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The Checklist Manifesto - mattmcknight
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/books/review/Jauhar-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3
======
tjic
I did a 3 month contract gig with a local robotics firm a while back. I
developed a few cool features for them, but the reason they fell in love with
me was that I worked up extensive testing checklists. During testing I'd be
the one with the checklist hardcopy (printed out from the internal wiki) in my
lap and a walky talky in one hand.
"Range safety officer, do we have your OK? Safety driver, do we have your OK?
Safety driver, throw the switch to manual. Safety driver, is steeting
calibrated? Remote operator, unpark the robot. Remote operator, confirm
feature X is turned off. Safety driver, confirm vehicle feature Y is on..."
Without the checklist, a trial-and-error run through of a certain feature took
3 hours. With the checklist we could do it in 3 minutes.
I came back from an intense demo of the robot to third parties and decided to
decompress in my woodworking shop...and next to my lathe was a checklist I had
written up a while earlier on how to make a certain Christmas stocking stuffer
<http://smartflix.com/projects/3>
...which is when I realized that there's something about checklist that
permeates my personality!
~~~
ardit33
I think it is a completely personality issue. Just like their desk, some
people like to keep things tidy and organized and know whats next all the
time, while some people seem to thrive in a bit of messiness, creativity and
improvisation and getting things done first.
When it comes to jobs that require originality and creativity, a checklist is
not going to be productive. In a job that is more operational, predictive and
repetitive, then a checklist would help.
When it comes to software engineering, the job is semi-structural (you are
bound by certain conventions, languages, computer science principles), and
semi-creative (you can use your imagination in a lot of places).
For QA types, a checklist is a must. For pure new feature programing, a step
by step checklist is basically a creativity killer. Crap in, crap out.
I personally distaste checklist, and try to avoid artificial constrains as
much as I can.
~~~
stuartcw
Doctors were quizzed, "Do you want to use a checklist?", they answered, "No.".
"Do you want someone who is operating on _you_ to use a checklist?", they
answered, "Yes.".
If you read the book you'll find that almost everyone hates checklists but
when used they cut down on mistakes and human error. The surprising discovery
is not that they work, but the reluctance of people to use them...
------
gfunk911
"And checklists lack flexibility. They might be useful for simple procedures
like central line insertion, but they are hardly a panacea for the myriad ills
of modern medicine. Patients are too varied, their physiologies too diverse
and our knowledge still too limited."
The problem is that everyone (including doctors) overestimates both their
ability to diagnose based on instinct, and the percentage of patients who
deviate from the norm.
For heart attacks, they found that a 3 step checklist was X% effective in
diagnosing a heart attack, while the doctor alone was Y%, and X was much
higher than Y. Yes, sometimes the doctor would use his expertise to catch
something the checklist would miss, but over time the math was with the
checklist.
~~~
DannoHung
I agree, but the real solution is either a branching checklist for the
situations where there are only a few possible norm deviations, or an honest
to god Expert System when there are potentially very many norm deviations.
------
joshstaiger
I've been more interested in checklists after hearing Charlie Munger
repeatedly espouse them:
"...You’ve got all the tools. And you’ve got to have one more trick. You’ve
got to use those tools checklist-style, because you’ll miss a lot if you just
hope that the right tool is going to pop up unaided whenever you need it. But
if you’ve got a full list of tools, and go through them in your mind,
checklist-style, you will find a lot of answers that you won’t find any other
way."
<http://www.tilsonfunds.com/MungerUCSBspeech.pdf>
~~~
zb
That's a great talk, but I sort of took away the opposite from it. Munger
mentions checklists and algorithms a couple of times, but it's clear that what
he is really talking about are heuristics ("I was using some rough algorithms
that work pretty well in a great many complex systems").
The problem with checklists is that they don't allow the possibility that the
checklist may be wrong. Heuristics are in this sense the opposite of
algorithms. It's the reliance on algorithms that leads to the sort of false
precision that Munger is complaining about:
_When I talk about this false precision, this great hope for reliable,
precise formulas, I am reminded of Arthur Laffer.... His trouble is his
craving for false precision, which is not an adult way of dealing with his
subject matter._
------
zb
Gawande's original article in the _New Yorker_ is definitely worth a read:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande)
Having said that, I'm pleased that this review mentions unintended
consequences and the limits of this approach. Checklists are not by any means
a panacea.
~~~
projectileboy
If you're interested in the benefits and limitations of checklists, you should
definitely pick up the book. It's a quick read, and there's practically a
whole chapter dedicated to the time he spent interviewing the guy at Boeing
who's responsible for developing checklists for aircraft procedures - both
normal and emergency. He goes into more detail about what does and what
doesn't make a good checklist, as well as where they can and can't be applied
effectively.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google: "You don't learn very much when you yourself are talking" - python_kiss
http://iinnovate.blogspot.com/2007/03/eric-schmidt-ceo-of-google.html
======
python_kiss
By Guy Kavasaki: The guys at iInnovate posted a lovely interview with Eric
Schmidt, CEO of Google. Among the topics they covered were:
Anti-trust _
Innovation_
Competitive advantages _
Motivation of entrepreneurs_
Maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit _
Traditional and non-traditional organization design_
What Microsoft and Yahoo does that impresses him _
Invention of disruptive technologies
------
python_kiss
Sorry, I just realized this is a dupe. Dan posted the same link a few hours
ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=5471>
~~~
bootload
I'd class this as a problem. Delicious solves this by having the link on
submission checking for uniqueness. If the link has been submitted previously
you can't re-submit. The submission process should also be checking for link
aliases (/index.html, index.htm, index.php).
Should be added to the todo list.
~~~
python_kiss
news.yc already takes care of that. I was able to get by it because I posted a
direct link, while Dan's link went through Guy Kavasaki's blog.
~~~
bootload
Damn, missed that. How do you check, rectify for that? aside from honesty?
It's a matter of the more authoritative source, so how do you check one link
is more authoritative than another algorithmically?
~~~
python_kiss
If I were to tag this link, it would've been "Guy, Kavasaki, Eric, Schmidt,
Google, CEO, Interview". There is a good chance Dan would have done the same.
So tagging helps a lot.
Moreover, tagging leaves open the option to build recommender systems through
collaborative filtering. I believe one of the reasons Reddit's recommendation
tab was broken for so long (and still is) was because it was difficult to
relate content without the use of tags.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Azure Stack – Azure On-Premises - mpweiher
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/azure-stack/
======
polskibus
This has been a recurring topic (with rebranding) for a while now. Has the
pricing been released?
I heard that they moved from supporting any hardware to just a select few
certified (expensive) vendors. Is that true?
~~~
1_800_UNICORN
In the whitepaper it references three vendors that will offer this- Dell EMC,
HPE, and Lenovo.
------
afeezaziz
I am using GCP and I am loving the ease of using GCP. I am wondering would
Google consider to do something like this because some of my clients have
'hard' requirements such as they have to own/manage the data centre which
stores their data.
~~~
MichaelGG
GCP is such a dream. I love using it. Azure's a mess.
Here's a lovely thing that happened. I wanted to figure out how much space my
containers take in Azure storage. Once a day, MS will calc the total for
billing purposes, but at the storage account level. There's no documented way
to do this for individual containers than to enumerate every single file and
sum it up.
Well, in the Azure portal, if you hit properties on a container, hey, it shows
you the count and filesize. Neato! Obviously MS is aware and slipped in this
functionality into the UI at least. So I check a few containers, it works. I
try it on another container and it takes a bit of time. I tab away and do some
other stuff. Then I get a text about my mobile data usage limit.
Turns out the Azure client portal, when you click properties, with no
indication it's doing this, will page through all your files and sum them. By
making requests for 2.5MB of XML metadata at a time.
Everything is just so clunky with Azure. GCP is the opposite, and I'm no fan
of Google.
~~~
darrmit
I've had exactly the same experience with Azure and GCP. Started out with
Azure and got so fed up with the crazy interface that I switched to GCP and
have been consistently impressed with the attention to detail - especially
with the tools they provide in the browser.
~~~
asytorktorkrto
google cloud astroturfing the worst part of hn imo.
~~~
tracker1
I'm not so sure it's astroturfing in this case... I haven't done much with
GCE, but the UX does seem to be better than AWS and Azure. AWS is just
horrible, and some of the defaults while more secure make less sense often
enough. Azure seems to have similar options, with a less horrible UX, but
still not great.
Though if you're using Ansible or another management system that's scripted
over the top, it makes less of a difference. I will say that some of the
hosted services (data in particular), Azure is really nice... Azure Storage
Queues/Tables are solid and Azure SQL is easiest to get a grasp on setup/cost
of the three.
That said Google Cloud is better in terms of compute with docker containers.
------
simonebrunozzi
As I wrote a few months ago [1], I believe that the only way for "public
cloud" companies to keep growing is to enter the "private" IT market with a
"cloud in a box" appliance. Azure is well positioned to do this properly; AWS
is of course still holding a leadership position.
[1]: [https://medium.com/simone-brunozzi/the-cloud-wars-
of-2017-ac...](https://medium.com/simone-brunozzi/the-cloud-wars-
of-2017-ac9f352911a2)
------
1_800_UNICORN
So many enterprises are going to go after this because of pre-existing
relationships with Microsoft... not realizing how badly Microsoft is going to
have them over a barrel when all of their software (on-prem and cloud) is
built and automated to only work with Azure.
Edit: Not sure why the downvotes, would love to hear other perspectives about
why I'm off-base. Thanks!
~~~
MS_Buys_Upvotes
Microsoft's social voting brigade is out in force today because of Microsoft's
annual convention thing.
Today HN is a safe space for Microsoft supporters.
~~~
KirinDave
Many of us do not hide our identities the way you feel compelled to, and do
not dismiss Microsoft out of hand because it was cool to do so when we were in
our teens.
You–on the other hand–are so confident in your opinion that you have made an
incendiary shell of an account to troll people.
If anyone's on the take, it's you.
------
MS_Buys_Upvotes
Regardless of my username, I really like this product. Microsoft is the first
to do it and (I assume) it works seamlessly with Azure.
Microsoft is certainly ahead of the pack with this product.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Denso - An Instapaper for Video - stuti90
http://getdenso.com/
So I came across this really cool new service that works like Instapaper for video, and thought I'd share it with HN.
Just got my invite today and I've been LOVING it so far. It lets me discover videos, bookmark them and watch offline on my iPad or iPhone.
(My hour long subway rides without internet aren't painful anymore. Phew)
======
voidfiles
These services have some serious barriers to entry. I created one of these,
<http://wacchen.com>, I think it was the first. When you search for instapaper
for video, the first 2 results mention my app. I am not actively maintaining
my thing anymore because I realized there was going to be a hiccup in any wide
adoption; Youtube. Youtube does not, and probably will never allow people to
download that content. 80% of what most people bookmark are youtube videos.
Sure some sites out there can be scrapped, but at best your business will be
in murky territory. I wrote about this on my blog as well.
[http://alexkessinger.net/2010/11/15/why-instapaper-for-
video...](http://alexkessinger.net/2010/11/15/why-instapaper-for-video-as-an-
ios-app-is-a-long-ways-away/)
Someone is going to crack this nut, but they will need to figure out the
youtube problem.
------
samps
I think this a great idea, and I've recently noticed a number of people doing
things in more or less the same direction. I've been collecting them:
* Deja [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deja/id417625158?mt=8&uo=...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deja/id417625158?mt=8&uo=4)
* Squrl <http://www.squrl.com/>
* Plizy <http://plizy.com/>
* Showyou <http://showyou.com/>
* Roadshow <http://fetchsoftworks.com/roadshow/>
I even wrote a really simple way to actually use a folder called "Watch Later"
in Instapaper as a video queue (only works for paying Instapaper subscribers):
<http://watchlater.radbox.org/> Mine focuses on trying to automatically
discover HTML5-capable viewers for use on iOS.
Every one is slightly different, and this one looks particularly nice. Thanks
for making it -- I look forward to trying it.
~~~
bravura
Does this service, or any of the competitors, actually scrape the video (like
pinboard.in does with bookmarks) so you can watch it later, even if the site
is taken down?
That's something I would _pay money for_.
~~~
iamclovin
Hey yes we do (including the Big You! ;)
We think we have an interesting twist on the way you can get videos on to your
iOS devices.
We're working really hard polishing up the experience for the user right now,
so we'll be sending out invite codes really soon. Thanks everyone for signing
up.
~~~
voidfiles
The nature of the youtube problem isn't technical. Any hacker can figure out
how to download a youtube video. The problem is policy. You will get thwarted,
shutdown or sued.
You can't build a business on top of subverting youtubes TOS. It won't work.
------
cleverjake
Seems like there is a lot of competition in the field
<http://www.google.com/search?q=instapaper+for+video>
Good luck
------
sahillavingia
Saw you guys when I was in Singapore. I think this could be pretty cool, it's
definitely very pretty already.
~~~
iamclovin
Thanks Sahil, was it at Echelon? I wasn't there during the conference (my
teammates were) but glad you like it :)
------
dolinsky
Watchlr looks to do the same and more. Gregory Schnese gave a really good
presentation at the most recent NYTM event this past Tuesday. You can sign up
at <http://watchlr.com>.
~~~
tommoor
seems to require facebook sign up though?
~~~
dolinsky
Yes, but it's the kind I can appreciate. Instead of a 'hey connect with
facebook and then go through my signup process as well' he's using FBConnect
as the authentication backend.
------
tommoor
Great video, explains the concept clearly.
Best of luck
------
sidwyn
Doesn't YouTube have a Watch Later button?
~~~
satyamag
Yes they do, but Denso allows you to bookmark across a lot more sources and
they also allow you to get your bookmarked videos onto any iOS device using a
custom podcast.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fedora 32 has been released - cloudbalkan
https://www.cloudbalkan.com/fedora-32-has-been-released/
======
bitmage
[https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-
fedora-32/](https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-32/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Code for America Apps for Detroit challenge - rmason
http://appsfordetroit.org/
======
Jwsonic
Thanks for posting this. As someone who lives in the Detroit-metro area,
Detroit certainly needs all the help it can get.
~~~
ronnier
I've never been to Detroit, what's wrong with it? Is it as bad as the media
makes it out to be? I hear of murders and vacant swaths of previously bustling
areas. How much truth is there to this?
~~~
mgkimsal
in one sense, not much - "detroit" as a catch-all for 'detroit metro area'
(and in some cases "southeastern michigan") - that's generally fine. Economy
is hurting, but suburbs are suburbs.
"Detroit" - the area within the technical city boundaries - it's decimated.
It's not quite 100% gone - there are new pockets of activity springing up, but
it's extremely depressing to see what's happened. Used to be home to close to
2 million people (IIRC), and now it's 700k, and most of those don't want to be
there.
The "downtown" area - about 15 square blocks - is nice - then it becomes a
wasteland for several miles until you hit the suburbs.
~~~
planetguy
How much would it cost to buy up the whole blighted area and declare it a
giant national park?
~~~
saturdaysaint
Unfortunately, a lot of prime, undeveloped real estate is owned by aggressive
squatters with enough money to make any such venture a living hell.
~~~
planetguy
> undeveloped real estate is owned by aggressive squatters
Is this some unusual use of the word "squatter" of which I'm not aware, or are
you using it wrong? Squatters tend not to be owners.
------
rmason
Got a cool idea for a civic app? Outside developers wouldn't get a hearing
much less a trial in other cities. Detroit is in such bad shape they're
willing to take some risks and try things.
In Detroit you've got a great chance to see your app actually get put into
production. It opens up opportunities for your code to make a real difference
in peoples lives.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wireless mice you can buy - feross
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1673096
======
chrisbennet
I'm hooked on Logitech "MX Anywhere 2S" mice. They are smaller and fit my hand
better. The Logitech "ecosystem" is really nice:
\- One USB "nub" serves up to 6 devices - mice and keyboards. The newest nubs
are really low profile (barely stick out of the laptop).
\- The mouse works on glass even - my desk top is glass.
\- I can just leave a keyboard and mouse at the clients and take my laptop
home or to my office where I have mice+keyboard sets ready to go. Its kinda
like a docking station for the keyboard and mouse.
\- Easy to delete and add new devices; the USB nubs are generic so I can use
them with any Logitech device. I keep a few Logitech mice and a few nubs in my
brief case.
Note: The original MX Anywhere wasn't very durable. I had to replace them
every 7-12 months. I haven't had any failure with MX2's. I'm a windows
developer - lots of mouse movement.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bringing people back to the open web - ChrisHardie
https://chrishardie.com/2018/04/rebuilding-open-web/
======
superkuh
>If the closed web is a place where hate speech, harassment and bullying
thrives, the open web can be, needs to be an experience where it does not.
I am strongly against this appeal to censorship. Luckily in the real open web,
where you host your own content the incentives and mechanisms for censorship
are few and difficult to achieve. No, my dream of the open web is diverse.
Full of things people hate and full of things people love. Not just some
gentrified, marketable, set of opinions from a narrow slice of the possible.
The overton window has shrunk enough.
That's how the web was and how it can be again. Without extremes there's
nothing exceptional.
~~~
groby_b
The reason we're in the mess that we are is the shit show the open web was.
People were _delighted_ to have a walled garden where they only communicated
with friends, instead of random drive-by trolls in the open.
And frankly, it's understandable. A place that justifies bullying and hate
speech as a good thing, with mumblings of "b.. b.. but free speech", is not a
place where anybody wants to spend their time. (Except people who either like
or don't mind bullying)
And given that we're currently debating if the Overton window should include
actual real-life Nazis - "because free speech" \- I'm OK with it shrinking
some more.
Extremes in thought are indeed necessary. But they need to be followed by a
realization of how far is too far, and an ability to moderate how much of that
extreme thought is publicly shared, respecting other people. Maturity is a
necessary tool of useful debate.
"How the web was" was (and is) mostly kids screaming in the backyard, with
sensible adults carving out spaces that exclude immaturity.
~~~
malvosenior
Sensible adults have long been a proponent of free speech. It’s the call to
censorship for comfort that is new and seemingly coming from younger
generations who don’t have experience with why that may be a bad idea.
The ACLU has long defended _all_ speech: [https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-
speech/why-we-must-defend-fre...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/why-
we-must-defend-free-speech)
~~~
prophesi
The saddest part is how the younger generation turned college campuses, the
place where radical & worldview-challenging ideas could thrive, into places
wherein you're protected from any such challenging ideas.
~~~
untog
That's a very common and entirely overblown hypothesis. Sure, there are
student protests about a tiny number of speakers each year. But there have
been student protests about anything ever since there have been students.
> More importantly, though, we can see here why reaching broad conclusions
> from sets of anecdotes is inadvisable. There are around 2,600 four-year
> universities in the United States. Friedersdorf tried to compile all of the
> most outrageous instances from a single year, and found about 10 of them.
> Those 10 were probably roughly evenly distributed according to the political
> affiliation of the students; i.e. there are more shutdown attempts by
> liberal students than conservative students, but students are also more
> liberal. And among those high-profile incidents, a bunch of the speakers
> ended up coming and speaking and the petitions went nowhere.
[https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/02/why-do-those-
college-...](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/02/why-do-those-college-
students-hate-free-speech-so-much)
"college campuses" are quite safe from the "younger generation".
~~~
prophesi
If you want a book that uses national polls conducted over the past 40+ years,
plus a little bit of anecdotal evidence to make the data tangible, I recommend
iGen by Jean M. Twenge[0].
There's a noticeable trend that the kids of this upcoming generation are ill-
prepared for college and expect the authorities to protect them. In
highschool, they're less likely to go out without their parents or work a
part-time job (And on a positive note, less likely to drink or have premarital
sex).
[0] [https://www.amazon.com/iGen-Super-Connected-Rebellious-
Happy...](https://www.amazon.com/iGen-Super-Connected-Rebellious-Happy-
Adulthood/dp/1501151983)
~~~
untog
Yeah, about that:
> For instance, Twenge argues that young people have become increasingly self-
> absorbed since the advent of the Internet. One piece of evidence she uses is
> a search she ran through Google's Ngram (which searches through printed
> books) for the phrase "I love me." She found a sharp spike in the phrase in
> the last few decades. But "I love me" sounds slightly off — surely most
> people say "I love myself." And lo, if you search "I love myself" (as I
> would guess Twenge did first), you find that the phrase fluctuated with much
> less satisfying results, and in fact occurred at a higher frequency in, for
> instance, the 1770s, than in the early 2000s. So, Twenge discovered a
> grammatical shift and disguised it as a cultural one.
> It's a small example, but the book is dizzying with this brand of deceptive
> spin.
[https://www.npr.org/2017/09/17/548664627/move-over-
millennia...](https://www.npr.org/2017/09/17/548664627/move-over-millennials-
here-comes-igen-or-maybe-not')
I'm not arguing that the book is without merit, but I really don't think it
comprehensively and inarguably states that the "younger generation" are as
damaged as the "older generation" might suspect (and "the coming generation
are wrong about all the things!" is a trope as old as time)
~~~
prophesi
Still, I recommend the book. You can't deny the statistical significance of
the polls. There are a few far-fetched pieces of evidence, but that's to be
expected with sociology.
I think the main issue is that we're trying to measure changes over a long
period of time across a wide swathe of people. Those are two very difficult
areas to study.
------
galactus
I don't believe there will be any silver bullet that will make people back to
the open web any soon by sheer technical merit. In the meantime, we should not
abandon efforts to make people understand why huge centralized walled gardens
such as facebook are a problem. It would be like if society had stopped anti-
smoking campaigns in the past, waiting for a miraculous safe cigarette to
solve the problem.
------
ianbicking
Open Source has done a lot for developers, but it's not very present on the
actual surface of the web – the surface that people interact with, and that
defines the Open Web.
If developers are going to build up the open web, then it feels like this is
something of an issue. To live up to one's potential as a developer, you can't
just make your own choices in support of the open web, you have to facilitate
other people. But I sure as hell don't want to run a service hosting people's
content. It's a pain in the ass! And to top it off I have to pay for the
privilege.
Building up a whole company in support of a service is an option, but then I'm
not a developer, certainly not an open source developer, I've instead become
an "entrepreneur". I don't want to be an entrepreneur! Hell, that's even more
of a pain in the ass than giving stuff away.
I think we (open source developers) really need a platform to build on. An
actual hosted platform. One where, as a developer, I can do interesting things
that empower people, things that participate in the web as a whole, things
other people can build on. I'd be willing to compromise SO MUCH if it means I
can give people cool things without any of the incurred debt.
As a strawman, maybe it could start as just a bit of static hosting, with easy
discovery and management from in-browser code. Neocities has an API, for
example ([https://neocities.org/api](https://neocities.org/api)), but you have
to already use Neocities, so I couldn't publish an app that would be easily
used by non-Neocities users.
------
optimuspaul
technology isn't going to solve a culture problem. I also don't think that the
walled gardens are even part of the problem. It's that anonymity gives too
many people the license to treat others poorly. I'm not saying we need to take
anonymity away, we need to change the culture (of the world) that regards
mutual respect as a default even when remaining anonymous.
------
throw7
We did have a way. It was called a kill file.
Unfortunately, we don't have adults anymore. We have children that need to be
protected from hearing anything they don't like to hear and must be giving the
right to shutdown people's speech they disagree with ("heckler's veto").
~~~
ebiester
In a walled garden, like facebook, I have a private/public space. I can send
out a message to a subset of my friends. The open web does not have these
controls.
Further, if one of the people I thought was trustworthy starts abusing that
trust, I can kick them out. Because it's a walled garden. I don't have to
worry about spam. I don't have to worry about hate speech. I don't have to
worry about any of that shit.
Facebook means that I can approve anyone from seeing that content
individually. As of now, we don't have an equivalent way to handle that on the
open web.
Facebook means I don't have to deal with spam to have a conversation with
anyone involved. As of now, the equivalent ways to handle that on the open web
take far too much time to be practical.
Facebook, over the last decade, has solved a legitimately hard problem, and I
don't see "kill file" as a sufficient solution.
The open web is about public space. Facebook is a more private space.
~~~
jononor
How are the ads that FB pushes into your feed not spam? Seems more or less
indistinguishable too me
~~~
amdavidson
Do you consider ads on cable TV to be spam? Likely not.
Like them or don't, but the ads on FB are not spam because they are not
unsolicited and are targeted.
~~~
jononor
Of course I do. It is one of the reasons I do not have a TV.
If there was a plain choice between without ads and with (probably at
different prices), I could accept them as a transaction I have accepted. But
such choices are often not available, they are bundled in with a bunch of
other choices.
~~~
zodPod
Agreed on all counts! It's pretty weird that we pay really good money for TV
and then still have to sit through commercials, isn't it?
------
bertil
I would love this idea to take off and be successful but I have many
reservations on the feasibility of such a project. Two are fairly simple:
innovation and trusted hosting.
Let’s assume that we have a protocol that allows us to have the same
interactions as Facebook/Instagram/Twitter: a multi-media flow of posts,
comments, etc. Let’s assume that we have distinct hosts that let you befriend
and follow people with a different service, just like we have with email. We
can even imagine that those services have internal tweaks (like the
integration of Google Calendar in GMail) that provide some network effect, but
overall there is a push to make such improvements universal (like providing a
compatible .ics file, etc.) and part of the protocol.
I expect that the overall protocol adoption will be slower, so I expect that
things like Gif comments that display (rather than a link; admittedly not the
most loved feature among HN’s crowd) or editable comment (with a version
control system; probably more within HN’s preference) will be slower. I don’t
think that most of those project imagine how to address that issue. It’s
distinct from open source (which admittedly innovates faster than closed code
in the areas that I’m familiar with) and more akin to how no new feature has
been adopted by email since probably the 80s.
I also wonder who people would trust with their personal data: intimate
conversations, dirty secrets… We’ve learned the hard way that security is
hard, and even serious projects like Telegram have had their issue. At the
moment, that information is indeed clustered on few servers with a reasonably
good security team protecting them. I suspect that more hosts with a lesser
team would not really make it safer. You could try extreme dilution, but I
suspect that people would not want to host anything themselves and would frown
upon letting their nerdy cousin hold the keys of that server, over a cold
company who presumably monetise their data but at least is not really expected
to pry and gossip. That leaves large-ish commercial entities.
I see that area concentrating fast, like email did, and the upside of using
internal features winning people over to two or three platforms, like today.
It would be great to have that platform be open and allow you to host your own
server compatible with Facebook, but that kind of openness is what got us the
latest scandal.
------
kuschku
This is a good idea – but impossible.
Google and Facebook have tenthousands of developers. And not just any devs,
some of the best in the industry. Google and Facebook have tons of userdata
for training ML models.
How do you compete with that?
The only way your projects would ever be able to outcompete Google and
Facebook on technology is if you’d somehow get a ton of engineers willing to
work for a good cause.
But that doesn’t happen. There’s not enough engineers that would volunteer
their time for this. In fact, most engineers either don’t care at all about
this stuff, or they drank the kool aid and believe Google and Facebook are
doing good.
As long as there’s so many developers that _want_ to work at Facebook, as long
as Google has more resources than you, you won’t be able to outcompete them on
technology.
~~~
bitwize
A free OS for PCs is a good idea -- but impossible. Microsoft and Apple have
tenthousands of developers. And not just any devs, some of the best in the
industry. Microsoft and Apple have research labs where they can subject their
OS to hundreds of thousands of user-hours of testing for usability,
scalability, and robustness.
How do you compete with that?
~~~
butterfi
Linux?
~~~
lwhsiao
I believe the parent was intentionally mirroring the grandparent comment to
make the argument that Linux is a good counterexample.
~~~
bitwize
Not only that, but I was almost directly quoting the arguments that were
routinely used against Linux back in the 90s.
------
carapace
What if the Internet itself is the problem?
We might be witnessing the Eternal September of the entire network.
Humans + networked Turing machines = shit-show
Are we doomed? Can we have a fundamentally different relationship with these
machines?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)
~~~
lainga
> networked Turing machines
Brainfuck over UDP...?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Insect: High precision scientific calculator with support for physical units - kiyanwang
https://github.com/sharkdp/insect
======
based2
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7v10po/insect_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7v10po/insect_a_small_language_with_firstclass_support/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sugary Drinks May Trigger Early Puberty in Girls - DanBC
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26868-do-sugary-drinks-trigger-early-puberty-in-girls.html#.VNt67Gz47To
======
DanBC
Submitting this because it talks about the problem of sucrose and insulin
spikes, and sepcifically mentions the lack of an insulin spike from fructose.
I changed the title to avoid tedious Betteridge posts (which are as bad as
"First!")
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Future of code editors for JavaScript: keeping it more DRY and easy Refactor - ttty
http://www.webdesignporto.com/future-of-code-editors-for-javascript-keeping-it-more-dry-and-easy-refactor/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=post&utm_content=code-editor&utm_campaign=hackernews
======
pedalpete
I've been struggling with this same issue a bit while I'm building an editor
in javascript.
My problem isn't only in the ability to keep DRY, but in Angular, when I want
to include modules, and bind controllers to directives, etc. I don't want to
have to keep diving into the code to update the injection.
However, I disagree that this is the job of the editor/IDE. What I've done
instead is built a config file which manages my injection for me, and I'm
looking at extending the config manager to use either Require.js or Browserify
(I'm leaning toward Browserify).
Any thoughts on that? would you prefer the IDE to manage this? Or is doing
this through a config/build process possibly a good solution?
~~~
ttty
From my point of view the refactoring should be completely managed by the IDE.
About the other stuff that can be DRY-ed I think could be managed by the IDE
too. But don't forget the right tool for the right job. If you need class
hierarchy don't use the 'instance' option in the IDE, use proper class
hierarchy.
The 'instance' for code should be for stuff that cannot be or is not worth to
encapsulate within a single method.
Thanks for the comment, pedalpete.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should Quadrotors All Look Like This? - eguizzo
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/iros-2013-should-quadrotors-all-look-like-this#.UoRAb7LvVFs.hackernews
======
neya
Wow, readers, please do yourselves a favor and watch the linked video in that
article!
[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8t41avFuCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8t41avFuCc)]
though it's slightly WTf-y, it's definitely cool. I'm just wondering - Are
heli's better at carrying my Canon DSLR or would the triquad work better for
this?? Anyone with experience, please suggest, as I am SO gonna build this tri
quad (and integrate it with my Raspberry Pi) :D
~~~
fijter
A heli carrying a DSLR is big, expensive, hard to fly, dangerous and
maintenance intensive. It's good for lifting a DSLR but I would go with a
multicopter, the more blades the better. A hexacopter or even an octocopter
are very stable, easier to fly, possibly cheaper to build and have a fail-
safe, if a motor fails you can land it safely because the other motors take
over. You can find a nice video about the subject here:
[http://flitetest.com/articles/T_Rex_800E_DSLR_Camera_Gimbal](http://flitetest.com/articles/T_Rex_800E_DSLR_Camera_Gimbal)
It demo's a Heli carying a DSLR and afterwards (after the first 7 minutes of
video) they talk about this compared to multi-rotors. For the best video
results you should probably pick the stable octocopter, you can fly FPV as
well with a multicopter, great for live previewing your video.
~~~
neya
Thanks! That's pretty informative! :)
------
shitlord
Did anyone else watch the linked video of the RC helicopter? It was amazing! I
had no idea that those things were so powerful. The only ones I've ever seen
are the ones at the mall.
~~~
look_lookatme
Link
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8t41avFuCc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8t41avFuCc)
The thought of a weaponized version of that is terrifying. A weaponized and
_non-human controlled_ version is straight up Cyberdyne level stuff...
~~~
btown
Is it possible to scale one of those up to Predator-size? Would the limiting
factor be that the power requirements wouldn't scale linearly? Are there
properties of the atmosphere that model-scale aircraft can take advantage of
that larger-scale ones cannot?
~~~
jamesaguilar
Yes. It would be called a helicopter. Full sized ones can have fuel engines,
which can carry more energy per weight and can go further. On the other hand,
they are heavier and not as durable because of that weight. They cannot change
directions like this mid flight.
~~~
aaren
Can you explain why?
Is it to do with the bulk properties of the materials not varying with scale?
Or scaling with some power of length < 3?
If you tried to spec a full sized helicopter engine to make speed changes like
those in the video would it tear itself apart?
~~~
barrkel
Yes.
Mass increases with the cube of scale, while structural material cross-section
area increases only with the square of scale. So insects can have miniscule
legs, while elephants have tree trunks, proportionally.
~~~
mturmon
Right, sometimes called "square-cube law"
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-
cube_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law)). Worth knowing about
so you can explain to yourself the differences noted above.
------
CraigJPerry
How does this perform cross wind compared to a traditional micro quad?
That main rotor will act like an umbrella does in a gust of wind. The micro
quads don't suffer the same problem.
I'm not sure of the physics involved (and if anyone knows i'd love to learn
more!) but just from hands-on piloting both micro quads and larger helis, the
micro quads are some of the least susceptible to cross winds i've ever flown.
~~~
loup-vaillant
Accelerometers are bound to detect such adverse effects. Correcting roll and
pitch automatically shouldn't be hard. Also, I would guess that the higher the
main rotor (compared to the centre of mass), the more susceptible the device.
So, if you build the main rotor as close to possible as the centre of mass,
you should have a more neutral design.
While we're at it, I've flown a little toy with _two_ main rotors, rotating in
opposite directions, controlling power and yaw, while the tail rotor
controlled pitch (the whole thing was auto-stable, so there was no need for
roll control). It worked like a charm. So, if we're willing to suffer the
complexity of an actual swashplate[1], we could try a design with 2 main
rotors, one above, and one below, hereby getting a neutral, manoeuvrable, and
(hopefully) efficient design.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swashplate_%28helicopter%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swashplate_%28helicopter%29)
~~~
CraigJPerry
AIUI there's all sorts of considerations & trade-offs. E.g. the motors have a
limit to how quickly they can change output (up to around 400Hz today).
Because there's no swashplate on the upper rotor of those wee co-axial rotor
designs, they're really ineffective in cross wind. You can't apply the
required corrective input when the top rotor gets blown off axis.
~~~
loup-vaillant
The design I was thinking about puts the lowest rotor below the gravity
centre. First, it would lower the highest rotor, and second, crosswind would
have the _opposite_ effect on the low rotor. I really expect such a design to
be neutral.
------
kybernetyk
I always wondered why there are no "real life" sized quadcopters in use for
manned flight. From what I understand the design is simpler and requires less
maintenance compared to "normal" helicopters.
Are there any reasons why we're not flying quadcopters around instead?
~~~
2bluesc
Lady Gaga flies with a hexacopter @
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2499954/How-L...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2499954/How-
Lady-Gagas-flying-dress-works.html)
... what the world is coming to?
~~~
pygy_
Morning coffee, this put a big smile on my face.
She (or, probably, her team) has been hacking the entertainment scene for a
while.
Dubbing "a dress" what would otherwise be considered a nerd toy is genius.
What's not a dress for her?
------
jwr
I really like this, because it shows that quadrotor (and flying vessel in
general) research is far from "done".
Most people would tell you that you'd be insane to try to design new types of
aircraft, because we already know how to do that. This research proves
otherwise.
~~~
Gravityloss
One might almost say that anybody knowing basics of Newtonian mechanics would
say maximizing your blade swept area reduces power needed to stay aloft. Then
there's stuff like tip vortices etc. So just one big rotor is great.
The problem becomes control. With many small rotors you don't need to control
blade pitch, as the electric motors have high torque and the blades are light,
so you can control with quick engine thrust changes. And it's that what makes
the quad rotor system much more attractive than a normal helo. The traditional
helicopter pitch control system is complex and requires precise high stress
components that are well built and maintained.
But it's a very inelegant brute force system in my opinion. The pitch control
could be improved a lot as well if you have powerful electromagnetics with
very precise control.
You still need a tail rotor though.
The real helicopter is seeing some real progress at the moment as well, all in
the name of higher speeds. There's Sikorsky's X2 and AVX's modified Kiowa.
They have coaxial main rotors with a pushing tail rotor and two pushing fans
respectively. Then there's tilt rotors by Bell and Boeing, IIRC. These were,
at least at some point, all part of a US scout helicopter competition. And
then there's the Eurocopter X3, with no tail rotor but twin pulling rotors
like a twin prop airplane. X2 and X3 have flown.
------
bambax
It takes (at least) six months to learn to fly a helicopter (or, in the case
of the linked video from the article, probably a lifetime).
It takes ten minutes to learn to fly a quadcopter.
~~~
nakedrobot2
No. Try a cheap quadcopter without any auto stabilization. it takes more than
10 minutes. Maybe 8-12 hours of flying time to become proficient enough to,
say, risk mounting something breakable (like a camera) onto it.
Less time than a normal helicopter though, so I get your point.
~~~
bambax
I have two quadcopters -- that both have auto stabilization: Parrot AR Drone
and DJI Phantom, and it did take around 10 minutes to learn to fly them.
Is it even possible to fly quadcopters without stabilization? Would they not
start spinning out of control as soon as they take off?
~~~
Sae5waip
He probably means "stabilized using gyro _and_ accelerometer" (ie, release
sticks = evens itself out) as opposed to "just stabilized by gyros" (ie,
release sticks, copter stops any rotation but keeps pitched/rolled position).
Sure, learning to hover in one general spot is doable in 10 minutes. I
wouldn't call that "learning to fly".
What about very basic maneuvers like landings (no bouncing around, no dropping
from too high, and at the spot where you wanted to land) or circles/eights,
dealing with ambiguous orientations when your copter is high enough (~ 6m ?),
nose-in flying / dealing with control reversal and recovering from orientation
loss?
------
speeq
"The researchers explained that the standard "control" quadrotor had an
optimized design, while the triquad was not optimized at all (because its
design was constrained to keep it as similar as possible to the control
quadrotor). This gave the control aircraft an advantage in power of about 9
percent."
I wonder what the optimized "triquad" would have looked like?
------
brianbreslin
Is there a video of this thing in action? I didn't see a link in the article
(skimmed it quickly though)
~~~
BrandonMarc
I can't find one, but these links may help:
Dr Paul Pounds, the project leader:
[http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/bme/pounds](http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/bme/pounds)
[http://www.eng.yale.edu/pep5/](http://www.eng.yale.edu/pep5/)
Scott Driessens, his student:
[http://www.youtube.com/user/sdriessens](http://www.youtube.com/user/sdriessens)
------
krasin
What software should I use to verify their claims? aerodynamics simulators or
how they are called?
------
marvin
This is really cool, and probably a better solution than quadcopters for many
applications. However, what we would _ideally_ want in the end, would be a
tilt-rotor of some sort which incorporates wings. Fixed wings are a lot more
efficient than active lift, and is necessary if you want to squeeze more speed
and range out of your UAV.
~~~
Pxtl
So, like, a remote-controlled Osprey?
------
rplst8
I for one welcome our new...
------
zobzu
That's kinda stupid garage-scienticism to be honest.
\- TFA does not mention the stability issue. Guess why people and drones fly
tri, quads, etc and not regular helis. Yeah. (a simplification: stand on one
leg. Now stand on 2, and use your 2 hands as well. 4 legs. Stable heh?)
\- Yes single large prop is more efficient than many tiny props. But put many
large props and the difference isn't so big. Let's take a $1000 ultra
efficient quad: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0SR5bzuFq4 yeah thats 100min of
flight time for something smaller than the Align Trex of the video. And it's
cheaper too.. The trex flies 5 to 10minutes (6S 5000mah). At equivalent
batteries, the trex flies 25min (hint: the trex is not made for efficiency,
it's made for 3D). An average camera-less quad flies 10 to 15min (3S 3000mah).
\- TFA compares a $5000 Align Trex 700 with a bunch of expensive upgrades -
the top of the top - with one very good pilot with decades of training... to a
$200 toy.
\- $200 toys made of wood and plastic flown by random people are actually
pretty good at acro. Why? Because being more stable they're much easier to
fly. Ex:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzu5eSZqKpY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzu5eSZqKpY)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QP0QjIsTTM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QP0QjIsTTM)
So yeah. Not exactly impressed when that's coming from a university. I
expected much better.
~~~
joosters
\- Taking cheap shots about their measures of efficiency is hypocritical. TFA
says that the researchers did investigate the efficiency and calculated a 25%
gain. Presumably their calculations will be in their research paper. You on
the other hand have just given a YouTube video and battery capacities as your
'proof'. Heck, the researchers went as far as constructing a device to test
their efficiency claims.
\- The stability might be an issue for completely manual flight (but then,
people fly ordinary helicopters just fine...) but with computer-assisted
balancing, the problem can be much reduced. Even existing quad copters often
have computer-aided stability.
~~~
zobzu
I investigated and I say this is wrong. No backup either. = The point.
Now then again, I actually fly every of these so I pretty much know what the
efficiency is.
YES they gain 25% efficiency with the tricopter that has a huge prop in the
middle, I TRUST that. But the test is meaningless:
If you change the 3 props instead and put big props, with corresponding
motors. Guess what. Efficiency is probably higher than the 25% difference. I
actually design my own. In fact, I also design my own control boards (the
software that is)
Quadcopters use accelerometers, barometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers (and
GPS) to ensure stability. Guess what. Measurement from these devices isn't
0ms. Actuating the motor control isn't 0ms.
On regular 1 rotor head heli it isn't either. In fact, it's longer.
Result? it's more stable with 4 props than one prop. It has more inherent
stability., even if it wasn't "computer assisted". Timecop did a fully gyro
stabilized quad copter recently that shows exactly that, if any "actual proof"
was needed. Gyro stabilized can be made with no computer whatsoever (like
helicopters are/used to be - that's why they're very, very hard to pilot, real
ones and RC ones).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A simple explanation of how money moves around the banking system (2013) - rndn
http://gendal.me/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/
======
rebelidealist
This is the problem that Stellar ([https://stellar.org](https://stellar.org))
can solve better than Bitcoin. Unlike Bitcoin which takes 10-30 minutes to
confirm transactions, Stellar takes seconds with its new consensus system
([https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-
consensus-...](https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-
consensus-359e9eb3e949)). This eliminates the need for mining which consumes a
exorbitant amount of electrical energy. Stellar is also built to work with a
diverse set of currencies (USD, EUR, CNY, BTC etc).
~~~
o-0
I'd bet my money on ripple instead of stellar. RL is more professional and has
much better personal resources. From Stellar Foundation I've seen only a chain
of fails - initial distribution using facebook, modifying consensus and
blaming RL for breaking it, STR auction, promised&undelivered STR distribution
to BTC&XRP holders, community communication, mccalebs secret bitcoin projects
revealed as just a ripple fork with no real innovation..
~~~
rebelidealist
Ripple Labs is strong in the business development side. Stellar's new
consensus system is very much different from Ripple's. I would say the
Stellar's FB distribution is a major win since over 4 million people have
signed up.
------
MichaelGG
>First, we need to acknowledge that SWIFT is not cheap. If Barclays had to
send a SWIFT message to HSBC every time you wanted to pay £10 to Charlie, you
would soon notice some hefty charges on your statement.
Why is this so? Sure in decades past it might have been expensive to send so
many messages, but today it should be easily accomplished with moderate
hardware. Wikipedia says SWIFT did about 15M tx/day in Sept 2010. That seems
pretty miniscule as far as hardware load goes.
~~~
pjc50
Fortunately SWIFT pricing is freely available on the Internet:
[http://www.swift.com/solutions/pricing/fs_pricing_easier_200...](http://www.swift.com/solutions/pricing/fs_pricing_easier_200803.pdf)
All the per-transaction prices are below 15 euro cents. Banks charge you many
£/€ for a SWIFT transfer because they can, not because of what it costs;
usually to subsidise the existence of branches.
Edit: I see another commenter has hit the same link :)
------
andrewstellar
Great article on the global correspondent banking system.
For anyone interested in how US domestic payment systems work (checks, ACH,
Visa/Mastercard) check out Payment Systems in the US by Carol Benson. It is
the bible.
------
bdamm
Now that was one of the most eye-opening small articles I've read in a while.
Many a times over the years have I been privy to a tiny glimpse here and there
of the internal workings of the banks. This helped open the portal a little.
~~~
dublinclontarf
Part of the issue is that banks and banking in general is so large and they
have so many systems that the vast majority of people have no idea on the big
picture of how things worked on a more fundamental level.
This changed to a large extent when Bitcoin came about and people
(technologists especially) began asking what is money and how does it move.
The average person still has no idea though.
------
TeMPOraL
I love the article. This is a kind of explaining that really works for me -
building bottom-up, outlining the problems that are to be solved and the new
ones a solution introduces. Thanks for posting it, rndn!
------
wcbeard10
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6793063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6793063)
------
ww520
Learned something today. This is an informative piece on the behind the scene
activities on fund transfer between banks. Very nice.
------
gadders
I met Richard when I was working at a different bank. Nice chap.
------
photonios
Awesome! A nice and rare view into how banks work internally.
------
zilly
Thanks for sharing, really interesting.
------
PebblesHD
Thats fascinating! nice find
------
cm2187
Excellent article
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sample Chapter From "Ruby Best Practices" - sandal
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/329554
======
sandal
This chapter is basically the meta-programming / DSL stuff if not by that
name. It gives a good sampling of the overall feel for the book. Feedback is
very welcome. The book will be released under a CC license 9 months after it
hits the shelves, so it will eventually be an open community resource.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Dream setup for a “smart” home? - mgertner
We have just closed on a new house which is a fixer upper that we plan to renovate from top to bottom. Since I am a programmer and technologist, my wife asked me to make suggestions for creating a "connected home" with modern security, climate control, etc.<p>I've spent some time looking at various home-related "smart" products. There's a lot out there and it's hard to know what to chose. Do we put in smart locks or do they represent a security risk? Should we go for smart glass or just some type of foil window covering? There are doubtless also amazing ideas for cool home tech that haven't even occurred to me.<p>What about you? If you could build your dream home to benefit from the latest in 2017 technology, which products would you choose? I'm interested in general ideas as well as specific brands.
======
CyberFonic
Most products out there are rubbish. Every manufacturer wants to own their
customers through yet another form of cloud hosted smarts and yet another app
for your smartphone. The Nest smoke alarms are a canonical example - they stop
working because they want you to buy the next version. Samsung, LG, et al are
all the same ... clueless.
As for wireless networking, these devices need batteries, lots of them and all
the time. Many won't even tell you when it is time to replace their batteries.
For my home, I'm looking at using alarm cabling to every point. Using 2 cores
for power and another 2 cores for data - rather like CAN-bus (which works well
for cars, trucks and marine applications). I also plan to wire in quite a bit
of Cat-5e/6 with PoE for security cameras, etc.
For intelligence I'm using MQTT (mosquitto). Arduino, e.g. LilyPad for small
devices and PocketBeagle (it supports CAN-bus) for more complex nodes. As you
might guess, I'm constantly on the lookout for clever hacks of consumer
devices to add into my "system" without using cloud services. Plan for on-
going work-in-progress. But you'll have lots of fun.
As for smart locks - they're all basically easy to defeat. You'd be better off
using conventional locks with electric strikes that you can control from your
system - but remember to carry your keys .... just in case. I find that keying
all locks alike saves having too many keys.
~~~
brudgers
If you're going to the trouble of running wires, run Cat 5 everywhere. It's
easier to interface with general purpose computing devices.
~~~
CyberFonic
I did a quick check of costings and you are right, there isn't much of a
saving by using alarm wire and fittings. As long as you provision enough
points and have a patch panel in a central cupboard, the all Cat5 approach
will be far better in the long run.
~~~
brudgers
For the long run, consider running pull-strings in parallel to the wiring so
that adding additional capability in the future is easier. At some point I
think it is possible that homes will bet low voltage power to avoid converting
household current down to DC with "wall warts".
------
brudgers
I'd run Cat 5 and use Raspberry Pi's and relays and such. Generic materials
and material methods are the way to go with any construction project. Maybe
some solar panels and lead acid batteries. It's a systems integration problem.
A dependency on the app store has low reliability over a five year period.
Wireless systems will be increasingly vulnerable because they are consumer
devices and therefore have short term firmware support (and the FCC prohibits
sale of wireless devices with user modifiable software in the US).
I'd put it another way, a functional smart home is primarily a design,
engineering, and construction project not a shopping exercise.
~~~
CyberFonic
I totally agree with you. With the current state of the market, a fully
integrated smart home is only attainable to those who have the requisite
engineering know how and skills or are willing to pay for professional design,
installation and support.
Conceptually smart homes have a lot of potential benefits but as the market
currently stands, I don't see how it will become mainstream any time soon.
Rather like PCs were in the 1980s.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to report Google Local Guide who is randomly down rating for points? - techaddict009
This guy: https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/107035689799550788450/reviews/@26.9872123,70.0936697,6z/data=!4m3!8m2!3m1!1e1?fbclid=IwAR1v2yP8K1SWShFu2oYjCw5Dxd3ZTeD5LnLacoUY9Zc0QL_eD2wQA9i9qmk
Just randomly rating hell no of places to gain points.<p>I couldn't find any proper way to report his profile.<p>You can see he has rated so many places in few mins.<p>One place is almost too far from other. So chances are high he hasn't visited any. Still, Google is accepting this reviews.<p>He has even rated my business. We are a development company and never served anyone named "Rashmin". It doesn't affect as much but just curious how to report such spammers?
======
gesman
If google cares about this - they already detected it and adjusted whatever
they need internally.
If they don't care about it - no amount of "reporting" is going to make a
difference
------
awaywopassd
Personally, I don't rate immediately after visiting a restaurant/business. I
would rate them while bored at home or standing in a line. So if he posted
multiple reviews in a few minutes, it doesn't mean that he never visited those
places.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best mathematics courses for programming and intrigue? - bsima
What college courses did you take that you found to apply to programming (e.g. algorithms, logic) or found to be genuinely interesting?<p>FWIW: I'm a philosophy major with many courses in medicine, but it turns out RIT doesn't have a medically-related minor. So I'm turning to math. I start my math minor in a month. I've taken calculus and biostats previously. I know Perl, PHP, JavaScript, R, SQL, shell scripting and CSS/HTML. I do computational biology research with a professor and I hope to translate coding skills into an intro level job at a startup like Comprehend.com or Automattic.com.
======
solidparallel
Linear algebra can be useful depending on what you plan to work with (SUPER
useful for graphics, not so useful for building a simple online game)
Probability and Statistics. A MUST if you want to look into AI or machine
learning.
Discrete math was cool, but I have found it largely not useful in my career
thus far. But I think a large part of that is me being a programmer as opposed
to a computer scientist, and also not someone who works with circuits. Neat
class though.
That's all I can personally speak to.
------
codegeek
I suggest the following:
Combinatorics [1]. I took it in college and was really interested and the
professor made us program in Mathematica as well.
Probability and Statistics
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics)
------
gabeguz
Just off the top of my head:
Boolean Logic
Automata + Computability
Statistics
Relational Algebra
------
dscb
Discrete Mathematics
Logic, Set Theory, & Proofs
Linear Algebra I/II
------
tjr
You might consider taking linear algebra.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Build a Company for the Long Term - sinzone
http://www.slideshare.net/Finance4Founders/financeforfounderfinal-090620191829-phpapp022
======
finiteloop
This is a great presentation. We ended up having a good set of terms when we
did the FriendFeed Series A because we were fortunate to find good advice, but
I wish I had read this when I left Google to start a company. The incentives
implicit in these deal terms turn out to really impact your company at its
most important points (acquisition, new funding rounds, etc).
Also worth reading:
Chris Dixon on "Ideal first round deal terms": <http://www.cdixon.org/?p=271>
Fred Wilson's response to Chris' post: [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/08/the-
ideal-first-round-term-s...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/08/the-ideal-first-
round-term-sheet.html)
------
csmajorfive
Is there a good book out there where I can read about the terminology and
various pivots in term sheets? Good information about the mechanics seems rare
..
------
jasonlbaptiste
this is VERY well done and has a few specific scenarios that are explained
well. Money quote: "Last money in, is the first money out"
~~~
fpgeek
Interesting, my money quote was: "Pay someone to watch your back".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cloud66 major service incident — "missing servers" - hopeless
http://status.cloud66.com/
======
hopeless
Full text of their email to customers:
====================================
Today we had a major service incident on our site. As a result of this
incident some of our customers lost their virtual servers.
We are still investigating the cause of the issue and our service will be shut
down until the investigation is over.
Here is what we know: ================
\- There hasn't been any signs of security breach or abnormal activity
anywhere on our systems.
\- All sensitive information is encrypted throughout the system, including
cloud API keys.
\- The affected stacks were across Digital Ocean, AWS and Rackspace.
Here is what we are doing: ===================
\- We are working hard to find the root of the issue, but we need to keep the
systems shut down until we are sure our customers are not exposed.
Here is what you can do to restore your service:
===================================
\- If you are not affected by this issue, you will not be able to redeploy
until the service is restored. We will keep you posted.
\- If you are affected by this issue, we can help you with your latest
deployment Git SHA (if you don't have it), redirecting your traffic from our
DNS.
\- If you are affected and were running on Digital Ocean, they might be able
to restore your server from an automatic pre-destroy snapshot they take.
We are very sorry about this and understand the disruption it has caused to
all of our users, we are working hard to restore the service as soon as
possible.
=============================================
------
hopeless
Summary: Cloud66 is a provisioning service for Ruby on Rails (it installs the
servers, databases etc onto your AWS/Rackspace/DigitalOcean server). It seems
Cloud66 has started destroying some virtual servers without permission.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anomalous keys in Tor relays - aburan28
https://nymity.ch/anomalous-tor-keys/
======
mirimir
Thread to watch:
[https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
dev/2017-April/01...](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
dev/2017-April/012161.html)
------
fluxist
Targeted hidden services:
222222avkcjpcbwi
22222tolarsrblkw
22u75kqyl666joi2
bxgxtfeka5jlfoxi
e65rngozye7xbzlo
escrowxzvepij47i
freebay3yuvebsog
ghemfwgrouuy5rsl
h7f3q4yiw6rfpzwz
jumpwtfbk44aa37y
kpvz7ki2v5agwt35
luavqzwze3mduxyw
lzxsffcd6pn4bg2w
n3q7l52nfpm77vnf
silkroadvb5piz3r
tc43p6yceci5gh2y
thehub7gqe43miyc
tssa3saypkimmkcy
tz4732fxpkehod36
vljyah4v3i3xiebn
wd43uqrbjwe6hpre
xcvwjwwnzjh3og2s
xnyvcjj6ybauprjx
Presence of the original Silk Road would indicate at least a pre-2014 start.
Also a few other early darknet markets in there.
~~~
jwilk
Where did you get this list? AFAICT the article (§5.4) mentions only 4
targeted services:
22u75kqyl666joi2.onion
n3q7l52nfpm77vnf.onion
silkroadvb5piz3r.onion
thehub7gqe43miyc.onion
~~~
phw
I'm one of the authors. You are right, these are the only onion services that
were most likely targeted. The others are part of our publicly available
dataset, but most likely false positives.
------
m-j-fox
This is good work. Just like a competent IT department should pen test their
own network, Tor needs white-hat hackers working to shake out the
vulnerabilities.
------
kerouanton
Great work and paper. The fact 53% of the Tor relays have either shared prime
factors or non-standard RSA components is worrying. This kind of research is
mandatory.
~~~
avian
You are misunderstanding the summary. Researchers found ~3500 keys with shared
factors in a historical dataset of ~4M keys. None of the relays with
vulnerable keys they found are online today.
~~~
kerouanton
Thank you for the clarification. I've probably read it too fast.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Glacier Costlier Than S3 for Small Files - drue
https://therub.org/2015/11/18/glacier-costlier-than-s3-for-small-files/
======
raverbashing
The real question is why are people glaciering small files?
Tar everything and send it up. And then do an incremental backup
Amazon charges per operation, reduce the number of operations
~~~
lucaspiller
My guess is they don't realise. AWS let's you setup lifecycle rules to archive
S3 objects to Glacier automatically. It doesn't explicitly say it is cheaper
(it says "this may reduce your costs"), but they probably just saw the
headline prices for Glacier and moved everything.
~~~
smackfu
Also, I would guess a lot of Glacier users are probably just slotting it in
place of some other system that doesn't have the same pricing model.
------
boulos
This is one of the things I love about GCS Nearline, it really is a penny per
byte and then the whole retrieval charges (which for my lazy rsync backup is
never).
Disclaimer: I work at Google on Compute Engine, but not on GCS.
------
TazeTSchnitzel
> For consistency and precision, the following units are used throughout this
> article.
> KB: 1,024 bytes, expressed as 2^10
Why not just use KiB? Unlike KB, it's unambiguously binary.
~~~
drue
I primarily wanted to note that I used 2^X notation in the math, in case it
was confusing for folks. I used KB/MB/GB to be consistent with the language
AWS uses on their S3 pricing page
([https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/)).
------
nine_k
Glacier has a very clear use case, to my mind.
It is useful for keeping archives of massive data you're _unlikely to ever
need,_ but legally obliged to keep around, or just want to have available for
a very improbable later examination. Think some huge transaction logs of two
years back.
For a case like this, you don't _need_ fast retrieval, and mostly you don't
need retrieval at all. You plan ahead to only ever retrieve a small percent of
these data. The rest will be silently discarded when retention period has
expired.
If your use case is not like that, Glacier probably makes little sense for
you.
This is totally _not_ a backup which you likely keep in order to restore the
entire state from as soon as possible.
~~~
drue
Right, but you missed the salient point: it also does not make sense for files
smaller than about 200KB.
------
jakozaur
AWS is more honest with S3 Infrequent Access:
[https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-
classes/](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/)
No additional metadata, but you get charged at least for 128 KB . Luckily
lifecycle transition doesn't move files smaller than 128 KB. However, even
using lifecycle transition you pay $0.01 per 1000 transitions. It doesn't seem
much but for smaller items it can decrease savings a lot. E.g. if you average
file is 6 MB, than you will loose 4 days of savings on S3 IA comparing to
standard class.
------
tghw
Personally, I'm looking forward to Backblaze's cloud storage, which is being
advertised at $0.005/GB/month. Cheaper than glacier, without all of the
transaction fees.
[https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-
storage.html](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html)
~~~
tw04
The whole custom API instead of S3 or Swift compatibility is really, REALLY
annoying.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Someone from Backblaze previously mentioned on HN they're working on an
S3-compatible API.
------
bound008
AWS has a wizard for bucket storage policy where they tell you this
information explicitly with a big warning sign.
------
aps-sids
Unfortunately, I learned it the hard way :(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wall Street Is Obsessed With Snapchat - mikegreenspan
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/wall-street-is-obsessed-with-snapchat.html
======
billconan
wall street is dumb
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple spends $700,000 a year to keep Tim Cook safe - ForFreedom
http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple-tim-cook-security-budget-2015-8
======
stephengillie
One way to look at this is that it's part of the CEO's overall compensation-
and-benefits package. Instead of paying the money to the CEO and having her
(or him) purchase a security service, the company can purchase it directly.
And a large company like Apple probably just has part of their security staff
protect him.
Losing a CEO is extremely disruptive to any company, and so this can also be
seen as a business expense, similar to insurance protecting the company's
headquarters building.
------
kjs3
_Losing a CEO is extremely disruptive to any company_
Losing a CEO is also a material event for a publicly traded company, and
there's a whole ecosystem of lawyer who will file "shareholder" lawsuits if
they think they can make the case you didn't spend enough to protect that CEO.
_Company-paid term life insurance premiums in the amount of $2,520_
If what I pay is any indication, that's a _big_ policy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Friedman After a Week in Silicon Valley: Third Party Rising - jaybol
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03friedman.html?_r=1&src=tptw
======
pg
Not likely. If he'd talked to people in SV at any time in the past he'd have
found they despised politicians as much as they do now, and that did not turn
out to be a predictor of the rise of a third party.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How did your passion for computer stuff start? - 321yawaworht
======
ian0
As kids we embarked on a quest across a (small) country, to my cousins house,
to collect a copy of Doom 2. We were so excited we took turns holding the
floppy discs on the bus home.
When we finally got there and installed it, it ran at about 2 frames per
second. My friend didn't let it phase him. He played it in slow motion for
weeks in my attic. Shoot. Wait. Wait. Missed. Shoot again. Wait Wait...
I couldn't take it, and eventually learned about autoexec.exe & config.sys,
about the different types of memory etc. Trying to get games like this to run.
Even from the outset its been a battle of hate & love :P
------
AngeloAnolin
My fascination with computers started when I watched the movie Hackers (1995)
[1]. I just liked the idea of the underdogs upping the ante over their well-
funded bureaucrats and being smart and stubborn. Even though this was rather a
bland movie (by today's standards), I appreciate the fact that this movie
pushed me into the realms of software and computers in general.
[1]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/)
~~~
jetti
Hackers was one of the two movies that got me into development. The other was
Antitrust (2001) [1]. I ended up taking AP Computer Programming in high school
that year (back when it was C++) and had dreams of going to UIUC and starting
a startup in the garage with my good friend.
[1]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/)
------
emeraldhearts39
I fell in love with computers under serendipitous circumstances -- I was
pretty lucky that I went to the only hackathon near me in my freshman year of
high school. I ended up loving it so much (I made a meme generator at the
event) that I wanted to create a hands-on coding club at my school, which only
continued to fuel my love for code as I found a community of young coders when
I started my school's chapter of Hack Club. After the club began, my peers at
my school and I finally felt like we had a group of students excited about
code and its impact, leading us to create many coding initiatives in our
relatively under-served community.
After us, 3 other Hack Clubs popped up, and it's been magical to see them
hosting school hackathons and summer camps. I really hope that this continues
so we can show more students what pushed us into the wild coding world!
------
ConcernedCoder
The local arcade got a Pong machine, then later, a Lunar Lander, and many
others as they came out.
I went from playing pinball, to video games, and fell in love with it all. In
about the 7th grade I started to design my own games, working out how they'd
play and the layout of screens ( on graph paper...lol ) etc...
Later I earned enough cash to get an Apple II+ with all the programming
manuals it came with, and spent most of my highschool nights recreating games
I'd played and designing new ones in Basic and then eventually 6502 assembly.
Without money for college, I spent my 20's working odd jobs and continued to
program on the side. Eventually I got my foot in the door at a national news
paper's budding computer department, writing help files and documenting all
the existing systems... and worked my way into web development from there.
------
mgraybosch
I grew up poor and didn't want to spend my adult life that way. So I got my
hands on a used computer and some tools, and learned to code.
I'm only in it for the money.
~~~
dronescanfly
Didn't grow up poor, still in it for the money. Every other benefit that comes
with it ( highly flexible workibg hours, intelectually teasing tasks) are just
bonuses on top. Can't remember I ever wrote a line of code that hasn't been
paid for (except whilst studying)
The one thing that pushed me to follow this path was a joy for pc gaming, an
enthusiastic teacher and income per profession rankings showing that computer
science pays quite well.
------
tonyedgecombe
Playing moon landing on an old TI programmable calculator[1].
From there I used to travel into the Computing Teaching Centre in Oxford
University on weekends to write BASIC on a CTL Modular One[2]. I had no idea
of the significance at the time but I met Tony Hoare[3] there on numerous
occasions. It was a friend who got us in, I think he just knocked on the door
and said can we play with your computers and remarkably they said yes. I was
14 or 15 at the time.
The first computer I owned was an Acorn System 1[4], 1KB RAM, 512 bytes ROM
and a 7 segment calculator display. I had to work through the summer holidays
picking fruit to pay for it. I spent countless hours hand assembling code for
it, I think the biggest project I did was a Forth like language.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-57](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-57)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Technology_Limited#Th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Technology_Limited#The_Modular_One)
[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare)
[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1)
------
ggregoire
A guy took control on my computer when I was 12. He opened a Matrix-stylized
chat window (black background, green font color) and started to talk with me.
He told me I had a trojan and than I should clean my computer. Then he
restarted my computer to show me what he could do.
After this event, I learnt how to clean and tweak Windows. I started searching
and comparing programs. I installed Firefox, adblock, an antivirus and a
firewall, etc. I remember also asking my parents if I could open the computer
to see how it works. It's also the period I started to spend a lot of time on
forums. I discovered MMORPGs. Then I built my own gaming computer and made a
basic website about the game I was playing.
------
beckler
When I originally went to university, I went for music because I thought it
was fun.
However, I was terrible at my music classes because I didn't enjoy many of
them. Theory, conducting, and just doing scales all day. At some point I was
determined to turn things around, and I decided to build an excel spreadsheet
to help figure out what I needed to make in order to bring my grades up.
This was when I discovered VBA for excel. I had never programmed before, but I
thought it was such a fun challenge. So I ended up making this over-engineered
gradebook for my classes... At the end of the semester my grades were awful,
but I changed schools, got my GPA back up, and changed my major to CS.
------
richardthered
Grade school. I learned that computers followed rules. And if you learned the
rules, you could make it do interesting things.
My classroom was the first class in the school to get a computer. At the time,
nobody knew how to work the things, so instead of rotating around all of the
different classrooms each week, it was left in our room for half of the year.
During that time, I got to use it a lot and became more fluent on it than the
teacher. Eventually, a local news crew came to do a story on this rollout of
computers in the classroom, and I got to be on local TV showing the reporter
how to do stuff on this 'new technology'.
I learned that not everyone 'got' computers like I did.
------
zanedb
I've been coding since I was about 10, though not well. It was more messing
around with computers and playing video games. I think I was mostly interested
once I discovered all the things computers could do - but I didn't know how to
do them.
Around the time I was looking to get serious about coding, my friend mentioned
he attended a sort of code club. I was immediately curious and looked it up.
It turned out to be run together with Hack Club[0], an organization helping
kids run computer science clubs internationally. Unfortunately, I didn't go to
his high school (and there wasn't one at mine) so I was unable to attend his
coding club. However, I could still join the Hack Club Slack[1] where I've
been helped by many (and have begun to help others).
I'm looking forward to starting a Hack Club at my high school this upcoming
school year, and hope many more can have the experience I had, sooner. I don't
work for Hack Club but can personally recommend them.
[0]: [https://hackclub.com](https://hackclub.com)
[1]: [https://slack.hackclub.com](https://slack.hackclub.com)
------
rwieruch
I was always into "computer stuff", but nothing serious where I could earn any
money (gaming > programming). So the programming part, where I ended up in the
end as software developer, took off very late for me.
I studied computer science, but didn't really know why I did it. I learned
about all this programming syntax, solving smaller problems, but it was always
difficult for me grasping the bigger picture. But there was one seminar for
half a year which open my eyes: Distributed Systems. Suddenly the bigger
picture, having webservices, IOT or mobile devices, made so much more sense to
me. Everything is connected with an API and not till then the acronym made
sense for me. After the seminar I saw this huge potential in programming,
because everything could be connected. That's when I started to develop
serious interest in programming. If you are interested about it , you can read
the whole story over [here]([https://www.robinwieruch.de/what-is-an-api-
javascript/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/what-is-an-api-javascript/)).
------
midnightmonster
I don't think I have a passion for "computer stuff", but I really enjoy the
craft of programming (and related application design and experience design and
general hacky problem solving).
When I was a kid, home computers were barely a thing. We had one, but I only
played with it. I thought maybe I'd grow up to be an architect. I took a few
programming classes in middle school (logo and basic), but I started messing
around with web pages in high school in the late 90's--mostly for publishing,
since I liked to write and draw. JavaScript code was relatively small and
rarely obfuscated then, so I learned a lot by reading the source of pages with
cool layouts or effects. Haven't stopped since then.
Turns out there's a whole field where you can design things to solve problems
or create experiences and make them come into being just by thinking about
them carefully (and writing down your thoughts). The feedback loop for
satisfaction and learning is very tight compared to architecture.
------
BlackjackCF
I was 5.
My dad was really into electronics and got a Windows 95 for home use. He
insisted that my sister and I learn how to type.
He also made the fatal mistake of sharing the MechWarrior 2 and MechWarrior 2:
Mercenaries CDs that came with our computer with me. I popped them in and got
hooked. So I learned how to type, but I also developed a huge love for video
games.
Basically, the rest of my childhood was spent thwarting the various ways my
parents devised to try and lock me out of using the Internet/playing games.
The more my parents tried to keep me off the computer, the more I wanted to be
on.
My fascination with video games also made it so I wanted to learn to program.
I learned some basic control flows in C++ at 13. Never really went much past
that, because I started working in technical theatre and lighting, and spent
more of my time programming lights and setting up lighting networks.
Picked it back up again in college, when I started taking game development
classes and having to build stuff in Unity and GameMaker.
------
BjoernKW
It started with the C64: Games and the ability to quickly create something of
your own with BASIC.
Interestingly, with the web it was quite similar: "View > Page Source" and the
ability to quickly learn and create something yourself really fascinated me
about the web. Accessibility in my opinion was one of the key aspects that
really made the web take off.
------
dnel
My uncle was the computer guy of the family. I remember playing on his Amstrad
1640 when I was very young. I always wanted a home computer desperately but my
dad never had an interest or saw it useful to encourage my passion for it. It
wasn't until my uncle eventually upgraded from his 8086/640KB Amstrad to a
Pentium 60 then he gave me the old Amstrad and I was hooked. This was probably
about 96/97 so this was already vintage hardware and my attempts to run
anything contemporary was frustrating, but that didn't stop me trying to
squeeze out every drop of performance from the old beast. I had it for many
years and eventually my experiments in trying to get more out of it broke it
and it went to the tip. I could probably have repaired it easily just a few
years later but I guess that's the tragedy of youth. I'm tempted to buy
another 1640 to remember those days but I know it would never be the same.
------
stevekemp
My parents moved house when I was around 11. I suspect as a result of the
recent house-purchase my parents basically bought one christmas present for my
two sisters and myself: A 48k ZX Spectrum home computer.
The computer came with ~10 casette-tapes, a casette-player for loading them,
and the computer itself. Unfortunately the casette-player we received in our
bundle was broken. Which meant that we couldn't load any games.
So I read the manual instead, and experimented with programming in BASIC. A
week later, or so, (all the shops being closed around Christmas time in the UK
back then), we had a working system. My sisters played games, and while I did
too I was hooked on programming.
A few more details here:
[https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html](https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html)
------
rpeden
My dad got us a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. We used out TV as a monitor. I
remember typing in games in Basic, and then saving them to an audio casette so
we could load them up again later.
That was my first taste of a computer, and of programming. And I've loved both
ever since.
------
Humdeee
I must have been 6 or 7 with Windows 95 at home and I double-clicked that
mysterious black and orange hazard icon on my dad's desktop. Duke Nukem
proceeded to captivate me, then I blinked, and now I'm over 30.
~~~
omegbule
Same here, it started when I found Duke Nukem's Penthouse Paradise and Leisure
Suit Larry 6 on my dads PC.
------
debacle
The amount of money I could make not doing computer stuff was quickly eclipsed
by the amount of money I make doing computer stuff.
------
johnnycarcin
Wrote a post about this awhile back, easier to just link to it instead of copy
+ paste :)
[https://esheavyindustries.com/2017/01/i-owe-my-career-to-
bei...](https://esheavyindustries.com/2017/01/i-owe-my-career-to-being-a-
script-kiddie/)
------
EADGBE
The birth of my daughter combined with an affinity for HTML/CSS and website
creation combined with a realization that what I was originally setting out to
do in life (music) just wasn't going to work the way I had anticipated.
I'm really glad it worked out the way it did. I enjoy this a lot more than I
ever could have thought.
------
tudelo
Well, I had a grandfather who owned a print shop and had an extra computer. He
gave it to my family when I was 9 and then I discovered Runescape and have
been hooked on computers ever since. My first real foray into programming was
through making mods for a game called Toribash.
------
Canada
I was interested when I got my first computer for sure, but when I got my
first modem I was hooked.
------
Terribledactyl
Oregon trail on an apple 2 in kindergarten.
Then taking apart my parent's IBM work computer to see how it worked, mostly
got it back together..
Found a book on basic in the library around age 8 and was hooked.
------
psalminen
Myspace in middle school. Looking at the themes and editing them turned into
creating my own own one-page website. It showed me the complete control you
can have with a computer.
------
gnode
I had computers in the house since I was born, as my dad was a software
engineer. I started programming in QBASIC, trying to make games.
------
amorphous
in the 80s a friend dragged me into a department store where they sold PCs. He
typed into one "10 Print Hello; 20 Goto 10" and pressed return. What I saw on
the screen seemed like magic to me and I got hooked since then. Later got my
own VC20 and spent most of my time with that piece.
------
8bitsrule
Writing simple programs was a blast. Then I learned they could be simply
interfaced to external circuits.
------
raysarebest
I've always been the kid who was into technical stuff. Before I was in
elementary school, I would insist that my dad let me help put together my Hot
Wheels tracks and such. On a rainy day when I was 8, I had locked myself in my
room to avoid my family, and I was lucky to have a computer to myself there. I
turned my focus for that day towards it, and I wondered how it worked, so I
googled "How to code". The first result that came up at the time (circa 2006)
was
[https://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/c-tutorial.html](https://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/c-tutorial.html),
and an hour or two later, I had learned the basics of my first programming
language.
I didn't really care that much about computers at the time, though. Over the
years, I became a power user of Windows, iOS, and macOS, but I was way more
into sports, particularly baseball. After a while, though, I became the fat
kid that all the pitchers liked to hit, and when the pitchers started learning
to throw 80 MPH fastballs in early high school, I decided I needed a new
hobby. That's when I started getting serious about understanding code and
becoming a developer.
I bounced around free tutorial after tutorial online, and I ended up with a
solid understanding of how to make a static website. I saw a few ads between
YouTube videos for a more cohesive online coding school called Treehouse, and
they were running a promotion at the time where if you bought one of their pro
subscriptions, they'd give one for a year for free to a public high school
student. I thought to myself, "Hey, I'm a public high school student. I wonder
how I can get on the receiving end of that?", and so after some googling, I
found their CEO's email address, and asked him. He got me set up with that,
and I've been hooked ever since. I taught myself everything from the web
front-end to scripting languages like Python to mobile development. Nowadays
I'm a moderator on their community forums, supporting myself as a freelance
iOS/web developer.
In high school, I was also really into the technical clubs I had available to
me. I went for the majority of my Junior year to a high school in suburban
Philadelphia, where I joined the robotics club, which got pretty much all my
attention and passion while I was there. There was also a computer science
club there, too, which was part of the Hack Club family of high school coding
clubs. I loved that club, too. It was a great time to stop worrying about the
stresses of they day/week before, and just sit back and work and learn about
code with other people who're into it. I enjoyed it so much that when I went
back to my former high school in suburban Nashville for my Senior year, I
started another Hack Club there, too. Since then, I've pretty well known what
my life's passion is, and now I'm trying to use it to start a career.
Treehouse: [https://teamtreehouse.com](https://teamtreehouse.com) Hack Club:
[https://hackclub.com](https://hackclub.com) My website:
[https://hulet.tech](https://hulet.tech)
~~~
megaman22
Oh boy, treehouse... I did most of my girlfriend's treehouse training for her
new job, the parts that weren't on google word-for-word. She's something of a
legend at her company for finishing those CSS snd JavaScript modules so fast.
------
saintPirelli
Games
~~~
megaman22
It's the gateway drug. Gaming (at least used to) gets you into save-file
editing, then into modding, then into programming.
Not to mention all the general IT fiddle-frigging that was involved in making
games run, or fixing your PC after something went disastrously wrong with
that, and you needed to get it back in a working state before the parents
noticed that you'd broken the computer...
~~~
saintPirelli
Yes, all of that, but particulairly because I want(ed) to make my own game(s).
I actually took a detour via 3D modelling (Blender) for gaming and then
becoming interested in writing my own Python scripts, so I learned how to code
and forgot all about my original aspirations with Blender.
------
mrdebugger
<script>alert(1);</script>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OpenSSL 1.0.1f - 3 CVE issues fixed - ballard
http://www.openssl.org/news/openssl-1.0.1-notes.html
======
ballard
[http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1f.tar.gz](http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1f.tar.gz)
[http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1f.tar.gz.asc](http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1f.tar.gz.asc)
[https://www.openssl.org/docs/misc/fingerprints.txt](https://www.openssl.org/docs/misc/fingerprints.txt)
[https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1f.tar.gz.sha1](https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1f.tar.gz.sha1)
~~~
midas007
sha256: 6cc2a80b17d64de6b7bac985745fdaba971d54ffd7d38d3556f998d7c0c9cb5a
sha1: 9ef09e97dfc9f14ac2c042f3b7e301098794fc0f
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It Is Surprisingly Hard to Store Energy - mhb
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/It-Is-Surprisingly-Hard-to-Store-Energy
======
nxzero
Entertaining that Gates finds something so fundamental as the nature of
something that wants to move does not like being contained a surprising idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan - jackpotrnev
https://gum.co/goplf
======
rdegges
How did this only get 7 upvotes? The book has finally been released! This is
awesome!
The C Programming Language is my all time favorite book. I've read it cover-
to-cover 3 times, and it single handedly got me through my senior year of high
school while bored in homeroom.
Can't wait to read the new Go book! Congrats on the launch guys! <3
~~~
andrewbinstock
Because it was posted a week ago (and got 200+ comments). See:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9150163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9150163)
------
damny
Isn't supposed to be released on Friday? No EPUB version?
~~~
damny
On: [http://www.informit.com/store/go-programming-
language-978013...](http://www.informit.com/store/go-programming-
language-9780134190440)
For the ebook: Estimated Release: Nov 13, 2015
:(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare - louhike
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/youre-targeted-sexually-how-female-astronomers-are-being-hounded-out-of-work
======
danso
Though the submitted article does link to the BuzzFeed articles, it's curious
that BuzzFeed isn't mentioned by name in the same way that the NYT and WaPo
are...even though in the WaPo case, the WaPo was simply playing catch-up to
BuzzFeed's exclusive investigations, particularly in the cases of Drs. Marcy
and Ott, which are indepth enough to be interesting longform reading on their
own:
\- [http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/famous-astronomer-
all...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/famous-astronomer-allegedly-
sexually-harassed-students)
\- [http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/ott-harassment-
invest...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/ott-harassment-
investigation)
~~~
dang
If there's another URL which is a more substantive original source on the same
story, we can swap it out. I'm hesitant to do that without having time to read
the articles carefully but am fine with taking suggestions.
------
grahamburger
There is an interesting side effect to these issues that I think doesn't get
discussed very often. I try to be as aware as possible of these issues in the
hope that I can make sure that I'm not part of the problem. As such I make a
concerted effort to give anyone that works for me equal opportunities for
advancement, and when in doubt I try to err on the side of the person who's in
a marginalized class. I also try to make a habit of publicly recognizing good
work that I see from any one in the company, and again I make an extra effort
to recognize the work done by those in marginalized classes.
I'm also very choosy in general about who I make friends with, or who I
interact with on anything other than a professional level. As a rule, I don't
interact socially with women in the workplace. The primary reason is that it's
more important to me to not be labelled a sexual predator / harasser than it
is to have female friends. (I am married, but I acted basically the same at
work when I was single.) There are just too many ambiguities in what is
considered sexual harassment for me to feel comfortable putting my reputation
on that line.
For example, it's not at all uncommon for me to comment to a male co-worker
who comes in to work dressed up more than usual 'looking sharp, man!' or
something along those lines. Would that be sexual harassment if I said that to
a woman? Probably not on the face of it, but what if she has just (unbeknownst
to me) endured harassment from another co-worker about her looks - then I
could see my comment adding to the fire. Or what if I without thinking said
something that implied that her dress would make her a more valuable employee
or help her get that promotion or whatever. So, I just avoid it altogether. I
recognize that my position may keep me from being part of the problem but also
prevents me from being a part of the solution because I won't be aware of
problems or able to offer meaningful support. I'm not sure what else to do.
~~~
labster
If you ignore all women socially at work, you're going to end up
discriminating against women. People have a strong tendency to select for what
they already know. If you have a hiring choice between a theoretically equal
woman and an equal man, you'll probably want to select the man because you'd
feel safe to interact with him socially. You won't because it's Wrong, but
what about all of the little decisions you don't think about so hard? Even if
you were outside of management, you'd still be marginalizing the women on your
team by your actions -- making an in group and an out group.
It's possible to run so far from sexual harassment you run into sexual
discrimination. I don't know if there is an answer to this other than "be a
nice person". Not trying to pick on parent in particular, just trying to
illustrate how thorny the issues are.
~~~
bittercynic
I think it is pretty safe for a man to socialize with men and women at work,
but you have to recognize signals that a person doesn't want to talk to you
and find a gracious way to deal with that.
If an adult is unable to recognize those basic signals, what training options
are available to get up-to-speed?
~~~
grahamburger
I think that every person that I regularly interact with socially I have both
offended and been offended by in some way. I suspect that that's just part of
normal human interaction. But it seems like any offense from a man to a woman
can be considered sexual harassment, which I would say makes those
interactions dangerous.
Also note that I wouldn't blame women for this issue. It's really the fault of
(mostly) men who are aggressively and shamelessly harassing women and putting
everyone on edge.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
> But it seems like any offense from a man to a woman can be considered sexual
> harassment
Have you considered that this is not in fact the case.
------
goodcanadian
I must admit that I was genuinely surprised by this. I have worked in
Astronomy (as a technologist) for over a decade, and I have never witnessed
this sort of behaviour. Of course, I am male. There are, however, plenty of
assholes in the world including in academia, and I have noticed that
universities tend not to want to rock the boat, so I suppose that it is not
entirely surprising that these things are occurring.
My wife is an academic (biology). Thankfully, so far as I know, she has never
had to deal with sexual harassment. She did have an experience of dealing with
an extreme bully during her PhD (who threatened her career and the like; pro-
tip: individual assholes generally don't have the power to destroy your
career). The university was not at all supportive, but her PhD advisor was, so
things generally worked out in the end, but it was a lot of stress along the
way. Besides that, she has suffered the occasional subtle discrimination for
being a woman or a mother, generally from older males in the field, but all in
all, I don't think she would say that harassment is rife. I think she would
pin the problems on individual assholes rather than a systemic problem in
science. You do need to look out for yourself, however, as the institutions
generally won't, and I do find that a bit sad.
~~~
scott_s
Based on your description, it sounds like your wife _has_ experienced a decent
amount of harassment. (I include that extreme bullying in it.) When a number
of individual assholes are allowed to continue being assholes, and you need to
have a "look out for yourself attitude", that _is_ a systemic problem.
I'm genuinely curious what your wife's take is - she may see it a little
differently from you.
~~~
goodcanadian
I said she hadn't experienced sexual harassment. You are correct that the
bullying constituted harassment. I was not trying to say that it doesn't
exist; I was just trying to offer my thoughts on the article. The title says,
"For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare." I have
worked in Astronomy my entire career, but I have not seen it at all (perhaps,
because I am male). My wife works in a different STEM field, and while she has
experienced harassment, possibly due to her gender, it was not sexual
harassment. For the record, I believe the stories in the article, and I am
very saddened by them.
~~~
scott_s
My point is that the harassment your wife has experienced may in fact _be_
sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is not limited to harassment of a sexual
nature. If the harassment was because she is a woman, that falls under sexual
harassment as well:
[https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm)
~~~
yorwba
Although the site you linked is titled "Sexual Harassment", it appears to me
to be talking about harassment in general
> Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances,
> requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a
> sexual nature.
Even if I am misreading this, I would rather call it "sexist harassment" to
make clear that is not itself of a sexual nature.
~~~
scott_s
The very next paragraph:
"Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include
offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a
woman by making offensive comments about women in general."
This is what the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission considers
"sexual harassment". You may not like these definitions, but this is the
government's definition of "sexual harassment".
~~~
oldmanjay
You can define anything to be anything when you're in the outrage porn
business, but unrealistic descriptions meant to stoke emotion don't help to
solve actual problems, they just make for more outrage porn.
~~~
scott_s
You're implying that the US government is in the "outrage porn business".
~~~
qb45
Not the gov but you.
The paragraph you quoted says "harassment doesn't have to be of sexual nature"
and you are using it to support the claim that "sexual harassment doesn't have
to be of sexual nature".
~~~
scott_s
And that paragraph is under the title "Sexual Harassment". It is clear to me
that when they say "harassment", they mean "sexual harassment". Otherwise, the
sentence would not be under that title. You're free to disagree, but your
disagreement has no bearing on the laws we operate under. (Assuming you are in
the US.)
~~~
qb45
The exact paragraph you quoted from section on "sexual harassment" is copy-
pasted from section on "sex-based discrimination". And it's not law, but some
guidance/advice/faq/whatever.
You are overinterpreting this thing.
~~~
scott_s
I think I am interpreting this thing in a straight-forward manner. This is the
part of the government responsible for ensuring equal employment opportunities
telling the public that it does not limit "sexual harassment" to harassment of
a sexual nature.
------
I_HALF_CATS
I investigated Vice for over six months for a book. Their media is so bad I
regularly call it a liar's cult.
It should be stated that Vice has no fact-checking process. They also rarely
issue corrections. Read everything from them with caution.
Here is an article where I fact-checked two documentaries with links to other
fact checks.
[https://notvice.com/fact-checking-vice-a-
fiction-2d482100116...](https://notvice.com/fact-checking-vice-a-
fiction-2d4821001163)
~~~
snowwrestler
Ok, but for this story Vice is mostly recycling facts and stories reported
elsewhere. It's a fact that Geoff Marcy was disciplined for harassing women.
It's a fact that Christian Ott was disciplined for harassing women. It's a
fact that women scientists are speaking on the record about these things.
So I don't see how your comment is relevant to the article we're discussing.
~~~
I_HALF_CATS
Did the article really describe a 'constant nightmare' or was the article more
an example of anectdata.
I would argue that demonizing STEM fields with sensational language does more
harm than good.
~~~
snowwrestler
I don't think Vice has a monopoly on clickbait headlines.
~~~
I_HALF_CATS
I'm not quite sure what you're advocating. The reporting isn't original and
the headline is click-bait.
I consider yc news a place for elevated discussion not for elevating BS.
------
sqldba
It sounds terrible. And yet working in he unrelated field of IT I haven't seen
it.
I have seen a bunch of assholes in high positions though and have to put up
with their idiotic demands and abuse.
So when I read these articles I wonder if it's the same people and how they
translate treating male workers like garbage into treating female workers like
garbage. It's not misogyny; it's welcome to the workforce and dealing with
people above you who are neither competent not deserving of their positions
and their power trips and borderline psychopathy.
What do you think? Or are there really nice bosses who are just complete
assholes to women with zero crossover?
~~~
QuotedForTruth
Yes. People exist who may seem like really great bosses and nice people but
are also aggressive and entitled with their female coworkers. It is important
not to think of sexual harassment as only the skeevy creep who purposely takes
advantage of women he has power over (although these people definitely exist
too). Women have a right to work without being sexualized at all. Many times
it is well meaning, otherwise good people who over step professional
boundaries. They don't make an advance expecting to make the woman feel
uncomfortable, but that doesn't make it ok either!
~~~
ElComradio
Yet something like 30% of office workers have had office romances. Are you
going to tell all of those people they should not have flirted?
~~~
vkou
Depending on the circumstances, asking someone out for a coffee is one thing.
Asking them five times is almost certainly harassment.
~~~
semi-extrinsic
> Asking them five times is almost certainly harassment.
Yet this behavior is romanticised is popular culture, and has been from the
dawn of time up to and including the present: Oddyseus and Helen of Troy,
Shakespeare's "The taming of the shrew", tons of Fred Astaire movies, as well
as modern movies like "Ghost", "Life is beautiful", "Chasing Amy", TV shows
like "Sex and the city"... I could go on. Lucikly I don't need to, since
TVtropes has a site dedicated to this character (the "dogged nice guy"). And
note that many of these are targeted at, and very popular with, women (who are
usually at the receiving end of the initially-unwarranted attention).
Apparently this behaviour can walk a thin line between illegal and very very
romantic.
~~~
drunken-serval
Thank you for not linking to TV Tropes. I've lost a great many hours to that
site. :)
~~~
semi-extrinsic
Yes, it was a deliberate non-link ;)
(Oblig. [http://xkcd.com/609](http://xkcd.com/609) )
------
DarkContinent
In the present day and age, where PhD supervisors are given massive amounts of
power over their graduate students, such incidents are all too commonplace.
Put more institutional safeguards on the process of awarding doctoral degrees
to protect both sides of the inequality.
~~~
manyxcxi
I wonder, and this me genuinely wondering without an assumed answer, if some
of the issues we're seeing with gender inequality in 'traditionally male
dominated' lines of study and work might be due to the type of people drawn to
those fields.
I'm not going all men's rights or saying anything is acceptable but if you
took a (painfully?) stereotypical set of physicists, technologists, etc. they
would probably be male, on the autism spectrum/socially awkward in general,
and likely have spent the majority of their time around the same types of
people (smart, socially awkward men/boys). Could part of it be from social
cues they may not have learned along the way since they likely spent a good
portion of their time out of the 'normal' stream of socialization?
Another thought, and anecdotally, I played multiple sports in high school and
aspired to play college football. When I walked into a CS or advanced physics
class in high school and college I was the something is not like the rest;
sauntering in at 6'4", in a cutoff t-shirt and sweats having just come from
practice or lifting weights. There were multiple times where when I screwed up
I was called a dumb jock, or something like that. If I was instead a woman,
might they have just called me a dumb girl? Now they are being misogynistic
for sure, but couldn't you attribute it to the fact that they pick out the
difference between you and them and attack on that? Isn't that what most
groups do in a "you don't belong, you're not our kind" kind of mentality? I
shook most of it off pretty casually because I could look into myself and a)
be sure I was just as good, if not better than the majority of 'them', and b)
I knew I could physically destroy them and it made 17-22 year old me smile
inside.
As a Type A, incredibly outgoing and social individual, I've been reminded
many times of how annoying I get to a lot of the people who studied with me
and work with me because they are very typically not. Growing up with one foot
in nerd life and another in jock life (taking the non-pejorative easy to
describe route with nerd and jock) it was very clear the group social
difference between both sides of my friends. I, frankly, had a much easier
time fitting in with the sports oriented/popular crowd and felt almost,
hesitant, maybe, in larger groups in my CS/Physics studies. It was a weird,
unnerving feeling for someone who spent most of his life dropping into social
situations and just rolling with it. It was almost as if I was communicating
at a _just_ different enough baud rate that we could work together, but it was
taxing for a long time.
I could imagine if I was a woman who maybe couldn't draw on their physical
dominance to provide a sense of safety, how much more stressful those years
would have been.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
> I'm not going all men's rights or saying anything is acceptable but if you
> took a (painfully?) stereotypical set of physicists, technologists, etc.
> they would probably be male, on the autism spectrum/socially awkward in
> general, and likely have spent the majority of their time around the same
> types of people (smart, socially awkward men/boys). Could part of it be from
> social cues they may not have learned along the way since they likely spent
> a good portion of their time out of the 'normal' stream of socialization
If this were some sort of low-budget situation comedy, maybe, but we're
talking about the real world here. Go read about, for example, Geoff Marcy:
"""“He would stroke my arm or my neck while going over information, standing
very close,” Borland told BuzzFeed News. He would also play with her hair or
brush up against her with his legs, she said, “often resulting in his crotch
touching me.”
Because Marcy was a vocal supporter of women in science, “it was contradictory
in my head that he could have bad intentions,” Borland said. “But at the same
time, it just felt so uncomfortable that after a few times I had to tell him
to stop.” """
(note I haven't read the buzzfeed article as I've been following this story on
astronomy blogs such as [http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2016/04/sexual-
harassme...](http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2016/04/sexual-harassment-
changing-system-i.html))
~~~
manyxcxi
I want to be clear that I'm not brushing off the incidences or saying they're
in any way acceptable. It's more of a thought exercise asking why these guys
think the behavior is acceptable. Why are they doing it in the first place?
Are some of them just predatory, knowing it's not acceptable and think they
can get away with it? There are certainly plenty of examples in all fields
where people in a power position think they can simply get away with it due to
the resources available to them.
I've worked with, and hired, plenty of women and it's never crossed my mind to
behave that way, not ever. Is it because I've not ever felt that I had the
power to make the problem go away, ignoring what I know is right and wrong? Is
it because I went through 'normal' socialization channels growing up? Is it
because I do not feel socially awkward in different environments that would
allow me to court a woman in a more acceptable fashion? Is it because those
'normal' socialization channels helped me figure out (even through trial and
error growing up) what an acceptable fashion even is? Are 'normal' people just
wired up to innately feel how an action such as touch could make the other
feel in a given context? One of the hallmarks of autism spectrum is an
inability to read social cues for example, so if people in these fields have a
pre-disposition to be on the spectrum, is it possible this plays a factor?
Hearing the victims' descriptions of what they had to deal with genuinely
makes my skin crawl, and that's why I floated the questions/ideas in the first
place. I can't put my head into a place where I could see why these guys would
do it, and I'm wondering if the general wiring of the types of people that
gravitate to and achieve in these fields might pre-dispose them to socially
abnormal behaviors like this. Are the incidences of this type of behavior
greater than in other fields, say teaching, that have historically been more
equal or female lead? If so, is it because the intent is generally predatory
(in that the offender generally knows it's wrong and doesn't care), or is it
that they don't get how wrong it is?
Again, going back to an anecdote of being in both social circles... One of my
best friends from my CS studies at university was a delight one on one, or in
the small circle of our group of CS friends. But whenever he could gather
himself to come to a party that was filled with pretty much no one like
himself he had no freaking clue how to behave. A lot of female friends said he
creeped them out- stared too much, said weird stuff, etc. No physical
violations by any account I can recall. I asked him about it one day and his
response was pretty much what I expected: he had no freaking clue how to
connect to these people, women in general scared the shit out of him, and he
shared no real social point of reference with my other friends that would
allow them to connect.
It's personal experience like that that makes me wonder if some of it is
attributable to wiring/social disconnects, not just pure predation. Again,
their actions whether with bad intent or out of ignorance are no more
acceptable and do not magically inflict less trauma to these women. I'm just
wondering aloud if there exists some common thread that might explain why this
might happen more in some fields than others.
------
mooseburger
These harassment cases are so mysterious to me. What kind of men think this
sort of behavior is ok? I mean, I would like to help somehow, but I don't know
anyone like that.
~~~
kitd
> What kind of men think this sort of behavior is ok?
The kind who think that the real world is just an extension of the school
playground.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Interesting point. And why isn't it? Why is the 'real world' run according to
some narrow set of safe-and-happy rules that insecure people make up? Just
being 'devil's advocate' here. Sales people know, you get what you negotiate,
not what you deserve. Anything else is a fantasy. Extend that to every facet
of the working world, and you have the 'school playground' all over again.
~~~
kitd
One would hope that when you have left the school playground and entered the
"real world", you have developed enough sense of empathy and social skills to
understand the long-term benefit of treating people with respect, ie how you
would want to be treated yourself. We do spend much time and effort drilling
this into infants after all.
Those who don't, ie who find it ok to use/abuse others (or can't stop
themselves) for personal profit/pleasure, I would term social freeloaders.
It's sad that this seems to extend to middle age in some people. And that
grown-up institutions need processes to deal with problems that should have
been sorted out in kindergarten.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and _that_ , I would say, is the _real_ world. We have to deal with it.
Short of rounding up and executing all the sociopaths that never learned
empathy.
------
pc86
Can someone explain to me what "nearly over a decade" is supposed to mean?
~~~
tantalor
Nearly a decade, e.g., "9 years".
~~~
slazaro
Then "over" makes no sense, right?
------
LoSboccacc
this:
> Universities, Mia notes, have protocols for dealing with complaints of
> sexual harassment
seems part of the problem. sexual harassment should be a 'go straight to
police' offence, not a hr reprimand.
if the problem is as widespread as it's made in the article, it cannot correct
from within.
~~~
woodman
This is the sort of thinking that leads to people calling 911 for disputes
relating to McNuggets. Calling in armed mediators is not likely to improve
your situation.
~~~
wfo
It's the sort of thinking that gets abusive people who commit crimes public
criminal records (or at least records of a series of accusations) instead of
slaps on the wrist which forever remain private so they can continue their
abuse.
The other alternative, calling in University-owned mediators who have no
incentive to help you and every incentive to "just make it go away" will
almost certainly not improve your situation -- as described in detail in the
article.
~~~
woodman
> ...people who commit crimes...
While sexual harassment is terrible, it isn't a crime. There are a lot of
terrible things that aren't crimes. A push to criminalize it would have the
opposite effect of what the proponents desire: the definition would be
severely narrowed and companies would likely have a lot less exposure to
litigation.
~~~
wfo
Actually, fortunately you are incorrect here. While certain kinds of sexual
harassment are not criminal, groping is certainly a crime.
I'm pretty sure threatening to destroy someone's career to force sex is a
crime. If you succeed, it's rape which is quite a serious crime.
Even if you just file a report, it's important to establish a pattern of abuse
for when the person inevitably crosses the line and goes to court. This is far
more serious than chicken nuggets; the fact that people are willing to liken
it to something like that is very troubling and indicative of how deep the
problem runs: many people don't even see it as a problem.
~~~
woodman
Describing an assault as sexual harassment is ridiculous. That is like
describing a murder as impolite driving... that resulted in the flattening of
a person who you happened to want dead.
We are talking about different things here, and conflating them isn't going to
help anybody.
~~~
wfo
It's okay for words to have wide and general meaning. Assault can mean
flicking someone with your middle finger. It can mean saying something
threatening. Sexual assault is a kind of assault. Barfights and brutally
beating someone all count.
Similarly with sexual harassment. It doesn't mean exactly what you have in
your head at this particular moment and nothing else no matter what anyone
else says. Look it up if you care to and you'll find its definition is quite
broad, especially the way it's used in general conversation. Nobody is
suggesting locking people up in jail for saying bad words -- it's an absurd
strawman, though it's quite an effective way to derail the conversation and
avoid having a real discussion.
The article is about the climate of abuse and sexual harassment of women in
astrophysics departments. Groping, specific comments, threats, general
comments. Everything from flirtation to repeated unwanted advances to actual
assault. That is what we are discussing, so when someone says women should go
to the police to report the crimes described in the article you need to assume
they are talking about the crimes described in the article.
~~~
woodman
> Look it up if you care to and you'll find its definition is quite broad...
I'd think that my awareness of the broad definition would be made clear by my
repeated warnings that criminalization would narrow it.
> Nobody is suggesting locking people up in jail for saying bad words...
Well the poster that I initially replied to was pretty explicit about getting
the police involved, as have a few other people here. So I'm not sure if your
point is that I should be more charitable and assume that when someone says
"sexual harassment" they don't mean sexual harassment, or if your point is
that police should get involved but somehow leave the whole threat of violence
thing at the door.
> That is what we are discussing, so when...
That isn't what I was discussing, and you replied to me, so you must be
referring to yourself with the royal "we". I'll be more charitable and assume
that people don't mean what they say, but I'd appreciate it if you'd extend me
the same generosity and assume that I've chosen my words carefully.
------
artpepper
This is why any talk about women being "naturally" less gifted at hard
science, or naturally drawn to other fields, is B.S. You'd have to get to a
level playing field first, before you could even evaluate that type of claim.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson has made this same point.)
------
evanb
There's a long-standing overrepresentation of women in solar astronomy. Why?
It was previously thought unthinkably inappropriate that women should spend
the nite in the observatory alone with men. So, to do astronomy many were
pushed towards daytime astronomy, which pretty much restricts you to study the
sun. Even today solar astronomy is largely dominated by women, demonstrating
that historical biases propagate into the modern day.
It's disappointing to think that female astronomer's fear of sexual harassment
is well-founded and persists to this day.
------
appleflaxen
It's amazing that sexual harassment (or any kind of harassment, really) can
survive the era of the cell phone recording? Allegations of misbehavior carry
far more weight, once there is a recording that can tickle people's sense of
voyeurism and outrage.
~~~
s_kilk
> It's amazing that sexual harassment (or any kind of harassment, really) can
> survive the era of the cell phone recording?
In some jurisdictions it's illegal to record someone without their knowledge
or permission, so the victim of the harassment can get nailed to the wall for
trying to gather evidence to support their case.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_recording_by_civil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_recording_by_civilians)
~~~
cmdrfred
Do you have an example of when this occurred?
------
SCAQTony
"...At the time of the survey, Berkeley had two women to 17 men, while MIT had
three women to 11 men. At Harvard, there was only one woman compared to 12
men...."
The amount of working female astronomers at a given institution seemed
woefully small. One sexual harasser in the bunch could harass 100% of the
women. It's hard for me to believe that universities have a monopoly on a-hole
men. What seems more believable is that they don't lay down the law like the
rest of societal business institutions.
------
mathattack
This sounds as bad as investment banks. Why are schools so behind the times?
Accounting firms and Advertising agencies are cleaning up. Why are
universities staying with the banks?
Is tenure part of the problem? That it's so hard to fire people for bad
behavior?
Or is it that academic prestige is "Winner takes all" so schools choose to
protect those who give them their reputation?
------
koolba
What's the legal jurisdiction of the ISS? Is it split by country of origin of
the separate modules?
On a more comical note, I wonder if "worldwide copyright" applies after
escaping the worlds atmosphere...
~~~
randlet
I think you've confused astronomers and astronauts?
~~~
koolba
Oh duh ... My mistake for writing as I think rather than after!
~~~
erispoe
To answer your question though, maritime law largely applies in space.
------
bunnymancer
Yet people find it hard to understand why some people might be somewhat
offended by a shirt with scantily clad women during a press conference.
Things do not happen in a vacuum and pretending like nothing is wrong isn't
going to help anyone get anywhere.
~~~
sp332
The guy wore the shirt to a celebration after working with those co-workers
for 10 years. It wasn't intended to look "professional" and I'm pretty sure
none of those co-workers were offended. The reason the shirt was a bad idea is
that it was easily misinterpreted by people watching the press conference.
Edit: I didn't see it at the time, but this article exactly reflects my
perspective on the thing.
[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/why-a-
sh...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/why-a-shirt-with-
scantily-clad-women-caused-an-internet-fight/382812/)
Edit2: I agree with bunnymancer's comment as far as it goes. But I don't think
the shirt is a very big problem. It would be almost insignificant if it
weren't interacting with the big problem we already have.
~~~
ainiriand
A shirt that depicts women as objects or objectized women is just plain wrong.
I do not care about the celebration.
~~~
corford
You do realise the shirt was given to him by a female colleague/friend right?
~~~
ceejayoz
So what?
If a black friend gives me a shirt with the N-word on it, that doesn't mean I
should wear it _at work_.
~~~
Chris2048
If you're white, and your black friend gives you a shirt with the N-word on
it, they aren't your friend.
~~~
ceejayoz
These guys are probably friends.
[http://realfunny.net/picture-3097-these-two-friends-
wearing-...](http://realfunny.net/picture-3097-these-two-friends-wearing-my-
nigga-and-my-redneck-shirts-better-not-get-separated-.html)
They probably don't wear the shirts to work.
------
rurban
I've only seen such behavior in 2nd or 3rd world countries, like in some
eastern block countries or the US, never in the developed world.
It's disgusting.
------
rokhayakebe
Ask Women: What counts as sexual harassment?
Is it "Let's go out this weekend?" or is it a comment about body parts below
the neck, or is it physical?
~~~
vkou
Why not ask a lawyer instead?
~~~
simunaga
A woman's or a man's lawyer?
~~~
vkou
Since when do lawyers segregate their practices by gender?
~~~
rokhayakebe
Google this "divorce lawyer for men," granted it is marketing ploy.
~~~
vkou
Fair enough. In this case though, both sides of the aisle will give you the
same legal advice.
------
powertower
I am curious of why is it everyone here is so eager for this to be true?
Several people so far have posted that they have never seen such a thing in
the field, and a number of people (outside those fields) responded that they
must be blind.
The last 9 out of 10 of these types of stories ended up being exaggerated to
such an extent that it became clear that they were all fabricated to get views
and to drive agenda.
------
Bud
Pretty obvious from looking at the points and age of this posting that some
people have flagged it.
I hope some admins are considering removing those flags. Users who flag a post
like this shouldn't really have flagging privs.
~~~
privong
> Users who flag a post like this shouldn't really have flagging privs.
I agree with you that the article is focused on an important topic (and I did
not flag it), but I don't think you can easily make that one-to-one link
between article flagging and poor judgment (or what ever negative trait would
justify revoking of flagging privileges). People may have flagged the article
because of some issue they had with the accuracy of the text (though it all
seemed accurate to me). Or maybe they flagged it because this topic has
received some attention previously on HN and the flaggers thought this article
didn't bring any new information to the discussion (plausible, since most of
the specific cases discussed were already in the news). There could be
multiple reasons for flagging this article, not all of which are
objectionable.
------
peterwwillis
> "Until recently, we have tiptoed cautiously around these discussions for the
> most part" [Mia]
Looking for feedback from women on this one: why would one tiptoe around this
issue, rather than shouting it from the rooftops? It seems so counter-
intuitive.
~~~
ksenzee
One reason: It's dangerous to shout it from the rooftops because a lot of
people will accuse you of lying. Being branded a false accuser can be fatal to
your career.
~~~
home_boi
As it should since being falsely accused would be even worse for your career
------
hobarrera
"These people are bullying you, and you're being polite back to them."
I think this pretty much summarizes something that should be transmitted to
all women in these sort of situations.
------
Cyph0n
I never knew BuzzFeed wrote exclusive longform (and interesting) content.
Thanks for mentioning it.
~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11519919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11519919)
and marked it off-topic.
Btw this comes up every time a substantive Buzzfeed article appears on HN.
~~~
Cyph0n
Damn, sorry for the trouble :(
------
graycat
I've been a prof: Academics is awash in non-objective _pushing and shoving_
that, yes, affects careers. In academics, even high end universities, a lot of
the nasty behavior of middle school is still alive and well. Added to that is
grown up politics, professional jealousy, professional competition with
sabotage, and, also, no doubt, sexual harassment as in the OP.
I can't speak first hand about sexual harassment because I'm a normal male and
never knowingly harassed a female. But, gee, right, there were some times: (1)
I was chair of the college computer committee, and she was in the
administration and invited me to her office to talk about computing. She
leaned back in her chair, put her feet up on her desk aimed at me so that I
could see under her skirt and said "My husband and I have an open marriage".
Well, my wife and I don't. (2) I was a consultant, say, an applied
statistician, in a computing center, and a new prof on campus in sociology
with some survey data came to see me about processing the data. She started
talking about finding things in her data and said that she was "looking for
sex". Then she kept saying she was "looking for sex". Gee, those women were
trying to harass me _sexually_? No, I didn't have any "nightmares"!
Similar things can go on in parts of business.
My mother used to say that a young woman should carry a six inch long, sharp
hat pin and be prepared to insert it into any man who got too _fresh_. We're
talking an old story. Maybe I should start a Web site to sell long, sharp hat
pins with some instructions on usage.
If we could get rid of all the sexual harassment, then we will discover that,
once have some good work, others afraid of losing out in competition will
start to fight back, with whispering campaigns, sabotage, gang behavior, etc.
I saw one female prof have a nice little tactic: She never said anything about
her research. So, she never gave anyone any hint about what she was doing.
Then, suddenly, in one 12 month period, she published five nice papers in one
of the best journals in the field. Presto. Bingo. In a baseball analogy, she
had hit a home run, or call it a grand slam, had rounded all the bases, and
was home free. Five papers in one of the best journals one year? Tough to
fight with that, i.e., whispering campaigns mostly won't work. BTW, I was the
faculty member who proposed hiring her -- her qualifications looked good to
me.
Is being a prof a nice job? Not very.
For one, it's super tough to get paid well enough to buy a nice house and do
well supporting a family. Even if get tenure, that doesn't mean that your
salary has to keep up with inflation. It can seem better just to be in
business, e.g., start and own a successful business, where actually make some
money and can accumulate it for some real financial security.
Second, really, to get very far in academics, have to pay close attention to
money anyway -- have to get grants. So, can begin to feel like are in business
anyway.
Third, in business, it's fairly easy to know how to _keep score_ \-- the units
are dollars. In academics, we're talking numbers of papers, numbers of invited
talks, numbers of journal editorships, number of dollars of grant money,
prestige, number of citations, etc. So, it's tough to count and/or compare.
For a successful business owner, the criteria are simpler to count and compare
-- e.g., a bank statement or, if you will, an account's report.
I have always felt protective of girls and women, and I hate to see them have
"nightmares" over anything. But, honey, and I say this out of 100% affection,
caring, and respect, out in the real world, there is lots of pushing and
shoving, and there still will be even without men trying to kiss you, knocking
on your hotel room door at 3 AM, sending you suggestive messages, etc.
Or to borrow from and paraphrase E. Fromm in _The Art of Loving_ , "For
humans, the fundamental problem in life is responding to the anxiety from our
realization that alone we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and
society. The first recommended solution is love of spouse." Well, honey, and,
again, I mean this with full affection, caring, and respect, one of the
"hostile forces of society" is the nearly eternal force of men pursuing
friendship, affection, sex, domination, etc.
For such men, part of the solution is a ready supply of clear, loud statements
"No. Stop. Quit.". For more, there is that long, sharp hat pin. For more, be
in a public place and scream. For more, be with some girlfriends.
Indeed, one of Fromm's other recommended solutions is "membership in a group".
It's easy to remember the TV ads for the TV show _The Babysitters Club_ with
six or eight very pretty teenage girls walking on a sidewalk close together
with each girl trying harder than all the others to be in the center of the
group -- it was _herd_ formation, and the TV people believed that it was
credible. So, right, females tend "form herds", look like _herd animals_ , and
with good reason: They have more safety in a herd, as a member of a "group".
So, right, form groups via Twitter, Facebook, fora, one to one e-mail, face to
face, etc.
E.g., it was totally clear to a girl I knew of 12, and one of her girlfriends
of 11, each about 100 pounds, that they would feel much safer with me, 6' 3"
and 14, if they were together and in a public place instead of alone with me
in private. Since those girls of 11 and 12 knew about the safety of being in a
public place and not alone instead of in a private place and alone, I'm sure
the women of the OP can understand that. So, use that tactic.
But, still, honey, that's not nearly the only problem you will face _out in
the real world_. And, again, notice Fromm's first recommended solution --
"love of spouse". That is, have a good marriage with a good husband.
Honey, for a lot of the problems you face in _the outside world_ , sexual
harassment is one of the easiest to deal with because (A) it is relatively
easy to prove (e.g., smartphone and message recordings), (B) in its more
serious forms is very definitely seriously illegal, i.e., you can hire a
lawyer, and (C) there is the solution of that hat pin, or just your long,
sharp fingernails. But for whispering campaigns, jealousy, sabotage, gang up
behavior, etc., defense is more difficult.
Honey, definitely you should protect yourself, and you do have some strong
means. But out in _the real world_ some guy trying to get too close to you is
not your biggest problem and not what any nightmares, if there are to be any,
should be about. Honey, relax; you are overreacting to the wrong thing.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
This is what "being part of the problem" looks like.
~~~
graycat
For "being part of the problem", look at yourself. You are profoundly
confused, mixed up, misled. The women in the OP are suffering, from "constant
nightmares", and I gave them some powerful, difficult to obtain, wise, helpful
advice.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Advice like "say no" and "stay in groups" is neither difficult to obtain nor
helpful. (And: "carry a hat pin"? seriously? this is the 21st century here)
~~~
graycat
Your response makes no sense, is not a reasonable or rational response to what
I wrote.
E.g., "say no" and "stay in groups" is VERY helpful.
Of course that advice is not "difficult to obtain". Neither is advice to keep
breathing, but all the advice is helpful.
But much of my other advice and descriptions of the real world of work is very
helpful and difficult to obtain.
Given your response, maybe you need a remedial course in reading comprehension
-- try a US community college.
More likely, you are angry, at me, personally and for no good reason. So,
likely you are lost, confused, mixed up, and misled.
------
simunaga
While in general it can be true, it's not necessarily the case that everything
in the article is 100% true. We don't know all the details.
------
ar0
My first reaction: Oh boy, apparently far too many people take the dating
advice of phyiscs "god" Richard Feynman far too seriously and don't seem to be
able to accept if this doesn't produce the stellar results he predicts in his
book.
Also a good read on this: [http://mathematigal.com/home/2014/7/14/feynman-is-
not-my-her...](http://mathematigal.com/home/2014/7/14/feynman-is-not-my-hero)
------
nikolay
Maybe in America... where people (which includes scientists) don't really have
a social life. Anyway, if America becomes too hostile for scientists, I'll be
happy if Europe and Russia become more attractive to people who don't want
deal with bullshit and lawyers.
~~~
arcticfox
Most Americans don't really have a social life? News to me...
~~~
nikolay
We've brought over the years more than 30 developers from Eastern Europe some
8 years ago here in Southern California. Nobody wanted to stay for more than
3-6 months even though they got better pay here and no expenses to worry about
- company lunches and dinners, nice company cars, nice spacious company
houses, etc. On the contrary, when they go back to Western and Central Europe
to work for clients, they didn't want to leave!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook has a neural network that can do advanced math - lelf
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614929/facebook-has-a-neural-network-that-can-do-advanced-math/
======
abc_lisper
What about the confidence in the result? Math is never done willy nilly, and
without the ability to show how it is done, this will go no where. That said,
this is a exciting result
~~~
colejohnson66
That reminds me of a joke that goes something like this:
> Me: What is 2+2?
> AI: It’s 42.
> Me: Wrong, it’s 4. What’s 2+3?
> AI: It’s 4.
~~~
julienreszka
Can someone explain me the joke
~~~
colejohnson66
AI (or more accurately, machine learning (ML)) learns by being told when it’s
wrong and right (like a child). The AI makes a mistake on what 2+2 is, so it’s
corrected. However, when it’s asked 2+3, it doesn’t know that 3 is one more
than 2, and the only answer it’s learned is 4, so it says 4.
~~~
perl4ever
As is well known, a child learning language will often initially assume that
rules/patterns are more regular that they actually are.
------
siegelzero
This paper was posted earlier with Anonymous authors:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21084748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21084748)
------
Havoc
Headline reminds me of cold war era "the Soviets have a x that can do y"
------
shmageggy
> _Other neural nets haven’t progressed beyond simple addition and
> multiplication, but this one calculates integrals and solves differential
> equations._
And this one can't solve addition or multiplication. Turns out they are
different problem spaces that require different approaches.
------
plutonorm
Quick, someone stick the navier-stokes equations in.
~~~
perl4ever
I'd rather see if it can infer anything about the input from a SHA-256 hash.
------
forgotpwd16
Is there anything machine learning is bad for?
~~~
savanaly
Un-differentiable output. Take, for instance, writing a program. Change the
input by the smallest possible amount, one character, and generally the output
changes by a rather large amount (it could, say, go from working to failing to
compile). Rarely would changing one character get us X% closer to a solution,
or produce a change in a working solution that is X% faster.
~~~
mturmon
OTOH, the example in the OP has somewhat the flavor of the hard problem you
just sketched.
The tree-based (RPN-esque) notation itself gets around much of the "perturbed
program fails to compile" problem.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hackers Meetup : Hyderabad , India - FameofLight
How about 2nd July , 2011 ? Suggestion for a good place highly recommended :)
======
barlo
I'll be visting Hyderabad the week of July 25th and would love to attend a
meetup while I'm there.
~~~
FameofLight
Are you here on 23- 24 July. As on 30 - 31 July Yahoo Hack day many will be
visiting Banglore.
------
sitakantaray
Will like to attend the meetup on July 2nd.
------
vardhanvarma
yup. would be great if around hitechcity ...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A C64 Games Mashup - ingve
http://level4.jojati.com/c64mashup/
======
yodsanklai
So many great memories. I used to play video games a lot from 7 to 15. First
C64 and then Amiga. And then started the PC era and I totally lost interest. I
didn't find the games and the platform as enjoyable. What kind of games do
kids like to play nowadays? is there the same diversity of games as there used
to be?
Recently, I was at a museum in New Zealand (I think it was in Dunedin) and
they had a C64 there. I was pleased to see a bunch of young kids enjoying
playing it! They didn't seem to think it was outdated.
~~~
chipsy
Digital distribution has brought back the feeling of the older computer games
in a big way. Steam has some titles, but it still puts up some barriers.
itch.io [0] is the hotspot for stuff too small to notice these days. Just last
night I was linked to a homage to the ICOM adventure games [1] and it was
hosted on itch.
Kids don't really seem to care too much about a high fidelity experience.
Everything is new and different to them to begin with, so that stuff is just
window dressing.
[0] [http://itch.io](http://itch.io) [1]
[https://grahfmetal.itch.io/infested](https://grahfmetal.itch.io/infested)
------
david-given
If you walk too far right, there's some serious full-screen strobe effects. Be
aware.
Also, this reminds me inescapably of the sublimely brilliant ROM CHECK FAIL:
[http://www.farbs.org/romcheckfail.php](http://www.farbs.org/romcheckfail.php)
~~~
jimjimjim
it's a fairly standard c64 loading screen/border.
------
halviti
Ah, my childhood, this is great.
Maniac mansion, world games, pirates!, the last ninja and impossible mission
were some of my favorites.
I actually managed to beat impossible mission, and I can't even imagine the
amount of time I spent wandering aimlessly in last ninja and pirates! not
having a clue where to go or what to do.
Good times.
"Stay a while, stay forever!!!!"
~~~
vinbreau
You can play it online now. It's a faithful rendition. [http://impossible-
mission.krissz.hu/](http://impossible-mission.krissz.hu/)
~~~
freekh
Wow - I can't remember this game (had the amiga not the c64) but the link sure
is pretty awesome!
------
hansjorg
Awesome trip down memory lane.
Can't see any audio files loading, so I'm guessing it's emulating a SID-chip
in JavaScript? Great emulation in that case.
Might be the nostalgia talking, but it's surprising how well the SID still
sounds.
~~~
mrspeaker
I recently hooked up a C64 to my stereo for the first time. Hearing things
through a decent system (instead of my old crappy tube-TV speakers as a kid) -
a can't believe how great it sounds: all that huuuuge base wasted on me!
I also am surprised I never noticed as a kid the limitations of only having 3
channels of sound for music AND effects. It's amazing how well it's hidden,
but still - long notes abruptly chopped because I decided to shoot at a bad
guy, or notes falling out of chords: I never heard this at all when I was
younger!
~~~
Flow
If you have a pair of good headphones, try the dolby surround processed
versions on this YouTube account.
[https://www.youtube.com/user/Kuokka77/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/user/Kuokka77/playlists)
Some are just great, some sound so spacious that I once thought I forgot to
connect my headphones and the sound came from somewhere outside.
------
CapTVK
I recognize and played a lot of them all back in the day. Only things missing
are Commando and Ghost & Goblins (I can still hum the tune!).
Amazing what they could do with the SID chip back then. Most PC's and
homecomputers in the early 80's had to make do with bleeps and bloops.
Literally.
There's a quite a subscene for those interested in SID music. You can find a
lot of new C64 cover versions (some by the original musicians) and new work at
Chris Abbott's www.c64audio.com. He's done a lot of work in keeping the
C64/SID scene alive.
------
afro88
Last Ninja endlessly trying to pick up an unpickupable key. Nice touch
------
franze
Miss Druid [https://youtu.be/_RXVgaMybCw](https://youtu.be/_RXVgaMybCw) or was
that a european thing?
~~~
gillianseed
Me too, this was my favourite of the countless Gauntlet clones, given that it
added some cool ideas: element magic which affected enemies differently, a
sidekick you could conjure, and probably more cool things I can't recall at
the moment.
------
PhasmaFelis
The C64's sound capability is absolutely boggling for a machine released in
1982. I don't think anything on the market came close for years.
~~~
OSButler
I think that exact capability also attracted a lot of great musical talent to
it, who used crazy techniques and experimented with it continuously to get new
sounds out of that breadbox. It had a sense of evolution where you started
with a beeping machine, then a game gets released with such a great soundtrack
that you'd simply leave it running just to listen to it (Ninja, Traz,
International Karate, Giana Sisters, ...), and then you get a demo that
manages to play back the stoning scene of The Life of Brian - all that's still
stuck in my head from my C64 days.
------
JohnTHaller
First: Seizure warning for anyone walking all the way to the right
Second: Be sure to walk all the way left as well as right
------
alphadevx
This makes me want to play Turrican again, that game was _so good_.
~~~
ricksplat
Whatever became of Manfred Trenz eh?
~~~
alphadevx
I used to love reading his little notes at the end credits of those games,
nice personal touch.
------
metaos
Super Final Fight Gold is a bit more playable!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c1raWrdwFk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c1raWrdwFk)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Constitution Compels Sessions to Dismiss Mueller Non Campaign Cases - tomohawk
https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/constitution-jeff-sessions-dismiss-robert-mueller-non-campaign-cases/
======
daly
Interesting. So your claim would be that if the president was compromised due
to money laundering, the special council would not be allowed to investigate
the financial crime?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Bacteria Eat Penicillin - tosh
https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/52456/title/How-Bacteria-Eat-Penicillin/
======
zaarn
"Life finds a way." ~ Some dude from Jurassic Park
IMO we should ban antibiotics use for farmers in the amount they use it today
(probably overall, they shouldn't feed antibiotics just to promote growth) and
get into research for phage-therapy.
Eventually we will have to face the inevitable superbug that lives in common
desinfectant like a warm petridish. Probably already exists even.
Atleast the farmers can make more profit in the meantime.
------
delbel
this whole fear "antibiotic super resistance bug" doomsday fear is narrative
is totally out of control, where now doctors are resisting prescribing totally
safe and proven penicillin based drugs, which is causing more damage then
good. The "super bug" threat is not from penicillin based resistance, but this
clarification is nowhere to be found in the mainstream media. This article and
the researchers are totally out of character with what the problem is. It's
gotten so bad that the WHO has now put out an advisory to say it is OK to
prescribe amoxicillin because people are getting really really sick from
doctors worried about this irrational fear because they believe in these lies.
~~~
pokemongoaway
Not to mention low dose antibiotics are sometimes very therapeutic. When the
effective medicines become widespread big pharma has incentive to spend as
much money marketing against them as it does to actually develop better stuff.
Antibiotics never worked against biofilms anyway - and many of the cases of
so-called evil bacteria are actually just full fledged biofilms.
~~~
Fomite
A number of antibiotics penetrate biofilms just fine:
[https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/65/9/1955/722668](https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/65/9/1955/722668)
Ciprofloxacin would be an awesome drug if it didn't promote the development of
active C. difficile infection.
~~~
pokemongoaway
"...were grown on black, polycarbonate membranes placed on tryptic soy agar
plates..." So ya, definitely not a walk in the park to eliminate the bacteria
in the biofilms of grandma's old infection! I never really got the incentive
for smart people like you to post sorts of "see, it's solved, we're so
advanced" replies online. It makes sense with technology because that is easy
to reference and prove one way or another. But implying something is solved in
biology is very often problematic, isn't it?
~~~
Fomite
Your objection doesn't really make much sense.
The description of how the biofilms were grown is precise because it's a peer-
reviewed paper. That it uses big words doesn't mean it's complex. "We grew the
biofilms on black plastic with food" is all that sentence says.
That's also _growing_ the biofilm, not penetrating it, which is what you seem
to be under the impression it's referring to.
I also didn't claim that "It's solved." Biofilms are a bitch. But claiming
that antibiotics don't work against bacteria in biofilms is _actively wrong_.
"Hey, your information is wrong, some broad spectrum antibiotics penetrate
biofilms" isn't claiming the problem is solved, just that someone has made a
factually incorrect statement.
Which is, you'll note, also why I noted that Cipro has other drawbacks. Do you
think I would have done that if I considered the problem "solved"?
To use a programmer example, if someone said "Python's 1-based indexing is a
bad idea", would you chew someone out for replying "Python is 0-indexed" and
linking to the language description?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why my post not getting up-votes? - Mehuleo
Why my post not getting up-votes, when similar post by someone else is making front page?
Does my initial karma matters?
======
lmm
If this post is anything to go by, then I suspect your poor English is making
more difference than your initial karma.
But yes, initial karma does matter; I've had articles on my own blog that
weren't upvoted when I posted them myself, but were then upvoted when a big-
name user posted them. It kind of sucks, but if there's nothing you can do to
change it then why worry about it? Karma is an indicator that you're doing
something good for the site, but the important thing is that good content gets
posted, not who gets the credit for it.
------
ferrari8608
Karma isn't a huge factor, at least this is what my own experience here has
led me to believe. My very first post here got over a hundred upvotes. Your
post was probably just overlooked. It happens.
------
sdoering
It is a question of time, luck and a lot of "Headline juice". The last one
means, how much does your headline invite other people seeing it to click. And
after that - how good does your content deliver on the headlines' promise.
Only after reading, I might upvote - if the content is worth it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Htmlfetcher – No pain HTML fetching library - gaojiuli
https://github.com/gaojiuli/htmlfetcher
======
karmakaze
Title for HN could mention Python. README should say when/why to use this
library over others. Is it just more convenient or is there more to handling
pages with 'lots of Ajax?'
------
one87
Uhhhm, that's just a wrapper around Selenium...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Skeptical Berkeley Earth Surface Temp. study finds Earth is indeed warming - anigbrowl
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/21/berkeley_earth_surface_temperature_study/
======
anigbrowl
Incidentally, the dataset and code for the BEST study is freely available
here: <http://berkeleyearth.org/>
This is AFAIK the most comprehensive climate dataset going, so if you're
interested in this topic and like crunching big numbers (or just learning how
to do so) then it's a data miner's playground.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
European Court of Justice declares “zero rating” to violate net neutrality law - mschuster91
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/eu-bestimmte-handytarife-verstossen-gegen-eu-recht-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-200915-99-568762
======
Normille
WARNING: modal face shitter
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Would you use this service? Video summarization/digesting - mrbird
I've been thinking about a simple web/mobile app idea, and thought I'd throw it out there to the HN community.<p>The problem: Almost every day, I come across a video that I'd like to watch, but I don't have time. For example: Tech talks, conference presentations, product or company demos, and so on.<p>Proposed solution: A simple on-demand video summarization service. I know transcription is available many places, but I don't want a 20-minute video to turn into 20 pages of text. That won't save me time. I want the bullet points, created by someone with solid critical and analytical skills.<p>I'm not aware of such a service available right now (maybe I just haven't seen it).<p>Would you pay for it? I think I would. Maybe $5 per video? $1? As a monthly service?
======
jpmc
If you don't have time to watch a video you may not have time to read. Maybe
along the same lines but instead of text it could be an mp3 that one could
listen to while walking in from the parking lot, driving or doing whatever.
You could pack several hours of videos into a few minutes. I think the trick
will be finding a low cost QUALITY summarization source.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest - mergy
https://www.tides.org/impact/awards-prizes/pizzigati-prize/
======
mergy
Taking submissions for 2016. Please apply or nominate someone for the $10,000
prize.
Application link:
[https://tools.tides.org/forms/view.php?id=19109](https://tools.tides.org/forms/view.php?id=19109)
Nomination link:
[https://tools.tides.org/forms/view.php?id=10988](https://tools.tides.org/forms/view.php?id=10988)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Canada Needs Entrepreneurs - DuncanKinney
http://www.financialpost.com/executive/story.html?id=3067469
======
GiraffeNecktie
Meh. Kind of a content-free article. And it repeats the old saw about
entrepreneurs being risk-takers. The evolving wisdom seems to be that
successful entrepreneurs are actually risk-averse. They just happen to be
people who can effectively analyze, manage and minize risk.
~~~
hga
Indeed, but it points out one thing by glaring omission: while Canada may well
need entrepreneurs, why would entrepreneurs need Canada?
More specifically entrepreneurs need a good environment in which to do their
thing and as this article mentions, but only a bit, Canada just doesn't
provide that environment.
Heck, I had no idea until it was reversed that foreign startup investment was
impractical due to needless red tape. That fact and Canada's long delay in
fixing it tells you rather a lot.
Also telling are the three suggestions for improvement which are all top-down,
governmental sort of things.
BTW, how many top universities in Canada are private vs. public?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Drone Racing League – Racing Through an Empty Miami Dolphins Stadium - dpflan
http://qz.com/602230/theres-now-a-drone-racing-league-that-feels-like-pod-racing-from-star-wars/
======
dpflan
I can certainly see collaboration between Major League Gaming and the Drone
Racing League for large convention events.
I would like to think about how Drone Racing League can advance the realm of
drones (abstractly: control of, precision of, and communication with remote
robots) much like Formula One has impacted consumer road cars:
[https://www.quora.com/Which-innovations-from-from-
Formula-1-...](https://www.quora.com/Which-innovations-from-from-
Formula-1-have-found-their-way-to-road-cars)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Angel List for London - rayhano
http://bamlondon.blogspot.com/
======
rayhano
Also interesting is how Sprouter have featured London-based Housebites today
(and managed to spell their name wrong in their email blast...)
If you have seen it, Housebites is awesome! <http://housebites.com>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How can we prevent excessive force by police? - i_like_news
What steps can we take to build a safer society for everyone regardless of class, race, religion, gender, disability, or anything else?<p>I think that police departments open sourcing their policies would go a long way. Or wearing body cams in more situations.<p>What do you smart (non-cynical) internet people think?
======
respect4othrs
"The 50 Years of Crowd Control Research Police Are Ignoring"
[https://slashdot.org/story/371676](https://slashdot.org/story/371676)
"New Era of Public Safety: An Advocacy Toolkit for Fair, Safe, and Effective
Community Policing" (2019)
[https://policing.civilrights.org/toolkit](https://policing.civilrights.org/toolkit)
[https://policing.civilrights.org/](https://policing.civilrights.org/)
[https://civilrights.org/](https://civilrights.org/)
Criminal_justice_reform_in_the_United_States
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_reform_in_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_reform_in_the_United_States)
Are there points in these resources that could be summarized here?
------
igrekel
Training and drilling to stay calm and de-escalate situations. Training on how
to handle confused individuals or individual with mental illnesses.
Be better at working as an organisation and not rely on the action of a single
cop. Change laws procedures so that persons of interest can still have hope
and that being arrested does not equal to the end of life as they know it.
Strangely enough, fair process and trials and forgiving laws help make it less
likely that people being arrested attempt desperate violent actions against
the cops. In return, it makes the cops job easier and reduces their likeliness
to use excessive force.
Again, the probability of getting caught is the most effective deterrent to
criminal activity , not the severity of the punishment.
------
Finnucane
I wouldn't look to an industry that produced Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel,
Dorsey, Kalanick, etc., for answers.
~~~
respect4othrs
Who would you look to?
------
rm445
The US seems to have a fairly adversarial, legislative rules-based
relationship between policing and people's rights to justice, if that makes
any sense. This is just speaking as a layman observing from outside. (Contrast
with other countries. There are many places which achieve even less control of
their police, or the police serve corrupt interests, but there are also
countries which seem to have more public consent and less excessive force).
So, the USA - the bill of rights, search warrants, Miranda rights. It's not
exactly policing by consent, it's more like an understanding that the police
will go to any lengths they feel necessary, so there need to be hard rules
that completely invalidate the case against someone if breached.
I guess the same model can continue to be refined through the democratic
process. Technology can play a part. One can imagine future laws that impose
strict rules about body cams (e.g. that absence of a recording implies
innocence, or that 'lost' footage carries a presumption of guilt in police
brutality allegations). Ubiquitous surveillance, not to say it's a good thing,
but if it's happening anyway, it should be useful in preventing excessive
force by police too. Laws could be passed specifically enabling (and
preventing treatment as a crime) various technological forms of monitoring of
law enforcement by the public.
> What do you smart (non-cynical) internet people think?
I don't know how one would start to rip up American policing and produce a
kindly institution that was accepted universally by the community. No-one can
be that non-cynical. But I guess I'm non-cynical in thinking that there's
still some mileage in democracy and the rule of law, and progress might still
be made via the normal channels. Of which, by the way, protesting is a part.
------
sudoaza
Accountability!!
Racism and abuse are cultural and deeply rooted, don't know how you change
that without dismantling it. But abuse is learned and cheered upon, then is
covered and rarely punished.
You have cases like a cop shooting with a machine-gun an unarmed teen and then
not only going unpunished but retiring to cash in a milionary pension because
of "PTSD".
~~~
giantg2
I'd be careful about that PTSD statement. If the officer really has it from a
duty related incident, then it would be best to retire. They could be a danger
in that profession if they are "jumpy".
On a side note, the retirement requirements for non-medical retirement should
be more stringent.
~~~
sudoaza
I'm talking about this case, the officer wasn't punished instead now has a
huge pension for his traumatic experience
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ooa7wOKHhg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ooa7wOKHhg)
------
halfcat
Redesign police departments with separation of roles and responsibilities.
In most any other organization, especially ones where there aren’t enough
qualified workers, you don’t have one main role where the entry level people
and under performers are all doing the same work as seasoned veterans. You
separate out roles, and entry level people do work that requires minimal
responsibility and can inflict minimal damage.
You have a swat team, and they get called in when needed, but they don’t get
to decide when to jump into action, someone else decides that, and the swat
team doesn’t drive around looking for things to get involved in. There’s no
reason the shooters and the deciders need to be the same person.
Is there any reason a cop writing a traffic citation:
* Needs a gun?
* Needs to approach another car on foot?
* Needs to exit his own car at all?
What if there was a role for traffic cop, which is entry level, unarmed, where
the cop never exits their own vehicle, and where the only job is to write a
citation, but _not_ also to run warrants and try to search the citizen’s car
for illegal items?
If you had that role, the traffic cop isn’t on edge, worried he might get shot
in the face for pulling over a guy with warrants. The guy with warrants
doesn’t need to run, he just gets his citation and moves on.
Eventually technology will help enable this, say, once we have remote control
drone cars to issue traffic citations.
Sure, there are tons of details to sort out, like a reliable system to
identify drivers independent of the physical car (so there’s no person-to-
person interaction required to write a ticket), but I suspect this is an area
where the motives are so misaligned that technology will have to show up which
forces these kinds of forward progress. The same way people fought for women’s
rights for a long time, then the pill shows up and advances things forward by
an order or magnitude.
~~~
i_like_news
This makes a lot of sense.
Why does a cop have to prepare for the absolute worst case scenario when
interacting with the everyday public?
The research (and the recent 538 article) show that, by the cop preparing for
the absolute worst, it makes the other party feel disrespected ("He thinks I'm
going to attack him?? Well..") and ironically, is much more likely to lead to
a worst case scenario.
I'm not saying that cops as a whole shouldn't have guns, riot gear, or
bulletproof vests. But those should only come out after being shown necessary
in an interaction. Yes, this is likely to shift deaths initially to the side
of police from the side of the general public. But overall, deaths should go
down dramatically over time. Plus we'd live in a healthier society.
------
giantg2
Body cameras would be good. This would also need to be joined with some policy
and law changes, such as amending or abolishing qualified immunity and
requiring personal liability insurance.
Along these lines, it would also be good to dissolve or restrict the police
union. The union protects bad cops. The goals of the union are in conflict
with the interests of the community in these situations. Even FDR was against
public unions.
They aren't going to release many their policies or tactics for opsec and
efficacy purposes.
A good book (content-wise, maybe not execution-wise) is "We Get Confessions".
~~~
respect4othrs
> _amending or abolishing qualified immunity and requiring personal liability
> insurance._
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity)
(1967, 2005,)
What other professions (other than legislative civil servants) offer
exemptions to personal and business liability?
~~~
giantg2
The SCOTUS ruling that created qualified immunity only applies to government
workers such as police and politicians, so the answer to your question would
be "none".
------
chewz
Disolve Police Departments and let citizens organize new police force that
they will trust.
~~~
giantg2
This could be a disaster. Knowledge of the law and training in policing would
be necessary to avoid chaos and deviation (further than we are already) from
rule of law.
In theory the community already does this, but in a safer way - by electing
mayors and sheriffs that share their beliefs. These leaders should be able to
institute changes or appointment people within the rule of law.
~~~
respect4othrs
Is due process by the justice system sufficient for responding to violations
of rights?
How can bias in administering due process be addressed by criminal and civil
prosecution?
Due process #UnitedStates:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process#United_States)
Use of force:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force)
~~~
giantg2
If due process and rule of law is not followed, then you will be violating the
rights of the accused.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Salaries of government officials in Singapore - marcamillion
http://www.yeocheowtong.com/Salaries.html
======
marcamillion
FYI: The official exchange rate (according to Google) is: 1 Singapore dollar =
0.71623 U.S. dollars
Perhaps it's no surprise that Singapore is the 3rd least corrupt country -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Ra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Rankings)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Grid Collapse in India Leaves 360 Million People Without Power - akshxy
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-30/grid-collapse-in-india-leaves-360-million-people-without-power.html
This is what can happen when you are in between an interesting conversation :\
======
akshxy
This is something can happen when you are in between an interesting
conversation. :\
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Redesigning Hospital Signs - andrewl
http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=11897
======
andrewl
There's a slide show at: <http://www.uc.edu/slideshow/signage>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Consumers not waiting for Windows 8? - SlipperySlope
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57472324-92/consumers-not-waiting-for-windows-8/
======
SlipperySlope
An anecdote from the article ...
On Friday, in the Microsoft store there was a small crowd checking out
ultrabooks (on display were half a dozen new Vizio ultrabooks -- and note that
a couple of the ultrabooks were plagued by a freezing mouse cursor). A few
"customers" were using available PCs to play games. Around the corner, the
Apple store was packed -- many huddled at the front of the store around the
Retina MacBook Pros (the store had just sold the last one in stock when I
walked in) and iPads."
------
jsz0
The Surface Pro would be interesting if it weren't 2 pounds. People had issues
with the original iPad at 1.5 pounds. It may not sound like a big difference
but it's not going to be the type of device you actually hold in your hands to
use for very long. If you can bear a little extra weight in your bag a regular
ultrabook + cheap 7" tablet is just going to be a much better combination.
~~~
SlipperySlope
That's right. My wife has a wonderful Logitech bluetooth keyboard/cover for
her iPad 3, that she hardly ever uses despite its obvious utility for word
processing - for that reason. Its just a bit too heavy and she uses the Apple
Smart Cover instead.
But for those few times in the office when she needs a laptop style device,
e.g. conference room meetings, she takes the Logitech keyboard/cover along and
it just magnetically snaps together with easy-to-type-on keys. She switches
rapidly back and forth between voice dictation and the Logitech keyboard with
a function key.
------
derekerdmann
> Instead of waiting, consumers are buying MacBooks, iPads, Google's Nexus 7,
> and large-screen Android phones.
Yet the author offers no data that supports this conclusion. No real insights
here.
~~~
SlipperySlope
Yes, the author is seizing on the profound drama created by Microsoft
appearing to bet their company on Windows 8 and its Metro UI. This bet has
certain presumptions, one of which - that Windows 8 will be popular - is not
yet testable.
------
flebber
Of course pc sales are going to be flatter with many other options in the
marketplace. I am waiting for Surface however, I will buy windows 8 PC and
leap for my kids, the new generation know.
------
Toshio
I keep reading the word "analysts", but how trustworthy are those analysts.
How do we know they are neither in microsoft's nor in Apple's pockets? Those
analysts certainly wouldn't disclose their affiliations because of NDAs. So I
suggest having an NLP algorithm (natural language processing) to distinguish
PR trolling from trustworthy independent opinion.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Restoration of defocused and blurred images (2012) - lobo_tuerto
http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration1.htm
======
lpage
Many aspects of CV and signal processing in general produce almost magical
results. It's a little less magical when you think back to stats examples of
fitting a curve to some signal + (known) noise process. For linear models, the
noise term can get really bad before simple regression won't persevere. Least
squares in one form or another finds lots of use in image processing.
Images are just functions, and almost all of the mathematical techniques that
you would use to analyze one domain hold for the other. Certain perturbations
such as camera jitter are easier to deal with as "undoing" them is tantamount
to assuming some underlying regularity/structure on the signal and filtering
accordingly. Others, such as removing an occlusion, are harder. Humans do it
well thanks to our power of inference, learned from the litany of visual
examples that we take in over the course of a lifetime. It's not trivial
getting an algorithm to visualize what should have been behind the person who
photobombed your insta, but we do it somewhat naturally.
For occlusions and finding relationships between partially overlapping scenes,
really interesting things are happening with deep learning. For noisy images,
techniques continue to improve. Compressed sensing and signal recovery is an
active area of research that's already paid huge dividends in many fields,
especially medical imaging. I can't wait to see what becomes possible in the
next five years. And, as has been noted - this article is dated. There are
already more powerful techniques using deep learning for image super
resolution and deblurring.
------
skimpycompiler
How does an upscaler in your TV work? How does it create information out of
nothing?
Imagine that you are learning a deep neural network on a huge amount of
movies. You have access to all of the lovely Hollywood movies. You downscale
them to a 480p resolution, and then try to learn a deep neural network to
upscale the thing, maybe upscaling only 16x16 blocks of the image.
It works amazingly well, and looks like magic.
Maybe there was no visibility of pores on the face in the 480p downscale, but
your model can learn to reproduce them faithfully.
Sony has access to billions of movie frames in extremely large resolutions.
Their engineers are definitely using this large amount of information to
create statistical filters which upscale your non-hd, or maybe your HD to 4k
HD. These filters work better than deterministic methods in this article. Why?
Because the filters know much more about the distribution of the source
(distribution of values of each individual pixel). They have exact information
that one instead tries to assume (author in the article assumed that something
in the source - be it noise or something else - behaves according the to
Gaussian). If you know how to find the proper distribution, instead of
assuming it, you can move closer to the information theoretical limits.
Just imagine how fast these filters can be if you put them on an FPGA, it also
explains why TV sometimes cost more than $2k.
If you knew that your images would only contain car registration plates, you
could definitely learn a filter that would be very precise in reconstructing
the image when zoomed, you'd now find CSI zooming a little bit more realistic
:D
~~~
TillE
> you could definitely learn a filter that would be very precise in
> reconstructing the image when zoomed
Yes, your result would be a very clear image of one _possible_ license plate.
An algorithm may be able to do slightly better than a squinting human, but
ultimately you can't retrieve destroyed information.
~~~
skimpycompiler
Of course you can't retrieve destroyed information.
But information is not destroyed by perfectly unpredictable (uniform)
distributions of noise.
> Yes, your result would be a very clear image of one possible license plate.
Fortunately there are methods of evaluating how well your statistical filter
works, if it's precise enough you'd be fine with indeterministic nature of
your filter. Or even better, you could generate all of the highly probable
licence plates, instead of having only one - given by your deterministic
algorithm.
------
BurningFrog
Note that this works for out of focus photos, __not __for enlarging tiny
details of in focus photos.
They may look similarly blurry, but are mathematically very different.
~~~
timwe
How's that? Can't you think of a pixel as the average value of it's subpixels
(=blur)?
~~~
zero_iq
In focus-blurred images, the blur spreads the information about certain pixels
throughout a region of the image. (Objects appear larger and fainter because
of this when they are blurred. It's why you can shoot through a mesh-wire
fence with a wide lens aperture, for example, and not see the fence.) This
'spread out' information is being used to reconstruct an approximation of the
original image.
However, when images are downscaled, all the information from 'subpixels' is
kept within the reduced-resolution-image-pixel, and all replaced with a single
RGB value. There is no 'spread out' information from those pixels. The 'blur'
only applies to a region with sharp edges that exactly coincide with the unit
of information. So, none of the data from the sub-pixels remain. To
reconstruct the pixels that were within you have to essentially guess based on
the context of the surrounding pixels.
------
YUVladimir
I'm author of this article (and SmartDeblur
[http://smartdeblur.net/](http://smartdeblur.net/)), thank you for posting!
Also, you can look at the second part that describes practical issues and
their solutions:
[http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration2.htm](http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration2.htm)
And if you have any qustions, feel free to ask me.
------
roel_v
Wow, that's very impressive, and very un-intuitive (to me) that it's possible
at all.
So, who is the first to dig out some pictures that were 'redacted before
publication' and can be de-obfuscated this way?
~~~
DanBC
Law enforcement have large libraries of images of child sexual abuse.
Sometimes the abusers appear in the photo but blur their faces. There's
probably some work happening to identify those abusers.
Here's one famous example
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil)
There's a bunch of other image processing stuff that can be done. Identifying
location from sparse clues is important. Identifying wall paper patterns, or
coca-cola bottle labels gives clues.
------
jakejake
These really de-focused images are interesting for the article but if you can
take a slightly out of focus image and make is laser-sharp then it is
extremely useful for all kinds of photo and video applications. It's really
tough to fix a shot that was slightly off when you're going for professional
quality where you can't tell it was sharpened.
~~~
slimsag
Highly agreed! I would be really curious to see if someone could take a
slightly defocused picture and run it through this to see what it would
produce / if it would introduce a bunch of undesirable effects or not.
~~~
dpwm
I have tried the referenced implementation (SmartDeblur) on a few (similar)
slightly de-focused images. From memory, I had the artefacts without any
noticeable improvement. I don't think I even saved the results. YMMV and I
would almost certainly try it on photographs with a larger blur than mine
(approximately a disc kernel with radius of 0.8px). Since then I've been
working on other methods with mixed results.
I've found a few things out: Firstly, many articles mention some form of
Richardson Lucy with regularization as if de-convolution with a known Point
Spread Function is a solved problem. The regularization can indeed produce
better results, but usually introduces new parameters. I've found, with real
photographs, I have had far better results using less statistically sound
methods. This is especially true as I've found that RL, more often than not,
begins to diverge quite early.
The reality is that there are papers surrounding deconvolution and blind
deconvolution that get apparently good results and work poorly in practice. It
is only once implemented that the flaws of the algorithms proposed are
exposed. This is compounded by the fact that we have a wonderful error metric
with this inverse problem: the euclidean distance between 1\. the solution
convolved with the point-spread function used for deconvolution; and 2\. the
original (blurred) image. With many algorithms, lowering the euclidean
distance decreases the perceived quality by introducing more artefacts.
Nonetheless, I have only seen a handful of papers that include this metric
when considering a proposed regularisation scheme, and this is one of the only
times when this particular metric makes any sense in computer vision -- if
your deconvolution is working, and your PSF is correct (which it is in many
cases as the blur is synthetic) then the euclidean distance is the measure you
want.
I have since switched to least squares using L-BFGS-B for fitting which has
lowered again the Euclidean distance and produced the best, most natural-
looking results by far on real photographic images. Unfortunately, estimating
the PSF is difficult for small out-of-focus blurs. Optics applied to an ideal
lens would suggest a disc kernel, but at this scale other factors are playing
a part.
I'll probably do a writeup of this when I'm done -- though I don't know when
that will be. I'll also be putting any code on Github in due course. In the
meantime if anybody has any pointers or is interested in further details or
source code please grab my email address from my profile.
------
Animats
It's neat that this is possible. It was demonstrated in the 1960s, but nobody
could afford the CPU time back then.
The intensity range of the image limits how much deblurring you can do. If the
range of intensities is small, after blurring, round-off error will lose
information. Also, if the sensor is nonlinear or the image is from
photographic film, gamma correction needs to be performed before deblurring.
------
hemangshah
I've used Marziliano's[1] blur metric to reject images with motion blur
recently. It is very fast and quite accurate in distinguishing blurred and
non-blurred images.
[1]
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.7.9...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.7.9921&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
~~~
MikeTV
That looks really useful. Could you provide a link to your/an implementation?
------
boulos
Note: 2012.
As some people have mentioned in the comments already, there's been great work
since on blur estimation at siggraph (particularly for motion).
------
lobo_tuerto
Wondering what would happen if you apply this after enhancing (upsampling)
something like what's shown in here as magic kernel thrice:
[http://www.johncostella.com/magic/](http://www.johncostella.com/magic/)
~~~
frozenport
FYI: The magic kernel isn't taken nearly as seriously by people in the field
of signal processing (almost my field). I'm always surprised as to why it
keeps popping up.
One of the many articles on the internet explaining why the magic kernel isn't
really that magic:
[http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2011/03/03-24-11-image-
filte...](http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2011/03/03-24-11-image-filters-and-
gradients.html)
------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679801).
------
tansey
Strangely enough, the author only mentions total variation denoising in
passing as a feature of SmartBlur. I would say this method is one of the most
common, especially when your image has sharp transitions and lots of solid
regions of color (e.g. pictures of buildings). I wrote what is effectively one
of two of the fastest TV denoising algorithms and implementations out there:
[https://github.com/tansey/gfl](https://github.com/tansey/gfl)
The way to use it in image processing is to basically think of each pixel as a
point on a graph, with edges between its adjacent pixels. Then you apply a
least squares penalty with an additional regularization penalty on the
absolute value of the difference between neighboring pixels. The result is
regions of constant pixel color.
~~~
dpwm
It wasn't too clear but I wonder if the author was referring to deconvolution
under a Total Variation prior -- this is a little different to deconvolving
and then applying TV denoising or just applying TV denoising.
Either way, the results of overdoing it with TV are the same: cartoony images
with large regions of constant colour. The difference is that incorporating TV
within iterative deconvolution reduces some compression artefacts and removes
some of the ripples around large discontinuities shown in the author's
pictures.
~~~
rer0tsaz
I agree that the staircasing effect is definitely the biggest drawback of
Total Variation. In the "Smoothed" picture the noise is removed but the
results are blocky.
The first way to deal with it is to take into account higher powers of the
differences, e.g. using a linear combination p-norms or a Huber function.
The second way is to take into account second order differences. This promotes
piecewise affine instead of piecewise constant functions. You can go further
and look at third order differences, but the improvement is minimal.
Other than being more complex, the biggest downside is that all of these
methods have some new parameter(s) to tune.
~~~
tansey
> Other than being more complex, the biggest downside is that all of these
> methods have some new parameter(s) to tune.
They're so fast to run though, that just doing warm-starts and a huge solution
path (or grid in the case of additional penalties) with a BIC selection
criteria is a pretty decent way to auto-tune the parameters.
------
dharma1
This is a very old link. Same feature has since landed in Photoshop
~~~
prewett
And Photoshop is expensive and is now rent-ware, which means Photoshop is a
non-starter, so the feature might as well not exist for me.
I've been looking for this article ever since I saw the link the first time it
was posted, so I am glad to see it! Plus, it's interesting, and you get source
code (unlike Photoshop)
------
pvitz
This reminds me of MaxEnt, which could be mentioned, too.
[http://www.maxent.co.uk/example_1.htm](http://www.maxent.co.uk/example_1.htm)
------
thearn4
Deconvolution is a very cool subject! A sizable portion of my dissertation was
dedicated to applications of linear algebra tricks to deconvolution and
denoising procedures for image restoration.
[https://etd.ohiolink.edu/ap/10?0::NO:10:P10_ACCESSION_NUM:ke...](https://etd.ohiolink.edu/ap/10?0::NO:10:P10_ACCESSION_NUM:kent1333415470)
------
schrodinger
So all those tv shows where someone just clicks "enhance" we're accurate after
all?
~~~
blahedo
Well, yes and no. I had exactly the same thought as I was reading the article,
but the bit about noise is important: in the presence of even a _tiny_ bit of
noise, the de-blur algorithm collapses pretty rapidly. And the "enhance!"
scenes in TV and movies are of images that are likely to be noisy.
They're also often un-detailed due to pixelation/low resolution as much as
from blur, which violates this algorithm's assumptions, so that would be
another reason that "click enhance" wouldn't work.
------
tghw
A friend has a software product that does image deblurring. His focuses mostly
on motion blur. Depending on the type of motion, it can work quite well.
[https://www.blurity.com/](https://www.blurity.com/)
------
williamsharkey
Can you measure the blur that I see when I do not wear glasses, and apply the
inverse function to an image, like my computer monitor, so that I can see
clearly without glasses? What sacrifices would be made -- dynamic range?
------
camperman
Are there security implications? If the last example was a blurred out license
key or address for instance, this technique might be able to restore it.
~~~
symmetricsaurus
Blurring or mosaicing is not very secure at all [1]. To be more safe block out
sensitive information with solid black. (Just remember to not leak any
information in the metadata, like an embedded thumbnail.)
[1]: [https://dheera.net/projects/blur](https://dheera.net/projects/blur)
~~~
camperman
Woah, lesson learned. Thanks for the link.
------
musgrove
Who takes pictures that are that crappy anymore?
~~~
anyfoo
Automated processes, quick snapshots that were taken under insufficient
control, pictures taken from moving platforms or of moving objects... Maybe
the picture was intentionally taken with other things in focus than the ones
you are interested in now.
Honestly, how your comment came to be escapes me. Can you seriously not see
the utility in those approaches? Do you really think blurry pictures are "not
a thing anymore"?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shopify is Down along with tens of thousands of stores - asnyder
Was just working on my store and lo and behold Shopify is down right when I was about to post things live. Funny, I was using Shopify instead of rolling my own so I wouldn't have to worry about things like this... maybe it's the universe telling me something :).
======
asnyder
Back up it seems, for me anyway.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
30 pounds in 30 days - TheFullStack
http://fullstack360.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/30-pounds-in-30-days/
======
netcan
"How long is a piece of string? It's impossible to answer that question. But,
if I _had_ to guess... in my experience, the string is 19 inches long."
This is the kind of thing a lot of consultants seem to post, including the
anecdotes of clients going with the cheap guys and the project failing. At the
end of the day, the OP's answer is no more convincing then the hypothetical
"outsource to Pakistan for 1/10th the cost." I think it's a consequence of
someone trying to "sell" to an inappropriate market. If you expect to pay $120
for a mattress, sitting you down and lecturing you on why you need a $1,200
mattress is unlikely to convince you. If you expect to pay $10 for a meal, a
$100 restaurant will not be getting your business. This post is the chef
hanging out with other chefs and restaurant people to have a chuckle at those
lame tourists who expect to pay $10 for a meal. The problem is that you are
dealing with people who don't go to restaurants. They're comparing eating out
to things they do know about like buying food in a shop.
The reality is that pricing development is tricky. Getting an "app" developed
if you know nothing about making software is tricky, even if you are willing
to pay _"well"_. A lot of projects fail. A lot of projects are not realistic
to begin with. Cost, development time, quality, the definition of MVP, exactly
how "bespoke" a project is, etc. all vary hugely. Quality is not always
correlated to price. You can pay $60k for your MVP and have that die too.
Developers will blame the clients and the clients will blame the developers.
~~~
brudgers
An experienced consultant - that is someone who is experienced in the
technical area as well as experienced consulting in that area can fairly
accurately estimate the amount of time a project will take. They can because
they know how they work and know how to lead the process to match their
workflow.
I've been in architecture for more than twenty years. I estimate how much and
what resources will be required all the time. Nobody has been developing iOS
apps that long, of course, and the iOS app industry doesn't go back to the
days of Vitruvius. Reading the article, I am reminded of stories about the
early days of building websites.
~~~
netcan
The issue is that if you are dealing with an inexperienced client, the project
you are quoting for and the project another consultant is quoting for is not
the same project, especially if it's an "MVP".
I like your comparison to website building during its early days. Gives us the
benefit of hindsight. One consultant was going to take a html page from a
previous project. Find and replace the client's colours in. Make 5 pages
(home, about us, product catalogue..) and then wait 6 months for his client to
fax over the "content."
Another consultant was going to use coldfusion to make a dynamically updating
copyright notice, & contact form and use templates to make the site "ecommerce
ready". He was going to hire a copywriter to work with the client. And (as an
optional extra), do CSS.
------
ajlburke
His quote does seem a bit high. In my experience (Rails and iOS developer) if
your back end is mostly RESTful resources and a simple data structure, and
your front end is standard iOS components like simple tableviews and a
NavigationController, you can get an MVP done in the $5k-$10k range in a week
or two.
HOWEVER: everybody has a different opinion of what is meant by "Minimum",
"Viable", and "Product". $5k gets you only bog-standard UI components and a
simple data model. Animations? Fancy graphics? Optimized performance? Search?
Custom UI? Graceful error handling?
Localization/Internationalization/Translation? Integrating with Facebook and
dealing with their constant poorly-documented changes to their API? These tend
to be little bullet points in the spec, but each on their own can take as much
work as the MVP does.
With modern tools it's pretty easy to build a basic version of an app quite
quickly. But it turns out that most people don't actually want a basic
version. Often they have to see the basic version first to realize that,
though.
So the question ends up being: how important is schedule/cost to you compared
with details/performance?
To be honest, though, most people who come to me wanting a simple iOS app are
better off with a mobile-optimized webapp instead. Much quicker to build,
already cross-platform, and no deployment delays while waiting for App Store
approval. Mobile apps might not be as sexy as a native app, but saving lots of
money is also pretty sexy.
~~~
zavulon
> His quote does seem a bit high. In my experience (Rails and iOS developer)
> ..., you can get an MVP done in the $5k-$10k range in a week or two.
That's because your experience is limited to development only. There's a lot
more steps involved in making a successful app or a site. Brand identity,
architecture, UX design (mockups/wireframes), and UI design are all steps that
have to be done BEFORE development even starts. The cost of that can be 20-30K
by itself.
There's also the cost of QA on different platforms, system analysis,
professional copy, etc. So yeah, his quote is actually on a low end.
Too many people seem to think that they can get away with hiring a developer
only.. then they wonder why their app/site doesn't do as well as they wanted
it to.
Source: I run a web/mobile development agency.
~~~
ajlburke
Sure - although the amount of upfront work required varies with your
definition of "Minimum" and "Viable".
I've done full-cycle apps with branding, architecture, UX, QA, promotion, etc.
and yes they _start_ at $30k - but they're finished polished products, while
the discussion here seems to be about MVPs.
As I said above, the biggest conflicts I see between developers and clients
are over the meanings of "Minimum" "Viable" and "Product".
------
benjaminwootton
Two developers working for 3 months feels more like 1.0 than MVP territory to
me.
$60k _is_ a lot of investment simply to test a concept, and would be a luxury
out of the price range of most small businesses, let alone individual
entrepreneurial subject matter experts who want to build a product - even
really committed ones with money to spend.
Assuming you actually want to win the business, why not pitch a much smaller
project to help them tease out some mockups and build 1 or 2 of the main
application flows to MVP level?
This wins you the smaller engagement now with the likelihood of the bigger
piece of work once the customer has been away and shown the concept to
customers.
This is why I don't really like these $2k and $5k MVP packages that people are
pitching on HN lately. Your iterations should start with mockups rather than
an MVP.
~~~
kranner
> Four weeks and $6,000? Sure, why not. IF I was shooting for a contract.
> Therein lies the key. I didn’t care what happened after each of those
> meetings. My plate is pretty full right now. My hunch is that the people who
> quoted much lower estimates and timeframes were shooting for the development
> work.
Apparently, OP is not particularly interested in getting the job. The point of
this post isn't entirely clear to me.
~~~
mbesto
> _OP is not particularly interested in getting the job_
It depends on _what_ job you're referring to. A job that pays and keeps your
profit margin and revenues consistent, or a job that could potentially end up
costing you way more than you thought?
He's pointing out that many clients come to him with completely unrealistic
views on developing, and yet are asking an expert (him) to advise him on how
to properly develop something.
------
brudgers
_"Every group I worked with in the past six months spent several orders of
magnitude more than that [$60,000] on their iOS products"_
$6,000,000. $60,000,000. But only if you act now. This is a limited time
offer. Operators are standing by.
Offer not valid in all areas. Certain
restrictions apply. Shipping and handl-
ing not included. Void where prohibited.
Results may not be typical.
~~~
PanMan
Exactly. While I'm sure there are apps that cost > 6 million (How much has
Path spend sofar?), the "several orders of magnitude" seems highly overstated
for an MVP.
~~~
loceng
It all depends on how honest of a person you are, and if you're willing to
take advantage of someone who might not know or perhaps not care how much they
are spending. If you have a bigger budget, sure you can do a lot more
experimentation - pay others to do experimentation and thinking for you, that
is - but if you are good at building relationships to feel out honest people,
have some direction yourself and are good at communicating it, then you can
come out on the lower end of costs.
------
eloisant
"Unfortunately, the developer used Phone Gap and when they needed to access
more complicated native API’s in an upgrade, the developer couldn’t get past
that barrier with the PhoneGap SDK"
The guy was not a good PhoneGap developer, you can write plugins to access any
native API you need.
~~~
steverb
Funny part is, THAT guy got the MVP done on time and under budget. It was only
when they went for the next that the developer ran into trouble.
~~~
rhizome
It's a nice bit of sophistry the writer uses to blame the developer rather
than the company. If your MVP becomes something you want to build upon, a
"VP," then you get some staff or something and get serious. It's not the MVP
dev's job to be the future source of code. They did their job, the company
just tried to be lazy about it.
~~~
anthonyb
The point of an MVP though, is to start small and build your VP incrementally.
If you can't do that it's not an MVP - it's a prototype.
~~~
rhizome
As the legend goes, an MVP is not even a prototype, but an ad or a landing
page that describes an idea to see if people respond and/or comment on it in a
usable way. The prototype form of an MVP can certainly be thrown out in favor
of a new codebase, and at any rate prototypes as a generic industrial concept
are routinely built by independents, contractors and small firms before the
manufacturing decisions have been made, before going to a larger concern to
build the product as refined from the prototype. That is, prototypes are
commonly used to generate funding for the actual product. Therefore I don't
think being an MVP coder who can't or won't move on to the final building
stage is anything to be ashamed of, and not anything to blame like this
consultant does. Not only that, but a lot of product-stage coders are terrible
at greenfielding.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project>
~~~
anthonyb
How is an ad a minimum viable product? That's insane. You can't sell it - it's
a marketing exercise, not a product. As a mechanism to get pre-orders, or
gauge demand, maybe, but it's still not a product.
The point is that for something to be a fully-fledged product, it has to have
certain features. They're expensive, so an MVP skips a lot of them in favor of
getting a product up quickly. _But_ you still have to add those features in
later. They're usually not optional.
Hence, an MVP that you can't add those features to to is not an MVP - it's a
prototype _. You will get beaten in the market when someone else adds whatever
your product is missing.
_ \- if it will (or should) be thrown away at the end of development, it's a
prototype. MVPs are not thrown away. Though from looking at wikipedia, even
they confuse the two.
------
GFischer
I live in Uruguay, and I can definitely believe it can be made for a lot less
than U$ 60.000 (for comparison, that's 3 years of my salary).
I actually have a quote from a local company called XSeed (
<http://www.xseed.com.uy/> ) for an app for both Android and iOs, and it comes
out for a third of the amount.
Yes, you can be burned if you don't know the locals, like the guys with the
Egyptians, or the Pakistanis. That's why many companies here in Uruguay get
the jobs - the ones that are responsible cost twice or three times as much as
the cheap Egyptian, Indian, etc.. companies, but they deliver, while being
vastly cheaper than US or European counterparts. The really good ones can
charge very close to US prices (go globalization :) ).
~~~
peterkelly
> I can definitely believe it can be made for a lot less than U$ 60.000
How can you make that judgement without knowing what was actually involved in
the projects?
~~~
GFischer
You're right, I should have clarified that it's based on the article's premise
of "two qualified engineers working full time ... and take about three months"
"At 12 weeks, that comes out to about $60,000"
That's what I'm talking about. I know that I can get two competent engineers
working three months for far less, for example the company above.
~~~
rhizome
Do those engineers work in English?
~~~
GFischer
Most of them do. Not many have top-level English, though (speaking generally,
not of that particular company).
------
wiremine
This reminds me a lot of the discussions I was having 12 or 13 years ago about
developing a website. "You want me to pay how much for a website?!?!? My
cousin can do that for 1/10th of that you're quoting."
Today, the difference between the plain-old website market and the mobile
market is that few people on the demand side of the mobile market have any
frame of reference or experience. How many people have bought a mobile app,
compared to the number of people who have built a reasonably sized website? My
guess the difference is a few orders of magnitude, maybe more.
Beyond that, I think it is also the sign of an immature supply side. If you
wanted a blog 12/13 years ago, you had to pay someone to make it. Now you get
one for free with blogger or wordpress. If you want a decent ecomm solution,
you don't have to role your own.
Eventually both sides will figure it out: the supply side will add niche/task
specific tools [1], and the demand side will gain the experience sorting
through the options. [2]
[1] We see this this with a few of the dumb "hey, add your RSS feed" options
for mobile apps.
[2] Also, equally likely in my mind: the raw horsepower of mobile hardware
will make skinny clients more of an option, disrupting the app economy in
general.
------
mmsimanga
Seems most comments are nitpicking some of the amounts and references he uses
to make some of his points. This is what I read into it as a developer who has
been in similar types of meetings:
1\. Charge what you are worth not what the person who has the App idea wants
to pay you which in some cases is next to nothing. 2\. Pay no attention to
people saying, "but my friend says can do it in 3 days". Tell the truth and if
they can't accept the truth move on. There is no point in explaining to
someone that the most sustainable way to lose weight and keep it off is years
of eating well and exercise.
------
peterkelly
What is an app?
The problem with this discussion is that you could be talking about anything
from a simple program that displays some content (e.g. for marketing
purposes), to some basic social interaction, right up to a full-scale word
processor or 3D modelling program.
The amount of time and effort required to build a product can differ by orders
of magnitude depending on what that product is. So it's senseless to talk
about "$X is an reasonable/unreasonable price to build an app" without any
context about what it is you want built.
------
DanielShir
This reminds me of a conversation I had back when I was freelancing.
It was along the lines of:
Client - "Aren't you afraid that Pakistani/Indian developers would undercut
you and everyone would go there for their apps?"
Me - "If everyone were going to outsource there, I'd have more work fixing
that stuff up, not less"
~~~
GFischer
While there probably are bad developers in Pakistan, India, Egypt or Uruguay,
I'm sure there's a huge cost asymmetry which should work out in those
countries' favor, and by that I mean good developers over there (and here in
Uruguay) that are earning a fraction of what an equivalent U.S. developer is
making.
What they need is somebody that can filter the good ones from the chaff (knows
the locals), AND has contacts and good standing among the buyers, AND has the
project management skills to make the outsourced team deliver.
~~~
InvisibleCities
>good developers over there (and here in Uruguay) that are earning a fraction
of what an equivalent U.S. developer is making.
As it turns out, people from India/Pakistan/Uruguay who are smart enough to
build complex software systems are also smart enough to go on glassdoor,
realize they are being fucked, and then come over here (or start charging
higher rates). The only ones who keep charging 1/10th the cost are the ones
who have to.
~~~
ricardobeat
Moving to the US is not the smartest move if you have a much lower cost of
living in your home country. Trying to charge the same as a local US
developer, without considering familiarity, proximity, language, etc. isn't
smart either.
~~~
GFischer
Uruguay has a decent standard of living, so most of us don't want to move out,
unless forced to by economic conditions.
It is extremely stressful to move to a foreign country where you won't speak
the language correctly, you don't family and friends and the social and
psychological safety net you're used to, and you don't know the local customs,
AND you'll be a second-class person even if you do somehow manage to get legal
papers (which are a huge source of stress in and of themselves).
That's why most people that do are either young people (more adaptable) or
families under economic hardship.
In my case, my girlfriend won't consider moving to the U.S., and I won't
consider moving without legal papers, which means a H1B visa for me, or moving
to Canada and starting the long citizenship process.
That's why many smart people will accept lower wages in order to stay with
their families and friends and environment.
I know firsthand what it means to emigrate, one of my brothers is living in
the United Arab Emirates and tries to convince me to emigrate very often (I'd
instantly double or triple my salary, plus the UAE are much cheaper than
Uruguay), and I have family in Austria and Canada. All three countries are
great (I like Austria the most, but I don't speak much German), but all of
them represent all the challenges outlined above.
------
jiggy2011
Software dev pricing is weird since it is so easy to _grossly_ undercut
yourself or overprice yourself by an entire order of magnitude.
I can certainly sympathise with people who have sent reasonable estimates and
have received somewhat borderline insulting responses like "Wow, I could buy a
used car for that!" or "That's nearly what my plumber charges!".
However in a certain sense I can't help but feel the industry has brought this
upon itself. I remember ~2000 when websites were a new thing.
There were contractors around who would happily go in and quote very large
sums of money for really very small amounts of (often very poor quality) work.
Since the market had not really had a chance to self-adjust it's prices yet
people would often just accept these costs without understanding what they
were buying.
I remember a popular tactic being for designers to literally rip the HTML for
a competitors website, switch the logos around and come back with a $10,000
bill.
So naturally the smart teenagers with a lot of free time to learn saw an
opportunity to rebuild these websites better for the price of a few pizzas.
This taught the market that costs could be _significantly_ lower and also that
the correlation between price and quality was very loose.
These kids also figured out the value of sharing code and ideas with each
other, leading to a sort of open source renaissance.
Now that those teenagers have grown up and have to feed their families during
a global recession those in developing nations are basically pulling the same
trick on them that they had pulled back in the day.
You also have the added problem that there a sort of "iceberg" going on here.
For example one can build an impressively featured website in around an hour
simply by uploading one of the popular CMS and shopping cart systems to a
shared webhost and copy pasting some content.
Of course, once you do such a thing you will get the familiar "this is great
_buy_ wouldn't it be ever greater if this drop down menu just sort of did
_this_? I mean this entire thing took you an hour , so that change should take
like 10 seconds right?" , "Well actually, I will need to develop a custom
module to do X and then interface with Y so it's probably 4-8 hours
depending.."
At that point it might be hard to convince a customer that you are not somehow
trying to pull a fast one..
------
pjungwir
This article (and the comments here) remind me of something I read in
_Managing the Professional Service Firm_ by David Maister: whether you're
hiring a lawyer, a car mechanic, or anything in between, you usually have
little ability to asset their technical merits, so you have to choose based on
other factors. That could be price, but it can also be things like reputation,
responsiveness, patience & clarity in answering your questions, etc. Realize
it's the same way when someone is thinking of hiring you. The article & these
comments mostly focus on technical questions, and indeed if the tech is bad
enough you have project failure. But if you're talking with technically un-
savvy clients, you should help them realize you have more to offer than just a
lower risk of botched tech, certainly more than just "better code."
Particularly as a sole contractor, you can offer them a more personal
relationship with wise guidance that they aren't going to get by hiring their
cousin or the cheapest programmer they can find on elance.com.
------
VLM
I'm most surprised the MVP effort can be so consistently estimated. It might
be that the pool of "apps" is extremely shallow, so they're just
reimplemention #1231 of "XYZ" therefore estimation is simple based on
extensive past experience reimplenting #1230, #1229, etc. "fart app #2935315"
takes just as long to MVP as doggcatcher or evernote?
Also a major problem I've experienced is trying to force what I consider the
technical requirements for a MVP past the non-technical people barrier, I
didn't see that in the discussion, maybe it was assumed. For example, in my
opinion, at least some minimal backup strategy is part of the MVP, whereas the
non-technical types just reply "well, if THE hard drive crashes, we'll just
sue the hosting provider, my buddy is a lawyer so he'll work cheap" or "if it
blows up, you'll just work 36 hours straight on salary to fix it, right, so
don't waste money/time preventing it from blowing up or adding debugging code
or monitoring code, just work on features for the PR checkboxes".
------
tudorizer
These type of clients smell like deja vu to me and the post is a good light
education for these kind of clients.
For people who get shocked at 60K for a full stack solution: go with the devs
from [insert any outsourcing country here] or with the friend and keep a
journal of how things went. I'd be damn curious to read it... (even though I
already know the outcome).
~~~
GFischer
Ok, when I start development of my app here in Uruguay I will :) .
My guess is that we will find the normal troubles of any other development
project.
It's kind of cheating though, since I'll be here to supervise and collaborate,
and that eases most of the communication problems.
------
seivan
For most iOS applications you don't necessarily need a designer and two
developers. Trim the fat.
One developer is more than enough for most iOS applications that doesn't cross
into games and physics.
You also don't need an "Mobile UX, UI, iOS designer expert" either. Just get a
good developer that can do both, instead of mixing science with snake oil.
In the end, one guy to be the product owner, develop and design will be
leaner, and far more better than involving more people.
Less is more.
~~~
robmcm
Less that can do more in less time is normally more expensive. Seperating out
areas into design, front end and back end development also splits your risk.
~~~
bguthrie
Not necessarily. Yes, the comparative advantage of roles playing to their
strengths can net you a lot of short-term gains, but you run a tremendous risk
of getting stuck if one person quits or get hit by a bus, for example.
Knowledge sharing via cross pollination of roles is a good risk mitigation
strategy.
~~~
robmcm
Yes but if you had it split into three experts for each area the chance of
they all getting hit by a bus?
Also I think if you hire an expert in field x, there is a lot higher chance
that their coding style and practice will be easier for another expert in
field x to pick up. Ever seen a developers photoshop files :p
------
tylerc230
It's so true. I've been a freelance iOS developer for a year now and half of
my contracts have been fixing amateur looking code of large consulting firms.
Is this endemic of iOS work or all software development? My theory is that
consulting firms have trouble hiring senior engineers because working for a
consulting firm isn't "sexy".
~~~
tudorizer
define "sexy" here
~~~
tylerc230
High profile companies outside of tech circles.
------
unstoppable
60k might be a bit much... we can often get a mostly functional app off the
ground for 30k. It just depends on specs.
Web MVPs (landing page with a signup form) can be done easily from anywhere
between $200-1000. Yes, I realize there's stuff like unbounce, but even with
those, they still take a couple hours to set up and properly split test. If
you've never done this before, you can easily burn through that very quickly,
and even if you have done this before, and you're valuing your time as any
good founder should, then you're burning through that value allotment very
quickly.
As for the foreign quotes, I've taken over plenty of jobs where it was started
by a foreign firm for a tenth of the cost of what US firms charge... quality
is usually terrible, and the reason I took over is because they couldn't get
it finished. It's occasionally been so bad that we had to scrap their entire
project within 6 months.
------
bdreadz
I've had a lot of these types of meetings. Everyone has an app idea. I'm
always ears though because ideas have come to me that are very interesting.
The noise to signal ratio though is pretty terrible.
It's always interesting to have them reference apps and designs that they
think their app should end up looking like. Very quickly a general breakdown
of things in regards to the app they are looking to build can follow. Even
taking the approach of outsourcing and painting a picture of how that works.
A lot of times I've gone the route with at least doing the mockups of the
pages with a little on how the UI will work. It's something that I know I'm
selling that will be of value to them even if they choose not to have us
continue on with the development and to just really boil down the idea and
even more importantly what kinda of money and time it's going to take to
develop the idea.
------
beering
When we needed native Android and iOS versions of our app, we contracted it
out to a couple Indian developers. We figured that the development was pretty
straightforward - it was essentially a port of our mobile webpage that had
some performance issues, so we had all the server-side endpoints and a working
example to copy from.
Was their work output buggy? Sure. But they got it done at a reasonable speed
and cheaply, and they fixed the bugs as we noticed them (and we were paying
them to...). For us, being cash-strapped and needing apps just to say we have
them, it was pretty OK. I think it worked for us because we didn't expect a
perfect, polished app, and the requirements were well specified from the get-
go.
------
andybak
In software there is a correlation between spending money and getting good
quality work done. However - it's only a correlation.
Yes - some people get their nephew to build a modern, well coded, SEO-friendly
and accessible, ajax-driven, e-commerce site for $800 but they probably just
got lucky. A lot of nephews get out of their depth and never deliver.
And yes - some people spend a couple of million on the project with the same
specs and get given a piece of crap in return. But on the whole - like good
whiskey - the price tag is a good indicator of quality and a good way to
reduce risk.
So - like many areas of enquiry - anecdotes aren't incredibly useful. If
anyone has got any tips on finding the magic nephew, however, I'm all ears.
~~~
onemorepassword
I have no tips on finding the magic nephew, but I can point you to plenty of
software shops that will gladly burn a couple of million for you and give you
a piece of crap in return. And maybe worst of all: they're not even
deliberately trying to screw you.
The magic nephew may be rare, but my 25 years worth of anecdotal evidence
suggests the latter example is quite common. And it's this experience that
makes people very wary of spending a lot of money on software development.
------
timjahn
Amen brother.
To me, the key is right here: "My hunch is that the people who quoted much
lower estimates and timeframes were shooting for the development work."
Firms/individuals/groups that quote dirt cheap prices are probably either a)
desperate for the work (which makes ya wonder why) and/or b) not caring about
the work they do at all (therefore producing a sub par final product).
A big mission of my new startup matchist (<http://matchist.com/talent>) is to
filter out these clients for freelance developers, so they only deal with
those who aren't looking for 30 lbs in 30 days.
We're not 100% there yet but we're working damn hard at it.
------
MatthewPhillips
Fast, good and cheap. Pick any two.
~~~
julien_c
Or one.
~~~
venus
Or none. That's the thing - that "pick two" saying actually applies only to
competent practitioners. Actually getting two is the best case scenario!
I have seen projects where the implementers happily go way over time, way over
budget, and fail to deliver anything at all.
------
desireco42
Excellent metaphor, I like how this post explained simply difficult problem.
I can expand on it that I also ran into, like most of us, on similar
comparisons and while I don't think it is wrong to seek help overseas,
especially in places like India/Pakistan, I think that it is completely wrong
to have clueless person seek help and then when they get burned, come back
running to me and tell me about those bad, bad, people over there.
So again, excellent metaphor.
------
mbesto
From the Project management triangle:
_Like any human undertaking, projects need to be performed and delivered
under certain constraints. Traditionally, these constraints have been listed
as "scope," "time," and "cost"._ [1]
It's amazing how often I need to reiterate this to clients and potential
clients.
[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle>
------
darkarmani
Thinking about the title, I just kept thinking of Christian Bale losing 60
pounds in 4 months. If that took him 4 months, I don't know how you'd lose 30
pounds in 30 days (well in a health way).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinist#Production>
------
startupstella
We deal with educating clients on the cost of apps and MVPS all the time at
matchist. We get clients who have been burned and understand the value of not
outsourcing overseas, yet I think there is still sticker shock at the costs
associated with building exactly what you want. What do you think is the
solution to this?
------
kamelot
This article really got my goat on so many levels.
Nice response here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5129675>
Full disclosure: I am an investor in the response posted to the OP.
------
shwetanka
Response to OP: <http://blog.launchyard.com/response-to-30-pounds-in-30-days>
------
arvcpl
Funny, I have a completely opposite experience :)
It really depends on people, not about location. Talent can be EVERYWHERE, as
well as not so talented ones :)
------
gtirloni
1 pound every day.. that sure ain't a very healthy diet. Go easy, bro.
------
logn
I make $48/hr at my fulltime job. I take an odd freelance job here and there
and charge the same rate to my clients. Sure, I could charge more but I don't
have a huge portfolio. So, he charges $125/hr and has 3 examples of clients
whose previous devs failed. Must mean he's correct.
------
cma
This is ridiculous, the Simpson-Bowles commission didn't come up with a
recommendation:
"The Commission shall vote on the approval of a final report containing a set
of recommendations to achieve the objectives set forth in the Charter no later
than December 1, 2010. The issuance of a final report of the Commission shall
require the approval of not less than 14 of the 18 members of the Commission."
They never had that vote.
[http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-
bowle...](http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-bowles-
simpson-commission-did-not-issue-a-report)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Unexpected Math Behind Van Gogh's “Starry Night” - erkose
http://www.openculture.com/2014/11/the-unexpected-math-behind-van-goghs-starry-night.html
======
acqq
Relatively inaccurate, even if full of colors. The original work:
[http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0606246](http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0606246)
------
teddyh
Annoyingly, neither the article, video, _or_ original paper show _any_ images
of (or links to) the actual paintings:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_van_Gogh_%281853-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_van_Gogh_%281853-1890%29_-_Wheat_Field_with_Crows_%281890%29.jpg)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_with_Cypress_and_Star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_with_Cypress_and_Star)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_1...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_106.jpg)
~~~
tyang
Maybe edit the Wikipedia entry?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lifelong debunker takes on arbiter of neutral choices - adam
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/june9/diaconis-69.html
======
gjm11
What an awful title.
"Lifelong debunker": Persi Diaconis, an interesting chap who used to be a
professional magician but turned to mathematics and is now a professor at
Stanford. (His best-known work is on the statistics of riffle-shuffles: how
many such shuffles do you need to do to make your pack of cards "random
enough"?)
"Arbiter of neutral choices": a coin-toss.
What the title actually means: Diaconis is doing some work on the behaviour of
coin-tosses; he has a simplified model of coin-tossing that suggests that
there should be a small bias in favour of having the coin land the same way up
as it started; he's doing (or, rather, getting some other people to do) some
experimental work aimed at tuning the model on the basis of high-speed video
footage of real coin tosses.
And, er, the story ends there: he isn't finished yet. But supposedly it's
looking as if there might be a 51:49 bias. That would be large enough to be of
some practical interest -- though maybe not very much since, as the article
mentions, a skilled coin tosser can make them come up quite reliably whichever
way s/he chooses.
~~~
bfung
The background story is that he was trying to beat the odds from being cheated
at a casino using shaved dice; the presumption that dice not even on all sides
would land more favorably one way than five others. This was before his foray
into statistics. After he went into statistics, he discovered that millimeters
shaved off a complex shape landing on a rough surface was something very hard
to account for. A more simple problem was coin tosses.
The first thing that popped in my head was that if the coin tossed was to hit
a "rough" surface on the ground, all bets are off again. The article doesn't
specify is the experiment was tossing a coin and catching it (which I myself
can reliably toss and bias it to the side i want, catching it in my hand, w/o
using stats to prove it), or if the coin was to land on a surface of some
sort.
------
geekfactor
TL;DR. Summary anyone?
~~~
tzs
From the OS X Summary service, set on about 10%:
To bet strategically, one had to calculate the odds that a die with one-
hundredth of an inch shaved off an edge would tumble out of the box on any
given side.
..."Barely six to nine months after he struggled with my advanced calculus
course, he was applying to the finest graduate schools to continue his study,"
says D'Aristotile, who has taught probability courses at Stanford the past
four summers.
...A recommendation letter from Martin Gardner was enough to lure Fred
Mosteller -- a statistician on the selection committee who had dabbled with
magic -- into taking Diaconis as one of his graduate students.
...To make his point, Diaconis commissioned a team of Harvard technicians to
build a mechanical coin tosser -- a 3-pound, 15-inch-wide contraption that,
when bolted to a table, launches a coin into the air such that it lands the
same way every single time. ... But what he really wanted to know was whether
unrehearsed tosses -- by ordinary folk who flip coins with unpredictable
speeds and heights and catch them at different angles -- would show that the
outcome of the act was, in fact, random.
...Diaconis first approached statistics Associate Professor Susan Holmes, who
is also his wife, and asked if he could try her computer's camera.
..."What that means is, when I'm stuck on a problem, I feel free to call
somebody who's an expert and try to talk them into helping."
While he and Holmes were analyzing the coin toss images, for instance, coffee-
shop conversations with physics professors Kapitulnik and Stephen Shenker
spurred them to consider the effects of air resistance, an important factor
they had neglected in previous analyses.
...Several months ago, Diaconis recognized that Andersen's work in the
statistical mechanics of fluids sounded similar to a mathematical theory being
developed by of one of his colleagues, mathematics Professor Horng-Tzer Yau,
who came to Stanford last fall.
...Mathematics doctoral student Joe Blitzstein agrees, noting that the most
important thing he's learned from Diaconis, his thesis adviser, is "how to
recognize that one problem is really the same as another, in a different
guise."
...Though Diaconis had made a key conceptual leap by connecting falling cats
and flipped coins, he still hadn't found a camera that could adequately
capture the complex motion of a split-second coin toss. Without these images,
it would be impossible to derive the quantitative model needed to calculate
the size of a coin flip's predicted bias. ... Over a latte at Bytes Café in
the Packard Electrical Engineering Building a year ago, Diaconis asked
Wandell, an expert in human vision and color perception, if he knew anything
about slow-motion photography. ... Two years earlier, a team led by Wandell
and electrical engineering Professor Abbas El Gamal had built a speedy digital
camera that shoots 10,000 frames per second -- 400 times faster than a typical
camcorder.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Greenwald's keynote at 30c3: priorities for privacy activists - jobeirne
http://jameso.be/2014/01/01/greenwald.html
======
salient
Michael Hayden, former chief of NSA, recently said that the young people
should give up on their "romanticized" idea of transparency (for the
government). That's some irony for you, considering his NSA is the one that
started going after "total information awareness", by collecting everything on
everyone, and trying to kill privacy and anonymity worldwide.
Why isn't his idea "romanticized", too? Also, if anything, it's the
governments that should have total transparency, not the citizens. They are
the public people working on the interest of the public, and the public should
be able to verify that what they're doing is in its interest. Instead, we see
the opposite. They're trying to make every person an open book to them, while
they're increasingly denying FOIA requests, to the point where even the police
does it (NYPD especially).
That's not how it's supposed to work. Maybe Hayden and the others that think
like him, should give up on the idea of "romanticized" tyranny, that they want
to establish.
------
moloch
Direct link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEJIR0-KJu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEJIR0-KJu0)
------
rmc
If you hack corporations you can very defintly "get a gun pointed at you".
There are laws against hacking, even hacking corporations, and you can be
convicted. You can also be sued.
~~~
falcolas
Agreed. Swartz wasn't convicted of hacking the government. He was accused of
hacking a private corporation. The fact that it was the government prosecuting
it like they did shows how little difference there is between the targets.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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What is the most elegant line of code you've seen? - rshlo
http://www.quora.com/Elegant-Code/What-is-the-most-elegant-line-of-code-youve-seen
======
bdfh42
The link demanded a "sign up" so no way.
Probably the most elegant (and eloquent?) line would be in BASIC:
END
says it all.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub repository to track cloud GPU offerings and promo codes for free credits - binga
https://github.com/binga/cloud-gpus
======
sunnykgupta
An interesting compilation.
Are you planning to update this frequently yourself? Or relying on the
ecosystem to maintain and update?
~~~
binga
Thanks for your interest Sunny.
I am planning to actively scourge the internet for new providers, update the
repository with useful insights about the usage of GPUs for ML practitioners
and also help enthusiasts with lowering the barrier of entry by passing on
information about promo codes & credits.
Ofcourse, if the ecosystem also sees necessity of having such a one-stop
destination, it'd be great because the entire community if much better off
having it rather than not! :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Packt Publishing $5 eBooks and Videos - jsingleton
https://www.packtpub.com/
======
jsingleton
Full disclosure - my book on making high performance web apps (in ASP.NET
Core) is one of these: [https://www.packtpub.com/application-
development/aspnet-core...](https://www.packtpub.com/application-
development/aspnet-core-10-high-performance)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Rosa and I've created a project to help travelers fit into new culture - sergioruiz
https://www.waysily.com
======
Kengomomichi00
Hi, What is your goal with this project? Your title is: travelers fit into new
culture, but I can see that you offer only local schools and teachers.
~~~
sergioruiz
Hi kengo, thank for your comment. Yes, right now we have a small side project
to show in the map local schools and teachers. But our main goal is add some
features such as: \- Show on the map the location of travelers and locals for
being able to have a language exchange. - Bring together locals and travelers
at local events created by the members of the community.
~~~
Kengomomichi00
Ok, but I think you should change your PUV to something like: 'travel and fit
into new culture' or something related to your main goal. On the other hand, I
think that find schools and locals teachers should not be your main product,
it should be a section of Waysily, not the main value that you give your
users, because I am not sure if there is a big market to this.
~~~
sergioruiz
Yes Kengo, that is our goal, right now we are receiving feedback from our
users (you could see a left square float button on landing page in order to
choose what do you think should be the next feature, and based on the result
we'll work on the most requested option). Thank you so much for your comments.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Freelancing – from nothing to 5 solid leads a week - juliankrispel
http://reactrocket.com/post/from-nothing-to-5-leads-a-week/
======
RickS
TL;DR: Split test a niche website, slam it with paid traffic, network like a
mofo, make it easy to get in touch with you.
Good advice, in the abstract, but it feels like this post is hyping up the
golden path, and totally ignoring the realities of the freelancing slog. I did
it for years. Pipeline management SUCKS, at least for a not-so-social guy like
me.
So these 5 leads...
Why just 5? Paid traffic and landing pages should be pretty scaleable. Are the
5 leads actually new people from web traffic, or is this the long tail of an
in-network recruiting burst?
Are they actually quality leads? I could hit the craigslist gigs section and
get you 5 leads in 30 seconds, but they're trash. What kinds of projects, on
what timeline, and at what price, were these leads? If they're not sane
organizations with 5k+ contracts, a disclaimer is needed. If they're 10k+
contracts, start a business selling them, I'll buy.
How long do they take to close? What's the closing like? The post mentions a
chatbox on a website. Do people use it? What do they ask? I find those very
corporate. if you're looking for JS-focused customers, do they also find those
grating, like most tech people do?
The post says the rate was up and too high, and so he got a lot of requests.
How many is a lot? What was the rate? What did it change to? How was that
decision made? What was the customer response?
Basically, this post really light on unique content. It talks like it's
selling the "secret sauce" but in reality, it's a painfully high level
overview of some very boilerplate advice.
I want to hear about a real human experience, not a maybe-scaleable super high
level overview of babbys first marketing engine.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: What do you use/do for keeping your eyes healthy - peyloride
Especially those who are against the screen all day. I need some advice.
======
walterbell
Move monitor further away, set brightness to match ambient light, adjust
contrast, [http://www.clickonf5.org/hardware/adjust-brightness-
contrast...](http://www.clickonf5.org/hardware/adjust-brightness-contrast-
monitor/3846)
If you wear glasses, ask optometrist for computer prescription.
Force yourself to blink when using the computer, [https://iristech.co/blink-
detection/](https://iristech.co/blink-detection/)
Take regular breaks: set 20 min timer, look for 20 seconds at an object at
least 20 feet away, [https://lifehacker.com/5976390/use-the-20-20-20-rule-to-
figh...](https://lifehacker.com/5976390/use-the-20-20-20-rule-to-fight-the-
effects-of-sitting-all-day-long)
Avoid flourescent lighting.
Avoid extended sitting: [https://glarminy.com/2016/11/29/sedentary-lifestyle-
cause-in...](https://glarminy.com/2016/11/29/sedentary-lifestyle-cause-
insomnia-tired-eyes-photophobia/)
Install flux or redshift on computer to reduce blue light after sunset.
~~~
appedus
Awesome tips. Just adding to it:-
Hydrate yourself. Have your sipper around you all the time.
~~~
nextos
Do a cheap OCT scan of your eyes every year.
------
imhoguy
Over 25 years in front of screen so here is my recipie:
* flicker-free matte IPS screen
* keeping optimal room light and screen dim
* flux or redshift on linux
* doing frequent breaks and finishing work earlier when I feel eyes may suffer, also intentionally blinking more often to rehydrate them naturally.
* try to not rub eyes with hands, if you need then wash them first.
* habit of changing position and looking at the distance while in thought process
* keeping healthy humidity in the room, especially while room heating or air-con is on.
On TODO list:
* some intelligent audio notification once some long running terminal command finishes or screen updates, possibly paired with webcam to detect my absence.
* switching between dark IDE/terminal theme and usually bright browser pages hurts my eyes, therefore I usually stick to bright themes. Maybe color inversion limited to browser would solve that.
------
j_s
Easing Eye Strain with the Right Lenses (2012) |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15373992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15373992)
Exercising for Healthier Eyes |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7480946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7480946)
Save your eyes, start using f.lux |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5036590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5036590)
#eyehealth
------
troydavis
I’ll put basic stuff in here, which should be obvious but from talking with
ophthalmologists, often doesn’t happen:
\- visit an eye doctor on whatever schedule they recommend (usually every
other year) and immediately if your vision changes.
“Immediately” is not “I’ll call/go if it’s still a happening in 2-3 days” like
it might be for, say, going to the doctor with fever. Don’t wait.
\- When I’m wearing contacts, I usually take them out and re-wet them (not
just eye drops) in the middle of the day.
\- Obvious but statstically, someone reading this probably does it: don’t ever
reuse contact solution.
~~~
Kevin_S
Don't reuse contact solution? Uh-oh, I do this. It stays in the case for 2-3
days typically. Apparently I should stop...
~~~
mpatobin
If some nasty microbes get under your contact you're going to have a bad time
------
drakonka
I use flux and my phone's night mode. I also try to look away from the PC and
focus on a more distant object once in a while during the day (luckily I have
a window right behind me, lots of interesting focus points). I'm not as
consistent with this as I'd like to be though. I also had LASIK in 2009 which
had the biggest positive impact on my eyes of anything else I've done so far.
------
aglionby
If you're asking this because you've noticed something weird with your eyes,
things are blurry, or they hurt, go to the opticians. They're best placed to
tell you what to do.
Otherwise, I use a couple of lamps to up the ambient light if the light in the
room is otherwise too dim. Eye drops can also be helpful if you're using a
screen for exceptionally long periods per day.
~~~
paulcole
>opticians
You'd be much better off going to an ophthalmologist, an actual MD who
specializes in vision and the eye.
Opticians just do prescriptions and eyeglass stuff (at least in the US).
------
tugberkk
I don't know if anyone heard of Steve Maxwell, he is a well known fitness
educator. He is doing what he calls eye yoga, which is some simple eye
exercises.
Below you can find his morning routine which includes some eye yoga;
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea0ReKfszEM&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea0ReKfszEM&t=2s)
Simply
------
ezconnect
I wished I rested my eyes more and rehydrated my body more frequently. When I
lost my eyes ability to focus it was like an on off switch, it can focus only
on my screen after a few minutes of staring at it. After a few months I cant
control it anymore and had to wear glasses. Doctor says at age 40 above eyes
get dried and lose ability to gocus because the lens is alteady hard
------
dineshkapoor27
Take a break every 1 hour for 2-5 minutes. Use rehydration drops if you have
dry eyes. Avoid low lighting areas and I try to reduce brightness in my laptop
if it hurts my eyes. Supplements for Vitamin A,C, B3 etc. are also helpful
(use it after a medical advice though).
~~~
EnderMB
On the subject of drops, it's worth speaking to a pharmacist about getting eye
cream/gel if you find that you suffer from dry eyes.
I used to get occasional headaches, and maybe once or twice a year I'd get a
minor corneal abrasion, which I assumed was from stuff getting into my eyes.
After a while, I was recommended by a doctor to try an eye cream for night
use, and the difference was vast. Alongside my eyes feeling much better, I was
sleeping better as well, which the doctor put down to how the eyes move in the
head while asleep, and my eyes scratching against my lids.
I use drops during the day when I feel the need to, and on occasion when I
feel tired I'll use the eye cream. Since then, no problems with my eyes and no
headaches.
------
misframer
I have perfect vision but I use +1.00 reading glasses. That way my eye muscles
aren't working hard all the time to focus up close.
------
spotman
drink lots of carrot juice, it’s high in vitamin A
| {
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New Drug for Eczema Is Successful in Two New Trials - salmonet
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/health/severe-eczema-atopic-dermatitis-drug.html?_r=0
======
cycomachead
I saw "drug" and "ec..ma" and my mind first jumped to "ECMAScript Drug".
I have no idea what that says about me...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Review our web app - onktak
http://browsedit.com
browsedit is a web application for designing web pages/web user interfaces directly on the browser. Currently supports firefox, chrome and safari browsers with other browser support coming soon.
======
_sh
I have absolutely no idea what it is or how to use it. It's a web page editor
right?
I clicked on the image of a web site on the landing page which loaded what
looks like a designer/editor, but clicking around and trying to type things
(assuming its an editor) had no result. I 'added a page' or something, but
this just confused me even more: now there's the text 'this is just an example
page' and I've no idea if I'm supposed to edit it, or what (but I can't anyway
so forget it). I looked into the DOM tree to find a text area or _anything_ I
could use to interact, but no luck.
I tried, honestly.
~~~
onktak
Thanks. Yes, it is a web page editor. By clicking on the code button, you get
the html code which can be edited and to view the design you click on the
design button. The work flow is the same as (text editor[desktop app]) +
(check on browser) but this time everything is on the browser. Usually "click
and drag" programs don't spit maintainable code which is something i want to
avoid.
------
T-R
Very cool. It'd maybe be nicer with a double pane layout, with the code and
the preview side by side, using a key combination to reload the preview.
Still, you'd have trouble convincing me to give up my favorite editor,
browser, and alt+tab,F5. Might be good for ChromeOS users, though.
------
coderdude
It seems pretty cool, but I broke it, so I assume you'll want to know how. :)
I added a new page named butt.html (I usually pick a random word when I don't
care what I'm doing with it. I would have just pretended that it was test.html
but you might have logs somewhere to help you track errors so I'm being
honest.) I went back to the first page that shows (demo.html, I think) and
went to code view. I then changed the href of the anchor tag surrounding the
logo to butt.html and when I went back to the design mode and clicked the logo
it attempted to take me to browsedit.com/butt.html. When I clicked back, only
butt.html was in the editor.
Hope that helps. Really great progress so far.
------
ehutch79
why is this better than a dedicated editor like coda? or even notepad with
firefox split screened. if i have to click anyway, might as well be clicking
reload.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Falling through the holes in Texas' pro-life laws - stopinsanity16
https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/4c7fjx/my_nightmare_with_texas_womens_health_laws/
======
stopinsanity16
The couple to whom this happened have now gone public:
[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/31/texas-
force...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/31/texas-forced-this-
woman-to-deliver-a-stillborn-baby.html) .
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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New ARM processor: 2.5 GHz, quad-core, with virtualization hardware - pjscott
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2368924,00.asp
======
pjscott
Of course their main market is smart phones and tablets, but this looks
especially compelling for servers. Someone like Amazon could buy a bunch of
these, attach a bunch of memory to each one, and use a hypervisor to offer
something like their newly-announced micro instances. The hardware cost could
be lowered, and the low-power nature of the chips would really be useful in
large datacenters. Or look at Google: if they can fit the servers for
responding to search queries into the 4 GB address space that the Cortex-A15
offers to a single guest OS, this could seriously lower the cost of doing
searches -- something that's even more important now that they're doing
instant searches as you type.
Of course, it'll be a few years before you can actually buy these. In the
meantime, a lot of what I mentioned above can be done with the Cortex-A9,
which is just now coming into mass production.
~~~
wmf
Why Google doesn't want to use ARM servers (yet):
<http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/36448.pdf>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Latency SLOs done right - camel_gopher
https://www.circonus.com/2018/08/latency-slos-done-right/
======
postwait
I find this discussion fascinating. When I hear people advocate for SLOs (and
SLIs) they are often quite rigorous in how they approach it... that is until
the very last step where they hand-wave the math and produce numbers that
don't mean anything (like averages of percentiles and such). Often times
(specifically for sites/services that have undulating traffic volume like more
users in the day than at night), the incorrect mathematics can produce wildly
inaccurate outputs... so all that rigor and you end up determining that you've
failed or succeeded when, in fact, the opposite is true.
I appreciate the rigor in this post because it provides clear and simple
instructions on doing the last step (your calculations) correctly so that all
those fancy SLOs are actually honest.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Second Serve Problem - cwan
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/09/the_second_serv.html
======
Someone
The numbers look conspicuous to me. "If they get their first service in,
itself a 65%-ish probability for a top player, they will win the point with a
roughly 75% likelihood." implies a probability of winning the point on first
service of just under 50%. Add in the "only 50%-ish of the time" for the
second service and the 0% for the 3% of double faults, and I do not see how
top players can win so many of their service games.
It still could be valid data for the whole set of professional tennis plagers
(male and female), but I doubt one draw conclusions for individual players
from it.
------
aralib
Tennis is not about winning individual points, but about stringing points
together to win games (and sets). I find that first-serve faults tend to
happen a lot in the same game. I think employing this "two first-serves"
strategy and double-faulting a few times in a game could cost you a break of
serve and lose you the set. Winning more points on average over the course of
the entire match doesn't necessarily help.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Open Source Developers: Don't Block Organizations You Don't Like - DarkContinent
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/open-source-developers-stop-blocking-organizations-you-dont-like/
======
codeprimate
The idea that one should be compelled or be obligated to support a group or
organization that acts against one's morals is abhorrent.
I am sure that much of the open source developer community does not share the
author's moral flexibility. Those that do can fill the void of products or
services that conscientious objectors may no longer provide.
~~~
Wowfunhappy
The author is not suggesting that developers outright support bad
organizations:
> Of course, you can be an open source company and choose not to sell to an
> organization you find objectionable. At various open source companies for
> which I worked, we refused to do business with pornography or gambling
> companies, for example. Chef, in like manner, could choose not to do
> business with ICE. That said, at my open source companies, we could not
> block those same organizations from using our open source software (and some
> did), just as Chef couldn't block ICE from using its open source code.
If you put code into the world, you have to realize people you dislike are
probably going to use it in some form. The alternative is keeping the code
(and end product) closed and only giving it to people you vet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Colorado officials say it's too expensive to password-protect business data - freejoe76
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_16149416
======
freejoe76
"Colorado officials say putting password protection on corporate data -- where
only a business owner or representative can make changes -- is prohibitively
expensive. Instead, the state has opted to use e-mail notification any time
information is changed to a business' records."
------
freejoe76
Also, "Dozens of businesses in Colorado, and probably thousands more
nationally, are victims of a new and frighteningly easy breed of identity
theft in which corporate information is hijacked and millions of dollars in
phony credit purchases are made."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Is Apple ceasing to report unit sales because the iPhone has peaked? - evo_9
https://9to5mac.com/2018/11/06/aapl-stock-2/
======
mtmail
Last paragraph: "Have iPhone sales peaked? In the short-term, maybe; in the
long-term, not at all."
| {
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Nirvana's Nevermind Swimming Baby - perfunctory
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/jun/06/kirk-weddle-best-photograph-nirvana-nevermind-swimming-baby
======
panpanna
$1000 for everything including expenses?
That doesn't even buy you a hello in New York.
| {
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} |
Hypothetical Explanations for the Fermi Paradox - rococode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Hypothetical_explanations_for_the_paradox
======
100011
[https://www.unz.com/akarlin/katechon/](https://www.unz.com/akarlin/katechon/)
"A corollary of the Simulation Argument is that the universe’s computational
capacity may be limited. Consequently, advanced alien civilizations may have
incentives to avoid space colonization to avoid taking up too much
“calculating space” and forcing a simulation shutdown.
A possible solution to the Fermi Paradox is that analogous considerations may
drive them to avoid broadcasting their presence to the cosmos, and to attempt
to destroy or permanently cripple emerging civilizations on sight.
This game-theoretical equilibrium could be interpreted as the “katechon” –
that which withholds eschaton – doom, oblivion, the end of the world. The
resulting state of mutually assured xenocide would result in a dark, seemingly
empty universe intermittently populated by small, isolationist “hermit”
civilizations."
You might enjoy the article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Uggc: URL Obfuscation Service - xirium
http://www.rushy.com/cgi-bin/uggc.cgi
======
xirium
You can nest obfuscated references: [http://www.rushy.com/cgi-
bin/uggc.cgi?action=link&url=ug...](http://www.rushy.com/cgi-
bin/uggc.cgi?action=link&url=uggc:%2F%2Fjjj.ehful.pbz%2Fptv-
ova%2Fhttp.ptv%3Fnpgvba=yvax%26hey=http:%252S%252Swww.rushy.com%252Scgi-
bin%252Suggc.cgi%253Saction=link%2526url=uggc:%25252F%25252Farjf.lpbzovangbe.pbz%25252F)
| {
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Linux shell tips and tricks - lintips
http://www.techbar.me/linux-shell-tips/
======
pwr
cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.t...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.techbar.me%2Flinux-
shell-tips%2F&rlz=1C1SVEE_enDE423DE423&oq=cache%3Awww.techbar.me%2Flinux-
shell-tips%2F&aqs=chrome.0.57j58.1147j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
| {
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On Being a Bastard (Cultivating online communities) - jrockway
http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/on-being-a-bastard/
======
houseabsolute
Not impressed. I'm pretty sure being an asshole is more frequently harmful
than helpful. I myself have been one from time to time and I understand the
motivation to paint it as a strength. It's not. Even pretending that, "We need
a few like me to protect all the nice ones," is specious. We must resist
attempts to justify our bad behavior with pseudo-reasoning.
~~~
mst
If you find what I'm saying specious and pseudo-reasoning. perhaps you could
outline specifically which arguments you find unconvincing and why; I'm aware
that what I have here is very much a working hypothesis backed up only by
anecdata, but I thought it was a reasonably consistent hypothesis and any
holes you can poke in it would be very welcome.
~~~
houseabsolute
Thanks for replying. I'm not really an IRC person, but I find that the best
online communities are ones in which real names and adherence to real life
social norms are encouraged. You're a rare person if you would say what you
did to the newbie in your example in real life. Personally, I feel it would be
just as good if the conversation went this way:
newbie: I'm trying to parse out the td tags in this HTML and I can't get the
regexp right
expert: Please don't parse HTML with regexps - try HTML::TableExtract.
newbie: my regexp is /<td>(.*)</ but it doesn't work
mst: newbie: You can't use regexps to parse HTML. Look at this module: ... Now
we've answered you twice. If you ask again, you'll be muted for a few minutes.
Continued persistence on the part of the newbie should be met the same way you
would in real life. Tell him if he keeps bothering you, you'll uninvite him
from your club, and then follow through. The community's purpose is not to
educate outsiders who don't wish to receive an education, but for the
enrichment of people who will participate as equals. Establishing a norm of
unpleasantness, even on the periphery, for the sake of a dubious chance at
helping out is not a tradeoff I'd make.
~~~
mst
The next line in that conversation is:
newbie: WTF. But I just wanted help with my regexp! Quit being a nazi! You
have no right to ban me I'm just trying to ask a question!
or them quitting immediately. Or at least, it has usually been one of the two
in my experience. But I'm not going to claim that means the technique doesn't
work; just that it hasn't, for me, so far. I should probably experiment more
with it but I suspect it will, oddly, come across far more heavy handed than a
bout of profanity.
~~~
dagw
if you took a few seconds to explain why regexp is the wrong solution rather
than just saying "don't use it", I'm sure the user would not only leave a lot
more enlightened, but would also stop asking the same question.
~~~
mst
If only that were actually true.
Well, no, a lot of the time it does work, and I never say a word or I'm the
one doing the explaining.
The point of the example is that there's a fairly common pattern where people
don't listen, don't become enlightened, and don't stop asking the same
question because they've managed to get tunnel vision through staring at their
non-working code for too long.
At which point a short sharp verbal slap upside the head often serves to
dislodge the cobwebs, at which point they start thinking again, read the
explanation properly and become enlightened.
------
jrockway
My thoughts are that "regulars" deserve special treatment over normal users.
It creates loyalty, and you want the regulars to be loyal.
Look at airline loyalty programs, for example. Ask a once-a-year traveler how
much he likes "Foo Airlines", then ask someone who travels 100,000 miles a
year on Foo Airlines. The person who travels 100,000 miles a year will like
Foo Airlines a lot more than the once-a-year traveler because Foo Airlines
rewards his loyalty with lots of free stuff that "normal users" don't get.
I don't see why the people involved in the open-source community would be any
different.
~~~
chromatic
In this case, the regular people _are_ the airline.
------
jvdh
I wonder how many people are going to use this as an excuse to be a bastard.
~~~
mst
Too many. I just hope it's outweighed by people watching their communities die
because nobody's setting social boundaries and standing the fuck up and doing
something about it.
~~~
perlpilot
Luckily, the regulars on IRC can tell the "good" assholes from the "bad"
assholes and act appropriately :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Desmond Tutu's genome sequenced as part of genetic diversity study - tokenadult
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/feb/17/desmond-tutu-genome-genetic-diversity
======
tokenadult
"'On average there are more genetic differences between any two bushmen in our
study than between a European and an Asian,' said Webb Miller, a professor of
biology at Penn State and co-author of the study. 'To know how genes affect
health, we need to see the full range of human genetic variation, and southern
Africa is the place to look,' he added."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
As VCs look for liquidity, private-company stock exchanges are emerging - gcventures
http://vator.tv/news/show/2009-05-31-the-rise-of-the-secondary-markets
======
Dilpil
Is this enough evidence that the public stock markets have become so over
regulated as to make the costs of being a public company outweigh the
benefits?
If not, what would be?
------
pz
Is there any oversight & regulation in these secondary markets? What's the
catch here? If this is allowed, then what's the incentive to go public. My
guess is the overhead in these private transactions will be high enough to
keep out most individual investors. I wonder if that's a plus or a minus for
the VC & equity firms this seems to cater to.
~~~
Dilpil
I would imagine only 'accredited investors' are allowed to participate.
| {
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Learning is possible only where free, reasoned and civil speech is respected - jseliger
https://www.wsj.com/articles/middleburys-statement-of-principle-1488846993
======
pklausler
TLDR: WSJ wants students to be nice to racists.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
10 Lessons from an Olympic Athlete - jkush
http://functionalpathtraining.blogspot.com/2007/05/really-good-stuff.html
======
jkush
If you consider startupping as competition, these lessons apply.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Simple, but powerful domain agnostic sentence (& word) embedding models - jowiet
https://github.com/jwieting/charagram
======
jowiet
This builds upon earlier work (which is included in other projects in the same
account, complete with demo scripts.)
------
brudgers
Related paper:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.02789v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.02789v1.pdf)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Java 8 Library for Building High-Performance, Thread-Per-Core Applications - xedin
https://github.com/xedin/windmill
======
crudbug
How is it different from Netty [1] / Reactor [2] ?
[1] [http://netty.io](http://netty.io)
[2] [http://projectreactor.io](http://projectreactor.io)
~~~
xedin
It uses Thread-Per-Core architecture where Netty/Reactor use thread-pools to
process work and have dedicated threads for selecting from network.
~~~
crudbug
So CPU affinity provides further optimization ? I am thinking less context
switches.
[1]
[http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2010/papers/p218.pdf](http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2010/papers/p218.pdf)
~~~
xedin
Yes, exactly since it allows for fewer context switches and cache locality not
only for the network packets but for disk I/O as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Handbook of Constraint Programming (2006) [pdf] - espeed
http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/CSP/papers/CP_Handbook-20060315-final.pdf
======
kriro
For anyone interested in playing around with constraint logic programming I
can highly recommend Eclipse (not to be confused with the IDE):
[http://eclipseclp.org/](http://eclipseclp.org/)
If you're looking for ideas, classical examples are work sheduling (nurses),
layout planning for production facilities or stuff like soduko (I also did a
poker hand ranker once)
Edit: they also have a good self learning course on their site:
[http://4c.ucc.ie/~hsimonis/ELearning/index.htm](http://4c.ucc.ie/~hsimonis/ELearning/index.htm)
------
espeed
Constraint-based things to check out:
1\. Sussman's talk "We Really Don't Know How to Compute"
([http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-
How-T...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To-
Compute)) and his work on the Propagator
([https://github.com/ProjectMAC/propagators](https://github.com/ProjectMAC/propagators)).
2\. Gremlin Graph Traversal Machine
([http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.03843v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.03843v1.pdf),
[http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/the-benefits-of-the-
gremlin...](http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/the-benefits-of-the-gremlin-
graph-traversal-machine))
3\. Clojure core.logic
([https://github.com/clojure/core.logic](https://github.com/clojure/core.logic))
and core.match
([https://github.com/clojure/core.match](https://github.com/clojure/core.match))
4\. Yedalog: Exploring Knowledge at Scale
([http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43462.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43462.html),
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9zS43FRzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9zS43FRzQ))
5\. Datomic Datalog
([http://docs.datomic.com/query.html](http://docs.datomic.com/query.html))
------
kragen
Constraint programming is extremely important, now more than ever. I don't
want to fall on the tired old explanation that says, "you program by
declaratively describing the answer instead of procedurally describing how to
compute it," both because it's sort of not true and because there's a whole
declarative-procedural continuum: FORTRAN is more declarative than assembly
language, LISP or Python is more declarative than FORTRAN, arguably ML is more
declarative than Lisp or Python, Prolog is more declarative than ML, and SQL
is more declarative than Prolog. And it varies by application area: probably,
if you're describing a circuit layout, Verilog is more declarative than SQL,
and MyHDL is more declarative than Verilog.
Unfortunately I don't have a good, compelling way to explain why I think
constraint programming is so important. Here are a few attempts.
Constraint programming transforms a program that determines whether a possible
solution is acceptable into a program to compute an acceptable solution.
Constraint programming allows you to write the specification of your program
and then separately search for ways to fulfill that specification, either
manually (by specifying search strategies/proof tactics) or automatically.
Constraint programming allows you to abstract away the question of which
values in a subroutine are returned and which are provided as parameters. If
you have only two such candidates, like the tired old °F↔°C example, this is a
minor saving. If you have many parameters, it can be a major saving.
\---
So much for why constraint programming would be important if we could do it.
Now what's new about being able to do it, particularly since 2006?
I'm not a specialist in the area, so this may not be the best possible answer
to the question.
However, it looks to me like miniKANREN is one important development: it's a
logic programming language far more powerful than Prolog. cKanren is an
extension to CLP.
Also, SMT solvers ("SAT modulo theories"), which are capable of fairly
general-purpose constraint solving, have gotten enormously more efficient
since 2006. One of the fun things about exponential-time algorithms is that
reducing the base of the exponentiation even by a little bit can produce
enormous speedups in practice.
Additionally, constraint solving shades over into optimization. In constraint
solving, you have a bunch of absolute constraints, and you try to find a
configuration that satisfies all of them. A configuration that barely fails to
satisfy any of the constraints is no good. (Although this book talks a bit
about "soft constraints", too.) In optimization, you have a "loss function"
that you try to minimize (or equivalently a value function you try to
maximize) and so you're looking for a configuration with a good value of this
function. So if you turn each constraint into a Boolean variable that takes on
0 or 1 and subtract their product from 1, then you've turned a constraint
problem into an optimization problem. (Maybe you want to sigmoid out the 0/1
transition a bit in order to keep everything differentiable.) All this stuff
we've been seeing about "deep learning" and "machine learning"? Those are
optimization problems! You can use those techniques to solve constraint
programming problems, and you can use CLP techniques to dramatically speed up
optimization problems. This is in its infancy. A really cool example of
solving inverse kinematics constraints with optimization (just using gradient
descent and reverse-mode automatic differentiation) is
[http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/constraints](http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/constraints).
Finally, lots of the things we run on our computers — word processing,
spreadsheets, HTML rendering, TCP/IP — really don't benefit from the immense
increases in computation and memory that have happened since 2006. But
constraint solving is NP-hard, and consequently it can eat up all the
computrons and DIMMs you can throw at it.
~~~
johnbender
> Constraint programming allows you to write the specification of your program
This captures the core idea from my brushes with various constraint based
programming languages. There's nearly always a spec floating around somewhere,
it's really a question of how expressive your constraint language is. Even
programs in "higher level" languages can be seen as a (rather complex) set of
constraints.
------
mcphage
This is really cool, but it's also almost 10 years old... Is that a problem,
or is it still up-to-date?
~~~
brandonbloom
Does it matter? Even if it isn't the latest and greatest, it's still valuable
for it's original reason: To teach you about the basics of constraint
programming. And now it's valuable for a new reason: To teach you about the
context and evolutionary path which led to modern constraint programing.
Often, the latest and greatest is defined in terms of incremental changes from
the body of generally accepted knowledge. If you just read the most recent
stuff, you'll probably lack the requisite knowledge to understand it. This is
true up until the point that the new stuff becomes generally accepted and
widely known. At that point, somebody writes it up nice, requiring minimal
context, but by that time, it's no longer the latest and greatest!
~~~
mcphage
> Does it matter? [...] Often, the latest and greatest is defined in terms of
> incremental changes from the body of generally accepted knowledge.
I don't know. Some fields that's true, and some fields that's not (a book on
the latest and greatest of web development from 2006 would be highly out of
date). Constraint Programming isn't a field I'm versed in, so I'm asking to
find out whether or not it matters.
~~~
brandonbloom
That's not an apt comparison. This book is about a general technique and
problem domain, not a particular constraint programming
language/framework/toolchain.
------
jules
The link does not work for me.
~~~
nickpsecurity
Current link should work. Does on Android.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OBS the new iPhone security update - punnerud
OBS! The new iPhone security update remove all:
- WiFi passwords
- All app logins
======
anonymous_iam
My WiFi passwords were not removed with yesterday's update.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IPlayer Performance tricks behind the scenes - danw
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/12/iplayer_day_performance_tricks.html
======
gaius
Look, BBC, you haven't done anything clever here. The British taxpayer OWNS
you. We own every programme in your archive, we're already paid for them.
Rather than wasting time and money on this you should have made your entire
catalogue available for download in an open format like MPEG. A proprietary,
DRM-laden format on public property is an outrage.
~~~
handelaar
The actual link, which this comment doesn't have any relevance to _at all_ ,
describes (in rather too shallow detail for my taste) what the iPlayer's built
with and how they scale the front end.
The link's about code and development and deployment: Hacker News stuff. Your
comment is about none of those things.
Ranting that "you haven't done anything clever" because you don't like their
streaming format? Please, I beg you, take it back to Slashdot.
~~~
gaius
No, it is completely relevant. The BBC should not have spent taxpayer's money
on any of this. Everything they needed to make the archive available for
download in MPEG is freely available. Expending vast resources to solve a non-
existant problem in an overly complicated manner is the exact opposite of the
hacker/startup ethos.
Not only that but this is the BBC publishing an article on how great the BBC
is. That alone should set the alarm bells ringing.
~~~
danw
It isn't relevant that they didn't use MPEG. What they build was a great
platform to browse what content is available that can handle the enormous
amount of traffic they receive. That wouldn't change if they offered the video
in a different format.
~~~
gaius
Of course it would! Streaming their at all was a very poor technical decision.
The very obvious technical and economic solution would be self-contained files
shared over BitTorrent. This was and is a pointless waste on the scale of
pets.com. The difference being it's not just sucker VCs money, it's every
taxpayer's.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Napoleon Bonaparte’s delayed funeral came to be - Thevet
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/bring-him-home
======
keiferski
If you ever get sucked into the vortex that is reading about Napoleon's
incredible life, I highly recommend _The Napoleon Bonaparte Podcast._ It's
something like 100 hours long and covers everything you could possibly think
of about the man.
[https://napoleonbonapartepodcast.com](https://napoleonbonapartepodcast.com)
~~~
jaxelr
Sweet! Thanks for this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Designer School Relaunch - joshuahornby
http://designer-school.com/#
======
arturbelico
Hey Josh. Maybe you could put the message a bit more clear. Is that a blog
that has a newsletter or is there something more? Do I get something extra if
I sign up?
The site looks nice.
~~~
joshuahornby
Hey, yes correct this is a blog that has a newsletter? signing up for the
newsletter will give you access to exclusive content and a round up of the
best posts from that month on the site.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paper on Ni-H Fusion by Focardi - mrb
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/FocardiSlargeexces.pdf
======
mrb
I posted about the history of nickel-hydrogen fusion on my blog:
<http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=61>
Let's just say that I did enough research that I am now convinced that the
E-Cat device is not only possible, but likely very real. Read everything,
especially the site of Christopher Calder that I submitted as another entry
because it is worth it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3176820>
~~~
dhimes
I would think this would be on the "front page" of every media outlet by now.
It would rival the announcement of the potential aids vaccine. OWS folks would
be playing it up as the beginning of the end of the Evil Corporations.
Instead, silence.
I consider it very unlikely that the experiment was a success. So that leave
two possibilities: 1). Deliberate fraud, a la Madoff. Or 2). interesting
science, not fusion, but still a reaction that is not well understood.
Something like a fuel cell, when for a while it looks like e_out > e_in, but
in reality e_in happened over a long time, and as such the reaction is non-
sustainable.
I'm hoping for 2)- an honest mistake in which we learn something.
~~~
vidarh
While it's right to be skeptical, it's worth considering that the press has
been burned by cold fusion claims many times by now.
No serious journalist would touch this without a ton of caveats, and then
what's the point? So a lack of massive mainstream media coverage doesn't
really mean all that much.
Especially given that these guys seems to be secretive, which is
understandable whether or not it's real or a scam - if the process is easy to
reproduce, and claims are that the process is very simple, and thus _if_ the
effect is real they're probably worried about someone copying it and finding
simple ways around any patents they might apply for.
Of course the second reason to be secretive would be if it blatantly is a scam
or they have failed to make it work and refuse to accept that they won't find
a way to fix it.
And history is littered by companies like this that claimed to have similar
stuff for all kinds of reason and then just fell off the radar after it turned
out they were frauds, wrong or delusional...
~~~
dhimes
My point exactly.
~~~
mrb
The most trusted media outlet who wrote about E-Cat was Forbes:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/30/believing-i...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/30/believing-
in-cold-fusion-and-the-e-cat/)
It is worth noting that the Italian Patent Office first rejected Rossi's
patent on claims it was dubious, but they finally recently granted it in April
6, 2011:
[http://www.uibm.gov.it/uibm/dati/Avanzata.aspx?load=info_lis...](http://www.uibm.gov.it/uibm/dati/Avanzata.aspx?load=info_list_uno&id=1610895&table=Invention&#ancoraSearch%20Patent%20Issued%20by%20Italian%20Patent%20Office)
As I said, Rossi and Focardi are very bad at making themselves look credible.
Hopefully, over the next year or so, the situation will clear up.
------
romaniv
Personally, I no longer think "is this true?" when reading about stuff like
this. I know that the odds are in favor of this being another fake technology.
What I do think about is whether there is any mechanism for real inventions to
become acknowledged in this kind of environment. Would Nikola Tesla be
considered a fake these days? Did he have good documentation for his devices?
How did his public demonstrations go?
~~~
dhimes
Initially Tesla would be viewed with skepticism. But his work with AC was
reproducible. His anti-gravity experiments are not accepted.
An interesting contemporary thread currently is the inflationary expansion of
the universe that was reported a couple of years back
([http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/334907/title/Cosm...](http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/334907/title/Cosmic_acceleration_discovery_wins_physics_Nobel)).
It was a remarkably unsettling find, yet seems to be confirmed other teams. If
it's not true we will learn something truly fundamental (like h-bar isn't
really constant or something).
------
alvarosm
This is very likely to be a scam. The guy is just delusional and trying to get
financing to make it work because it probably doesn't work _at all_. Why don't
they visibly disconnect the generators? why don't they allow anyone to verify
that new elements have been created inside the fusion modules? why all the
secrecy and only letting reporters go in for a few minutes during the test?
They've been publishing their bullshit papers since the mid-90s. If this was
for real, reproducible and all, somebody else would have verified it by now.
~~~
mrb
In 1996, the CERN did reproduce Focardi's first experiment: <http://lenr-
canr.org/acrobat/CerronZebainvestigat.pdf>
They discovered results consistent with Focardi et al.: excess heat around the
nickel bar and hydrogen absorption. However they also placed an additional
temperature sensor on the container of the cell which was unable to measure
any significant excess heat. They theorize that the nickel bar is prone to
local variations of its thermal characteristics, correlated to the phenomenon
of hydrogen absorption. They concede that hydrogen absorption remains
unexplained.
Then Focardi took this feedback into account and wrote the 1998 paper which I
linked above.
But the stigma attached to cold fusion did entice researchers to have a 2nd
look at this later paper. Some of the scientists interviewed on October 28,
2011 for the test admit that they had never read about hydrogen-nickel fusion
until 2011. You can bet that from now on, many are starting to look into it...
~~~
mrb
I meant: "did _not_ entice researches to have a 2nd look"
------
mrich
Everything I read about the E-Cat sounds fishy to me. Especially the latest
experiment - so the output is 480kW, and there is a 500kW generator connected,
but supposedly not operating? What a coincidence!
People want this to be true so I can understand the reporting but come on,
this is just not real.
~~~
mrb
In other smaller experiments earlier this year, they had no generator attached
to the cell:
[http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article31...](http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece)
------
terhechte
I'm kinda always falling for free energy stories because they appeal to my
hopes. Rationally, I know it doesn't work and my brain keeps telling me it's a
scam. In my gut, however, I dream of a world where free energy reigns and we
don't have to burn fossil fuel en masse just to keep society afloat.
However, lately I wondered: Would free energy really be a good thing? If
there's limitless energy for everybody, wouldnt it be even easier for a
lunatic - or a government run by lunatics - to run amok. Economically and
Ecologically, it would be terrific. But I wonder if we, as a species, are
already adolescent enough to be given such power.
~~~
wladimir
Free energy appeals to the dream to keep up the historic trend of human
expansion, using more and more energy. It could prevent a lot of struggles in
this century.
However I somehow feel it isn't going to be this easy.
------
Mvandenbergh
It's more accurate to say that the this is a paper on the experimental setup
with which they claim to have achieved low temperature Ni-H fusion.
A plausible mechanism for the supposed fusion itself has yet to make an
appearance.
~~~
DennisP
There actually is a theory that seems to have some credibility:
[http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/05/nasa-confirms-widom-
larsen-...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/05/nasa-confirms-widom-larsen-
theory.html)
According to the theory, it's not actually fusion, it's some kind of new
reaction involving the weak nuclear force. (Rossi's not a fan of the idea.)
------
angdis
If this were a real breakthrough, we would be seeing a trickle of
confirmations followed shortly by a flood of news and immensely stepped-up
activity.
I'm impressed by Focardi, however. Not because he can make energy from nothing
(I triple-dare say he can't). Making money from nothing, however, doesn't
violate any physical laws and this guy seems to have that talent although it
is probably a "once-in-a-lifetime" trick.
~~~
merraksh
Focardi is a co-author. Andrea Rossi is the one that set up the whole
experiment and is in contact with this mysterious US company.
------
nickzoic
> Novembre 1998
Has there been any progress since, is the question ... googling around I find
a lot of press-release type material breathlessly translated into English but
not much else ... surely, by now, someone has been able to measure the copper
isotopes produced and at least take a stab at a theory ...
------
zby
Nickel and hydrogen are abundant on Earth - do they fuse in nature?
~~~
arethuza
I wondered if nickel fuses in a supernova - a bit of browsing shows that it is
apparently one of the main seeds for creation of heavier elements through
neutron capture:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-process>
Edit: The conditions in a supernova are probably just a wee bit different from
anything we can create outside of the core of an H-bomb.
------
robinduckett
So... this is real?
~~~
hcles
No. It's a free energy scam. It will go away and in a couple years another
scam will bubble up against all odds and make it into mainstream media. Call
it zero-point quantum energy, call it magnetism, cold fusion, free energy by
any other name.
Research the people, not the techno babble. If they don't submit to
independent scientific scrutiny and approach ignorant investors individually,
well there you go.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is the semantic web still a thing? - sysk
A few years ago, it seemed as if everyone was talking about the semantic web as the next big thing. What happened? Are there still startups working in that space? Are people still interested?
======
irickt
The semantic web is now integrated into the web and for the most part it's
invisible. Take a look at the timeline given in this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3983179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3983179)
Some of those startups exited for hundreds of millions, providing, for
example, the metadata in the right hand pane of Google search.
The new action buttons in Gmail, adopted by Github, are based on JSON-LD:
[https://github.com/blog/1891-view-issue-pull-request-
buttons...](https://github.com/blog/1891-view-issue-pull-request-buttons-for-
gmail)
JSON-LD, which is a profound improvement on and compatible with the original
RDF, is the only web metadata standard with a viable future. Read the
reflections of Manu Sporny, who overwhelmed competing proposals and bad
standards with sheer technical power: [http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-
origins-2/](http://manu.sporny.org/2014/json-ld-origins-2/)
There's really no debate any more. We use the the technology borne by the
"Semantic Web" every day.
~~~
mindcrime
I agree with most of what you just said, but one nitpick:
_JSON-LD, which is a profound improvement on and compatible with the original
RDF,_
I don't think this is right. JSON-LD _is_ RDF. What it isn't is RDF/XML. But
it's important to realize that RDF != RDF/XML. JSON-LD is just an encoding of
the abstract RDF triple model in JSON, just like RDF/XML is an encoding of RDF
into XML.
~~~
rmc
There are several other encodings of rdf. Ntriples, turtle
~~~
mindcrime
Exactly. There's even another JSON encoding, RDF/JSON[1], but I don't think
anybody uses it.
[1]: [https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/rdf/raw-file/default/rdf-
json/index.h...](https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/rdf/raw-file/default/rdf-
json/index.html)
------
andybak
I'm still waiting for a comprehensive rebuttal to Cory Doctorow:
[http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm](http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm)
Just to clarify - I don't think his arguments demolish all aspects of the case
for 'the semantic web' (however ill-defined that term is) but if he's right
then it severely circumscribes the kind of content that will ever have useful
metadata.
At the same time, we are getting better at inferring context without needing
metadata. There is so much more data coming from this source (i.e. the "sod
metadata, let's guess" methodology) than from 'intentional' semantic sources.
So - semantic markup will never be of use unless the content is coming from a
source where the metadata already exists. It will largely be useful to
'database' styles sites rather than 'content' style sites. Think directories
and lists rather than blogs and articles.
(Question to front-end types. Are people still agonising over section vs
aside, dl/dt vs ul/li under the impression that it makes any damn difference?
Angels dancing on the head of a pin...)
~~~
IanOzsvald
Consider Wikipedia->DBpedia->Wikidata->Wikipedia. First we had semi-structured
human-readable information expressed using mediawiki's markup which was hard
to parse automatically. Next the DBpedia project (and YAGO) created tools to
parse mediawiki and extract facts as triples (e.g. "this thing" "is-a"
"company"), they encountered many alternate ways of expressing the same
information (e.g. date variants, weights and measures).
Now the Wikidata project (2012) is normalising the data in Wikipedia so that
projects like DBpedia have an easier time with the raw information (no need to
write alternative parsers for dates, weights, measures and simple facts!). As
a result we've gone from human-readable information to machine-readable
semantic-web-like information which is accessible via Linked Open Data.
Maybe the driver for semantic web data is humans trying to programmatically
consume human-readable information, rather than the other way around?
~~~
jerven
Working on the UniProt RDF I find that everytime we make it easier for
semantic tools to work with our data it actually improves the usability for
human users as well.
The RDF part of the semweb idea encourages us to be extremely explicit with
what we mean with our data. This helps our end users because it removes a lot
of guess work. What was obvious for us as maintainers is not obvious at all
for the biologists who need to do stuff with our data. e.g.
[http://www.uniprot.org/changes/cofactor](http://www.uniprot.org/changes/cofactor)
(going to be live soon) it's a small change from textual descriptions of which
chemicals are cofactors for enzymatic activity to using the ChEBI ontology.
This allows us to better rendering (UI) and better searching. It also makes
the difference clear between cofactor is any Magnesium or cofactor is only
Magnesium(2+).
In the life sciences and pharma semweb has a decent amount of uptake. For the
very simple reason that this branch deals with a lot of varied information and
often mixes private and public data. RDF makes it cheaper for organisation to
deal with this.
SPARQL the query language has a key feature that no other technology has in
the same way. Federalised queries: if I am in a small lab I can't afford to
have datawarehouse of UniProt, it would cost me 20,000 euro - 30,0000 euro
just to run the hardware and maintain it. As a small lab I can use
beta.sparql.uniprot.org for free and still combine it with my and other public
data for advanced queries. Sure uniprot has a good rest interface but it is
limited in what you can do with it in ways that SPARQL never will be.
SPARQL is only interesting as a query language since last year. Schema.org is
only interesting since last year. JSON-LD is only interesting since last year.
Semweb is finally growing into its possibilities and making real what was
promised 17 years ago now.
Of course even in the life science domain many developers don't know what one
can do with semweb tech, and semweb marketing is no where as effective as e.g.
MongoDB or even Neo4J is. So uptake is still slow but it is accelerating!
------
mqsiuser
The company of my professor went bankrupt in 2012 (Ontoprise). Not sure if
they dissolved totally by now.
AI failed (again). I never understood where "Intelligence" lies if the only
thing you can do is infer: If A --> B & B --> C, then also A --> C ("we don't
do anything else since that won't be _logic_ " & then bloating it and naming
it "Reasoner").
If you can't spin of quickly from academic ideas (like Google search) it will
just be ongoing research binding masses of people on the wrong things (to
pursue). Don't tell me they chose to,... still influenced and finding out
later that it wasn't worthwile.
Academia thought it's the next web, but it wasn't. The Web 2.0 was the next
web then, leaving the semantic web in the dust.
"When I see the semantic web (of trust) be done (properly), this is basically
when I can retire" (Tim Berners-Lee ~2004).
Just my (honest) thoughts (as s/w who spend a significant amount of time on
RDF/OWL et al at university).
~~~
bemused
no idea why this comment gets downvoted -> I came to the same conclusion,
having done quite some research at university on this topic as well. The
community does a great job on getting huge funding from the government/eu but
the results are mostly pathetic from a CS pov. eg I came across papers/PhD
thesis where people were fabulating about all the great things you can do when
automatically merging ontologies would be feasible without the slightest
understanding of computational complexity and the semantics of natural
language in general
that said I still see the advantage of semantic web style technology in
cathedral style environments eg corporate knowledge DBs or wikidata IF you can
afford the bloat. most of the time its much more straightforward to just use
your own schematics and call it a day (like the KDE folks did this year,
finally giving up on getting their rdf-database to perform reasonably well and
going back to a relational model for the desktop search)
~~~
jerven
Not sure KDE went back to a relational model. The main change I feel was going
from a single central database (Virtuoso) which had a copy of everything to
keeping the data where it is as much as possible and only store copies where
needed for performance.
Virtuoso being an impressive DB is not the most stable or resource use
friendly datastore for desktop use.
This decentralised data storage actually makes a lot of sense. And I hope to
work on something similar for life science data except that the unifying API
will be SPARQL instead of a C++ API. (Not to say that a single C++ API does
make a lot of sense for the KDE project, where it does not for life science
data.)
------
pudo
For what it's worth, I spent last month trying to use RDF tooling (Python
bindings, triple stores) for a project recently, and the experience has left
me convinced that none of it is workable for an average-size, client-server
web application.
There may well be a number of good points to the model of graph data, but in
practice, 16 years of development have not lead to production-ready tools; so
my guess is that another year will not fix it.
Here's a write-up: [http://pudo.org/blog/2014/09/01/grano-linked-
data.html](http://pudo.org/blog/2014/09/01/grano-linked-data.html)
~~~
parasubvert
I managed to build a reasonably scalable product with the Java based tooling
from the Jena project , along with the Python bindings - also the Clark and
Parsia tools like Stardog are quite workable.
My experience is that much (SPARQL, basic reasoning) is production ready and
has been for a long time, the problem is that it is hard to constrain yourself
to the subset of features that don't lead to exponential computations.
------
brandonb
Peter Norvig put it best: "The semantic web is the future of the web, and
always will be."
(For what it's worth, the startup school video that quote comes from is worth
watching:
[http://youtu.be/LNjJTgXujno?t=20m57s](http://youtu.be/LNjJTgXujno?t=20m57s))
------
tckr
Absolutely. Given the constant progress in extending schema.org and new works
like JSON-LD and Hydra ([http://www.markus-
lanthaler.com/hydra/](http://www.markus-lanthaler.com/hydra/)) I think we are
(slowly) aproaching a state where we will see adoption of semantic schemas in
APIs and website in a wider scale.
~~~
coldtea
If not anything else, I admire your incredible optimism.
------
joostdevries
The way I see it that technology has been on the cusp of being succesful for a
long time.
What the reasons are is largely a matter of opinion. In my opinion there are
several possible reasons: \- the 'semantic' idea of 'strong' modeling of the
world lost out to a competing approach that uses probabilistic models. The
latter models don't require coordinated effort by humans and thus scale
better. \- the semantic approach also suffered from academicians myopically
going over the same millimeters of theory for decades. And losing sight of
matters of practicality. \- The fundamentals of the semantic technology seem
rather brittle to me. With that I mean that a tiny difference in the reasoning
axioms can make the whole reasoning intractable. That might be anti-tethical
to the 'tinkering until it works' approach that software engineers often use.
\- Somehow a broady applicable killer application didn't turn up. But that's a
result as much as it might be a reason.
There's still use for the technology though. If you need to unify data that
follows subtly different datamodels I'd be hard pressed to think of an
alternative. Which makes me wonder whether intelligence agencies use the
technology. F.i. I remember a reference given by Oracle of the US Geospatial
Intelligence Agency using their quad store. The new moniker 'linked data'
emphasises this aspect. Government agencies do struggle with having to relate
data that are obviously related but conceptually, legally subtly different.
And they do spend quite some attention on linked data. They seem to stay
mostly within the RDFS realm and do not stray into more interesting OWL
applications. But even in government circles I get a whiff of the solution-
looking-for-a-problem vibe that hounded the semantic web for so long.
~~~
irickt
It's important to not dwell on the past. In the present here are two strong
developments issuing from the original Semantic Web:
Especially in Europe, research is very active and these technologies are core
to many big science projects. (For example in this thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8510885)).
These projects are exploring the higher aims of TBL's proposal - with good
cause.
On a more down-to-earth level, there is now a solid web metadata standard in
place in JSON-LD. The big search engines index it and presumably use it to
give better results. Any startup can add value to published data by adding
links - in a significant extension to the "API economy".
Think about it. The base concept of the semantic web is simply a data exchange
format that can be used to implement a distributed relational database - a
pretty practical idea. By way of the false starts of any broad initiative (eg
XML) and withstanding a lot of political spin that I've never understood, we
now have that standard.
Web developers should look at this opportunity with new eyes.
~~~
porker
> On a more down-to-earth level, there is now a solid web metadata standard in
> place in JSON-LD. The big search engines index it and presumably use it to
> give better results. Any startup can add value to published data by adding
> links - in a significant extension to the "API economy".
One pragmatic question is whether schema.org/JSON-LD is of benefit to anyone
other than Google at the moment? I like the idea but with their dominance it
feels like I am doing work to add value to their business, not mine.
------
bane
A bit of background, I've been working in environments next to, and sometimes
with, large scale Semantic Graph projects for much of my career -- I usually
try to avoid working near a semantic graph program due to my long histories of
poor outcomes with them.
I've seen uncountably large chunks of money put into KM projects that go
absolutely nowhere and I've come to understand and appreciate many of the
foundational problems the field continues to suffer from. Despite a long
period of time, progress in solving these fundamental problems seem hopelessly
delayed.
The semantic web as originally proposed (Berners-Lee, Hendler, Lassila) is as
dead as last year's roadkill, though there are plenty out there that pretend
that's not the case. There's still plenty of groups trying to revive the
original idea, or like most things in the KM field, they've simply changed the
definition to encompass something else that looks like it might work instead.
The reasons are complex but it basically boils down to: going through all the
effort of putting semantic markup with no guarantee of a payoff for yourself
was a stupid idea.
You can find all kinds of sub-reasons why this was stupid: monetization, most
people are poor semantic modelers, technologies built for semantic system
generally suck and are horrible (there's pitifully few reasoners built on any
kind of semantic data, turns out that's hard), etc.
For years the Semantic Web was like Nuclear fusion, always just a few years
away. The promise was always "it will change _everything_ ", yet no concrete
progress was being made, and the vagueness of "everything" turned out not to
be a real compelling motivator for people to start adding semantic information
to their web projects.
What's actually ended up happening instead has been the rebirth of AI. It's
being called different things these days: machine learning, heuristic
algorithms, whatever. But the point is, there's lots of amazing work going
into things like image recognition, context sensitive tagging, text parsing,
etc. that's finding the semantic content within the human readable parts of
the web instead. It's why you can go to google images and look for "cats" and
get pictures of cats.
Wikipedia and other sources has also started to look more structured than it
previously was, with nice tables full of data, these tables have the side
benefit of being machine AND human readable, so when you look for "cats" in
google's search you get a sidebar full of semantic information on the entity
"cats": scientific name, gestation period, daily sleep, lifespan, etc.
Like most things in the fad driven KM world, Semantic Web advocates are now
simply calling this new stuff "The Semantic Web" because it's the only area
that kind of smells like what they want and is showing progress, but it really
has nothing to do with the original proposal and is simply a side-benefit of
work done in completely different areas.
You might notice this died about the same time "Mashups" died. Mashups were
kind of an outgrowth of the Semantic Web as well. One of the reasons that
whole thing died was that existing business models simply couldn't be reworked
to make it make sense. If I'm running an ad driven site about Cat Breeds,
simply giving you all my information in an easy to parse machine readable form
so _your_ site on General Pet Breeds can exist and make money is not something
I'm particularly inclined to do. You'll notice now that even some of the most
permissive sites are rate limited through their API and almost all require
some kind of API key authentication scheme to even get access to the data.
Building a semantic web where huge chunks require payment and dealing with
rate limits (which appear like faults in large Semantic Networks) is a plan
that will go nowhere. It's like having pieces of your memory sectioned off
behind tolls.
Here's TBL on this in 2006 -
[http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/262614/1/Semantic_Web_Revisted.pd...](http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/262614/1/Semantic_Web_Revisted.pdf)
"This simple idea, however, remains largely unrealized."
There's a group of people I like to call "Semanticists" who've come to latch
onto Semantic graph projects, not as a technology, but as a religion. They're
kind of like the "6 minute ab" guy in "There's Something About Mary". They
don't have much in the way of technical idea, but understand the intuitive
value of semantic modeling, have probably latched onto a specification of some
sort, and then belief caries them the rest of the way "it'll change
everything".
But they usually have little experience taking semantic technologies to
successful projects (success being defined as not booting up the machine and
loading the graph into memory, but actually producing something more useful
than some other approach).
There's then another group of Semanticists, they recognize the approaches that
have been proposed have kind of dead-ended, but they won't publicly announce
that. Then when some other approach not affiliated with the SW makes progress
(language understanding AI for example) will simply declare this new approach
as part of the SW and then claim the SW is making progress.
The truth is that Doctorow absolutely _nails_ the problems in his essay
"Metacrap"
[http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm](http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm)
He wrote this in 2001, and the issues he talks about _still_ haven't been
addressed in any meaningful way by professionals working in the field, even
new projects routinely fall for most or all of these problems. I've seen
dozens of entire companies get formed, funded and die without addressing even
a single one of these issues. This essay is a sobering measuring stick you can
use to gauge progress in the field, and I've seen very few projects measure
well against any of these issues.
Semanticists, of both types, are holding the entire field back. If you are
working on a semantic graph project of _any_ kind and your project doesn't
even attempt to address any of these things through the design of the program
(and not through some policy directive or modeling process) you've failed.
It's really hard for me to believe that we're decades into Semantic Graph
technologies and nobody's bothered to even understand 2.5 and 2.7.
If your plan to fix problems you're experiencing with your project, the reason
it isn't producing useful results, is to "continue adding data to it" or "keep
tweaking the semantic models" you've failed.
[http://semanticweb.com/keep-on-keepin-on_b41339](http://semanticweb.com/keep-
on-keepin-on_b41339)
"The Semantic Web is not here yet."
No, I've rethought this, the SW is not like Fusion, it's more like Communism.
~~~
a3n
> The truth is that Doctorow absolutely nails the problems in his essay
> "Metacrap"
> [http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm](http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm)
"Take eBay: every seller there has a damned good reason for double-checking
their listings for typos and misspellings. Try searching for "plam" on eBay.
Right now, that turns up nine typoed listings for "Plam Pilots."
I wonder, are there search tools, anywhere from functions to libraries to
engines, that will search for mis-spellings? Google, DDG and probably everyone
else will _correct_ your mis-spelled query, but will anything large or small
go the extra _miel_ and search for mis-spelled hits?
~~~
bane
There's some query expanders that do this. Some are pretty sophisticated,
calculating the n most likely mispellings based on a statistical model
generated from some large corpus, or based on models of human typing behavior
on QWERTY keyboards.
For example, if you search google right now for "plam pilot" you'll get
results for "palm pilot".
~~~
andrewflnr
GP is asking about searching for "palm pilot" and getting results for "plam
pilot".
~~~
a3n
Yes, that's exactly what I'm asking.
------
mindcrime
_What happened?_
The Semantic Web happened, and is still happening. But most people don't
notice, because the Semantic Web isn't, for the most part, about being visible
to end users. But every site using microdata, microformats, RDFa, etc. _IS_
part of the Semantic Web.
Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., are all using elements of the Semantic Web.
Just because the average end-user isn't writing SPARQL queries doesn't mean
the Semantic Web isn't around.
_Are there still startups working in that space?_
We are. I just gave a presentation on using Semantic Web tech in the
enterprise at All Things Open last week, and a related talk at the Triangle
Java User's Group earlier in the week, where we showed off a lot of the ways
we are using the SemWeb stack.
_Are people still interested?_
Judging from the response to the two talks I just gave, I'd say yeah.
For more on my take on this topic, see:
[http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/11/dominiek-ter-heide-is-
de...](http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/11/dominiek-ter-heide-is-dead-
wrong.html)
------
georgespencer
Tantek is still alive, if that's what you mean.
Jokes aside: microformats started to get pretty good traction, but the biggest
challenge (as I see it) has always been adoption in software, rather than
encoding the data itself.
Flock was the great white hope in this space for a browser which (somewhat
sensibly) used the semantic web to enrich people's lives, but there wasn't
really a killer app for it. It did a lot of interesting stuff, but none of it
was omfg can't live without youuuuu.
If browser vendors start building great features to take advantage of the
semantic web, then developers will start adopting and consumers will start
[tacitly] demanding it.
Interesting point: if you go back to the SciAm article which kickstarted a lot
of interest in the semantic web amongst relative laypeople, then you'll find
that actually it's not dissimilar to where we are today, but we are getting
there without the semantic web.
~~~
mindcrime
_If browser vendors start building great features to take advantage of the
semantic web, then developers will start adopting and consumers will start
[tacitly] demanding it._
I think browsers have little to do with the Semantic Web. The semantic web is
more M2M.
~~~
georgespencer
I'm trying to think of real world applications for the semantic web, in 2014,
which do not require a browser. Struggling.
~~~
mindcrime
I just mean that there's not necessarily a need for any Semantic Web tech _in_
the browser specifically. An application may certainly have a browser
interface, but, to my mind, most of the "stuff" that involves working with
RDF, OWL, SPARQL, etc. is server-side / behind-the-scenes stuff that the user
wouldn't touch directly. The various browser plugins that let you look at
embedded RDFa, microformats, etc. are nifty, but I don't personally consider
that kind of stuff a primary use-case for semweb tech.
~~~
Fannon
My problem with that is: Most modern web-apps run much (up to completely) in
the browser. And the Semantic Web Stack is very heavy if you want to use it
client-side. Here every kilobyte counts.
Well, you could directly query a SPARQL database, but thats the one scenario
where a server still makes sense, to provide some decoupling from the database
model and the client.
~~~
mindcrime
_My problem with that is: Most modern web-apps run much (up to completely) in
the browser._
"Use the right tool for the job". :-) There's no particular reason a "modern
web-app" has to run completely in the browser... it still makes perfect sense
to put heavyweight process intensive stuff, persistence, business logic, etc.
on the server-side. If I'm building an app that uses a lot of "semantic
stuff", most of that stuff is, indeed, happening on the server side.
~~~
Fannon
Well, there are reasons and it's getting more common. In fact most modern
browsers, even on a smartphone, may have more computing power than a server if
you consider that the client has only to serve itself and the good performance
of modern JavaScript engines. And having to do a lot of networking with a
server slows a lot too, since network is one of the slowest and unreliable
parts of an app.
So your answer sounds more like an excuse than a solution to me, sorry.
------
charlysisto
Good ideas don't always follow a linear path. The buzz around semantic web
probably didn't mesure at the time all the obstacles it would find on its way.
Agreeing on categories is one of them but IMHO, the biggest one is legacy
content and the inertia it carries on change.
I use dbpedia on a toy project and really appreciate it although I only use a
very shallow portion of its possibilities. And it's still very brittle on the
edges. Also I don't see it taking any momentum if it's not embraced by more of
the big content players.
An interesting question would be : would semantic web favor google ? It would
certainly help it index content but wouldn't also deprive it from its search
monopoly ?
~~~
robryan
Google is probably one the biggest drivers of structured data on websites.
They pull a lot of the additional search features such as ratings stars from
structured data. [1]
As websites will do anything to better than out in search results there is a
large uptake in adding structured data.
[1]
[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/99170?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/99170?hl=en)
~~~
charlysisto
I was aware of it but I find it's the 'minimum syndical' as you put it in
french. A real way of embracing the semantic web would be, for example, to
expose a LinkData compatible subset of their indexed content (a la dbpedia).
The way they expose the web today is unidimensional : keywords => related
website list.
It's great for humans to parse. But its extremely limited for machines. Why
isn't there yet an API or an UI to ask all books of Japanese novelists of the
last 2 centuries (website links included per book). I am sure this could be in
googles reach and of greta interest for everybody (replace books by manga if
you wish).
And that I would call embracing semantic web.
------
sgt101
In 2003 I was in an EU project (Agentcities) that did interoperability
demonstrations for distributed knowledge applications. We had to develop and
use ontologies for ticketing, transport - and a few other similar things.
My honest expectation was that building these ontologies would take about a
week of group effort. As I remember it we were still at it months later.
This convinced me that the SW was a bust. Moreover one of the roadblocks we
hit was very illuminating to me.
Creating the ontologies and onward development/extension of them was hard
because the tools were so poor (also other things like it is just... hard) but
the lack of tools was widely noted as a clear issue.
No one did anything about it. We had protege then, and lo it is so now.
------
Thiz
Semantic web was replaced by an API.
See, people was tryimg to ram information down the throat of the presentation
layer, and what for if our eyes were never to see it?
If you need meaning, ask for it gently, an API will provide it. And leave html
alone.
~~~
icebraining
You're confusing the Semantic Web with one of its particular technologies
(RDFa). It's absolutely not required to stuff the semantic attributes in the
HTML, you can use the Accept header (or even different URLs) to differentiate
between HTML and RDF documents.
If you use JSON-LD, it's not unlike implementing a REST/JSON API, except that
it allows you to reuse standard formats and integrate with other APIs in an
easier way.
------
coldtea
It was never a thing, outside of some fringe companies (academic spin-offs and
the like) and some academic research inspired by Tim Berner's Lee's ideas.
Oh, that, plus, the misappropriation of the term "semantic" by the designer
community for BS like working with DIVs instead of TDs and having hierarchical
document sections in HTML documents (ad-hoc per website), something that never
gave any particular advantage, not even for screen readers (which were from
the start designed to cop with the mess that document structure in the real
world is).
~~~
PavlovsCat
It's easy to downvote this, but what _are_ the advantages of using the "new
semantic HTML5 tags" like section and aside? I read plenty of articles about
them, and in all the advantages were purely theoretical; sure, search engines
or other user engines _could_ do interesting things with it. But do they?
~~~
eponeponepon
It's a bit chicken-and-egg, really. If nobody uses them, nobody else will ever
bother looking for them - but conversely, if nobody's looking for them,
nobody'll use them. Someone has to make the first move.
There's some traction in academic publishing - aside in particular has some
utility for popup/inline footnoting in some EPUB platforms, and some of the
other new HTML5 elements are finding a place in online journal presentations,
marking up formal abstracts and so on. There's nothing terribly clever going
on yet though, as far as I'm aware, and anything that is will be very much
platform or publisher-specific.
~~~
coldtea
> _It 's a bit chicken-and-egg, really. If nobody uses them, nobody else will
> ever bother looking for them - but conversely, if nobody's looking for them,
> nobody'll use them. Someone has to make the first move._
Except if you know, the universe doesn't work this way, and people and entropy
will abuse and misuse any such system on a web scale, just like Cory Doctorow
suggests.
------
bastawhiz
One of the biggest barriers to the semantic web is the barrier to entry.
Scraping web pages are hard. Parsing HTML (which probably doesn't validate) is
hard. Extracting semantic meaning from parsed HTML is hard.
Even once you've piled on the libraries and extracted the bit of information
that you need, what do you do with that data? You process it a bit and store
it in some kind of data structure. But at this point, you've could have just
pinged the website's API and gotten the same data (and more) in a data
structure.
It turns out it's a heck of a lot easier to return a blob of JSON than it is
to process text in markup on a page. And smaller, as well: JSON often takes up
far less space than the corresponding markup for the same content. That's a
big deal when you're processing a very large amount of information.
There's the promise that AI will someday make this easier: if you eliminate
the parse-and-process-into-a-data-structure step and just assume that an AI
will do that part for you, you're in good shape. But that's nowhere near being
a practical reality for virtually all developers, and APIs eliminate this step
for you.
Even if you use something like HTML microdata, there's very few consumers of
the data. Some browsers give you access to it, but that doesn't make it
extremely useful: if you generated the data on the server side, why not just
make it into a useful interface? Or expose the data as raw data to begin with?
Going through the extra effort to use these APIs is a redundant step for most
use cases.
------
sktrdie
As a beginner semantic web researcher I believe it is very successful. Just
came back from an international semantic web conference [1] where a variety of
useful, interesting and important things have been presented.
I want to stress that the semantic web will probably always be a more academic
field rather than "the next big thing". Similar to the artificial intelligence
field or other academic fields that don't always have to lend themselves to
"help industry make more money".
Nonetheless lots of our technologies are being used by industry (startups and
enterprises). But again, our success doesn't depend on industry adoption. It
depends on how useful the things we research about are from a research point
of view - which is sometimes more theoretical.
As an example, most semantic web people think RDF is a more useful model than
ad hoc data models because we care about generality and serendipitous reuse of
data. Industry rather cares more about simple and efficient and fast tools.
All in all I hope some of our findings can be useful to industry and adopted
by many startups but I hope we'll always find a niche where we can do things
that industry can't afford to do. In a way, semantic web exists as an academic
field precisely because it's unexplored by industry. If it were widely used,
perhaps we'd never need academic fields as industry would take over. I hope
that never happens for the semantic web.
1\. [http://iswc2014.semanticweb.org/](http://iswc2014.semanticweb.org/)
------
jacquesm
Nobody will ever agree with anybody else on what the right hierarchy is for
any given set of metadata so I think that hierarchies will eventually die off.
But tags are metadata too and they are getting more and more common. They're
unstructured in many ways (and therefore messy) but they do a pretty good job
where hierarchies failed to gain good traction.
~~~
sesuncedu
Yes, and no, Minister.
Hierarchy will not die off because it is a core part of the way that the mind
organizes concepts- for example, prototype effects imply several different
levels.
Folk Taxonomies are hierarchical, though the depth is usually smaller than
that of scientific taxonomies and the principles of organization is usually
different.
There can be many ways of arranging the same concepts, and although it _is_
possible to show that some are incorrect, it is in general impossible to show
that one and only one Ontology is correct; this follows from the indeterminacy
of translation (Google Gavagai!)
Attempts to force an alien Ontology onto subject matter experts breaks them.
They just stop performing at an expert level.
It is usually possible to develop a suite of ontologies that are logically
interoperable, but this requires experts who have skills from a variety of
disciplines AND who are capable of deferring to the SMEs on how they see the
world. It may be necessary to have intermediate mapping ontologies, but if the
ontologists working with the different communities of interest are careful,
these mappings can avoid losing meaning.
Tagging as ad-hoc keywords does not work for data interoperability; it also
usually fails to achieve good recall. Flat lists of controlled terms are
usually difficult to apply unless they are very small. When Thomas Vander Wal
coined the term Folksonomy, it was intended to cover the same kinds of
structures as folk taxonomies. Its subsequent application to describe
unstructured lists of tags was a misappropriation.
RDF and OWL added some extra problems. They were designed without much input
from people with actual use cases, and optimised for the wrong things. Some
things were dumbed down because some people didn't understand what had gone
before, and could not understand why the old folk were kicking up such a fuss.
Other things were constrained in order to make OWL DL decidable, even though
the resulting worst case complexity of 2-NEXPTIME means that implementations
have to work on special cases, check for too slow results, and / or limit
expressivity to sub profiles just in order to work.
Other design decisions did not consider the human factors of using OWL. It is
very difficult to explain to people why restricting the range of a property
for a specific class is handled by adding an unnamed superclass. It is also
difficult to explain the Open World Assumption, and the non unique name
assumption. It is also hard to explain why, in a web environment with no
standard world closing mechanism, making everything monotonic is necessary.
It is especially hard to justify the restriction of RDF to binary predicates-
some predicates are intrinsically of higher arity; just because higher arity
predicates can be misused, and it is possible to reduce everything to binary
does not make it desirable.
Having a model that does not match the existing experience of UML modelers,
database designers, or users of other KR systems causes real problems for real
users.
Nevertheless there is baby in the bathwater, and it can become soup. It just
might not look the same.
The schema.org efforts are limited to the extent that they are barely semantic
(a conscious decision by danbri and guha); unfortunately some of the
discussions by others show a visceral distain for any questions as to what
vocabulary choices would actually mean that is almost anti-semantism.
------
hocuspocus
As someone who had to implement PoC's using semantic web at a big company, I'd
say it's still limited to academia and very specific fields in the industry
(like bio-medical research).
On an anecdotal note, no recruiter has ever contacted me because of these
particular keywords on my LinkedIn profile.
------
kriro
Not sure about the semantic web as defined but there's quite a bit of metadata
in some places. Last time I checked a full tweet was 4kb in size which is
quite a lot for 140 chars of text :)
If metadata is useful it will be used but pre-emptively adding semantic
information to everything seems pretty unlikely.
------
bemused
[http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/676/F01/icecreamontolog...](http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/676/F01/icecreamontology.jpg)
------
padde
Wikidata is a good example where "semantic web technology" is really useful,
imo.
[http://www.wikidata.org](http://www.wikidata.org)
------
blablabla123
Like 10 years ago some people said Web 3.0 will be either the Internet of
Things or the Semantic Web.
IoT is becoming a reality, both technology wise but also financially. But
Semantic Web? Some ideas of it are there but I think we are not there yet.
FWIW the W3C has several standards for semantic information and there are even
more in progress. I'm having the impression though that the field is still
heavily academia focused.
~~~
rjsw
I work on an ISO CAD standard [1]. There has been some work done on converting
it to a mixture of RDF and OWL but it isn't ready for serious use yet, file
sizes increase about 10x though if it was being used for real some stuff could
be linked to rather than copied around.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10303](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10303)
~~~
blablabla123
Ok crazy... Well I believe the proprietary CAD standards are all just some
binary mess, maybe the 10x is worth it?!
~~~
rjsw
The exchange format for ISO 10303 is ascii files, not binary ones, the 10x
expansion is just from wrapping XML tags around the data. I guess we should
look at JSON-LD though.
------
math0ne
Google has recently started to embed some semantic elements into search
results: [http://googleresearch.blogspot.ca/2014/09/introducing-
struct...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.ca/2014/09/introducing-structured-
snippets-now.html)
------
kirkyz
The semantic thing - modelling language nodally - is inevitable. if you get it
- it is simple - the question is when. tools will enable nodal linking as
standard when the need to communicate becomes blinding. today google has their
internal nodes as we all see - and how powerful its intelligence grows by the
day as a result of their nodal step change. but it will not be the only
creator of coherence - it will not want to be - as that is stupefying. We all
need external predication (not by unstructured text alone - although I note
that text is our evolved method of creating a node - just a little rougher
than a GUID.) Tools to link will be created so information points can fluidly
relate to each other. If we talk to computers today, why will they not talk to
each other tomorrow. Is that far away? So then we must just ask if the SW
framework is well conceived. Personally I like the simplicity and power of
attribute value, and an ID that I can relate.
------
rainhacker
Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) in Ireland specializes in
semantic research: [http://www.deri.ie/](http://www.deri.ie/)
~~~
djulius
Specialized in fact, they "pivoted" some years ago and layed off much of the
staff.
------
CmonDev
People suddenly decided that languages designed for no more than interactive
documents are good enough for apps. We need to wait until the js.MVC craze
fades as it should.
------
oneloop
Big data kinda reduced the need for it. People figured that its easier to
bring the masses to the computers than the computers to the masses.
------
roboben
was it ever a thing outside of an university?
~~~
csirac2
I'm not sure that lack of adoption of sem-web tech (even the loosely defined
kind) in sites serving cat pictures is a big deal.
For some, semantic web means RDF and linked data. Of course, the "full
promise" is queries that have the ability to draw inferences from indirect
relationships in the data - admittedly the few examples I've seen, whilst
remarkable - perform best when there's only one, homogeneous underlying
dataset. Where you have disparate datasets from many
organizations/institutions (and the data spans decades), these things struggle
outside of demos due to the huge work required in normalizing/mapping onto
something common that can be sensibly queried against: and sometimes that's
even when the same ontologies are in use! The underlying data just doesn't
necessarily map very well into the sem-web representations, so duplicates
occur and possible values explode in their number of valid permutations even
though they all mean the same handful of things. And it's the read-only
semantic-web, so you can't just clean it, you have to map it..
Which is why I'm always amazed that
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/](http://www.wolframalpha.com/) works at all. And
hopefully one day [https://www.freebase.com/](https://www.freebase.com/) will
be a thing. I remember being excited about
[http://openrefine.org/](http://openrefine.org/) for "liberating" messy data
into clean linked data... but it turns out that you really don't want to
curate your information "in the graph"; it seems obvious, but traditional
relational datasets are infinitely more manageable than arbitrarily connected
nodes in a graph.
So, most CMS platforms are doing somewhat useful things in marking up their
content in machine-readable ways (RDFa, schema.org [as evil as that debacle
was], HTTP content-type negotiation and so on) either out-of-the-box or with
trivially installed plugins.
If you look around, most publishing flows are extremely rich in metadata. For
all sorts of things, like describing news articles [1], journal articles [2]
(DOIs weren't built to serve the semantic web, but certainly are rich in
metadata), movie/book/audio titles and their content...
Beyond that, we just had GovHack [3] here in Australia a few months ago where
groups were encouraged to do what they could with public government datasets
(which themselves, again, aren't necessarily "semantic web" but are
increasingly using "linked-data" formats/standards for, if not
interoperability, then at least dataset discovery). There are RDF
representations of everything from parliamentary archives [4] to land use [5].
I've personally seen some great applications of inter-organizational data
mashing/sharing/discovery in materials science and a few years ago I really
enjoyed working with bioinformatics services such as [6] which allows some fun
SPARQL queries to answer interesting questions.
[1] [https://developer.ap.org/ap-metadata-
services](https://developer.ap.org/ap-metadata-services) [2]
[http://www.opendoar.org/](http://www.opendoar.org/) [3]
[http://www.govhack.org/](http://www.govhack.org/) [4]
[http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record/46420/Export?...](http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record/46420/Export?style=RDF)
[5]
[http://www.data.gov.au/dataset/ca83e9bf-1220-43b6-b332-206bf...](http://www.data.gov.au/dataset/ca83e9bf-1220-43b6-b332-206bf0daa258.rdf)
[6]
[http://biodiversity.org.au/confluence/display/nsl/services](http://biodiversity.org.au/confluence/display/nsl/services)
~~~
mark_l_watson
freebase.com is a real thing: along with DBPedia data, freebase.com is a major
input for Google's Knowledge Graph.
I agree that wolfram alpha rocks - I wish it were less expensive to use
though.
------
auggierose
It's funny, I asked exactly the same question in a seminar about 2 weeks ago.
The answer I got was, there are about 500 researchers assembling to talk about
it (somewhere in Italy, I think), why don't you ask them?
~~~
scast
He's talking about ISWC, which was last week.
------
eskimobloood
Whats about facebooks open graph?
------
Fannon
I've looked into Semantic Web Technologies for a year now and trying to come
to a personal conclusion at the moment. This is my current state, through some
of this may be premature:
PRO:
* I can see that the semantic annotation part of it is spreading. Schema.org / JSON-LD might be the first pragmatic solution that I can imagine actually getting more widespread acceptance. Especially if currently existing Frameworks / CMS add support by default.
* Semantic Annotations are helping big companies like Google to make their products smarter and this is happening right now.
* Semantic Web tries to solve some real problems, not just "academic" problems. Information and Knowledge is indeed rather unconnected which reduces its value tremendously. Right now APIs grow to make this mor accessible, but there are many problems unsolved.
* SemanticWeb has some truly interesting ideas and concepts, that I've grown to like. Of course nearly every one of them could work without buying the whole Semantic Web. But still, I think some very interesting ideas come out of that community.
CON:
* It takes a lot of time to understand the Semantic Web correctly and learning about the technologies behind gets soon very mixed up with a lot of complicated and rather uncommon concepts, like Ontologies.
* The tools (even Triplestores) feel awkward and years behind to what I'm used to as a web developer. There are a LOT of tools, but most seem to be abandoned research project which I wouldn't dare to use in production.
* It gets especially complicated when entering the territory of the Open World Assumption (OWA) and the implications that has on reasoning and logic. Say you want hard (real-time) validation because data is entered through a form on a website. Asking some people from the Semantic Web Domain, the answers varied from "I don't know how to do this" up to "Its complicated, but there is some research... , additional ontology for that...". I'm kind of shocked since this is one of the most trivial and common thing to do in the web. And I really don't want to add another complex layer onto an already complex system just to solve simple problems. Something's wrong with the architecture here.
* OWA might be interesting, but most applications / databases are closed world and it would make many things very complicated to try fit it into the Open World Logic. OWA is an interesting concept and makes sense if you are building a distibuted knowledge graph (Which is a huge task and only few have the ressources to do it), but most people will want to stay closed world just because its much more easy to handle. The Semantic Web seems to ignore reality here and prefers to be idealistic, imho.
* This sums up to me to one big problem: The Semantic Web Technolgies provide solutions to some complex problems, but also make some very easy things hard to do. As long as it doesn't provide some smart solutions (with a reasonable amount of learning / implementation time) to existing problems, I don't see that it will be adopted by the typical web developer.
* There are not enough pragmatic persons around in the community, that actually get nice things done that produce that "I wan't that, too!" effect.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla Replacement battery modules for model 3 between 5-7k - aerophilic
https://electrek.co/2019/04/13/tesla-model-3-longevity-claims-elon-musk
======
aerophilic
If the 5-7k is current cost, explains why they are having difficulty reaching
35k price point...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PayPal releases Kraken, Node.js framework - bluepnume
http://www.krakenjs.com/
======
moreproductive
Maybe I'm a minority, but I can't really trust anything from a company with a
login screen that says "logging you in securely" for 5000ms before loading me
(sometimes) to my dashboard.
~~~
lighthazard
You are not their target market.
~~~
moreproductive
Explain?
~~~
chaz
This might provide you some insight: [http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-
Slow-Down-Loop.aspx](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Slow-Down-Loop.aspx)
In all seriousness, adding interstitials can provide value. If the login
performance has high variance, it's better to set an expectation that it will
take 5 seconds than leave the user wondering if the click actually worked.
Similarly, Apple has done an amazing job with UI transitions in iOS to mask
the actual load time.
------
ricardobeat
I was honestly expecting something with more added value to warrant it's own
name, maybe a viable competitor to Sails.js, Derby, etc. Lusca is nice,
everything else is more or less what everyone is already doing - runtime
config, controllers, grouped routes, etc, more of a template than a framework.
Good thing they are not reinventing the wheel.
------
leokun
====
Don't like:
dust.js templates instead of handlebars
self = this all over the place
native use of forEach and Object.keys instead of underscore or lowdash
====
I like:
that you can change the template system
grouping routes, I always add this myself, makes it more django like
security stuff like csrf
dev and prod environment awareness
directory layout is cool
apache license
uses grunt
they use Object.create!
one var statement per function
krakens
====
Overall pretty awesome.
p. s. I have no idea how to format text here.
~~~
kevincennis
I'd be interested to hear what you don't like about Object.keys or
Array#forEach. Not looking to start an argument, just genuinely curious why
you prefer a utility library over native methods -- especially in Node, where
you have guaranteed ES5 compatibility.
Also: self = this can be avoided in a lot of cases with Function#bind, but not
always. Seems like a weird criticism to me.
~~~
leokun
Native methods can be slower than simply using a for (Edit: while) loop:
[http://allyoucanleet.com/post/21624742336/jsconf-
us-12-slide...](http://allyoucanleet.com/post/21624742336/jsconf-us-12-slides)
self = this is error prone because it relies on JavaScript's lexical scope to
share a variable across nested functions. It's a gross abuse of closures. It
invalidates the ability to bind or use apply later, since everything is bound
to that local variable self, and it's simply not needed and is probably used
to avoid considerable use of bind, but using bind is only an issue when you
write flock of seagull style nested function code. using self = this is not
the right solution, writing more modular code with smaller functions is.
~~~
ricardobeat
The performance hit of using .bind() instead of `self = this` is much larger
than .forEach() vs loop. Pick your side :)
~~~
leokun
I pick less chance for errors over performance. Referencing variables outside
of local scope is something I avoid. Write beautiful code first, because it's
easier to optimize beautiful code than to beautify optimized code.
------
blhack
Huh: [https://www.kraken.com/](https://www.kraken.com/)
Why this is relevant: kraken is a bitcoin trading platform. Paypal is a
competitor to bitcoin.
~~~
gberger
Huh: [https://kraken.io/](https://kraken.io/)
~~~
gry
Huh: [http://asana.github.io/kraken/](http://asana.github.io/kraken/)
~~~
ricardobeat
Yeah, these days people don't seem to give a shit to preceding OS projects
with the same name. "Ours will be much bigger".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Opinion of thinking of startup ideas vs. not thinking of startup ideas? - LeicesterCity
Paul Graham states that not thinking of startup ideas leads to good ideas. Whereby, one develops a way of thinking of ideas unconsciously. Thus, the idea of working on side projects because they're plain interesting.<p>The other alternative is to constantly think of startup ideas. PG warns against this mode of thinking.<p>What is HNs opinion on thinking of startup ideas, vs. not thinking of startup ideas. There are many examples of successful companies using the latter strategy, but are there examples of successful companies using the former idea?<p>Overall, which is the more viable strategy?
======
mindcrime
I just try to read a lot, absorb all kinds of ideas from all sorts of places -
articles on HN, books, Youtube videos, Wikipedia articles, conversations with
strangers at coffee shops, whatever... and then think about stuff and let the
ideas pop out whenever / wherever they do. Some of the ideas I have might be
good startup ideas, or not. Who's to say? I find a few from time to time that
seem appealing enough to at least write down, or email to myself for future
reference.
_shrug_
------
pizza
imo solutionism is only sustainable if you have a source of free money
~~~
tlb
Solutionism is a belief in the power of technology, in the most general sense
of any applied knowledge, to eventually solve all problems. While any
particular solution may create new problems, those are in turn solvable. (If
you mean something different by the word, let me know.)
If you believe solutions exist, you can think of lack of money as just another
problem to which there must be a solution. Indeed, any problem you care about
probably requires solving several other problems before you can address the
main problem. Getting money is just another step in the giant yak-shaving
project.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Massive Breach in Panera Bread - pnrabrdthrwy
https://pastebin.com/21H28TA1
======
deft
A similar flaw exists in the Denny's Canada app. Reveals usernames, email,
full name and phone number. The API is entirely unauthenticated and account
hijacking is very easy. The app is used for reward points that grant you free
meals.
I tried reaching out to them multiple times and was ignored. I tried
contacting the firm that developed the app, and they ignored me. Maybe I
should have made a pastebin dump :)
~~~
papagg
You should post your method. I could scrape it for data if you want
~~~
deft
Would rather not. I've made scripts that take all the data possible, I'll
probably post a dump and repro instructions some time later.
~~~
stevekemp
Might be worth getting in touch with Troy Hunt, over at
[https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)
------
d4mi3n
API seems to be down for maintenance. Nice to see Panera is taking action, sad
to hear that this seems to be way, way after the original vulnerability was
reported.
------
dsl
Verified the vulnerability, but it looks like they have taken down the API
now.
Hopefully they will publicly acknowledge.
~~~
CiPHPerCoder
I anticipated this and made archived copies of the hyperlink referenced in the
Pastebin entry in case they tried to pretend there was no leak.
[https://www.webcitation.org/6yNwbyvu0](https://www.webcitation.org/6yNwbyvu0)
[https://archive.fo/h9mjp](https://archive.fo/h9mjp)
------
jclardy
There whole system seemed a bit odd to me, given a password to your "account"
is optional. Using the terminal you can login with no password, then at the
end it asks you if you want to save your credit card to your account. Maybe it
requires a password at that point, but I wasn't going to try.
~~~
CiPHPerCoder
Oh no no no no no please don't tell me that's true D:
------
gtirloni
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.panerabread.com/" on this server.
Reference #18.96d8f648.1522702964.2a61eebf
The Web Archive can access it just fine though:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180402210155/https://www.paner...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180402210155/https://www.panerabread.com/en-
us/home.html)
------
dx034
For non-Americans and as their page is down: What kind of accounts do you have
at such a company? I never had an account with a restaurant, why would you use
that and store personal information there?
~~~
stevula
I’m American but I have made accounts with restaurants to order for pickup (or
delivery). It’s especially helpful if you eat in an a busy area with long
lunch lines. It’s also less error prone having the order in written form than
trying to order over the phone. I think most restaurants use a vendor like
Yelp for their ordering service, but I guess some big ones like Panera can
afford to build one themselves (poorly).
------
zcdziura
Oh boy. I just verified this with a few phone numbers of folks that I know
personally, and their personal data came back just fine. This isn't good! I
hope it's patched ASAP.
------
mxpxrocks10
It's back online and they're verifying sessions now.
------
papagg
Anyone manage to scrape all data? If so please provide a link so it can be
archived for a database search tool.
------
thriftwy
That's exactly what you should do when you see a vulnerability. "Internet"
"businesses" has proven that they don't understand kind words. Take all those
lawsuits, or promises thereof, and _shove_.
Do this until they plead mercy. Are they? No they aren't yet!
------
mr_overalls
Wow, this looks pretty bad.
~~~
pvaldes
If in doubt, put a catputer photo. Cats always look fabulous.
Update: It seems that error-cat has gone now. In resume, anybody could
download a list of all people eating at this restaurants, their telephones,
addresses, pastry preferences and last four numbers of their credit cards. Am
I right? It seems that entering a single telephone they obtain a dozen of
diferent users. Is a sort of wildcard or something?.
Wouldn't be much better to talk with Panera Bread directly?
~~~
ctvo
I'm going to pick on your post a little:
Why would you assume a security researcher who put in that much effort and
kept the pastebin mostly anonymous didn't put in the effort to contact Panera
Bread?
Is there a reason you automatically assume that the security researcher is
irresponsible, but companies, who almost daily, have data breaches, are
responsible in these scenarios?
"Hey, maybe you should contact the company?!" Thank you captain fucking
obvious.
~~~
pvaldes
> Why would you assume...?
Because there is not data that specifies the opposite in the link (and extra
info was lacking when I wrote it), thus is a reasonable and logical first
thing to check.
> Is there a reason you automatically assume that the security researcher is
> irresponsible...?
Please, don't put words in my mouth. I didn't called irresponsible anybody and
I didn't automatically assume anything. To be honest, I couldn't care less
about who, if one, has the responsibility here. I'm trying to learn something.
Not more, not less.
Captain fucking obvious is a nice title. We'll have a safer world when people
start paying notice to a lot of fucking obvious and boring things. This
reminds me a lot to the outrageous lexNET case (that was much, much, worse
than internet knowing who has a sweet tooth for buns).
------
mxpxrocks10
Verified this is legit.
------
bt3
Perhaps I'm naïve, but the fact this "breach" is being disclosed anonoymously,
via a medium commonly associated with nefarious data dumps suggests to me that
there really was little consideration paid to allowing Panera an opportunity
to correct this situation.
Disclosing this as such was irresponsible, despite being an important
discovery.
~~~
CobrastanJorji
Given the number of times well-meaning do-gooders have been prosecuted or sued
after publicly disclosing a breach, I find this approach entirely reasonable.
The caveat, of course, is that the poster should definitely have first
attempted to contact Panera. I would not be surprised at all if Panera
responded by doing absolutely nothing, which eventually led to this post.
~~~
thriftwy
If you contacted them, you just opened yourself to potential persecution, even
if it would not be you who actually pastebined it later.
Not even once.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reading About the Financial Crisis: A 21-Book Review (2012) [pdf] - dave446
http://www.argentumlux.org/documents/JEL_6.pdf
======
haylem
OP's link is for a draft version. Final version can be found in several places
(e.g. Google Scholar). Here's one of them: [http://dspace.mit.edu/openaccess-
disseminate/1721.1/75360](http://dspace.mit.edu/openaccess-
disseminate/1721.1/75360)
------
roymurdock
_There are several observations to be made from the number and variety of
narratives that the authors in this review have proffered. The most obvious is
that there is still significant disagreement as to what the underlying causes
of the crisis were, and even less agreement as to what to do about it. But
what may be more disconcerting for most economists is the fact that we can’t
even agree on all the facts[...]Many of us like to think of financial
economics as a science, but complex events like the financial crisis suggest
that this conceit may be more wishful thinking than reality. Keynes had even
greater ambitions for economics when he wrote, “If economists could manage to
get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with
dentists, that would be splendid.”22 Instead, we’re now more likely to be
thought of as astrologers, making pronouncements and predictions without any
basis in fact or empirical evidence._
I find it kind of sad that the author is more concerned with lamenting about
what people think of him and his profession than he is preoccupied with
synthesizing the most plausible set of causes and remedies for the financial
crisis from the 21 different sources he has studied.
~~~
muraiki
I think the point being made is that it's not straightforward to synthesize a
plausible set of causes and remedies, despite the survey of 21 sources, and
that economics as a science needs a bit of self-reflection in the light of
this reality.
~~~
roymurdock
The author's main conclusion is that economists "need to collect, check, and
accumulate facts from which more accurate inferences can then be drawn.
Without the immutable hard platform of objective facts on which we can build
an accurate narrative of the crisis that stands the test of time, there’s
little hope for scientific progress as the waves of public opinion toss our
perspective in one direction or another."
I don't need a degree from Harvard and Yale, nor do I need to be a professor
at MIT to tell you that.
If I were an expert in Professor Lo's position, I would probably make a
greater attempt to present _my_ expert view of the events and _my_ expert
recommendations based off of the 22 texts that I have just read on the
subject, rather than just saying that we should collect more data on
everything so that this won't happen again in the future.
~~~
Illotus
If the data sucks, how are you going to present any other reasonable expert
view than the one he presented? Manufacturing some grand view and
recommendations based on untrustworthy data is something that needs to be
avoided, however much we would want to hear it.
~~~
roymurdock
I'd love to hear the opinion and recommendations of the guy who read 22
primary/secondary texts on the subject and have him help shape policy now.
You're not going to get better data than the expert views and analyses
presented in these texts, barring the constant surveillance, recording, and
analysis of every transaction ever made within and without the US economy,
every email sent within and between banks/regulators/credit rating
agencies/mortgage brokers/loan originators, etc. - data that is impractical
and currently illegal to collect.
We'd all love to have more/better data, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't
draw conclusions or act on the data that is available to us now.
------
rebootthesystem
Not sure why author is confused. Here's how it went down:
- Congress needed votes
- Easiest way to get them is to be a populist
- The tool: Everyone should be able to buy a home
- The approach: Remove red tape
- Why demand that people actually prove income?
- Both major political parties at fault
- Lenders, well, start lending
- Government guarantees any loan
- A McDonalds worker can buy a $500K home
- No-docs, zero down, interest-only loans invented
- Wall street help is needed to write more loans
- Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) invented
- Now we can loan to even more non-qualified buyers
- Now people can invest in loans made to non-qualified buyers
- Mutual funds jump in
- What could go wrong? It's a party.
- Thanks US Congress!
- The frenzied environment takes to new heights
- Every institution working under the law
- This is what Congress wanted
- Happy people buying homes
- Well worry about affordability later
- Gimme your votes
- Valuations went insane
- And then the music stopped
- Eventually the McDonalds worker had to face the
fact that he/she owed $500K
- People bought $1.5 million dollar homes and woke
up to their mortgage payment quadrupling overnight
- Chain reaction of defaults
- CDO's were hot potatoes nobody wanted
- Mutual funds imploded
- Municipalities invested in CDO's went bankrupt
- Strategic defaults were invented
- Businesses and individuals went bankrupt by the millions
- Hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost every month
- The effect is international
- The US government picks winners and losers
- Banks and auto manufacturers are bailed out
- Politicians start to blame bankers and "greedy"
Wall Street brokers
- The lynching mob focuses on them in complete
ignorance of who truly triggered the entire mess
- Politicians got their votes while imploding the
world economy and came out looking good as they
talked about going after the "evil bankers"
- Of course, they didn't go after anyone because
there was nothing to go after
- Banks and Wall Street were operating under the
rules and laws passed by Congress
- It was a case of political collateral damage taken
to an extreme
- And almost every single one of them is still in office
The real cause was greedy politicians (not banks and Wall Street) and their
use of populism as a tool.
A decidedly evil tool in the hands of politicians who take advantage of the
uneducated masses for their own benefit.
Latin America is going through a bit of an awakening and a revolt precisely
aimed at the massive destruction populism has caused in nearly every country
south of the US. It's a disaster that will take decades, if not generations,
to repair. While few seem ready to recognize it, we have exactly the same
problem in the US.
A woman from Guatemala named Gloria Alvarez has emerged as one of the most
vocal and intelligent figures in a multi-national effort to push back on
populism.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkYEXS16dZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkYEXS16dZA)
Don't be led by the nose by politicians who only care about using you for
their own benefit. As we have seen and as Latin American has seen, allowing
populism to reign unchecked can have dire consequences.
In the US both parties are guilty of populism but the left has taken it to
"expert level" over the last few years. The technique is to divide us by race,
occupation, educational level, income and any other criteria they can find.
You appoint an "enemy" for each divided class: whites vs. blacks, rich vs.
poor, blue collar vs. white collar, etc. You focus the masses on the enemies
and promise you will find solutions for their grievances.
And, just like that, you have masses willing, ready and able to cast votes for
you. Once in office, you drop them on your heads and ignore them. Why? You
need the groups to remain at odds with each other in order to continue pumping
them for votes. You give them just enough to feel OK but strategically keep
them miserable for your own benefit.
Don't believe me? Look at how effective the various "wars" have been: drugs,
poor, education, etc. Decades of promises that magically never seem to come
true. Why?
Populism loves the poor so much they multiply them.
Don't be a tool.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter analysis: identifying a propaganda bot network - anigbrowl
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/09/03/twitter-analysis-identifying-a-pro-indonesian-propaganda-bot-network/
======
Jsharm
If it's possible to do this analysis why does twitter not routinely shutdown
these networks?
~~~
scribu
The analysis in this post is only on two rather small hashtags (a very small
percentage of the whole of Twitter).
It also involves a lot of "eyeballing", particularly the part where the author
looks at the graph and notices a weird pattern. That's very hard to do
automatically.
~~~
Nextgrid
> That's very hard to do automatically.
When you run a worldwide network that has significant potential for abuse and
spreading misinformation I would consider it to be your duty to monitor it and
guard against these kinds of things. If it costs too much then maybe you
shouldn't be in business or should change your business model so that you can
afford to clean up the damage your business is doing to society.
~~~
Zenst
Issue is if you run such automation with aggresive settings that would pick up
this - you also increase false-positives and those for such a business could
have a more negative impact than a few small bot nets.
So you do need people somewhere in the loop to handle these things.
What would be nice though would be if social media offered rewards for
identifying such abuse, after all - they happily pay bug bounties, why not
abuse bounties! That would get them lots of zero-hour/non-contract workers
doing their job for them and big companies love that it seems and to be able
to do that in a PR way that has positives. Well, it works for BUG bounties,
why not incentivise the populus to police the populus against abuse as well.
~~~
cat199
> you also increase false-positives
...
> if social media offered rewards for identifying such abuse
couldn't this also be gamed for false positives, and create an incentive for
groups to form smear-for-profit entities which try to spin small communities
as 'bad' to the benefit of others?
~~~
Zenst
When life is a game, everything is gameable. However, as humans are good at
adapting, you are playing one large mass of people against a lesser mass of
bad players. So whilst you may get gaming of the system, that would still
stand out to others who would investigate.
But let us not forget, things like posting IP and client and other such
details that may prove useful in identifying such abuse, may well elude public
investigation. So it would be these niche area's in which Twitter could then
focus upon.
However, as an example of a slightly comparable problem - wiki editing and the
weighted credibility of editors over time, we may well end up creating a
hidden social media based upon a small subset of society and perhaps yielding
a bias in some direction or another in judgment of what is abuse.
~~~
cat199
agree all is gameable - this is why I argue social media should provide tools
for users to filter their own content rather than being everyones nanny
~~~
Zenst
Totaly, that would work. Let people impose their world view upon themselves
via filters instead of imposing it upon everybody, would solve so much and
tick all the free speech boxes.
But with the ways social media churns upon spam/botnets, it would place a huge
load upon people self filtering.
------
luckylion
> This exact sentence was published by many of the other bots in their own
> individual tweets using the hashtags #westpapuagenocide and #freewestpapua.
A clickbaity video "what the government is trying to hide" that contains pro-
gov messages ("they've developed an app for personal finance management and
are giving villages more opportunities", "they are helping the food industry")
posted under those hashtags. Is that attempting to influence people that are
looking up those hashtags (presumably expecting to find info on "the
genocide"), or is that just to add noise to the hashtag?
It looks too high quality for just noise (so it's probably too expensive to
produce a lot of that content), but on the other hand, I can't imagine someone
saying "woah, there's a genocide going on in west papua? I better check
twitter. Ah, here's a video ... mhh, they are deploying an app to help people
with finances and there's something about the food industry? I'm now convinced
there is no genocide". Like, is that some "if only people knew about our app,
they wouldn't mind the crimes" thinking? Does that work?
------
ailideex
Not a bot, Twitter recently blocked my account that had almost no activity
without providing any reason and now I cannot delete it which is in
contravention of GDPR.
~~~
peteretep
> I cannot delete it which is in contravention of GDPR
Go on. They’ve refused your removal request with appropriate ID sent to their
office, or?
~~~
megous
Appropriate ID is username/password if real-life ID was not previously linked
to an account directly.
------
eecc
Uh, from the article: why is he using sudo to run a python script?
sudo twint -u bellanow1 –media -o papuabots1 –csv
Not good
~~~
speps
Theory: he's a reporter, someone showed him the command, one time it didn't
work and the other person said to use "sudo" possibly because he was trying to
write a file somewhere he needed access to. Now he always uses sudo because it
always works...
------
markdown
Surprising to see this on here. The ongoing genocide of the West Papuan people
by Indonesia has largely been ignored by the West.
BTW the propaganda team behind this bot network has also been very active on
reddit.
~~~
nencrystation
Every now and then bellingcat covers a "lesser" news story like this one, so
they can pretend their main purpose isn't to push for regime change in Syria.
~~~
howard941
bellingcat made its mark documenting the MH17 shootdown.
[https://www.bellingcat.com/tag/mh17/](https://www.bellingcat.com/tag/mh17/)
has the exhaustive history
~~~
Udik
Let's say they seem to be consistently on one side of the Russia - USA
disputes, of which Syria has been one of the issues. Just a quick browsing of
the articles published in the last few months show that the vast majority of
the investigations is focused on various malfeasances of Russia, Syria or
Iran.
~~~
varjag
Bellingcat investigations on Syria predate Russian involvement in Syria.
~~~
Udik
Bellingcat was founded in July 2014, while Russia has been siding with Assad
from the start of the war- vetoing sanctions, providing weapons and preventing
an open attack by the US in 2013.
~~~
varjag
Russia did not enter Syria until 2015. Bellingcat's founder was already
publishing on Syrian conflict in 2012.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mathematicians find 'magic key' to drive Ramanujan's taxi-cab number - ghosh
http://esciencecommons.blogspot.ca/2015/10/mathematicians-find-magic-key-to-drive.html
======
crystalmeph
Ramanujan was a genius, but he didn't just factor 1729 on the spot in the
hospital bed. According to Wikipedia, he'd already known about it a few years
before, so it was just coincidence that Hardy happened to present a number he
already knew about, although to be honest, he probably knew interesting facts
about most numbers below 1 million or so.
~~~
justifier
when you think about these sorts of things you come across many interesting
numbers that posit unique problems to your theories
when you are looking to develop a theory you can sometimes look to markers for
guidance
markers like: first, smallest, largest known, outliers;
ramanujan's language:
the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes
in two different ways.
certainly implies he once asked himself.. what is the smallest number i can
express as the sum of two cubes in only two different ways
and its place as the smallest, with postive cubes, means it is elementary and
essential to a number of extended applications that use products,cubes and
sums
i wish the story went on to have ramanujan explain what he was seeking to
uncover by examining which number could be the smallest expressible as the sum
of two cubes in two different ways..
to what end was he using the two different ways, controlled in their only
being two, to examine properties of sums of cubes
------
osullivj
Whenever I need an arbitrary const int I use 1729. I've left a trail of 1729s
in the codebases I've touched over the years, and I like the thought of other
hackers recognising the number when they have to fix the bugs I've left
behind.
~~~
elbrownos
Can I borrow your debit card for a minute?
~~~
osullivj
LOL! No - 1729 is not my PIN ;)
~~~
liotier
Well... You have just been tricked into reducing the guessing space by 1/10000
!
~~~
chki
or has he...? (SCNR)
------
chx
Ramanujan was an extraordinary mathematician who was able to intuit (and then
prove) many really surprising formulas. I have no idea how a movie is going to
work since most of these results are far too heavy for a movie screen and
without it how can you understand the man ?
~~~
coliveira
Ramanujan had such an extraordinary life that you don't even need to tell
anything about mathematics to make it interesting.
------
Tinyyy
So, what’s the deal with K3 surfaces?
~~~
elcct
They are improved K2 surfaces with less glare and more hype
------
dang
Url changed from [http://phys.org/news/2015-10-mathematicians-magic-key-
ramanu...](http://phys.org/news/2015-10-mathematicians-magic-key-ramanujan-
taxi-cab.html), which copies this without linking to it.
~~~
sohkamyung
Out of curiosity, how did you know that the original URL copied the article
from the current URL?
~~~
shripadk
Just look at the other articles on that blog. Google the title and you'll know
that he is copying from various reputed science news websites and journals.
For example "Fungi at root of plant drugs that can help, or harm, sick monarch
butterflies" is an article published in this blog as well as
[http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/ehs-
far100815...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/ehs-
far100815.php) . Unless the author of the blog can prove that he is a central
source of information for all these sites, there is no doubt that he is
blatantly plagiarizing.
~~~
psykovsky
I think you should read their About page[0]... they are partners of Emory
University. Or so they say[1]...
[0] [http://phys.org/help/about-us/](http://phys.org/help/about-us/) [1]
[http://phys.org/partners/emory-university/](http://phys.org/partners/emory-
university/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Smalltalk: Welcome to the Balkans - abyx
http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/blog/?p=466
======
dmlorenzetti
This surely will sound like a troll, but the main thing that struck me here
was the statement: "Just getting the code out of VisualWorks was a pain." How
can anybody use a development environment that doesn't expose the source code
in plain-text files?
Can somebody who likes VW expound on the advantages it provides?
~~~
rbanffy
Smalltalk has been using images since ever. The image contains your world -
your code, development tools and all your complete environment, preserving its
state between your sessions. When it's time to deliver the application to its
users, you just take out whatever is not the application and its dependencies
and give the image to your client.
That said, I too find it a bit disturbing not to be able to import/export
changes to the base image as text-files and being unable to build a clean
image from source-code only.
~~~
larsr
There are objects in the modern day Squeak image that were created when
Smalltalk-80 was released. In fact, if you explore around Squeak's image, you
can find all sorts of disconnected bits and pieces that nobody uses anymore,
that are just along for the ride because they are in the image. Sort of
Smalltalk pseudogenes. It's organic, very different, and to me as a biologist
who likes to program, quite fascinating.
~~~
rbanffy
I know I shouldn't, but this organic thing makes me worry that one day my
working image could develop some kind of disease ;-)
~~~
mahmud
Use a purifying/tree-shaking tool then. I am sure STs have them.
------
jhancock
It didn't used to be this bad:
1 - I used to have a commercial app framework in smalltalk. You could take a
fresh Digitalk smalltalk system (or even one with lots of mods as long as
there were no namespace conflicts) and "file-in" my app framework code and all
was well. The tools of that day allowed you to "file-out" the code to a plain
text file(s) or save it in object repos with revision history.
2 - Porting between the two major vendors of the day, Digitalk and ParcPlace,
was trivial if you were a solid smalltalk programer.
For the last 10 years, I've on and off tried to use smalltalk again, but the
tool sets are horrid compared to what they used to be. A 1994 Digitalk
smalltalk was a great toolset. Maybe in a few years, Pharo will be on par with
what we had then.
------
vladev
what does this has to do with the Balkans?
~~~
matasar
He's referring to Balkanization:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkanization>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Oculus Quest Review - dcminter
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/oculus-quest-review-2019s-best-new-gaming-system-is-wireless-affordable-vr/
======
cynic_
> My biggest issue with Oculus Quest is its weight and fit.
They should move more stuff off the front of the headset, it would help
relieve the pressure on the face and make it more balanced. Like in this mod
from Palmer Luckey where he removed the battery and attaches a bigger one to
the strap [https://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-
ocu...](https://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-oculus-go-
better/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
For those of you looking to break into programming - g0lden
http://www.rdegges.com/how-i-learned-to-program/
======
saldrix
This is a great article of a person who went through the joys of programming
coming from not know anything.
~~~
g0lden
my impression as well
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Async-profile: A CPU Profiler for Node.js - geetarista
https://bugsnag.com/blog/async-profile
======
jonstewart
"You appear to have N cores, N-1 more than Nodejs can use."
~~~
elwell
fails for n=1 ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple releases iOS 10.3 - zitterbewegung
https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/27/ios-10-3/
======
jordansmithnz
I've been running the beta for a few weeks now. The thing that stands out the
most? They changed the filesystem, and I haven't noticed a thing - the upgrade
time wasn't even significantly longer. If anything, the beta has been more
stable than 10.2 releases.
The fact they've pulled it off so seamlessly is pretty impressive. Heck, the
majority of users won't have a clue that their filesystem has changed, and
that's the way it should be - users shouldn't be required to know about
technical implementation.
~~~
derefr
> the upgrade time wasn't even significantly longer
I wonder if it works like FileVault, where there's a notion of a "partially
converted" volume and blocks are slowly converted as a background-idle task
after the update completes.
~~~
mrsteveman1
Could be, it may be more like the ext3/4 -> BTRFS conversion process[1], where
metadata for the new filesystem is written in the free space, but with
pointers to the original data which isn't moved or re-written.
[1]
[https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Conversion_from_Ext3](https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Conversion_from_Ext3)
~~~
tradersam
I believe they discussed about this being the method they were actually doing
on ATP a few weeks ago, I'll find the link and report back soon.
------
sirn
Biggest change to me in this release is that iOS now switches language
immediately with hardware keyboard rather than after the switcher animation
ended.
This problem is not very noticable if you do not use non-Latin input method.
However for some languages (Thai in my case), in iOS 10.2, it means you will
have to wait a little moment until the language switcher faded out until you
can type in the target language, otherwise it will still stuck at previous
language. I'm _really_ glad to see this fixed.
(Previously I workaround this problem by using Capslock, which seems to be
able to make iOS go into latin input mode.)
------
dmerrick
I'm excited about exposing to app developers a way to ask for ratings.
Specifically, the ability to opt out of them.
I think this doesn't address the real problem though, which is that ratings
reset after every app update. This means that app developers have to
constantly ask for reviews, which is exhausting as a user.
~~~
drusepth
>ratings reset after every app update.
What's the reasoning behind this? On Android, reviews for prior versions have
a "This review was left for a previous version." banner at the top of them,
but the star aggregates are all still there. How do apps keep reviews if
they're wiped out every time an app updates?
~~~
thecosas
There are two views when looking at ratings in the iOS App Store:
Current version
All versions
It defaults to "Current version"
~~~
dceddia
This is true, and also, when searching the app store the star ratings
displayed next to each app are based on the "current version", so if an app is
recently released it might say "0 reviews" even though it previously had
thousands.
~~~
k-mcgrady
I guess as a developer this approach is useful if your first version is bug
ridden, gets terrible reviews and you quickly push an update that fixes them
all. Your product is doomed. Maybe after 5 updates or something to an app it
should show the 'all ratings' as defaults but before that show 'current
version'.
~~~
0x0
Or, alternatively, if a previously popular app changes hands and turns into
semi-malware, it's useful to not get a free 5 star listing.... :)
~~~
drusepth
How often does something like that happen on iOS?
------
geofft
Here's the security info: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT207617](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207617)
Notably, ten kernel arbitrary code execution bugs, seven from Google Project
Zero and two from Qihoo 360's research team. There are also a few WebKit RCEs,
so it seems like it's prudent to update as soon as possible, lest a malicious
website silently jailbreak your phone.
~~~
pdog
Don't upgrade immediately unless you're willing to deal with problems. If
these security updates were critical they'd be made available in a 10.2.x
point release.
------
AdamGibbins
Changing filesystem for billions of phones in a point release? That doesn't
sound fun.
~~~
pflats
Initially, I was thinking the same thing. Given how fast the average Apple
consumer updates to major iOS releases, I imagine that rolling it out over a
point release is actually part of the plan.
Presumably, if something does go wrong on the individual level, the support
burden on the genius bars will be lower (since major iOS releases have
traditionally come alongside hardware releases), and if a major bug is found,
the number of devices affected will also likely be smaller.
It stills feels wrong on a gut level, and semver folks might not be happy with
it, but it seems to make some real sense.
edit: Also, if it went out with 11.0, coordinating all the bug fixes for a
11.0.1 would almost definitely take longer than whatever will be in 10.3.1
release, letting any APFS issues get tweaked faster.
~~~
mikeash
Rolling it out first on iOS at all doesn't seem like the right approach.
If I were somehow in charge of it, I imagine I'd want to do it like: 1) ship
it as officially supported on the Mac, but off by default. 2) a year or two
later, ship it as officially supported on the Mac, on by default, but still
allow HFS+ as an option. 3) A year or two after that, if all has gone well,
then introduce it into iOS (where presumably it's not reasonable to make it
optional).
It's really weird to me that Apple is rolling it out to hundreds of millions
of devices all at once, when it's not even a bootable filesystem on any of
their platforms yet. Seems like the kind of thing where you'd want to take a
more gradual approach.
I get that HFS+ is super old and I see why Apple wants to switch to APFS. But
I don't get why they're in such a hurry.
Here's hoping their approach works well, in any case!
~~~
coldtea
> _If I were somehow in charge of it, I imagine I 'd want to do it like: 1)
> ship it as officially supported on the Mac, but off by default. 2) a year or
> two later, ship it as officially supported on the Mac, on by default, but
> still allow HFS+ as an option. 3) A year or two after that, if all has gone
> well, then introduce it into iOS (where presumably it's not reasonable to
> make it optional_
The plan doesn't make much sense. For one, the Mac has way more edge cases
than iOS (in that people do more, and in more low- and -high level ways) with
the filesystem, including running all kinds of unix userlands, exchanging
files with other filesystems, etc. In iOS all fs APIs and access are tightly
controlled, and there's no mounting of disks, no touching outside the sandbox,
no disk management apps, etc.
So iOS is a much better target for first launch than OS X.
Second, with this plan it would take 3-5 years to ever arrive. Why so late?
Apple has been developing it for a while, and probably have thousands of tests
it has to pass. And they have been running it on 1 million or more devs on the
10.3 beta program on actual devices for feedback for 2 months.
~~~
mikeash
3-5 years seems to be pretty typical for a filesystem to go from merely
available to being battle tested enough to use without thinking about it. Bugs
could destroy people's data (and the cloud won't necessarily help if the bugs
corrupt data rather than erase it). What's the hurry?
~~~
coldtea
> _Bugs could destroy people 's data (and the cloud won't necessarily help if
> the bugs corrupt data rather than erase it)._
There's no reason to expect bugs if you have a comprehensive test suite and
extensive internal and beta testing (like with a million of registered iOS
developers running it for months).
Doubly so if you control most of the APIs and interactions with the OS tightly
in your platform (as iOS does).
~~~
mikeash
Which is why the rest of iOS has no bugs?
This statement makes me wonder, have you written any software before?
~~~
coldtea
> _Which is why the rest of iOS has no bugs?_
It has no show stopper bugs, and is used by close to a billion everyday just
fine.
And the "rest of the iOS" (kernel, userland, etc) is orders of magnitude more
LOC than the filesystem. And with all kind of interactions between components,
not just a constrained API that all sandboxed apps use, as is the case with an
FS. It has way bigger test surface and (presumably) way smaller test suites
than an FS would.
What's the reason to assume an FS which is under production for 2 years now at
least (it didn't appear magically formed a day before last WWDC) will have not
just some obscure or infrequent bugs, but data killing bugs?
(And why they'd be more than with the frequent new features and changes that
Apple made/retrofitted to HFS over the years? Because they've started from
scratch?)
~~~
mikeash
Because software has bugs, filesystem software has data corruption bugs, and
two years of development with only a couple of months of serious real-world
testing is _tiny_ for something like that.
What other filesystems have gone from zero to being the only supported option
on their platform in such a short time? ZFS took almost five years. HFS+ was
supported in parallel with HFS for a _long_ time.
"And why they'd be more than with the frequent new features and changes that
Apple made/retrofitted to HFS over the years? Because they've started from
scratch?"
Once again I have to wonder: have you _written_ software before? Of _course_ a
brand new from-scratch effort will be buggier than something with a long
history.
~~~
coldtea
> _Once again I have to wonder: have you written software before?_
Yes, for several decades -- though not filesystems.
And I trivially know that software can always have bugs. I also know software
has to ship at some point, and that is a different point than the "we're 100%
sure it has 0 bugs" point -- which is not possible anyway.
I also don't believe in some cargo cult "optimal necessary period of testing"
to make sure a given piece of software has or doesn't have bugs.
I also know that it's perfectly possible to have 10x the testing in 1/10 the
time other teams/companies might take for their tests -- (e.g. by having far
heavier test suites, more intelligent tests, better fuzzing, more systems to
test on in your labs, more QA engineers thrown at the problem, or even
formally proving your software's behavior) .
Finally, I can make ad hominem arguments too: have you wrote and deployed any
filesystems before? If the domain experts designing AFS are confident to put
it in use why we should trust you? Because of your scientific observations of
checking how long other companies took to deploy their new filesystems and
extrapolating some BS "optimal deployment time" from that?
In any case, maybe visit back this thread in 1 month? If the sky hasn't fallen
for iOS 10.3 users (except, at worse, for some edge cases affecting tiny
minorities/uncommon setups), maybe you'll be ready for your serving of crow?
~~~
mikeash
I knew this argument would be made.
Why should you believe me instead of the people writing APFS? You shouldn't.
I'm stating my opinion on the matter. I'm allowed to disagree with them, and
you're allowed to disagree with me, but "Apple thinks it's OK" is _not_ going
to convince me. If it was, then I wouldn't have formed a contrary opinion in
the first place, since it's so obvious.
Further, we don't even know if the experts are confident. It's entirely
possible this decision was made above them and forced on them. It's also
entirely possible it wasn't, we just don't know.
In any case, if everything goes smoothly (and I hope it will), that doesn't
disprove me. It could mean that you're right, or it could mean that I'm right
and they got lucky. It could also mean that some people _are_ losing data, but
not visibly enough and not in large enough number to make the news.
You say "except, at worse, for some edge cases affecting tiny
minorities/uncommon setups" as if that would justify Apple's approach. That's
exactly the kind of thing I'm worried about here. I have no doubt it'll work
for the common case. 99.9% of users will not suffer any problems. But I don't
see why pushing APFS now as opposed to in a few years is worth the risk of
that 0.1%.
~~~
coldtea
> _In any case, if everything goes smoothly (and I hope it will), that doesn
> 't disprove me._
Doesn't that make your case an empty statement that basically amounts to "you
can never be too careful" (and which is always right, no matter the outcome)?
> _But I don 't see why pushing APFS now as opposed to in a few years is worth
> the risk of that 0.1%._
Because it improves lots of things with the 99.9% -- SSD utilization, better
Time Machine, etc.
------
graeme
Backup first. Both my parents phones went to recovery mode. They have an
iphone 5c and another old model.
Going to see if I can extract data. They didn't have itunes backups.
~~~
astrange
You can use Revive from Apple Configurator to possibly fix them.
~~~
graeme
This worked, thank you!
------
nitinreddy88
I dont know whom to blame? I need Google Maps in Apple Car play and without
that its not worth at all for me (countries where Apple Maps is not supported
and Google maps is superior)
------
nicholassmith
I've been running the beta without issues for a while but I've PSA'd for my
extended circle to say "definitely do a backup". I fully expect this to be a
smooth transition but it's definitely an impactful change.
If you have less tech savvy members of your family with iPhones you might want
to just remind them how to do a backup (to save having to explain why it's
gone wrong).
------
michaelmurray
Just upgraded to 10.3 last night on my iPhone 7. Nothing works! iMessage
doesn't work anymore, I can't even swipe up to toggle wifi/bluetooth, the menu
pops up about 1/3 of the way and just freezes.
Twitter hangs when it starts to fetch new data.
Anyone else had these issues after upgrading to 10.3?
------
Synaesthesia
Cricket scores in Siri! But only Indian Premier league. I want international
games too.
~~~
praveenweb
You can ask Siri for "Latest ICC Cricket Scores" or more specifically like
"India vs Australia Cricket Score" for international match updates.
~~~
Synaesthesia
I'm very happy about this.
------
melling
My iPad Pro only sees beta 7. I removed the device from the beta program a
month ago, but it still sees the betas.
Rebooted several times. My iPhone 7s, and two older iPhones upgraded to 10.3,
as well as another iPad. Why is the iPad Pro different?
~~~
X-Istence
When you remove the device from the beta program, you have to re-install from
scratch by restoring from a non-beta version.
If you had stayed on the beta program, you would now be upgraded to 10.3
automatically.
[https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/restore#ios](https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/restore#ios)
~~~
IMcD23
That's untrue. You can upgrade to a newer release version if there is one.
(source: just did this today with 10.3)
You only need to restore if you want to downgrade to a release version when
you are on a later beta.
~~~
X-Istence
I have a device that I unregistered from the beta's and it never picked up a
newer version, I had to manually restore it.
~~~
k-mcgrady
I had the same issue but a manual reinstall wasn't necessary. I believe the
problem was that in the developer > profiles menu there is a certificate for
beta updates that needs removed. Something along those lines.
~~~
sigzero
That is correct. You have to unregister yourself and remove that beta profile.
------
newman314
Just updated all my devices and I must admit that things feel snappier, even
the 5.
~~~
cpncrunch
How do you know it isn't the placebo effect? I once had one of my customers
saying that a certain feature in my product was faster after an upgrade, but I
hadn't actually touched that feature...
------
pawelgrzybek
Night Shift is cool but I wish to have a quick shortcut to toggle it or
disable for some apps (like f.lux). Any idea how to control Night Shift via
AppleScript?
~~~
DopamineHigh
Notifications menu on the very top(need to scoll up a bit for the hidden
toggle switch to appear).
Super easy and smooth way to toggle Nightshift: I have the multi-touch gesture
to open the Notifications menu with two-finger swipe from the right edge. Then
I scroll up and turn on/off Night Shift.
------
zitterbewegung
Just installed it myself and runs very smoothly. Also the changes in Safari
are good especially interactive form validation.
------
bitmapbrother
I just updated and was greeted with an Analytics screen asking to send usage
and other telemetry data back to Apple. The first option to opt in was in
large text while the second option to opt out was in very small text. Is this
new? I don't recall seeing this screen before.
~~~
DopamineHigh
Been there for a long while now. Think it was introduced in iOS 7 with he UI
redesign.
------
jbverschoor
"An error occurred installing iOS 10.3"
~~~
beamso
I got this error attempting an over-the-air update. I was forced to do a full
install of iOS 10.3 using iTunes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests - ingve
http://juhakiili.com/box256/
======
zokier
Love it, very Zachtronicesque. If the author is reading, here are couple of
improvement ideas:
* Show the level number somewhere so its easier to discuss with others
* Add some way to know how well I did on the level, either by having some leaderboards or rating system/target cycle count
* Allow pausing the execution when running
* Not sure if it would make sense to have full 8-bit color palette instead of 4 bits. Probably does not matter to game design too much
I think it might be neat idea to implement this on real hardware with these
sort of rgb led modules
[http://i.imgur.com/4YnDwWu.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4YnDwWu.jpg) and some way
to input code, maybe row of toggle switches Altair/PDP style or small keypad
like in KIM-1
~~~
tehbeard
8 bit palette means trying to match the colour against 256 possibilities
instead of 16.
~~~
zokier
That reminds me of one additional improvement suggestion: allow viewing the
color values of the target pixels somehow.
------
keely
Hi, I'm the author.
Looks like the game went a bit viral and my personal website bandwidth limits
were exceeded.
You can now play here instead: [http://bit.ly/1V1PiHt](http://bit.ly/1V1PiHt)
~~~
golergka
Could you build OS X version too, please?
~~~
keely
I will try to build an OSX version tomorrow(ish), when I get my hands on an
OSX machine.
------
azeirah
Made a subreddit for this game:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/box256](https://www.reddit.com/r/box256)
------
tromp
Visiting that webpage causes my SUSE Firefox 45.0 browser to say "You need a
browser which supports WebGL to run this content. Try installing Firefox."
~~~
fpgaminer
Probably a driver issue. Firefox 45.0 supports WebGL, but it may be disabled
on your machine if it can't find a suitable OpenGL driver. For reference, the
site worked fine on my Ubuntu 15.10 machine, Firefox 45.0, Intel GPU.
------
impomatic
Four squares solved in 7 cycles, 16 threads and overlapping code :-)
[https://twitter.com/john_metcalf/status/716901521036861440/](https://twitter.com/john_metcalf/status/716901521036861440/)
------
kencausey
I looked at this a couple of times today before finally digging in and as I
completed each level I looked forward more and more to the next level. And
then there were no more levels, far sooner than I expected. I hope the author
adds more in time.
Edit: Oh and earlier today after having looked at it many times I bought
[http://www.lexaloffle.com](http://www.lexaloffle.com) 's combination of
Voxatron and Pico-8. I've spent sometime today learning about Pico-8 (to which
I'm going to limit my attention for now) and I think anyone interested in the
linked game might be interested in these as well.
~~~
keely
There will be more levels in few days.
~~~
kencausey
Great, thanks!
------
SilasX
Neat! Would like my own editor though. This doesn't have a lot of text editing
capabilities and is fixed size.
How well does this map to real x86 assembly programming?
~~~
zokier
Real x86 is very different; you have limited registers (especially 32bit x86),
very weird variable length instruction encoding, gazillion different
instructions, memory access takes significant amount of time. Of course having
near infinite amount of memory compared to the 256 bytes of BOX256 changes the
way you program your code too.
------
kencausey
This has moved to [http://box-256.com/](http://box-256.com/)
------
azeirah
Copying and pasting is not working for me :(
~~~
jsnell
The manual implies that's a limitation of the Unity WebGL player, but works in
the standalone version.
~~~
azeirah
Oh I was confused for a moment, thought that only counted for the "external"
clipboard. Obviously not :(
------
amstocker
Very cool, reminds me a lot of TIS-100
------
johnlinvc
It's HNed, I got 509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded. Looking forward to play it.
------
OMGWTF
My current scores:
Square: 0x07 cycles
Checkerboard: 0x4C cycles
4 Squares: 0x09 cycles
I will post my solutions in 24-48 hours.
~~~
ekimekim
Checkerboard: 0x24 cycles.
[http://imgur.com/C1UeEdn](http://imgur.com/C1UeEdn) (EDIT: 0x16, see below)
My key insight was twofold:
1\. If you start every thread at 0x00 and make the first N commands "THR @00",
you get 2^(n+1)-1 threads running by the time your first thread exits the
chain of THR commands.
2\. You can use a single array MOV instruction to set a range of program
counters, effectively causing every thread to jump to a set position.
So in the first 5 cycles I start 31 threads, then my main thread drops into a
loop where all it does is set every thread's position (including its own) to a
start point every 2 cycles. Every single thread is now a 2-cycle loop with no
JMP cycle spent to return to the start each time. Then I simply make 16 loops
of:
PIX counter color
ADD counter 1 counter
with color being one of two memory positions, which the main thread swaps out
each loop. I initialize counter such that each thread is doing its own row of
the output (0, 10, 20, etc). The leftover threads I don't actually want (but
it's hard to fine tune the thread count, so I left them in), so they share the
first thread's loop. The repeated actions are effectively a noop.
Note that, due to space constraints, I use the unused 4th byte of each PIX
instruction as the counter for that loop.
Doing this got me to 0x24 cycles. I shaved a further 4 cycles by using the
leftover space to add 4 more loops. These ones run vertically and operate on
the last two columns (two threads doing one column together). By the time the
row-moving threads have reached the 2nd last column, the column-moving threads
have finished the last two columns, and so the program is finished 4 cycles
earlier.
I think I could get another 2-cycle saving if I fine-tuned the number of
threads started, compressed everything down again and got another two column-
moving threads.
The bigger improvement is converting the whole thing to 1-cycle loops instead
of 2-cycle, and having half the loops incrementing the counters and the other
half doing PIX instructions. This might just be possible in the available
space if I've run the numbers correctly, and would result in a total time of
0x14.
EDIT: Did the latter: [http://imgur.com/zD1Gw5H](http://imgur.com/zD1Gw5H)
It came out to 0x16, as I failed to account for the extra time to spin up more
threads.
~~~
keely
Awwww this is great stuff. I would love to hear your thoughts on how the
language could be changed/improved to make puzzles and optimizing even more
fun.
~~~
ekimekim
The biggest thing for me is being able to save/load solutions. I ended up
keeping multiple browser tabs open as I tried to tweak solutions / attempt
different puzzles.
As for the language itself, a MOD operation to go with the DIV operation is
useful. bitwise AND / OR / NOT / XOR could be interesting.
Something that would make threads a lot more versatile would be some way to
have them behave differently from one another even when executing the same
code.
Perhaps a new instruction like JTI X Y: Jump if Thread Id (defined as 0xFF -
location of program counter) is equal to Y
Or much more versatile but harder to account for in opcodes: a new prefix #XX
which behaves like @(XX + thread id). So you could, for example, write 0x42 to
a per-thread slot in an array starting at 0xA0 by doing "MOV 042 #A0"
For making the puzzles interesting: The problem is most shapes and images can
simply be described in memory and subsequently brute-force PIXed in sequence.
After the simplest puzzles, the trick is having images that do not fit easily
in memory and require procedural description. Checkerboard is a good example
here. What about something like fizzbuzz but described in colors (like this:
[http://imgur.com/RMEaKAg](http://imgur.com/RMEaKAg))? Or tricky questions
where a seemingly random image actually has a simple pattern (like this:
[http://imgur.com/TbTPZnh](http://imgur.com/TbTPZnh) (spoilers here:
[http://imgur.com/73De5QF](http://imgur.com/73De5QF) ))? Unfortunately you're
very limited as there's no actual input; the program's exact output is always
entirely known.
Several people here have mentioned TIS-100: It's not the exact same thing as
what you're doing, but it could be an interesting thing to compare with if you
haven't played it yet.
EDIT: Just for fun, my best time for that second puzzle I posted is 0x103.
~~~
keely
Interesting thoughts. Thank you for the feedback.
The copy-pasting to clipboard doesn't work in the webgl for browser security
reasons, but you can download a Windows build that has working copy to
clipboard. I'll make an OSX build later also. See the link here:
[http://bit.ly/1V1PiHt](http://bit.ly/1V1PiHt)
How to make threads operate differently on same code is interesting. I don't
really want to do another prefix, because I want to keep the realism of 255
opcodes and I've already used 128. The permutations of new prefix would not
fit anymore. I also like the JTI suggestion, but perhaps it doesn't go as far
as I would like.
Currently I'm thinking that maybe in addition to program counter, the thread
would have another slot where it can define "memory offset". You could state
the offset when you start the thread, but it is also modifiable later on, as
its in memory. You would call for example "THR @023 010 000", which would
essentially mean that for ALL operations for that thread, ALL memory addresses
get a offset of +010. I think this is very close to what you suggested with
threadID. I think the offset would live next to program counter (FE & FF). Do
you think that would work?
I've played TIS-100 and named this game similarly BOX-256 as a homage, since
TIS-100 pretty much inspired the whole thing. It's a wonderful game.
Great ideas on the new levels. I will shortly update with more levels and I'll
be sure to add your suggestions in to the mix :)
~~~
ekimekim
You can't access localstorage or anything for persistence? Can't create a
popup with copy-pastable text? Any means of input or output from the game
short of screenshots and manual typing at all?
The "all operations offset" sounds tricky but interesting. It'd be problematic
in a typical usage scenario, but probably work well with my horrible "every
line of code runs in a 1-cycle loop on its own thread" style :P
~~~
keely
I will go for the tricks you mentioned for the input/output in browser, but
will take some time to implement.
I'll take a step back and think about the threading some more.
------
azeirah
The `thr` statement is not very useful at the moment.
It's impossible to pass parameters to a piece of code using threads :(
I have to duplicate my code in order to use the threads
~~~
chipsy
It's really ungainly to work with -- but it does drop the cycle counts to
solve the problems by running more threads.
~~~
ekimekim
What's really funny is when the program's trivially paralellizable (any of
them where the entire thing to draw fits in memory) and the main thing your
threads are doing is to start more threads, then finally all the threads do 2
draw instructions each.
------
doomrobo
FYI this gives a javascript error in Safari 9.1 private browsing mode.
Disabling private browsing fixes the problem.
------
danjayh
Wish it had a 'mod' instruction :(
------
achikin
Will there be a standalone version for Mac?
~~~
keely
Yes, in a few days hopefully
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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