whole reason why Windows became popular in the first place was
because there were a ton of development tools/compilers/languages that could
be used to produce binaries for Windows, and Windows gave zero preference to
any of them. This was carried over from MS-DOS. And, _none_ of this precluded
_any_ vendor from going ahead and providing/selling their source code along
with the product. Linux developers have just got to let go of trying to
control how people use the OS, and just try to make it as amenable to as many
usage/deployment scenarios as possible.
------
dralley
Cross-posting a comment from Reddit, because it nails one of the points
mentioned:
\---
The list on the page is
Gimp, VSCode, PyCharm, Octave, Inkscape, Steam, Audacity, VLC, ...
With the exception of Steam all of those programs are used to open random
files anywhere on the system. One could implement a permission prompt for
accessing a file, but that would lead to a Vista-like Situation where
basically every action causes a prompt.
Now, that's not to say this is good as it is, but for most listed programs
it's probably the way to go.
~~~
gmueckl
This highlights a conceptual dilemma with access rights in file systems: if an
image manipulation software wants to open .bashrc, this is potentially
suspicious. But for a text editor this is probably ok. Likewise, a text editor
that reads a binary executable is probably a little bit fishy. But a unzip
program might so that for a valid reason (e.g. ZIP archive appended at end of
program, a common thing for installers). How can we distinguish between those
cases?
~~~
briffle
This is pretty much the whole point of SELinux (and probably AppArmour)
~~~
geofft
How does SELinux or AppArmor distinguish between those cases? More
interestingly, how can it tell that VSCode spontaneously editing .bashrc is
bad, but doing so in response to user input is good?
(There are capability-based systems that permit distinguishing between these
cases, but to my knowledge SELinux and AppArmor don't support this.)
~~~
cyphar
SELinux and AppArmor would allow you to specify that your text editor is
allowed to edit .bashrc, but some random other program isn't.
But I agree with you that this is not really a useful security feature --
you'd want something where a program has to be explicitly granted permission
rather than some programs being able to do things that others can't (because
then any attacker will just spawn "vi -c 'bad payload'" to get around the
restriction).
------
gbraad
The developers are employed by Red Hat, but that does not make this a Red Hat
endorsed product. It is not included in the current offering of RHEL and
unlikely would be in a new(er) version as the technology is immature/not well
enough tests d/proven yet for inclusion within EL. I call the usage of 'Red
Hat' here clickbait and sensationalism as there is no indication within the
text that shows the aforementioned non-existence of endorsement or inclusion.
Note: the engineers working on Flatpak and both friends and colleagues of
mine. Just concerned that the author misrepresents our employers viewpoint. We
are allowed to work on side projects, but that does not make them default
inclusions or endorsed.
------
nickysielicki
1\. None of this has anything to do with Flatpak, it has everything to do with
Flathub and how particular software is packaged.
2\. Your preferred distribution can host their own Flatpak repository and
ensure that things like security updates get dealt with properly. Flatpak is
not Flathub.
3\. This ecosystem is growing, so it's putting some things on the backburner,
prioritizing application availability over holding a package to make sure that
permissions are perfect. There is no reason that these issues can't be ironed
out going forward.
~~~
aritmo
But Flathub is flatpak. Also, does flatpak have the full support of redhat?
~~~
Natela
No. Flathub has nothing to do with flatpak technology itself. Flathub is just
one server hosting some flatpack repos.
It's like saying .deb is Ubuntu Store. Well no, it is just one PPA among many
other you could add to get your apps
~~~
int_19h
Isn't the whole point of Flatpak to prevent the same app from being packaged
multiple times for different distros?
~~~
Natela
Ideally , Firefox would be downloaded from official Mozilla Flatpak repo,
Blender from Blender Flatpak repo on Blender server, etc... And we would have
this list of those repo on our distro.
However because the official adoption is slow (very few software have official
flatpak repo), flathub allowed the community to build packages themselves. But
this is clearly not how it should be.
The second (more legit) reason of flathub is that small developer might not
want to pay a server to host their app and flathub proposes to host their
repo.
------
djsumdog
Ugh. This trade off again. Linux package management means you update a library
once, and fix that security problem everywhere for all the apps that use that
library .. except for Firefox, Libreoffice, Chrome and others which insist on
packaging their own versions of libjpeg, libpng and everything under the sun
for stability.
A docker container contains all its own dependencies too. You gain stability
.. but you could have a bedbug nest of security problems down there.
I don't get the move to Flatpack and Snap for desktop apps. Desktop apps need
to interact with the base OS, the display system (X11 or Wayland) the shared
toolkit libraries (GTK/QT). I've screenshots of native vs Flatpack vs Snap and
they tend to have different window borders, some get the GTK themes matched up
while others don't.
Not to mention the wasted space when every single application has its own
version of everything. What, did you think electron apps each packaging their
own 80MB web browser was a good idea too?
This just seems like the wrong direction to move in for Linux. We're not
MacOS! We don't have hacked together shit like Android apks. We need to be
better than that!
~~~
XorNot
Linux needs a deduplicating filesystem though in the kernel. Something to make
containers and docker handle the situation of "lots of mostly identical files"
well. Even ZFS, which should be good at this, really isn't.
~~~
dralley
Take a look at Fedora Silverblue with rpm-ostree, it does basically what you
describe
------
wbond
> CVE-2018-11235 reported and fixed more than 4 months ago. Flatpak VSCode,
> Android Studio and Sublime Text still use unpatched git version 2.9.3.
Wait, what? We explicitly do not ship a Flatpak version of Sublime Text, and
no version of Sublime Text comes with git.
After such inaccurate information, I can’t help but question the rest of the
article.
~~~
v8engine
I don't know about git integration but as for Flatpak version of Sublime Text,
I found this:
[https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.sublimetext.three](https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.sublimetext.three)
~~~
wbond
Yes, it appears that the flathub maintainers have published Sublime Text under
flathub. This is not an official distribution channel by us, and looking at
the spec
([https://github.com/flathub/com.sublimetext.three/blob/master...](https://github.com/flathub/com.sublimetext.three/blob/master/com.sublimetext.three.json))
it seems to rather automatically install Package Control, but also in a rather
brittle way. Sigh.
~~~
nickik
If many distros and people want to use a flatpak to install software even with
these drawbacks that would be a good indication that it would be worth doing
upstream.
~~~
wbond
We currently provide a full complement of Linux package manager repositories,
along with tarballs:
[https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html](https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html).
~~~
vetinari
Have a look into flatpak too, otherwise in the not-so-distant future the users
could have a problem.
For Fedora, they are planning switching to Silverblue around Fedora 30 (atomic
system, rpms still supported, but jumping around the hoops).
~~~
wbond
It will be interesting to see if Flatpak, Snap or AppImage ends up being the
predominant force in the new wave of Linux packaging. Knowing Linux, users
will probably expect projects to support all three. :-)
------
phaer
Could someone knowledgeable enough comment on how this compares to Cannoicals
Snappy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snappy_(package_manager)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snappy_\(package_manager\))?
~~~
linappdev
With the exception of snaps running on Ubuntu and Solus, snap confinement is
limited. Snaps rely heavily on Ubuntu's specific flavor of AppArmor to be able
to offer full confinement, currently. Solus imports these changes into their
kernel, though I don't trust the changes much because they haven't undergone
formal review and have been approved by the kernel developers.
So, for example, on Fedora, Debian, CentOS, or openSUSE, snaps run in
"devmode" because of the missing functionality. There's been some work over
the last couple of years to upstream some of the work on AppArmor (so openSUSE
may partially work in the future). There's a desire to support SELinux
properly, but to date, no work has been done. There is an SELinux policy that
attempts to confine snapd itself, which was contributed by the guy working on
the Fedora/CentOS package for snapd (though it looks like the policy would
also work for openSUSE and Debian SELinux setups, too).
Based on conversations I've had with the Snappy team before, it comes down to
two things:
* Canonical doesn't know how to work with SELinux at all, and doesn't want to learn how to * Canonical's customers haven't demanded it of them yet
I find the latter point especially strange given the constant demand for
official Snappy support on CentOS and Amazon Linux 2 (which is currently not
available yet). Both distributions have SELinux and rely on it for security.
In addition, the majority of snaps are not sandboxed at all anyway, as they
operate in "classic" confinement. That is, they're not confined, and have full
access to the system, they just use snapd as the delivery system for the
software. So _even_ if Snappy confinement actually worked on all Linux
distributions, it doesn't matter because most apps delivered through Snappy
are entirely unconfined.
Finally, Canonical is the sole arbiter of snaps. You cannot use your own store
with it, as snapd is hardwired to Canonical's store. They own all the
namespaces, and are the sole publisher. And yet, they have a confusing policy
of how they don't consider themselves the distributor of software when they
are... It's strange. But because you can't run your own store, you're at their
mercy for snap names, available functionality, and so on.
Flatpak, in contrast, is designed to offer the fullest confinement possible
with common security features in the mainline Linux kernel that all major
distributions offer. Applications register what they need in their manifests,
and the Flatpak system handles granting access as appropriate. Flatpak relies
on federation through "portals" for interacting with the host environment, and
that allows for the applications to have far less direct access than they
would normally have. It's basically an Android-like setup, and it seems to
work well, though it's still far too coarse for some kinds of applications.
Flatpak lets you run your own repository, so you can implement whatever means
you'd like for delivering them, even keyed paywall locations, so that
customers who pay get their own access to their own purchases. But most apps
probably should be pushed to Flathub, especially if they're free. I think no
one has figured out yet how to do paid stuff.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Linux app developer that grudgingly deals with both
formats. I'd rather just keep using RPMs myself, as it works well and is
reasonably portable.)
~~~
niemeyer
> Snaps rely heavily on Ubuntu's specific flavor of AppArmor to be able to
> offer full confinement,
The AppArmor patches have been largely upstreamed by Canonical, and
improvements continue to float upstream constantly. So claiming it's not being
reviewed isn't accurate.
> * Canonical doesn't know how to work with SELinux at all, and doesn't want
> to learn how to
That's disingenuous. Canonical works with many parties, and has people working
on LSM stacking for example precisely to support co-existence of the systems.
We also had exchanges in the forum to discuss the implementation of actual
backends in snapd to support it, but Canonical indeed won't pay for the cost
of implementation until there's a reason to do it. That's business as usual
and pretty straightforward.
> In addition, the majority of snaps are not sandboxed at all anyway, as they
> operate in "classic" confinement.
That's incorrect by a huge margin. I'm curious about where you could possibly
have based that opinion on? Classic snaps require manual reviews, which need
to be backed by public justification. You can see every single request
floating by in the store category at
[https://forum.snapcraft.io](https://forum.snapcraft.io). That means every
snap people push without talking to anyone are not classic, and thus the vast
majority.
> Finally, Canonical is the sole arbiter of snaps.
Well, yes, it has created the project and maintains it actively for years now.
You're welcome as a contributor.
> Disclaimer: I'm a Linux app developer that grudgingly deals with both
> formats. I'd rather just keep using RPMs myself
And I work on snapd (and have also worked on RPM back then, so enjoy :).
~~~
bubblethink
>Well, yes, it has created the project and maintains it actively for years
now. You're welcome as a contributor.
So, there cannot be a third-party/self-hosted snap store ? That seems like a
major limitation.
~~~
niemeyer
There are self-hosted proxies, and there are publicly hosted stores, but all
stores are part of the exact same hierarchy and share some of their knowledge.
That's mainly a consequence of implementing the intended user experience as
originally designed back then.
------
Ecco
Wait a minute, did somebody get so pissed at flatpak that they bought a domain
name just to specifically host that single blog post?
~~~
TeMPOraL
Domains are cheap. Often free for one year.
~~~
Ecco
Well they’re “free” if you buy them alongside hosting. Still even if cheap,
that’s quite a commitment: finding a domain, paying it, writing a custom
(albeit simple) website, uploading it, etc...
~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Well they’re “free” if you buy them alongside hosting._
Depends on hosting company. I've "bought" domains for free many times, without
hosting, just to run joke sites for few months.
~~~
Ecco
Ha, interesting! I always assumed a .org was at least a dollar. Mind sharing a
link?
~~~
TeMPOraL
Don't have a free "org" source; maybe they never was. Free domains I got were
under national TLD.
------
andreyv
Flatpak, Snap, container images are the new iteration of static linking.
Just like with static binaries, they make deployment easier for the developer,
but introduce problems with size, duplication and library updates.
Flatpak added runtimes [1] to alleviate the problem. Does this solution look
familiar? Yes, it is the same dynamic library concept. We are coming full
circle.
[1] [http://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-
runtimes.html](http://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-runtimes.html)
------
jbk
> VLC [...] filesystem=host
See my comment on why it's not easy to fully sandbox software like VLC:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409234](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409234)
The author is correct, in the fact that flatpak-vlc is not a secure sandbox.
~~~
laurent123456
Thanks for sharing the info. I'm just curious - how would splitting VLC into
multi processes solve the permission issue, since the sub-processes will still
need access anyway?
~~~
jbk
Each subprocess would only get one permission, the one that it actually need.
The critical parts (audio decoders, video decoders, parsers) would not get
access to $HOME or network, for example.
~~~
laurent123456
Thanks, that makes sense.
------
emmelaich
By default, flatpaks don't have r/w to your home.
And setuid binaries have been blocked for a while (as the article says). Plus,
selinux will have these things locked down on a system that uses selinux.
I think the problem is part perception. Flatpak, like Docker is not primarily
for security isolation. It's isolation for ease of deployment - to avoid
dependency hell.
Not saying Flatpak's failings are not a problem. Just keep some perspective.
------
ktpsns
To be honest, this security nightmare also covers other contemporary
"container" formats such as docker.
Running docker containers as a non-root user is unfortunately still not a
widespread practice. That means that any root process within a docker
container has root on the host.
~~~
viraptor
Only if you run with no isolation / user namespace. And even without that, you
need to run with `--privileged` to get access to interesting capabilities.
It's not as simple as container root == host root.
~~~
yrro
Are user namespaces enabled by default, or are they something that you have to
enable and then spend time dealing with all the containers that weren't
written with them in mind?
------
RX14
What a lot of people are missing is that flatpaks put the flatpak author
responsible for the security of every package inside the flatpak. If you use a
package from an unofficial rpm or deb repo, they're nearly always still
dynamically linked, so security updates for things like openssl still apply.
~~~
linuxftw
> they're nearly always still dynamically linked, so security updates for
> things like openssl still apply.
Could be, or might not be. It's easy enough to ship compiled libraries in the
same rpm/deb as the software you ship, or put your defunct versions into the
same unofficial repo under a different name and have your application pull
from there. In fact, they might not use openssl at all, possibly some other
half-baked library. Of course, that's for languages that are compiled; people
can vendor in all sorts of stuff into python sources. Don't even get me
started on golang.
Installing software from any source involves risk. Distribution repos help
mitigate some of that risk. Flatpaks as a technology don't change the risk
(significantly) from a bit-rot point of view IMO.
~~~
cyphar
> Distribution repos help mitigate some of that risk. Flatpaks as a technology
> don't change the risk (significantly) from a bit-rot point of view IMO.
I don't agree. There was a FOSDEM talk by one of my colleagues specifically
about this issue, and why Flatpak is walking us backwards in terms of how
packaging has worked historically[1]. Distributions are far from perfect
(hell, some of them ship my packages and I'm definitely far from perfect) but
they do solve real problems and going to a Windows-DLL-dump method of
packaging is going in reverse.
If your "package format" makes developers maintain all of their dependencies,
it isn't solving the problem that most people actually want you to solve -- to
be able to do less work and build on top of other people's work. By using
dependencies maintained by your distribution you also get security updates and
maintenance for free -- many distributions have paid security and maintenance
teams that deal with precisely this. I cannot overstate how much work it is to
maintain your own distribution.
[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkXseJLxFkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkXseJLxFkY)
~~~
linuxftw
I'm with you, I prefer traditional packaging over flatpak. I usually build
from source if I need a newer version than what a distro provides (or if the
distro doesn't provide it at all).
------
newnewpdro
This is what happens when you try escape "dependency hell" by turning the host
into a composition of hosts-per-application.
Now you have a clusterfuck of dependency islands which all need updating and
have their own unique sets of CVEs and upstream release schedules and
policies.
It's not really flatpak-specific, this is the reality of containers (in the
image/rootfs software distribution sense, not namespaces+cgroups) in general.
------
nickik
Flatpak and Flathub are not hiding this and nowhere on Flathub does it claim
that all Flathub apps are securely sand boxed. Flathub has unoffical packages
and this it has the same issue like all other unoffical repos.
Flatpak CAN be used to do sandboxing, but that totally different from saying
'all application will be securely sandboxed'. I don't know where the authors
got this idea from.
The simple fact is, that sandboxing on a legacy system is difficult and
Flatpak can't magic away many of the security issues in the Linux desktop.
Also all the 'Red-Hat Developers' evil reminds me of the typical Systemd-hate
rant and I really hope we don't have to suffer another iteration of this in
the Open-Source community. The person that leads the project works for Red
Hat, but its not a Red Hat project.
------
pdonis
I share this writer's concerns with Flatpak. It looks to me like yet another
attempt to bring the horribly broken and insecure "download it and drag it to
your desktop" model of application distribution, which has long been a source
of viruses and malware on Windows and Macs, to Linux.
~~~
stephenr
> bring the horribly broken and insecure "download it and drag it to your
> desktop" model of application distribution, which has long been a source of
> viruses and malware on Windows and Macs, to Linux.
Wat?
Windows _famously_ doesn’t have “just drag it to your desktop” to install.
There’s an entire segment of the industry around building installers and
managers for installation of windows programs.
And I can’t recall a single mac-affecting malware that spread the way you
describe _except_ maliciously modified versions of pirated commercial software
(eg adobe stuff) which doesn’t actually install via drag and drop anyway - it
has an “installer” if its own.
~~~
ambrice
I think the reference is to the fact that on Windows you download some random
.exe installer from some place on the internet and trust it, rather than
selecting a signed package from a trusted repository that gets automatically
updated. Should have been "download it, drag it to your desktop, and install
it".
~~~
pdonis
Yes, this is what I was referring to. Sorry for my unclear phrasing.
------
Natela
The sandbox is in a sense working, the problem is that the folder the app
accesses is more critical than what the user thought. We should make sure
nothing in home will get executed : no bashrc, no scripts, no executable. In
the "ideal" world you would never download & run any script or any executable
(like on Android or IOS). Everything the user should be able to do is install
or run flatpak apps.
(Of course in practice as soon as you are programming a bit you'll want to
open a terminal, run scripts and do stuff outside flatpak)
For the second point, well it's just that update are not frequent enough ?
This has nothing to do with flatpak technology right ?
~~~
dcbadacd
Maybe it's about time we break backwards compatibility and get rid of all
dotfiles in ~ and move them to say .local/share/software_name and then start
restricting access to those folders?
~~~
mort96
But I still want to be able to use my Flatpak VsCode to edit config files in
.local or .config, and I still want to use my Flatpak Gimp to edit images in
.local/share/icons.
~~~
dcbadacd
The chances of those things happening are rather low for the average user a
prompt would solve those and would be a way better solution that just allowing
full access to ~ and any dotfiles.
~~~
bil-elmoussaoui
There are a WIP portals that would instead of giving access to the whole
filesystem or the whole devices list a prompt for the user to allow access to
a specific device or a specific system feature. Let's take for example a Music
player, you can give it access to `xdg-music` folder only. But the users will
start complaining about the fact their music is stored somewhere else and they
would want a full access to their home folder or to the devices list to play
music from an external hard drive or whatever. Things are not perfect yeah,
but many of those apps were not made with a sandboxed env in mind. There are a
bunch of new apps that were created with that in mind and use those portals
features. Things are getting better, slowly maybe but surely! The Flatpak
packages will improve with time and we will be getting a better way of
distributing apps safely and easily on Linux.
------
bubblethink
I don't see any real benefits to using flatpak in its current form. You get
worse integration with the rest of the system, poor tools that are inferior to
your system's package manager, and no real security benefits currently. What's
the point of launching all these rubbish proprietary apps on the store with no
real sandboxing ? It creates a false sense of security, which is worse. All
the proprietary apps will do what they used to. They've just been ported to
flatpak as thin wrappers. If you get the dropbox flatpak, it will continue to
litter your home directory with hidden files.
~~~
androidgirl
I use flatpak on my system for the fact that packages can be had there I can't
get through my package manager easily and officially. That's the only selling
point!
~~~
bubblethink
Yes, that's kind of true. You can get newer versions of things slightly
easier. It can be major point if your distro is getting quite old (like RHEL
or even xenial), but if you keep up with a 2 year cycle of distro updates like
ubuntu LTS, you rarely hit that scenario.
~~~
androidgirl
That's definitely true! It's also good for smaller distros with smaller
package managers. It's easier for a dev team to support just Flatpak than to
bundle/petition for pacman, apt, yum, eopkg, and so on.
I'd greatly prefer 'native' packages though.
------
jopsen
flatpak is still early.. most apps are still installed from package managers,
and few apps are written with flatpak in mind.
The current situation is probably not much worse than installing from various
third party package archives.
I suspect things will get better as adopting catches on.. it's no surprise
that early stage open source software have rough edges.
------
p2t2p
Trust me, nobody cares. The regular user doesn't go past "I can install
Spotify in one click". It always were like that and it always will be like
that. With more "normies" coming to Linux there will be more stuff like that.
That is exactly why people were saying that there are no viruses on Linux only
thanks to lower popularity.
And with all honesty - how many of us read script files when installing
something from AUR?
But hey, nobody forces you to use it! You can always choose you distro repo or
go DIY way.
~~~
p2t2p
Downvoted without replies... Does anybody find statement that most users don’t
spend too much time to ensure security of their machine offensive or
incorrect? I know only myself and few other fairly geeky people doing that...
------
anon_cow1111
Random mint 18.04 user here.
I just noticed about a week ago that flatpak was downloading huge amounts of
data (like hundreds of MBs). I had all system updates set to download and
install manually, and hadn't installed anything new for at least a month. All
this data was getting sent to /var/tmp as flatpak-cache folders.
I don't know what it was doing but I've since turned it off in the startup
list. Any ideas? What are the chances this was malicious?
~~~
c487bd62
I'm not a flatpaker but maybe it was updating the runtimes?
[http://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-
runtimes.html](http://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-runtimes.html)
Honestly I would be more worried about running mint (a topic not suited for
this thread, a quick search would probably show you what I've read about it in
the past).
------
megous
What's cross-platform experience for packagers/builders? Seems like you can't
do cross-compilation, so expecting upstream to provide flatpaks for users is
expecting upstream to manage virtual or real machines for every [desired] CPU
architecture with all the annoying host distro installation/management,
networking stuff, etc.?
At least with the current model, upstream developers can offload most of that
to distribution packagers.
~~~
wmf
In reality every desired CPU architecture is x86-64.
~~~
megous
I have GNU/Linux desktops on armv7 and aarch64, and i686 laptop. So with this
attitude, flatpak is mostly worthless to me.
------
patal
> A high severity CVE-2017-9780 (CVSS Score 7.2) has indeed been assigned to
> this vulnerability. Flatpak developers consider this a minor security issue.
The flatpak release notes talk of a "minor security update", where "minor"
surely means "of small size", not "of little importance" as OP would have it.
Though the text could add a little importance.
------
jwildeboer
Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat
I strongly oppose these kind of attacks by people hiding their identity. No
matter how valid the criticism might be, this goes against all the ethics of
Open Source.
Just like the Devuan folks that vigorously attacked systemd and Lennart.
This must not be tolerated.
Yes, I’m very upset.
~~~
JepZ
Why is it problematic when people hide their identity? I mean, if the
criticism is valid, what does it matter who said it?
I think hiding the identity is not the real problem here. To me, it looks more
problematic, that the critique is not very constructive, one-sided and loaded
with imputations.
~~~
jwildeboer
> I think hiding the identity is not the real problem here. To me, it looks
> more problematic, that the critique is not very constructive, one-sided and
> loaded with imputations.
And I think there is a strong correlation between those two things.
It definitely makes it impossible to enter in a productive discussion about
how flatpak could work better. The way it stands now, this rant is useless,
aimed to be destructive and simply unacceptable. IMHO.
~~~
folknor
> And I think there is a strong correlation between those two things.
There might be a correlation between those in this case.
But just because it - perhaps (I haven't actually read the "article") -
applies in this case, that's a far cry from being a general rule.
Think of it in terms of - for example - a muslim speaking up against
oppression in their home country, or a Tibetan speaking up against China.
Should they not be allowed to do so anonymously?
It is possible in most cases to judge merit on content/argument alone.
It's very difficult to imply or deduce someones motive, whether you know who
they are or not. In most cases, you would be mistaken.
I find it helpful to remind myself that most people do what they do out of
love, even if their actions are/seem utterly insane, or are/seem destructive.
------
glglwty
Is the sandboxing of flatpak more or less secure than docker?
~~~
lvh
They use a lot of similar techniques. One big difference is that docker uses
user namespaces and flatpak does not. I'n not sure about the reasoning, but
it's probably a combo of "not trusting user namespaces" (disagree) and user
namespaces requiring privileges to use.
It sounds like the bigger issue isn't that the underlying technologies are
fundamentally better or worse, but that the de facto configurations are worse.
In particular, the median docker container can not write to my home directory.
The median flatpak can.
Despite the ordering, the "no updates" seems like a way worse issue than the
"most of the sandboxing is ineffective". It seems pretty clear to me that a
lot of apps need wide access and the first person who does a great job at that
will do us all a big security favor but we're not there yet in terms of UX.
Sometimes I really want my text editor to edit my bashrc. Maybe that should
require a privilege escalation, that's fine.
~~~
Jasper_
Yes. The sandbox tool used by Flatpak is "bubblewrap", which has an overview
here:
[https://github.com/projectatomic/bubblewrap/blob/master/READ...](https://github.com/projectatomic/bubblewrap/blob/master/README.md#user-
namespaces)
There is nothing against Flatpak using user namepsaces when the developers
feel a bit more comfortable with that, though.
~~~
lvh
Are you one of the developers/speaking for them? That warning is pretty old.
~~~
cyphar
Creation of user namespaces still has caused security vulnerabilities in very
recent history. But with seccomp you can disable it inside a container (which
is what Docker and LXC do by default for instance), and it doesn't make sense
to be worried about that _as a container runtime_ because you are using it to
increase the security of your sandbox.
------
codedokode
> Almost all popular applications on flathub come with filesystem=host,
> filesystem=home or device=all permissions
Aren't other sandboxes (like Ubuntu's Snap) the same?
~~~
ianlevesque
Not on macOS.
------
tomc1985
Coming out with yet another deployment format and then expecting maintainers
to include you is wishful thinking
------
zeroname
_" Almost all popular applications on flathub come with filesystem=host,
filesystem=home or device=all permissions, that is, write permissions to the
user home directory (and more), this effectively means that all it takes to
"escape the sandbox" is echo download_and_execute_evil >> ~/.bashrc. That's
it."_
No shit, installed applications can write to the filesystem. What an
exceptional security hole that only affects flatpak and literally every other
form of installing those same programs outside of a sandbox.
~~~
alkonaut
A document editor will want to write to the users documents directory.
Is the problem here that the user home dir both contains typical locations for
user data _and_ writing files with certain names to it will automatically
execute ,such as ~/.bashrc?
Wouldn't it be better if the app only had permission to write to an actual
user documents/data directory, rather than the home root? Which begs the next
question: _is_ there a standardized user document/data directory for desktop
linux that isn't just "~"?
~~~
zeroname
> Wouldn't it be better if the app only had permission to write to an actual
> user documents/data directory...
Well, would it? If the app went rogue, it could still encrypt all your
documents.
Either way, dealing with that is not the job of package management or software
installers. They can not solve the fundamental design issues of software that
has been written without a finer permissions model in mind.
------
brian_herman__
I dont see the point of This website if i am installing an application for
example gparted it can format my drives??
------
chb
They so don't deserve CoreOS. Pity they were able to acquire it.
------
JepZ
This is especially bad for projects like Linphone (open source SIP Client)
which exclusively provide Flatpak-builds for Linux [1].
[1]: [http://www.linphone.org/technical-
corner/linphone/downloads](http://www.linphone.org/technical-
corner/linphone/downloads)
~~~
confounded
I think flatpak is probably the right choice for a phone. Assuming equal
developer attention on both flatpak and deb repos, there's nothing inherently
worse about flatpak.
The nice thing about flatpak for a phone is that it _could_ in the future
offer something like the Android/iOS permissions interface.
~~~
JepZ
Yeah, maybe I am a bit too negative about the format itself. My problem with
the Flatpak only approach was that it was kinda hard to get it to run at all
and it didn't work particularly well, so I ended up with putting some work
into it while ending up with an unsolved problem (stable Linux desktop SIP
client).
So maybe this is not an inherent problem of this technology and will work
better in the future.
------
jiveturkey
oy. i'm not at all familiar with it but the author comes off as being on his
game so i'll take it at face value.
beyond disappointing that RH would release such a thing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What It's Like to Be Passed by a Tesla Semi on the Highway - ourmandave
https://jalopnik.com/heres-what-its-like-to-be-passed-by-a-tesla-semi-on-the-1830347845
======
cimmanom
The idea of a semi that isn’t loud scares the hell out of me as a driver and
even more as a pedestrian.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which dedicated server provider do you currently use? - samsheen
I am looking at setting up a dedicated server, but am having a hard time figuring out which one.<p>Hetzner seems the best when it comes to bang for the buck, but should I be concerned about the DDOS issues?<p>Any recommendations for other providers from HN members? Any Gotchas that I should be careful about?<p>I'd be great if you could list down the provider you currently use or have used in the past (with price and specs if possible) along with your experience.
======
czbond
So you're in Europe/Germany? I've used AWS, Softlayer, Firehost, etc - and my
thoughts are: \- If you have a small team, and will use the services, AWS can
be great. It can become expensive. But many people don't realize the cost
actually defers the need for some DevOps team members. Performance of EC2
hosts can be middle of the road at times compared to Softlayer, or pure metal.
I love their HighAvailability, and many of their offerings, and security that
comes "for free". \- SoftLayer is fantastic. They don't have as many SaaS (eg:
SQS, SNS, RDS) offerings - so you will build more of your own services and be
responsible for uptime, etc. I love their performance. \- FireHost is what you
want if you're taking care of a very financially at-risk product. It is
expensive, but you won't be hacked unless it's on your own stupidity.
~~~
samsheen
Thanks for the reply. I'm fine with any location for the server. Right now,
just looking at keeping the costs down.
------
tdobson
Hey Sam, I work for [http://bytemark.co.uk](http://bytemark.co.uk)
What are you trying to _do_? What's it for?
There's a whole bunch of pros and cons to dedicated servers, bang for buck,
uptime, customer service, networking...
If you explain what you're planning on using it for, I might be able to tailor
some suggestions as to what might suit you best - always happy to offer
helpful suggestions - even if it's not about our products.
------
dataminer
Hetzner 4 years, no major issues yet, good support, reliable servers
Online.net 1 year, no major issues yet, reliable hardware, support a bit slow
~~~
samsheen
Thanks for your reply. I am definitely leaning towards Hetzner. Are you
concerned about the DDoS issue? (related to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6577465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6577465))
~~~
dataminer
My suggestion would be to first launch your service and then worry about any
other issues. Automate provisioning of your servers, so you can migrate to
other providers if you have any issues. I would recommend Ansible or Chef for
automation.
------
breakingcups
I'm with Hetzner, although I'm also considering online.net[0]
No complaints with Hetzner thus far. Support is okay.
0\. [https://www.online.net/en/dedicated-
server](https://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server)
------
Cort3z
Check out serverbear.com. They have a really nice overview over most (all?)
server providers, their price, IOPS, UnixBench and more. Helped me a lot when
choosing servers :) (There is a tab so you only see dedicated servers)
------
atmosx
I'm with TransIP but I'd jump to Digital Ocean if I didn't had a fairly
complex FreeBSD setup.
NOTE: Sorry I kinda misread, wasn't talking about dedicated, was talking
(personal) VPS.
------
alltakendamned
Hetzner for a long time. Experienced nothing out of the ordinary. I'm content.
------
BorisMelnik
been with Liquid Web for 5+ years. I've got several dedi's with them, never an
issue and up time to the 9's.
------
pipu
Where? :=)
------
eip
soyoustart.com
~~~
flippant
Is it supposed to be somewhere in between OVH and Kimsufi in terms of service?
------
haidrali
digital ocean
~~~
BorisMelnik
for a dedicated?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Markupwand, magically convert your photoshop files to HTML & CSS - alagu
http://www.markupwand.com/
======
QuantumDoja
As the developer of www.psd2html.co.uk I can honestly say I am very happy that
someone else out there is doing something similar to me...you might ask why?
When I launched Psd2Html in late 2010, I was unable to get on the front page
of HackerNews, or any other website for that matter, I was down-voted to
oblivion. I had insulting, slanderous comments posted on the Mac App Store
which were untrue.
I was ridiculed by "hand coding only" services like www.psd2html.com, the
employee lots of people and don't want to make people redundant, but the
problem with this approach is that they will never move forward.
I was certain, and I'm still certain hand-coding will go the way of the Dodo.
So Markupwand, thanks for re-validating the idea, and I'm glad I'm not the
only one who thought the idea was worthwhile.
I can see that I need to enhance my service/business model/add relative CSS
positioning as an option.
I hope we'll be good competition for each other.
Thanks
Chris
~~~
crazygringo
Hand-coding isn't going to go the way of the dodo, because in practice, web
pages are vastly more complex than Photoshop or Word documents.
They need to respond dynamically to window resizing, have rules about which
directions text boxes expand in when they overflow with text, how the page
operates when a whole section is missing, etc.
Any tool that appropriately allows for all this complexity to be specified,
has already become as complex as CSS itself, thus defeating the purpose.
And in my personal front-end experience, 95% of my time is spent on these
harder details. Throwing together the basic HTML/CSS skeleton of a page is
trivial, and so fast I don't really need a tool to speed it up, especially
when that tool is always bound to get _something_ wrong.
~~~
sic1
You sir, are spot on. You put it perfectly here:
> Any tool that appropriately allows for all this complexity to be specified,
> has already become as complex as CSS itself, thus defeating the purpose.
This was my immediate issue with CSS Hat. The designers are not trained to set
up their photoshop files to be properly evaluated in CSS. They do not know
CSS, or how it works. They get their pixels "perfect" (or way off most of the
time when doing real math with css), but the fact is to use tools like this
they have to get on board 100%. For some designers, this is easier than
others.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still interested in trying out the tool. Maybe it is
magic...
------
crazygringo
How on earth does this not use absolute positioning, but actually figuring out
the full width of text boxes, whether they are expandable vertically or not,
etc.?
I'd love some insight into the technique.
I mean, I work with designers who often don't even know what their intention
was in the first place, what should happen if a line of text turns into two...
~~~
vhf
I've just seen that some of the technique/some of your questions are answered
after sign up! I'll c/c here for your convenience (without the explainations
and examples available on sign up)
Five tips given on the website to get good results (I have not tested myself)
:
\- _Break your page into smaller pieces_ (header = 1 .psd, same for body,
footer, sidebar, etc)
\- _Use one text layer for each logical piece of text_
\- _Each icon or image should be a single layer or a smart object_
\- _Want CSS buttons? Use shapes; not images._
[edit] I know there's only four. Fifth being _avoid any hacks_ , it's probably
not understandable by someone not really very familiar with Photoshop. Or I
just couldn't figure out what _photoshop-design-hacks_ are used by actual
webdesigners.
~~~
haxplorer
Sorry about the fifth point not being clear. Will try to make it clear.
Some designers produce effects using indirect methods instead of using the
photoshop effects. These should be avoided as much as possible, for the code
to be clean.
~~~
vhf
Don't worry, I was only quoting the titles of the tips.
The explaination and screenshots on your website made this fifth tip very
clear to me !
------
danso
I don't have much experience with prototyping-with-PSD...how standardized is
that process among designers? This is a neat tool but it seems like it might
be very dependent on good practices by designers, and seeing how adherence to
best practices -- in naming conventions, file types, layer arrangement, etc --
can be highly variable among coders, I can only imagine what it's like among
pure visual designers.
~~~
dmix
Almost every designer I know implements in photoshop.
For prototyping, its either gomockingbird, balsamiq or some quick HTML (plus
the odd photoshoping) to simulate interaction.
~~~
brianfryer
As a designer, I've never "implemented" in Photoshop. Ever. Illustrator, yes
(a _long_ time ago), but there's nothin' like coding your own design.
In fact, I design entirely with HTML/CSS (using the Live CSS Editor feature of
the Web Developer add-on for FireFox) and use Illustrator to mix and pick
colors.
~~~
jontas
I cannot tell you how much I wish all designers worked this way. I spend more
time cutting PSDs than I do building the backend of the site (which is what I
am actually hired to do).
~~~
davedx
Yep, every web development job I've ever had has required me to get Photoshop
installed, usually sooner rather than later. Then the company moans and drags
their feet about licensing costs etc. My current Mac has one old cracked
version of Photoshop, one version with an expired trial, and the Gimp...
------
brianfryer
As a visual designer who has learned to code, I feel that this is not a good
idea for the simple fact that it outputs non-semantic HTML (divs are not
semantic HTML) and CSS "class soup".
I am all for getting more designers to output code (thus saving a lot of
developer time), but these sorts of things not only reinforce non-semantic (&
unmanageable) coding practices, but also handicaps those who use them by not
teaching them how the web works.
~~~
alagu
We do worry about semantic HTML. We are working on a editor which would allow
users to modify tags as well.
~~~
brianfryer
This makes me happy!
Back when I was learning how to code my own HTML/CSS, I really could've used
something like this to help understand how HTML/CSS works together.
Being able to edit tags is a great feature :-)
------
jenntoda
Awesomeness!
Now how about hire a little army to manually split my page to pieces, make it
compatible to get markupwand to work, then give me back the whole page as if
you did it all by magic. Imagine the premium I'd pay for that!
~~~
alagu
Thanks Jenn!
Splitting page into pieces is only a temporary fix. We are working on getting
the entire page work (automatically), it will be out pretty soon :)
------
cypherpunks01
This is a really great idea! I can imagine people in the future
designing/coding/deploying simple webapps from a single photoshop-like
interface.
How does it know to put clever class names like ".social-actions"? Is it
gleaned from layer metadata or something?
~~~
alagu
It doesn't get class names from layers, yet. Because, most often people don't
rename their layers (they are usually "Layer 1" and "Shape 1").
It has a editor which quickly allows you to name classes (Screenshot:
<http://cl.ly/image/0q2O0O0y2B1P>)
~~~
reustle
That was the only piece I couldn't understand. This is fantastic, great work!
------
nimbix
Does Markupwand use scripted Photoshop instances in the background? And if so,
how did you manage to work around the fact that the standard Photoshop license
does not permit such use?
~~~
StavrosK
Easy, they just used a pirated version that has no such restrictions!
------
ananddass
Good catch on how us designers hack websites together-"Positioning a gray
colored copy of a layer just below the layer, to get shadow effect." Looks
like you certainly solved this problem. Cool stuff!
------
splatcollision
The problem with this and other photoshop > CSS tools, is that you're still
stuck with Photoshop. We should be elevating design by designing web native
and making it beautiful, not using the same old fixed desktop beasts. Edit
Room [1] and the like (typecast [2], etc.) will be the wave of the future.
Great web design requires great human communication, which means great
typography. You can't get close to the real web type display with Photoshop,
and this tool won't help there.
Unlike Edit Room, using Photoshop + Markupwand generates all units in pixels -
not too useful for real multi-device prototyping. Others have mentioned the
tag soup. It's fine for those who can't move on from Photoshop, but more and
more folks are interested in trying something new.
[1] <http://www.edit-room.com/> (my project, friendly critiques welcome) [2]
<http://beta.typecastapp.com/>
~~~
splatcollision
Just to prove a point, I roughly re-created the sample PSD on the markupwand
page in my tool, Edit Room:
<http://www.edit-room.com/review/RnNDyuCX>
It's not pixel-perfect, but it is flexible and responsive, and should work
decently well across different screens for 5 minutes of work.
(I don't support images yet, so you won't see icons or an avatar, but the type
and grid and color and shape and all those important things about design are
well-represented)
~~~
DeepDuh
What you show in the video looks pretty good. A few things that caught my eye:
The signup form is unconventional. that in itself is ok. but the cleartext
password text field is a really bad practice. Also the whole thing just looks
very hand-stricken, you know what I mean? I'm not that much of a designer
myself, maybe others have a different taste.
I really hope you succeed, overall I think it's a very good idea. I like the
abundance of CSS options and the format pasting you show in the video very
much. The video makes me want to use it right away.
~~~
shock3naw
Why are cleartext password fields bad practice? How many accounts are actually
compromised via shoulder surfing? They're especially annoying on mobile
phones.
edit: Since there are password fields, I guess the question should have been
"How many accounts _would_ be compromised by shoulder surfing?" I bet it's a
truly insignificant number.
~~~
DeepDuh
1) As OP has pointed out, security is not just about effective security, it's
also about the perceived one. Cleartext passwords are so unusual it makes me
question as a user, how things are handled in the backend.
2) I don't see the problem on mobiles. Not sure about Android or WP but at
least on iOS I always see the last character that is entered. Still vulnerable
to shoulder peeking but not as bad as cleartext.
------
ianstormtaylor
Are you guys looking into methods that don't apply widths and pixel-perfect
margin/padding to everything? Obviously much harder, but until these
converters can do that they just aren't substitutes for handwritten CSS.
I almost never define a fixed width for elements. Here every single element
has a fixed width.
~~~
alagu
We have few approximations to do simple versions of this, but not perfect yet.
Yes, it is harder to guess that an element should be of fluid width.
------
alagu
Hey guys, our queue is growing pretty long. We are scaling it up, meanwhile
you might face delays.
~~~
alagu
Queue is back up normal now.
But a few photoshop files failed, since Markupwand isn't yet capable of
handling full pages and a few complicated cases.
~~~
swamy_g
Super Machi, good job on the app.
~~~
alagu
Thanks machi.
------
kirillzubovsky
I can see this as a great product for designers who would like to code, but
don't have the time to learn. Now they can take this instant output and simply
tweak it, which is a lot simpler than to learn from scratch. Great job guys!
~~~
brianfryer
I can totally see something like this being used as a tool to teach designers
how to code.
Design something > run it through some secret sauce > output HTML/CSS +
provide explanations/advice/best-practices/etc.
------
damian2000
And so begins PSDD (Photoshop Driven Development).
~~~
bluetidepro
This is exactly what I'm afraid of, when I see products like this. Ugh.
------
alexlande
This is really impressive, but I'm very hesitant. Obviously this html output
won't be useful until you can modify tags, and as far as the CSS goes, this is
not really ok:
margin-top: 14px;
padding-top: 15px;
margin-left: 44px;
padding-left: 11px;
padding-bottom: 11px;
padding-right: 348px;
~~~
alagu
Agreed. We haven't worked on optimizing the no. of css rules yet. This is an
early working prototype.
------
kevinbluer
Awesome! Really psyched to try it out...I was about to go down the path of
trying CSS Hat but I'll give this a shot first.
Any thoughts on where tools like Adobe Muse
(<http://www.adobe.com/products/muse.html>) fit into the picture?
------
mehuln
This is definitely a problem worth solving, and I am glad these guys are doing
it. I've worked with designers who hated doing, and developers are not fond of
it too. As it improves, it has lots of potential.
Great start guys!
------
theatraine
I just tried it out with a .psd, the downloaded zip contained what appeared to
be other users projects. This may be disconcerting to some, and will hopefully
be quickly addressed.
The tool, however, is very impressive. I'll try to respond with a list of bugs
I notice once I figure out how to fix them through hand-coding. Good work!
~~~
suren
The issue has been fixed now. Really sorry for this bug though. You could
check now and let us know!
------
ing33k
Very impressive ! and I am sure many people will use this service ..
About the quality of code that it generates : I don't mind setting some on in
my team to work on optimizing the generated code , but having some base
html/css to work on is definitely a plus point.
Oh, BTW, You wont share my PSD with any one else right ?
------
sunsu
I'm on a MBA and can't see the bottom of the tutorial images. My browser
height isn't tall enough.
~~~
alagu
Hi Sunsu, sorry for that. We are fixing it right now. Meanwhile, here is the
image url - <http://www.markupwand.com/assets/illustration-break-page.png>
------
grigy
How about PNG? Is it just me here using Fireworks for web design?
~~~
ricardobeat
Fireworks has it's own "export to tables + image slices" thing. The end result
is not too different, tag soup and fixed dimensions for everything. Next step
up is hand-coding. Or really smart robots.
------
bosky101
congrats guys, two Q's
have you thought about maybe options to split html into ejs/jade/other
templates as well
you could in theory be able to do the reverse (html to image ) as well ?
~~~
suren
hey bosky101, That is exactly what we plan to do. This is just the starting
point :)
------
codegeek
Just tried it using the provided PSD. I am supposed to get an email with
results. Is there any manual work involved in getting the HTML/CSS ?
~~~
alagu
There is no manual work involved. After generation, you would have to edit the
class names and you should be done.
------
jabo
When I click on "Try now" I get a "Bad Request Error 400". Could it be because
of me being signed into multiple google accounts?
~~~
alagu
No, it shouldn't be. Could you please try in incognito window?
~~~
jabo
It works in incognito window. It does look like it's an issue with multiple
account signed in. Yours is not the first site on which Google auth is failing
for me when I'm signed into multiple accounts.
~~~
alagu
Ah, ok. When we are signed in into multiple accounts, it allows us to select a
specific account to sign in with.
------
fredsters_s
Love these guys
------
massarog
Is this any different than csshat?
------
lincolnq
Wow, nice work. This looks great.
------
tambourine_man
Drag and drop to upload doesn't work in Safari.
Nor does the progress bar, or selecting multiple files.
------
brettcvz
This. is. awesome. Super cool
------
coryl
The "r" in "Jack Dorsey" renders funny in Chrome AND in my Firefox. Just me?
~~~
suren
Not just you. We see that too. Not sure why though!
~~~
magic_haze
Probably because chrome (and/or ff) doesn't handle decimal point sizes well
(18px =~ 13.5pt) 13pt works fine though, as does 14pt (after adjusting the
word break)
------
chetan51
How does it work?
~~~
bherms
Agreed... Is this an automatic thing or are we looking at a psd2html.com type
thing?
~~~
eurodance
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition>
~~~
Danieru
PSD does not rasterize text by default. Besides getting the text is far from
the most difficult task that they need to handle.
------
rikacomet
is there a offline version available ?
~~~
alagu
We don't have a offline version.
~~~
RageKit
will there be one ? what about opensourcing ?
~~~
ebr4him
everything doesn't have to be open source.
~~~
RageKit
no, and i never implied that if you read carrefully. Still, that doesn't
answer my question.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Software Engineering Within SpaceX - theanirudh
https://yasoob.me/posts/software_engineering_within_spacex_launch/
======
aphextron
>SpaceX also made use of Chromium and JavaScript for Dragon 2 flight
interface. I am not sure how that passed the certification. I assume it was
allowed because for every mission-critical input on the display, there was a
physical button underneath the display as well
I think that's all the validation we need for HTML/CSS/JS as the best tool for
UI development nowadays. I wonder if there was actual shared code from the
Dragon UI used in their online docking simulator. How neat.
~~~
cryptonector
The consensus regarding automobiles and touch interfaces is starting to form
that they are just a bad idea.
Physical switches, knobs, toggles, buttons -- these things can be activated
using one's hands _without_ needing to coordinate with sight, meaning, our
eyes can stay on the road.
There is no road to keep your eyes on in space though, so needing to
coordinate hands and eyes is clearly not that big a problem for the Dragon,
and might even be better than lots of physical inputs: you can cram more
virtual inputs into the same area by using menus and what not, and that might
make it easier to navigate one's way around them. Then again, complex menus
might make things worse in an emergency. There's not that much for the
astronauts to do in Dragon though, so it's probably all OK.
~~~
goshx
Do you have a source about the said "consensus"? It sounds more like
resistance to change than an actual rationale.
You have always had the need to look at the buttons, like reaching out to the
radio.
From my experience, the majority of people who drive a car with touch
interfaces don't want to look back to old fashioned buttons.
~~~
mlyle
> From my experience, the majority of people who drive a car with touch
> interfaces don't want to look back to old fashioned buttons.
Many automakers that had touch-heavy interfaces are moving back towards
physical controls, both because of market demand and evolving industry safety
considerations.
e.g. [https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-
pur...](https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-
touchscreens-from-its-vehicles) [https://jalopnik.com/honda-follows-mazda-by-
ditching-some-to...](https://jalopnik.com/honda-follows-mazda-by-ditching-
some-touchscreen-contro-1842564375)
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/06/17/ford-
my...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/06/17/ford-myford-touch-
infotainment-sync/2432489/)
I have no problem with touch controls in general, but replacing a volume knob
I can find blindly with a relatively small pair of "Vol+" and "Vol-" touch
targets is mildly infuriating. It's OK as the driver because there is an
actual tactile control on the steering wheel, but downright unpleasant as a
passenger.
~~~
goshx
One of the issues with those automakers is that their interfaces are in
general unresponsive and slow. The one in my BMW sucked. The Jaguar I-PACE is
very slow as well.
Tesla got this right with both the touch screen and the physical buttons on
the steering wheel for things like volume control.
~~~
BeetleB
> One of the issues with those automakers is that their interfaces are in
> general unresponsive and slow. The one in my BMW sucked. The Jaguar I-PACE
> is very slow as well.
> Tesla got this right with both the touch screen and the physical buttons on
> the steering wheel for things like volume control.
Perhaps there's an auto manufacturer or two that got it right. However, I've
never driven a car with physical buttons that got it wrong. When I used to
shop for cars in those days, I _never_ had to consider if those buttons were
compatible with me. Now when I buy for a newer car, it's an added headache to
consider, and one that I've not seen add any real value. Going on a test drive
really will not tell me enough about whether the interface is good. And worst
of all, _whether it is or isn 't affects my safety_.
~~~
filoleg
>Perhaps there's an auto manufacturer or two that got it right. However, I've
never driven a car with physical buttons that got it wrong.
You gotta give it some time, because modern physical control interfaces in
cars had over half a decade to evolve to reach this point. With regard to
touchscreen interfaces in cars, it simply feels like those are still stuck
somewhere in the pre-iPhone era of touchscreen interfaces for phones in terms
of usability compared to physical controls.
------
danans
Years ago, astronaut Chris Hadfield told an audience of software engineers
(including me) that the moment the space shuttle was in stable orbit, the crew
would pull out laptops and set up an ethernet network for all the scientific
work of their expedition, as the space shuttle's own computers, though limited
in raw computing power, ran software that was so thoroughly tested that there
was every reason not to "upgrade" them in any way to support the scientific
work.
~~~
thechao
As a child, a friend's mother was a programmer for the Shuttle (mid-80s to
early 90s). Her job sounded _awful_ : a 'science person' (I was a child,
remember!) designed a piece of math; an engineer (software?) would take that
piece of math and reduce it to an algorithm; my friend's mother would program
that algorithm in machine code, in parallel to an assembly listing. Each
instruction (and all the data) would be reviewed line-by-line. She had to
provide reasoning (roughly a proof) that each instruction correctly
implemented the algorithm. My guess is the algorithm went through the same
equivalence checking to the 'math'. I don't know how much code she wrote, but
it was only a few programs (functions) _per year_.
That was my view of 'programming', and I wasn't disabused of that until very
late 90s.
~~~
rustybolt
Sounds lovely. Now I write code with vague requirements that interfaces with
ill-specified functions, on tight deadlines. It surprises me that it doesn't
contain a lot more bugs. Maybe we just haven't found them yet.
~~~
ngcc_hk
And whatever you wrote And right to the spec， user said it is not what they
want. And demo why it is not working or useful ... Of course that is nothing
to do with them, that is not what they said or your it guys analysis wrongly.
As spec goes ... do not understand it.
To be fair it takes a lot of interaction (and understanding ) to fix it. And
you wonder how these operate here.
------
tectonic
Good writeup! In general, the direction in modern aerospace is to use COTS
(commercial off-the-shelf) parts with redundancy and failback for radiation
hardening.
If you’re into this sort of thing, I co-write a weekly newsletter about the
space industry and often talk about software.
[https://orbitalindex.com](https://orbitalindex.com)
~~~
sq_
Thank you so much for the Orbital Index! I've been subscribed for a while now,
and I look forward to it every week. Great content!
------
extrapickles
When you think about it from a first principals perspective, having multiple
touchscreens is better than only having physical switches. When a switch is
damaged/fails, you are out of luck. When a touchscreen is damaged/fails, you
use the one next to it. On a rocket you do not have the mass or room to have
more than 1 of all but the most critical of switches.
There have been quite a few missions that nearly caused death or mission
failure directly due to a switch getting broken (Apollo 11, lander return
engine-arm switch) or going faulty (Apollo 14 abort switch).
What really matters is that they have no single point of failure (touch
screens can do everything switches can, an individual touch screen is not
important, and switches can cover abort/return scenarios to protect the crew).
For the software, it only matters that its been fully tested, including random
bit flips and hardware failure.
From a cost savings perspective, its vastly cheaper to verify that 3
touchscreens are working correctly than the 600 switches they replace.
~~~
colllectorof
_> When a switch is damaged/fails, you are out of luck. When a touchscreen is
damaged/fails, you use the one next to it._
This is a trivial problem to solve on a physical interface. One solution could
be what is commonly used on hardware synthesizers. A shift button or switch.
You engage it and all controls begin to perform their secondary functions. You
get redundancy for the price of one extra control and a secondary set of
labels in a different color.
Also, use of displays to virtually label buttonss is common. In such case you
can reassign a control if one fails.
In any case Dragon capsule had physical buttons for important functions as a
backup.
~~~
extrapickles
The touchscreen frees you from the complexity that comes with giving switches
alternative modes, and gives you the mass to have multiple copies of critical
switches. Also multimode switches greatly increase the complexity and failure
modes, so they need to be done so that if a switch is triggered in the wrong
mode its recoverable (eg: the switch for aux radio power isn’t also the undock
switch).
When you get to the point of having displays for the switches why not go full
touchscreen and eliminate all of that cost and complexity of a bunch of tiny
displays?
------
randtrain34
Note that the data within the post is from an AMA ___7 years ago_ __
~~~
Fiahil
Tech moved a bit in that timeframe!
> We leverage C#/MVC4/EF/SQL; Javascript/Knockout/Handlebars/LESS/etc and a
> super sexy REST API.
Nowadays it would be ".Net Core/SQL; Typescript/React/GraphQL"
~~~
pjettter
Webassembly
------
wlesieutre
Interesting read. I've wondered about their use of big touchscreen interfaces
having heard a friend's experience with the similar setup in a Model 3.
On multiple occasions they've had to pull off the highway to turn their car
off and on again to get the screen working. Not really an option on your way
to space.
~~~
rootusrootus
> On multiple occasions they've had to pull off the highway to turn their car
> off and on again to get the screen working.
Surely not? The touchscreen is run by the media computer which does not
control the car. You can reboot it with the 'two finger salute' while you are
driving down the highway. Some things will be unavailable (you cannot, for
example, engage autopilot while it is rebooting), but the car still runs &
drives.
I hope they just miscommunicated the situation to you, otherwise they are
really working too hard just to fix a touchscreen. Turning the entire car off
is kind of a pain in the ass. I've never done it. And I have only rebooted the
touchscreen a couple times ever. Your friend may want to schedule a service
appointment if they really do have to power cycle the whole car, because that
is super abnormal.
~~~
wlesieutre
I'm not suggesting it had any function on that automotive functions, but I was
also not aware of the media center reboot with steering wheel buttons. From
what he described to me I don't think he was either, I'd have to check and
will pass that along if not!
I'm a little surprised that the media computer doesn't have a built-in
heartbeat check and know to reboot itself if it stops responding. I've heard
of other cars and embedded systems doing that.
EDIT - asked him about reboot via steerling wheel:
_> It’s not great because you lose lots of feedback. No speedometer, no sound
from turn signals, etc. But it does work._
~~~
mav3rick
It's called a watchdog. And it's 99% running Android and should have that.
~~~
comboy
Last time I've heard they were using Ruby on Rails..
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17835760&p=2](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17835760&p=2)
------
yasoob
Hi guys! I am the author of this article. Excited to see it on the first page
:)
------
naringas
I would have expected them to use formal verification tools in the vein of
TLA+ and such... or maybe use ADA for mission critical systems?
But they only mention Astree[1] which seems to be a propietary analyzer for C
code
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astr%C3%A9e_(static_analysis)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astr%C3%A9e_\(static_analysis\))
~~~
dahfizz
TLA+ is basically an academic tool. It allows you to verify your
specification, but it is useless to detect bugs in your implementation. In my
experience, the process of writing your specification in TLA is a buggy enough
process to make it all a waste of time.
~~~
superqd
No, not just for academia. Apparently, Amazon uses it to check their designs
for correctness.
[https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/formal-methods-
amazon....](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/formal-methods-amazon.pdf)
------
stevofolife
Taken from the article: "We leverage C#/MVC4/EF/SQL;
Javascript/Knockout/Handlebars/LESS/etc and a super sexy REST API."
Knockout.js, good times.
~~~
hu3
I believe Trello uses Knockout.js
And at least before Atlassian bought it (I haven't used since then), it was a
responsive and plasant piece of software.
------
chasd00
at the bottom of the article they mention model rockets and the three levels
of certification. Each level grants you access to more powerful motors and
therefore higher or larger flights. The hobby is self-goverend by NAR and
Tripoli who manage level certification.
It's a fun hobby, although large motors get pricey. The largest can be 4-5
figures per launch. However, you can get very advanced and do things you
wouldn't typically expect in a hobby.
Here's a two stage ( 4" diameter booster, 3" diameter sustainer ) reaching
over 200k feet in altitude. The Karman Line is about 330k feet.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0imcpdLdB8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0imcpdLdB8)
------
mips_avatar
I'd love to work with physical software (software that interacts with the real
world through sensors and actuators), as a C developer, how should I move into
this space? Every time I try intro to ARM kits I feel like I'm in over my
head.
~~~
Rebelgecko
Start out with an Arduino, or ESP32/ESP8266. The ESP boards are probably the
best bang for your buck out there if you're just playing around— you can start
out with the Arduino environment (C++-ish), or use something like PlatformIO
to interface a bit more directly with the hardware. It's not as low level as
an ARM board where you have to worry a bunch about setting up clock
multipliers and all that jazz, but the power to do so is there when you're
ready for it.
The best way to learn is to solve a problem that motivates you. Maybe you want
a phone notification when your laundry is done, or when a room in your house
exceeds a certain temperature. Work on some little projects like that
If you want to get even lower level, then try out the ARM boards again.
Someone else mentioned STM32 boards, which are great in many ways but IMO not
very user friendly (Their STMCube software actually makes me mad). You can
also try your hand at FPGA development. Verilog and VHDL are both popular
languages, and preferences between the two tend to depend on domain. There's
compilers that let you program FPGAs in C, but shying away from that.
If you want to look for work, probably the big industries to check out are:
Consumer embedded hardware: companies that make printers, cell phone radios,
etc
Medical devices
Aerospace/defense
------
dang
A thread from a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23368109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23368109).
The current article quotes from it, in fact.
This article looks like a fine overview but when it comes to follow-up posts,
the test is: does the new submission contain enough SNI (significant new
information) to support a substantially different discussion? In this case it
looks like not, but I can't really tell.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow-
up&sort=byDate&type=comment)
------
0xDEEPFAC
No mention of Ada or their methods of writing the important software. I wonder
what they use.
"Avionics Test team
...The main objective is to write very comprehensive and robust software to be
able to automate finding issues with the hardware at high volume...."
~~~
lavezza
The "important" software is the Flight Software that runs on Falcon and
Dragon. That is written in C++.
------
theanirudh
The astronauts show parts of the touchscreen and physical controls here:
[https://youtu.be/llbIzbOStt4?t=150](https://youtu.be/llbIzbOStt4?t=150)
------
drummer
It would be awesome if some SpaceX engineers would give a few presentations at
events like CppCon and talk about their software development process including
some code examples and demos.
------
chrisfinazzo
Hearing about the Flight Software and Avionics teams reminds me of this,
although they don't seem to be on that level quite yet.
[https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-
stuff](https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff)
------
theanirudh
I wonder how they manage not to have accidental taps on the touch screen
during liftoff and or re-entry. As I understand there are a lot of G's and
violent vibrations and I would assume it's hard to keep a steady hand?
(Atleast this is my understanding from watching Apollo documentaries/movies
etc.)
~~~
NikolaeVarius
The screen compensates, and they train with vibrations in mind.
~~~
theanirudh
Impressive, especially considering some of the touch targets are pretty small.
~~~
NikolaeVarius
They probably aren't bothering with using non critical buttons on a launch
that is automated anyway
------
oxguy3
I'm so relieved to hear all the redundancy and testing in place. I had heard
that the touchscreens were built in Chromium/JS and was rather alarmed. Don't
get me wrong – I do a lot of web stuff and I love that environment, but I've
never seen a web app I would trust two human lives to. This, however, sounds
like they really thought it through and made it safe.
~~~
paxys
A contrary opinion - a tool/framework used and tested by billions of people
every day is a lot less prone to crashing when used for its intended purpose
than something custom-built. There are tons of developers out there building
complex apps by following beginner JavaScript tutorials, but SpaceX is
obviously going to enforce better standards. HTML/CSS/JavaScript/V8 are all
extremely solid technologies that have stood the test of time, and there is
nothing better to build a user interface with today.
------
ChrisMarshallNY
This was cool!
Thanks for sharing that with us.
I'd be interested in finding out how they iterate. I'm absolutely positive
that they do.
~~~
thoughtpalette
Off topic but we share the same name. Except I'd be ChrisMarshallCHI.
~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
I met another Chris Marshall that worked for Kodak, back in the 1990s. Have
you ever worked for Kodak?
~~~
thoughtpalette
I have not. Though, I have been eyeballing chrismarshall.com for years,
setting calendar reminders on expiration's and such.
Have you been doing the same? Was curious if all the CM's are competing for
that domain lol
~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
I've had cmarshall.[com|org|net] for a long time. I recently also fetched
chrismarshallny.[com|org|net|dev], along with a bunch of various social media
handles (see my HN ID). Right now, they point to my LLC site, but I'll
probably set up a personal site; sooner or later. I did notice that a squatter
had grabbed the Pinterest name. I don't care.
I've decided that ChrisMarshallNY is my "Google Me" name. It's working fairly
well.
~~~
thoughtpalette
Ahhh nice. Fair enough. I settled on thoughtpalette on everything but I wish
whomever owned our namesake domain would do something with it \\_O.o_/
------
fallingmeat
Does this article imply that RTCA/DO-178B is used as a means of demonstrating
compliance in some way, or otherwise is used to define lifecycle processes for
their development/verification/systems teams? Anyone know where this was
mentioned by SpaceX?
------
scep12
> The Flight Software team is about 35 people.
I'm shocked the discussion is about UI tech and not that there was only 35
people on the team that built the software to land Falcon 9.
Surely it's changed in the last 7 years. Anyone know the size now?
------
MrSaints
They will be doing an AMA on Reddit again soon according to
[https://youtu.be/y4xBFHjkUvw?t=674](https://youtu.be/y4xBFHjkUvw?t=674)
------
jonpurdy
> The secondary ports go into the primary ports, which are heavy-duty
> actuators that connect to what’s called a “summing bar,” which is no more
> than a massive steel rod.
"In Rod We Trust"
------
sammycdubs
This seems like a remarkably small team for the scale of what they're
building! For some reason I imagined they'd have legions of engineers.
~~~
bdcravens
I think we’ve been conditioned to believe that any application of medium
complexity requires hundreds or thousands of developers. Snarkiness aside,
they have a very concrete set of functional constraints and total control over
the hardware, network, and software environment. Issues like resource
management, dependency conflicts, security, scale, etc are taken out of the
equation, things that are often the biggest time and resource sinks.
~~~
junon
IME, more bodies usually always equates to more bugs and slower release
cycles.
------
Animats
It's interesting that the mission control console systems are written in
LabView.
~~~
themeiguoren
I can see how it’d be a decent tool for plotting up a bunch of raw telemetry
streams, but as someone who had to write a moderately complicate program in
LabView once, I’m astonished they’ve scaled it up that far and very glad it’s
not me who had to do it. It’s a real PITA to work with.
------
b20000
doesn't sound like a great idea to involve 10 different technology stacks
------
f00_
touch screens are a bad choice to me
I want the buttons and knobs.
Love the old soviet control rooms posted awhile ago:
[https://designyoutrust.com/2018/01/vintage-beauty-soviet-
con...](https://designyoutrust.com/2018/01/vintage-beauty-soviet-control-
rooms/)
Need John Carmack's opinion of SpaceX
~~~
josefresco
Oh so beautiful: [https://main-designyoutrust.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/upload...](https://main-designyoutrust.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/01/18-12.jpg?iv=146)
~~~
f00_
i love the windows xp screen saver ):<
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Best free Rails message board software? - rwebb
Anyone know of good free message board software that runs on rails?
======
callmeed
Check out altered beast
<http://github.com/courtenay/altered_beast/tree/master>
Of course, you could always roll your own pretty easily with rails.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Show HN: Reading journal app I made - yanis_t
https://www.candlapp.com?utm_source=hn
======
yanis_t
Hey guys! If you like to keep track of what you read, please take a look at
this service I made. I need advise on whether this concept is tenacious... And
of cause for HN-ers first 6 months is free.
------
tbirrell
How is this superior to goodreads?
~~~
yanis_t
It's more like a personal thing to keep notes to yourself, but also a way of
making some notes public and have a public book journal like this one
[https://www.candlapp.com/ianis](https://www.candlapp.com/ianis)
~~~
tbirrell
Hmm... I might give this a try if the following existed.
1) I could sync over my Goodreads shelves. I don't want to have to start over
or copy it all manually. 2) It was a freemium model. If I had access to like
3-4 features and the rest were paid-only, I could get behind this. I
understand you have a 30 trial, but I don't read enough for 30 days to be a
meaningful amount of time, and I have no investment in this product right now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask YC: What do you want? - sdurkin
Pg advocates a simple model when deciding what product to offer as a startup: Make something people want.<p>Since I've decided to target the tech startup world for my first venture, this seemed like a good place to ask a few questions. What do you want? What do you need? What service would add enough value to your startup that you would be willing to pay for it?<p>I also have a follow up question. I am currently building a peer-to-peer microlending service targeted at startups. I'm doing this because I noticed that many startups get their initial capital from credit card loans. Would this be something that would help you?
======
blogimus
Let us ask you the same question, "What service would add enough value to your
startup that you would be willing to pay for it?"
I want to add "a service or product that you can't already find or that
doesn't cut it for you and you're looking for something better."
Not to be flip, but if there's a scratch I have that nothing out there is
itching, well, there's my next big thing.
~~~
sdurkin
My answer to the same question is "an easy way to get small amounts of
funding." So that's the avenue I'm pursuing.
Are you saying that there's no problem you've encountered for which there
isn't already an adequate solution? Perhaps I was wrong in assuming that even
in an entrepreneurial minded community there must be some problems people
can't fix for themselves.
~~~
blogimus
I guess I'm thinking in my domain, software solutions. Most everything else
that I can afford is already out there.
Edit: If there is something I need that is a hindrance (service not existent
yet, I'll say) from the outset of my venture, and that hindrance is not part
of my solution, I don't go there.
~~~
sdurkin
Not to belabor the point, but what would you use if you could afford it? What
do you use that doesn't work well enough or costs too much?
These are the types of questions I'm hoping the intelligent people here might
humor me by answering. Perhaps the original question was too simplistic, as I
was going for succinctness.
~~~
blogimus
I don't need micro-lending, but many others might. I've had ideas that could
use an effective merchant micro-payment system usable by all, charging tiny
amounts of money for individual services, but credit services charge fees
currently preclude that, AFAIK.
~~~
lanej0
I'll second that. All of the low-cost payment processing solutions are so
unprofessional looking. It's terrible having a professional looking site, and
then having to send a customer off to Paypal or some other ghetto service.
Bonus points for white label.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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The Moral Sense Test - mhb
http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/index2.html
======
seles
All 10 questions were variants of the trolley problem. The problems were also
poorly formed which is what made answering them difficult, not the actual
moral dilema. For example, in the real trolly problem it is clear that you
really only have two options flip the switch or not, it is hard to imagine
there are other alternatives. But in many of these problems, it is hard to
believe there is not a better option available, even though the problem states
"but the only way..."
~~~
dkarl
Yes, they were quite poorly formed, which renders the study entirely
pointless. The idea behind these problems is to collect people's intuitive
reactions to simple, clear situations. If the problems are so poorly formed
that intuition simply rejects them, the exercise is useless, except as a study
in human frustration. (Perhaps that's the point? It would explain the poor UI
design.)
Several situations present you with the option of causing one immediate and
fairly certain death to prevent several more distant, much more speculative
deaths. You can't predict the path of a boulder down a mountain. A boulder
that would be stopped by one person would be unlikely to kill five. The man
driving the injured people to the hospital actually has little idea how
quickly he needs to get them there to save their lives. The certainty
presented in the problems is so unreal that they might as well have been posed
in an entirely abstract way in the first place.
------
petercooper
This test uses a variant of the good old "trolley dilemma"
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem>) where a trolley/train is
headed for five workmen on a track and it asks if you'd pull a lever to divert
the trolley onto a track where only one man is working. (This test then goes
on to vary that situation somewhat.)
Studies have been run on this in the past and to my dismay most people would,
in the initial scenario, flick the switch to save five but kill one -
immediately becoming murderers rather than bystanders. I suspect this test is
trying to weed out what could make people flip-flop from one point of view to
the other, as when replaced with "pushing a fat man off a bridge to block the
trolley" the stats have tended to swing the other way.
~~~
frig
Involvement in the world isn't voluntary; actions have consequences, some
people prefer some consequences to other consequences.
In your case you value maintaining an unsullied self-image over assisting 5
people in mortal peril, and would prefer if other people saw your choice the
same way.
But you're right (I've met people who were familiar with the people involved
here): the intuition is that the stronger the perceived interpersonal
relationship between you and the unlucky bloke the less likely you are to
flick the switch, but teasing out exactly how much relationship is needed to
make the moral intuition flip is tricky business.
~~~
petercooper
_In your case you value maintaining an unsullied self-image over assisting 5
people in mortal peril, and would prefer if other people saw your choice the
same way._
"Maintaining an unsullied self-image" is largely what personal moral codes are
about. If I actively killed someone, I would find being a murderer harder to
cope with than being a _witness_ to the death of a larger number of people.
I think this is a purely moral standpoint, whereas "killing one to save the
five" is the result of people playing a "numbers game." I think this is
demonstrated by the opposing results of the "push the fat man off the bridge"
dilemma - once you change the mechanism from a lever/switch to actually
pushing a dude off a bridge, people's sense of morality comes rushing back.
~~~
frig
This is the argument of the ages, no?
I would say moral codes are about trying to use your agency to do good, not
bad; there's no obvious reason why "doing good" would always and everywhere
equate with "easy to cope with".
You claim you're not doing a #s game but I think I can prove that you are,
even if you're not yet aware of it.
Consider this alternative scenario: the trolley is hurtling towards the 5 men
as before and you've got the option of throwing a switch; what's new is that
_this time_ the switch moves the train into an empty railyard, saving the five
lives at no one's expense.
The #s game is removed and it's just a case of: do you think yourself morally
obligated to throw the switch and save the lives, or not?
Careful here.
------
dstorrs
These tests just annoy the crap out of me. I put up with the first few
questions because I wanted to see if they would do something novel. But no,
they had all the standard problems of morality tests:
1) False dichotomy. (There are _exactly_ two actions you can take, no more.)
2) Unrealistic foreknowledge. (These are _exactly_ what the results of these
actions will be.)
3) Unrealistic scenarios. (How many of us are ever going to be standing with
our foot stuck in the tracks of the sideline right near the switch when five
other people are...blah blah blah.)
This kind of test is exactly what gives philosophers a bad reputation. They
are studying important issues; could they /please/ take the time to build a
test that respects the intelligence of the testee?
~~~
gort
These are simplifying assumptions; it's rather like a scientific experiment
that aims to control for other factors, in order to distill the experiment
down to its essential core.
~~~
dstorrs
Assume a spherical cow....
------
ilitirit
_Andrew has been kayaking and is six miles from the nearest town. He hears on
the WBZ4 radio station that the damn has broken upstream and that the river is
about to flood._
Spelling and grammar mistakes reduce your credibility.
~~~
bwillard
Interesting, my radio station was not WBZ4, it was WBZ60. This corresponds
well with the observation in other comments that there was some numerical
priming going on that might have been the real point of the study and not the
moral part of it.
------
req2
Joshua Greene's thesis provides us with some ways to think about how we think
about these problems. There's some nice excerpting, and ensuing discussion, at
lesswrong:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/10f/the_terrible_horrible_no_good_ve...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/10f/the_terrible_horrible_no_good_very_bad_truth/)
------
zargon
I have no patience for these contrived dilemmas that few people will ever
encounter. When humanity is done making war with one another then maybe we
could ask these questions. But until then it is like treating someone's skin
rash and ignoring that they are in cardiac arrest.
~~~
ismarc
Why do you think there are wars? It has to do with the moral standing and
beliefs of the leaders who wage those wars. These types of tests are actually
very appropriate for "treating" the problem of war. One life for one more
important one, or one life for many, or a few lives for many are the
foundations of war. Is the study and the results a fix for these things? No.
But they can give a much greater understanding of the decisions people are
willing to make, allowing for better judgement of reactions ot situations.
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Why PHP is (still) the easiest web programming language to learn - dorkitude
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4699961/why-is-php-the-easiest-web-programming-language-to-learn/4699971#4699971
======
roadnottaken
It's a bad comparison. PHP is not an alternative to Rails or Django. It's more
like an alternative to Perl. PHP is a language, Rails/Django are frameworks
and thus necessarily far-more complex.
~~~
simonw
I disagree. PHP is a web framework. It comes with built-in functionality for
talking to databases, extracting form variables, setting cookies, outputting
HTML, routing URLs - everything you'd need expect to need a web framework for
with other languages.
~~~
HerberthAmaral
If we follow your logic, C is a framework for building OSes.
~~~
chc
You're going to need to explain further how C is endowed with all the
capabilities normally associated with OS-building frameworks (which I've never
heard of).
------
michaelchisari
Also, finding a web host that supports Python or Ruby may be easy, but finding
a web host that _doesn't_ support PHP is damn near impossible.
------
bergie
That example holds true until you start using a framework :-)
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Elixir Deployment Tools Update – February 2018 - megido
https://dockyard.com/blog/2018/02/28/elixir-deployment-tools-update-february-2018
======
elcritch
Handy, this should help resolve a few annoying parts of making releases.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Looking for team-mates to join start-up (venture) in Bay Area - Venktheman
Hey guys,<p>I am an ios developer, and I have been working on two ideas in the past, and I strongly believe that these ideas will take off. I was working with a team before, but they got caught up with corporate life, and lost the momentum after being rejected by the investors. I am an iOS developer, and the prototype is pretty much done, and the work is in the stage of :<p>* Improving value proposition.
* Design changes.
* Finalize Revenue Model
* Finish up the business plan.<p>So yes, I am looking for MBA graduates with a passion to take up ideas and see the revenue potential in it and work with me, and the clients. Another iOS developer on the team would also be great, but the priority is to finalize the business model, and get things rolling.<p>I know launching a startup may or may not be the fruitful, but I do believe that if we continue to work non-stop, and truly understand the value proposition and get the "best" revenue model & show it to investors (which we eventually will), things will get rolling !<p>I need a really smart MBA talent with a good background in marketing and finance. I am looking for talented people with a "never-stop-before-goals-are-reached" attitude. We will be partnering with grocery store retailers to deliver a product for the end users that benefits both parties greatly !<p>Please email me at [email protected]<p>We can discuss about the idea and I can demonstrate the prototype to you, and I would love to share ideas with the team and learn about new suggestions.
======
nanijoe
What specifically do you need the MBA to do for you? Have you tried doing it
yourself? What stopped you from being successful? Also, your "continue to work
non-stop" line will not exactly have people beating down your doors.
~~~
Venktheman
I apologize. I have tried doing it myself, but I am requiring someone who can
handle the business end of the atart-up, and take care of it. We will be
partnering with grocery store retailers to deliver a product for the end users
that benefits both parties greatly !
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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The privacy paradox: why do people keep using tech firms that abuse their data? - hhs
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/05/privacy-paradox-why-do-people-keep-using-tech-firms-data-facebook-scandal
======
oil25
Tech firms engage in capitalist logic to achieve it: wherein the true costs of
production are externalized and obscured from public view (or worse, portrayed
as being virtuous and of benefit to the user). Willing or not, we are in their
employ when we engage in their services, much in the same way we contribute to
climate change merely by participating in industrialized Western society. We
are both the victims and perpetrators, because even individual moral
responsibility has been externalized, seemingly to the point of irrelevance.
And as the complex systems (e.g., near-omnipotent global surveillance,
totalitarian fiat currency, Bernays' propaganda) we've designed and
implemented to run our world are beyond the comprehension, let alone control,
of any single mind, how could it be any other way?
~~~
hhs
Interesting points. You write about externalities, which touch on an economist
view. And you also note Ed Bernay and his work on human psychology/propaganda.
Is there empirical literature that further explains this paradox? I wonder if
there’s anything in anthropology that describes this.
~~~
jdillaaa
The paradox here is pretty difficult to break down because it its function and
causes are so intertwined with everything in "industrialized Western society"
as the above comment makes note of.
The book "24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep" captures many social
phenomenon and mechanisms of the neoliberal/"late capitalism" moment.
Here is an excerpt from a book review: "the emergence, rationalization, and
normalization of the “observing subject” across the 19th century, revealing
new techniques of discipline, such as the regulation of attention in
industrial labour and later the pathologization of deviant forms of perception
and attentiveness" from
[https://muse.jhu.edu/article/580561](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/580561)
~~~
hhs
This is neat, I'll check out Jonathan Crary's writing, thank you!
------
bwang29
The article is so confusing. I'm hooked when it started at "The point of the
experiment, one imagines, was to prompt the question: “How do they know this?”
in the target’s mind." and then it just ends without answering anything.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4 - xyby
https://ir.tesla.com/static-files/b3cf7f5e-546a-4a65-9888-c928b914b529
======
40acres
The bull case for Tesla is clear. Aside from Nissan with the Leaf, who
recently loss their galvanizing CEO and who's market cap has tanked since,
what major automaker has anywhere near the success of Tesla with EV?
No doubt execution has been an issue in the past, but recent sales trends,
completion of gigafactory, and Chinese expansion show that they are on the
right trend.
Tesla's were confined to the luxury market, but the Model 3 is doing well and
Tesla is being allowed to come out with more and more SKUs while the other big
auto's are still finding their footing.
The branding is on point without the need to advertise, like the iPhone,
Tesla's are becoming just a feature of everyday life (at least in large
metro's). Finally, and this is absolutely non-empirical, I just believe in
Elon. Tesla might be one of those companies that simply fades away once a
galvanizing leader leaves, but as long as his heart is beating I'll hold.
~~~
Sohcahtoa82
Other car manufacturers are missing what makes Tesla do so well.
It's a lot of things, really. Range, performance, the hope of self-driving,
the supercharging network (Which is much bigger than people think!), and of
course, the fact that they look like normal cars. Most other EVs like the Leaf
are either incredibly lacking in range and performance, or they're incredibly
ugly like the BMW i3.
Then you've got cars like the Mullen Qiantu K50 [0] that try to be something
special, but other than looks are incredibly lackluster and overpriced. $125K,
and its performance and range are on par with a $48K Model 3 LR AWD. They're
trying to brand it like a supercar, but it's only a supercar in the looks.
It's crazy to me that other makers can't even get charging done well. Most
public CHAdeMO or CCS chargers are only up to 50 kW, while Tesla superchargers
are usually 72 kW and sometimes up to 150 kW. Being able to charge quickly is
a must when one of your biggest barriers to getting customers is overcoming
their range anxiety.
[0] [https://mullenusa.com/reserve-qiantu-k50/](https://mullenusa.com/reserve-
qiantu-k50/)
~~~
nexuist
>the fact that they look like normal cars
This was my first thought during the Cybertruck unveil. It no longer looks
like a normal truck. Rivian was far out originally, but this blew it out the
park.
So the question is really, would people want an electric pickup truck that
looks like nothing before it?
I'm leaning towards yes, but we have to wait for the market to make its choice
to find out for sure.
~~~
philwelch
Cybertruck is going to be an Edsel-type blunder if they keep pursuing it. It’s
obvious that Elon is a car guy because the Tesla cars all look slick and
sporty but he’s obviously not a truck guy and I think he’s utterly
misunderstood the market with Cybertruck.
~~~
nickik
Based on what? Its cheap, can pull lots of stuff fast, you can plug in power
tools and it has lots of storage area.
~~~
philwelch
It looks stupid, the trapezoidal side walls around the truck bed actually make
it much less usable, and it looks stupid.
The whole problem with eg the BMW i-Series or most other electric cars is that
they are designed in a silly way that says, “look at me, I’m a weird electric
car, I’m not a normal car at all, I’m willing to look like a total dork in
order to virtue-signal about being eco-friendly”. Teslas just look like sports
cars—except the Cybertruck’s styling is 100% “dorky virtue signal about having
a weird special truck”, and truck people are even less likely than car people
to put up with that.
~~~
nickik
Because you have active suspension you the bed can actually be lower then most
trucks. Also overall usability seems like its clearly better on this truck
compared to the competition you basically point out one single thing and
ignore everything that goes the other direction.
And I think it looks cool, so that literally purely your opinion.
The design of the truck allows it to be produced for 40k and still have quite
a bit of range. Those performance and price measures matter. Had they copied
an F150 it would cost at least 50k and would not have as much range.
Tesla had to make conservative cars to establish themselves, but a
revolutionary brands will not always just copy the competition, specially when
trucks are on of the most uninspired markets where literally every vehicle is
a copy of the other.
~~~
philwelch
Do you own a truck? What do you use it for and how would the Cybertruck
provide an improvement?
I wouldn't characterize Tesla's other cars as "conservative" in the slightest.
"Conservative" makes me think of Volvo or Lexus. The Model S is absolutely
gorgeous and if any car aficionado saw it, he would say, "that is an
absolutely gorgeous car". It literally looks like a better Lamborghini,
Ferrari, or Porsche. The Cybertruck provokes reactions somewhere on a spectrum
between "what the fuck is that?" and "hmm, that's interesting". Which is
roughly the same design space that the Pontiac Aztek, Chrysler PT Cruiser, and
BMW i-Series inhabit. It's not fertile ground.
------
slg
I have been a longtime bull, but their stock value is now up over 140% in the
last 3 months and I can't say I fully understand why.
~~~
stellar678
I dunno. My bullish view has more to do with Tesla using the vehicle market as
an entry point to the broader energy market.
If the Tesla cars start throwing off profit and make the company self-
sustaining, their vertically-integrated energy thing opens the kind of
insanely huge global energy market. They're not just going to eat Ford's lunch
- but also Chevron, Saudi Aramco and your local energy company.
~~~
mdasen
I think you've hit the nail on the head for the bullish Tesla case. I don't
think there's enough profits in the automotive industry for Tesla to be worth
$105-120B. Sure, Toyota is worth more, but basically no one else is and Tesla
is a long time from being the next Toyota and I think the odds of them
becoming the next Toyota have to be below 50% and are realistically probably
more like 5-10%. That's not a dig at Tesla, just a recognition that there may
never be another Toyota (just as no one has been dominant at anything like
Microsoft was with Windows in the 90s) and even if there is another Toyota,
it's a long shot that Tesla will be there.
I think Tesla might run into issues around energy regulation. They are working
on energy storage and solar, but we'll have to wait and see how that turns out
in the market. Energy companies are highly regulated and generally provide
highly reliable service. This comes with costs like running higher than you
can actually charge for so you don't get outages, employing a lot of people
for emergency response and storms, etc. What happens when solar roofs get
covered with snow and don't work as well? If the utility company is tasked
with making sure they have enough generation power to cover that, then we'll
still need to pay them for the investment even if we're using our solar roofs
90% of the time. We're already seeing net metering going out of fashion as the
unpredictability of it doesn't help utility companies lower their costs
enough.
Would Tesla be willing to also go into the generation and transmission side of
things? It's definitely possible, but that's also difficult. Generation is
easier since they could just set up solar arrays and batteries and sell into
the grid. However, that still means customers paying the transmission company.
It's possible that you're talking about the generation side and Tesla could
tackle that a lot easier. In terms of the transmission side, they'd probably
have to start buying utility companies which don't come cheap.
I think it's more likely that Tesla will sell tech to transmission companies
and solar roofs and small batteries to individuals. I think there's still a
lot of money and environmental benefit there, but I think transmission
companies are going to stick around. It's a good business if you're just
looking for standard return-on-investment, but it also requires dealing with a
lot of regulation and communities that end up hating on you.
\--
In terms of Tesla being up so much, it's a bit surprising. Automotive revenue
is basically flat year-over-year. Total revenue is up only 2%. So, Tesla isn't
really growing. By contrast, Apple's revenue was up 9% year-over-year and
Apple is solidly profitable today. Assuming that Tesla continues having
profitable quarters, their PE ratio would be around 250 which would be fine if
they were growing revenue rapidly.
On the plus side, Model 3 production and sales are up over 40% YoY which is
excellent, but it's clear why revenue is flat: Model S/X sales are down
significantly and they carry a high price tag. For every three Model 3 sales,
they lost a Model S/X sale. That's certainly to be expected. The Model 3 is
really nice. However, it does mean that revenue is flat.
As a car offering, I like the Model 3. However, I don't know if demand will
continue to increase. How many people want to spend $40k on a car - and
specifically a Tesla Model 3? Will there be some hockey-stick like growth in
revenue? Probably not. Profits? Maybe. Tesla's vertical integration might pay
long-term dividends. Maybe they can spend less developing things they've
already paid for or maybe they can keep spending on R&D and really outpace the
industry.
Still, it seems unlikely that they will grow more than 10x their current size
in the automotive industry. That's not a dig at Tesla. If they're pushing out
around 600k cars this year, becoming 10x the size would put them in the same
place as Ford and GM. A 17x increase would make them larger than Toyota. But
that's going to take time. It looks like Tesla is looking to increase
production capacity by 15.6% in 2020 (from their slides). At that rate, it
would take 20 years to match Toyota's capacity (starting from 640k production
capacity and compound expanding at 15.6% per year for 20 years).
Maybe Tesla can expand faster than that, but that would also likely require
moving into lower cost/margin vehicles, many more types of vehicles, etc.
Toyota has 17 US vehicles not including variants like hybrid vs non-hybrid not
to mention many more for other markets and not including things like Lexus -
Lexus adds another 12 models, not counting variations like hybrid vs non-
hybrid.
And I'm not saying that Tesla isn't going to do that. However, I think it's
going to take a long time and a 20-year horizon (and the risk involved in
money that might materialize in 20 years) deserves a discount compared to
money that's actually being earned today.
You might totally be right that Tesla will not only eat Ford and GM's lunch,
but also energy companies. However, that future is likely 20 years away with a
lot of risk between now and then. Musk has been very upfront that electric
vehicles are easier to make than ICE cars. Other auto makers are creating good
electric vehicles except they won't offer enough range because batteries are
expensive. When batteries become cheaper, will competition limit Tesla's
automotive expansion? I think they'll still be highly successful, but what
happens when Toyota or Volkswagen puts their full weight behind battery-
powered cars? Some people will surely buy them instead of Teslas. At some
point, if battery-powered cars are our future, Tesla will clash head-on with
Toyota. Toyota is so good at manufacturing. Even if Tesla is good, Toyota is
likely to find ways to capture a lot of the market. Heck, if electric cars are
more reliable as Musk touts, what happens when people double the lifespans of
their cars? That's a much smaller customer base to be selling to.
Again, I want to emphasize that Tesla is doing well, but anything with a long
time horizon has all sorts of things that can happen in the interim and Tesla
is playing a long game and going up against a lot of established incumbents
and that means risk. I don't think it means risk of bankruptcy or anything
like that, but there's a big difference between Tesla's current market cap
(around $115B in after-hours trading) and ending up as the next Mazda (a
solid, profitable, and well-respected auto maker) that's only worth $6B. Even
if they're the next VW (the second largest auto maker sitting just behind
Toyota), VW is only a $95B company - and there's a lot of risk between now and
Tesla selling 10M cars per year. Likewise, there's a lot of incumbents,
competition, and risk between Tesla's current solar and storage deployments
and eating energy companies' lunch.
~~~
reitzensteinm
I have to say, thank you for this thoughtful post.
Tesla is one of the most compelling stories to follow in recent years, but it
seems like moderates have been pushed out and discussions have devolved in to
Tesla is a fraud vs Hodl to the moon, with both sides cherry picking facts so
hard it's mildly impressive.
So the above is a breath of fresh air, and I'd love to read more in depth
takes from others whether I agree with them or not.
------
dgritsko
Model Y production ramp started in January, ahead of schedule. Deliveries
expected to start before the end of Q1. Exciting stuff!
~~~
new_realist
The Y will mostly cannibalize 3 sales, but will be good for a few quarters’
pop.
~~~
war1025
I thought the Y was most similar to the X? Am I missing something?
~~~
nordsieck
> I thought the Y was most similar to the X?
IMO, all Tesla vehicles (so far) are pretty similar to each other.
On the one hand, Y is a less expensive X.
On the other hand, Y is a bigger 3 with a hatch back.
I'm not an expert in automotive consumer behavior, but I have to imagine that
Y will cannibalize some amount of 3 sales. I also don't think that will matter
that much - there is so much demand for Tesla vehicles that they are battery
limited.
~~~
manmal
Also, Ys are more expensive, meaning an increased bottomline if they really
displace 3s.
~~~
xkjkls
Increasing the top line, not necessarily bottom line. There is nothing to
indicate that Ys have better margins than 3s.
~~~
mehrdada
There's _some_ evidence: pretty much same platform as 3 should imply roughly
the same cost structure for the Y. That+higher price implies higher margin. It
would be akin to Performance Model 3 in that sense.
~~~
xkjkls
There is still more material in the Y than the 3. That doesn't seem to
indicate better margins
~~~
manmal
But they might have reduced the number of stamped parts by an order of
magnitude, improved wiring in a revolutionary way (there’s a patent by Tesla
for that), MUCH less R&D and production setup than model 3 (they won’t make
all the mistakes twice),... and let’s not forget economies of scale, they will
produce more Y than 3.
~~~
xkjkls
All of this is theoretical and we don't have any real data on how it will
affect gross margins. When the car is larger, many things are going to be more
costly, like painting, which takes up a significant part of automotive
margins.
------
irjustin
Congrats to the whole Tesla team + SpaceX. Crushing things. It's taken a long
time, but it's all starting to pay off.
~~~
m0zg
For a while there it seemed like Musk would die from stress. He just looked
like he's hanging on by a thread, which he probably was. He seems far more
relaxed now - if I were an investor (I'm not - the company metrics are
completely detached from its valuation), I'd consider that to be a good sign.
~~~
xkjkls
I don't think investment thesis based on the body language of the CEO are
great ways to place your money.
~~~
m0zg
Given that if this particular CEO were to, like, physically die (or even just
throw in the towel) _Tesla_ would immediately die, I challenge this view of
the situation. Even in its current, more stable state, this is a good signal
that things are going well - this is not something most people can fake,
certainly not people "on the spectrum" like Elon.
~~~
xkjkls
I would never invest in any company which the bus factor is 1.
~~~
brianwawok
How many billions were made off of Amazon with a bus factor of 1?
~~~
xkjkls
I don’t think anyone who really understands Amazon would have ever claimed
that they have a bus factor of 1. In fact, I don’t think much would have
changed if Bezos retired a decade ago. There’s a reason there are two other
Amazon CEOs.
~~~
m0zg
Not really, no. I hope you don't have a large position in AMZN. It can only
have a PE ratio of 82 because investors believe in the myth of Jeff Bezos.
~~~
xkjkls
Jeff Bezos could retire tomorrow and it would barely change the stock. Is it
expensive? Sure, but it’s expensive because it has a wide variety of
charismatic businesses, not Jeff Bezos.
------
aguyfromnb
Year-over-year revenue flat, year-over-year GAAP income down 25% on 20k more
units delivered. Hard to understand...
~~~
Animats
Tesla is at breakeven. Marginally profitable for 2019, but R&D was cut by more
than the difference between last year's loss and this year's profit. Still $26
billion in long term debt, up a bit from last year. Not clear on the terms on
that. They had to agree to some awful terms about two years ago, but dodged
the bullet on some of those.
Read the numbers on page 21-22 first, of course.
~~~
jsight
R&D was at $356 million in Q4 18 and $345 million in Q4 19. For the year, it
moved from 1.4 billion in 18 to just over 1.3 billion in 19. I don't see how
these minor differences were a major factor.
~~~
xkjkls
R&D hasn't been up to depreciation for a year.
------
notananthem
Everyone's financial statements: WE'RE DOING GREAT Everyone's GAAP numbers:
ehhhhhh
~~~
xkjkls
Yeah, if you choose to pay people more in stock, its easy to make your non-
GAAP numbers look good.
------
pcurve
I guess he is happy about "Funding secured" not panning out.
~~~
xkjkls
He should be happy that he wasn't reprimanded more for faking the largest
corporate buyout of all time...
~~~
yellowbeard
He was reprimanded by the SEC: [https://www.sec.gov/news/press-
release/2018-226](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226)
~~~
xkjkls
For what he did that was a slap on the wrist. He committed the most boneheaded
act of blatant securities fraud the SEC has ever seen.
------
xiphias2
It's interesting that Model Y production in China is starting only next year,
but I can imagine that first further cost reductions in the manufacturing
process must be achieved.
------
the8472
> We also introduced in-app purchases, where our customers can buy various
> software updates, such as basic Autopilot, FSD, acceleration boost and
> additional premium features.Software will continue to play a growing role in
> our business model.
I forsee an ingress-style mobile game and "pay 1$ to outmuscle that guy on the
highway/arrive faster at work" features.
------
jaimex2
Looks like they are truly unstoppable now, Musk's plans seem to have shifted
into high gear.
------
tempsy
no joke there are several people on /r/wallstreetbets that have turned a few
hundred dollars into $1M+ in 2 months.
~~~
xkjkls
There are also several people I know who have done so at a craps table. That
doesn't make it a sustainable or recommendable activity.
~~~
tempsy
I call BS. There's no casino game outside of a slot machine that someone could
play that could turn a few hundred dollars into $1M in a gambling session.
This difference you're missing is the upside is asymmetric with options. Your
losses are capped but your gains are essentially unlimited. In a typical
casino game the house edge is >50%. If you're turning $500 into $1M at a
blackjack or craps table you're cheating.
~~~
lucasmullens
Can't you go all-in 12 times to get there? It would only work for one out a
few thousand people, but it's certainly possible.
~~~
tempsy
uh find me one real life example of someone doing that and succeeding.
on a craps table there's no bet that has no house advantage other than the
behind the line bet. Same with roulette.
and no, usually these tables have max bets, so it wouldn't be possible, if you
had got to $500k (somehow), to bet that on a single bet.
again, the difference is the upside is asymmetric with options. also it's
never an all or nothing bet like a coin flip - if your option value goes in
the wrong direction you can sell for a partial loss.
~~~
bduerst
12 second search:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWok7813jZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWok7813jZU)
Splitting hairs over whether or not it's in a casino isn't really a
requirement to being gambling, which is kind of the point.
~~~
tempsy
I was responding to the hypothetical example of betting it all on flipping a
coin 12 times to get from X to Y.
i'm not sure what your point is. this is a just a large 35x bet. turning $500
into $1M is 2000x. what casino game can you play that would get you there?
again, outside of essentially winning at a slot machine I don't know a game
where you can turn $500 to $1M.
the insight here is that options buying is _asymmetric_. max loss for
essentially unlimited gain if you bet in the right direction. there isn't a
casino table gain that has the same quality.
i'm also not suggesting this is not speculative or not akin to gambling, but
the risk/reward for options buying is better than a casino. it's also not an
"all or nothing" bet. You can sell for partial losses without losing
everything if it goes in the wrong direction, whereas table games are
generally "all or nothing".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No CEO: A Swedish company where nobody is in charge - jon-wood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38928528
======
whack
It's worth keeping in mind that this is a company of 40 people. Half the size
of most primitive hunter-gatherer tribes which had no formal organization
whatsoever. At sizes that small, everyone knows each other, everyone knows
what everyone else is doing, and people can make decisions through consensus
after a round of informal discussions.
The problems only start once the "tribe" grows beyond 150. That's when the
number of people involved is too great for the human brain to process the
entire social network. Hence why formal organisations and hierarchy are now
needed.
It's great that startups and small companies are innovating with different
organizational styles. Many of the structures found in big corporations are
overkill for small organisations where everyone knows each other. Just don't
expect any success stories from these startup experiments to scale up to
bigger companies though.
~~~
RubenSandwich
Agreed. I've noticed that organizations that often times claim to be
'leaderless', just have other implicit ways of exerting power and influence.
Truly leaderless is difficult, and requires humility from all it's members.
~~~
anigbrowl
Yep. It only works as long as everyone knows each other. I've been arguing
this point for years with my anarchist friends (both left and right
varieties), who seem unwilling to grapple with basic concepts like scale and
externalities.
I don't think straight hierarchies are the only possible organizational
structure but it does seem like more people want to be told what to do than to
think for themselves. .
~~~
dpc59
My experience working with anarchist friends is that something as simple as
leadership creates a certain hierarchy. Obviously if there's nothing formal
everyone is pretty cool, but in the organisation of a society and a longer
time frame I can see how it can lead to our historical material conditions.
~~~
anigbrowl
If you're interested, I've been toying with the idea of an organizational
structure that's loosely but explicitly modeled on the human body. My basic
idea is that since bodies are complex interdependent structures that mostly
Just Work, social structures that explicitly recapitulate human anatomy should
be inherently more robust.
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Would this open the social structure to all sorts of disease states in a
similar way to the human body?
Then you would need teams within the social structure who's role it is to seek
out pathogenic agents / sub-structures and terminate them. An immune system,
if you will. Analogy could be a police force to deal with auto-immune issues,
and a military to deal with foreign invaders.
Well, in a way, our social / structural systems already _do_ mimic bacterial
colonies: reproduce by consuming all available resources until the host system
dies or the infection is cleared.
------
didgeoridoo
I get the impression that service companies like Crisp can get away with this
kind of org structure in a way that product companies cannot. If you are
simply executing on consulting contracts, you can afford to act more like a
collection of freelancers who share a space. When doctors do this, it's called
a "group practice".
~~~
Nullabillity
> you can afford to act more like a collection of freelancers who share a
> space
In fact, that seems closer to the actual situation than the article implied.
From
[http://dna.crisp.se/docs/index.html](http://dna.crisp.se/docs/index.html) :
> None of the 30+ consultants are actually employed by Crisp (although we do
> have a few employed office staff).
~~~
walshemj
so they are self employed and not workers or employees - well until the tax
man gets involved
------
jasode
This BBC article is terrible and manipulates the reader via the omission of
critical facts. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you _first read_ the
company's recruitment webpage[1] and specifically their following sentence:
_- "It also means that there is no guaranteed salary. The only thing we
guarantee is that you will have to pay a flat fee every month plus one-tenth
of what you bill."_
After making a mental note of that, go read the BBC piece. You'll notice how
empty that article actually is. For example, the following sentence becomes
meaningless:
\- _" Ultimately, the firm hopes that its way of working could inspire other
companies to emulate the "Crisp DNA"."_
What "DNA" of Crisp exactly? The DNA of having employees _pay the company_ to
work instead of the other way around?!? Of course, the BBC article wants you
to think "DNA" as in "no CEO" instead of "workers paying a rent".
There's nothing wrong with that model (as another commenter mentioned doctors
paying into a "group practice" for shared expenses such as an office and
billing staff.)
However, leaving that fee structure out is incompetent journalism. If workers
are the ones paying the company, it's easier for them to agree not to have a
CEO manage them.
[1] Google's English translation of: [https://www.crisp.se/om-crisp/jobba-pa-
crisp](https://www.crisp.se/om-crisp/jobba-pa-crisp)
~~~
adzicg
> The DNA of having employees pay the company to work instead of the other way
> around?!? Of course, the BBC article wants you to think "DNA" as in "no CEO"
> instead of "workers paying a rent".
This is missing the point (full disclosure: I know several people working at
Crisp and co-organise workshops with them in Sweden).
I remember hearing Henrik Kniberg talk about this at Oredev a while ago, and
we ended up restructuring our consultancy firm quite close to their model in
2013. The idea is that you don't work for the company, the company works for
you. It's applicable to consultancies, where everyone effectively goes and
earns money on their own, but some shared overhead (such as accountants,
paperwork, getting master-services agreements with banks and insurance
certificates so you can do business) can be effectively shared by everyone
under the same umbrella.
our model is not a 10% haircut, but that all shared costs are divided
according to the proportion of revenue quarterly. the company also doesn't
have a boss or anyone in charge (legally, in the UK, we have designated
partners who are allowed to sign documents, but everyone has that right, so
everyone is a boss and nobody is the Boss).
Our company is also not allowed by the statute to have any assets or own any
IP, that all belongs to individuals. This is to avoid any conflict of interest
and people starting to 'work for the company' in the future.
This model obviously wouldn't apply to companies trying to accumulate
wealth/IP/assets and looking to create an exit by selling the company. But it
works amazingly well if you want a lifestyle consulting business where
everyone does their stuff.
Edit: typos
~~~
PatentTroll
This is how law firms work. In that sense, this is more like a partnership
than a corporation.
~~~
alkonaut
So law firms, barber shops and software consultants can have a no CEO
organization. Full news at 11.
------
gaius
Someone is always in charge. They've just decided not to write down the org
chart on paper, is all.
~~~
neolefty
They've written it down -- it's the board for big things and "shared among
other employees" for others. It actually sounds pretty practical to me. As
people become more responsible and self-regulating, there's less need for a
single person to be in charge in a hierarchical sense.
> The staff decided that many of the chief executive's responsibilities
> overlapped with those of the board, while other roles could be shared among
> other employees.
~~~
notahacker
They've written it down in more detail than "shared responsibilities" too.
It's a pool of self-employed freelancers handling projects in their own way
paying fees/commission to a holding company with dedicated admin/sales
responsibilities and major decisions made by a board or by vote. Paid projects
people don't want to handle themselves go to the first person to indicate
interest unless the interested parties agree otherwise. It sounds more like a
non-profit, elected-board, closed-shop Uber than "shared responsibility".
Needless to say, this model is not going to work quite so well with every type
of creative process and personnel.
------
f_allwein
Yes, similar things have been tried before. See e.g. Ricardo Semler's
Maverick! book (1993). Sounds interesting and seems to have worked well for
them (judging from the book). [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/945-excerpts-
from-ricardo-sem...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/945-excerpts-from-ricardo-
semlers-book-maverick-the-success-behind-the-worlds-most-unusual-workplace)
~~~
nickpsecurity
They went from $1 million or so to over $100 million during a time of
hyperinflation and otherwise terrible economy. There's the objective evidence
the methods produce results. Now just need to start tweaking the model in
various ways applied to other companies to see which variables had what
effects. I've seen companies get very far just minimizing
management/executives, treating employees respectfully, letting them make most
improvements, and giving above-average compensation.
------
valuearb
I know this article is misleading, it's basically a consulting organization
where they decided instead of having a partnership structure (where the old
guys get to take a piece of the young guys billings) they are a meritocracy
where everyone gets to eat what they kill. So not having admin/CEO overhead is
fine, esp. when they can all agree on the value of marketing/PR and other
shared cost programs.
But it's an interesting concept. I've managed up to 45 people at a time and
believe giving people more authority and responsibility over their area not
only better motivates them, but can lead to fantastic results. I would be
really interested in how Zappos did it, since they seem to be a larger more
traditionally organized business and had some turbulence implementing it.
------
erikstarck
Crisp is quite transparent in how they work and it's documented here if you
want to clone it yourself:
[http://dna.crisp.se/docs/index.html](http://dna.crisp.se/docs/index.html)
------
ptaipale
I wonder what happens when the first trouble comes with an accusation of
harassment, discrimination or some such thing. How will you defend the
company, who will speak for it, and who takes the personal hit that eventually
comes?
~~~
krzyk
When did any CEO take personal hit for the company? It usually is quite the
opposite, company takes the hit for CEO.
And a funny quote, from 1911s The Devils' Dicitonary:
Corporation - noun: an ingenious device for attaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
~~~
ptaipale
Many times. There's one fairly high-profile case going on where I live just
now.
Devil's Dictionary is funny but things don't completely work that way.
------
pbhjpbhj
Is this just a workers cooperative, or is there a distinction I'm not seeing?
~~~
valuearb
Yes, it's a "consultants" cooperative.
~~~
walshemj
I doubt that Crisp would be considered a coop by the Rochdale principals
Voluntary and open membership.
Democratic member control.
Member economic participation.
Autonomy and independence.
Education, training, and information.
Cooperation among cooperatives.
Concern for community.
------
mwilliamson
To me, the most interesting example of a similar organisation (that I see
rarely mentioned) is AES (an energy supplier) under Dennis Bakke, as described
in Joy at Work [1]. As he puts it, every decision made at the top was a lost
chance to delegate responsibility. He advocates the advice process: any person
can make any decision, provided that they first get advice from anybody with
expertise, and anybody who will be affected. Note that consensus is not
required: one of the desired results is that, freed from the need to persuade
others, you can focus solely on listening and understanding other points of
view. You're hopefully better informed to make a decision, and others feel
listened to (rather than feeling like their points aren't being heard as
you're trying to persuade them).
Not only did AES have tens of thousands of employees, many of them joined by
way of acquisitions of existing plants, rather than being hired by AES with
their ethos in mind. That's not to say that everybody was a good fit (some
people chose to leave given the choice), but that many stayed and eventually
appreciated the change in management structure challenges the idea that self-
management is only appropriate for a small proportion of people.
[1] [http://www.dennisbakke.com/joy-at-work](http://www.dennisbakke.com/joy-
at-work)
------
retrac98
I don't believe this works well, especially in larger organisations. Groups of
people naturally form a hierarchy, whether it's officially recognised or not.
It's human nature.
~~~
mempko
Bullshit. It's trained into people. Starts from your first day of school.
------
leeny
I expect that this method works better in a consultancy (which is what the
company in this article is) than in a startup that builds product. In a
consultancy, the customer can be the de facto CEO. They tell you what they
need and when they need it, and while actually figuring out what to build and
how isn't necessarily easy, at least there's some direction. That and each
project is, out of necessity, scoped from day one.
In a startup where you're making something, especially BEFORE you make
something and during the dark times when you don't know if the thing you're
making is something anyone wants, having a single source of vision and
direction is critical.
------
kmfrk
As implemented by Twitter.
------
alistoriv
This article, as many others have pointed out, is pretty misleading. If you
want to read about a company that functions mostly as a traditional business
with no CEO, look into the Mondragon Corporation.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation)
------
ThrustVectoring
Cynical hot take: great, now everyone might have veto power over doing things,
rather than just my chain of command.
------
nunez
they aren't alone. many boutique shops operate like this. decisions at the top
are made by consensus. everyone is their own boss. salary decisions sre made
by local managers and HR. if there is a ceo, then s/he is mostly a figurehead.
it makes sense for consultancies to operate this way because they don't really
sell "a product" as we come to think of it. They sell services in specific
areas, and growth of that business is largely contingent on the type of work
they take up, how much of it they're willing to do and keeping the structure
of the firm in an optimal state to satisfy those demands.
------
cft
Another idea: during the Soviet perestroika just before economic collapse, the
"CEO elections by employees" became quite popular in the Soviet firms.
------
leog7
So incase of fraud everyone goes to jail right ?
------
rasjani
Company's salary and organization model is very similar some Finnish
consultant companies. Vincit Helsinki at least.
------
james_niro
I would like to speak with someone in charge around here?
~~~
logfromblammo
We don't have a lord. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in
turns to act as a sort of executive officer of the week....~
------
feiss
igalia.com works in a similar fashion. No boss, some democratic global
meetings per year. Their motto: 'same salary, same responsibility'.
------
richardboegli
So they basically copied Valve? But removed the CEO part.
~~~
benbristow
[http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...](http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf)
------
tdkl
You know that ship that has no captain ?
Yeah me neither.
------
tn13
Sounds like US immigration policy.
------
unit91
[https://youtu.be/V_d55RrPfP4](https://youtu.be/V_d55RrPfP4)
Couldn't resist.
------
adamio
"Borg? Sounds Swedish"
------
dleslie
Fascinating what a culture that doesn't value personal prestige can produce.
------
id122015
By what date will we conclude "No PRESIDENT" ?
------
myf01d
Sweden, when Tumblr turns into a country
~~~
dang
We've asked you repeatedly to stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. We
ban accounts that use HN this way, so please stop.
~~~
myf01d
It's my right to write whatever I want and it's also your right to ban me
~~~
dang
It isn't your right to post whatever you want to this site, and I don't want
to ban you. I'd much prefer to convince you to use HN as intended.
There's a constant downward pressure on the quality of this site—that's how
things go on the internet—so we all have to make the effort of posting civilly
and substantively, or else HN will get worse and we'll lose the things that
make it worth visiting.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Y combinator real life application: recursive memoization - viebel
http://blog.klipse.tech/lambda/2016/08/10/y-combinator-app.html
======
viebel
Did you ever try to memoize a recursive function?
In this article, we show a real life application of the Y combinator: the
memoization of a recursive function.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee] - eternalban
https://medium.com/@aliafshar/to-the-4-white-male-policemen-who-beat-me-for-checking-the-health-of-a-sick-black-man-in-their-8d77789fb24d#.f4129orat
======
rayiner
This shit has been happening to poor black and Hispanic people for a long
time. In a sick way, it's a good thing that it's happening to doctors now.
It's easy for comfortable suburbanites to vote pro-police, but now that the
cancer has spread and police are brazenly abusing everyone else, it won't be
so easy to ignore.
We need a system of collective punishment for such conduct. "Good" police
officers should fear losing their livelihoods for helping cover up the abuses
of "bad" ones. For example, lawyers are subject to professional discipline for
failing to rat out the misconduct of other lawyers. Liability also flows up to
supervisors from reports. It creates a healthy culture of paranoia. There is
no reason police should be held to a lesser standard.
~~~
pessimizer
> "Good" police officers should fear losing their livelihoods for helping
> cover up the abuses of "bad" ones.
Good police officers do fear losing their lives and their livelihoods for
_not_ looking the other way.
I'm a strong advocate for hotlines specifically for police officers to report
other officers, backed by civilian investigative authorities with no loyalties
or connections to the police force, but with the ability to investigate and a
primary mandate to protect the reporting officer. Plenty of police officers
are disgusted by a lot of the people they work with. I've met them.
I also think that policemen involved in cover-ups of police shootings should
generally be punished more than the shooters. For the shooter, this was a
usually spontaneous act spurred by fear and rage, and happened in an instant.
The same cannot be said for the cover-up. The cover-ups create an environment
of impunity that make future shootings more likely.
~~~
morgante
We really need to develop a parallel prosecutorial system which is _only_
directed towards the police. So the only way to advance within it is to find
and punish bad cops. The current incentives are all out of whack.
------
trhway
>“He is resisting arrest!”
>They were running this weird fake dialog in the background.
it seems to be a pattern how they run plausible deniability and can do
whatever they want - one policeman may "see" something, like a gun, and
announce it thus providing the other with full legal reason to act, i.e. shoot
in the case of gun. If that "seeing" by the first happens to be just a
mistake, such mistake can never be punished until proven that it was
intentional, i.e. never. Such pattern is even completely resistant to body
cameras.
~~~
skywhopper
Yes they are trained (whether explicitly or informally between each other) to
do this. It will continue so long as it works.
~~~
gravypod
I'd like to ask you for a hypothetical. Say you are a police officer and one
of your coworkers shouts "GUN" and you don't directly see one. You see your
coworker freaking out, you see them drawing, and you see the other suspect
moving.
What do you do? Do you draw your gun/taser? I'd do that just going off of what
my coworker has said. It's entirely reasonable to suspect there to be a gun.
Now I'd like to run through two things that can happen from this point. The
suspect either has a gun or does not. If I draw my gun, point it at the
suspect, and wait till I see a gun (what the officers of the law are trained
to do) is that not a reasonable reaction?
What happens if I say "Oh I don't see it so I'm going to stand here and
watch"? My partner and some innocent by-standards might very well get hurt
because now I have to wait for my senses to catch up with what's going on
before I react.
I don't think it's unreasonable for cops to be allowed to go off what other
cops are saying. If it can be proved that a cop has lied then that's another
story. They should be punished to the full extent of the law for lying. Sadly
though it's not illegal for them to lie to or about us, it's only illegal for
us to lie to them.
~~~
jaredklewis
Of course it isn't unreasonable to work together. But the officers in the
article were colluding to cover their asses for breaking the law, not
cooperating to ensure mutual safety. And indeed, this is a pattern I read and
hear about often, unfortunately.
~~~
gravypod
Oh cool, I didn't know you could read minds and see into the past! You should
do me next!
Honestly though, we will never objectively know what the officers are thinking
in that situation nor know exactly what happened. If they were colluding or if
they did think that the person was resisting arrest. Given all the information
I have, it's not unreasonable that the officers did what they did. Someone
walks up, tries to go towards a suspect, and is confrontational when asked for
ID. That is a bit of a hint that something is off.
------
trungonnews
Santa Clara city has some racist cops. I was pulled over, accused of DUI,
arrested, illegally searched my car, brought back to the station for a blood
test. Blood test came back with zero alcohol in my body. They treated me like
I was criminal, finger printed, mugshotted. After being held for two hours, I
had to pay $300 to retrieve my car from the impound. I guess we still have a
lot of bad cops in the Silicon Valley then we thought.
~~~
Meegul
How is it at all legal for the government to demand payment for something when
you are not convicted of a crime? It's effectively a 100% discriminatory,
corrupt, and unaccountable tax. Completely reprehensible.
~~~
duaneb
This isn't even the most absurd part about citizen/cop cash transactions:
under civil forfeiture, they can take up to (iirc) $10,000 of your cash no
justification or remediation path. Really, all they need is a traffic stop or
a (suspect) smell of cannabis in the air.
~~~
SwellJoe
There is no such limit, in most jurisdictions, as far as I know...and, if you
happen to be carrying a lot of cash, it is viewed as evidence of wrongdoing.
Hell, Oklahoma has begun using a device that allows them to take money from
debit cards, as well.
My position on police has evolved over the years to the point where I don't
even really believe in "good cops", anymore. The entire system seems built to
excise honest cops and reward bullies; I can't name a single whistle-blower
cop who has kept their job, while the crimes they documented have generally
gone entirely unpunished and the perpetrators often remain on the police
force.
The only reasonable path forward I see is tearing the whole damned system down
and starting over, with a focus on prevention, rehabilitation over punishment,
restitution when plausible, de-escalation rather than military style raids,
and overall a lot better training in psychology and community policing and
less training in how to kill and maim people.
------
dleslie
This is why I teach my children never to speak to police officers, to avoid
them as much as possible, and to leave the area should they become visibly
present.
And I live in Canada; when I travel to the USA on business I stay in the hotel
or the venue and restrict my traveling as much as possible. I don't fear the
citizens, I fear the police.
~~~
soneil
That's always made me sad. My ex was American - when we moved to Ireland, I
made a habit of routinely (once a week or so) asking random policemen for
directions to places, just to teach her that they're entirely approachable
here.
The closest thing we had to a bad experience, was one chap who took it upon
himself to walk with us until we could see our destination, just to make sure
we found it. I'd only wanted to waste a moment of their time, not a few
minutes.
~~~
berntb
Weird, it seems counterproductive. Why doesn't the US police in bigger cities
try to integrate with the citizens?
Is the violence risk so big or are there legal reasons?
~~~
tptacek
They should. The phenomenon of heavily-armed police spending most of their
working hours either in a squad car or actively handling a disturbance, rather
than walking a beat, is a modern one. It's something Peter Moskos laments in
Cop In The Hood, which is a pretty decent book on the practices of modern
police forces written by a sociologist who served for a year as an experiment.
Beat policing is not one of the most dangerous occupations in the US, and a
lot of the danger police face is self-generated: readiness to escalate
conflict alters the calculus of offenders as well.
The big issue we have with current police forces is cultural, and it probably
can't be fixed by fiat. We'll have to do it at the organization level, through
attrition. It's simple. For simplicity of discussion, rename all current
patrol officers "assault officers"; they're the heavily armed ones that spend
their day in cars or in confrontation. Now: stop hiring new assault officers.
Instead, for every assault officer headcount you'd hire, bring in 1.5-3 new
"compliance officers" who can walk beats, help people, de-escalate simple
criminal incidents, and very quickly summon assault officers.
(I also think that most police officers should simply be disarmed. They should
have ready access to long guns, perhaps in the trunk of their squad car, but
they shouldn't be 5 seconds from killing someone else at all times during
their work day.)
~~~
kasey_junk
"they're the heavily armed ones that spend their day in cars or in
confrontation"
This is simplifying quite a bit. Right now, most LEO are not in positions that
require being heavily armed or in confrontation. The vast majority of LEO
currently are in positions where being armed is not a benefit, if not a
outright detriment, but their training and regulation require them to carry
weapons unsafely (see for instance court security police who _must_ carry
weapons, except when they are in the courts where they actually work and where
they _must not_ carry weapons, leading to them all walking around with empty
holsters all day).
The other side of this is of course corrections officers, who have objectively
the most dangerous jobs in LEO but receive the least training, the least pay,
and the least equipment.
It turns out this is quite simply a cultural problem. The culture of law
enforcement in the United States right now is quite simply dangerous and
irrational. Without fixing that culture, renaming titles isn't going to go
very far.
~~~
tptacek
Renaming the titles isn't the point. The point is freezing new hires into that
culture, and creating a new culture to run in parallel to it.
~~~
kasey_junk
There _already_ exists a separate culture without weapons (corrections
officers). Its universally less paid, less equipped, less respected and more
dangerous.
~~~
tedunangst
So we create a _third_ culture, beat cops who aren't gun slingers.
------
13of40
I had a conversation a little like that when I was a teenager, without the
beating part:
ME: Am I being arrested?
COP: No, you're being detained. Get in the car.
ME: And if I don't?
COP: Then I'll arrest you.
ME: For what?
COP: For resisting.
ME: Resisting what?
COP: ?!?!? Just get in the damned car.
------
my_first_acct
From Felipe Hoffa's twitter feed [0]:
"Ali is a manager at Google. Ali is a doctor. Ali knows his rights. @aliafshar
was brutally attacked by the police."
Related tweets hint that the incident may have taken place in Santa Clara,
California..
[0]
[https://twitter.com/felipehoffa/status/776131486437081088?la...](https://twitter.com/felipehoffa/status/776131486437081088?lang=en)
~~~
exolymph
Article says El Camino, California (perhaps an update?)
~~~
gregatragenet3
El Camino is a street. It runs from San Jose nearly to San Francisco.
~~~
aetherson
Heh. It runs from San Diego to the North Bay.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Camino_Real_(California)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Camino_Real_\(California\))
------
WalterBright
Consider it from the cops' point of view. A random person shows up and wants
to "check the health" of their suspect. When asked for id, he wants to debate
"why". Does he seriously think they'll let some unknown person who refuses to
provide id interfere with their arrest? Would any cop in any country allow
this?
What he should have done is opened with "I am a licensed physician, here's my
license and id. May I check the person's health, he appears to be having a
seizure?"
It does appear the cops overreacted, but how could he expect anything but a
negative reaction from the way he approached it?
~~~
morgante
How is that at all relevant?
He could have shown up and started cussing at them and they wouldn't have
justification to beat him up and arrest him.
Cops are supposed to serve us, not the other way around. We shouldn't have to
be afraid of them or treat them like volatile, emotional dictators (though
that's exactly what they are).
~~~
generic_user
A crime scene and an arrest in progress are not an informal gathering of a
bunch of people you can happily join in.
By interfering for any reason with a crime scene in progress you are putting
the Officers lives in jeopardy and possibly your own if you you make the wrong
choices. They are fully sanctioned under the Law to take your life if they
feel threatened in the line of duty. Even something as simple as putting your
hand in you pocket could be a life threatening situation and you could be
shot.
~~~
morgante
This attitude is abhorrent. Asking questions is not justification for a cop to
do _anything_ to you, even at a "crime scene."
Cops are not dictators allowed to commit murder because they "feel
threatened." They are supposed to be trained professionals who asses actual
risks.
Cops are not judge and jury, or at least they're not supposed to be.
> They are fully sanctioned under the Law to take your life if they feel
> threatened in the line of duty.
That's a terrible attitude and is _not_ the law, though unfortunately law
enforcement protects its own and will never prosecute police.
I have a right to self-defense. Does that mean I have the right to shoot
police when I feel threatened by them driving behind me as I go on my morning
walk?
~~~
generic_user
"I have a right to self-defense."
No you do not have the right of self defense against a Police Officer. If you
try to assault an Officer you will more then likely be shot and killed. The
Officer will be completely within the bounds of the law.
~~~
foobarcrunch
It's not so black-and-white as you try to oversimplify a myriad of issues and
legalities. It depends. If the man stayed at a reasonable distance, presented
ID, approached calmly and slowly and said he needed to check the health of the
prisoner because he is both a doctor and required to render aid under Duty to
Rescue, and then waited for permission or made his intentions clear if denied,
things might've happened differently. Regardless, that jurisdiction is likely
to be out a few million to settle this matter and this guy will be slightly
richer.
“Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting
officer's life if necessary.” Plummer v. State, 136 Ind. 306. This premise was
upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case: John Bad Elk v.
U.S., 177 U.S. 529. The Court stated: “Where the officer is killed in the
course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is
resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when
the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer
had no right. What may be murder in the first case might be nothing more than
manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been
committed.”
“An arrest made with a defective warrant, or one issued without affidavit, or
one that fails to allege a crime is within jurisdiction, and one who is being
arrested, may resist arrest and break away. lf the arresting officer is killed
by one who is so resisting, the killing will be no more than an involuntary
manslaughter.” Housh v. People, 75 111. 491; reaffirmed and quoted in State v.
Leach, 7 Conn. 452; State v. Gleason, 32 Kan. 245; Ballard v. State, 43 Ohio
349; State v Rousseau, 241 P. 2d 447; State v. Spaulding, 34 Minn. 3621.
“When a person, being without fault, is in a place where he has a right to be,
is violently assaulted, he may, without retreating, repel by force, and if, in
the reasonable exercise of his right of self defense, his assailant is killed,
he is justified.” Runyan v. State, 57 Ind. 80; Miller v. State, 74 Ind. 1.
“These principles apply as well to an officer attempting to make an arrest,
who abuses his authority and transcends the bounds thereof by the use of
unnecessary force and violence, as they do to a private individual who
unlawfully uses such force and violence.” Jones v. State, 26 Tex. App. I;
Beaverts v. State, 4 Tex. App. 1 75; Skidmore v. State, 43 Tex. 93, 903.
~~~
generic_user
It's possible that if this persons behaviour was conducted in a professional
manner they would have let him into the crime scene but thats a very small
possibility. The Police can call in an Ambulance or Fire rescue on a whim if
they need it. Its more likely that they would not take the risk. At a minimum
they would have to ID you and search you first.
I doubt very highly this case will make it to court. Or see any sort if
compensation.
"Show me your ID"
"Why?"
"Show me your ID! You must obey an officer."
"I haven't done anything, I need to know he is OK, and I will be on my way"
Thats where any possibility of a civil ending to this story ends. He refused
to show his ID while trying to enter a crime scene while officers were
apprehending a suspect. At that point he becomes a danger to the Officers.
Possibly an accomplice to the person in custody. Who knows what the crime was,
how many suspects they were looking for etc.
On the self defence note, if anyone were to attempt to enter a crime scene and
refuse to show ID and manage to get into an altercation with an Officer which
lead to your death. There would be no chance that Officer would be on the
wrong side of the law.
------
williamgb
Interesting to see that "white" managed to lead the spate of pejoratives
toward the end of the article ("Each of 4 white, ignorant, racist asshole
police officers").
I've been the victim of interracial crime, at least once due to my race. I did
not consider the race of my assailants to be anywhere near the top of the list
of characteristics to which I should like to object.
~~~
AWildDHHAppears
Without any facts, I'm skeptical. He should either move on with his life, or
make a formal complaint and/or a lawsuit.
Taking the middle road with a story with few details on Medium doesn't help
anyone.
~~~
harry8
I didn't believe Bill Cosby's accusers. Neither did law enforcement. Seeing
the cover of the magazine with so many accusers, yeah maybe I and law
enforcement were both wrong and it needed a closer look. Didn't want to
believe it.
It could be the same with all of these stories of law enforcement behaving
very badly. It seems like a weird thing for so many disparate people to be
fabricating. Maybe there is a problem and reporting it isn't getting toward a
solution? If it happens to you, silence is almost certainly the wrong course
of action. I don't want to believe there is an endemic problem with law
enforcement either. What I want shouldn't matter at all.
------
mdadm
Why does "white"/"male" matter? I understand that this is potentially a very
contentious question, but I genuinely don't understand why those are listed in
the title, or why "white" was the first in a list of insulting words used at
the end of the article.
~~~
powertower
What really gets to me is the fact that white societies are the number #1
immigration destinations for non-whites, and are entirely responsible for this
person's opportunities and high standards of living.
Yet all he sees is white racism.
edit: since I can't reply anymore; to that one person...
You've missed the point entirely.
1\. You don't know that race had anything to do with what happened. All you
have is one side of a story that keeps dragging race into it. Which is very
racist in itself.
2\. If white societies where racist, they would not be the #1 immigration
destination or have the highest standards of living for non-whites (or even
let non-whites in).
~~~
oconnore
But he's probably right (and he's certainly the most qualified to comment on
this incident). I'm pretty sure if I had walked up and said, "Is everything
all right? I'm a medical doctor in case you need a hand with anything." the
situation would have gone _much_ differently.
Furthermore, even if he isn't right, there is plenty of evidence of a growing
white nationalism/racism in this country that the article wouldn't be any less
relevant if you could somehow prove that these four particular officers are
not racist.
~~~
anexprogrammer
But he didn't identify himself as a doctor. I can't help feel the encounter
may have gone differently if he had.
Not that the behaviour is any more acceptable if he was just a random passer
by.
------
gravypod
Had I read through this article years ago I'd feel very different about this
then I do now. My default position is, and always will be, to suspect the
government is at fault but that being said I still understand why police
officers do what they do.
I'd like to leave something that has helped me to understand the thought
process of most police officers. There is a youtube channel called "Think Like
A Cop - The Rest Of The Story" run by an..... interesting character. He's an
expolice officer who, by all accounts I've been able to find, was very good at
what he did.
He presents the "other side of the story", the side of the police that you
don't usually hear well developed. From watching many of his videos, I can
pretty safely assume that he doesn't trust the government, I'm fairly sure he
isn't racist, and I'm fairly sure he isn't sexist. What is more representative
of him is that he tries his hardest not to be politically correct. It is my
opinion that even if you don't respect him as a person, you can probably
respect his methods of thinking about problems and his experience as a police
officer. I'd hope some of the people here watch some of his stories about how
cops react to situations as he makes things that seem 100% unreasonable seem
much more sensible.
For instance his motto is "no people belong on the ground" which refer to to
people who want to be adversarial to the police. This policy is blanketed
across all people that cops deal with and after watching some of his police
shooting videos you can see why. When he shows videos of cops getting shot or
killed he mostly shows videos where the police don't follow this golden rule.
This rings true with all of the cop shooting videos I've seen.
I'm not saying he is right, I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying he
offers a very "interesting" perspective that I think many will enjoy.
~~~
shawndumas
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsgkhimI0MthrMZo-F2zrTQ/fea...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsgkhimI0MthrMZo-F2zrTQ/featured)
not an endorsement; just being helpful...
~~~
gravypod
Thanks, I'd have felt kind of strange linking directly to there. He is a very
interesting person, it's well worth watching him.
------
tzs
From the comments on the article:
aggieben:> Did you identity yourself as a doctor, or in any kind of way you
had a reason to be there?
author:> No I didn’t. That was my first error. Second was not immediately
showing my ID. I certainly could have done this all better.
------
mattnewton
This struck a nerve. He should contact the ACLU, and If this guy needs money
for lawyers I'd throw in to the pot to get some precedent.
------
koenigdavidmj
We need a few very large businesses to refuse to do business with police,
against their own financial interest, before they'll notice something is
wrong. More fines that taxpayers pay aren't fixing it. If Dunkin Donuts could
be convinced not to allow cops to enter their business except with a warrant,
or Glock refused to sell a department any more weapons, they might do
something.
(Of course, this is illegal in California. And I'm hesitant to encourage this
fully without a measurable standard of when sufficient change has occurred to
start working with them again.)
------
mavdi
Yeah ok, brave guy but he will eventually get shot for doing this. Call me a
coward, but I'd never do something like this. I have a kid to raise.
~~~
mping
Thats all fine and dandy, but if it was your kid being detained (or yourself),
wouldn't you like a passerby to check on you? It's not being coward, it's
being shortsighted.
------
650REDHAIR
At what point did you identify yourself as a doctor?
~~~
fake-name
At what point does _not_ immediately notifying people that you're a doctor
remotely justify beating the shit out of you?
~~~
AnimalMuppet
It doesn't justify the _beating_. But if a random guy walks into the middle of
a police confrontation, that random guy is going to be presumed hostile until
proven otherwise, with some fairly good reason. He just made the situation
considerably less safe, even with the best of cops.
From there, the cops went completely out of control. But notifying them that
he was a doctor might have prevented them from starting down that path.
------
joesmo
I'm sorry that this happened to the author, but the author has no common sense
whatsoever. In addition to suing these officers and the police department, he
should probably consider getting some common sense and _never_ approaching a
police officer again. I mean, seriously, what did he expect would happen? That
they would let him check the suspect? That's so incredibly far-fetched and
ridiculous, I cannot even imagine it! Does this guy even know what country he
lives in? As was quoted in another piece today, "This is America."
~~~
wfo
"Common sense" is only common to the people who know it already.
There are plenty of people who think the vast majority of the police are
public servants trying to do their job, serve and protect. Maybe they're
right. Some are. I've had good interactions with police officers and bad ones.
The author was trying to do the right thing and maybe save someone's life. If
a woman screams for help in a dark alley, it isn't common sense to run in and
try to help her -- you're putting yourself in the line of fire. But it's brave
and we celebrate and worship the people who do it rightfully as heroes, we
don't berate them for "not having common sense" and putting themselves at
risk.
What he did took courage or naive ignorance (or both) and from the rest of the
article I'm fairly certain it's not ignorance -- he's well aware of rampant
police brutality.
~~~
powertower
He witnessed white cops and a handcuffed black male who he claims was possibly
muttering to himself.
No one was beating anyone, no one was bleeding out.
Common-sense is he interfered and made the situation worse.
~~~
wfo
He didn't interfere (he asked some questions as a certified medical
professional) and he didn't make the situation worse. The officers made the
situation worse, and he probably made things better for the guy in question --
would you want those particular violent abusive officers spending the next
little while with their full attention on YOU? Ideally they'd be in jail, but
if he distracted them for a while the guy's probably better off -- maybe the
author took a beating the guy would have received.
------
powertower
Wait for the evidence, and the other side of the story, before making a
judgment.
The last 9 out of 10 of these types of stories turned out to be completely
hoaxed on the part of the victim.
~~~
rjn945
Do you have a link to an example of hoax story? I haven't seen that.
~~~
powertower
Take any racial media story...
From the Duke-lacrosse rape case, to the shooting of Michael Brown, the "clock
boy", the black woman killed in jail, and everything in-between and beyond.
All proved to be false narratives.
The list is so large that I'm constantly surprised by the opinion that such a
thing does not exist.
------
generic_user
"As I pulled over to ask if the gentleman was OK, I was immediately threatened
with a ticket for blocking traffic. I re-parked my car legally and returned."
This person drove past the scene of a crime while Police Offices were in midst
of arresting someone. He stopped his car was told to move. He then proceeded
to park his car car and approach the suspect.
I'm sorry but if you pull your car over and interferer with a crime scene
where the police are in the midst of an arrest you will be arrested and
incapacitated to preserve the safety of the officers.
The 'Evil White Man' is sadly, predictable click bait to drive traffic. I'm
sure this person would be in court if he had a case. But any lawyer is going
to tell you if you interfere with police business you have no case.
------
davesque
While I basically agree with the argument of this article -- that it's not
okay for officers to be so aggressive, abusive, and dishonest -- I don't find
the tone to be very helpful for a couple of reasons.
1) The word "white" appeared in a sequence of insults toward the end of the
article. It's hard to deny that, while this kind of talk might be broadly
accepted, it's still basically racism. Fundamentally, the ethnicity of the
officers is irrelevant. The account of what happened didn't even mention the
officers calling out the author's race.
2) It's understandable that a person would feel extremely angry after an
experience like this. Even so, it seems the author hasn't let much of his
anger die down since the time of the event. The tone of the article is not
only angry, but quite frankly, a bit juvenile e.g. the talk about hiring a
"badass" lawyer.
Either way, I don't feel like much good will come as a result of this
incident. I'd feel differently if Mr. Afshar spent his time calmly talking
about how he took the officers to court, what kinds of evidence he cited
against them, and how others could do the same.
~~~
justin66
I'm white and I didn't view it as any sort of racist slur to identify the cops
as white. It indicates that the author viewed his treatment, and the treatment
of the handcuffed suspect, at the hands of police as probably being racially
motivated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are the most innovative technologies for fighting wildfires? - panabee
======
kristoft
There is one thing I'm always thinking about: a mesh network of autonomous
devices that scattered across a field or a forest and a base nearby. These
devices can have temperature sensors and someone can rather quickly see that
something is going wrong either by temperature or if some amount of devices
went down (say burnt in fire). I think those things called sensor networks or
something like this.
~~~
2rsf
I am not sure how can this scale up, if a sensor can cover X square meters
then you need a LOT of them to cover huge forests like Sweden has for example,
not to mention the amount of bases, communication channels etc.
~~~
giantg2
If it's on a tower on the peak of a hill, the coverage might be measurable in
miles. That's the case with fire towers today. But yeah, even then scaling
could be difficult. It might work for realtively smaller, more developed areas
prone to fires, such as parts of CA. Maybe put them on existing cell towers?
------
2rsf
Fighting or detecting ? I think that the most efficient way of detection is by
covering a lot of area at once and satellites are best for that, I see that
there are multiple efforts being done around automatic real time detection and
alerting of forest fires from above.
------
rawgabbit
Aerial drones with thermal imaging cameras to predict where wild fires will
occur.
[https://apnews.com/3546526d7ce34881a92df0688268e3a4](https://apnews.com/3546526d7ce34881a92df0688268e3a4)
------
probinso
Regular intentional Burns.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: iCombinator back up - bdotdub
Hi all,<p>Apparently iCombinator.net has been down for the past couple of days. It should be resolved now.<p>I've also fixed:<p>- "Next 30 Stories...". Looks like this was also not working for a while. back up! :)<p>- Instapaper-ing HN items (such as these 'Tell HN', 'Ask HN', etc. stories) will now work. It had previously been trying to instapaper the relative iUI url.<p>Enjoy and sorry about the downtime!<p>(thanks to @stephencelis for the heads up!)
======
jacquesm
I'd suggest 'nagios' to monitor if your stuff is working. That way you don't
need to wait until a user alerts you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Web 2.0 names that were stolen from my 4 year old - eastsidegringo
http://tracksuitceo.com/2008/07/17/web-20-names-that-were-stolen-from-my-4-year-old/
Jaiku, that was just bought by Google and Joomla are both names invented by the author's 4 year old. He wants her to get some credit...
======
ScottWhigham
Cute :)
You could use the Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator if you don't want to pay those
steep, 4yo consulting rates :)
<http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Systems for supporting Evidence-Based Policy? - westurner
What tools and services would you recommend for evidence-based policy tasks like meta-analysis, solution criteria development, and planned evaluations according to the given criteria?<p>Are they open source? Do they work with linked open data?
======
westurner
> _Ask HN: Systems for supporting Evidence-Based Policy?_
> _What tools and services would you recommend for evidence-based policy tasks
> like meta-analysis, solution criteria development, and planned evaluations
> according to the given criteria?_
> _Are they open source? Do they work with linked open data?_
I suppose I should clarify that citizens, consumers, voters, and journalists
are not acceptable answers
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intel SPMD Program Compiler: A Compiler for High-Performance SIMD Programming - kick
https://ispc.github.io/
======
rrss
Matt Pharr wrote a series of posts telling the story of ispc:
[https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/18/ispc-
origins.html](https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/18/ispc-origins.html)
I found them extremely interesting - highly recommended.
~~~
joe_the_user
That is an interesting read - compiler writers got hung up on creating auto-
vectorization where Cuda is essentially manual vectorization. And that's the
thing. Once you find ways that writing a massively vectorized program on a GPU
makes sense, why would you write a program where you had to _hope_ your
program gets vectorized?
That said, as I understand things, vectorization can fail with Cuda if you
allocate more kernels than exist on the chip, in which case the chip may run
the kernels in serial, producing surprising results.
~~~
rrss
That isn't really a failure case in cuda (or opencl). It's very common to
launch more blocks/workgroups than can be resident simultaneously on the GPU.
~~~
joe_the_user
Neither autovectorization-fail nor Cuda executing kernels in serial is a
"fail-fail", both are fall-back actions that accomplish a given task in a bit
longer than the explicit instructions imply. That said, executing kernels in
serial can supposedly create problems if a programmer creates logic that
assumes kernels are always moving in lock-step.
------
corysama
I only played with ISPC a little bit. What I found is that it is really great
if you need to write a large volume of SIMD code and that code sticks to one
lane size. Like, 4 32-bit floats or ints. But, if you want switch mid-stream
to 8 shorts or 16 bytes, you’re gonna have a hard time. Or, if you just need a
few instructions, it’s easier to just use intrinsics.
~~~
BubRoss
I would have to see an example of what you mean, but it should be completely
possible though might require converting without using vectorization.
Switching lane size doesn't make much sense to me because ideally you would
want lanes that are as wide as possible and mostly be agnostic to their size.
~~~
corysama
I had some code that tried to stay 16x8bit, but would occasionally
_mm_unpacklo_epi8, _mm_unpackhi_epi8 to 2 8x16bit vectors to keep precise
intermediate results during some fixed-point math.
Writing it out like that, it sounds like it should have been easy. Don't
remember what I ran into. Maybe didn't bang on it long enough.
~~~
BubRoss
The original AVX instructions didn't have all the integer operations that the
most modern chips have. It might have been haswell that added small integers
over the 256 bit lane width.
~~~
stephencanon
Right. AVX (the original extension) only added 256b floating-point and non-
destructive 128b integer. The 256b integer SIMD ops are all in AVX2 or later.
------
gnufx
This would benefit from a comparison with current OpenMP/OpenACC (which
supports offloading to attached processors in a standard way for C and
Fortran, at least). Also, comparing with gcc 4.2 in the performance examples
doesn't seem very useful; it didn't support AVX, regardless of auto-
vectorization. (That's not meant to dismiss ISPC.)
------
yarg
It's open source, so it should be fine?
But Intel's history when it comes to compilers and applied optimisations
leaves this making me immediately uncomfortable.
The sort of PR work that these guys would need to do in order for me to
consider them even remotely trustworthy is beyond even their budget.
~~~
wahern
You don't have to guess. The process of upstreaming and the [then] current
state of ARM support is described here:
[https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/29/ispc-
retrospective.ht...](https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/29/ispc-
retrospective.html)
Not sure what conclusions to draw from that, but it looks like ARM support was
finally made first class this past August:
[https://github.com/ispc/ispc/blob/cf90189/docs/ReleaseNotes....](https://github.com/ispc/ispc/blob/cf90189/docs/ReleaseNotes.txt)
I think it might be difficult to purposefully cripple AMD in an open source
project.
~~~
loeg
> I think it might be difficult to purposefully cripple AMD in an open source
> project.
It's not as explicit as it has been in the past, but the CPUID checks for very
specific feature sets aligned with particular Intel models may not match AMD
models, producing worse code on AMD models that support featuresets above
baseline AVX2:
[https://github.com/ispc/ispc/blob/master/check_isa.cpp#L106-...](https://github.com/ispc/ispc/blob/master/check_isa.cpp#L106-L140)
That said, I don't assume malice here and I haven't investigated thoroughly.
Most likely they just want to support their own silicon well and that's what
they know. It's possible they would accept similar support for AMD µarchs in
the OSS project (or maybe not).
I wouldn't draw too much inference from the ARM example, as I don't see ARM as
an Intel competitor. AMD, on the other hand, is currently very competitive
with Intel.
~~~
mcbain
I’ve spent time writing CPU detection code for previous projects, and there is
nothing that jumps out at me as biased in the linked ISA check. In fact that
is really the bare minimum required to split the AVX variants, and will detect
AMD support just the same as Intel.
You can compare it to other detection functions - one relatively easy to read,
non-vendor biased example that does dig into all the extensions is this Go
implementation (not mine):
[https://github.com/klauspost/cpuid/blob/master/cpuid.go](https://github.com/klauspost/cpuid/blob/master/cpuid.go)
~~~
loeg
Right, it looks pretty reasonable to me too. Zen2 still doesn't have AVX-512
anyway, so the super parallel paths this aims to really help aren't applicable
anyway.
Zen1-2 should land on the "AVX 2 (Haswell)" path in the linked excerpt -- they
have AVX/AVX2, F16C, OSXSAVE, and RDRAND -- which is the best ISA without
AVX512 implemented in the compiler. That's entirely reasonable on Intel's
part.
(I don't know why they look for RDRAND in a compiler, but whatever.)
~~~
moonbug
Because it has an rdrand() function.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can Glucose Replenish Willpower? - CMartucci
http://whatblag.com/2011/08/21/can-glucose-replenish-willpower/
======
6ren
It might not be literal glucose consumption, but the body figuring it has
calories to spare to indulge in a pointless (for survival) lab exercise.
~~~
sixtofour
Yes, the blog poster states that the brain consumes .25 calories per minute.
But we are more than just our brain. The brain is part of a complex system.
And so we can reasonably ask if our willpower, or other mental measures, could
be affected by non-brain parts of the system.
~~~
CMartucci
Of course the brain is affected by non-brain parts of the system. But my point
is that, in order for glucose to "replenish" willpower, it should be the case
that some task depleted glucose by some significant amount -- hence the need
for replenishment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the United States Learned to Cyber Sleuth - boh
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/russia-cyber-war-fred-kaplan-book-213746
======
jessaustin
One might expect that eventually they would start ignoring FBI.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Worker injuries, 911 calls, housing crisis: Recruiting Tesla exacts a price - navigatesol
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/11/12/tesla-gigafactory-brings-nevada-jobs-and-housing-woes-worker-injuries-strained-ems/2452396001/
======
foxyv
I think USA Today has forgotten how dangerous most industry is. Especially
construction work. 8,000 workers in an environment that hazardous are going to
injure themselves. At a concert with 8,000 people you can expect that there
will be medical emergencies, fights, and 911 calls galore. That's without
heavy lifting, and machinery that can remove limbs.
What's surprising to me is that they haven't had a fatal accident yet. After a
couple years of operation you would expect at least 1-2 people to die
actuarially speaking in a worker population that large.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google's nit-picky interview process is a turnoff for some experienced coders - jahan
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-an-older-google-contract-programmer-left-google-2016-10
======
smt88
It's a good goal for your interview process to "turn off" or filter some
experienced hires. Not all experienced people are good coders.
Google, however, seems to be selecting/rejecting the wrong people. I've used
dozens of Google products, and not one of them is stable/reliable (except for
Gmail).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is There Any Good Open Source Voice-Activated Virtual Assistant? - FiveSquared
======
mabynogy
OpenJarvis:
[https://github.com/alexylem/jarvis](https://github.com/alexylem/jarvis)
I'm also on that with some folks on irc (check my profile for contact).
------
neilsimp1
[https://snips.ai/](https://snips.ai/)
This was posted on HN the other day. I can't vouch for whether it's any good
or not, but at quick glance it looks interesting.
------
wenbo
Check out [https://mycroft.ai](https://mycroft.ai)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Please Re-Review My Webapp - boundlessdreamz
Site: http://www.celebsutra.com<p>Previous Review:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=869803<p>New since last review:<p>Top celebs by twitter activity and followers, Pictures shared by celebs are easily browseable and I think the celeb list was revamped after the previous review.<p>About:
Celebsutra aggregates tweets by celebrities. This a side project I was working on for fun<p>Design is by a friend of mine: http://sandosh.info/v2/pages/home/<p>Thanks in advance for spending your time on reviewing the site. :)
======
boundlessdreamz
Clickable links
<http://www.celebsutra.com>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=869803>
The image browser can become popular is my hunch.
<http://www.celebsutra.com/celebs/pictures>
~~~
prawn
(Not your target market, but I'm sure with some work your site could be
interesting to some.)
1\. As someone has already said, feature the photos more strongly in your
layout. Otherwise what you've put up is a little too like Twitter Lists,
right?
2\. Maybe make their name and photo larger (even if it means using a stronger
photo that isn't their current avatar).
3\. Upgrade the design - it's pretty bland and not very "celeb". Needs to be
brighter and bolder.
4\. You'll want to have more countries represented before plugging it to the
public - I'm sure you could do a country per evening for a couple of weeks,
just find a list of movie and sports stars, track them down online and get
them into your database.
~~~
boundlessdreamz
1: Yeah. Will be doing so
2: In the photo view or the tweets view ?
~~~
prawn
Tweets view. For celeb lovers, I imagine a big part of it is the vibrant looks
and identities and small avatars might not really cut it. Maybe just use a
larger version of their avatar because custom-creating your own adds more work
you don't want to be doing.
------
joez
Can you have a view that shows the last tweet of each celebrity you want to
see? This might be a good alternative to getting spammed by one prolific
celebrity (or one who is paying someone to twitter for them). This might go
against the real time grain though... maybe use AJAX and sort the a celebrity
who just tweeted to the top?
Also, reach out to some celebrities and see if you can get them to tweet you.
I know some maybe receptive if this will help them get more users. I.e. if you
know that users who followed Martha also likely followed Newt Gingrich, you
could build a suggestion engine. (you maybe able to scrape twitter for this
data?)
Hopefully this feedback was of nonzero value. Unfortunately, I don't think HN
is the same demographic as the one you are targeting :)
Edit: Oh I just had an interesting idea. When people sign up for your service,
give them an opt-in to also follow celebsutra. Whenever someone follows a
celeb through celebsutra, you RT their action. (@biggestcelebfan just follow
@bigceleb through @celebsutra) This could be a kind of discover engine for
people to find people with the same interest. I know it's a little spammy,
make it an easy opt out but it could easily create a viral loop.
------
delano
Interesting.
It would be more useful for me if it displayed only a subset of messages from
any one account. Some accounts are very active (e.g. Martha Stewart:
<http://www.celebsutra.com/tweets/index?profession=Corporate> ). I'd like to
be able to get a sense of what's happening from a single page.
What is your target audience by the way?
~~~
boundlessdreamz
If you register you can choose the celebs you want to see.
Target audience is anyone interested in following celebrity news. Readers of
tmz.com etc.
------
mailarchis
1\. I guess you might wanna test with putting fewer pics on home page but of
higher resolution if possible. It can be two rows with a simple right/left
arrows that pull in more pics without requiring the page to refresh.
2\. For login you can use Twitter's OAuth
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Douglas Coupland: Moody - century19
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c737c3fc-1468-11e5-ad6e-00144feabdc0.html
======
plg
"Douglas Coupland is currently artist in residence at the Google Cultural
Institute in Paris"
Try explaining THAT to someone from past decades. Wow
~~~
jgrahamc
The Medici's made a fortune in banking and politics and were great sponsors of
art.
~~~
kitcar
I think more-so what past decades may find unusual is that a Canadian, born in
Germany, is an artist in residence position in France, at an American
institution.
~~~
mariodiana
In all fairness, in the days of the Medicis, those who were both educated and
well-off lived in as cosmopolitan a society as the one you describe.
------
robotresearcher
> Until the mid-20th century, alcohol was it.
Not really. Cannabis, opium, mushrooms, etc. have been around forever and have
been marginalized to a greater or lesser extent over time, and often much less
than they were in the 20th century.
I've enjoyed some Coupland work, but I didn't get this piece at all.
~~~
hunterjrj
I'm with you - this is a noted (at least in Canada) author, who appears to be
ignorant of history and especially of markers in his own craft. Sherlock
Holmes/snuff, etc.
~~~
coldtea
> _Sherlock Holmes /snuff, etc._
Sherlock Holmes or Freyd etc, is not indicative of any trends in the general
population. Might as well have used Mescalito indians as an example to rampant
psychedelics use in the USA in the 19th century...
~~~
hunterjrj
"It originated in the Americas and was in common use in Europe by the 17th
century"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_%28tobacco%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_%28tobacco%29)
~~~
coldtea
In the same Wikipedia articles it mentions several times that it mostly spread
among the elites.
------
applecore
Is “neural reconfiguration generated by extended internet usage” a real
phenomenon, or is that just a clever turn-of-phrase for reading?
~~~
blfr
Neural reconfiguration generated by extended anything is probably real. This
is the point of practicing or training.
~~~
coldtea
It also happens with not practicing and not training, drug use, prolonger
stress, brain-washing etc (in the negative way).
------
facepalm
I usually like to read Coupland, but I disagree here. Seems to me there were
always ways to experience different moods: simply by doing things. Watching a
sun setting would evoke different moods than chopping wood or reading a book.
------
treerock
I get the impression, reading certain writers, that they live in some parallel
universe very different from my own. Just about every paragraph here had me
saying 'what?'.
~~~
shadeslayer
Try reading Generation X [1] by the same guy, I'm still trying to make sense
of the book after 2 weeks of finishing it :P
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X:_Tales_for_an_Acc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X:_Tales_for_an_Accelerated_Culture)
~~~
equalsione
20+ years later it's hard to have a context on Generation X and how perfectly
it captured that moment in time. (American Psycho was published the same year
- how's that for context!). Post-Regan, Post-yuppie (well, almost), Pre-
grunge, mostly pre-internet...
Generation X, McJob etc are all parts of the lexicon now. Fight Club always
felt to me like a kind of follow-up to Generation X.
It's the weakness in Couplands whole "capture the zeitgeist" storytelling. 150
years on, Great Expectations is still relateable. Generation X, not so much. I
still love the book though :-)
------
Kluny
I don't exactly disagree with what he said, but what was the point of this
article?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Firefox 3.5 is out, But Are You Dazzled? - aj
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/firefox_35_arrives_today.php
======
dpcan
It's not about being dazzled. When you go on a road trip, you rotate the
tires, check the brakes, wash the windows, change the oil and fill it up with
gas - and not because it's dazzling, but because you need to be prepared for
the road ahead. Not to mention you must be able to maintain the pace with the
other vehicles on the road.
"Dazzling" will come (or so the rumors say) but right now it's about being
competitive, useful and functional.
------
profquail
The one feature I've noticed so far is that the page renders much faster than
it used to. I guess this is the "speculative rendering" changes made to Gecko
(FF's layout engine). In fact, it made me realize that a lot of page loading
time is probably due to slow-loading ads or scripts, not because the actual
website or my connection is slow.
~~~
aj
I've also noticed that my FF instance uses a LOT less memory. Where the usual
60 tabs would take 400+ MB (and a max of 1gig+ sometimes) of memory, it now
hardly goes more than 350 MB and an average of 275-300 MB
~~~
ramidarigaz
60 tabs? WOW. I never use more than 10-15. Right now, I have 12 open, and FF
is using a total of 172MB.
~~~
aj
Hehe.. This is less because due to a stupid tech support dude, I lost about
100+ of the open tabs
------
Tichy
I just want a nice browser, and FF delivers. I don't need the internet
reinvented. I like the awesome bar enhancements, too.
------
sp332
Yes!
[http://labs.pimsworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/demo-
co...](http://labs.pimsworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/demo-content-
aware-image-resizing-2/)
<http://craigmod.com/journal/font-face/>
<http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/pop-art-video/>
------
natmaster
The whole point of Firefox is to not overload the average user with feature
bloat. Yes, Safari and Chrome are slightly faster than Firefox now, and this
is something that should be in core. OK. But awesomebar + ubiquity + weave?
Other browsers just barely started copying awesomebar, and the others have yet
to be copied. How are these not revolutionary?
~~~
sp332
Because they are not ready for prime-time. The Weave platform only has one
feature implemented so far (Weave Sync), and Ubiquity just recently (like last
week) figured out what kind of parser it was going to use. Sure, they're
awesome features (I use both!), but they don't count if they don't get
shipped.
------
natmaster
I don't see why private browsing should be considered a late copy for Firefox?
That feature first appeared as a Firefox extension, and was then copied by IE.
Are you saying Firebug should be included with the default Firefox install
just b/c IE has their copy of it now?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Perian is shutting down - BenSS
http://perian.org/
======
SeoxyS
I will be really sad to see it go. Perian is one of the first five things I
download when I'm on a clean install of OS X. Support has sadly been lagging
when it comes to MKV, and for that I still keep VideoLan around; but otherwise
I love having full system-wide QuickTime support for all common video formats
(AVI).
~~~
peter_l_downs
What are the other four things?
~~~
SeoxyS
Adium. Quicksilver. Homebrew. Dropbox.
Also: Chrome, Xcode, Skitch, Divvy and the basic CLI tools.
~~~
fusiongyro
It's funny. I used to use Psi, but then I switched to iChat. I used to use
Quicksilver, then I switched to Launchbar, and now I just use Spotlight. I
have Homebrew, because MacPorts can't install 3.2 of GNU Smalltalk and for no
other reason. I haven't installed Dropbox ever, or Skitch (never heard of it,
will check it out) or Divvy (I think I downloaded a demo of it once, thought
it would be cool, and never went back to buy it).
I don't know what my problem is, but I guess my need for new features keeps
diminishing. Maybe in forty years I'll finally be able to use Plan 9.
~~~
sjs
I went from LaunchBar to Quicksilver to Spotlight to LaunchBar. Can't live
without that clipboard history! I don't use many of its other features anymore
though.
Preview annotates things well enough that I never use Skitch, although Skitch
is cool if you want to use the sharing features.
You might be missing out on Dropbox. I wouldn't want to go without it these
days as I use more than one computer regularly and don't have to remember to
commit 'WIP' on a branch before I head home, I just drop the mic and get the
fuck out. YMMV.
Divvy is great. I use it w/ SizeUp every day and wouldn't want to go without
them. I don't miss xmonad at all anymore.
Other than that I install 1Password, The Unarchiver, Growl, CrashPlan, Flux,
TextMate, iTerm, and GitX and I am good to go.
I seem to shed tools as OS X improves as well, but I hope that nobody is using
plan9 in 40 years! ;-)
~~~
fusiongyro
Agree on TextMate. Haven't heard of most of the other stuff. I used Xmonad for
about six months, then I basically copied the keybindings into an fvwm config,
then I switched to KDE, brought over a handful of the keybindings and I seem
to be alright.
I would probably use Dropbox if I didn't have a VM. A friend has been trying
to get me to use one of their competitors for a while.
Plan 9 is great, just a bit too much ideology to actually get anything done. I
hope it's still maintained in 40 years in case I do go that way. :)
------
X-Istence
This is a shame. I absolutely love Perian and it has made it much easier to
just play content without having to download VLC as well, and it just worked.
One thing I have noticed is that support for MKV/VP8/WebM has always been
pretty bad. It uses a LOT of CPU time and in general was really slow. When
YouTube put me in the HTML 5 beta it was unbeknownst to me sending me WebM
content because I had Perian installed and it was causing HUGE spikes in CPU
usage and overall lag because it was trying to decode and render WebM, whereas
h264 requires almost no CPU power on my older MBP.
I hope that the community as a whole picks up the project and helps it
succeed, it would be fantastic to still have it around.
~~~
thristian
Under the heading "Frequently Asked Questions" on the linked page, it says:
_Why does it take so long for MKV to load?_
_QuickTime expects to know the location of every single frame in a movie in
order to play it. This is easy with its native format, MOV/MP4, but more
difficult for several others, including MKV. Perian has to read in the entire
file in order for seeking and playback to work._
That's probably (part of) the reason MKV and WebM are slow for you (since WebM
uses the MKV container format).
~~~
Schlaefer
A symptom of this issue is that you have to wait _before_ you can start
playing the movie. So if you wanted to play a 1 GB mkv the player had to read
the whole 1 GB from disc once, which took a fair amount of time back in the
days.
Afaik playback performance is not affected by this. Poor playback performance
is mainly related to the lack of hardware acceleration (and codec
optimizations) people take for granted since h.264 matured on OS X.
------
kschults
Best of luck to the whole team there. It's such a great tool, and seamlessly
pulled off. I'll be sad to see it go, and I'll be crossing my fingers in the
hopes that it will work with future OS releases for a while.
~~~
mistercow
>I'll be sad to see it go, and I'll be crossing my fingers in the hopes that
it will work with future OS releases for a while.
Given that Apple has seemed to feel, for the last few OS releases, that it's
acceptable for "deprecate" and "break" to happen in the same step, I wouldn't
get my hopes up.
------
filmgirlcw
It's a shame, but I hope some other devs consider picking up development where
the Perian guys left off. Perian is one of my favorite Mac utilities because I
love using QuickTime for everything when possible.
To the team, thanks for all your years of hard work and best of luck on future
projects.
~~~
zbowling
It's not so much an issue of picking up Perian in that the new Quicktime 10
API doesn't work anything like the old Quicktime API.
Perian just made open source codecs work with Quicktime's API. Quicktime X
however demands much more that makes it impossible to do without rewriting all
the codecs. Those same codecs are directly embedded in other players (like
VLC) so it's not a big issue. Quicktime X is pushing towards hardware
acceleration, better battery life (with a few tricks), and multicore
processing that the old model just doesn't work with.
Right now when you run older codecs, Quicktime X actually runs a little host
process in 32bit that actually does the decoding using a fork of the old
Quicktime 7 code. Native codecs run in 64bit using multiple cores and hardware
acceleration.
~~~
filmgirlcw
Indeed -- I actually meant developers interested in doing native 64-bit
codecs, assuming there would be advantages. In truth, having hardware
optimized support would be ideal, but the reality is that H.264 is quickly
becoming the dominant codec, even in the HD space, that it might be a moot
point.
------
WiseWeasel
I used this at one point, but long ago switched to MPlayerOSX, finding it a
much more straightforward interface for playing random format movies than QT,
with noticeably better performance. VLC is also... an option.
~~~
Stokestack
MPlayer lacks a playlist though, which is annoying.
VLC's recent UI changes have been a step backward (specifically making it
impossible to see the playlist and the video at the same time), but at least
you can queue things up to play.
~~~
sirn
MPlayer OSX Extended[1] is your friend. It has playlist, it has nice interface
and you could swap out MPlayer player binary with a newer one (e.g.
mplayer2-git[2] or build your own via Homebrew[3]). I like MPlayer OSX
Extended far more than MPlayerX or any other alternatives, shame that it
didn't get the attention it deserves.
[1]: <http://www.mplayerosx.ch/>
[2]: <http://code.google.com/p/mplayerosx-builds/downloads/list>
[3]: <https://github.com/pigoz/mplayerosx-builds/>
~~~
Stokestack
Interesting. Thanks.
------
gurkendoktor
Perian used to be me first download on every Mac, but 10.7 does not let me
hide the file preview (top right) in column view anymore. If I scroll through
a list of video files and hit something complicated (like MKV) the Finder just
hangs. Has this bothered anyone else? Or is detail view more common in the
wild?
I love the VLC redesign though, and it arrived just in time, so I'm happy.
------
victorlamhk
It's really sad. I installed it because Quicktime and iPhoto can't play any
video taken from my Canon digital camera. Perian provided system-wide
Quicktime support for many video format and this is what VLC or MPlayer cannot
compare.....
------
Feoh
Interesting thread. I too am truly sad to see this go, while everyone is
suggesting stand alone players, I personally loved that Perian actually
extended the native tools to support all these other formats.
------
amanuel
Perian has been the first thing I install on every mac I own/use.
A sad day.
Perian team, great job guys and thanks for the many years of awesomeness.
------
kylebrown
never used perian before. seems vlc (also built on ffmpeg of course) is the
only major open source media player out there.
~~~
breidh
There's MPlayer...
<http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html>
~~~
hackermom
And in the OS X context the better form of it, MPlayerX:
<http://mplayerx.org/>
~~~
Groxx
Which has taken over Perian / VLC almost entirely, for me. Perian has been
utterly fantastic, a near ideal passive improvement for everything, but
MPlayer smokes everything in performance.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which career to choose? - dumitrupetrov
So i have two options for internship, one in java and one in PHP(symfony/Laravel).<p>I already made a wrong decision recently.
What the future say? Which better to choose to go with? I mean it the start of the career, give me some pros, cons. I want to be confident in making the decision, so its wiser to ask.
Your thougth's and opinions will greatly help!
======
deltron3030
Go with PHP/Laravel if you want to freelance or start your own software
business down the road, and want to build more generalist skills, and Java if
you want to get hired by bigger companies and their departments and need more
job security, and maybe want to specialize in a specific backend niche at that
company.
------
CoderCV
Java - Variety of future [Web, Desktop, Mobile] - develop for any platform.
Hard to enter - better the future.
PHP - Mostly only for the web - easy to enter - future just ok or very
competitive and easy looking opportunity.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best bookmark and archiving service? - arikr
I bookmark a lot of tweets. But, because I've had the bad experience of going back to an old tweet that I bookmarked to find it deleted, now I always copy out the tweet text and save it.<p>I've had a similar experience with blog posts, too, so I save them also using Evernote.<p>Is there a nice service that does bookmarking/organization of notes and automatically saves an archive of any web thing that is saved?
======
arikr
It'd be really neat if there was one that I could take notes and paste links
in, and for all links that I pasted it automatically saved the contents of
that link on my local device.
------
mindcrash
Pinboard with the archiving addon, perhaps?
[https://pinboard.in/](https://pinboard.in/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ten times the iPhone traffic on AT&T starting in June? How come? - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2009/04/03/ten-times-the-iphone-traffic-on-att-come-june-how-come/
======
swernli
My theory is based on personal desire, and some early and very fake images of
the iPhone 3G: video calling. A major desire for many users has been the
ability to record video. If they give the chance to record it, they would also
be pressured to let you send it to friends via email. But why stop there? Why
not add a front facing camera and let users video call, simultaneously using
their data connection and their mobile minutes?
Of course, these may once again prove to be pipe dreams...
------
blasdel
It's possible that there'll be _two_ new iPhone models that debut in June:
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/more-evidence-
aris...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/more-evidence-arises-for-
future-iphone-models-in-latest-beta.ars)
------
jaxn
My guess is a $99 iPhone will greatly expand market penetration in the US.
I don't think a 2x speed increase and video calls of limited utility will
create a 10x network increase.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Interview on Startup Life with millionaire entrepreneur Erica Douglass - pmichaud
http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/erica-douglass-success-in-vulnerability/
======
mikegreenberg
I must say that you have great interviewing skills. It feels like a
conversation is happening rather than firing questions at them. This something
that I feel most other amateur interviewers typically miss. Great interview!
:)
~~~
pmichaud
I appreciate it Mike, it was my first go, so it's good to get positive
feedback 8) Maybe I'll keep doing it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MIT Open Courseware for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - SEJeff
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/
======
fasteddy
Is unreadable (text too small) in Chrome browser on my Android phone. Perhaps
MIT needs a course in Responsive Web design.
------
Isamu
Question: are these courses all offered through edX? Or just a subset?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Top books discussed on Stack Overflow and other Stack Exchange sites - BookInsider
https://bookinsider.gitlab.io/
======
gallerdude
This is off-topic at best, but I find it interesting that with certain
websites which won't be named, as a college student I have basically unlimited
access to all the books, movies, and songs I'll ever want for the rest of my
life (or until anti-piracy measures get smarter).
I used to wonder what it'd be like to be a rich celebrity, and be able to buy
literally everything you want immediately. And now that I can do that in a few
fields of commerce, it's turned out to be not very exciting at all. It's good
to know that if a book looks interesting, I can have it, but it's not nearly
as exciting as I would have expected it to be. I'd imagine celebrities knowing
that they can own any house or car is kind of underwhelming.
~~~
beefield
And if you compare to anything but a handful of recent decades, you not only
can afford to buy pretty much anything that only the very richest have had
access to, you can easily buy things that even the richest have hardly even
dreamed of. And yes, still most people find their lives pretty underwhelming.
~~~
gallerdude
The weird part is how obvious this seems. Obviously, the things we have don't
make us significantly happier. But if we lived our lives with this simple
assumption, our lives would look infinitely different.
~~~
jdavis703
Expensive things I own or rent that make me happy:
* Having my own house (no random roommates or bad family members)
* Having a computer and cellphone
* Having a bike
* Having house plants
These things cost money, and also make me happy. I think the key though is to
buy and own things that will bring you joy. If maintaining house plants is a
chore you’re doing to keep up with trendy design, it won’t bring happiness. If
having a house full of greenery helps to you to feel more connected with
nature it will bring joy. Figure out the things you own that bring happiness,
and don’t buy the rest.
~~~
okr
That sounds just like me. I wonder if you buy apps. There is so much value for
me in cell phones (hm, or rather small computers), that i feel, even if it
seems like i do not spend too much, that i get a huge bargain with these small
devices: weather, nav, music, video, news, chat, photo, etcetc...
------
jasode
A friendly fyi to BookInsider: I noticed that your amazon urls have
_"?tag=bookinside-20"_ and therefore you need to clearly disclose on your
website that your book links are part of the Amazon Affiliate program.
If you don't, someone could report your website to Amazon and get your account
banned.
([https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+ban+seller+account+ta...](https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+ban+seller+account+tag+affiliate+links+disclose))
~~~
BookInsider
Thank you for your FYI, I have updated the Amazon info into the webpage now!
~~~
dclusin
Seems like you're doing things above board, kudos. I was wondering, since this
a site catering to entrepreneurship (among other subjects), if you wouldn't
mind sharing your revenue numbers from your participation in amazons referral
program. As a programmer find these sorts of lists helpful. I wonder what kind
of action you're seeing for a top post on HN :)
------
theoh
Odd that "Assertiveness at Work" comes top of the RPG books list.
[https://bookinsider.gitlab.io/2018/12/01/top-20-books-on-
rpg...](https://bookinsider.gitlab.io/2018/12/01/top-20-books-on-rpg/)
I looked into it, and it's just one user recommending it over and over:
[https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/2100/sardathrion](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/2100/sardathrion)
~~~
BookInsider
Are you saying that it is a bad thing to count mentions over and over if they
are all from a single user?
~~~
profquail
Maybe not a bad thing, but seems less of a strong signal of “goodness”
compared to a book recommended the same number of times by different users.
You might consider capping the number of times you consider recommendations
for one book from a single user to something reasonable, like 3. That way you
get more of a crowd consensus as to what’s really good.
------
kperry
Working Effectively with Legacy Code is the best Software Engineering book I
have ever read. Most authors will show you very trivial examples, but Feathers
shows detailed examples and an almost formulaic way to make your code
testable. You can read and memorize SOLID principles, but he shows you how to
_do_ SOLID principles.
~~~
james_s_tayler
I was revisiting that book again last night briefly and was having a chuckle
at some of the example code in Java (I assume it's Java?) before some of the
more modern features came into the language and thinking "yep, using iterator
and .next() to do your loops sure is legacy code alright!". It smelt like Java
1.4
Good times.
------
svat
This is great, but an important caveat: this is actually “books for which the
Amazon links are most frequently given” (maybe other sites too; the About page
doesn't clarify), i.e. “most-linked books”, rather than “most-discussed
books”.
For example, it says that on the TeX/LaTeX StackExchange, _The TeXbook_ is
mentioned only 6 times
([https://bookinsider.gitlab.io/2018/12/01/top-20-books-on-
tex...](https://bookinsider.gitlab.io/2018/12/01/top-20-books-on-tex/)), while
in fact it's mentioned closer to 1357 times
([https://tex.stackexchange.com/search?q=texbook](https://tex.stackexchange.com/search?q=texbook)).
What appears to be true is that only 6 times someone bothered to link to
Amazon when mentioning the book. Worse, for the English Language & Usage site,
the _Oxford English Dictionary_ does not even show up in the results
([https://bookinsider.gitlab.io/2018/12/01/top-20-books-on-
eng...](https://bookinsider.gitlab.io/2018/12/01/top-20-books-on-english/))
while in reality it's mentioned about 7000 times by acronym
([https://english.stackexchange.com/search?q=oed](https://english.stackexchange.com/search?q=oed))
and about 1600 times by full name
([https://english.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22oxford%20engli...](https://english.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22oxford%20english%20dictionary%22)).
Under what circumstances will someone add a link when mentioning a book? I can
think of two:
\- The user thinks the book is not sufficiently well-known, so they add a link
to Amazon or some other such site, for the readers to learn more.
\- The user is trying to make money off affiliate links, or whatever.
For books that are well-known, or for the typical (lazy) user like me, books
are going to mentioned and discussed without any link to anywhere being added
(and often by acronym or nickname). So in that sense this site is actually
likely to miss all the most frequently discussed books — the ones so well-
known that no one bothers to link to anything when mentioning them (as in the
examples above).
Shows that the hard part of data analysis is usually data cleanup (eliminating
false positives and false negatives) and normalization (this one seems to
treat links to different editions on Amazon as different books).
All that said, this site is useful nevertheless; thanks for making it!
~~~
dorkwood
I tried to do something like this years ago by scraping websites in a
particular niche. I decided that I wanted to count a book any time it was
mentioned -- not just when it was linked to. As a junior-level programmer,
however, it was a problem I couldn't solve.
How do you determine whether someone using the word "mindset" is talking about
the book by the same name, or just using the word?
~~~
svat
It's a hard problem; one you can't ever fully solve. You need to accept some
degree of error, as pretty soon you'll hit the point where every incremental
improvement requires you to basically double the amount of effort. (You can
start by incorporating some signals like whether the word/title occurs in
uppercase, whether it has any special formatting like italics, whether the
author's name occurs nearby, and so on.)
But what you can do is be very up front about the error: you can be explicit
about your methods and describe their modes of failure, give examples of some
of the things you might miss, try to analyze your error and how bad it is, and
so on, and finally leave it to the reader to decide how seriously to take your
results. (If you see some recent papers they include a “Threats to Validity”
section, e.g. Section 3.4 here:
[https://people.engr.ncsu.edu/ermurph3/papers/seip18.pdf](https://people.engr.ncsu.edu/ermurph3/papers/seip18.pdf))
------
chrononaut
I was perhaps somewhat amused to see that a large portion of the books under
"Science Fiction & Fantasy" are actually non-fiction or reference books about
the backstories / physics / realism behind various Science Fiction & Fantasy
universes / worlds.
------
BookInsider
Thanks everyone for your suggestions and testing of my site. I will keep
improving it. I just create a patreon link to my site so hopefully that can
become a progress log.
[https://www.patreon.com/BookInsider](https://www.patreon.com/BookInsider)
~~~
tonyedgecombe
There is an error on [https://bookinsider.gitlab.io/2018/12/01/top-20-books-
on-mat...](https://bookinsider.gitlab.io/2018/12/01/top-20-books-on-math/)
Line 223: \u can only be followed by a Unicode character sequence.
On Safari 12.0.3.
~~~
BookInsider
Thank you for letting me know! It has been fixed now (will be updated in a few
minutes), and I also add twitter for the Book Insider site:
[https://twitter.com/Book__Insider](https://twitter.com/Book__Insider)
------
chalst
I see that under the algorithms tab, Knuth's TAoCP is ranked 13th equal,
together with 4 others.
~~~
BookInsider
Thank you for noticing that! So far I haven't dealt with books with the same
number of discussions. I will probably sort the tied-rank books with sentiment
score.
------
vidanay
Is there an implicit understanding that these are all "good" discussions?
~~~
wiremaus
Not necessarily. Some of these might be universally hated.
I bet all of them are pretty interesting, however.
~~~
BookInsider
It is true that some of the discussions actually hated some books. So I tried
to use the sentiment score to characterize discussions.
------
YesThatTom2
The serverfault.com list includes 2 editions of the same book. If you collapse
them, it would make room for another deserving book.
Tom Limoncelli Co-author of TPOSANA
~~~
timb07
The book is so good it deserves to be listed twice. :)
------
4thaccount
I noticed electrical engineering had nothing in the power systems category, so
these lists are still pretty sparse.
~~~
BookInsider
Some of these links are actually other products (not books) on Amazon. We
remove these products. Still need to improve the UI so sparse lists look
nicer. Thank you for pointing that out!
~~~
4thaccount
No problem. I'm sure each category can be endlessly fleshed out. It just
looked weird that there was a lot of EE not covered.
------
billfruit
Surprised the English stack exchange doesn't reference the OED that often.
~~~
svat
How they count mentions is not mentioned anywhere, but it appears they only
count links to Amazon. Obviously no one is going to link to Amazon when
mentioning the Oxford English Dictionary. In that sense, they may be missing
the true most discussed books, the ones so well-known that no one bothers to
link to anything when mentioning them.
~~~
woodrowbarlow
that's disappointing. i was also hoping to see books that have commonly-used
nicknames, like "the dragon book", get counted.
~~~
floatingatoll
I was unable to determine what you mean by “the dragon book”. Is that related
to the recent Dragon movie that was in the Oscars? I don’t imagine you mean
The Magicians book 2. Maybe you mean “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (terrific
dragon on the cover!) but I’m honestly not really sure what you mean otherwise
:(
While you could answer my above questions directly, I don’t need them
answered; I’m just trying to make the point that “nicknames” cannot be easily
correlated with a book when you scale up to “the entire word of readers”.
~~~
gburt
He almost surely means Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools by Alfred
V. Aho, Monica S. Lam, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman [1]... or one of the
earlier versions of the book with different authors and titles ;-).
As was common for 80s software textbooks, this was nicknamed for the
distinctive image on the cover.
But (and now your edit clarifies that this indeed was your point), perhaps
your point is just how difficult it would be to automatically disambiguate
nicknames in diverse communities like StackExchange.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniques,_and_Tools)
------
jeanluchayes
I hope Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is on that list.
------
forgotmypw2
consider making your site accessible to nonjs users, please. currently, the
book lists are not visible.
~~~
BookInsider
Thank you for your suggestion! I didn't thought about that. But in the next
step, I will definitely make changes to consider nonjs users!
------
updateYourMind
Is it sad that the most popular book is about working with a legacy codebase?
~~~
YesThatTom2
The preface of that book IIRC is about the fact that 90% of dev time is spent
reading code trying to find where to insert your new code (the other 10% of
your time).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now - jds375
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/technology/moviepass-economy-startups.html
======
mabbo
> The king of money-losers, of course, is Amazon, which went years without
> turning a profit. Instead, it plowed billions of dollars back into its
> business
The key difference with Amazon is that Amazon could choose to be profitable at
any time- just raise prices ever so slightly, reducing growth in customer
demand, and the stop building out its enormous logistics empire and new
businesses. Amazon could have had profits for a very long time, but Bezos
understands that re-investing money in the company grows the value quickly.
Plus, you only pay taxes on profits.
MoviePass can't really do that. They don't have potential profits that they
can just stop re-investing. They aren't spending money on investments- they
just don't have income high enough to cover the costs of their product. And
lots of other start-ups have the same problem right now.
~~~
Bucephalus355
Raising prices would solve lots of problems for Amazon. They’d lose some
market share, reducing the monopoly accusations. Most likely companies are
going to face increasing pressure to do something about inequality levels, so
maybe a $5 / hour (hopefully more) pay raise for their 28k a year warehouse
workers could also be in the store.
~~~
CamTin
I'm not a lawyer, but I think if you are accused of being a monopoly, suddenly
increasing your prices is a bad legal strategy because it proves you have
pricing power, which is the classic sign of a Sherman-style monopoly that
regulators like to break up.
------
Certhas
> But it also reflects the willingness of shareholders and deep-pocketed
> private investors to keep fast-growing upstarts afloat long enough to
> conquer a potential “winner-take-all” market.
That's the gamble. Destroy competition, get lock in, become a monopolist and
the free market is your money printing machine. If regulators had teeth to
break up such monopolies, we wouldn't be seeing these gambles, and maybe more
honest competition.
~~~
dlwdlw
This strategy only works if you can effecticely build new habits that are
sticky enough to persist when the friction increases. Even better is if the
new behavior has interesting interactions with other things.
The reason enterprise tools tend to be “worse” is because the stickiness is
arbitrarily enforced instead of being rooted in reality. Uber/lyft are non-
sticky because theyre basically the same.
------
vinhboy
> Enjoy It While You Can
I love the conclusion of this article. As someone who has participated in the
online "deals" community for 10+ years, I have definitely benefitted from many
of the opportunities.
However, I do spend a considerable amount of time wondering what will happen
when this house of cards comes falling down.
But you know, I think that for every one person like me taking advantage of
these "arbitrage" scenarios, there are like 10 people paying full price. They
keep this economy going.
~~~
mmt
> But you know, I think that for everyone person like me taking advantage of
> these "arbitrage" scenarios, there are like 10 people paying full price.
> They keep this economy going.
That seems contrary to what the article is saying, which is that for every
person taking advantage, there are _zero_ people paying full price, because
it's the investors who are keeping this economy going.
As such, it may never end without a regulatory end to the winner-take-all
scenario, as a different comment suggested.
~~~
metalliqaz
All it would take for it to end is for investors to stop investing in money-
burners.
~~~
mmt
Isn't that a tautology, though?
My point is that actual[1] investors have an incentive to pour their money
into money-burners because if _just one_ of those initially money-burning is
the next Google, Facebook, Amazon, or whatever overwhelming winner-take-all
breakout profitable company, they will have more than justified dumping all
that cash into the losers.
[1] for lack of a better term. I've never quite understood why it's considered
"investing" to buy stock in a company if someone other than the company itself
previously owned the stock. That cash isn't going into company coffers. This
activity seems more like asset ownership/speculating than asset allocation
(which is what I think of when I hear the word "invest").
~~~
metalliqaz
Your point is well taken.
I think I just don't agree that government stepping in is the only way to end
the cycle. Seems to me it can/will die of natural causes when the "bubble"
bursts.
~~~
mmt
But what bubble? Where's the irrationally increasing asset values at a macro
level? Where's the "greater fool" that's buying it all up?
Without that, there's nothing to burst.
Moreover, this has been going on for _so_ long, at least since (before) the
dot-com boom, and we've had quite a few economic downturns. It's not very
credible that any bubble would survive that.
------
austinl
Reminds me of _VC Fund My Life_. It's an index of discounts offered by
startups, which you more or less know they're taking a loss on. Clever name.
[http://www.vcfml.com/](http://www.vcfml.com/)
~~~
erentz
That site seems like it’s all fake promotion - e.g. coinbase is on their and
last I looked coinbase’s fees were monstrously high compared to Gemini and
other exchanges. It’s definitley not saving you anything choosing them.
~~~
bonestamp2
Agreed, and Gemini is not well known enough... it's basically no fees for most
users moving between USD and BTC, and it's legit, based in NYC and follows all
of the NY state regulations on crypto.
~~~
wmf
Gemini recently increased fees to 1% so it's now far more expensive than GDAX.
~~~
erentz
Wow, that’s insane. I can no longer recommend retail buyers use Gemini if
they’re charging 1%. Very disappointing.
~~~
bonestamp2
Guess it's Robinhood then. Free to buy BTC.
~~~
wmf
Note that you can't transfer BTC into or out of Robinhood so you may be stuck
if they increase fees in the future.
------
xivzgrev
Pretty much. Seated was another gravy train. You got a $15 Amazon or Uber gift
card just for going to restaurant with a second person. There were no
minimums. you just had to show up and had to order food. There was a 2-3 month
period where my girlfriend and I were getting good meals for a net $15-$20
total. It was awesome, but I knew it wouldn't last. Then they put in
restrictions - to qualify for the $15, you needed at least 4 people or spend
$X. It's no longer even a "good" deal, so now I don't use it anymore.
~~~
pmoriarty
I got an even better deal: I cook my own meals, or eat at even cheaper
restaurants. I'm also looking in to joining a community garden and growing
some of my own food.
Amazon restaurant deals are not worth it for me, even with their discounts.
But I understand that a certain segment of the population doesn't think much
of such an expense, and that's who Amazon is targeting.
~~~
CabSauce
That sounds like a different product, not a better deal.
------
andrewjrangel
I am curious if this will end with a "bubble-burst" or a slow burn like
twitter has experienced. Surely the money has to dry up sometime? It is too
bad that none of these companies create any kind of net good for society like
a startup that pays you over minimum wage to clean up a park or sort
recycling.
~~~
crazygringo
> _Surely the money has to dry up sometime?_
Why? A bit simplified, but think of the money as coming from the profits from
the companies that have been successful. It's just how investment works. And
when you add up all the gains and losses, it's still a net positive as the
economy grows a little bit more year after year.
And what do you mean no net good? The companies create jobs which create huge
amounts of income taxes (always) and corporate taxes (when profitable) that
pay the salaries of the people who, for example, maintain our parks, or manage
a city's recycling systems.
~~~
nickparker
Jobs aren't intrinsically good. These startup jobs might be, but it's an
insanely complex system you're trying to suss a value judgement out of.
If these startups didn't exist, the money going into them would be seeking
returns elsewhere. There would probably be jobs involved there too, and the
people working those jobs might be doing something better for society than
building a short-lived money-losing consumer product.
If the mysterious "elsewhere" didn't create jobs with the money say because it
was spent on capital assets, that's still not the end of the story. Wherever
it went, someone else has it now and they're probably spending it, perhaps
hiring some people with it ie creating jobs.
The simple interpretation of your second line is the broken window fallacy,
which is false. The grasping-at-straws interpretation is that paying software
engineers to work on junk is a better than average way to route capital
through our economy - measured in terms of how much real value the capital
produces for people as it changes hands from company to coder + tax man, coder
to shopkeeper + tax man, and tax man to public works employees, etc forever. I
don't think we could possibly measure the latter interpretation, but I don't
believe it.
~~~
hueving
These companies losing investor money isn't anything like the broken window
fallacy.
If I pay a company $0.75 for a $1 widget with a $0.25 VC subsidy, I get the $1
widget and I'm ahead a widget. Nobody had to destroy a widget to make me buy a
new one.
The underlying widget suppliers still get the full price so the money is
flowing into the economy. The VCs are the only ones losing anything.
So paying people to clean parks is not better for the economy than VC
subsidizing blue apron meals.
The mistake you are making is assuming that a company losing money cannot
provide more value to society than it loses.
~~~
nickparker
You're right it's not quite the fallacy in that there isn't any destruction
going on. It's something adjacent though:
The whole point of markets is that people decide where to spend their money
based on the value they can get for it. When 3rd parties subsidize services
like Moviepass or Blue Apron, they break the pricing mechanism that's supposed
to lead us to efficiently use limited resources eg seats in a movie theater or
space on mail trucks.
If a company losing money is providing more value to the customer than it
costs to operate, they don't need to be losing money and they should raise
prices. Otherwise, you're arguing these companies have a beneficial
externality of some kind, and society at large gains in the transaction even
though the company is burning more value than the customer gains from its
product. I don't think that's the case for Moviepass or Blue Apron.
It's Bastiat's idea of the unseen alternative, except we're talking about LP
money channeled through VCs instead of taxpayer money through the government.
I'm not blindly against VC-, cross-business, or any other kind of subsidies.
If positive externalities exist they're a good thing. Eg, Amazon was "losing
money" or barely breaking even on its physical goods business for a long time,
but that money was strengthening our logistics network (both internal to
Amazon and in USPS, FedEx, UPS) so they could be profitable later at the same
or lower price points. Healthcare probably ought to be a money-losing business
because a healthy labor force has huge positive externalities. I just don't
think leisure or mild convenience/lifestyle products are positive on the
balance.
------
bmpafa
VC bucks creating discounts is about the only form of wealth redistribution we
[the U.S.] can count on these days.
~~~
adventured
Not quite. The US is currently undergoing a renaissance of successful
government programs that have massively cut poverty and homelessness over the
last 15 years.
"Child Poverty Falls to Record Low [nearly a 50% reduction since 1967],
Comprehensive Measure Shows Stronger Government Policies Account for Long-Term
Improvement"
[https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-
inequality/child-p...](https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-
inequality/child-poverty-falls-to-record-low-comprehensive-measure-shows)
"The U.S. Social Safety Net Has Improved a Lot. ... Its social safety net is
only a couple of percentage points below the OECD total, and larger than that
of Canada, Australia and South Korea."
"Furthermore, U.S. government transfers have been increasing over time. The
U.S. system of taxation and spending has become more progressive during the
past two decades. Per-capita government transfers were about $8,567 a person
in 2016, up from about $5,371 at the turn of the century (adjusted for
inflation) — an increase of 60 percent"
"After 16 years of expansions in the safety net under Republican and
Democratic presidents alike, the U.S. has a much more robust welfare state
than people seem to realize."
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-16/the-u-
s-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-16/the-u-s-social-
safety-net-has-improved-a-lot)
The National Alliance to End Homelessness, reports that total US homelessness
declined by 27% from 2005 to 2017. The drop was from 763,000 to 553,000 for
all forms of homelessness (while the US simultaneously added 30 million people
to its population).
"the rate per 10,000 people is at its lowest value on record."
[https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-
america/homeless...](https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-
america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness-report/)
(their 2013 report which gives figures back to 2005):
[https://b.3cdn.net/naeh/bb34a7e4cd84ee985c_3vm6r7cjh.pdf](https://b.3cdn.net/naeh/bb34a7e4cd84ee985c_3vm6r7cjh.pdf)
~~~
cimmanom
Given how much larger our population is, what would be shocking would be if
our social safety nets were _smaller_ than those of Canada, Australia, or
South Korea.
~~~
RhodesianHunter
The relative measure used in the linked article is a percent of GDP used on
social welfare programs.
It's not an absolute value comparison.
------
dalore
Hmm you laugh, but if you could sell dollar bills at $0.75 but you limited the
amount any person could buy. And you made them look at advertising, and
collected all sorts of personal info on them. You could easily quite a bit of
money off them. More then what you lose in selling the dollar bills at a loss.
~~~
supertrope
My economics professor auctioned $1. Someone bought it above par.
~~~
dsr_
The lesson your class was supposed to learn is that people aren't always
rational. Did they?
(And did your economics class then go on to assume everyone is perfectly
rational and understands their own utility functions, anyway?)
~~~
sullyj3
Rational doesn't mean valuing every dollar exactly the same. Buying a $1 for
more than $1 from an economics professor is funny, maybe a good story, maybe a
good keepsake, and plausibly worth more in utility than what they paid.
------
adventured
The entire economy.... Talk about an extreme click-bait headline.
Their fraudulent premise is extracted from this single setup:
"Over all, 76 percent of the companies that went public last year were
unprofitable on a per-share basis in the year leading up to their initial
offerings"
There were a whopping 30 tech IPOs in 2017 (tech & biotech IPOs substantially
tilt the percentage of unprofitable listings; there has been no change in the
number of unprofitable biotech listings, they overwhelmingly tend to be
unprofitable across all years). You see, that's the entire economy. By
comparison there were 370 tech IPOs in 1999, 12x more.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the S&P 500's profits are at record highs.
Small business profitability is also booming per the National Federation of
Independent Business survey (a survey going back to 1973), which is
registering sales & profit growth levels rarely seen in the last five decades.
"NFIB: A ‘record level’ of small businesses are growing their profits"
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-
business/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-
business/wp/2018/05/08/nfib-a-record-level-of-small-businesses-are-growing-
their-profits/)
"Small business profits are at a 45-year high: NFIB survey"
[https://finance.yahoo.com/video/small-business-
profits-45-hi...](https://finance.yahoo.com/video/small-business-
profits-45-high-144509636.html)
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-13/u-s-
small...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-13/u-s-small-
business-optimism-index-rises-to-highest-since-1983)
~~~
salvar
> The entire economy.... Talk about an extreme click-bait headline.
I don't think the headline meant to imply that literally the entire economy is
MoviePass.
------
cityzen
One thing I found interesting is that MoviePass Ventures has started acquiring
rights to movies. From an article on IndieWire:
Just five days after MoviePass declared that it would acquire films through a
new subsidiary, MoviePass Ventures, the company has made good on the promise.
Partnering with The Orchard, MPV will share the reported $3 million bill for
North American rights to “American Animals,” the first narrative feature from
BAFTA and Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentarian Bart Layton (“The
Imposter”). A U.S. Dramatic Competition contender at Sundance, “American
Animals” premiered there January 19, hours after the MoviePass announcement.
Full article: [http://www.indiewire.com/2018/01/moviepass-the-orchard-
acqui...](http://www.indiewire.com/2018/01/moviepass-the-orchard-acquisition-
american-animals-sundance-1201921511/)
Trailer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKvPVvy2Kn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKvPVvy2Kn8)
I saw the trailer for that movie and had to pause it to make sure it said
MoviePass. The movie looks like something I'd like and I'm looking forward to
seeing it in the theater with MoviePass. I like to see MoviePass movies with
MoviePass, dawg.
I think the $10/month thing is a marketing stunt. Don't forget they hired
Mitch Lowe who was an executive at Netflix and Redbox as CEO in 2016. I would
say there's some method to the madness here. They're gaining a lot of insights
and a lot of users. I would still pay $10/month even if they limited it to 4-5
movies per month.
Also, don't forget about the tech. MoviePass has built out a system that I am
still fascinated by where you can check in for a movie and your pre-paid debit
card is instantly funded for enough to cover the price of a ticket. I know
it's nothing earth shattering but as a nerd I get a little giddy thinking
about it whenever I use it.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I think they're playing a
long game.
------
rdiddly
It's kind of too obvious to even point out, but why act surprised that a
company, each of whose customers causes a net loss, gets poorer, faster, as it
grows?
_Spotify, the popular music streaming service based in Sweden, lost $1.5
billion last year, even as_ [because] _it continued to add millions of users._
_On Tuesday, Helios reported that MoviePass lost $98.3 million in the first
quarter, " despite adding_ [because it added] _more than a million net
subscribers._
FTFY.
------
amelius
It's called "predatory pricing", and it's illegal in many places.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing)
------
acd
Central banks are pumping out new money in form debt of close to zero interest
rates. This is below market rate interest rates if the market would freely
choose the interest rate would be higher. The new money flows to automation in
startups that makes processes cheaper. Thus the central banks are not creating
inflation through salary inflation they are creating deflation through
automation. Robots on average replace 5.7 humans. Software is also a form of
automation.
Thus the central banks keep printing new money in hope for inflation but the
process where the money flows are creating deflation.
~~~
johnvanommen
Interesting.
I've long thought that the ZIRP policies of the last ten years had the exact
OPPOSITE effect of what was intended. The idea of ZIRP was that the Fed would
inflate house prices, and this would keep homeowners from defaulting on their
mortgages.
But the truth was that many homeowners only "owned" a tiny fraction of their
home. Often as little as 5-10% of what they paid for it. _So if their home
price dropped by even 15%, they were underwater._
This created a cascade of defaults. Then gasoline was added to the fire, when
the government began to forgive the capital gains of walking away from a home
that was underwater.
This created a scenario where thousands of people walked away from their
homes, and then large hedge funds scooped up thousands of properties for
pennies on the dollar.
Naturally, prices recovered eventually, but then the former homeowners were
now renters, and the rent was prohibitively expensive. To a large degre
because the value of the dollar had been devalued to prop up prices in the
first place.
------
empath75
This dude stole my startup idea:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16945451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16945451)
~~~
jpao79
'MoviePass inspired me to start my $20 bill club where you send me $10/mo and
I send you a $20 bill in the mail.'
Hey - that just might work - once you've shown enough traction and proven
demand for DollarPass monthly membership subscriptions, then you should be
able to go to USA.gov and negotiate a bulk pricing on $20 bills at a sig-ni-
fi-cant discount. Plus if you had a payment app so the end user could pay for
stuff with the $20, you could show the user ads and charge a fee of every
transaction. You could also track their GPS location 24/7 and sell that.
It's all about leveraging and fully monetizing your captive user base!
------
textmode
"The fact that Google and Facebook were able to generate such enormous profits
and growth does give hope to some companies," Mr. Ritter said. If start-ups
can figure out to convert a large user base into paying customers, he added,
"it can be enormously profitable."
Did Google or Facebook "convert a large user base into paying customers"?
Is that what enabled them to "generate such enormous profits"?
------
nraynaud
Yeah, I am a bit sad to see those Ofo, limebike, Bird going all out in the
streets, they are trying to outspend each other for the winner to raise the
price. I just want a sustainable shared transportation system.
~~~
pwinnski
Ofo has been free to use for many months now, at least in Dallas. Are they
counting on the competitors to all fold and leave them the sole market owner?
Such weird economics!
~~~
pcr0
1\. Yep, they're funded by Alibaba and they've been buying out bankrupted
bikeshare companies.
2\. Alibaba and Tencent both own competing bikeshare services, so it's a cash-
burning contest.
------
candiodari
This is why I think we don't have inflation. Very low loans, and for managers
_personal_ careers it is actually beneficial to do this. The more of this is
done, the more others are forced to do the same. This then results in lower
interest rates, which ironically make it cheaper to do this, and results in
more below-cost and more capacity, making the problems worse.
But in reality many companies are producing/exporting under cost, because it
results in cashflow. To "conquer market-share".
It also means that at some point interest rates will rise ever-so-slightly and
_boom_ the whole thing will stop in a matter of a few months and we'll see 10%
inflation in quite a few products and an absolute disaster in the stock and
bond markets.
But in reality inflation is already here. The money has been printed.
Governments have given it to their favorite banks, and financed their own
careers _ahem_ I meant government programs with it. Banks have given this in
loans to everyone (because governments demanded they do this), and those
managers have "invested" it in growth.
In reality of course, the vast majority of those managers and governments have
no idea how to grow the economy (in fact, according to secular stagnation
theory it hasn't really grown, for individuals, since ~1980-1990 depending on
where you are in the world). So it's just been invested in unnecessary
capacity expansion, making products they have no hope in hell of selling at
the normal price, or just outright into financial constructions.
These things will have to be paid, and they will have to be paid by the
customers. So the cause for price increases has occurred in the past, but
people have used loans to stave off the consequences of their decisions on a
large scale. So inflation is already here, and done, it's just suddenly it
will need to explode.
------
Karrot_Kream
How do startups that don't network well with VCs survive in this kind of an
ecosystem? Doesn't this make VC money the kingmaker to penetrating a market?
I'm not sure having to be well-connected enough to be favored by VCs is a good
thing in the long run for the economy, but maybe this isn't such a different
situation from the pre-VC status quo.
------
jonbarker
Positive cash flow is actually way more important than profit, although you
should have both ideally. If you are running a positive cash flow business
with good growth and accurate depreciation numbers on fixed assets, you are in
a better position than a profitable microbusiness in a small market. Amazon's
breakthrough wasn't realizing this, it was realizing how big the ecommerce
market was and how to grow to be able to address the whole market using cash
flow to invest. They also used a large pile of investment to get there along
the way too. (Four negative cash flow years in their history according to
this)):
[https://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/08/12/2016/comparin...](https://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/08/12/2016/comparing-
amazon-then-tesla-now)
------
mearly87
I'm curios the impact VC subsiding goods happens on traditional players in
industries -- they can't compete because they don't have the luxury of
operating at a loss.
------
alexchantavy
> So, back to the 75 Cent Dollar Store. Are you in?
Anyone care to share great examples of these MoviePass-like businesses right
now so we can enjoy the savings?
------
organicmultiloc
Consumers are wising up to this and just turning the tables on companies,
exploiting them for the first reduced month or whatever the unit of service is
and then jumping ship immediately.
Hey if you want to lose money on the transaction I'm happy to help you out.
------
telltruth
It’s just basic economics. Let’s say you are CEO of a company. Your CFO
informs you that you are going to make $1B in profit this quarter. You will be
a fool to leave the money on table and give it back to shareholders. That
doesn’t buy you anything. You don’t gain any competitive advantage or
significant stock price boost (because market keeps going up _anyway_ ). From
the eyes of CEO, you are simply throwing away your profit money in to a
garbedge bin. Instead, you would take out another billion dollar in credit at
tiny interest rates based on your growth. Use all that up in expansions,
building moat, acquisitions, long term projects and then show $1B in loss to
get full tax credits. Market would love you even more because you are building
up expectations for even bigger things to come as well as becoming safer bet
by gaining bigger moat.
Taking losses and burning cash to aquire customers also makes sense when
mountain of cheap investment money and credit lines are easily available.
Remember, IPO is the major event for cashing out for most investors. Balance
sheets before or after don’t matter too much as long as you can cross that
proverbial finish line called IPO. Once that event happens, you take a dip in
so-called “river of money” fueled by massive trillion dollar funds like
Blackrock (which are in turn fueled by our 401Ks) and all your sins are washed
away over night.
Current economy and business models wouldn’t make sense to people who are
still living in past when money wasn’t cheap and companies were valued for
dividends they returned. In a way, new way is actually all good. This is what
allows taking on high risk bets. Without these models, we wouldn’t have
massive cloud infrastructure built up so fast without worrying about chicken-
and-egg problem. We wouldn’t have app based taxies available so fast virtually
all of the world without worrying about establishment. We also wouldn’t have
such massive investments in AI research without worrying about actual impact.
All these stuff simply wouldn’t be possible in 60s and 70s because companies
would be reluctant to do investments on such massive scale without being
extremely confident and diligent. Most likely these stuff would have gotten
killed right away. Hype is good. Cheap money is great.
------
Shivetya
I do not accept putting Amazon and places like Moviepass in the same
comparison. I would not even accept Moviepass is comparable to
Airbnb/Uber/etc.
I never understood the allure of Moviepass to the investor. So basically you
want to buy another companies product and resell it to another party and
expect the source company to cave to your demands of partnership? What service
are you providing and to who? It is similar to all those attempts to deliver
groceries but they mostly failed because they were buying from a source who
could care less who bought their product at full price as long as they were
paid.
------
blueyes
Joel Spolsky addressed this, much more insightfully, in one of his early
strategy letters:
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-
letter-i-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-ben-
and-jerrys-vs-amazon/)
There are real reasons why companies like MoviePass exist, why companies like
Snap lose money, and why investors back them. It's just a land grab where you
have to move fast to establish dominance.
~~~
lozenge
Snap I can understand, but MoviePass not. People can easily switch to another
subscription.
~~~
tlynchpin
People can easily switch, maybe so, but generally they don't. That is one of
the reasons subscription revenue is highly prized. Many businesses are
sustained on long forgotten subscriptions landing on credit card bills every
month.
~~~
intrasight
This is so true. Less true for me since I have my credit card email me about
every transaction, and every time I get one I must decide if I wish to keep
that subscription.
Here's an idea for a business. Monitor customers credit card transactions for
subscriptions, and do bulk negotiation with the service provider to knock down
the price based upon how much service the customer is actually using. Take 10%
of the savings.
Each time one of these subscription payment emails arrives, the user would be
shown a few extra buttons: 1. cancel my subscription, 2. Offer service
$X/month to keep me as a customer, 3. No change.
Just the "one click cancel" would be useful, but the "get me a better price"
should be real popular.
~~~
cimmanom
What would the incentive be for the service provider to participate in this?
Most of these customers aren't going to cancel anyway.
~~~
intrasight
There are lots of business that are in the business of negotiating better
prices. It's arbitrage - assuming that a service provider with list price of
$25/mo would still be happy to get $20 as opposed to losing the customer.
------
Mc_Big_G
Buy HNMY @ $0.65 if you have the cajones. If there was ever a case of "be
greedy when others are fearful" this is it. There's a good chance you'll lose
it all but the potential is there if they can get it right. I like that
they're adding more services like a premium for 3D/IMAX and front-row seats.
------
JansjoFromIkea
What exactly happens the entertainment industry when MoviePass fails? When
Netflix stop deciding to lose colossal sums of money each year and their
competitors get to scale back as a result? When a large number of people don't
have enough disposable money to justify paying $10 a month on Patreon to a
podcast they can get for free?
I do feel like the free movie ticket business in general is a bit of a mad
bubble that's gonna burst in a big way. A huge number of people currently
going to the cinema seem to be going on things like this instead of directly
paying the huge ticket prices themselves. I get free tickets weekly from my
health insurance to a cinema that shows stuff I'd never dream of paying to
see, you'd have to imagine the chain and distributor are getting some
reasonable kind of kickback from each time I go though.
~~~
slivym
It's not really all straight forward though. Whilst it's true that it's
cheaper to get a MoviePass for a month than to buy 2 tickets in that month I
can't remember the last time I paid full price for a movie ticket anyway. The
cinema industry is basically a chaotic experiment in price discrimination. The
most successful Cinema is the one that can get the 50 people willing to pay
full price to pay it whilst also giving heavy discounts to the other 200
people to make sure the cinema is full.
------
ghostbrainalpha
I think of MoviePass as very similar to Groupon. Their business model
eventually eats itself and the growth in unsustainable, but at the end of the
day they are still ok.
Sure Groupon's stock went from $30 to $5, but the company still exists, and is
a solid part of the marketplace.
------
acchow
> Over all, 76 percent of the companies that went public last year were
> unprofitable on a per-share basis
How is this the entire economy? I bet if you added the revenues (or market
caps) of all those companies together, they would pale in comparison to Apple.
------
sp332
I misread the author as Kevin Rose, which would have been fitting.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Rose#Startups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Rose#Startups)
------
privexpert5
This business model makes sense for some products, like Snapchat. Get as many
users as possible and maybe eventually the advertising revenue will pay off.
Focusing on monetization early makes for successful businesses, but good
products happen because they fix or solve a problem --not because they make
money.
------
nerfhammer
thank goodness so many people are smarter than those darn goofy VCs.
Businesses competing for customers! It's flagrant hubris. Those Silicon Valley
guys who became billionaires doing this still have no idea what they are
doing. I am pretty sure they have a big comeuppance due to them.
~~~
Retric
The number of internet only SV companies that regularly pull in 100+ million
in actual profit each year and are thus _stable_ billion dollar companies is
surprisingly small. The companies that shoot past that into 50+ billion dollar
territory are a large part of why SV has so many billionaires.
~~~
Analemma_
The number of people who became billionaires through venture capital– as
opposed to becoming a VC after you were already independently wealthy through
family or another business– is also quite small.
------
pishpash
Not every one of the half dozen "MoviePasses" in a given market category can
come out on top to dominate (by definition, one -- at most two -- can) but
every one is funded/priced like it will. This thing will come crashing down,
it's just a matter of time.
------
_bxg1
I wonder if this is a bubble that's going to burst eventually. With so many
ships sinking and so much optimism being for naught, investors might grow
tired of the game and stop investing so aggressively, perhaps shifting things
too far to the other side of the spectrum.
~~~
adventured
The article implodes when you actually start comparing the scale of what the
article is basing itself on to anything else.
The US economy will hit $20 trillion in GDP this year. The article is built
heavily upon a few dozen IPO listings for just one year.
With US business profitability at essentially record highs for all sizes of
business, the article is going to comical lengths to present a false headline.
If we had 500 unprofitable tech companies pulling an IPO in 2017, that would
mean something. 30? That's not even a rounding error in the US economy and it
obviously says nothing about the ability of those companies to reach
profitability.
One year also does not make a trend. The number of unprofitable tech listings
in 2015 and 2016 was similar to: 2001, 2005, 2007, 2011, 2013.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
Looking at the original analysis, it looks like 108 IPOs, where did you get
30?
[https://site.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/files/2018/01/IPOs201...](https://site.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/files/2018/01/IPOs2017Statistics_January17_2018.pdf)
~~~
adventured
In that PDF it breaks out the number of tech and biotech IPOs.
66% of the "other" category (ie everything else) reported being profitable.
Something the article goes out of its way to not mention.
The 30 tech IPOs and the 32 biotech IPOs dramatically tilt the number of
unprofitable listings as a percentage.
If you only have 108 IPOs and 32 are biotechs, which are almost always
unprofitable, you start with an extreme tilt.
------
mrbonner
Comparing MoviePass to Amazon is like comparing Michael Scott Paper company
and Dunder Mifflin.
------
_nalply
> So, back to the 75 Cent Dollar Store. Are you in?
Yes, of course. (And thinking: «only as a customer»).
------
osteele
DELETED as a misreading of the OP.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
_The author 's thesis is that all unprofitable business are the same._
This is not the author's thesis. The author's thesis appears to be:
_" An economy full of unprofitable companies has risks."_ and we should be
concerned about the rise of so many unprofitable companies.
------
ada1981
Non-paywalled: [http://outline.com/ctYCuP](http://outline.com/ctYCuP)
Perhaps this is the redistribution of wealth we’ve been waiting for.
Can I look forward to the AptPass Startup that will pay my rent in Park Slope
so they can study my consumption patterns?
------
the_cat_kittles
so i guess the first thing i think is: where does the money go? i think it
mostly goes to employees and contractors of the company, who get paid a lot
usually. it doesnt go to the consumers of the product, they just get a better
deal on things- not the same as getting money. in movie pass' case, i guess it
goes to the theaters? i guess its just interesting to try and pin down where
the money ends up going in lots of the these vc backed money losing endeavors.
seems like the kind of article pricenomics would do a really good job on-
taking 10 or so big money losers that ultimately kicked the bucket, and seeing
where the cash all ultimately went.
------
eldavido
This is such a stupid and uninsightful analysis. You can tell just by the
terms they use.
A company that isn't profitable isn't necessarily "losing money". Sure the
amount of cash on hand can be declining, but if the business is building long-
term assets such as a consumer brand, recurring transactions, differentiating
IP, etc., that's hardly bad business management.
In order to really understand this you have to look company-by-company at
what's really going on with the financials. If someone wants to give away for
75 cents something that costs a dollar, sure, that's a fast lane to
bankruptcy. But there are tons of other cases, including aggressive new
customer expansion, trying to create winner-take-all network effects,
development of core IP, etc. that really will create long-term benefits for
their owners.
Using "profit" as a metric is such bullshit. Ask Amazon. They focused on
creating as much free cash flow as they could for two decades, and look where
they are now. Why someone would insist a company earn an accounting profit, or
even worse, pay cash dividends, in an environment with a sub-2% fed funds rate
and near-zero returns on cash to investors is silly. I would much rather have
a company with 10-15% return on equity "lose my money" than hand it back as
relatively useless cash.
tl;dr read Ks and Qs, this stuff isn't amenable to sound bites.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Termites Are Guardians of the Soil - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/termites-are-guardians-of-the-soil.html?ref=science
======
bediger4000
This is kind of a weird article. For instance, a photo of a chimp sitting on a
termite mound is partially captioned with "A chimpanzee learning how to fish
honey out of a termite hole ...". Ummm, _bees_ make honey, not termites. Also,
mix metaphors much?
The second weirdness is the "guardians of the soil" business. Apparently
termites evolved from cockroaches probably in the Triassic period
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termite#Evolutionary_history](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termite#Evolutionary_history)).
Was there a "soil revolution" after termites came along as guardians? What
carpeted the ground in the Permian and earlier periods? Was there a different
kind of "soil" back then?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Companies Make Millions Charging Prisoners to Send an Email - SQL2219
https://www.wired.com/story/jpay-securus-prison-email-charging-millions/
======
imnotlost
Here you are, after making some mistakes and behaving very badly, the State
has full control of you.
They then limit how much you can communicate with normal people.
They are complicit in you being exploited financially.
They look the other way if you are physically or sexually abused.
When you've served your time no one will hire you and you're limited from
interacting with society normally.
And we, society, think this is just great! Which ticker can I buy to get in on
this action?
Dystopia is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
~~~
mindslight
It's an inevitable outcome from the myopic viewing of rights as enumerated
primitives, rather than qualitatively - the mob is constantly looking for ways
to justify why those rights don't apply to a given person. Prisoners are a
super easy target, as their right to liberty is already being violated
(justifiably, _I think_ ).
Driving a car (even though it's de facto mandatory) - bye-bye rights. On
privatized commons (like a shopping mall or Faceboot) - bye-bye rights. Forced
to contract for (employment, housing, food, etc) - bye-bye rights. Affecting
your own consciousness with substances - bye-bye rights. Caught peeing in some
bushes - bye-bye _all of your rights_.
And all the while, the majority cheers because it is inherently their norms
being enforced. The concept of rights wasn't meant to protect the majority,
but good luck getting that point across to the majority!
------
iamleppert
My aunt is in prison and I’ve had to use the JPay app to send her photos and
messages.
It’s the most awful piece of garbage you’ve ever seen. It barely functions,
and doesn’t even handle the aspect ratio of photos correctly, and sends a tiny
barely viewable pixelated version. It frequently crashes and fails to send the
message although it deducts a “stamp” from your account. It looks like it was
hacked together by the cheapest outsource firm they could find and then never
updated. There is no customer support at all.
There’s a special place reserved in hell for people who use technology in such
twisted ways.
------
wayanon
How is it moral for people to get rich from imprisonment?
~~~
whatshisface
Another question might be, how _isn 't_ it? In every other area of society, if
someone is very good at arranging things to achieve some widely valued goal,
we think it's OK for them to get rich. If someone is the best jailer in the
world would it not be reasonable to reward them? Operating a prison is a lot
of work.
The problem is that they are being rewarded for doing the _wrong_ things,
there's no problem with rewarding them in general.
~~~
jrhurst
"If someone is the best jailer in the world would it not be reasonable to
reward them?"
I mean if we're gonna bring up this anology we've gotta figure out what a
"best failer in the world" even means? What is the value the jailer creates?
How do define a high performance jailer over just a nominal performant jailer?
If there is no extra value produced by the best jailer in the world then we
are over paying the best jailer in the world.
~~~
bdcravens
There's value in reducing recidivism and escapes. More practically, jails are
understaffed, and there's tremendous political value in making Joe Public feel
safer.
~~~
rhizome
_there 's tremendous political value in making Joe Public feel safer._
On this point, without looking it up, what do you estimate the overall
recidivism rate to be? Just in a general conversational sense.
~~~
bdcravens
Depends on the crime and incarceration level.
~~~
rhizome
Overall.
------
wallace_f
Regulatory capture is terrible.
Another example: Once I needed some court records. Not surprisingly, they're
recorded in proprietary format, only playable with a proprietary media player,
and all to enormous cost to the taxpayer, all while applicable state law
demands these court records be open access to the public.
------
WheelsAtLarge
I want to be outraged by JPAY but I can't be. 47 cents per email seems like a
lot but it's not. Consider a typical home situation, Spectrum charges $50 a
month just to get internet service that does not include the hardware,
maintenance, taxes and who knows what else. Divide service cost by .47 cents
and that works out to something like 100 emails. I know for a fact that I
don't send that many emails a month. So, in reality, I would be paying more
than that per email. Sure, I use the internet for other purposes so I'm ok
with it.
JPAY has to deal with all the fixed costs of setting up the internet
connections plus ongoing maintenance. There are only a few information
services that society wants prisoners to use in prison since all prisoners
have been proven to be untrustworthy. Email is one of the few so JPay has to
charge high rates just to get a return on their investment. I'm not crying for
them since they are making a good return.
I don't like the situation but the alternative is no e-mail. It's obvious
prisons don't want the responsibility of providing it and private companies
want a high return for doing it.
Like it or not JPAY is providing a service that wouldn't exist otherwise. 47
cents per email is high but it's acceptable given the alternative.
~~~
chillwaves
.47 is not reasonable by any measure.
You can't compare being in prison with signing up with an ISP.
Prisoners also have basically no income. They are often charged per day on
their accounts as well and are charged high mark up for basic commissary items
and outrageous mark up for phone calls (even more than email).
This is exploitation, plain and simple.
------
markbnj
I was surprised that the article did not mention the fact that Idaho prisoners
recently gamed their jpay tablets to steal $225k
[https://qz.com/1343662/inmates-gamed-their-prison-issued-
tab...](https://qz.com/1343662/inmates-gamed-their-prison-issued-tablets-to-
get-225000-in-credits/)
~~~
mikeyouse
They didn't "steal $225k", they gamed the tablets and sent messages that would
have normally cost them $225k in the magic beans that these awful leeches make
them buy to communicate with their families.
------
mnm1
Of course, if you can profit nicely off of people's misery and suffering, it'd
almost be un-American not to. These perverse incentives go a long way to
explaining what a shitty society we live in. Over two and a half million
people locked up isn't good enough. Let's charge them for email. Let's root
for them to get raped or murdered inside. They must deserve it even if over
ninety percent didn't even have a chance at a trial when they were threatened
with a plea deal or an absurd amount of time in jail. There is so much hate
and cruelty here, it's beyond sickening.
------
blindwatchmaker
Prison labor is the natural next step in the race to the bottom for wages.
~~~
gumby
Look at the development of chain gangs in the 1870s US and you'll see it was
an explicit mechanism for restoring slave labor to the southern economy.
Specifically look up Parchman and Angola which are hardly the only instances,
merely the most famous ones.
------
JudasGoat
The only way to repair this is to allow competition where the inmates can
choose from a list of applications built to whatever security standard.
------
Kagerjay
This is an interesting read
While profiting off inmates may seem predatory to some extent, it does offer a
service that was not there before the dotcom age.
When we look at prison communication back in the day, it was through locally
wired telephone systems. The loved one or family member had to physically be
present to speak to the person, but with technology something like an ekiosk
(essentially the same types you see at newer airports, olive garden, etc),
this does not have to be the case. You can be halfway across the world and
still have more than just a phone call with someone who is incarcerated using
the internet.
Prison phones are a commodity but now it seems to be legalized in a sense with
this type of kiosk gateway for buying news, watching TV shows, etc.
I've done a bit of work with prisons before, the restrictions for equipment
inside of it are absurd. Everything is considered a weapon in prison. I can
only imagine the amount of censorship involved with this gateway though, its
like bigbrother 1984
~~~
chrisseaton
> but with technology something like an ekiosk (essentially the same types you
> see at newer airports, olive garden, etc)
What's an ekiosk? And Olive Garden is a fast food chain isn't it? What do
these two things have to do with each other and with prisons? And why do you
need ekiosk or fast food chains to solve this? You just need any two tablets
and an internet connection.
~~~
Kagerjay
Ekiosk is just a short term that people use IIRC, similar to "drones" and
"quadcopters".
Its just a tablet (using a samsung galaxy normally), that is encased and
mounted physically. Similar to what you would see at bestbuy when window
shopping but more robust.
I've seen them in McDonalds and some innovation centers in specific Airports
([https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-future-of-airport-
dining-i...](https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-future-of-airport-dining-is-
now)). These restaurants utilize empty-dead space in larger central walkway
aisles in airports. The one I'm thinking of is in Newark, NJ , I went to that
airport on a layover to switzerland last year.
Many innovations in restaurants get passed along to prisons after the fact
IMO. The demands for higher market innovations builds unique solutions that
end up getting pushed to other industries such as prisons.
~~~
chrisseaton
So with all that talk of restaurants, Best Buy, ekiosks, innovation centres,
airports, drones, window shopping, the actual idea is just 'let people call
each other over the internet like the rest of society does'?
~~~
Kagerjay
More or less, its not an amazing technological innovation by any means its
more of an adoption of business solutions existing in the market already.
------
intralizee
I find the social support systems in America awfully poor from my experience
growing up in the US and observing what was provided or obtainable (depending
on personal financial status). It's no surprise to see this first world
country lacking compassion towards others who didn't find the variables to
succeed. The capitalist mindset feeds from irrational behavior and lack of
understand towards you are who you are from genetics, environmental factors
and all events in a linear ordered progression (life). So many times I've
encountered people just write off a person they consider a failure to
themselves by having oneself obtain the variables to succeed and refusing to
acknowledge the other person(s) didn't have the same experience. How people
even have the capability of profiting from these extremely unfortunate people
shows everyone is at fault in the US for allowing it. Everyone should take
responsibility or leave the country like I did. You're unlikely to succeed
when the majority are irrational and you're less fortunate.
~~~
nojvek
This x 1000. If Aliens were trying to find an example of advanced civilization
and they saw how things operated in the US, they’d very much think we are a
messy and non functioning civilization that would eventually wipe ourselves
out.
The truth is we as a nation consider prisoners as a second glass citizen. Like
humans with defects from a manufacturing plant that need to be contained in
jails away from everything.
And we have a dark side of capitalism that optimizes for stock value without
regard for human element. We are already in the world of AIs optimizing
endlessly to increase a magic number without much regard to external
consequences.
------
jimnotgym
It still amazes me the human waste of US prison sentences. Armed robbery in
the UK for a 17 year old, from memory, is likely to attract significantly less
than 10 years of actual time served.
Yet in the UK we are not overrun with armed robbers. I think the deterrent
effect of a long sentence is rather lost on a 17 year-old who is already
making bad life decisions.
~~~
Retric
The idea is not a deterrent. The idea is if someone spends most of their life
in prison they are not going to be able to commit crimes outside.
Effective or not, the reasoning is fairly straightforward.
~~~
albertgoeswoof
But you have to let them out at some point. The longer they’re in the more
likely they’re going to be to commit crime when they do leave.
~~~
themihai
Without some rehabilitation programs chances are that they will get back to
prison regardless of how long or short it's their stay. I guess the gov has to
decide if it's worth to pay for rehabilitation or just keep them in jails. The
latter is easier to implement and to sell.
~~~
albertgoeswoof
Re-offending rates are lower in counties that do provide rehabilitation rates,
it’s pretty well known. So the US government is wrong on this point if that’s
what they’re judging against.
Most people in positions of influence aren’t stupid though- clearly there is
something else swaying the decision. I would imagine that for-profit prisons
are probably the root cause.
------
Invictus0
Is it really so hard to compete with this company? It's only a monopoly
because no one else went in and did the work. Whats preventing anyone else
from making these kiosks and charging a penny per call/email?
~~~
Sharlin
Getting them to prisons? It’s not like the customers (that is, the convicts,
_not_ prison officials) have a free choice of the service provider. It’s not a
free market and the current situation is perfect for rent-seekers.
------
dplgk
30 years for armed robbery? I've seen less for murder. Maybe Kim Kardashian
can get him pardoned.
On topic: if you see prison as a punishment then paying for email is part of
it. If you see prison as a place to store bad people but treat them fairly
while they're there, then I guess it's morally wrong. As the risk of
whataboutism, charging for email is really the least of our moral problems
with prisons. People are profiting greatly from the prisons themselves.
~~~
swalsh
Some people commit crime because they have things biologically wrong with
them. I'm not convinced they're anything but a minority. I think most
offenders violent or not end up there because a series of bad decisions. I'd
hope prisons could be placed to help put people on better paths. Paying
extortion prices for email isn't helping them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Larry and Sergey: A Valediction - smacktoward
http://www.roughtype.com/?p=8661
======
kinkrtyavimoodh
It's funny how much public perception is tied to the media pulse of a company.
If you read comments on online boards today, you'd think Google was one of the
worst companies out there.
And yet, I think it is safe to say that Google basically defined the post-dot-
com-bubble era, in a good way. So many things that comprise 'company culture'
today and that have been emulated (whether willingly or out of pressure to
stay competitive to other companies in the hiring market) by tech and non-tech
companies around the world were pioneered by Google. Anyone who has actually
worked in other industries will attest how much a breath of fresh air Google
brought to corporate life. It's a separate matter how some of it is coming
back to bite them now that they have hired too many people who are more
interested in activism than doing their job.
So many of Larry's and Sergey's ideas were truly about organizing the world's
information. That vision statement wasn't just words. It affected how Google
and Googlers thought of things. My favorite example is Google Books. Is it an
obvious ad-funnel? I doubt it. Or Google Street Maps, for that matter. And yet
it has provided so much value to the world.
It's almost never a good idea to make gods out of people. But it is at the
same time a terrible idea to make absolute demons out of them. And I think we
stray too much into the latter territory just because it has become
fashionable to shit on Google for the tiniest of things.
~~~
dnautics
> it has become fashionable to shit on Google for the tiniest of things
I think that's a reaction against how it's also fashionable to worship
whatever Google does. And just cargo culting google practices can be damaging,
at least from a selfish perspective. I lose developer hours because our entire
13-person company's (with 2.5-ish developers but 7 years worth of code) is
hosted in a monorepo. I've now worked at two out of two companies that have
gotten stuck because they built with an Angular stack and management refuses
to switch to a stack that I can reliably hire or train juniors out of a
bootcamp for, etc.
~~~
crdoconnor
Also:
* The ridiculous nosql fad that led to a tsunami of databases with horribly invalid data because constraints aren't sexy.
* The ridiculous academic fetish that triggered the leetcode phenomenon and led to a tsunami of developers who can code a quicksort in their sleep but still don't have the first clue about structuring code or data properly.
~~~
triceratops
> developers who can code a quicksort in their sleep but still don't have the
> first clue about structuring code or data properly.
I don't understand this belief. Where does it come from? Junior engineers
don't have the first clue about structuring code or data properly, whereas
senior engineers do. Google's belief (probably) is that anyone able to
quicksort in their sleep is either already good at the other stuff too, or is
smart enough to pick it up over time. If they're wrong, companies will outhire
and outcompete them eventually.
~~~
crdoconnor
>Google's belief (probably) is that anyone able to quicksort in their sleep is
either already good at the other stuff too, or is smart enough to pick it up
over time.
Exactly. This belief that the two correlate closely enough that you can
supplant one kind of test (physically writing code, discussing it and
architecting it) with another (leetcode) is massively, horre ndously wrong and
damaging. The two do _not_ correlate well. They correlate very badly.
~~~
triceratops
> The two do not correlate well. They correlate very badly.
Do you have any evidence? It seems to be working rather well for the companies
that follow these practices.
You may speak derisively of "leetcoding" but it does demonstrate persistence,
grit, speed of thought, and/or the ability to learn something difficult
(algorithms, data structures, competition-style programming). It's not crazy
to posit that people who are able to learn one hard thing well will probably
also learn other hard things well. In fact, it should be the other way around.
Why in the world would someone hardworking and intelligent not be able to pick
up new skills?
To me it's absolutely insane that being good at architecture and good at
algorithms and data structures are seen as mutually exclusive skills. They're
not skiing and barbecuing.
Now I'll concede that Leetcode-style interviews are a terrible and stupid way
for smaller companies to hire, because they don't have the candidate pipeline
of a Google or FB or Amazon. But it isn't a wrong approach in and of itself.
If that's true, someone should be making bank by hiring all the scores of
talented devs that the megacorps reject for not being good "Leetcoders".
Plus, surely you're aware that the megacorps also have system-design
interviews for all but entry-level candidates? That's where you're asked about
architecture, tradeoffs, and high-level design decisions.
~~~
crdoconnor
I don't have studies but my experience of those who excel in leetcode is that
they _suck_ at system design and good programming practices - largely because
they focused on leetcode to the exclusion of all else. They "hacked" the
programming interview.
And while hacking the programming interview does demonstrate grit and
persistence, it doesn't demonstrate actual programming skills. The worst part
though is that it generates a mindset that "good programming skills" means
"even _more_ advanced leetcode".
I don't begrudge these people. A set of absurd incentives was put in place and
they reacted to them accordingly.
It isn't good for Google either. The hires that came after this philosophy
have achieved very little of note. The vast majority of post Gmail abject
project failures have been built in house while the successes (maps, android)
were bought.
~~~
triceratops
> I don't have studies but my experience
Cool, so anecdotes, not actual data.
> it doesn't demonstrate actual programming skills.
It demonstrates ability to learn difficult things. You still haven't answered
why junior devs hired this way are somehow incapable of learning good
architectural practices. You also didn't address the fact that most of these
companies also interview senior hires for system design and architecture.
> The hires that came after this philosophy have achieved very little of note
Photos. Chrome. Brain. Tensorflow. Kubernetes. Even Android didn't take off
until 6 years _after_ its acquisition. I don't have the time to research more
but you get the idea.
------
chewxy
Nick misrepresents the original paper.
Nick writes:
> they introduced Google to the world, they warned that if the search engine
> were ever to leave the “academic realm” and become a business, it would
> inevitably be corrupted. It would become “a black art” and “be advertising
> oriented.”
This is verbatim from the original paper:
> Aside from tremendous growth, the Web has also become increasingly
> commercial over time. In 1993, 1.5% of Web servers were on .com domains.
> This number grew to over 60% in 1997. At the same time, search engines have
> migrated from the academic domain to the commercial. Up until now most
> search engine development has gone on at companies with little publication
> of technical details. This causes search engine technology to remain largely
> a black art and to be advertising oriented (see Appendix A in the full
> version). With Google, we have a strong goal to push more development and
> understanding into the academic realm.
The meaning is not even close to what Nick suggests!
~~~
rrss
I don't agree.
When that paper was written, "Google" referred to an academic research
project, not a company. Page and Brin indicate that because other search
engines were developed at corporations, they were "largely a black art" and
advertising oriented.
Since Google has become a company, and is no longer a research project in the
academic realm, it has become a black art and advertising oriented, just as
Page and Brin said happened to search engines developed at corporations.
~~~
extempore
The phrase “black art” in the paper refers to a technical challenge which only
experts can tame, via methods which aren’t widely known. It has zero to do
with ‘black arts” in the sense of witchcraft. The blog post drifts between
these meanings, possibly with poetic intention.
~~~
bsanr2
Perhaps the use of "black art" rather than "technical challenge which only
experts can tame" in the paper implies poetic intention on their own part?
------
lacker
I know this is an almost insane digression, but I found it quite interesting
that the author theorized the net worth of King Lear.
_Lear must have been worth a billion or two, in today’s dollars._
Far more, I would say! The way I see it, if you converted the wealth of
medieval monarchs, relative to the world they lived in, into modern day terms,
they would be the richest people alive. Lear was the king of Britain in an era
where the king was an absolute ruler, and nominally owned the entire country.
How much is Britain worth? Nowadays the GDP of the UK is over 2 trillion
dollars a year.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=britain+gdp](https://www.google.com/search?q=britain+gdp)
GDP isn't a great match to the wealth of an absolute monarch, but government
spending in the UK is about a trillion dollars a year. How much of that is an
obligation, and how much could be extracted to count as personal wealth? I
estimate about half of it, for an income the modern equivalent of 500 billion
dollars.
In terms of net worth, that income stream would be worth a present value maybe
$5 trillion.
So, obviously this is just a back-of-the-envelope calculation of something
that doesn't make all that much sense, but in _relative terms_ I would argue
those medieval absolute monarchs were far richer than any modern rich person.
In absolute terms, of course, it's a much different story.
~~~
antognini
Medieval monarchs weren't really the absolute rulers they're often perceived
to be. A medieval monarch was heavily constrained by the nobility. It wasn't
really until the late 1600s and 1700s with monarchs like Louis XIV and
Catherine the Great that the monarchy grew sufficiently powerful to start to
exercise some real control over the nobility.
~~~
leoc
Elizabeth I cadged from the English nobility for items of clothing and
jewellery.
------
jedberg
> Page has even managed to keep the names of his two kids secret
That's an impressive feat in this day an age. I mean, birth certificates are
public record. I'm surprised no one has looked it up and leaked it. Good for
him for working hard to keep it a secret, so they can reveal themselves
when/if they choose.
Ps. If you know his kid's names, please don't out them here.
~~~
sdan
Fairly sure he'd change the last names or something to conceal who they are.
Otherwise, they'd eventually be recognized.
~~~
jedberg
Yeah but legally his name would have to be on the birth certificate.
------
patcon
I refuse to love Google, but I do have love in my heart for Sergey and Larry.
imho, the foundations of the corporate ecology that we've built seems to
favour the creation of large companies with quite dehumanizing values at their
core. The fact that Google has grown to such size and existed at all (even as
imperfect form), that is a triumph of these two citizens.
They've built a metropolis out of plutonium, and miraculously we live good
lives in it, largely without illness ;)
~~~
mattkevan
We’re living good lives in their metropolis of plutonium because we’re not yet
fully aware of the consequences.
Rather like how a hundred years ago people happily put radium in toothpaste
and soap. Nothing better than a healthy glow to your morning routine - until
the consequences arrive.
What will be the result of building the sort of global, hyper-targeted
surveillance and propaganda machines spearheaded by google and Facebook, and
will our descendants think we’re as dangerously naive as we do about those who
made radioactive chocolate?
~~~
patcon
I do appreciate what you're saying here, so thank you. Don't get me wrong, I
resist Google with all my might, and have actively organized against Sidewalk
Labs in my city, and other projects from them. But I look at Amazon's Bezos
and count myself relatively lucky to be living on a timeline where the magic
beans that became Google ended up in the hands of someone quite UNLIKE him.
Sinking money into moonshots (though sometimes misguided) and a diversity of
experiments; that is much better than Bezos' unartful "growth above all else"
mentality.
------
h2odragon
> The white-robed wizards of Silicon Valley now ply the black arts of
> algorithmic witchcraft for power and money. They wanted most of all to be
> Gandalf, but they became Saruman.
I don't actually recall anyone proclaiming the messiah-ness of these guys and
the inevitable social justice juggernaut of Google back then. It was a better
search engine. they (justly) got rich off it. If the author had more hope of
what "the Internet will mean to Mankind" back then and is dissapointed in what
he's got now, perhaps he shoulda jumped in then or even now, and fix it.
~~~
corporateslave5
Yeah I think this is romanticizing it. These guys never really were out in the
public bragging about themselves or how they’re helping humanity. Mostly
they’ve been pretty behind the scenes
------
ripvanwinkle
Never thought pictures of business /technology leaders could evoke pure kid
like joy.
------
x__x
Probably a life of guilt for opening doors and handing over all their data to
big brother.
Sooner or later this will all be public knowledge. Will this tarnish their
legacy?
------
zuhayeer
"When, in 1965, an interviewer from Cahiers du Cinema pointed out to Jean-Luc
Godard that “there is a good deal of blood” in his movie Pierrot le Fou,
Godard replied, “Not blood, red.” What the cinema did to blood, the internet
has done to happiness. It turned it into an image that is repeated endlessly
on screens but no longer refers to anything real."
Damn
------
lazyjones
The author has a lot of imagination and a grudge... What if Sergey and Larry
were just engineers at heart and simply never craved for the attention they
got after their success? AFAICT they always kept a low profile. They got
talked into posing for silly PR pictures a few times, so what? As if that was
unusual for tech founders.
------
Invictus0
What does unspiderable mean in this essay?
~~~
gniv
In this context, a spider is a web crawler.
~~~
Invictus0
Ahh, makes sense. Thank you!
------
dibujaron
This is a very well written article, what a fun read! "as bubbly as the water"
haha
------
fhehhdg
> Larry and Sergey may well have been the last truly happy human beings on the
> planet.
I really don't get this kind of writing. The millennial angst that suffuses
all my social circles is just bizarre. Is this guy also a millennial or is he
just trying to emulate one?
~~~
davidajackson
I second this. Why do writers use hyperbole to make points when their
hyperbole is not an exaggeration, but rather just false? It makes me as a
reader not trust anything they say afterward.
~~~
kev009
Writing is a tool. Think of this article like a runway, and you the reader as
an airplane trying to take off. Hyperbole can and did introduce a bit of
turbulence to induce lift in your mind to get you out of follower mode and
thinking critically whether you agree or disagree with the author. To complete
the metaphor achieving lift off and thinking your own thoughts on the topic.
It's not dishonest because anybody can clearly reason the statement is
tautologically false, there are no tricks like numbers or misleading
statistics or anything explicitly duplicitous and dishonest.
You may dislike that the author effectively caused you to do this, thinking
for yourself is dark and scary versus gently pulling you along for the ride
but then would you have even read or commented? All I see is a skilled writer
ruminating on an interesting topic. The comments on this thread already
greatly outweigh the length of the piece, it's a pretty nice piece of writing.
------
Mugwort
Google started out as a tech company and then later became a part of the US
Deep State (Prism program). I think any good the company was doing will be
long overshadowed by this unfortunate relationship. Eric Schmidt bears the
greatest responsibility for moving Google in this direction. The revelations
of Julian Assange basically demolished the myth of "Don't be evil". Google was
revealed as a company that in fact did much evil. Seeing Julian slowly die in
prison on false rape charges while Google profited immensely helping destroy
whatever was left of our digital rights and privacy certainly didn't help the
company's image. I wanted to like Google. I liked Google from the beginning
and then the ugly reality chipped away at their reputation until if found
myself making awkward excuses for Google and doing all sorts of self
deceptions and mental contortions to rationalize what they were doing. Then it
became too much. I realized a good company can go bad and that's exactly what
they did. Why? Who knows but size and unprecedented success have something to
do with it. I don't think you can ignore the Behemoth factor but still, they
are responsible for their conduct. I wouldn't want to be either of these men
and I can't imagine anybody who loves technology and things that hackers care
about like digital freedom and privacy continuing to hold Google if high
esteem. Google has become a force for evil. It's an unpleasant truth.
~~~
MikeKusold
In response to Prism, they immediately started encrypting all internal
traffic. They were not willing participants and were likely furious to
discover they were infiltrated.
------
bsanr2
Sergey Brin attended my high school. I found out through Wikipedia, in
college, in 2009. To my knowledge, he has never mentioned, visited, or donated
to it, personally or through Google/Alphabet. We were not a rich private prep
or anything like that, just a majority-minority community school that
benefited from a school-within-a-school-type magnet program and proximity to
several research institutions (particularly NASA Goddard); outside support
would have been more than welcome. Brin was certainly phenomenally intelligent
from the get-go (as related by the teachers who remembered him), so it's
questionable how great or negligible Roosevelt's influence on him was.
Still, I take a lot away, inasmuch as his character is concerned, from his
regard for us. One would think that singular and eminent success such as his
would consider the role of every community he passed through in the shaping of
his fortunes.
For comparison, Martin Lawrence at least got his teacher a car (RIP Froggie).
~~~
randomsearch
I hated my high school but loved my university. If I ever have cash, I will
happily donate to the uni. Maybe his experience was the same.
~~~
bsanr2
My sense is that this may be the case, but I have trouble understanding it if
the school's culture during his time was anything like it was during mine
(that is, accepting of diversity not only in backgrounds, but also in
aptitudes, with niches for high intellectual and physical achievers, normal
kids, and even, perhaps especially, those who would have been marginalized
elsewhere.)
That said, I think what I'm advocating for approaches a sort of noblesse
oblige, in that Brin has been SO successful that any deviation from his
existing path might have lead to much less success, obliging consideration of
every step along the way; and in that even a marginal actor in his life would
be worth giving back to, from the point of view of the actor, commensurate to
their involvement. ERHS is a school that could benefit hugely from a modest
grant, or periodic appearance (if not personal, perhaps from a Google rep),
which would presumably be a incredibly small sacrifice on his part. But most
who went their didn't even know he had.
It just seems weird.
| {
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How Facebook’s Winning The War Against Yahoo, Patent By Patent - tilt
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/04/yahoo-vs-facebook/
======
chaosprophet
It is very disheartening to see that something like privacy settings have not
exempted from this 'lets patent everything we can get our hands On' mentality.
Sure these patents may be used today only for defence but in the future when
Facebook in Yahoo's shoes, who is to say they wont try to sue their
competitors out of the market?
------
Camillo
I could comment on how this reads more like a paean than as news reporting,
but no. I can't get over the fact that Facebook has a patent on selecting a
region of an image and associating information with it. I think I'll just go
home now.
------
sek
We will see more of these articles, a lot of people have stock in Facebook and
this lawsuit directly affects the price. There will be a big PR fight for a
high IPO valuation.
| {
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SwarmKit by Docker: a toolkit to orchestrate distributed systems at any scale - shykes
https://github.com/docker/swarmkit
======
marcc
Obviously it is very early in the data center orchestration and scheduling
world, but it looks like this is filling in many of the gaps that exist today.
Excited to dig into a bit more. I'm setting up a test cluster right now to
give it a spin. I spent all day today working with Docker for OSX and an super
impressed with some of the new docker-compose functionality.
I like how easy service-defined networking is getting. (Side note: I'm still
working through an issue where Docker on OSX won't bind to a gateway address
of a bridge network. My YAML works on Ubuntu, but not on OSX. I'm starting to
think it's a beta bug, but I haven't given up yet.)
If SwarmKit can make progress in delivering an easy to run, but still very
powerful scheduler and orchestration platform, I think it might be a big
platform.
~~~
justincormack
Hi if you have issues with the beta try posting on the forum or the bugs email
link. There may be bugs, but the network environment is different and some
things there is rather different routing.
------
dantiberian
It's not clear from the README how this fits in with the rest of the Docker
ecosystem. How does this relate to Docker Swarm? Would I use this to create
apps that are directly manipulated by Docker Swarm, or does it just provide
primitives that Docker Swarm uses that other apps may find useful, but that
don't depend on Docker at all?
~~~
shykes
It's the latter. As we build up the Docker platform we're spinning out small
individual components (the "plumbing") which other products can use and
contribute back to.
Here are a few of the components we have open-sourced recently:
* [https://github.com/docker/swarmkit](https://github.com/docker/swarmkit)
* [https://github.com/docker/hyperkit](https://github.com/docker/hyperkit)
* [https://github.com/docker/vpnkit](https://github.com/docker/vpnkit)
* [https://github.com/docker/datakit](https://github.com/docker/datakit)
* [https://github.com/docker/containerd](https://github.com/docker/containerd)
* [https://github.com/docker/notary](https://github.com/docker/notary)
* [https://github.com/opencontainers/runc](https://github.com/opencontainers/runc)
* [https://github.com/docker/libnetwork](https://github.com/docker/libnetwork)
* [https://github.com/docker/libcompose](https://github.com/docker/libcompose)
| {
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Ask HN: How do you keep a record of meetings at your company? - Madawar
Am looking for a fast and efficient way of keeping a record of meetings at our corporate company, which process has been most efficient for you? Do you record audio take down minutes is there any apps you use to plan and schedule meetings apart from outlook that is.
======
zhte415
1\. Print the agenda with lots of spaces between topics.
2\. During the meeting, write the important points on the agenda. Use a
highlighter or underline for action points.
3\. Take a photo of minutes with phone. Email everyone immediately.
Not my idea, got it from manager-tools.com
Additionally, for larger/more traditional teams, assign tasks in whatever task
tracker is being used. Shouldn't take more than 10 minutes.
------
tixocloud
We've mostly used Microsoft Word or any text editor.
What's important is you'll need to understand how big your team is and does
everyone typically attend the meetings? This will guide how much note taking
you'll need.
We never used audio (because it's time consuming to sit through an entire
meeting and it also doesn't provide a lot of context for those who weren't
there) and we're into daily scrums so it keeps everything fresh in our head.
------
brianjking
Atlassian Confluence has excellent templates for this, however, it can end up
being fairly expensive depending on how many users need access to it.
[https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence)
------
iamsalman
I'm considering doing a side-project to auto transcribe minutes from voice
recognition for the meeting and index all that data so its searchable and also
plugable to existing enterprise systems through REST API. Does that sound
something useful?
------
lj3
Most companies I've worked at and spoken to would rather we not record our
meetings. Paper trails and law suits, etc.
------
kvee
workflowy.com is pretty good
| {
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The unified control group hierarchy in Linux kernel 3.16 - chiachun
http://lwn.net/Articles/601840/
======
gioele
In the last weeks, the kernel developer Neil Brown has been contributing a
series of very in-depth articles about cgroups and hierarchies in the current
kernel in general. Worth reading and worth paying LWN to access the content
(and the associated discussions) as soon as it is published.
[https://lwn.net/Articles/604609/](https://lwn.net/Articles/604609/)
* Control groups, part 1: On the history of process grouping — a look at the history of grouping processes, going back to the early days of Unix.
* Control groups, part 2: On the different sorts of hierarchies — a look at hierarchies, including some from inside Linux and some from outside.
* Control groups, part 3: First steps to control — a look at the more simple cgroup subsystems.
* Control groups, part 4: On accounting — hierarchical accounting in the remaining cgroup subsystems.
* Control groups, part 5: The cgroup hierarchy — options and implications for hierarchical structure.
------
maggit
I had no idea what a control group is, so here is a short summary for others
in my position:
\- cgroups (abbreviated from control groups) is a Linux kernel feature to
limit, account, and isolate resource usage (CPU, memory, disk I/O, etc.) of
process groups.
\- Various projects are using cgroups as their basis, including Docker
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cgroups](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cgroups)
~~~
jpgvm
Technically isolation is actually implemented in what we call Linux namespaces
(which are analogous to Solaris Zones/BSD jails etc) and are not part of the
cgroups infrastructure per se.
The definition above comes from wikipedia and is incorrect in my opinion.
Cgroups only really encompasses accounting, limits and some other cool
functionality (like freezer, which allows you to atomically pause groups of
processes).
Namespaces on the other hand implement namespacing of all the crucial
resources like UIDs, PIDs, devices (including network adapters), routing
tables etc and form the basis of the "security" part of a container.
It just so happens that people tend to think of them as one thing as their
only interaction with them so far has been LXC/Docker/Heroku/Borg when in
reality they are much richer systems that can be used to do all sorts of cool
things.
~~~
menage
Being able to ensure that your important job gets a certain fraction of the
CPU, memory or I/O resources regardless of what other jobs on the same machine
are doing is very much an instance of 'resource isolation' \- in terms of
usage, rather than access/naming which is the kind of isolation that
namespaces provide.
CGroups can theoretically provide resource access isolation too, e.g. the
device security cgroup subsystem, but it's not really the ideal model for it.
FWIW, Borg (at least as of a few years ago - it's possible that it's changed
now) hardly uses any resource access isolation - apart from a bit of bind-
mount trickery to provide filesystem isolation, it's primarily concerned with
resource usage isolation, and jobs are very aware that they're running on the
same kernel with potentially many other jobs.
------
jpgvm
Huge props to Tejun Heo and everyone else involved in this effort.
This is a big deal in our modern container powered ecosystem.
------
tbrownaw
Hearing about cgroups always reminds me of the resource metering/dispensing
parts of the KeyKOS papers.
[http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~KeyKOS/](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~KeyKOS/)
Convergent evolution is fun. :)
| {
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So You Want To Be a Developer (Part 2) [video] - jonikanerva
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/so-you-want-to-be-a-developer-part-2
======
jonikanerva
First part here: [http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/so-you-want-to-be-a-
dev...](http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/so-you-want-to-be-a-developer-
part-1) HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3595115>
| {
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The Sourcehut Project Hub - ddevault
https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-04-30-the-sourcehut-hub-is-live/
======
omdv
Like many others I too admire Drew's work. But one thing I appreciate the most
is the visual style and usability of Sourcehut. I don't know what it is
exactly (am not a UX or visual designer myself, although work with them a
lot), but to me it is one of the most aesthetically appealing sites I visit.
~~~
lhorie
I find the text a bit hard to read (and it seems at least one other commenter
mentioned the compressed line-height).
What I do notice is that the site loads very fast (sub-1s w/ cache disabled
via devtools to simulate first visit, and sub-50ms otherwise). That alone
deserves big props.
~~~
ddevault
I am very proud of our performance :)
[https://forgeperf.org/](https://forgeperf.org/)
~~~
mappu
I think Codeberg.org is not doing the (normally very fast) Gitea any favors
here, because it's hosted on Hetzner in Germany. Lighthouse may only throttle
the connection further.
Where are the tests being run from?
Is there any way to control for network latency (maybe subtract the ICMP rtt
from the tests?)
You might consider comparing it to other Gitea instances like
[https://try.gitea.io/](https://try.gitea.io/) (Digital Ocean / USA),
[https://mirror.git.trinitydesktop.org/](https://mirror.git.trinitydesktop.org/)
(Czech Republic) or [https://gitea.com/](https://gitea.com/) (China), but I
guess Codeberg is probably the most representative instance for public use.
~~~
ddevault
This has been brought up many times, but latency and bandwidth is controlled
for with Lighthouse. The same tests have also been run _from_ Germany without
appreciably different results. It's also easy to run the test suite yourself
if you have an hour of compute time to spare:
[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/forgeperf](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/forgeperf)
The goal here isn't to compare forge software (that would require a completely
different approach to level the playing field), but to compare hosted options.
The test suite is easily extended with other hosts or pages, and a few people
have tested against their own Gitea instance - usually it ranks somewhere just
above the middle of the pack.
------
tiffanyh
Drew, congrats! I love the principles you hold fast too.
Q: does this mean pricing is no longer optional?
[https://sourcehut.org/pricing/](https://sourcehut.org/pricing/)
~~~
ddevault
Payment is still optional, and SourceHut is still considered an alpha. This
completes only one of a few important milestones blocking the beta.
And, thank you for the kind words :)
~~~
tiffanyh
Well, don’t wait too long before you charge :)
I realize we can all make optional payments but I’d love for you have
committed reoccurring revenue you can count on.
(I say this as a huge admirer of what’s you’re working on and accomplished)
~~~
ddevault
We have enough :) Not a lot, but enough, and a little more than that. You can
keep an eye on the financial reports if you want to see for yourself:
[https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-04-13-sourcehut-q1-2020-fina...](https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-04-13-sourcehut-q1-2020-financial-
report/)
Note that I have secondary income sources, and we also make some money from
lending our staff out as part-time consultants. It's not important to me to
maximize the earning potential of SourceHut. The mission is to make the free
and open source ecosystem better, not to make our own pockets richer.
~~~
Arkanosis
I have a hard time telling if I admire your mindset more than your work or the
opposite… :)
------
lbotos
Drew, Consider adding a line-height on .content of 120%. Should make it a
little bit easier to read.
~~~
ddevault
Good suggestion, thanks.
------
emptysongglass
I love sr.ht but for the love of God can we please have an easily deployable
Dockerfile for selfhosting? I'm almost positive its lack stems from Drew's
ideals of how software ought to be distributed but it would really help with
wider adoption. Sometimes you don't have he luxury of dealing with a NixOS or
straight Debian system or you're running containers-only because of company
policy and so on and so forth.
~~~
ddevault
This was brought up a couple of times, start here for the response:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23037904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23037904)
~~~
emptysongglass
Let me be real with you for a second in one of those let's pretend we've just
taken a bunch of psychedelics and all the structures that prop us and our
beliefs and ideals have collapsed: I really think you should reconsider your
position on this. Containers are ok, they are not a threat; the kinds of
people who are going to be selfhosting your stack are the same kinds of
curious, investigative people who will debug when it all falls down. Those
people do not need to be pushed through a manual series of commands as a
hazing ritual.
I'll be just as real with you that I'm not going to be the one to maintain it.
It's in the best interest in the platform's broader adoption I make my plea.
Because people like me will just flounder on the rocks of the GitHubs of the
world. And that's not a future either of us really want.
~~~
ddevault
It's not a hazing ritual, it's a necessary series of learning steps which
equips you to be a _good_ sysadmin of your new instance. Whatever did we do
before Docker? The world must have sucked back then!
~~~
t0astbread
Not to be snarky but Docker (+ Hub) is mostly just packaging with some
isolation to avoid conflicts, right? So why would you recommend packages from
"regular" package managers (as seen in the installation instructions) but not
Docker? (This is a serious question, maybe I am missing something.)
~~~
ignaloidas
Because Docker is a really shitty way to package applications. You don't
package the application, you package an entire linux distro, with it's
packages, and your application into a single opaque blob. Normal package
managers just package your application in a more simple manner which works in
conjunction with your OS, not on top of it.
~~~
t0astbread
It makes sense to package and isolate the base system since it avoids any
"hidden state" that could influence the behaviour of your program and
introduce hard-to-debug errors.
And it's not packed into a single opaque block: You can specify an image to
derive your image from and Docker will overlay-mount your image on top of the
base image, avoiding the need to store multiple copies of a base image.
------
selfhostfan
Hey ddevault, thank you for work, especially Sway and Wlroots. Is there any
plan to distribute Sourcehut as a docker image for installation? I personally
self-host a number of applications myself (using Docker+Traefik), and would
like to move to Sourcehut from SCM Manager.
~~~
ddevault
Thanks for the kind words :)
However, there is no Docker turn-key installer, and no plans to make one. I
elaborated on this here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23037232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23037232)
But, I've also long acknowledged that if someone else wanted to make a set of
third-party Docker images, it would be feasible, and I wouldn't be bothered by
it (so long as you didn't ask me to support it).
~~~
selfhostfan
I see, thanks for the reply. I didn't make my own only because I don't usually
have time to maintain and monitor for new updates; but if updating it is as
simple as `apk update`, then that shouldn't be a problem.
------
tsukurimashou
Happy for you Drew, I've been following you on and off for a few years, feels
good to see someone being able to live off the kind of work you do.
I like the minimalist approach of many aspects of your work. And the whole
website using no JavaScript is also very nice to see.
Have you thought about adding some opt-in JavaScript to enhance the user
experience?
~~~
ddevault
There are 2 or 3 small touches of JavaScript here and there which make
conservative enhancements. But, it's a base design requirement that all
features have to work without JavaScript - and once they do, adding JavaScript
doesn't often seem very compelling.
------
e12e
Great to see things progressing. We're currently self-hosting gitlab, and the
relatively tight coupling of repo and issues/issue boards is an itch for us.
How is the self-host story for sourcehut (paid or gratis)?
Is there a turn-key variant with turn-key upgrades a la gitlab omnibus
installer?
~~~
ddevault
The self-hosting story is pretty good(TM). It's not turn-key, and there is not
an installer. You need to run through the steps manually, which are documented
here:
[https://man.sr.ht/installation.md](https://man.sr.ht/installation.md)
Most people get this done in an hour or two, sometimes with the help of #sr.ht
on irc.freenode.net. It's also often made easier by the fact that you can skip
any services you don't need, like paste hosting or wikis. By making you go
through the steps and set it up, it makes sure to leave you with an
understanding of the pieces and how they fit together, so you're better
equipped to deal with it if/when it breaks and to adapt it to your particular
circumstances. After you set it up, upgrades are usually pretty painless, you
just run `apk upgrade` and it takes care of the rest. In general, I think this
approach makes a lot more sense than the turn-key Dockerized approach.
~~~
e12e
Thank you - I followed a link that said "open source" and it took me to a list
of repositories (which is nice, we all like open source) - but I apparently
didn't land on the install-link (to be fair, I didn't look very hard).
I'm not sure I'm a fan of many approaches I've seen (gitlab omnibus is not a
docker install, BTW).
You appear to be supporting alpine Linux - and also Debian derived systems -
via packackes?
Packages, obviously, is a nice way to install software... If I wanted an
appliance - I should set up an alpine vm, install source-hut components I
like, point it at a managed postgres instance and a smart mail host - and
assume I'll only ever need to do rolling updates via apk - and distro upgrades
via alpine?
Is running on Debian likely to be as smooth?
~~~
ddevault
If you remember where you found that link, let me know, so I can update it.
>Packages, obviously, is a nice way to install software... If I wanted an
appliance - I should set up an alpine vm, install source-hut components I
like, point it at a managed postgres instance and a smart mail host - and
assume I'll only ever need to do rolling updates via apk - and distro upgrades
via alpine?
Yeah, that's about right. Upgrades are done just by running your normal
package manager updates.
>Is running on Debian likely to be as smooth?
The Debian repository is community-maintained, but the maintainer does a good
job and a few people have reported sucess using his packages. We also set it
up so that upstream releases automatically update the Debian repo. You'll have
to depend on him for support, though, not me - his nick is dlax and he hangs
out in #sr.ht on irc.freenode.net; and his email is given on the package page.
He's a helpful fellow.
Alpine Linux is indeed the officially supported platform, though, and I highly
recommend it. I wouldn't dream of running a different system in production,
Alpine is simple and reliable and it's easy to fit the whole thing into your
head.
~~~
e12e
Thank you.
> If you remember where you found that link, let me know, so I can update it.
I belive it was the "100% free and open source" link in this very post:
[https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-04-30-the-sourcehut-hub-
is-l...](https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-04-30-the-sourcehut-hub-is-live/)
Which goes to:
[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/?search=sr.ht](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/?search=sr.ht)
Which does indeed link the repos - which is good - but from a mindset of "how
do I self-host?" maybe a bit bare bones.
Looks like if one follows any of the repo links - the install info is at the
bottom. May be an artifact of me being on my phone.
As I said, I didn't look very hard.
I really appreciate the no-nonsense/no hype vibe - but at the same time, I
really do want a "here's a sane way to get up and running" front and center.
Now, obviously there's a hosted offering - but at my current company we have a
few projects that we feel more comfortable self-hosting due to the nature of
some of our customers. For some, we avoid third parties, where we can.
~~~
ddevault
Thanks for the tip! I've updated that URL to the following, which is much more
helpful:
[https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sourcehut](https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sourcehut)
------
Seirdy
This is excellent. The great thing about Sourcehut is that if you have extra
git remotes, you can keep working like nothing ever happened if the site goes
down. Issues and patches are decentralized over email.
The Project Hub looks like an excellent way to tie together all the separate
Sourcehut services to better compete with other "complete" VCS-based
collaboration suites like GitHub and GitLab. In the future, it would be really
cool to expose an API to allow adding "custom" services that aren't part of
Sourcehut.
It's good to see Sourcehut focusing on project discovery, since this is the
area where GitHub excels at the most. When I search for a small CLI/TUI
utility, I often run these filters:
\- filter out weblangs, frontend-oriented languages, and languages with heavy
runtimes (JS, TypeScript, CoffeeScript, Vue, CSS, HTML, Dart, Purescript,
Livescript, Elm, Swift, JVM languages, .NET languages, Vala, QML, etc.). I
have several shortcuts for many combinations of languages so I don't have to
type them out every time.
\- filter repos below a certain size (a repo above 10mb is probably full of
bloat).
\- If applicable, filter out repos whose last commit was before a certain
date.
\- If applicable, filter by topic
\- If it concerns a recent technology, I can filter repositories created after
a certain date.
\- If I want to try a smaller project that isn't cursed with mainstream
success, I filter repositories below a certain number of stars.
For instance, if I feel like my MPD setup is missing something, I might
search:
mpd stars:<150 pushed:>2019-01-01 size:<8000 -language:purescript -language:livescript -language:vue -language:javascript -language:typescript -language:coffeescript -language:elm -language:dart -language:java -language:scala -language:kotlin -language:clojure -language:groovy -language:php -language:objective-c -language:objective-c++ -language:swift -language:css -language:HTML -language:haxe -language:csharp -language:fsharp -language:"jupyter notebook" -language:powershell -language:cuda -language:assembly -language:tex -language:batchfile -language:erlang -language:elixir -language:emacs -language:vim -language:plpgsq -language:julia -language:xslt -language:systemverilog -language:verilog -language:hcl -language:tsql -language:jsonnnet -language:gdscript -language:r -language:smarty -language:freemarker -language:nix -language:saltstack -language:"visual basic" -language:"visual basic .net" -language:plsql -language:"rich text format" -language:dockerfile -language:vala -language:QML -language:actionscript -language:matlab -language:alloy -language:cobol -language:graphql -language:m4 -language:qmake -language:fish -language:opencl -language:json -language:rmarkdown -language:xml -language:markdown -language:applescript -language:puppet
The result [0] shows quite a few nice utilities. If I want to go even more
minimal, I could filter out Ruby and even Python projects.
It would be great to have a FOSS implementation of an advanced project search
utility that isn't limited to (or even part of) any particular hosting
provider. Maybe ActivityPub could help facilitate connecting and indexing
project metadata from different hosting providers.
[0]:
[https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=mpd+stars%3A%3C150+pushed...](https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=mpd+stars%3A%3C150+pushed%3A%3E2019-01-01+size%3A%3C8000+-language%3Apurescript+-language%3Alivescript+-language%3Avue+-language%3Ajavascript+-language%3Atypescript+-language%3Acoffeescript+-language%3Aelm+-language%3Adart+-language%3Ajava+-language%3Ascala+-language%3Akotlin+-language%3Aclojure+-language%3Agroovy+-language%3Aphp+-language%3Aobjective-c+-language%3Aobjective-c%2B%2B+-language%3Aswift+-language%3Acss+-language%3AHTML+-language%3Ahaxe+-language%3Acsharp+-language%3Afsharp+-language%3A%22jupyter+notebook%22+-language%3Apowershell+-language%3Acuda+-language%3Aassembly+-language%3Atex+-language%3Abatchfile+-language%3Aerlang+-language%3Aelixir+-language%3Aemacs+-language%3Avim+-language%3Aplpgsq+-language%3Ajulia+-language%3Axslt+-language%3Asystemverilog+-language%3Averilog+-language%3Ahcl+-language%3Atsql+-language%3Ajsonnnet+-language%3Agdscript+-language%3Ar+-language%3Asmarty+-language%3Afreemarker+-language%3Anix+-language%3Asaltstack+-language%3A%22visual+basic%22+-language%3A%22visual+basic+.net%22+-language%3Aplsql+-language%3A%22rich+text+format%22+-language%3Adockerfile+-language%3Avala+-language%3AQML+-language%3Aactionscript+-language%3Amatlab+-language%3Aalloy+-language%3Acobol+-language%3Agraphql+-language%3Am4+-language%3Aqmake+-language%3Afish+-language%3Aopencl+-language%3Ajson+-language%3Armarkdown+-language%3Axml+-language%3Amarkdown+-language%3Aapplescript+-language%3Apuppet&s=stars&type=Repositories&utf8=%E2%9C%93)
------
smartmic
Congratulations to everyone involved and using Sourcehut! It is good to see
viable, free alternatives to Github rising. The developer ecosystem becomes
weaker if almost everyone get trapped in a corporate monoculture.
Personally, I trust fossil-scm for my side projects. Albeit based on a
completely different design philosophy, I recommend to check it out for
everyone eager to look outside the box.
------
foresto
Thank you. I spent ten minutes looking for a project index when I discovered
sourcehut today, and failed to find one.
Am I blind, or is there no link to
[https://sr.ht/projects](https://sr.ht/projects) from the main sr.ht or
sourcehut.org pages? What is the expected path of discovery?
------
chrisweekly
Bravo! Congrats! Thank you!
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Top 20 freemium alternatives to hunter io lead generation cold emailing - sharemywin
https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/top-20-freemium-alternatives-to-hunter-io-lead-generation-cold-emailing-ebcbffc1d7
======
tomatotomato37
I appreciate the work you put in to help others clog my spam folder
| {
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} |
How much energy goes into making a bottle of water? - indiejade
http://www.physorg.com/news156506896.html
======
indiejade
A: 2000 times more than the energy required to produce tap water.
Another interesting fact from the article: ". . . world consumption of bottled
water has increased by 70% since 2001 to 200 billion liters in 2007."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Which YC companies had the most traction before going into YC? - kkt262
Just thought this would be an interesting thread. Which YC companies had significant traction prior to their acceptance into YC? (Revenue, Users, etc)
======
yurka
Also, a related question: Has YC rejected applicants despite impressive early
traction?
~~~
thong
I don't have examples, but I would think so.
In terms of product-market fit, great fit in a small market still limits
potential success of a company in the absolute sense. (i.e. "dominating" the
now-$5M a year "pog" milkcap industry)
That's why VC's sometimes look for startups that have seemingly strange ideas
to "normals", but the potential to address problems in a massive market.
Achieving product-market fit can take time, but doing so in a large market can
mean more in the end. (i.e. Spanx - a "minor player" in the womens underwear
sector when compared to Victoria' Secret)
------
staunch
Humble Bundle is one.
~~~
kkt262
What kind of traction did they have?
~~~
staunch
They'd sold millions worth of games I think:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_Indie_Bundle>
| {
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Detailed Comparison Between WordPress and OctoberCMS - theluketowers
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/03/wordpress-october-cms/
======
larryvel
I'm making this post because OctoberCMS (OCMS) really helped simplify the
development process for me. After nearly 10 years away from web development, I
was looking to get back into the industry. The last time I worked with PHP we
were using header/footer includes to stitch together everything from
e-commerce to blogging sites. Fast forward to 2017-2018 and frameworks had
really blossomed.
After researching different platforms/frameworks to learn, it became clear
that Laravel would be a solid choice. Needing to put together a somewhat
straightforward community driven site with user authentication and blogging, I
started looking to different packages that would help me when I discovered
OCMS.
Not only is the OCMS community extremely friendly and helpful, does OCMS make
it relatively painless to implement many of the common features modern
websites/apps require: user authentication, CRUD functionality, email
handling, etc.
Where OCMS really shines is in its extensibility. Nearly every aspect of the
system/plaform can be extended with custom functionality. Furthermore, because
October is built Laravel, we have access to many Laravel packages and features
that any other Laravel application can use. This makes it painless to
integrate an OCMS project with other services and projects, something that is
not always easily achieved with WP.
As long as October maintains a healthy and vibrant community and continues to
push updates, I will be using it as my primary framework/platform of choice
for most of my projects.
Thanks for making it possible for me to get back into development and quickly
learn the important aspects to modern web development!
------
theluketowers
I'm completely biased obviously, but I feel like this article's author has a
lot of experience building WordPress sites but hasn't had the experience of
building a site in OctoberCMS yet.
OctoberCMS is an incredibly powerful yet simple tool that can handle all
manner of websites. I've built everything from your basic web brochure type
sites to complicated web applications that are used for a wide variety of
functionality to multi-tenant SaaS type offerings.
I recommend just trying it out for yourself and playing around with it. See
[https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KRj0LAnbC-
Fgl392-Hz0MnJgih...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KRj0LAnbC-
Fgl392-Hz0MnJgihu41KwmhNCOhMHn93k) if you would like a developer's
introduction to the platform.
------
cptmeatball
Really biased, but I feel OctoberCMS wins in terms of ease. As mentioned
before in this thread, OCMS can handle everything you throw at it, without
loosing its structure or ease of access. I feel that with Wordpress there's
such a lack of proper (clean) structure, that it gets in the way when
developing.
But then again, I guess every well structured framework / cms would win if you
compare it against Wordpress.
------
Fossy
October wins against WordPress.
| {
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$199, 4.2” computer is Intel’s first Raspberry Pi competitor - kcorbitt
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/199-4-2-computer-is-intels-first-raspberry-pi-competitor/
======
knocte
'It's notable that the MinnowBoard is an open hardware platform, a distinction
that Arduino and BeagleBone can claim but Raspberry Pi cannot.'
Nice
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Burning issue: how fashion's love of leather is fuelling the fires in the Amazon - occitan
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/aug/29/burning-issue-how-fashions-love-of-leather-is-fuelling-the-fires-in-the-amazon
======
aurizon
leather sales have plummeted, there is a glut of leather on world markets. The
lower grades are being buried in landfills.
[https://fortune.com/2019/08/09/cowhide-glut-americans-
devour...](https://fortune.com/2019/08/09/cowhide-glut-americans-devour-beef-
and-buy-less-leather-jackets-more-vegan-fashion/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Basic Aspects of Squeak and the Smalltalk-80 Programming Language (1998) - shawndumas
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/wolfgang.kreutzer/cosc205/smalltalk1.html
======
cwp
Love the screenshots!
You've heard of MVC? This is it. The original implementation. The one that was
demoed to Steve Jobs at Xerox PARC.
~~~
vidarh
If you liked that, Trygve Reenskaug, who did the original MVC implementation,
has a page about it that includes a few of the earliest papers on it here:
[https://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/themes/mvc/mvc-
index.html](https://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/themes/mvc/mvc-index.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Do you one of startup lovers and don't know how to become successful? - mtufekyapan
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140610190011-81337627-six-main-traits-for-startup-team-members?trk=prof-post
======
AJ72
The embedded image in the article crystallizes everything. I wish I could
repost it in the comments.
~~~
mtufekyapan
Thank you for comment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: My Startup didn't go viral- what now? - jiganti
So I launched my startup (moodstir.com) after working on it since November or so and have made a few attempts over the past couple of weeks to try and get a following. It's actually one of the main reasons I decided to take a leave of absence from the University of San Francisco.<p>I understand that virality is not going to happen overnight, but I approached the project under the assumption that it's either going to be adopted and spread throughout some niche quickly, or never catch on.<p>So I'm asking for advice from some of the more experienced founders on HN- am I being impatient? Should I pivot the concept in some way? Perhaps allowing other login options aside from Facebook is the first step to reduce barrier to entry.<p>If you have any suggestions about either where I should go from here, or specifically regarding the concept, I would be happy to hear them.
======
guynamedloren
I'm assuming you've been working on this project full time or near full time
since November, which is approx 10 weeks. Honest question: is this all you can
deliver with 10 weeks of full time work?
Unless there's something hugely complex under the surface that I'm not seeing,
here's my criticism:
\- This is not a startup, and you're hurting yourself if you think of it as
one. It's a simple MVP web project.
\- You could have - and should have - pulled this off in a weekend.
\- The 'why' input is too small.
\- 'Trending now' looks like it's broken.
\- Everything I click yields a search result. Why are there no profiles?
\- What am I supposed to search for in the search box? It should give me tips.
\- Why can't I click photos?
~~~
kamaal
Actually I wanted to say the same, but then I hesitated and thought that it
may be a little harsh on him.
By the way all your points are valid.
Also, If you want to quick tasks outside your work. What you are looking for
is consulting/freelancing not a start up. Start up will chew up both effort
and time in large magnitudes with a river of failures heading your way. Simple
Android/iPhone apps. Small utility website, are Ok if your want to make some
money with Google Ads. But they are not start ups.
By the way these there is a huge tendency among people to call even 100 line
scripts as projects and weekend apps as start ups. The sooner you face the
reality and set you expectations right, the better.
------
steventruong
The best thing you could of done but didn't do would have been to validate the
idea before even building it. And by validating, I meant finding a core group
of users who absolutely had a need or want for what you were looking to build,
not friends or people who thought the idea was cool. This core group would
then go on to be your beta (or alpha) users.
I assume you didn't do the above. Virality, press, etc... are often not
reliable sources of traffic to build a sustainable group of users in the early
stages. At this point, you should go back and find that core group to improve
the MVP with and worry about growth once you've worked out all the initial
bugs and features users actually want.
Obviously take my advice with a grain of salt as I have no idea what your idea
is and just how far you got and this is very general advice (on iPhone and
didn't go to your link). You need to make sure people even wants your product
~~~
jiganti
It was mostly "friends or people who thought the idea was cool". The handful
people who were most adamant about the idea were somewhat savvy Twitter users,
so I envisioned others having the same passion for the idea.
~~~
geoffschmidt
As it turns out, users lie. They will often say whatever they think will
please you, especially if they are your friends. They also have a hard time
imagining how they will use products that don't exist, and a hard
straightening out the reasons for their feelings. They will say "Yes, I
totally want a site that will help me find cool things to do my city!" when
what they really mean is "Yes, I wish I had more free time to go out with my
friends!"
Ways to deal with this sad fact:
* Ask users "how much would you pay for this?" Follow up with "seriously, if I build it, you'll commit to paying that much?" Tends to bring them back to reality, but doesn't make sense for all products.
* Look for external evidence for user pain. If there is no tool on the market for doing X, but users manage to sorta-kinda cobble together four other products to sort of do X poorly, you can believe that they want X.
* Build quick little prototypes, as cheap as possible, and see what users actually do with them. (You've just done that -- good job :))
~~~
kls
_As it turns out, users lie_
This can be overcome by explaining to them up front, that you are about to
invest your soul in the effort and that they will be doing you a disservice if
they are not honest and that failure later will be harder on you. When they
realize that they are actually saving you a larger amount of future grief then
they tend to be more honest.
------
OoTheNigerian
Like others have said, there is no apparent need for it when I can just
Tweet/Facebook "Yaay! I am happy because....."
My suggestions:
1\. Make it more fun and social by changing the call to action from "submit"
to "Tell the world", "let your friends" know etc. I am sure you get the drift.
2\. Use Icons to depict the mood. This smiley --> :) is a LOT more fun than
the word ---> HAPPY. icons are infinitely much more fun. If you cannot design,
go to dribble and contract one of these guys
<http://dribbble.com/search?q=smiley>
3\. Your site should have a mobile version and should be fucking FAST!
4\. Have twitter login too
5.You can seek advice directly from Mark Bao
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=markbao> he launched Threewords.me that
went 'ridiculously viral' (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2051288>) so
he should have better feedback and suggestions.
Remember, you should be thinking of building a sustainable product that is
useful not just something that should go viral.
Here is the very last thing you should do. In fact the thing you should never
do: Pity yourself. You are a warrior for taking the leap. You now go and crush
it! You can, and you will.
~~~
jiganti
Thanks for the response! Submit is a pretty emotionless word- true. Twitter
login is a good idea; icons to depict moods is something we have talked about
but aren't sure if users will know exactly what emotion is related to a
certain face. I remember threewords.me and loved the idea- I appreciate the
links.
~~~
OoTheNigerian
As for the icons, you can put a word to the face. That is the designers
problem. :). I doubt any real designer will have a problem of making smileys
'recognizable'.
------
jgrahamc
My feedback:
1\. It wasn't obvious to me why I would use this when I went to the site. This
is just for telling people my mood? I can do that on Twitter. You need to make
clear what the difference is. Perhaps even some sort of demo.
2\. When I did try to enter a mood I was asked to sign in using Facebook.
That's a dead-end for me; I won't give a random company access to my Facebook
account.
~~~
jiganti
Thanks for the advice- we should probably have this on the home page. The idea
is that there's something specific that caused that emotion. When a number of
people start posting an emotion about a certain thing, "Tim Tebow" for
example, others could search that term and find the collective emotional
consensus everyone has towards him.
~~~
mseebach
And why would I want to know what "the collective emotional consensus" is?
What's the pain? How will it get me laid?
~~~
jiganti
I'm envisioning it to be used for this purpose as a sort of review site.
Having the "collective emotional consensus" of a restaurant down the street
might give you a better idea of whether it's worth trying out than seeing
3.5/5 stars on Yelp will. Showing legislators a "collective emotional
consensus" of peoples' moods towards the "SOPA" keyword would be interesting
as well.
~~~
steventruong
This is just personal opinion but I wouldn't care to see emotional consensus.
That does nothing for me. Rather, I would like to see more in-depth reviews
and ways to flag reviews.
Taking your example of Yelp. I want to be able to filter out (personalize)
_my_ overall reviews by being able to flag reviews I think are ridiculous
(such as 1 star ratings base on other loud customers that may not have
anything to do with the restaurant or food they are reviewing). I would also
like to dive in deeper on reviews such as reviewing specific dishes, viewing
full menus online, etc...
Emotions don't tell me how a particular dish tastes. It doesn't tell me why
someone reacted the way they rated the restaurant (or whatever). Personally,
the collective emotions idea doesn't solve anything for me.
~~~
kls
To me, it could be useful for nightlife but for a restaurant it only applies
to a certain segment of the market. If I am going to a 5 star dining
establishment, on a date, I really don't care about the emotion, because I am
not interesting in socializing. Now for nightlife, I would want to be around
happy people, but I don't know if that can accurately be discerned. Most
people are going to say I am happy at the bar, so all bars are going to be
happy.
------
idanb
Either this is a bad idea, or it's a bad execution of a good idea. I don't
really believe in bad ideas to be honest.
There's no real experience here, as well as no real novelty. I have my own
ideas of how this might be made to be useful, but I think you should give a
real hard think as to the following questions
- what is, step by step, the user experience like?
- how are they getting to your page in the first place
- what is their response when they see your page
- what is their response when they use the page (what do they click, read etc)
- what brings them back the second time, time after that?
- why would they refer others to your page?
- what problem are you solving for them and how can they not get this anywhere else?
I'll give you one point that I noticed. W(hy)TF are the emotions in text
format? No one likes to write "happy" when they can ::ninja:: something, also
it's much easier to click in a sea of emoticons than to find an arbitrary
emotion in a list.
------
mvkel
The other feedback mentioned is almost invariably excellent. They're great
things to try.
In short, expecting a waterfall of activity after three months is very
impatient.
If you're an actor trying to make it in Hollywood, it's ridiculous to expect
to be an A-lister after three months.
Similarly, if you're a band that was in a garage in November, it'd silly to
expect to be headlining Madison Square Garden in three months. It even took
Rebecca Black longer.
These things can take an absurd amount of time. You could be around for five
years before "going viral," but will feel absolutely fresh to those seeing it
for the first time.
If this whole "patience" thing is a hard pill to swallow, take an honest look
at what you're doing and how your expectations align with the harsh realities
of being an entrepreneur.
Good actors love the craft and would be perfectly content to perform in their
local theatre for peanuts for the rest of their lives. While capitalism means
the same can't be said for an entrepreneur, the principle is the same.
------
InclinedPlane
_"I approached the project under the assumption that it's either going to be
adopted and spread throughout some niche quickly, or never catch on."_
This is a silly and immature approach, in my opinion. Such an approach is only
suitable if you either have loads of time and money to throw at projects just
for fun or you have a pet project that requires extremely minimal resources
and effort to get off the ground.
The de facto approach to just about any web business should be to imagine it
like a mom and pop store or restaurant. You'll spend a lot of hard work on it,
it'll take years to get into the swing of things properly, and if you're
really lucky you'll just barely do a bit better than keeping yourself employed
at a reasonable level of pay.
~~~
jiganti
I appreciate the candid response. The age-old "ideas vs execution" argument is
something that interests me, and I've always wanted to start projects that
have a neat core concept, where they can potentially get off the ground
quickly from word of mouth. However, it's inspiring to see sites like Reddit
struggle for long periods before eventually having explosive growth.
------
japhyr
I've read all the feedback, and agree with much of it. But I think I see
something here that a lot of people don't see. At my school one of our simple
routines is to go around the class a couple mornings each week, and have
everyone say their name, a number from 1-10 representing how they're feeling
that day, and maybe respond to some prompt. It's a silly, cheesy, touchy-feely
routine on the surface, but when done right it does a lot of good. If someone
is low, it's good for others to know that. We give that person some space, and
make sure someone checks in with them, without suffocating them. If someone is
having a good day, we use that person's energy to push projects forward and
help other people out.
Sure, people could do this using facebook or twitter. But they'd have to use
those general tools for this specific purpose. There could be some strength in
simplicity here.
That said, this will not be an overnight success. If you want to make this
into something meaningful, you've got a bunch of iterating to do. You've got a
lot to learn about what the specific strengths of this concept is, and cut
anything that doesn't build on those strengths. You've got to make it work
with fb and twitter, because it probably won't stand on its own.
Good luck, it's an interesting concept.
------
gizmo
If you want it to go more viral you can always go the usual route: integrate
aggressively with facebook, twitter, and other social networks. Use "rewards"
in terms of points or medals or achievements to encourage users to spend time
on your site.
Also think really carefully about what your target audience is, what value you
want to give to people, and how you plan to (eventually?) make money. I agree
that a startup product like yours has to grow big fast. So the important thing
is the viral part, the rest is pretty much irrelevant (once you have a
bazillion users it's easy to build something they want).
Where should you go from here? Figure out a clever way to make something
viral, then go do that.
Feedback regarding the product? I don't see how it can ever generate
passionate users. I can't imagine anybody saying "Moodstir is the GREATEST
PRODUCT EVER, because...". Twitter was the first social network to do one-to-
many broadcasting right. Facebook gets people laid. Linkedin is a social
network for business purposes. People _really love_ those products, and it's
very clear in what way they bring value to the user. This too is something
that you should probably think about.
------
friggeri
Same thing here, I launched <http://whodidiforget.com> a few days ago, and
after getting a little traffic from HN it fell flat.
Sorry for hijacking your post but my question is similar to yours: what to do
when you're not on a first name basis with big blogs editor (and those blogs
do not respond to email tips) and you don't yet have a large network ?
~~~
jgrahamc
My feedback:
1\. It's not obvious what you do that's special. There's probably some secret
sauce in figuring out who I might have forgotten, but you don't tell me what
it is.
2\. It would be useful to have a walk through or screencast or something
showing how it works. For example, does this thing just make lists, does it
manage invites, send emails? No idea from the site.
3\. I won't use sites that insist on a Facebook login.
~~~
friggeri
Thanks for your feedback !
1\. I didn't want to add too much complexity to the app by going into details
of advanced Social Network Analysis, but I'll think about adding details.
2\. Good idea, I'll work on a screencast/walkthrough
3\. I understand that, but I have no other solution: having access to the
user's facebook friends is an absolute requirement for the app to run.
Nevertheless, thanks for your feedback.
~~~
rlander
If you tell me upfront, maybe near the signup button, that you need access to
my facebook account in order to run "advanced Social Network Analysis" AND I'm
sold on how your app is going to help me, I would have no problem signing up.
~~~
friggeri
I've added an explanation on the how/why on the front page. Thanks !
------
puppybeard
I've never made a startup, so I'm talking as a consumer, but here's my honest
opinion.
I don't want to use your service, I have no need for it. I have four other
services I can use to vent, and I only use 2 of them.
Are you addressing a need that isn't provided elsewhere? What research did you
do?
If I was you, I think I'd be researching until I identified something people
actually need or want, and I'd re-use some of the code from this project for
connectivity.
Also, I'd allow people to use more than just Facebook. Maybe I'd rather have a
unique account on your service that's associated with my email, but not
discoverable by absolutely everybody.
------
Maro
I think you should pivot.
What your site allows users to do is one of the many things people can already
do on Twitter and Facebook much simpler, without the use of dropdowns, just by
typing whatever they feel like into the share box. You're adding very little
value (if any), but want to create a separate walled garden against one
thousand pound gorillas mentioned above. In fact you're subtracting value
because users aren't on Twitter or Facebook where their friends actually see
their shares.
~~~
kls
Right, if you want to continue with this idea, I would suggest building out a
structured front end for twitter that formats posts and collects the data from
twitter to make the reports. You could do this very easy with a hashtag. It
would have saved you the trouble of building out a back end.
------
vintagius
One of the key ingriedients to virality for sites, is Anonymity. If you can
incorporate that element into the site ,your chances of going viral will
increase drastically. If things stay the way they are than you going to have
to do things the old fashion way ie beat the chicken egg problem ,gain users
over a long period of time and let the network effect kick in.
------
samzhao
I guess you need to provide some reasons for your users to use your site? And
maybe you should try some more marketing strategies? Your UI looks fine, but
rather simple - maybe too simple. Looks more like an experimental side project
to me. It simply doesn't have the "official" look to it. That's just my humble
opinion. I'm not an expert or any sort, I'm a user.
------
Tichy
Just had an idea: what if you changed the "happy" "because" to "x made me
happy by". Then people could thank each other that way, instant virality.
Although they could still just do the same on Twitter or Facebook.
But I think there might be some way to redeem your site, by giving a crazy
reason for doing mood checkins.
------
DealisIN
Don't want to be too harsh, but why would people use this over Twitter or FB
status updates? I think the biggest weakness here is that the other users are
people I have no connection to whatsoever. What was your reasoning that this
would take off, and was there any niche you had in mind?
------
spdub
I just ran across this, wanted to say that it looks like an interesting
project - not sure however what advice to give you. I can however say, that I
m a student studying NLP and I like the way users self annotate their moods
based on their statements. Good luck.
------
realschool
Like others have said, I don't understand what value this adds. Second, I
don't have Facebook and won't give my twitter login to an random site..... at
the same time, those 'social' networks seem to be what gives this product
value.
~~~
vintagius
7 years ago,who would have though that tell your friends ''Whats on your
mind''So who know maybe dude is on to something.
------
nurik
Where is the schlep? I'd highly recommend this before developing anything
further: <http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html>
------
dclowd9901
You want viral? Ask yourself: Would this appeal to a 13-15 year old? In the
web, these are your mavens for viral.
------
jiganti
Clickable: <http://moodstir.com>
------
chetan51
What's the value-add you're offering users?
~~~
jiganti
The philosophy was that people use twitter to convey their rational
conceptions of things (140 character explanation of their thoughts) while
there was no medium for telling the world what you're feeling and why. Since
people love posting their thoughts on twitter, we imagined there would be a
market for those who want to let everyone know what's causing their emotions.
From the about page:
Moodstir is where you give the world a snapshot of your emotions. Tell the
world you're [frustrated] because of [traffic], or search [Jersey Shore] to
see the variety of moods the popular TV show causes people to share.
~~~
gradstudent
>The philosophy was that people use twitter to convey their rational
conceptions of things (140 character explanation of their thoughts) while
there was no medium for telling the world what you're feeling and why.
Why, exactly, can't we just use Twitter, or G+ or FB to post our mood? There's
no value-add here; your service is just trying to further divide your target
users' attention and splinter their social network.
Quite aside from the value-add problem is the value proposition itself: what
on earth do I provide by sharing my mood with friends and what do I gain by
moodstalking them?
~~~
jiganti
Say you had a great experience at a coffee shop- you post [satisfied] towards
[Velo Rouge Cafe]. If enough people do this, anyone who wants a quick snapshot
of what people have experienced in Velo Rouge might just search for them on
Moodstir. If there are a lot of [satisfied] emotions posted, or a lot of
[frustrated] ones, it imply certain things about the cafe. Different than a
Yelp review site, in that it takes the aggregate feelings of all users, rather
than a simple X/5 star system, which is a more limited glimpse into peoples'
experiences.
~~~
thhaar
I get it, and dig it.
Aggregating moods would be useful on a site such as Amazon, where, depending
on the technical level of the product, reviews range from sharp and
intelligent to blunt and kneejerk. Having access to sentiment analysis would
help consumers to quickly see whether or not the product/service being 'mood
reviewed' solves their problem or not.
Written reviews are full of conjecture and anecdotes, 5-star gradings may as
well not exist for 2-4 stars, so mood is another great metric to add to these
tools.
------
dkd903
Although the website looks good but you cannot call it a startup right now. It
is just another website or app that lets me do something. You should
understand the difference between a startup and a simple web app.
Just building a web app will not make your idea into a business / company. You
need to chalk out marketing strategies, revenue streams etc. Most importantly
you need to get users to use your site without much force!
My 2 cents :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“Maybe jobs are for machines, and life is for people” - cedricr
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/02/24/robots-will-take-your-job/5lXtKomQ7uQBEzTJOXT7YO/story.html
======
stegosaurus
So as far as I can see, living in the UK, we treat life as a sort of 'survival
of the fittest' game, but with seemingly arbitrary conditions applied.
For example - we consider a person with a physical disability to be worthy of
support (presumably because we reason that they're unable to work).
We consider a person of advanced age worthy of support (again, they're unable
to work, and probably supported society in the past via working).
There are a few other categories of human that we think of as being deserving,
and income support recognises this.
The flaw here as far as I can see is that we basically say that if you don't
fit into one of the above categories, you must be fit to work, and so if
you're not working you're doing so via choice, and if you choose not to eat
that's your problem to deal with.
To me it's just a really basic error of logic and I don't know how to even
come close to correcting it.
People talk often about the fact that they don't want to be taxed, or
whatever. But why don't they care about paying for the disabled?
Is it that they don't want to pay for people who just aren't trying? It seems
to me that unless unemployment is at 0% such an argument could never be valid.
I think that income support is a great idea, by the way, I just find it an odd
situation that we're in, almost like a really bad compromise. Surely we should
try to help everyone, or help no-one, not unfairly select groups based on them
having a 'bad enough handicap'.
~~~
paulddraper
Some people believe that charity and wealth redistribution is not the
providence of the government.
It's not that they believe charity is bad, but rather that it is either
morally wrong or inefficient for the government to force it.
This opinion has become less popular over time, as the norm for government
jurisdiction has increased. Progressive income taxes are, historically
speaking, a new concept, starting in 1909 in the UK and in 1862 in the US (and
requiring an amendment to the Constitution).
Another reason for the dislike may be the large amount of welfare abuse (not
necessarily fraud, but abuse), which you will probably find even after only a
little exposure to the system.
~~~
stegosaurus
I think my issue is with the ridiculous compromise.
Either government has no authority in this domain (and thus we should have
extremely low tax rates and zero overt welfare), or we should actually aim to
fix the problem completely (and thus have high tax rates but ensure that
everyone has a decent standard of living).
The middle route is absurd. It creates situations in which 'abuse' is even a
meaningful concept; it gives arbitrary groups special status.
What does 'abuse' of welfare even mean? In the UK we have media stories about
people getting a few grand more than they 'need' (and thus not having to eat
rice and beans every meal). Or getting more than the 'median salary', which I
take to be evidence that median employees don't earn enough.
~~~
paulddraper
An example of abuse is the 20-something-year-old whose back "hurts" too much
for him to have a job, so his is disabled.
Sans state-guaranteed welfare, he would do fine at many jobs. But the allure
of someone else paying for everything is too much to pass up, so consciously
or unconsciously, he allows himself to be crippled. (Similar to abuse, of say,
painkillers.)
The argument is that legal entitlement to welfare creates increased
opportunity for abuse, because no one wants to deny it and then get sued in
legal courts.
~~~
stegosaurus
I don't personally consider that to be abuse because welfare is set at such a
low level that I don't begrudge anyone who is completely (or largely) reliant
upon it.
Abuse, to me, would be a wealthy person claiming benefits when they don't need
them.
To elaborate a little - let's imagine welfare gives ~6000GBP a year
equivalent, and any job this person can hope to get gives ~10000GBP a year
equivalent.
I think if we want them to work, then they should be offered more by
employers, not less in welfare. Essentially, giving them negotiating power,
rather than saying 'work for BigMegaCorp for $5 an hour or starve'.
------
yasky
Could the transition start by having a 30 hour work week, for example? If I
work 40+ hours and a certain percentage of my income goes towards sustaining
the unemployed, I would far rather work fewer hours and give that work to an
unemployed person.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How I hacked sales: write about people who don't buy from me - goldfishcaura
I am a techy. I don't know how to sell. But everyone needs to sell: to get a job, to get people sign off on your project, etc. In my case, I am a data consultant. I need to sell to get hired for future projects.<p>Recently, I decided to try a new strategy. I write length articles about people who don't buy from me--or put in another way, people who don't buy my services. As a start, I wrote this:
https://my.caura.co/why-build-software-in-house-not-f3c9bc726b1<p>for someone at Criteo inc., who I thought would be a good candidate for my services.<p>What do you all think?
======
radley
Do it a few times (or more) and then report back. That's when we'll want to
know :)
~~~
gus_massa
... and just be sure to convince them to buy instead of just annoy them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stephen Hawking to unveil strange new way to tell the time - gscott
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/14/scihawking114.xml
======
frazerb
The clock really is quite garish, but you have to see it in context really.
It's going to be be sited on the wall of the old bank opposite Kings College
Chapel - anything quiet and unassuming in such an austere location would be
lost. Garish is good.
I was lucky enough to get a preview of the clock in operation about a month
ago - guided by the clockmaker himself. Two things stand out in particular.
First, the sound. The clock has a really satisfying mechanical whirr and
clunk. A satisfaction that you just don't get by building software! Second,
the LEDs. Bright blue LEDs mark out the hours, minutes, seconds. and they do
so with sweeping movements across the clock face. These sweeping LEDs are
exactly that - LEDs that sweep. It's not an array of LEDs that get turned on-
and-off around the face, it's just some LEDs on a bar that is swung round
mechanically.
Come and see it next time you're in Cambridge. It's mounted behind bullet-
proof glass on the wall of the bank. There's even a special audio system so
that you can hear the 'tick'!
[http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&...](http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=52.203852,0.117524&ie=UTF8&t=k&z=16&iwloc=addr)
------
rflrob
The article says it uses less power than three 60-watt bulbs... why not just
say it uses about 150 watts?
Also, when the designer says, "No one knows how a grasshopper escapement
works", does he mean "most people don't know how it works", or does he mean
that the very principle of its operation is beyond modern science? Probably
the former, but it's unclear phrasing.
~~~
huhtenberg
Here's how it works:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/07/Grasshop...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/07/Grasshopper-
escapement-005.gif/250px-Grasshopper-escapement-005.gif)
So some people do in fact know it :)
------
coderrr
Why is Hawking unveiling this? Seems like he had nothing to do with it.
~~~
michael_dorfman
Because it's unlikely that articles like this one would have been written
without the "hook" of Hawking's name. He's allowing a bit of his fame to be
reflected onto the project, and I suppose that's a good thing for all
involved.
~~~
volida
if thats the reason they could get better coverage inviting Paris Hilton to do
the showing.
~~~
michael_dorfman
And I imagine that if they could find a decent way to tie her to the project,
they would.
Hawking was an easy choice, writing an iconic book with "Time" in the title. A
tie to Paris Hilton would take a bit more creativity.
~~~
Tichy
She's the "woman of the time"?
------
zzzmarcus
I don't know if he could have possibly made it more garish (neon blue back
lighting.... come on!) but the concept is fascinating.
~~~
gaius
They like that at Corpus Christi.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Min Chiu Li - DoreenMichele
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Chiu_Li
======
sytelus
It is fascinating that Li was fired for his groundbreaking work on
chemotherapy which have now saved millions of lives. He is still not awarded
any major prize!
~~~
deepVoid
It is not fascinating. It is sad, unfortunate, and unfair to Li and his hard
work.
------
HillaryBriss
I find it interesting that the basis of methotrexate's success as a
chemotherapy apparently was its ability to reduce a cancer tumor's uptake of
folic acid (a vitamin!).
damn. vitamins can be dangerous.
~~~
otabdeveloper4
Well, yes. I think one of the first things they tell you when you've been
diagnosed with tumors is the danger of vitamins.
~~~
pizza
Wow, I hope the marginal benefit to most of the population (ie those who are
not very vitamin deficient) taking them is not less than the harm caused by
people with undiagnosed tumors taking them willy-nilly.
------
houqp
What a coincidence! i was literally listening to “The Emperor of All Maladies”
on Scribd yesterday and introduced Min’s story to my friend during driving.
~~~
salty_biscuits
When I read that I was amazed that I had never heard about Yellapragada
Subbarow. It seems like he should have won a nobel prize (at the very least!)
------
algog
Thanks for the submit. I learned something today. Roy Hertz wasn't bad either.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
From Russia, With Stupidity: Band Must Pay Fines To Itself - aj
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090710/0340345512.shtml
======
inerte
Probably not a problem with record associations or copyright laws, but just a
bureacratic misstep.
_Of course_ the Deep Purple has a right to play Deep Purple's song, but did
you reminded to fill form H14 from secratariate Office of Culture five days
prior the concert?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scaling Bitcoin Milan Day 1 Video - jlrubin
https://scalingbitcoin.org/event/milan2016/#remote-participation
======
jlrubin
Lots of really cool technology presented. Recommend watching TumbleBit and
MimbleWimble talks, very promising developments.
~~~
luck87
In the afternoon, also Lightning Scalability, Sidechain Scaling, Timestamping
are good topics.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: DataFire Interactive Tutorial – Build and Share Dataflows - bbrennan
https://datafire.io/dataflow?tutorial=true#/Code
======
persona
Like this? [https://zapier.com/multi-step-zaps/](https://zapier.com/multi-
step-zaps/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
From Rust to TypeScript - valand
https://valand.dev/blog/post/from-rust-to-typescript
======
aerovistae
The first code example he uses immediately threw me for a loop. Why is he
adding the return value of a function call to a function itself? bar() +
bar????
function bar(someNumber: number)
{
return foo(someNumber) + 1;
}
function baz(someNumber: number) {
return bar(someNumber) + bar;
}
baz();
Moreover, baz is called with its only argument being undefined-- so the
exception throwing code won't even throw, because it isn't 0. And _moreover_,
this is typescript, so this would have thrown a type error since a required
numeric argument is omitted.
This has so many problems. This is not a promising start to this article's
correctness or thought-outtedness. Yet here it is at the top of hacker news...
~~~
ByteJockey
In JS it's the function would be converted to a string representation of its
code and concatenated to the result of `bar(someNumber)`.
Some quick playing with ts-node says that the same thing should happen,
depending on the return type of bar. Given the definitions above, it should
throw a TypeError, but if bar returned a string, I think it would still behave
as I said.
~~~
formerly_proven
I was unsure if this comment was sarcasm so I tried and concatenating a
function and a string in JS _actually_ results in the source of the function
being concatenated with the string.
~~~
zamadatix
<rant> This whole "wow I thought implicit type coercion in JS was a joke"
style comment got old 10 years ago. If you look at where JS came from (the 90s
browser) and what it tried to do there then you should be left with few
surprises looking it JS code snippets. If you don't understand what a language
was designed for and how it evolved how can you be surprised at the results of
code snippets? Because it's not the same as every other language? What would
the point of the new language be then?</rant>
~~~
adchari
It’s not that the language is different, it’s that the default is stupid. It’s
much more likely that if I’m trying to concatenate a string and a function,
I’ve mistyped something, not that I want the source code of the function.
You can always include some additional function which takes a function as an
argument and prints the source code as a string for the 4 people in the world
who rely on function to string coercion, why is it a default behavior with no
visibility?
I get it, JS is different from C or C++ and every other language but we call
out poor design decisions by comparing them to expectations fostered by other
languages
~~~
zamadatix
Again how can you say it's an outrageous default if all you reference is what
you think it should have done from a generic language PoV not looking to
understand why it does it that way?
Javascript came in as a scripting language for working with the untyped string
content of a browser so you get dynamic duck typing where it tries to make the
types work (generally towards string since that's what the browser had)
instead of having the scripter trying to make some simple web content dynamic
do more type checks than actual code. In JS functions are just objects (like
most everything) and objects. Combine the above so when you say object + "foo"
it coerces object to string and it shouldn't seem outrageous just not what
you're used to.
Now a fair question would be "Why doesn't TS consider this an error out of the
box".
Also for those annoyed by this in places JS wasn't originally designed to go
(heavy app logic, server backends, desktop applications) you might want to
look at the no-implicit-coercion rule in ESLint or similar.
------
XVincentX
I love this. It reminds me a lot of the work I did in Prism to port what I
learned using Haskell in TypeScript: [https://dev.to/vncz/forewords-and-
domain-model-1p13](https://dev.to/vncz/forewords-and-domain-model-1p13)
Reading the article, I do have some suggestion:
1\. Never use isLeft or isRight; they break the composability of the monad
instance — use `fold` instead, as late as possible
2\. Do not use Enum in TypeScript — they have a runtime representation in
JavaScript that's likely messing up a lot of things. Use string unions to
accomplish the same result
~~~
no_wizard
I really wish the TS team would have used frozen null prototype objects for
enums instead. Feels like it would have been a perfect fit.
With that said I am curious why you think one shouldn’t use enums. I know it’s
a “factory” IIFE like namespaces at runtime but otherwise I don’t understand
why it’s undesirable?
~~~
XVincentX
My main issue with Enums in Typescript:
1\. Because they have a runtime representation, I cannot do `import type` —
and I am importing the entire file (which might have a side effect). While
it's still not justified (ideally importing should not do anything) the
reality in JavaScript is different.
2\. I can swap the enum value with a number or a string and it would still
work, even if invalid. See
[https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/KYOwrgtgBAggxgFwJY...](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/KYOwrgtgBAggxgFwJYHsRQN4CgpQKIByMAQgDJ5QC8UADADQ5QAiAkgMonlVQCMWAvliwATYHAA2AQwBOwKADMwIRKnTCUbBGHnyAFAHcAFpIQAuWCrQBKcwCMUKccEkgA3EPWbte+MjQA6Qk48K1coAHpwqAB5AGsRDS0dXV9Vf1YOMhCwyJiAaQSvZJ4aUIioghQEKFlJcXEATyg4B3EhUEgoTWkkEABzVLRMRiCs7gAiPBBJWydxhlwM4ImmJABnGbmBIA)
for an example
3\. On the other hand, I cannot use strings to create an Enum
([https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/KYOwrgtgBAygLgJwJY...](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/KYOwrgtgBAygLgJwJYgOYEEDGckHsRQDeAUFFAKIBy6AQgDLlQC8UAROSAIYBGANsKwA0pKABEAkjFoNmbUUgDOPfq2IBfYsUz4FcKJwBcsRCgzY8BFuy58BUAPT2olXHs69euAO7AAJkA))
— this is the exact opposite of n. 2
4\. Duplicates are possible:
[https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/KYOwrgtgBAIghgTwPI...](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/KYOwrgtgBAIghgTwPIDMDqxgGsoG8BQUUAymCACaIA0hUAsgPYXW0AqYwAzpQjURuRBcefKKwAWYAE7dEUALxQATKIBiUgJYjaxOABdpPfAF8gA)
~~~
nidu
1\. You can define enum like `const enum A {...}` and they will not have
runtime representation.
~~~
Jasper_
const enum doesn't work when in transpileOnly mode (e.g. webpack, Parcel), and
Babel treats "const enum" the same as "enum". I'd really love a non-broken
const enum in TypeScript, though.
~~~
XVincentX
I'd love to see them out of the language. I do not have evidence/document
supporting this, but I think it was ultimately a failed attempt of copying the
C# feature ignoring the fact that JavaScript works differently.
------
flowerlad
This article is unconvincing.
From the article: _Compared to the first snippet, this one is harder to debug.
It seems so because 1.) You don 't know that callMe will throw an error or
not. 2.) If it throws an exception you will not know what is the type of the
exception. The more modular your code is, the harder it is to debug
exceptions._
This is only a problem with unchecked exceptions as seen in TypeScript and C#.
Checked exceptions are the solution.
The problem with error code return is tediousness:
int foo() {
int result = bar();
if (result == ERROR_CODE)
return result;
int result2 = baz();
if (result2 == ERROR_CODE)
return result2;
int result3 = bazz();
if (result3 == ERROR_CODE)
return result3;
}
Compare to the same code written in a language that supports checked
exceptions:
int foo() throws SomeException {
int result = bar();
int result2 = baz();
int result3 = bazz();
}
In the first version the logic is interspersed with error handling, which
makes the logic hard to see.
How do people using Go and other languages that don't have exceptions solve
this reduced readability problem?
~~~
dilap
Go does indeed use the tedious approach. Rust and Zig have nicer syntax for
it.
But personally, I prefer even Go's "tedious" approach to (unchecked)
exceptions, simply because it's too easy to miss an error case otherwise.
I also find that knowing where errors occur is important information, so I
don't really mind having it add an extra line or two. (But the more minimal
Rust/Zig syntax is nicer.)
(This attitude comes from having once worked on a python server application,
which involved a lot, "oh shit, that throws" whackamole.)
~~~
flowerlad
> _" oh shit, that throws" whackamole_
You don't have that problem in languages that support checked exceptions.
~~~
ufmace
I've never seen a language that supported checked exceptions and actually used
them consistently for everything.
But then that would be kind of awful, because IMO the checked exceptions cases
for "I know this will never actually throw, leave me alone" and "This is just
a quick script, go ahead and blow up the whole program if this fails" are
poor, forcing you to write try catch blocks all over the place.
IMO, Rust has a nice approach for being stricter - unwrap. If it's a quick
script, throw unwrap everywhere with reckless abandon. For real programs, grep
for unwrap and make sure for every one, you really know for sure that it will
never fail or that blowing up the whole program if it does is the right move.
To convert from one to the other, grep unwrap and actually think about what
you want to happen if that line is Err.
------
gregopet
Sure, people say they want to have to check for _every_ possible error, but
then Java gets endless heat for having checked exceptions.
~~~
abraxas
Yes, this schizophrenic attitude drives me bonkers. Immature JS kids at my
company love to make noises about Java’s verbosity yet spend hours debugging
and troubleshooting most mundane errors because seemingly nothing is ever
enforced by the JS interpreter.
My theory is that nowadays Java is unpopular mostly because it is their
parents’ programming language. That’s reason enough for these twenty
somethings to despise it without even knowing the first thing about it.
~~~
ragnese
Hold on, though. There is plenty to dislike about Java. Everything can be
null, interfaces have to be implemented at definition, broken array type
variance, no const/mutable at the language level, no value types, etc...
~~~
abraxas
No question there is a lot to dislike about java but there are also things it
got mostly right or better than competing languages of the day. Checked
exceptions is in my opinion one of those.
~~~
ragnese
I agree with that. I was heavily involved on the other thread someone linked
to about Java's checked exceptions. Until that thread, I thought I was the
only one who didn't accept that they were a mistake.
------
taosx
I resonated with the post as I'm in a similar position but I'm really sad that
typescript chose just to be a thin layer on top of javascript.
The sentiment mostly comes from having the JS ecosystem mostly being untyped
and having to interact with it.
That being said I tried io-ts but found it undocumented, missing examples and
hard to write. For future libraries/projects I'm looking to try again
ReasonML, tried in the past but had to write too many bindings.
~~~
valand
Author here. I used io-ts when the documentation is still on its root
README.md. Apparently it has been moved to [https://github.com/gcanti/io-
ts/blob/master/index.md](https://github.com/gcanti/io-ts/blob/master/index.md)
------
rmrfrmrf
IMO the `Either` construct should be avoided in JS because inevitably you'll
either need to wrap everything in `try ... catch` anyway or you'll be pulling
your hair out trying to figure out how to get them to work in an async/event
context, in which case you'll end up re-inventing the Promise api (perhaps
wrapped in an extra thunk to make it more fp-friendly or whatever).
A more practical approach is to work along the grain of JS while getting
inspiration from fp. A common snippet would be:
function maybeUrl(str) {
try {
return new URL(str);
} catch (err) {
return null;
}
}
This is much more straight-forward and interoperable. Dealing with something
like Left<InvalidUrlError> where you've created an entire error subclass and
wrapping function for an unrecoverable failure that will be discarded is way
overkill.
The unreliablility of thrown values in JS is a valid concern, but instead of
trying to wrap all my code in a container construct, I simply wrap/convert the
untrusted errors themselves if I need to use properties on an error reliably.
~~~
rattray
Totally agree.
In cases where the error type matters, I like to return rather than throw the
error.
type Success = string
type Result = Success | BadInputError | NotFoundError | IncalculableError
const foo = (input: I): Result => {
//...
}
------
emmanueloga_
Don't write code like this... trying to fake sum types in an object oriented
language ends up being a horrible, hard to maintain mess, similar to those
examples on the original post.
Typescript's "discriminated unions" [1] make for incredibly inelegant looking
code for anything but the most basic sum types, the ergonomics are nothing
like the experience of using Haskell or OCaml.
I love sum types but in an OOP the equivalent implementation is the visitor
pattern (if the problem calls for it). I was once starry eyed about "making
invalid states irrepresentable". I even managed to introduce a code generator
to bolt sum types into a production Dart app. My colleagues loved it (not) :-)
Thing is, programs have this annoying tendency of being incorrect no matter
what technique you use :-), there's no silver bullet! If a pattern is natural
for a given language, it is better to use that pattern than to force it to be
something it isn't.
1: [https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/unions-and-
inte...](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/unions-and-
intersections.html#union-exhaustiveness-checking)
~~~
moomin
The joke is, OO language have sum types, albeit incredibly broken ones,
because any set of classes that inherits from the same base has the base as a
sum type.
You can surface this by implementing the visitor pattern.
------
chrismorgan
The first example code is rather off-putting, because it has multiple errors.
The code would _not_ throw an exception, because it produces compiler errors
so you’ll never run it. (OK, so it still generates JavaScript that you could
run, but I’m assuming you’re using TypeScript properly and won’t do so.)
• `return number + 1;` should be `return someNumber + 1;`. If you ignore
errors and run the JavaScript, this means that it’ll throw a ReferenceError on
this line.
• `bar(someNumber) + bar;` is adding a number (well, it should be a number,
but you’ve omitted the return types, so the previous error will mean it infers
`any` instead of `number`) to a function. This is a type error.
• `baz()` is called with zero arguments instead of the one it requires.
> _When baz is called it will throw an uncaught exception. By reading the code
> you know that foo throws an Error. Debugging this snippet is a piece of
> cake, right?_
As mentioned, this code doesn’t compile, but if you ignore that and run it
anyway, then the uncaught exception is a ReferenceError, _not_ the error you
see on a throw line. I… don’t _think_ this is what was intended. This also
demonstrates what I consider a bit of a weakness of the exception system in
such languages: various programming errors that a compiler should catch come
through as runtime errors instead.
(I’d generally prefer to use exceptions to indicate _exclusively_ programmer
errors, and basically never use a try/catch block, but too much is designed
around treating exceptions as normal parts of control flow to be able to do
this in most cases. I like the Result/panic split in Rust, where panic
_always_ means programmer error, and Result is for probably-exceptional cases,
but where they’re still generally expected and part of the design rather than
programmer error.)
If you fixed only the first error, you’d get a value like "NaNfunction
bar(someNumber) {\n return foo(someNumber) + 1;\n}" out of the baz() call. Fun
times.
~~~
valand
Author here. Caught red-handed not running it on playground. Thanks for the
correction.
> I’d generally prefer to use exceptions to indicate exclusively programmer
> errors
The idea that panic/exception means programmer errors worth to be noted. It
think they should be intended for errors that is intended to be unrecoverable.
Still, catching errors on runtime is not fun
------
rattray
Reminds me of a pattern I've wished would take off in TS, but hasn't (yet):
const result = await fetchData().catch(e => e)
if (_.isError(result)) {
return "some failure"
}
return (await result.json()).foo
TS is smart enough to know whether result will be of type Error or the
Response type.
This pattern should replace most Either cases when the left is an error state
of some kind. Also should replace exceptions and promise rejections.
You can also analogously replace a Maybe type with nullability, simply `type
MaybeFoo = Foo | null`.
~~~
tym0
I agree with Maybe not being that useful in TS but the point of an
Either/Result type is that the caller is gonna handle it each branch
differently. In your example the caller has no way to tell the difference
between an error and the succesful return value.
~~~
rattray
Perhaps I was unclear, the implicit typing is so:
const result: FetchResult | Error = ...
if (_.isError(result)) {
// Here TS knows that result is of type Error
return
}
// Here TS knows that result is of type FetchResult
On my phone, apologies for shorthand
In any case, with this pattern TS can easily tell the difference between
success and error (or left and right or whatever) as long as the error / left
case is a class of a different type than the success / right case.
Tldr, where relevant, classes are cleaner than tagged disjoint unions in TS.
Errors are one situation where this is relevant.
------
judah
Tangent: This article made me think deeper about programming languages in
general and I found it fascinating. So I went to subscribe to his blog in my
feed reader, but alas, no RSS feed. :-(
~~~
valand
Author here, thanks for the input. Forgot to put it in my backlog :pepesad:
~~~
valand
Rolled out!
~~~
judah
Thanks! Subscribed.
------
unnouinceput
You can write bad code in any language, Rust included. This article is cherry-
picking.
~~~
bitxbit
I think it’s best to stay language agnostic especially in 2020. I try to think
data-in data-out and use the best tools available for clean execution.
~~~
azangru
> and use the best tools available
How do you know which tools are the best?
~~~
matt_kantor
0\. Define what problem you are trying to solve, make sure you understand the
domain.
1\. Come up with a set of options by doing research, talking to people who
have solved similar problems before, etc.
2\. Rank them by some criteria (e.g. availability of libraries, documentation,
raw performance, hireability, support, quality of tooling, etc).
3\. Do some prototyping in your problem domain using the top 2-3 (more if you
aren't confident in your ranking) and pick whichever you like best.
4\. Always be willing to change your mind down the road. Avoid the sunk cost
fallacy and try not to lock yourself in too much until you're confident in
your choice.
------
tym0
You don't actually need the tag on Either. This is how I defined my Result
type. The shape is enough to discriminate them.
type Result<S, E> = Success<S> | ResultError<E>;
type Success<S> = { value: S };
type ResultError<E> = { error: E };
~~~
valand
Author here. Did this too. I found some quirks (rather irrelevant) while
compiling using TypeScript 3.6-ish.
``` const { value, error } = result; if (error) return doSomething(); if
(value) return doSomethingElse(); ```
^ You can't do this because value or error might be not an attribute of result
Nowadays I will just `npm install fp-ts` and use them.
~~~
tym0
You're right that you can't destructure until you've established which side of
the union you got, does the tag help with that?
I like a Result type over an Either because it feels semantically more
meaningful. I work with people with a wide range of background and a Result
type is self explanatory, they can just read the code by themselves without
knowing and understanding the convention of which side of the branch the error
goes, etc...
~~~
valand
I agree with you on the Result type being semantically more meaningful and I
agree there are a lot of conventions to be remembered coming from functional
programming that gets meta.
Thanks for the insight
------
hn_throwaway_99
I'm very unconvinced considering the section on avoiding exceptions doesn't
discuss async code at all. I mean, a returned Promise from an async function
is very similar to the author's "Result" object where you can even pass a
success handler and a rejected handler right in the single "then" method. That
said, I greatly prefer instead to await on an async function and handle any
rejections in a catch block.
~~~
choward
Exceptions aren't typed though so you either have to decode it in some way or
treat every exception the same.
------
tantaman
Please please please don't perpetuate the use of either or maybe types :(
They make software very hard to maintain and end up breaking anyone who
depends on a library that uses them.
Rich Hickey (author of Clojure) has a great discussion of Either and Maybe
here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug)
that dives into their unsoundness.
~~~
mattnewton
Rick’s argument seems to be that we should have better tools in the language
type system. If your language doesn’t give you those tools, these are still
very useful types. In addition, the library maintenance issues he raises seem
trivially solvable with languages that allow function polymorphism or have
refactoring tools to me.
------
aussieguy1234
With JS and Typescript, I find myself going back to logic error handling in
the catch block, because there is only one Error type. You can't have multiple
types of exceptions. So you have to set the error.type attribute and then do
logic.
~~~
MobiusHorizons
It is worth noting that you can throw anything you want. It doesnt' have to be
new Error(). There are definitely some drawbacks to this, such as if the
errors thrown by your dependencies are of type Error, but the upside is that
as long as you are consistent, you get a much richer set of types available.
IMO this also works primarily because errors are very rarely thrown by native
APIs, which instead encode failure into the return type. For this reason, you
can typically have a reasonable level of control over what code can reasonably
be expected to throw.
------
nsonha
Why do you need Either when you have union? All the left types subclass Error
so you can easily separate that from the successful value as well. Seems
rather a dogmatic choice.
------
ape4
Does anyone else hate foo(), bar() and baz() as example names. They are
meaningless - except communicating that its a programmer selected name. Even
func1(), func2() would be better.
~~~
jpxw
f(), g() and h() are decent alternatives.
Of course, the real solution is to come up with an reasonable example scenario
with meaningful names.
~~~
hu3
a, b, c seems more intuitive
------
sdwvit
Well exceptions are generally a sign that code smells. Instead of throwing an
exception, just return the default value.
~~~
otabdeveloper4
> 1 / 0 just returns 0, #yolo
No thanks.
~~~
sdwvit
Returns infinity like it should
------
auggierose
Stopped reading after the exception / result stuff. You can have both, both
are useful, learn yourself some Swift maybe.
~~~
lioeters
I can see the author's point, that a throw behaves awfully like a GOTO. It can
add complexity and unpredictability to the code path, especially dealing with
external modules.
On the other hand, there are situations in which throw/catch provides a
simpler, even elegant way to handle errors.
So I'd agree with you that both are useful.
The author makes a good point though, and I will consider it next time whether
returning errors may be more suitable, to be clear and explicit/verbose,
without requiring the GOTO-like control flow.
~~~
libria
Another place throws are inconvenient is chaining/streams.
Pseudocode:
var goodStuff = listOfStuff.map(x => transform(x))
.filter(t => typeof(t.result) != Error)
.map(y => handleGoodData(y))
If `transform()` threw exceptions, this whole thing aborts. But if it can
return an `Error` type, we can continue processing the good ones and log the
bad ones (here I ignore them for simplicity).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Barclays Bank Using Internet Archive as CDN for JavaScript Files? - ziodave
https://twitter.com/immunda/status/1278783894683336704
======
rvnx
It's cute but probably just a consequence of a content editor at Barclays who
has copy-pasted some old content.
A technical solution could be to add a strict CSP policy but in general the
problem is broader and applies to a lot of banks.
The real issue is that banks (and it's not specific to Barclays) are loading
JavaScript code from third-parties.
The fact that it is InternetArchive (yet another Internet cache) is not more
worrying than GoogleUserContent.com for example.
Otherwise, the "asking money for redemption/forgiveness" part to Barclays is a
bit borderline in my opinion.
~~~
curryhoward
Content editors should not be able to add arbitrary code to a bank's website
unless it undergoes review from someone who understands web security. If there
is some kind of content editing tool, it should only allow content (not
arbitrary scripts) to be edited.
~~~
BattyMilk
Until about a year ago I was working as a FE developer for a major
intenrnational bank.
All the processes and knowledge were in place to make sure all considerations
were taken with our software with regards to security. But... all that good
work and intention goes out the window when the marketing and analysis teams
could pretty much, on a whim dump any old JS onto a production page via GTM.
During my 18 months there, there were numerous issues (thankfully not security
issues - at least that we know of) indroduced via this method inc a full
outage of the customer onboarding journey.
~~~
tweetle_beetle
I see GTM being used (abused?) by marketing teams regularly, but I'm really
surprised that a bank with its own development team would allow it.
It is really powerful and sometimes incredibly useful in some scenarios (e.g I
once built a schema.org metadata system that scraped the pages on the fly for
a site with a broken CMS). Simo Ahava does clever things with it.
But from what I can tell, it seems to be a way of avoiding communication
between teams, or a political power grab inside bigger companies - a parallel
CMS. And the silly bit is that it's normally not doing much more than could be
achieved by copy and pasting a few lines of code into a template.
~~~
kevin_thibedeau
It's a backdoor way for Google to add more tracking.
~~~
frandroid
It's a Google backdoor for _your team_ to add more tracking etc.
The important point is that it's a backdoor for marketing (and adtech) teams
to get around developer/security requirements. At some point, someone on those
teams gets frustrated that their one-line code requests (just load this
script! add a gif banner here!) keep falling behind in the backlog. That
happens in part because the product team often doesn't care about marketing,
and sometimes because developers know that "just one more script!" paves the
road to hell. At some point the third-party that's trying to get their
business going through your business convinces the marketing team to add GTM,
the marketing team says to the dev team "Hey we need GTM to implement THIS
script". This time, because the other side has promised them $$$ in terms ROI,
the marketing team pushes really hard for it, and eventually a product manager
approves the request to get them off their back. The rest, as they say, is
history (at retro time, multiple times down the road).
------
billpg
"We need to roll-back (JS file) to an earlier version."
"Which one?"
"The one at (archive URL)."
"I'm on it."
~~~
Zenbit_UX
I'd bet this is exactly what happened, maybe a junior dev or intern took the
ticket.
~~~
ddoice
No code review in the front-end of a bank?
------
giancarlostoro
Internet Archive as version control, I love it. There's some good comments in
there, one guy determined it had been like this for a month, yikes. Peer
review anybody? Or maybe they only have one web dev and he's a junior so the
seniors dont inspect it as harshly.
------
miga
It is extremely concerning, because it indicates how quality control is
abandoned in search for every lower costs. Embarassing if one considers that
most of these issues should be caught by automation before code review even
happens.
Such a symptom indicates extremely sloppy development process, and low
security culture. It would be interesting to use such fragmentary news to
correct stock pricing, with respect to current management and processes.
------
jmvoodoo
This reminds me of the time I caught my mortgage lender using javascript
loaded directly from a github repo on their mortgage application process. I
reported it to them and they didn't understand the problem.
~~~
vmception
that's pretty funny but what is the problem with that? direct link,
possibility of updating, same possibility of 404 as anything else, CDN and
caching included
~~~
khalilravanna
If it’s straight up linking a non-versioned file (e.g. live file) it implies
the owner of that Github repo has direct access to update and run code in
client’s browsers. Could start shooting off API requests dumping the contents
of cookies/localStorage, set up keylogging, etc. IMO seems like a pretty big
security hole.
~~~
jmvoodoo
Exactly. Or in this case exfiltrate my entire loan application, which would be
a gold mine for identity theft.
------
HenryBemis
Anyone from BarclaysUK internal (IT) audit team reading this? I wonder what
your scope is when you run audits on your webs... Also.. that vulnerability
scanner and pentester.. what kind of reports do they issue that they don't
mention this JS source??
~~~
bArray
"Move Fast and Break Things" is not the motto you hope to see your bank
adopting...
I had a problem with Natwest online banking where the "random" character entry
was the same each time (first, second and third characters) - which reduces
the security incredibly.
~~~
HenryBemis
In a French bank 10 years ago, their e-banking system was recording the actual
values you typed in, their order in your 6 digit PIN, and your username. The
logs were dropped on a share drive so that backup can pick them up. The shared
drive was read only to "Everyone".
IT fought hard and long on the risk of this whole 'setup'. They agreed when I
reconstructed 5 PINs (I stopped at 5, point was made). CTO was cool about
this, insisting "what are the odds of this happening?" COO & CEO had a totally
different (more sensible) opinion.
------
robflaherty
The Internet Archive rewrites contents of scripts to inject the archive URLs.
A better explanation than OP's clickbait is that someone went to the archive
to copy/paste misplaced tracking code.
~~~
LordDragonfang
Everyone assumes that is the case yes. That doesn't make the title factually
incorrect, though.
~~~
robflaherty
Based on the replies to the tweet very few have assumed this is the case and
no, “using as a CDN” and “accidentally linked to” are not the same thing.
------
chaz6
From a security standpoint it is not unsafe to reference resources on an
untrusted third party so long as you use subresource integrity. [1]
[1] [https://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/](https://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/)
------
gregsadetsky
Ooh, this reminds me that I saw a file being included straight from github.com
on flyporter.com (Canadian regional airline)
Actually, extremely weirdly, they didn't include the "actual" file (the raw
version of it) but ... they included the github page in the <script> tag...??
Go through a checkout on flyporter.com (use dates > Aug 31st as they're
resuming service then) and you'll see
`<script src="[https://github.com/furf/jquery-ui-touch-
punch/blob/master/jq...](https://github.com/furf/jquery-ui-touch-
punch/blob/master/jquery.ui.touch-punch.js"></script>`)
in the source code which makes no sense (try that URL in your browser!)
I contacted everyone I could find on LinkedIn who's working as CTO/CIO/etc.
there, AND emailed them but never heard back. (this was 9 months ago... the
issue is still there)
Isn't this how the British Airways checkout ended up being hacked?
------
pier25
A bit off topic but... my bank renewed its web app a couple of years ago and
still uses jQuery v1.
I imagine they invested in auditing it and keep using the audited version...
Is this very common?
------
MattGaiser
I used to work for a bank. I suspect that they found it near impossible to get
$50 for a CDN approved.
------
jgalt212
For sites with a large % of the same people coming back on a daily or weekly
basis, there's probably not much to be gained by serving static files from a
CDN.
------
awadheshv
putting an executable js file under /content/dam, is pretty much a crime, when
you are working with adobe experience manager.
------
pldr1234
Post titles like these always completely overscope the action.
Something more accurate would read "A team at Barclays Bank".
~~~
geofft
While that's true in terms of root cause analysis, the browser doesn't see it
that way - all content on barclays.co.uk is equally trusted by the browser, so
every other team is impacted by this.
------
eska
It's really annoying how people like him blow these things out of proportion
to shame and extort companies.. Seems like he didn't even make a serious
attempt to message them.
~~~
immunda
Twitter author here. I didn't make any assertions about the impact of this
issue. A respondent to the Tweet said they found this earlier and had already
disclosed it to Barclays. I also tried to contact them for another issue and
spent over 6 hours on hold before giving up. It's really annoying how people
love to moan on HN without context.
~~~
ghusbands
You did say "Not to mention the scumbaggery of leeching bandwidth from a not-
for-profit", which is attributing poor motive and character. Even without
that, your general tone is scathing and accusing, over something that is
likely a simple mistake by a fairly fresh or unskilled developer.
~~~
FpUser
> _" that is likely a simple mistake by a fairly fresh or unskilled
> developer."_
I'd assume that for banks all code that goes into production gets audited.
More so it is easy to have the code run through some analyzers before
submitting it to production where presence of external origin should be
detected automatically and raise a flag.
If not it is gross negligence on the bank's side and deserves all the scathing
and accusations it can get.
~~~
TheChaplain
No. Being courteous and professional will still get the point across.
------
gpmcadam
> Barclays Bank Using Internet Archive as CDN for JavaScript Files
The original title is disingenuous, you're assuming they did this on purpose
when they very much likely made an error.
~~~
OJFord
It doesn't say 'decided to use' or 'deliberately using', it is 'using', that
doesn't connote malintent, that's just the state of things.
~~~
seanwilson
"using as a CDN" implies a deliberate choice to me. Why not "because it was a
convenient way for their developer to include it"? You don't know why. A lot
of web developers don't know what CDNs are for too.
~~~
erinaceousjones
"because it was a convenient way for their developer to include it" implies it
was a deliberate choice also, when there's no way in hell someone didn't do
this as a mistake lol.
PLUS, "using as a CDN" is what the site was literally doing, from a functional
standpoint. It was pulling that script from Internet Archive, using their
upload bandwidth.
~~~
seanwilson
> "because it was a convenient way for their developer to include it" implies
> it was a deliberate choice also
I didn't word it well but that was my point. For the same reason, I wouldn't
pick the "CDN" headline as it gives a possibly false narrative too.
> PLUS, "using as a CDN" is what the site was literally doing, from a
> functional standpoint. It was pulling that script from Internet Archive,
> using their upload bandwidth.
I'd be fine with "using their bandwidth". I don't see how the Internet Archive
having a CDN or not is important to the story, and including this fact in the
headline makes it sound important.
~~~
byteshock
I don't think the author was implying that Barlcay Bank was intentionally
using Internet Archive by using the term "CDN".
But, per your suggestion, if the title was something like "Barclays Bank using
Internet Archive's bandwidth to load their JS assets" then it's essentially
the same thing as saying they're using Internet Archive as a CDN.
A CDN is there to deliver asset files to websites, which is exactly what
Internet Archive was doing for Barclay Bank in this case. The author used the
term "CDN" to describe the situation or position Internet Archive was in
relation to Barclay Bank.
Also using the term "CDN" would make it easier for people to understand what
was happening just by reading the title.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Chat with WebSockets - dlubarov
http://jabberings.net/
======
slosh
add embed widgets
~~~
dlubarov
Hm, do you mean something like this (but without the header and footer)?
<iframe src="http://jabberings.net/mysite" style="width: 800; height: 300px; border: none;"></iframe>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HealthCare.gov Sends Personal Data to Dozens of Tracking Websites - markolschesky
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/healthcare.gov-sends-personal-data
======
zaroth
This is pretty shocking. What is PII doing in the query string in the first
place? Disclosing pregnancy status from an insurance application sounds like a
possible HIPPA violation and runs afoul of various state laws around
'Insurance Information and Privacy Protection'. E.g
[http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-
bin/displaycode?section=ins&gr...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-
bin/displaycode?section=ins&group=00001-01000&file=791-791.29). See Section
791.13(k). That's just CA law but many states followed with their own version.
(IANAL)
I think the really big penalties come into play when medical information is
'personally identifiable'. Since this data is going to Google, Facebook, and
Twitter (really?!) with 3rd party cookies, or even without, it would be hard
to argue this data is not personally identifiable.
It's not like they didn't know they weren't sending this data out. Or perhaps
the highly advanced debugging prowess of "Chrome Inspector" is beyond their
pay grade.
Edit: Oh it's not even just Referral leak it's actually it the request in some
cases, so blatantly intentional. :-(
~~~
threeseed
> Oh it's not even just Referral leak it's actually it the request in some
> cases, so blatantly intentional.
Be careful about throwing the term intentional around. There is nothing to
suggest this is the case. It's just a shocking breakdown in security/testing
processes and/or a bug. We see security/privacy issues everyday. They are
almost never intentional.
~~~
Alupis
> They are almost never intentional.
Somebody had to specifically code the application to concatenate into the
string:
> smoker=1&parent=&pregnant=1&mec=&zip=85601&state=AZ&income=35000
~~~
acdha
Reading the example more closely, that's part of a URL:
[https://4037109.fls.doubleclick.net/activityi;src=4037109;ty...](https://4037109.fls.doubleclick.net/activityi;src=4037109;type=20142003;cat=201420;ord=7917385912018;~oref=https://www.healthcare.gov/see-
plans/85601/results/?county=04019&age=40&smoker=1&parent=&pregnant=1&mec=&zip=85601&state=AZ&income=35000&step=4)?
Unfortunately, a quick Google search doesn't explain what the oref parameter
does but from the name I'm assuming it's something like "original referrer".
You don't need malice to explain this – it's entirely plausible to imagine
that some people wanted to track user activities and they had a staggering
lapse in HIPAA auditing due to the rush of getting the site out and
stabilized.
~~~
shard972
> it's entirely plausible to imagine that some people wanted to track user
> activities and they had a staggering lapse in HIPAA auditing due to the rush
> of getting the site out and stabilized.
Considering they spent 1.7 billion on the site, I simply cannot believe that
they were so unorganised and lazy on their testing that they couldn't find
this. Otherwise I don't know what to think anymore.
~~~
GabrielF00
I don't think it's accurate to say "they spent 1.7 billion on the site".
I think the $1.7 billion figure comes from this OIG report
[http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-03-14-00231.pdf](http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-03-14-00231.pdf)
However, the OIG report has a number of important caveats:
* The list of 60 contracts in the report includes contracts to support state websites and for programs unrelated to the website (for instance, I found an $85 million contract related to accountable care organizations, which doesn't seem to have any connection to the website).
* The $1.7 billion is not the amount expended, it's the estimated value at the time the contract was awarded if all the options are exercised. When you look at the individual contracts, this estimated value turns out not to be very useful. Some contracts had double the estimated expenditure, some had $0 expended. Looking at the total amount expended, you get a figure of $500 million.
So I think it's more reasonable to say that they spent $500 million on various
projects to implement the law, including both the user-facing website and all
the behind-the-scenes stuff.
------
devindotcom
_Spokesman Aaron Albright said outside vendors "are prohibited from using
information from these tools on HealthCare.gov for their companies' purposes."
The government uses them to measure the performance of HealthCare.gov so
consumers get "a simpler, more streamlined and intuitive experience," he
added._
It's one thing to send session length, general location, usage stuff like that
to see where, for example, awareness campaigns might be needed. But really:
smoker=1&parent=&pregnant=1&mec=&zip=85601&state=AZ&income=35000
That's a bit much! And I suppose DoubleClick is carefully siloing this
information so it doesn't accidentally perform all kinds of analysis on it for
comparison with its other huge databases? Perhaps they are barred from selling
it wholesale to data brokers but I can't imagine they are unable to use it for
plenty of their own purposes.
~~~
Arnor
I'm sure you're right that the information is getting used by DoubleClick.
To the other point about this information not being appropriate for the
purposes Albright mentioned: Isn't this exactly the information that a health
insurance company wants to know for outreach? If I know that all the pregnant
women in Tuscon are signing up but none from Pheonix, I suddenly know where to
put my next billboard or field office.
If this was a private sector company, nobody would be surprised at collecting
this data. It would also be a different story if the data was being stored and
analyzed in house or even if the doubleclick request happened on the server
side instead of the client.
I agree with the general sentiment that this is a privacy violation, but
that's because of the way that the data is collected and who processes it, not
the collection and use of the data generally.
~~~
Arnor
Confused...
------
j_s
Paging HN user brandonb and 'a bunch of other Google, Facebook, and Y
Combinator alums' \-- did this exist while you worked on the site?
> I've been working on healthcare.gov for the last few months
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312442)
~~~
brandonb
We weren't involved with this specific part of the site but folks are on it!
(I wrapped up my involvement several months ago, but others helping out with
this open enrollment period.)
~~~
bashinator
> folks are on it!
Am I correct in thinking that the cheery use of passive voice means you're
under quite a serious NDA?
~~~
brandonb
There is an NDA but I used "folks" since I, personally, have returned to the
startup world and am not involved in the details of fixing this particular
incident. But yes, rest assured that the people who currently work on
healthcare.gov are busy testing a fix, which is why they're not posting on HN.
------
drylight
Give $563M to Accenture and you get some really shoddy work
[http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/accenture-snags-
new-5-yea...](http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/accenture-snags-new-5-year-
healthcaregov-contract-for-563m/347935/)
------
declan
An additional problem, as I see it, is that the Obama administration made
unambiguous assurances that no PII was being collected as part of
Healthcare.gov's use of web measurement tools. Here's the excerpt from the
privacy policy:
_HealthCare.gov uses a variety of Web measurement software tools. We use them
to collect the information listed in the “Types of information collected”
section above. The tools collect information automatically and continuously.
No personally identifiable information is collected by these tools._
[https://www.healthcare.gov/privacy/](https://www.healthcare.gov/privacy/)
Note the last sentence is in bold on the actual web page.
A Department of Health and Human Services organ called the Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services is responsible for the site. An enterprising HN
reader might want to skim through the CMS (very long) privacy impact
assessment to see if there are any other incorrect claims about
Healthcare.gov: [http://www.hhs.gov/pia/cms-pia-summary-
fy12q4.pdf](http://www.hhs.gov/pia/cms-pia-summary-fy12q4.pdf)
It will be interesting to see if anyone gets fired as a result of this
particular privacy screwup. The buck should stop _somewhere_ , right?
~~~
jobposter1234
>A Department of Health and Human Services organ called the Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services is responsible for the site. An enterprising HN
reader might want to skim through the CMS (very long) privacy impact
assessment to see if there are any other incorrect claims about
Healthcare.gov: [http://www.hhs.gov/pia/cms-pia-summary-
fy12q4.pdf](http://www.hhs.gov/pia/cms-pia-summary-fy12q4.pdf)
Is there any way to split this up so each person is responsible for a section?
you'd miss a lot by missing context... but if the section readers bullet
pointed everything, that could be combined into a larger context.
Or, in HN speak, we could crowdsource a real-world Map/Reduce job to support
big data in the citizen-scientist.
~~~
declan
I love the idea of a real-world map/reduce job. :) But before spending any
time on this, please make sure it's the right PDF. It does mention
Healthcare.gov, but only a few times, and I'm no expert on HHS organizational
structure. Here's the full directory of PIAs:
[http://www.hhs.gov/pia/](http://www.hhs.gov/pia/)
------
garazy
Looks like a few of the tracking companies only just started to appear -
[http://builtwith.com/detailed/healthcare.gov](http://builtwith.com/detailed/healthcare.gov)
The only non-ad tool they added was the Twitter Platform to their homepage.
Lots of data leakage points though.
------
jayess
Isn't this a HIPAA violation?
~~~
Kikawala
No. I don't see any protected health information.
~~~
honksillet
# of pregnancies is a violation. One could infer whether the individual is
pregnant, has had a miscarriage or even an abortion.
------
tedunangst
Don't blame the browsers for continuing to send Referer headers though.
Because browsers take your privacy seriously.
------
bagels
I'm wondering whose doubleclick account those ad dollars are ending up in.
~~~
btian
Not ad account. I think doubleclick is used for surveys.
~~~
JeremyMorgan
Nope.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick)
DoubleClick is a subsidiary of Google which develops and provides Internet ad
serving services
~~~
btian
I'm saying in this case. Doubleclick accounts are usually for ads.
------
seccess
This is certainly scary stuff, but I was a bit annoyed with the line:
"...consequences such as when Target notified a woman's family that she was
pregnant before she even told them. "
I've heard this story referenced time and again with respect to motivating
people to care about privacy and tracking. I'm all for privacy, but I feel
like: (a) we should have more recent anecdotes about the consequences of
tracking than a story from 2012, (b) the mechanism that Target used to infer
this is far less intrusive (not making it OK) than what we see here, and (c)
its really not strong enough an example.
Not that speculation is the way to go, but what about the possibility of
someone being turned down for life insurance due to this information?
~~~
protomyth
Well, it is a simple example and has the virtue of being true instead of the
often quoted but misrepresented McDonalds hot coffee story. Simple examples
showing a situation are best, and much like iOS bug statistics, the parties
who would have the statistics on situations caused by tracking are never going
to make them public.
------
jtheory
They don't even get into the repercussions of loading externally-hosted
JavaScript into a secure page.
We avoid this entirely (also hosting medical data), though it's been a bit of
extra work to do so.
I'm sure Chartbeat, Mathtag, Mixpanel, Google, etc. are reasonably careful
about their security, and of course they would suffer as well if one of the
servers/scripts was compromised and the breach was made public.
But in short -- healthcare.org's security _relies_ on the idea that _none_ of
these many 3rd parties will ever have a CDN server compromised, for example.
Or (in other situations) have the NSA demand access.
It just takes one -- and then an "improved" script could be delivered to only
clients visiting a single targeted site, or even specific targeted clients.
The normal customer just sees the lock icon and can verify that there's a
secure connection to the main host; but there are actually many other
connections going on to other hosts, and any of them may provide a script that
can access any sensitive data on the page.
------
mindslight
What else could one _possibly_ expect when an industry has succeeded at
convincing the government to make buying their product mandatory?!
I know the EFF focuses specifically on informational issues, but stirring
outrage over one abuse of a captive market when such abuses are _by design_ is
a disservice to general sanity.
~~~
threeseed
The ACA model in the US is very similar to what exists in many places in the
world e.g. here in Australia. And it was driven from the needs of the
government not the needs of the health care industry. Although they are a
beneficiary. That said the model really does work.
The fact is that uninsured people has a devastating effect on the economy. It
prevents movement of labour, affects productivity, promotion to higher socio-
economic levels, prevents people starting businesses, affects crime and
countless other social effects. You need to force people who don't think they
need it to have it.
~~~
brc
From experience, an Australian doesn't have the correct frame of reference to
even engage in the US healthcare debate. I have tried to understand the issues
many times but it comes from such a fragmented starting point it's difficult
to understand unless you've been in it for a long, long time.
Your points about uninsured are valid, but it's much more complicated than
just saying 'hey, you guys should insure everyone'. So I generally try and
observe from the sidelines.
------
fubarred
Currently, [https://disconnect.me/](https://disconnect.me/) browser extension
says [https://www.healthcare.gov/](https://www.healthcare.gov/) uses:
\- 0 Facebook, 3 Google, 0 Twitter
\- 0 Advertising
\- 6 Analytics: 1 ClickTale, 4 MixPanel, 1 Chartbeat
\- 0 Social
\- 6 Content: 3 Google, 3 Optimizely
------
EdSharkey
More government doing shitty things not in its charter. I'm numb to this
abuse. Next up: increased taxes + inflation.
I hope I live to see the day that the laws are twisted and shredded such that
all corporate-government data about every person is available for purchase.
I'd love to have that detailed record of everything I've said, thought, places
I've been, etc since ~Y2K. How cool would that be?
I've heard it said that future cultural anthropologists of the future will
absolutely love mining the rich personal data coming out of this period of
time.
~~~
at-fates-hands
>>> I've heard it said that future cultural anthropologists of the future will
absolutely love mining the rich personal data coming out of this period of
time.
Former Anthropologist here.
While culturally speaking it will be interesting, up to a certain point in
human history there has always been _physical_ things left behind by cultures
to denote their existence.
As our whole lives have become digital, once the servers are gone, the pseudo
physical evidence will vanish. One of my professors told me in passing in the
early aughts that, "This generation (meaning the Y generation) will barely
leave a trace of its existence in 200 years."
He inferred that once technology has evolved past our current rate of burn,
the mechanisms by which we preserve our memories will be forever wiped out. He
made a note of saying, "When was the last time you used something _physical_
to create, retain or share your memories?" When was the last time you printed
a photograph? Listened to a music _album_? Once the devices by which we save
our memories become obsolete, so does our existence.
It caught me off guard, and was. . one of those times where you stop and
wonder what people will dig up in 2-300 years from now and discover about our
civilization? Will it all just be zero's and one's on a server somewhere?
~~~
paulfurtado
Couldn't you say that hard drives, SSDs, tape backups, etc are all still
physical mediums? While these mediums lose data over time, forensics will
still be able to recover partial data, similar to other physical mediums (pen
and paper, photos, etc).
~~~
jcrites
Those are usually destroyed when their useful life ends, exactly because
someone might dig them up later and extract data from them. Large corporate
data centers, for example, physically destroy hard disks and never allow them
to leave the facility intact.
There will be hard drives left around by individual consumers, I suppose, but
the vast majority of all those that exist today are likely to be deliberately
destroyed. We're so good at copying and replicating data these days that we no
longer rely on hard drives for data permanence over long periods.
------
stephenhess
If you're looking for a better place to go than healthcare.gov, give us a try
at stridehealth.com. Bunch of ex-privacy folks and healthcare folks - can shop
from your phone. Pretty shocking to see such a novice mistake by an org I
think we were all expecting to take it up a level this year.
------
natmaster
Don't worry guys, Obama's friend's companies will use that information to sell
you better products. It's for your own good!
------
dkroy
I heard something awhile back about the us government(NSA) leveraging the
cookie in a way that they could use it as a surveillance beacon. I doubt there
is any relation, but it makes you think a bit.
[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/nsa-turns-cookies-
and-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/nsa-turns-cookies-and-more-
surveillance-beacons)
~~~
bhhaskin
I am sure the NSA are involved with at least some aspect of all .gov
addresses.
------
kumarm
One of the heavily trafficked sites in India (Railway Booking) has been
showing Google adsense ads. Someone is making a Million dollars a month in
Government :)
[https://www.irctc.co.in/eticketing/loginHome.jsf](https://www.irctc.co.in/eticketing/loginHome.jsf)
536 Global Rank (50 in India):
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.irctc.co.in](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.irctc.co.in)
~~~
nathanaldensr
What does this have to do with the topic of this thread?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Huun-Huur-Tu - kostyk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i0djHJBAP3U#t=268
======
gregman
This could be the opening ceremony for Waza 2014!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Germany is opening its first electric highway for trucks - mariushn
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/07/tech/e-highway-a5/index.html
======
ChuckNorris89
So basically they reinvented the trolleybuss[1] that's been around for over
100 years and still popular in some European cities by putting a tram
pantograph[2] on top and moving them on highways.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus)
[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram)
~~~
chewz
Exactly. Trolleybus had been popular in my city when I was a child. Then
declared obstacles and replaced with oridinary buses.
Time to bring trolleybus back instead of EVs that as any individual cars have
no place in a city.
~~~
sergiosgc
> (...) as any individual cars have no place in a city.
That's one view. The other is that cities are too dense. There is no reason,
in the era of fast digital communications, to pack humans so densely that we
are discussing the right to use an 8m² space in the city for personal use.
It's an attack on the symptom rather than an attack on the cause.
~~~
chewz
Not a matter of taking 8m2 for personal use but rather of eliminating 8m2 for
green, parks, pavements. Adding friction for pedestrians with unnecessary
traffic lights etc.
In a city bikes and public transport should be all you need. Cars do not
belong in the city.
~~~
FerretFred
> _In a city bikes and public transport should be all you need_
Agreed! And what better time to get rid of those diesel-belching, noisy buses
and bring back trolleybuses? The problem is in the UK (IMO) is that
politicians generally can't think beyond the next election, so anything like
this gets ignored.
------
GhostVII
It seems like it would be to expensive to build and maintain this kind of
cabling over a significant portion of the highway, but it would be interesting
to have it over smaller sections so trucks can re-charge without stopping.
~~~
jessriedel
Naively, the ability to re-charge without stopping seems of limited value.
Given predictable routes and the existing network of specialized stops for
trucks, I expect that battery swapping and overnight charging of trucks is
sufficient, and does not require maintaining expensive overhead wiring
infrastructure stretching over miles. Just consider what is going to require
more hardware: a single battery swap station, or miles and miles of overhead
wiring necessary to recharge a truck battery given known limits to battery
charging speeds.
~~~
Reason077
Battery swapping is an inefficient use of resources.
Batteries are expensive assets and make up the bulk of the cost of an electric
truck. You want to have all your batteries inside trucks, working as much as
possible, not sitting around stored at swap stations waiting to be used.
Fast charging infrastructure beats battery swapping, and recharge times aren’t
really an issue. In Europe, truck drivers are required to take breaks every
4.5 hours anyway.
~~~
jessriedel
> You want to have all your batteries inside trucks, working as much as
> possible, not sitting around stored at swap stations waiting to be used.
Batteries don't sit at swap stations just waiting to be used, they sit there
charging. (The big difference is that the vehicle, which is also an expensive
asset, doesn't have to be attached to them while doing this.) Stations will
have the minimum number of batteries on hand to ensure there is always one
available to swap in.
Insofar as you need extra capacity to handle fluctations in usage, leading to
charged batteries sitting around, you have a a strictly worse problem if the
batteries are permanently attached to vehicles (since vehicle demand
fluctuations don't go away, and you have the additional problem that you can't
remove batteries from vehicles that aren't going to be used for a while).
Another way to see this is that swappable batteries is just an extra ability;
you can always charge the battery attached to the vehicle if you want.
If you have a link to a technical argument for what you're trying to gesture
at, I'd love to see it, but the argument you've given doesn't hold water.
Arguments relating to the cost of the swapping infrastructure are at least
plausible.
> and recharge times aren’t really an issue. In Europe, truck drivers are
> required to take breaks every 4.5 hours anyway.
In that case, there is no point to the overhead charging system discussed in
the OP article.
~~~
Reason077
_”Stations will have the minimum number of batteries on hand to ensure there
is always one available to swap in.”_
Therein lies the problem. You may be able to optimise your network, scheduling
truck routes according to availability of swaps, etc. But it’s always going to
require a substantially greater number of batteries than trucks.
And for what gain? Time savings are zero-to-minimal, and fast charging is
cheaper, easier, and more flexible than swapping.
Also, truck batteries are going to be much bigger than car batteries. A long-
range truck pack will weigh several tonnes. A station that can swap these
quickly in a semi-automated way is likely to be a substantial, expensive
undertaking.
~~~
jessriedel
> But it’s always going to require a substantially greater number of batteries
> than trucks.
I already addressed this is my comment. It's a loss that applies just as well
to batteries that cannot be attached to vehicles, so it's not an argument
against detachable batteries.
> Also, truck batteries are going to be much bigger than car batteries. A
> long-range truck pack will weigh several tonnes.
Stations already have massive underground infrastructures for dealing with
fuel, which has an effective energy density that is less than a factor of two
smaller than batteries. And unlike fuel, which must be stored on-site for the
entire time between fuel shipments (~24 hours), you don't need to store a
comparable number of batteries on site, just enough to have them continuously
charging.
> A station that can swap these quickly in a semi-automated way is likely to
> be a substantial, expensive undertaking.
Putting in miles and miles of overhead charing capabilities is, I claim,
significantly more expensive. But I'm not interested in having a detailed
conversation on the expense of swapping machinery if we can't even agree on
the simple point about utilization rates of swappable batteries being as least
as large as non-swappable ones.
------
PinguTS
Which actually isn't that kind of a news. Because the first such thing where
deployed in Sweden in 2016.[1]
Sweden even has a second prototype project right now, which uses electric
rails which can be used by trucks AND cars.[2]
[1] [https://www.scania.com/group/en/worlds-first-electric-
road-o...](https://www.scania.com/group/en/worlds-first-electric-road-opens-
in-sweden/)
[2] [https://www.freightwaves.com/news/technology/sweden-gets-
the...](https://www.freightwaves.com/news/technology/sweden-gets-the-worlds-
first-road-that-recharges-electric-trucks-as-they-move-over-it)
~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Implemented by Scania (owned by Volkswagen) and Siemens. The same are now the
main partners behind the one in Germany.
~~~
touristtam
When did Scania (and Saab presumably) ownership changed?
~~~
alkonaut
Saab-Scania (70's-90's) was split into Scania (trucks) and Saab Automobile.
Scania maintained independent for a long while but is now owned by VW.
Saab Automobile was bought by GM (90's-2000's), who completely ruined the
company, sold it for pennies, and now it's bankrupt.
------
t4ko
[https://new.siemens.com/global/en/products/mobility/road-
sol...](https://new.siemens.com/global/en/products/mobility/road-
solutions/electromobility/ehighway.html)
For those wondering about not electrified sections, trucks equipped with the
system use hybrid drives.
There are some points that would need more explanation for me: \- I don't see
any billing system described here. According to their page this system cut in
half the energy consumption so there is still a significant electricity
consumption that will be paid somehow. \- What's the durability of the truck
attachment and the cables ? Cable replacement/maintenance would mean blocking
at least one lane for a significant amount of time so I hope it's not a
frequent operation.
More specific to Germany, I really don't want to sound like I am against EV
but it's something I genuinely wonder about : Say this system becomes popular
and tens of thousands of trucks start sucking electricity out of the grid, the
electricity demand will skyrocket. Is Germany going to raise the electricity
prices to import or build clean plants or just restart a few coal plant ?
~~~
imtringued
Take a look at the primary energy consumption here in this chart [0]. As you
can see despite 45% of electricity coming from renewables it's still only 14%
of the total energy consumption. Just the mineral oil consumption alone
contributes 2.5 times more energy than renewables. This looks bad at first
glance except you have to consider that the efficiency of ICE cars is
extremely low, somewhere around 25% or even less depending on the fuel.
Electric motors will massively reduce the total amount of energy needed for
transport no matter what the source of energy is.
[0]
[https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig10-germany-
energy-mix-energy-sources-share-primary-energy-
consumption-2018.png?itok=84UVNr7M)
------
matteuan
I don't understand how they could justify this investment. Aren't railways
cheaper and more efficient anyway?
~~~
NikkiA
Railways are great for bulk transport of goods, but road trucking excels at
smaller loads with finer-grained destination selection. The railway equivalent
to what these trucks facilitate would be wagon-load freight, which is largely
considered impractical in europe[0] and generally lost out to road trucking
post war[1].
To explain why this isn't necessarily the case in america [0], it's important
to understand that america didn't have a huge rebuilding effort post-war [1]
that relocated industry away from the rail lines that had been servicing them
for a hundred years. Post-war europe did have that rebuilding effort, and it
saw a lot of medium industry spread out as the costs to remain in denser
populated areas near rail hubs increase. Thus road networks became the feeders
for these industries rather than proximity to rail freight depots and rail
spurs. Maintaining wagon-load rail delivery in that environment became much
more expensive as a result.
~~~
croisillon
I think you forgot to post the [0] and [1] notes
~~~
NikkiA
In this case I was using them as cross-references.
~~~
croisillon
oh ok!
------
blackdogie
If these cables could be used to recharge _and_ power trucks then you wouldn’t
need total coverage if they were all electric.
~~~
dredmorbius
Right, and gravity can be creatively applied as well.
Short-range (100-1000m) off-grid capability, or unpowered downhill segments
(relying on regenerative braking to battery storage) can further reduce
infrastructure needs.
There are battery-powered truck schemes relying on empty uphill returns for
quarry and forestry applications. Effectively the load itself is the potential
energy source and charges batteries via regenerative braking.
Clever, but of limited application.
------
learc83
There's a Civil Engineering professor at Oklahoma State University who's
pushing a similar concept to improve America's infrastructure.
It's called the Autonomous Trucking Corridor.
[https://youtu.be/_ev6hIQYKYY](https://youtu.be/_ev6hIQYKYY)
------
fouronnes3
Sounds pretty obvious when you look at it. I wonder why it hasn't happened
earlier.
~~~
fijal
It did:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus)
~~~
NikkiA
Eh, not really, there's a gulf of inventions involving better pantograph
technology, efficient and compact hybrid power trains, sensors and self-
driving capability (the trucks will need some form of self 'lane' keeping to
stay connected to the power source) and so on that makes the two barely
comparable other than at a very cosmetic level.
------
reacharavindh
A few questions come to mind.
Can this solution be scaled to higher speeds? (Yes, electric trains reach
higher speeds with similar top mounted tech. But, they run on dedicated rails)
What about failure of a line? Could people in cars be electrocuted?
~~~
llukas
Trucks have 90kph speed limit.
------
Digit-Al
I wonder how many miles you have to drive one of these new trucks before you
offset the carbon used to make it rather than continuing to use the old diesel
truck?
------
gridlockd
> Another benefit is a sharp reduction in emissions of CO2...
Yeah... no. Half of the German electricity is coal-based, so electric vehicles
in Germany are _worse_ in terms of CO2 emissions than Diesel-based vehicles:
[https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/04/27/1842245/electric-
ve...](https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/04/27/1842245/electric-vehicles-in-
germany-emit-more-co2-than-diesel-ones-study-shows)
Combined with the total stop of nuclear energy and the unsolved problem of
storing/distributing renewable energy, it's going to stay that way for a
while.
~~~
imtringued
What makes you think that Germany will stay on coal forever?
~~~
gridlockd
I don't think that. _Forever_ is a long time.
However, so far the "Energiewende" has been a total failure in terms of
reducing CO2, despite Germany having a huge amount of renewables and extremely
high electricity costs. If Germany had any obvious alternatives to coal, they
would've long done something about it.
As it stands and into the foreseeable future, without technological
breakthroughs, the idea that electric vehicles could significantly reduce CO2
emissions doesn't stand scrutiny.
~~~
grandinj
They do: nuclear power. Already built, costs already paid, minimal extra costs
to be incurred due to running it longer.
~~~
gridlockd
> They do: nuclear power. Already built, costs already paid, minimal extra
> costs to be incurred due to running it longer.
Nevertheless, Germany has already decided to exit nuclear altogether.
------
greendestiny_re
Ultimately, self-driving vehicles require maintenance on the road, meaning a
human riding along; if the self-driving capability fails, the human will take
over the wheel.
Logistics companies want to minimize maintenance costs, meaning the self-
driving truck ends up just a regular truck, except the driver now needs to
have a PhD in electrical engineering to do maintenance.
Self-driving vehicles don't seem scalable.
~~~
dmortin
> Ultimately, self-driving vehicles require maintenance on the road, meaning a
> human riding along; if the self-driving capability fails, the human will
> take over the wheel.
Maybe in the first several years. After that the technology will mature and
maintenance won't be needed that often. And if there is a problem the truck
can stop at the roadside, like in case of a failure today, and call for help.
I guess logistics companies will keep teams on the road which can respond
quickly if a self driving truck has problems.
------
mariushn
Unfortunately, some still look at immediate costs instead of considering long-
term health benefits (and cost savings) due to lower pollution:
_Doubts have been raised about the cost-benefit ratio of the pilot project.
Micheal Kraft, vice president of the Hessian Motor Trade Association,
considers the technology, which is already used in Sweden, to be
uneconomical._
~~~
gridlockd
The doubts are entirely warranted. Health effects are externalities, so unless
the government puts a price on it, they have no impact on whether something is
economical or not.
If something is uneconomical, it simply cannot work unless it is subsidized
and then the question is whether there isn't a better use for that money.
Cost-Benefit is always relevant. If you just care about the health effects,
subsidizing gas-powered vehicles may be more cost efficient.
~~~
fluffything
> If something is uneconomical, it simply cannot work unless it is subsidized
Or alternatively, everything else is made worse. Raise taxes on Diesel, raise
taxes on non-hybrid and non-electric trucks, forbid non-electric trucks from
autobahns, etc.
If you are a government, you don't have to make this solution better, you can
just make all other solutions worse.
------
wink
I apologize on behalf of our government that is enthralled by the automotive
lobby.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Estimate how many slaves work for you based on your possessions and lifestyle. - SandB0x
http://slaveryfootprint.org/
======
zeteo
Let's have a closer look at the "complex algorithm that determines the minimum
number of slaves [...] used to produce each product" [1]. The basic data is
supposedly taken from five official reports, but only one of these (the one
they call "DOL" [2]) has anything direct to do with production of goods by
forced labor.
Examining this report, it provides nothing more than a list of countries and
goods for which forced labor plays a "significant" part, where significant is
defined as anything but "an isolated incident of child labor or forced labor"
([2] p.7). There is no quantitative data in this list, which means that, for
instance, if you own a T-shirt made of Argentinian cotton, there's no telling
whether the probability this cotton was handled by a child laborer is 90% or
0.1%.
Thus it is impossible to estimate any number of "slaves" from such data, and
the methodology is complete and utter BS.
[1] <http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology>
[2] <http://www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/ocft/pdf/2010TVPRA.pdf>
------
marvin
A lot of the moral judgements made on the linked site about a materialistic
lifestyle don't really have anything to do with the fact that people in the
west are evil, but rather that the culture in certain parts of the world where
manufacturing takes place is conductive to exploitation.
For instance, if I buy a diamond ring, I am not responsible for lives taken
with weapons that have been bought with diamonds. If I drink Coca-Cola, I am
not responsible for some obscure branch of the Coca-Cola Company which seizes
the drinking water source of an entire village. If I pay for sex in Norway,
that doesn't mean I am responsible for children being forced to sell their
bodies in sex trafficing. Except in a few narrow cases where law enforcement
gets involved, I never even see these children.
In each of these instances, there are real wrongs commited - but the wrongs
are perpetrated by people who are a lot more unscrupulous than me. It is a
fallacy to claim that the end user of products of industries where bad things
sometimes happen, does something wrong. Everyone has a moral responsibility,
but this responsibility doesn't carry over all the way.
Does anyone really think that the Indian microfinance debt collectors who
force children into prostitution will suddenly become upstanding citizens if
"microfinance" companies are banned? These problems need to be addressed at
the source. Moral judgements like the ones implied in this app are a huge
fallacy. Things will not get better if demand for strictly unnecessary goods
and services suddenly disappears.
~~~
yelsgib
If you lived next to a diamond mine, you probably wouldn't buy diamond rings.
I say this because I assume you are a compassionate/empathetic person to some
degree, and I think it would be very difficult for you to separate out your
feelings towards the terrible conditions/bloodshed involved in diamond mining
and the shining ring that you just bought from the smiling slave-driver. The
only reason that you could ever be comfortable buying such a ring is that you
are far removed from the suffering involved in your purchase.
There are two complicating factors here: visibility and paucity of influence.
You can't see the bad thing happening and you, individually, don't have the
power to stop it.
The interaction between visibility and morality is a complicated one, but the
fact is that if people in the most affluent nations boycotted diamonds then
diamond mining would cease. If people boycotted Coca-Cola and Fiji spring
water then villagers would get their water back.
The fact that you can't control these situations also complicates things. You
can stop buying Coca Cola but, unless everyone else does to, CC is just going
to just keep on stealing resources.
I think that the thing I really dislike about your comment is that you have
the audacity to condemn the wrongs committed, but lack the integrity to
acknowledge that you play, at least, some very small part in those wrong
things happening. Because you do. If you don't buy that diamond ring then that
is real $$$ that the diamond miners don't get. The hole created by your
boycott has a non-zero probability of shutting down a diamond mine. The fact
is that you don't care. I'm not saying you should - I'm just saying you don't.
And the people doing these "wrong" things don't care either. Perhaps you could
say that you would do differently in their situation, but my guess is that you
are REALLY not in their situation and you have no idea what their situation is
AT ALL.
I get it. You're in a comfortable position. There's no reason for you to
change. You probably don't care enough about people in China, etc. that you're
actually going to significantly, or even insignificantly, change your day to
help them out. In fact, it's not even clear that you can. This may sound like
a criticism, but I really don't care what you do.
The main element missing from your comment is the answer to "what to do?" My
guess is that your answer is "Nothing. There are bad people elsewhere, and I'm
not to blame, so I do nothing. Let them figure it out." I guess I hope this
isn't actually your answer and that you realize that it's a lot more
complicated. These people are "unscrupulous" not because they're full of
demons, but because globalization exerts pressure and men sacrifice their
better intentions when faced with that pressure.
~~~
nightski
It's pretty obvious that if you stop drinking CC, no one else will stop
because you did. Meaning the events are conditionally independent. In my
opinion, rallying large groups of people is the only way to make a difference.
So really day to day choices you make on what to purchase have no effect on
the system.
I would argue that the only real way to change is attempting to effect group
think. Individual purchase decisions will not do this. Only organized efforts
will. Meaning everyone is just as responsible for not doing this, whether they
buy the product or not.
Again, if slavery is going on, whether you buy the product involved or not, we
are all equally guilty for allowing it to continue. Buying the product is
irrelevent.
~~~
AznHisoka
I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but my view is that I was not asked to
be born under these circumstances (over population, unequality of wealth,
unfairness, etc). I never was in charge of dictating the type of world I
wanted to live in. Therefore, why do I have the burden to do something about
unfairness in this world? It's like saying to a developer "Go fix this bug
RIGHT NOW!", and then when he/she asks for commit permissions, you reply back
"Sorry, you need to sign this form, and give it to HR, then send an email to
the DBAs, and wait a couple of days.. but still FIX IT NOW!"
~~~
yelsgib
This way of thinking doesn't make sense. No one is claiming that you're
responsible as in you need to fix this. We're claiming that you're responsible
in the sense that you're part of the cause (or, in the language of Nagarjuna
the "dominant condition"
-<http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/307/nagarlec.htm>) of the exploitation of
people in third world countries. There are many other conditions besides you,
of course.
The most important goal is to deeply realize your position and relation to
other people - how you act after you realize this is up to you/your emotional
makeup/your virtues/etc.
My claim is that because of the complicating factors (visibility and
ineffectiveness) inherent in this situation you aren't able to fully
understand this relationship.
~~~
AznHisoka
Of course I understnd my position relative to others, I think about it
constantly. People naturally are competitors in this world. One person having
a mate means one less mate for you, and less evolutionary success.
------
Dove
I was curious what they recommended behind the "take action" tab, but it
required a signup. Here's what's on the other sign of the registerwall:
Make Progress. Get the App.
You earn Free World points for spreading the news
and encouraging brands to audit their supply chains.
Down the app and use it for check-ins, sending
pre-written notes to companies, and sharing your
progress with your community. You can also earn Free
World points right here.
To get Free World points:
- Easily send notes to companies, asking them
to examine their supply chains.
- Make a donation to support the fight against
slavery in the supply chain.
- Raise awareness about slavery by sharing this
survey, your footprint, and your progress.
- Download and use the mobile app to check in while
shopping to share your concerns about the use of
slavery in the products you buy.
- Use the Made In A Free World mobile app for more
opportunities to earn Free World points.
So . . . it's a game. I must admit, I find that a bit cold. Compare the
approach to something like <http://mercyhousecoffee.org>
------
cbr
They describe their calculations:
<http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology>
They appear to count "N slaves working for you" if they predict N slaves were
involved in the production of anything you have, not the number you keep
continuously employed.
~~~
yummyfajitas
This methodology is questionable.
Suppose 10 slaves work on an assembly line for a year and produce 100,000
soccer balls used by 100,000 people. In that case, these 100,000 people each
have 10 slaves working for them.
On the other hand, suppose you had 100 slaves handcrafting 100,000 soccer
balls. In that case, each of these 100,000 people has only 1 slave working for
them.
This methodology seems to penalize inefficient manufacturing processes less
than more efficient ones, even if the more efficient ones result in less
slavery.
------
RockyMcNuts
Crappy job <> slave.
Yeah, anything nice we have or use is thanks to people with crappy jobs... but
there are people lining up out the door for those jobs, as they offer a better
life than subsistence farming or scavenging garbage and living in a favela.
And the places where those jobs don't exist are even worse off.
Not to excuse the creation of inhuman living and working conditions. But
better to work for appropriate conditions, than broad-brush everyone a
slaveowner.
~~~
DanBC
Debt Bondage is real. People are not lining up out the door to replace people
in debt-bondage slavery.
([http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--
en/inde...](http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--
en/index.htm))
~~~
RockyMcNuts
fair enough.
I don't want to minimize the issue, but there is room for some realistic
perspective, somewhere between indifference and equating consumers with
slaveowners.
The link says there are at least 12.3m forced laborers.
If every American had 10 'slaves' that would be 3.1b slaves.
This was a pretty eye-opening story about an unfortunate Chinese deliveryman a
few months ago
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/nyregion/22victim.html?pag...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/nyregion/22victim.html?pagewanted=all)
------
rokhayakebe
If we are buying products which were made, or have parts that were made, by
people in terrible conditions, what would happen if we stopped buying those?
Does it mean the people who use to make $1/day are now making $0/day which
will lead to a harder life filled with crimes?
Note: This is an honest question. I also come from a place where skilled-
workers make around $4 or $5/day. I think in many cases, $4/day is better than
0.
~~~
yelsgib
The people who make $1/day stop making $1/day. There is crisis. The crisis is
caused by the cessation of a domination-based dependence relationship. The
crisis could cause government collapse and mass-death. Out of the ashes will
arise a (necessarily) more self-sufficient community.
The fact is that globalization fixes countries as "slave countries." It's very
easy to control people by giving them a locally beneficial option. Which
sounds better to you:
Make $1/day working 16 hours per day - spend the rest of your time
sleeping/taking care of yourself/family.
Making $0/day refusing to work - spend your day working on building up your
community in creative ways, but suffer much higher probability of
personal/family death.
The option that 99.9% of people will take is #1. However, real change can't
occur if everyone takes #1, so we have stasis.
~~~
DuncanIdaho
That worked really well for Somalia, innit?
I mean, look at all the creative endeavours the good people of Somalia
ventured upon release from the hands of the Evil Government and Lobbies.
You are a perfect example of a person that would pave his road to hell with
good intentions. All due to failure to see humans as we really are, and our
time and again honoured tradition of refusing to do what "should" be done.
~~~
yelsgib
I don't know what you're referring to w/r/t Somalia. Fill me in on your
version of the events.
------
Omnipresent
Really neat interface but this is prime example of going overboard with UI.
I'm sure more people would actually finish step 11 if everything was within
one or two pages with fewer clicks. On a side note, I have 42 slaves!
------
catherinej
The survey app takes an interesting approach to raising people's awareness of
slave-labor conditions, but it doesn't make sense (or only makes sense for a
particular demographic) to base calculations on how many items of a particular
kind the survey-taker currently owns.
It matters just as much how often the items are replaced (once a year? once
every 20 years? once in a lifetime?) and whether they're acquired new or used.
In a materially rich society it's possible to buy almost all goods except
food, medicine, and energy in the second-hand market. And, with a few tools,
the life of many consumer goods can be greatly prolonged.
Some of the most politically and socially conscious (and most slave-labor
averse) people I know are low-income old people who remember the Great
Depression, live with packed closets, and spend their days repairing hand-me-
downs and broken machines. They aren't, obviously, the target market of the
slaveryfootprint app, but some of their consumption strategies might mentioned
in future versions. There might be future questions along the lines of, "How
many broken computers have your repaired in the past five years?" Or, "How
many worn and outmoded garments have you mended and re-sewn into something
more stylish?"
------
JoachimSchipper
There are real methodological issues here. Even so, I'd prefer reducing the
number of people forced into slavery. Does anyone have suggestions on how to
do this most efficiently?
Some numbers:
\- consume less: my consumption seems to require about one "slave" (in the
site's sense) per EUR 1000/USD 1500. (Being a fairly frugal vegetarian may
help here. Or not.)
\- Fair Trade: <http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/> suggests that 100g of
cocoa (say one good bar of chocolate) requires about one child-slave-day;
\- no diamonds: this is surprisingly hard to pin down. Searching the internet
suggests that the cost in lives lost in wars is much greater than the cost in
lives lost in slavery.
------
jay_kyburz
When I clicked on this link I thought it was going to be about the wage slaves
that work for me down at the local mall.
Day in and day out they shuffle into their meaningless jobs, selling shoes or
flipping burgers. 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 40 years. They rack up a
life time of debt in the first few years of adulthood and struggle to stay on
top of it for the rest of their lives.
I'd much rather live within my means and enjoy life instead. I want to build
interesting stuff, fun games, follow my dreams...
------
S_A_P
Maybe I am oversimplifying here, but I'm sure that a detailed audit of most
companies could find behavior that some group would find unconscionable. I
think that one could literally end up exhausting themselves by finding and
actively avoiding these companies. I also think that if someone has no qualms
breaking the law/exploiting people to make money, that cutting off one revenue
stream would not stop the behavior of that person, they would move along to
the next scam.
------
fbomb
After taking the test (69 slaves), I thought I would try to see if I could
minimize & maximize the results. So as a 1-year old naked infant in Bangalore
with absolutely nothing to her name, I had 14 slaves. As a 40-year old
homeowner in NYC with 16 children, a large house and tons of stuff, I had 151
slaves.
------
marcf
The questions really profile you pretty deeply -- City, Gender, Age, Children,
consumer preferences.
Is that the point of the website?
------
tamersalama
Great design; Does anyone know if that was from scratch, or if there's a
visual/back-end framework behind it?
~~~
darraghenright
looks like they're using backbone.js as a framework. also, raphaël which I
haven't heard of before; it's a vector graphics library apparently. so, I
think the answer to your questions are yes, and yes :)
very nice work from them btw.
------
peterwwillis
Where are these supposed sex slaves of mine and why haven't I met them for
their annual performance review?
------
sgt
Apparently I have 60 slaves working for me. Anyone beat my "high score"?
~~~
tintin
Well the interface is very bad so I gave up after 8/11...
~~~
artmageddon
I have 34. I agree that it can use a lot of work. Some of the numbers didn't
make sense. I don't get how I'm supposed to rank my shrimp consumption, for
instance, on a scale of 0 to infinity...?
~~~
ktsmith
Some of the side bars give guidance and some don't. The food one says at the
top rank them from 0-5 with 0 being never consume and 5 consume constantly or
something like that. The bigger problem is on that sidebar you can go past 5.
On the other side bars there's no guidance and the counters go up so what does
the number even mean.
Apparently I contribute to lots of slavery (60) because I have lots of ball
point pens and electronics.... doesn't make a ton of sense.
------
zwieback
Very cool website and a good message.
Main takeaway for me: either "everyone" is a liar or only saintly people took
the survey.
~~~
potatolicious
I'm slightly below average without lying - this may be a problem with
demographics. I'm a bachelor with scarcely anything beyond the basics in the
bathrooms, and a very limited wardrobe. Almost all of my slave score comes
from electronics.
This would change dramatically if you're calculating for multiple people in a
household, or you're just not a barebones bachelor like me.
------
thyrsus
I know, completely irrelevant, but coltran is not a supercondctor.
------
dwhitney
32 Slaves. Now what?
~~~
jsnk
Learn to exploit. I have 94 slaves.
------
johng
My score is 76.
------
kwamenum86
Comes off as a marketing trojan horse...
------
vijayr
very interesting interface, even though it is slow and sluggish at times.
------
maeon3
The site wont load on an Android browser. Take off the "if statement" that
says dont run on small screens.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AT&T’s Troubling Plan to Change HBO - okket
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/07/att-changing-hbo/564635/?single_page=true
======
tptacek
I don't buy the logic here, and I'm not sure David Sims does either; this
strikes me as one of those headlines that was written by an editor,
independently of the article.
For as much as anybody here likes HBO, the diagnosis Stankey (and, I think,
Sims) has of it seems apt. HBO has a sterling reputation. But so what? Even
today, they're no longer distinctively good; in fact, there are basic cable
channels (AMC and FX) that have given HBO a run for its money.
Does anyone really believe that HBO is going to outcompete Netflix on original
programming over the long run? Netflix introduces new programs like Google
introduces new chat programs. It's not even an event for them. They just
randomly drop them in the middle of the week, as if they don't have time even
to promote them. Have you ever started an episode of Jessica Jones and had to
wait 2 minutes for them to promo the next season of Mindhunter?
And that's just Netflix. Amazon will eventually figure TV out. Disney controls
Hulu now. Apple is making a move into online video.
Meanwhile, after Game of Thrones ends, what's HBO got for tentpole series?
Westworld? Besides the fact that it won't be airing again for 2-3 years, its
renewal was not even a certainty.
I think Stankey is right. If HBO is going to be a factor long-term, a thing
people pay substantial amounts of money to retain access to, it is going to
have to look more like Netflix and less like a thing you pay your cable
company extra for. HBO could afford lulls of a year or two taking flyers on
just 1-2 new prestige series (Carnivale; Newsroom; Vinyl). But premium cable
is over, everything is going to be disintermediated, and HBO will need to
justify demanding $15/mo directly from people. I'm not sure it's worth that
today.
~~~
mortdeus
I wouldn't say that premium cable is over. Rather before you used to pay $60 +
premium channels a month to have cable tv. Now you pay $15+15+15+15+15+15+15
... + 75 for internet connection that doesn't have data caps.
Personally I think the de-bundling of cable TV and the getting rid of ads (i
seriously never understood how we can pay for cable tv and still be forced to
watch ads) is a great way for the market to move forward. It shows you that
the consumer does ultimately get the final say so.
However, I do not believe that costs are getting cheaper. If anything they are
just going to keep going up and up.
Also the crazy level of competition going on right now to produce "service
selling" original content, is in my views creating a situation where we keep
getting a sub par product out of the deal.
~~~
notyourwork
I agree though I think in short term price normalization is going to create
lots of situations where demand exists but customers are unwilling to pay for
all they want. The forced choice is going to create a really competitive
market but in short term I won't sign up for 2+ services at ~$15/month.
------
kemiller
They should tap HBO's expertise and connections to build a Netflix competitor
while keeping the HBO brand premium. Flogging a racehorse to make it pull a
wagon train will just end in tears for everyone. I bet the champagne came out
in Los Gatos.
~~~
ordinaryperson
Developing hit shows like "Game of Thrones" is extremely hard, and the
competition for streaming content is cuthroat.
Meanwhile AT&T essentially only competes with Verizon, and does that primarily
by offering the exact same services -- not exactly revolutionary, Harvard
Business School Case Study stuff.
What has AT&T done in the last 20 years that was original? Mainly its
operating business strategy is to raise prices as a regional, quasi-monopoly.
But sure, it's the (not highly paid) HBO employees that have to work harder,
emulate those brilliant AT&T execs and their super original business growth
strategies.
~~~
tptacek
What is it that you think the prestige networks do to develop shows? They're
not writing them themselves; they buy them from writers and production
companies. Nobody is suggesting that AT&T is going to pull the next Sopranos
out of a conference room meeting.
~~~
ordinaryperson
If it were just a matter of buying ready-made TV, anybody could do it.
Showrunners come to them with raw ideas and the first step is to filter out
most of the bad ones. Then there's writing, casting, budgeting, filming,
editing, marketing...you make it sound like HBO is a bunch of cardboard
cutouts and they just order up completed shows from Amazon.
My point is AT&T has done practically zero creative or truly innovative in the
last 20-25 years, it's comical to listen to a career AT&T suit lecture HBO
staffers (who excel in a field far more difficult than his) about how they
need to work harder.
------
dagenix
So, basically day 1 of owning HBO, they tell the employees that they aren't
making enough money (even though they are quite profitable) and that they are
going to have to work harder. I'm speculating here, but I'm guessing there was
probably no talk about compensating them more.
Its hard to imagine a better way of convincing all your best employees to
start thinking about switching jobs.
~~~
hinkley
Yeah but think of all the money you’ll save in salaries!
~~~
AceJohnny2
"Nice Golden Goose you got there..."
~~~
tonysdg
"...be real shame if someone was to acquire it, force it to produce twice as
many eggs on half the feed, create a half-baked digital platform on which you
could watch it lay eggs in real-time, watch as its health slowly declined in
the face of insurmountable odds, notice the new Platinum-producing Pig making
headlines in town, acquire _that_ animal too, then sell what's left of the
goose to a local French bistro to make gold-encrusted foie gras for the same
someone to enjoy while watching House of Cards for the 3rd time on Netflix."
~~~
AceJohnny2
That was oddly specific and disturbing. Well done!
------
devmunchies
This was already HBOs plan before the merger was finalized (I interviewed
there a year ago)
------
jrs95
They don’t necessarily have to ruin HBO in order to compete with Netflix. They
can expand HBO Now as a platform while allowing HBO to continue doing what
they do best.
------
gamechangr
HBO is too great to be ruined by AT&T.
Wiki says "HBO is the oldest and longest continuously operating pay television
service (basic or premium) in the United States".
I'm not under estimating HBO. like the rest of the fear mongering I hear from
my friends :)
AT&T doesn't' have what it takes to ruin it.
~~~
karcass
I dunno man. The Russians impoverished East Germany.
~~~
barry-cotter
East Germany was the richest Soviet conquest and the richest ex-Soviet bloc
state at the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Coming close to keeping up with
West Germany is pretty good for a Communist state.
~~~
WillPostForFood
Richest ex-Soviet Bloc state is like healthiest terminally ill patient.
Comparing East Germany to West seems more “germane.”
~~~
diogenescynic
You’re both right.
------
zjaffee
AT&T owns a ton of content through owning Warner Media
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Warner...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_WarnerMedia)
and my guess is that they will be able to show that content on netflix. At
least from my perspective, netflix has become a less desirable place to spend
time on, given that they have taken down a lot of their third party content,
something that AT&T and HBO will likely be able to resurface.
------
SubiculumCode
I get HBO, binge on the new show, then cancel after a month. They have some
good content, but not enough to keep me paying $10+ or whatever each month.
------
jasonlotito
This was discussed by my friends and myself earlier today. The general
sentiment is it's going to be interesting watching how AT&T burns HBO to the
ground and ruins it. The attitude and what came out of that meeting made none
of us feel good about the acquisition, and pretty much hands down people are
ready to just unsubscribe once it seems like quality drops.
------
homero
HBO is incredible. Sharp objects with Amy Adams just premiered last night.
AT&T is going to ruin it.
~~~
wolco
I subscribed recently and watched silicon valley, entourage, ballers, veep and
watching the wire now. What do you recommend, as most of the other series I
haven't heard much about them and hbo shows for some reason seem a little bit
harder to get started with.
~~~
adzm
Sopranos, Westworld, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm
~~~
kjksf
Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, Sex And the City and The Wire
are currently "free" in Amazon Prime.
At some point those licenses will expire but this illustrates the "innovator's
dilemma" as applied to HBO.
They have a good business of selling cable subscriptions for new stuff,
licensing their past shows to Amazon, Hulu and other willing buyers and
selling on-demand access via Apple, Amazon etc.
Now they need to compete with Netlifx, which has a large catalog of licensed,
popular shows from all over and their own exclusive content.
To compete with that HBO would have to drop revenue from licensing (there's
less reasons to pay for HBO if I can get a lot of their good stuff elsewhere)
Their cable subscriptions are probably going to decline no matter what. Cable
subscriber count is on a steady, 6 year decline
([http://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-subscriber-
losses-q2...](http://www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-subscriber-
losses-q2-chart-2017-6)) despite being propped by internet + cable bundles.
That decline is accelerating i.e. every year more people are cancelling cable
as a percentage. If that continues, it'll be a bloodbath. If the decline stops
accelerating, it'll still be bloodbath, just later. I don't see a scenario in
which cable starts growing again.
Netlifx model is easy to explain but almost impossible to replicate.
The model is: get so many subscribers from all over the world paying you
relatively small amount that you'll be able to outspend any other company in
quantity of TV/movie exclusive content, thus making it even more likely to get
new subscribers.
This is "rich get richer" model and Netflix is already the richest.
People will be willing to buy 2-3 such subscriptions so that's how many
winning slots there are.
So HBO better fight hard for that 2nd or 3rd position, but unfortunately just
like BlockBuster or Borders had a good business until they didn't, HBO might
not do enough to compete.
------
softwaredoug
Funny it seems Netflix has been doing everything it can to be HBO! (And that’s
a good thing!)
~~~
thirdsun
It needs to try harder. I'm still waiting for anything coming close to The
Wire or The Sopranos.
------
brisance
Interesting that neither the article nor a single comment mentioned AT&T's
efforts to undermine net neutrality. That would be their ace up the sleeve.
And they can get away with it because this administration is corrupt to the
core.
~~~
everybodyknows
With its position as ISP, AT&T can make trouble for Netflix content delivery.
And they know how. Remember all those independent DSL providers, back around
the millennium? I had one for years, then intermittent failures set in. After
months of debugging, the cause was traced to misconfigured AT&T equipment in
the local office.
It's as easy and untraceable as deprioritizing Netflix-sensitive operations
tasks.
------
dec0dedab0de
I think George Carlin's death hurt HBO more than anything. That is to say if
they were still the home of stand-up comedy they might still be cool. They
really dropped the ball on that.
------
lawl
> HBO NOW is only supported in the U.S. and select U.S. territories.
Oh yeah, I still have to pirate the HBO shows I want to watch. Even the
Netflix catalogue seems to be shrinking rather than growing here outside of
the US. Apparently you can get Netflix to show more stuff here by changing the
language on the web interface because they only show me stuff that has dubs
for my language. Can't do that in-app though.
Uh, hello, I understand English well enough to be able to watch your fucking
show in English, why does my room mate have to call your support to figure
this out?
So now they want to turn HBO which is even worse than Netflix into Netflix?
Cool, I'll still be pirating.
_yawn_
------
matte_black
Can someone explain why it’s obviously doomed?
~~~
MBCook
They bought a niche diamond mine and want it to be a giant aluminum recycling
company.
HBO makes a few REALLY good series. That’s what they do. They are not setup to
produce 10x as much content. If they do they may not have the people who can
do that with reasonable quality. They’re used to polishing gems.
You wouldn’t buy Nintendo and order them to make a console more powerful than
the XBox One X. That’s not what they do.
This probably won’t go well.
~~~
tptacek
HBO doesn't make money by producing _really good series_. They make money by
producing series that get people attached, to pay them for years at a time.
Bored To Death might have been a fine show, but to a first approximation
nobody signed up for HBO just to see it. They can churn out Vice Principals
and Barry's and Young Popes, but if they can't reliably keep a Game Of Thrones
or (bleh) True Blood in the pipeline, they'll have a hard time justifying
their cost.
~~~
drawkbox
Silicon Valley and Curb Your Enthusiasm aren't mentioned enough and a big
reason I subscribe.
HBO used to be the pinnacle of stand-up shows, but Netflix has taken that
torch now it seems.
For comedy series they do well though. Curb, Silicon Valley, VEEP, Last Week
Tonight, Eastbound & Down, and back in the day Larry Sanders, Mr. Show, Ali G
and more.
They always deliver with great shows non-comedy as well: Band of Brothers,
Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, Sopranos, The Night Of, GoT, Big Little Lies, True
Detective and on and on, hard to find this level of quality and creator
freedom that allows that. Netflix definitely giving HBO a run for their money
in quality and creator freedom, hard to imagine AT&T even giving creators the
level of control HBO and Netflix have.
~~~
tptacek
They might be why _you_ subscribe (and I like Silicon Valley, too) but they're
not why customers in general subscribe. True Blood had something like 6x as
many viewers as Silicon Valley (this is what I mean when I say HBO's business
isn't really "quality" so much as stickiness); for Game of Thrones, it's more
like 12x.
But also, you can't look at those shows in isolation. Compare them to
Netflix's properties. Stranger Things is as big a deal as literally anything
HBO has launched in the last decade, including Game of Thrones (I really want
to believe that HBO is kicking themselves for not buying the script for that;
it was shopped to them). For any given HBO 30 minute comedy, Netflix has
probably launched 3 equally credible comedies.
The very best, most important 60-minute scripted dramas in the past decade
have not as a rule, with the exception of Game of Thrones, been on HBO. If AMC
can do Mad Men and FX can do The Americans, there is no reason to believe that
Netflix can't do equally well just by pouring investor dollars into acquiring
shows. At the end of the day, that's what these businesses do: pick production
companies to fund, fund them, and then distribute the results.
~~~
greedo
The Wire. Arguably one of the best dramas ever created. The Sopranos.
Deadwood. Carnivale.
You're avoiding some incredible shows.
~~~
tptacek
OITNB is a Netflix show, which makes my point for me.
Season 5 of The Wire was just about a decade ago, and it was abbreviated
because it didn't get great ratings.
Carnivale was cancelled for low ratings after its second season. I'm not
saying it's bad (it was a mess, though). I'm saying that HBO has to do _more
things like Carnivale_ , on a much faster schedule, if it's going to keep up
with Netflix.
~~~
kasey_junk
If you say another single bad thing about Carnivale we go to war...
~~~
tptacek
It's _fine_. It's much better than John from Cincinnati or Luck or Vinyl was.
I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Boardwalk Empire.
~~~
kasey_junk
War I say.
------
kisstheblade
And then HBO makes a show like Westworld, i.e. low quality of shows and low
amount, what a winning strategy :)
------
watertom
Netflix is as agile as they come.
AT&T needs a crooked FCC to pass laws in order to make their exiting business
model viable, and they have something everyone needs Internet and Cell phone,
and they are basically only 1 of 4 players.
------
forapurpose
I've wondered about HBO's future. I see a few problems:
First, it used to be the only source for intelligent programming. Now I can
get as good or better content from Netflix, Amazon, and smaller arthouse-
oriented channels. HBO doesn't stand out to me.
Second, streaming channels are a la carte, not bundled, and I'd have to pay
cable TV-sized bills to subscribe to 100 channels. HBO doesn't seem to offer
enough to be worth a separate subscription.
Finally, the lack of an integrated listing UI means that I have to open the
HBO channel to see what's playing there. It's rarely worth the effort with so
many other options that have more content.
~~~
throwawaymath
I guess this is a matter of opinion, but I’ll bite anyway. What content do you
watch from Netflix or Amazon that you find to be comparable to HBO’s tentpole
programming?
To be honest with you, I find Amazon’s content to be...well, bad. On the other
hand Netflix has a few good shows, but the company is clearly prioritizing
quantity over quality. Not only does its content not have the awards or
acclaim HBO’s garners, but it just churns out forgettable movie after
forgettable movie. A lot of Netflix’s content is becoming the new “direct to
TV” movie.
HBO’s approach is to produce character-driven and thought-provoking
programming which is ahead of the curve. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea when
it comes to entertainment, but they naturally achieve greater critical acclaim
and cult status. It’s hard to think of a way most of Netflix or Amazon’s
content can be compared to HBO’s except, “It’s entertaining.” In what way do
you see Netflix or Amazon innovating? For what definition of “good” do you
find your favorite Netflix and Amazon shows comparing favorably with HBO’s?
For a while I held high hopes of Netflix becoming a new HBO because _House of
Cards_ was exceptional. But they didn’t exactly make that a trend. And while
we’re on the subject of UI, Netflix is so hellbent on having me binge watch
the day away that I can’t hover over a title for more than 1 second without it
blaring a crappy trailer at me. The native Netflix experience (LG TV, AppleTV)
has me scurrying from title to title like a mad squirrel hoping to read a
description without triggering the trailer.
~~~
SquirrelOnFire
House of Cards (First 2 seasons at least), Stranger Things, Orange is the New
Black, Marco Polo, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Dear White People, Bojack
Horseman, and to a lesser extent some of the Marvel shows (Jessica Jones,
Daredevil, Luke Cage, Punisher), not to mention how much amazing standup
comedy Netflix puts out. Sure, there's a lot of junk, but Netflix is
succeeding in becoming HBO faster than HBO is becoming Netflix.
~~~
throwawaymath
I'll give you the standup comedy selection because I agree it's really quite
good. I also like Stranger Things but can't comment on the others. But I
actively dislike the Marvel content on Netflix. I find its characters one-
dimensional and its plot unmotivated. Some of this is probably the transition
from comic books to TV, but on the other hand I love almost everything from
the cinematic universe.
I think the biggest problem is that the Marvel cinematic universe seems to
have better acting, better writing, superior interconnectedness overall and
stakes that are well calibrated to its cast of heroes. In contrast, I find
most of the characters' hyperfocus on specific neighborhoods in Marvel's
Netflix shows to be frankly ridiculous and annoying. I also find myself
wishing the main characters would just kill the villains a few episodes into
each series. It boggles my mind how much waffling and angst goes on.
As a followup to your last comment though, my point had nothing to do with HBO
becoming Netflix. I don't even think HBO should try to become Netflix at all.
I would prefer for HBO to remain the curated content space that it is,
precisely because I'm concerned with the quality of content. Strictly
speaking, the ratio of quality content to junk on HBO is far, far higher than
Netflix's. It's not really about HBO or Netflix being more successful in
becoming the other, it's about quality. Regardless of whether or not HBO is
close to becoming Netflix, Netflix is so far from becoming HBO I don't even
think they could recognize an interstate map outlining the route.
~~~
siidooloo
HBO and Netflix both produce a couple of dozen shows a year. HBO seems like it
has a better hit ratio because you have to go back every week to get an update
on the one or two current shows you enjoy. HBO has a better presentation for
appearing prestige.
~~~
throwawaymath
No, I disagree strongly. I don't binge Netflix and I still feel the same way.
~~~
siidooloo
Do you watch 24 different HBO shows a year, or do you watch 4 or 5?
~~~
throwawaymath
Four or five, but I don't really follow what you mean. I sit through maybe 10
pilots on Netflix that don't motivate me to watch the entire season. The last
time I tried and failed to get into an HBO show was with _Succession_ (in my
opinion that show is exceptionally bad). Before that I can't recall. But on
Amazon I churned off of literally everything, and on Netflix it takes me at
least five duds (that are apparently a strong match for me) to find something
I'll commit to. The only thing I think Netflix has really nailed is comedy,
and that's because their selection of comedy is actually _diverse and
comprehensive._ Conversely, a lot of their selection for traditional drama is
formulaic.
------
esaym
I gave up on HBO 15+ years ago after every single new show they made was
nothing but a non stop stream of cuss words. Their only way to stand out just
seems to be by bringing new levels of raunchiness to the viewer, and that gets
old.
~~~
PhantomGremlin
How do you make a show like The Sopranos without cuss words? Not too many
mobsters earn an Eagle Scout medal.
And if you tell me that The Sopranos wasn't realistic, I'd say you weren't
paying attention to the news in the NYC metropolitan area. Many/most of the
show's plots were, at the least, "inspired by actual events".
You can always watch the Hallmark Channel on basic cable. Not too many cuss
words there.
~~~
jstarfish
Eh, I dont know what the OP had in mind, but I've watched all the big HBO
shows and the only one that was unwatchable specifically due to profanity was
Deadwood.
Whatever story it had was absolutely drowned out by dialogue written by
prepubescent boys who just learned the word "fuck" for the first time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Click on a few dots and our program will guess your age - vyrotek
http://kgajos.eecs.harvard.edu/ag/
======
edanm
My guess - this experiment has nothing to do with the clicks, but rather is
trying to measure something else. Something like the amount of time people
take on breaks, plotted against the amount of time people spent reading the
instructions. Or something like that.
~~~
ahoge
It could, for example, be used to demonstrate that people are more willing to
reveal some private information if you make them jump through a few hoops to
gain this "privilege".
~~~
qb45
Interesting idea, but if this was the case I'm sure they wouldn't bother
writing javascript which ajaxes timestapms of your clicks to their server.
~~~
ahoge
Why not? Placebos also look like the real thing, don't they?
Anyhow, in cases like this it's always nice to save all the data you can get.
The correlation you'd like to demonstrate might not exist at all. However, if
there are many parameters, you might be able to find something else.
------
bitboxer
Does that thing just throw random numbers between 28 and 33 ? Looks like that
if I read the comments :D .
~~~
charonn0
Probably has more to do with the age of your average HN reader.
~~~
qb45
For me it also said 30 although I'm few years younger actually.
~~~
tibbon
For a friend that's 29, it said he was 10.
------
tptacek
I'm 36, it says I'm 31. I feel like an atomic superman. Also my fingers hurt.
------
alarge
Not very close. Said 32. I'm 47. From the other comments, seems like a pretty
narrow range of guesses.
------
Fuzzwah
I'm 35. It gave me 55 on my 1st attempt using the trackpad on my brand new
laptop which I'm still getting used to (I turned on momentum yesterday and am
not used to it yet). I then plugged in a mouse and got 30. The sensitivity on
the mouse wasn't what I was used to, I felt hampered. I'll try it again at
home on the machine + mouse set up I use when playing starcraft 2 and hope
that I get at least a few years younger.
------
dlsym
return 30 if referer == '<https://news.ycombinator.com/>
Is it close?
------
tibbon
Kinda shocked that at the end it didn't give a debriefing like most study
tests do.
------
Echo117
Age 29 the first with regular speed of clicks. Age 53 the second time taking
lots of time between clicks and being more careful to click the center of the
circle.
------
TiagoPT
Said 40, I'm 21, really off!
------
Urgo
Just put up a video on my youtube channel asking my subscribers to try this
out. Looks like it does predict the 29-31 range much more then others. Anyway
check out the comments over there for results of a much different demographic
then here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K6bSVKao5I>
------
atesti
It looks like it even transmits mouse move events on the canvas via ajax to
the server. Too bad we don't know the calculations over there.
I used a Thinkpad tracking point which is extremely accurate and fast (Lenovo
will hopefully not remove them from the next ThinkPad after the T431 :-( ),
yet the page guessed I was 10.
------
brixon
It thought I was 2 years younger, so not bad. Gamers will probably get rated
much younger than they really are.
------
bengyusf
Not even close - guessed 44 and I'm 25.
~~~
jere
Thank god I'm not the only person that it guessed _older_.
------
joe_bleau
I used a MS trackball (thumb operated) and it read me as 9 years younger than
my actual age. I expected the trackball to be a significant handicap, but
maybe it's not? It certainly felt like I was struggling to hit the targets,
with plenty of overshoot.
~~~
qb45
I also used MS TBO but in my case it guessed few years too much. I'd say it's
interesting if there was a single person here who didn't get answer between 25
and 35.
And TBO definitively _is_ a handicap, try playing Quake with it if in doubt.
------
jivid
Despite being about 10 years off my actual age, I think this is pretty cool. I
wonder if there's any other information they're taking apart from speed
between clicks? Geo-location might help to narrow down the range of possible
ages.
~~~
prg318
I wonder if the duration of a "quick break" is taken into account for their
calculations?
------
IbJacked
Broken for me. The question page at the end didn't have a submit button (just
oddly quoted: Preparing results..."), and when I submitted by pressing <enter>
in an input box I got a "connection reset" error from Firefox.
------
danielweber
And just when I finally get it to load and to my test:
The following error was encountered:
Connection to 140.247.61.57 Failed
The system returned:
(60) Connection timed out
------
MattGrommes
I'm almost 35, it said 32. Close enough. I wonder if it just uses time to
click or if there's something involving extraneous clicks or noticing the
patterns. Interesting in any case.
------
dmastylo
It said I was 28, I'm 19.
------
edwintorok
Off by only 1 year for me.
BTW the site seems to be under high load, it timed out, and had to reload the
results page quite a few times, but eventually I got the result.
------
hmottestad
It's probably a privacy test to see if they can get personal information out
of test takers online simply by making you feel it's relevant to the test.
------
dangoldin
Is this just a clever way to collect survey data? Based on the guesses being
in a pretty narrow range I suspect that's the real goal.
------
uslic001
Not even close. Said I was 29 and I am 48.
------
sqqqrly
I got only the "preparing results"... I think I took the site down! Now none
of my three browsers can connect.
------
legalbeagle
Not accurate for me. I'm 51 and it guessed 32. I'd be interested in what the
key factors are.
------
jpollock
It was off by a good decade for me.
------
david927
That is amazing. It was spot on.
~~~
IanDrake
How old are you?
~~~
david927
45
~~~
IanDrake
Hmmm. That's pretty cool it guessed correctly then.
------
vesbot
Most of the numbers are around 30~ I don't think there is anything accurate
about it.
------
DanBC
Calls me 52. I'm 43. Using (badly) a touchpad.
I have terrible co-ordination.
------
infoman
Firefox: I am 10 years old Chrome: I am 30 years old IE: crashed in the end
------
Scryptonite
It guessed that I was 33. Divide that in half and it would pretty spot on.
------
trueluk
>> Our best guess is that you are 10. Is it close?
Nope, I'm 28.
------
peterwwillis
Says i'm 37, but really i'm 906. That's weird.
~~~
dennisgorelik
What country were you born in?
~~~
qu4z-2
I'm gonna guess he put down Gallifrey.
------
aroberge
31 ... I'm over 50. And I don't feel particularly dextrous.
------
jdwissler
It thinks I'm 42.
I'm 21. Something must be wrong with me.
~~~
brk
You/are are almost directly inverted in terms of age/score.
------
jere
Guessed 31. I'm 26. Crap. I must have awful motor skills.
~~~
dennisgorelik
Guessed 30 (I'm on regular mouse/desktop). I'm 38.
------
tremendo
not even close, but now I do feel like bragging, so thanks for that ;)
Actually the next position of the dot was pretty predictable in most cases.
------
eterps
It said 33, I am 40.
~~~
th
It told me I was 33 also and I'm 25.
The survey at the end was fairly short. I wonder what factors they might be
missing. I type most of the day in a terminal and rarely use my touchpad
except for scrolling and occasional clicks on websites. I also don't play
video games often. It seems like both of those facts could have affected my
speed.
------
charonn0
It said 29 and I don't turn 30 for a few more weeks.
~~~
disbelief
I also got 29, but I'm 33. You click like a 33 year old! ;)
------
regularfry
Not far off, but not amazing - 29 vs 33.
------
mrgreenfur
Got it right on the money. Spooky.
------
housel
I'm 46, and it said 46. Uncanny.
------
devopstom
It said 31. I'm 27. Who knows.
------
asdf333
this has very deep and far reaching implications for pro-level starcraft
players!!! :p
------
IanDrake
It said I'm 36. It guessed 30.
------
mjt0229
I click like a younger model.
------
wglb
Way off. Like, by half.
------
tony_landis
It got me within 4 years
------
Yhippa
Off by a year. Not bad.
------
eclipxe
Spot on for me too. Wow.
------
tpabla
Said 29 for me, I'm 24.
------
victorhn
I am 29 and it said 29.
~~~
tibbon
30/30 here
------
vtbassmatt
I'm 30, it guessed 10.
~~~
maxerickson
I'm 33, also got 10.
------
rsl7
said 31, I'm 41. yay?
------
amalakar
Guessed 30, I am 28.
------
igreulich
I got 39, I am 35
------
fl0w
Bang on for me.
------
netcraft
said 33, im 30.
------
__mtb__
right on the number for me. 33.
------
ollysb
28 for 33
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What books do you wish your manager would read? - a3n
Non-technical, technical, technical management, people management, perspective, insight.<p>What books or other resources do you believe would make <i>your</i> life better, if your present and future managers read them and lived their lessons?
======
jbob2000
It would be great if my manager read anything at all. Having been through a
few managers; the good ones read, the bad ones don't read. It doesn't matter
what they read, the last good one I had pretty much only read WW2 novels.
That being said, I think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an
important read for anyone in technology. It changed how I approach and
appreciate technology.
~~~
mrfusion
How did it change how you think about technology?
~~~
jbob2000
I used to be a first adopter, very fervent about certain technologies and
brands, always wanted to stay on the cutting edge. I used to spend huge
amounts of time on my computer, like frequent 12 hour sprints.
When I started reading the book, it seemed like it was going to justify that
lifestyle to me. It's good to tinker and be mechanically aware, you know? I
wanted to be like the narrator, he seemed like the pinnacle engineer.
But I just started missing out on things and ignoring people. It clicked for
me when I got my first car and when I got in my first accident. I spent so
much time keeping this thing in perfect shape, all to be destroyed by some
dumb ass maneuver I pulled. After that, I wanted to be more like John. A car
is just something to make life happen, it's not a reason to live. Same thing
with computers, they're just there to help you out a little, not something to
give up your life for.
I guess it was the car accident that really changed how I think about things,
but reading the book gave me the language/vocabulary to understand how I felt.
------
koja86
In context of software development these books (and other works by same
people) might be interesting. I have not read them all yet but have been
recommended by a colleague. My perspective is defined by being a developer in
circa 100 people company.
* The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month)
* Facts and fallacies of software engineering by Robert L. Glass [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Glass)
* Lessons learned from 25 years of process improvement: The Rise and Fall of the NASA Software Engineering Laboratory [https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/basili/publications/proceedings...](https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/basili/publications/proceedings/P94.pdf)
------
jrochkind1
I'll just be the first to mention The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-
Month](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month)
------
gvk
All the obligatory books and references have already been mentioned, so I'll
refrain from repeating.
I'm a recent developer-turned-manager [close to two years now] and have always
been a voracious reader.
Apart from specialist books of the profession, as an introvert I find that a
healthy dose of fiction helps me in my day-to-day dealings with people at the
workplace - especially those who report to me.
[[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-
way/201401...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-
way/201401/reading-fiction-improves-brain-connectivity-and-function)]
[[https://open.buffer.com/reading-fiction/](https://open.buffer.com/reading-
fiction/)]
^^ As such, I'd recommend some well-written fiction. Try The Godfather -
always thought it was the best "people management" book :-)
Fantasy [or novels with a touch of the fantastic] would also be good.
War books are also good. Try some interesting non-fiction - I'd recommend WW
II books by Stephen Ambrose. All about teamwork and beats reading dry
management books.
You should probably stay away from satire, lest your manager think you a d*ck
;)
Before you do any of this, you should probably find out if your manager is in
the habit of reading.
And despite the best advice, what a reader gets from any book depends on what
she brings to it...so don't be surprised if reading doesn't help your manager
:D
------
maxaf
But of course:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People)
If there's a single book I wish everyone had read - not just managers - it
would be this. I'd market it as "manual for human beings". You learn how to
deal with them, as well as how to be one.
------
mbubb
"The Phoenix Project" [http://itrevolution.com/books/phoenix-project-devops-
book/](http://itrevolution.com/books/phoenix-project-devops-book/)
is good for understanding Devops and constant refocus on business objectives.
~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
"The Phoenix Project" and an earlier one, "The Goal" by Goldratt
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_\(novel\))
------
bkirkby
\- Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek \- Creativity Inc., Ed Catmull \- Reinventing
Organizations, Frederic Laloux \- Joy at Work, Dennis W Bakke \- Valve
Employee Handbook, Valve Software
This list is heavily skewed toward self-organization because I work for a
company (Zappos) that is currently transitioning to a self-organization model.
I thought I'd answer the question about what books I wish my "manager" would
read even though I don't have a manager because in a self-org environment, you
do have leaders that emerge organically. The main difference between "manager"
and "leader" is that managers influence their charges with coersion (even if
subtle and unintentional) while a leaders ability to influence comes from the
bottom-up and is more meritocratic based on perceived experience and ability
by those being led.
Most companies hope to promote the leaders so their manager structure is
reflective of the actual effective social leadership structure, but all
companies get it wrong often.
------
jlhonora
Peopleware has great insights for both managers and programmers. Recommended
read for both.
~~~
Tcepsa
I am both a manager and a programmer and just read it last month. I fully
agree that it has valuable insights for both.
------
brnstz
* Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5)
Software engineering in particular attracts some extreme personalities. There
are elements of narcissism, OCD, borderline, avoidance, etc. in every
organization, even if it would not necessarily warrant a diagnosis. People
have irrational motivations. This is often ignored in the rational business of
software.
~~~
talkingquickly
Do you know of any more accessible books which might give people a feel for
what they might encounter? DSM-5 is pretty heavy going for someone outside of
the field but agree that some awareness of it could be really valuable.
~~~
brnstz
Good question. I don't know of any books, though they're probably out there.
You could look at the table of contents and google most of the diagnoses and
find more readable stuff online.
------
niHiggim
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering ([http://www.amazon.com/Facts-
Fallacies-Software-Engineering-R...](http://www.amazon.com/Facts-Fallacies-
Software-Engineering-Robert/dp/0321117425)). It may be starting to get a
little dated, so it's hard to say that all the referenced research is still
applicable in the same way. But it's a good antidote to a common problem
everywhere I've worked: the idea that our team is in some way special or
unique in a way that implies reasonable standards of software engineering
practice don't apply. It's almost always part of a rationalization cycle that
justifies the way things have always been done or some kind of Taylorist
management practice.
------
jeremysmyth
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Project...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects_and_Teams)
That page doesn't do it justice, sadly. This book just _gets_ it about working
in teams and larger organizations.
------
minikites
Not a book, but a particular podcast episode:
[http://5by5.tv/b2w/17](http://5by5.tv/b2w/17). Skip to 1:05:00 (an hour and 5
minutes in) and listen for 2-3 minutes.
You'll hear something many managers need to hear about the difference between
a "priority" and just something you need to do and the resources you need to
be putting behind something to really show that it's a priority (owner,
budget, deadline).
------
cybette
"Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" by Nir Eyal - I'm reading it
myself. I think it's really useful for those doing product
development/management and building user engagement.
[http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-
Product...](http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products-
ebook/dp/B00LMGLXTS/)
------
dizzystar
Making Things Happen;
Unfortunately, I read this book when it was too late for me, but definitely
something to read if you ever get into management. The politics section itself
is worth the price:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596517718](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596517718)
------
roymurdock
Older Stuff: The Bible/Quran, The Republic (Plato), The Social Contract
(Rousseau), Tao Te Ching (Laozi), Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), History of
the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides)
Newer Stuff: Nine Stories (Salinger), The Razor's Edge (Maugham), Nausea
(Sartre), Siddartha (Hesse), Road to Serfdom (Hayek), The Book (Watts), Design
of Everyday Things (Norman), Atlas Shrugged (Rand), Invisible Man (Ellison),
Debunking Economics (Keen), Blood Meridian (McCarthy), The Center Cannot Hold
(Saks), This Time Is Different (Reinhart/Rogoff), Infinite Jest (Wallace),
Calvin and Hobbes (Watterson)
All of these books are well written and have given me some perspective on
interesting people/situations/ways of thinking.
------
DanBC
I tried leaving Dilbert cartoons around. People don't recognise themselves,
even though everyone else can see it clear as day.
------
paulclinger
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It's an
old, but a good one.
------
alimnemonic
Drive by Daniel Pink, looks at what motivates people in general. Explains why
a guy that codes all day goes home to work on open source project...
------
SixSigma
Everyone Needs a Mentor - David Clutterbuck [1]
Flat Army - Dan Pontefract [2]
[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Needs-Mentor-David-
Clutterbuc...](http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Needs-Mentor-David-
Clutterbuck/dp/1843983664/)
[2] [http://www.danpontefract.com/the-book/](http://www.danpontefract.com/the-
book/)
~~~
Ysx
Flat Army summary: [https://www.ebscohost.com/uploads/corpLearn/pdf/Flat-
Army.pd...](https://www.ebscohost.com/uploads/corpLearn/pdf/Flat-Army.pdf)
------
askyourmother
The childrens book "Maisy makes gingerbread", it might help the aspiring
manager understand that often there is a simple, well understood series of
steps to follow, and if we do follow them, we deliver something of value.
If we choose to bog down the process, add unnecessary steps, or shortcut some
steps, the end result is perhaps less rewarding.
------
jazzyb
I think it's important to think about the effect technology has on culture
(both positive and negative). To that end, I would recommend _Technopoly_ by
Neil Postman. (And optionally _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ by the same author
-- it's more accessible but slightly less applicable to the software
industry.)
------
lisivka
Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense Approach to a Continuous Improvement Strategy
[http://www.amazon.com/Gemba-Kaizen-Commonsense-Continuous-
Im...](http://www.amazon.com/Gemba-Kaizen-Commonsense-Continuous-
Improvement/dp/0071790357)
------
staggler
[http://www.amazon.com/Red-Team-Succeed-Thinking-
Enemy/dp/046...](http://www.amazon.com/Red-Team-Succeed-Thinking-
Enemy/dp/0465048943)
Phenomenal modern look into the practice of alternative analysis
------
poseid
A basic understanding of JavaScript technologies, as described in my book
[http://pipefishbook.com/](http://pipefishbook.com/)
------
a3n
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-
Month](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month)
------
imdsm
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule)
------
jakozaur
[https://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/book](https://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/book)
~~~
jlhonora
Although the testimonies sound great, the landing page gives me mixed feelings
about the book. Perhaps too much salesmanship. Could you tell us a bit more?
------
Aij7eFae
Basic math for dummies
I'm not great at math but I do at least know how to remove the tax from a
number.
------
darkhorn
If my manager read English (language book) I would'n try to explain why Git
and unit tests are needed and how good it would be if we sell the app to
foreign companies.
The second book would be Turkish. so that he wouldn.t wrte like ths in his
Emails
------
pkhamre
Who Moved My Cheese?
[http://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-
Amazing/dp/0399144...](http://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-
Amazing/dp/0399144463)
------
Fede_V
Necronomicon.
------
cphuntington97
anything by W. Edwards Deming
~~~
hencq
I actually left a copy of Four Days With Dr Deming [1] lying around in our
office, which is not by him, but follows one of his seminars quite closely. I
hoped it would inspire my manager to take a peek, but so far I don't think
it's happened.
[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Four-Days-Dr-Deming-
Management/dp/0201...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Days-Dr-Deming-
Management/dp/0201633663)
------
pearjuice
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
------
serpix
By definition if you know what your manager should be doing you're in the
wrong position.
~~~
a3n
Could you expand on that?
Not everyone is suited to, or wants to be a manager. That doesn't mean that we
haven't learned about management in our careers. And I do think we all can
learn from everyone around us.
------
xchaotic
Rework.
------
kill_dang
Atlas Shrugged, but he's not the 'reading books' type of guy.
Atlas Shrugged's Taggart Transcontinental is the company I wish I could work
for. I hate the nitpicking and bad attitude that I currently deal with. I took
this job to write code and make money, why do I have to go to all these stupid
meetings, read these stupid e-mails, use Slack, answer this stupid desk-phone
etc?
'Going to work' is what is killing my work, and nothing I say or do seems to
matter. I just want to actually get some work done, seemingly unlike the rest
of this entire corp.
Give me my keyboard, my editor, and my coffee. That's all I need and I'll
write up what I did at the end of the day, talk to me then.
~~~
a3n
> I took this job to write code and make money, why do I have to go to all
> these stupid meetings, read these stupid e-mails, use Slack, answer this
> stupid desk-phone etc?
I call that work about work. Most of it's needless.
They _say_ it's to help us get better results, etc, but I think it's really
about adding meaning to _their_ work life. Or just to their life.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why 3d movies hurt your eyes and make you nauseous - lukas
http://www.slate.com/id/2215265/
======
cjlars
I'm relatively uninformed on this, but couldn't you reduce these unpleasant
effects by 'flattening' the 3D image? If the optical effect never (or rarely)
appears to come more than say, several feet off of the screen, then you loose
the nauseating effects, while keeping a kinder, gentler textured image.
I saw a 3D at the local aquarium recently and it seemed like every image came
as far out as possible. I, of course, left with a headache. After all, a
distorted guitar is nice, but any effect can be overdone.
~~~
bemmu
In current 3D films in theme parks and such the effect is often way
overstated. 3D will really start to matter after is used simply to tell the
story more vividly, as color is used now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The 'secret underground lair' where scientists are searching the galaxies - clouddrover
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-17/inside-super-kamiokande-360-tour/11209104
======
clouddrover
> _“I might add that if this ever happens to you, which it could, don’t say
> the following to the arresting officer: ‘Don’t open that, it’s really
> pure.’”_
Good advice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A programmer's view of the Universe, part 2: Mario Kart - pavelludiq
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/12/programmers-view-of-universe-part-2.html
======
glymor
The first part was a funny story about a little fish that tried real real hard
then failed and died without hope.
The second part is a boring series of reaches that doesn't go anywhere
(literally).
I was aware coming in that Yegge's style is to make tenuous metaphors that
obfuscate the point more than they elucidate (remember the story about the
Kingdom of Nouns) but I was so enamoured by part 1 that I inadvisedly read it
nonetheless.
(As a side note it is possible to write in the style Yegge is trying to: Neal
Stephenson achieves it in "In the Beginning was the Command Line" with the
story about the different drills.)
~~~
breck
Metaphors are like business plans. When they take too long to explain, it's
time to get a new one.
~~~
nazgulnarsil
I think the parent post was referring to choosing certain leaky abstractions
on purpose in order to frame the phenomena you are describing in such a way as
to elicit the desired reaction from an audience. For example, you can change
emotional response to a stimulus by using words with hot or cold connotations
to describe it.
------
jd
> But one way or another, all systems are embedded systems. [...] host systems
> often overlap and even cooperate. A city is composed of many interleaved
> subsystems. So is your body. It's not always a simple containment
> relationship. Systems are made of, and communicate with, other systems.
So now the definition of "embedded system" is essentially a "thingy". Thingies
overlap and cooperate, thingies are made of and communicate with other
thingies.
That's not very enlightening.
I have no idea what the purpose was of the 3000 (?) word analogy between Mario
Cart, a fish tank and embedded systems. And also it's unclear how the "holes"
(data channels) are related to reflection and metaprogramming.
And finally, I don't see how he can be so certain the state of the Universe
was "undefined" before the big bang. Maybe the Universe had a definite and
sensible but (to us) unknowable state before the Big Bang.
~~~
incomethax
To our vantage point, the universe was "undefined" before the big bang. It's
also "undefined" from our vantage point to every space that exists (or rather
doesn't exist) outside of our universe.
If you buy certain flavors of string theory, you could say that we can only
tell what's going on beyond our own 'brane, as our 'brane happens to be an
embedded system that we would need to step outside to understand what exists
outside of it.
Essentially it seems to me that Yegge is saying that we don't know what's
going on outside of our 3-space 1-time universe, and that even posing the
questions from within the universe is an exercise in futility.
~~~
jd
What you're saying makes perfect sense, but that isn't what Yegge is saying at
all. You're saying the state of the universe may or may not be sensible before
the Big Bang, but it's unknowable so speculation is pointless. What Yegge is
saying is that it's like an undefined variable: the state is totally
arbitrary. But we don't even know if the universe could be anything before the
Big Bang.
~~~
derefr
The state is arbitrary to the Host system, just like the state of memory
before it is initialized is arbitrary to us. In the guest (Embedded) system,
it's unknowable. Arbitrary is a term Gods (creators of embedded systems) use
to refer to things that are unknowable from within guest systems, _and_ that
they don't particularly care about from the vantage point of the host.
The only assumption Yegge is making is that the Big Bang wasn't self-started
from a confluence of previous state, but "initialized", _overwriting_ that
state, which almost makes sense: black holes overwrite later state, rendering
incoming material arbitrary to its later states (they're an "information
sink"), so why couldn't the Big Bang overwrite earlier state, rendering
_outgoing_ material arbitrary from its previous state (an "information tap")?
~~~
jd
By saying the universe has an arbitrary state before the Big Bang you're also
assuming the universe has _a_ state before the Big Bang. But perhaps the
universe had no state at all.
A variable is a piece of memory and always has _a_ value. The value may be
arbitrary, the value may be unknowable, but we know at least one thing: that
at any point in time a variable has exactly 1 value.
~~~
incomethax
Most values for quantum variables have multiple values at any point in space-
time.
That said, even if we assume that the universe had no state prior to the big
bang, we can postulate that state to be arbitrary, because it may be 0, it may
be 1, or it may be both 0 and 1 at the same time.
------
edu
A game is not an embedded system, a video game console (or a router, or any
_special purpose computer_ ) is!
I see what he means, but it shouldn't be call embedded system. What about
"embedded world", "contained world", "digital ecosystem"? I don't really like
those names, though, sound too much from a 90s 'hacker' movies. What names
would you use?
------
gnaritas
Not nearly as good as part one, he's back to rambling again.
~~~
rglullis
Wait until the end of the series. He says in the comments that these posts are
supposed to bring a larger point.
Kind of off-topic, but it is funny how these posts remind me of History class
in high-school. I had an amazing teacher: she would say that most of the
topics would individually seem dull (things like Middle Ages, Renaissance,
French Revolution, Russian Revolution, World War I and II), the whole thing
would be a whole more interesting in the end, where we could make sense of the
_why_ of the succession of historical events. And she was absolutely right.
When we got a chance to look at all of the pieces, I was able to think of
History as a running system.
Getting back to the point: I'd say that individually both posts seem pretty
inane. Even the first one was imho too silly. I do expect, however, that in
the end Yegge will manage to make sense of it all.
~~~
gnaritas
I'm talking about the writing, not the subject matter. The first post was well
written, not overly verbose, and well paced. The second was his usual verbal
diarrhea.
------
tlrobinson
Part 1 was an excellent read. Part two was a less excellent read, but deeper.
I think the analogy of our universe being like an "embedded system" is a good
one. I don't doubt that there's much more to it than we can understand, much
like the betta can't understand why he's stuck in a fishbowl, or the
hypothetical Mario who can't understand the invisible wall.
On another note, does anyone else find the "big bang" theory incredibly
unsatisfying? I have no reason to believe it's not true, but as Yegge points
out it seems to bring about more questions than it answers.
------
ii
Steve's story has reminded me of the other HN discussion:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=399967>
This "other side" is exactly what makes low-level languages so powerful.
------
JBiserkov
To be honest, I did not understand part 2. There was a nice idea lurking out
there somewhere around the subtitle "Reflections", but then he started
generalizing and the post just ended.
I guess this is the point from which we should stop reading and start
thinking.
I should probably learn more about meta-programming in order to understand
what he meant.
------
rw
Steve, I'm sorry, but the universe may not be a Von Neumann architecture!
------
rymngh
part one was really great article. it made me watch bettas in youtube and
appreciate them.
------
pmorici
Whats the point of this article?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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