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scaling_mia_the_pile_00_HackerNews

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US weighs up options in response to Russian hacking - gl338 https://www.ft.com/content/1de86910-9099-11e6-a72e-b428cb934b78 ====== gl338 One of the things I find fascinating about this article is how cyber warfare deterrence requires that you publicly show force (and thus, your cyber capabilities), which also puts you at a disadvantage against your adversary since they can learn your secrets/capabilities as a result. Very fascinating!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Western Medical Flyp Portable Vibrating Mesh Nebulizer - cpapusa https://www.cpapusa.com/flyp-portable-vibrating-mesh-nebulizer.html ====== chmaynard Plus, it doubles as a sex toy.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Firefox beta is much better than old (esp gmail) - netpenthe http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/beta/ i always found firefox would be laggy when you tabbed to gmail<p>new beta firefox has no lag! ====== ComputerGuru _New Firefox beta is much better than old (esp gmail)_ Can someone get rid of the super-editorialized headline that is not even remotely referred to on the linked page? ------ ethana Doesn't matter how fast IonMonkey can crunch when Gecko can't keep up to render it. Gecko is sloow compare to Trident and Webkit. Someone please smack some sense into Mozilla. ------ AndrewDucker I assume this is referring to Javascript speed, because the new JS engine (IonMonkey) is integrated into FF18.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SimCity-like visualisation of real-world cities in the works - Petersmart http://vizicities.com/ ====== Petersmart Early screenshot: <http://imgur.com/TCG3itK> ~~~ arethuza How does this differ from cities that already have 3D building data in Google Maps/Earth? ~~~ robhawkes 3D building data is only part of this, arguably the least interesting part. It'll be interactive and 'living', not much unlike city-strategy games. It'll also act as a real-time data view of cities in ways that aren't available on the Web yet. ~~~ arethuza Now that sounds cool! Are the simulations(games?) multi-user? ------ samwillis Could the OP explain a little more about what it is they are doing? A holding page and vague image of a block city doesn't tell us anything! There isn't enough here to up-vote yet. ~~~ robhawkes Sure, it's basically a 3d visualisation of real life cities using the latest Web technologies. Part data visualisation, part game, part art – it's ambitious and will be an interesting view of the cities we live in. The aim is to have the beta up and running soon. ------ fla Always curious, I gave my email address. The result is a mailing list preference panel. Thank you but no, I'm not hackable. -> [Unsubscribe] -> bye! ~~~ robhawkes The beta is coming soon, there are no plans to use your email for anything other than information about the early access. ------ rheide I don't understand what this does and I can't play around with it without giving my email address. Is there a publicly available example online? ~~~ robhawkes It's not out yet, but here is an early screenshot. The beta will be soon… <http://imgur.com/TCG3itK> ~~~ Hansi Can you please add an about section with some more screenshots and a "mission statement" ? ~~~ robhawkes Understood. We'll definitely add more information in the near future.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Two bytes are better than one - iamelgringo http://allfunny.net/pics2/oldcomputerads/old-computer-ads-2.jpg ====== Hexstream Feature Request: Automatically append " [pic]" at the end of the title of submissions that link to a URL with an extension known to denote a picture (such as jpg).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why We Removed Our Phone Number From Our Website - mvaxelaire http://wistia.com/blog/scaling-support-why-we-removed-our-phone-number-from-our-website ====== JoshTv No number is better than a fake number. Even though having a phone number on your website makes it a little more credible but if its non-existing then its useless. ------ lifeisstillgood It does not matter how you spin it - you reduced customer support to save costs. That's fine but its annoying pretending otherwise. Maybe offer different support packages, a paid channel where someone actually calls and spends time. Rackspace is an interesting model in this area - you pay for support, through higher costs or literally. But if its hard shooting, downloading, editing, uploading and linking to video, well, it _is_ hard. Tell folks that. What ever you do however, don't believe the $4m support call.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Entire concerts algorithmically "reconstructed" from YouTube videos - brettwelch http://switchcam.com/ ====== angusgr Wow. Many thoughts arose: \- Is this more, less, or equivalently legal (copyright-wise) to just posting the youtube videos on youtube in the first place? It seems like the act of compositing them in this way would be significant, but maybe not? \- The normalisation of audio could use some work. SwitchCam seems to do something (the youtube volume on each clip was different for me), but it didn't quite work. \- I'd be really interested to know how automated this is, and how much human curation is required to get it right. \- Presumably, the next step is stitching the multiple videos together to make 3d models, allowing you to pan to places between the various camera operators. :) ~~~ brettwelch Thanks! \- I'm no lawyer, but the advice we've received is that we're good on the legal side. \- You're on the money re: audio. It's miles better than it was 1 month ago, but we're still not 100% yet. \- There is a human curation step (~5% of the process), but that is mostly for removing really crappy videos. Searching/Synching/Sequencing is automatic. \- I dunno about _next_ step(!), but i agree the idea is super interesting :) ~~~ seats I wonder how possible it would be both technically and legally to use the audio from the various angles as inputs into an audio processing step where you distill just the true music audio and clean it up. Ideally you'd have one 'cleaned' version of the audio playing and switching views just switches video. This may be more legally grey than just piping through audio since you are actually producing a derivative work (even if it is mechanically produced), but the net effect would be awesome. You'd end up with better audio than any one person could record, and the more angles you get the higher quality you can make the audio. Definitely a great idea and very well done for the first cut. You just need some Wilco on there. ~~~ javanix It would probably be technically "possible" but I doubt that you'd end up with anything that sounds listenable. The only bootleg audio that usually sounds decent are soundboard recordings, and when you find audience tapes spliced in with them the difference is immediately noticable. ~~~ kokey I think theoretically you can make it quite good, but it's not going to be a simple task and you probably can't rely on purely the fans' recording. I think the best way would be to modulate them together based on a weighting depending on position or distance away from where the music is coming from, also discarding distorted recordings etc. That said, you probably only want this lightly mixed in along with a good recording from the desk, all adjusted for the viewing angle. ------ OoTheNigerian Really cool stuff! A little suggestion. The first video I picked had only one camera angle for the first two tracks of the concert. So it was an effort for me to understand how it works. I would suggest you have a prominent link to a 'model video' that has multiple camera angles so new visitors can easily see it in action. Very good job lads! Of course, I presume the bigger play is for switchcam to be the default app that people use to record at concerts and other events. Smart! ------ baddox Cool idea, but I was sad that it wasn't finally an implementation of an idea I've had for a long time. My idea is to actually use video and audio information from distinct sources to create a single video/audio stream that is of better quality and/or completeness than any of the constituent parts. Essentially, my idea would do to video what Photosynth does for photos. <http://photosynth.net/> ~~~ jeswin That is just so much harder; though I haven't looked at the website yet, seems to be overwhelmed right now. Besides, I would want one consistent audio signal instead of one that varies in noise, volume, whatever. Video from different sources is alright though, since we are used to switching scenes and cameras all the time. ~~~ baddox The idea I'm talking about should provide a single consistent audio signal. I know nothing about audio processing, but it seems like it should be possible to take multiple bad audio signals and combine them into one signal that's better than any constituent audio source. Perhaps one audio source captured low frequencies well, while another captured higher frequencies better. ~~~ JonnieCache _> take multiple bad audio signals and combine them into one signal that's better _ The problem eventually comes down to the fact that "better" is subjective. We're in the murky realm of art here. Should your algorithm keep that fret noise or the squeaking of a vocalist's intake of breath? Are they "noise," or are they part of the performance? _> I know nothing about audio processing_ Not wishing to be rude, but this much is very evident. Recording engineers position their microphones with millimetre precision in order to combat phase issues, and that is in an ideal studio scenario. Doing what you suggest is basically impossible. Maybe I'm overstating it, you could probably do _something_ and it'd be a nice bit of research, but you wouldn't get useful results in the way that you're imagining. ~~~ joshu Presumably one would get rid of per-device degradation and compression artifacts. ~~~ stuaxo This is the main thing (also tricky) ------ evan_ Reminds me of "Awesome, I Fuckin' Shot that", a Beastie Boys concert filmed by 50 audience volunteers and edited together: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awesome;_I_Fuckin_Shot_That>! ~~~ saurik <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awesome;_I_Fuckin%27_Shot_That>! <\- working URL ------ mambodog Very cool, just a slight niggle about the 'lightroom' colour scheme (dark area surrounding the video) which I see being poorly implemented time and time again: it doesn't really work when you have elements of bright white on the page, because they just end up looking even brighter next to the dark parts. The glaring white strips are distracting while watching the video, moreso than even an all white background. TL;DR: lose the strips of white from the video viewing page. ~~~ brettwelch Thanks for the feedback, I agree actually. We've been talking about changing the color scheme to either be all dark or all white but haven't pulled the trigger. ------ wittjeff I had been thinking about something like this, but in the context of recreating riot crime scenes. After the last riot in Toronto the police received over 1M stills and thousands of hours of relatively low quality cell phone video. The main task for them is to connect different shots of individual offenders over time to build a) a coherent story demonstrating premeditation, b) an unbeatable description and connect it to some identifying info that might not necessarily be present at the exact time of the offense. ------ ansonparker Site seems to be struggling under load. I am excited about the concept - was thinking about this very idea while watching Coachella streaming live this year and then seeing all the cams people were uploading. ~~~ nprincigalli Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://switchcam.com/&hl=en&safe=off&sa=G&strip=1) ~~~ EwanG Even using that, all I get are Internal Service Errors... ------ andrewfelix Sweet execution. Finally a use for all those dickheads who hold up their phones in the middle of a _live_ performance. ~~~ exDM69 Yeah, now that you can't see anything but camera phones while you're actually at the concert, you can watch it from youtube when you get home. Thankfully this isn't too much of a problem at heavy metal gigs. No-one wants to take their smartphone to the moshpit :D ~~~ hyperbovine The solution must be to institute moshing at all live shows, then. Lilith Fair, here I come. ------ cleverjake Honestly one of the coolest things i've seen in a while. If they can get around the legality of it, im sure they'll be snatched up quickly. ------ jamesgagan Pretty cool. Looks like they are a 500 startups project, formerly Veokami. Guess they used some of their funding to buy a better name! [http://www.startupsmart.com.au/growth/veokami- among-500-star...](http://www.startupsmart.com.au/growth/veokami- among-500-startups-latest-intake/201110174213.html) ~~~ brettwelch Yep, that's us. I miss Veokami sometimes, but my cofounder and I were two of about 4 people who could actually pronounce the name :p Incidentally, Switchcam.com was only a little more than $1k, which was definitely worth it. ------ chartley Sorry guys, probably should have sured up servers for HN load - my bad =\ On Caltrain, brb... ------ jjcm This is awesome. My only suggestion is to allow the user to switch angles without changing the audio track. Since these are concerts, the audio track is going to be one of the most important things. Often times one video will have significantly better audio than the other ones. It'd be nice to be able to choose that one to stay constant. Alternately, it'd be awesome if there were a way for the bands themselves to upload the recorded concert audio. I realize that often times getting the recorded audio for a concert can be a finicky matter, but maybe you could partner with one of the many music festivals that are cropping up to make it happen. ------ hospadam This. Is. So. Cool. Wow. I tried several concerts, several angles, and everything works pretty smoothly. Any critiques I might have are quite minor. ------ ianbishop This is really cool. I went to add a concert with time/date but landed up getting lot of videos that didn't meet the criteria. The concert was part of Osheaga (a festival in Montreal) but the listing shows up as Parc Jean-Drapeau, where the festival is held. I think including the ability to indicate what event it was part of might narrow down your search a bit. Since most of the 300 videos found were unrelated, I decided to go through manually and select only those which were relevant. By default, all 300 videos are checked with no easy way of unchecking them. Your average user isn't going to be able to just use a jQuery one-liner like I did, so this is something else you should consider! Overall, great job and I look forward to seeing how you guys progress with this idea! ~~~ brettwelch Thanks Ian, for the feedback and also for adding an event. I just saw those come through on the back end. We've put the processing on hold for the moment until the load becomes manageable - hope that's cool. We'll email you when they're up. ------ pavedwalden I love it. Any chance you would expand to more general "news" applications? The audio wouldn't be as good for syncing against, but I've always wanted an interface like this for watching protest videos. ~~~ PStamatiou Take a look at this: [http://blog.switchcam.com/uc-davis-pepper-spray- incident-fro...](http://blog.switchcam.com/uc-davis-pepper-spray-incident- from-all-angle) ------ aclements18 Very impressive. Very cool. I assume this will eventually extend beyond concerts to all kinds of other live events (sports, plays, etc). This is going to be big. What's also interesting is how much the effect of SOPA will have on such an awesome service like this. So disappointing to think about how the copyright holders would rather shut you down then come up with a great way to enhance the service and share revenue with you. Best of Luck. We'll all be rooting for you guys. ------ blcArmadillo Pretty cool. One thing... after switching camera angles from the first camera I can switch between all other camera except I can never get back to camera 1. ------ jhealy This perfect circle gig is a good sample: [http://switchcam.com/event/a-perfect-circle- lollapalooza-201...](http://switchcam.com/event/a-perfect-circle- lollapalooza-2011/) Some of these concerts may have bootleg audio available, often recorded by audiophiles with decent equipment. It'd be amazing if supported syncing that up so you'd get great audio with multi-camera video ------ phil Seems to work. That is incredibly cool/terrifying. ------ wingerlang Nice. However - the timeline should be default. I was pretty meh'd until I found it, works great. Now it would be nice with an underlying concert-track or / per song mp3. I don't like the crappy cellphonesound. I guess the syncing will be hard though, with the videos lag not very constant (most often, seems to work good now but I have a nice broadband connection) ------ phil So if you can do this with concerts, presumably you can do it with any collection of video shot in the same place, if there's enough audio in common. That makes me think that all kinds of crowd video (protests, speeches, etc) should be stitchable, which seems like it would open larger (and potentially morally ambiguous) markets. ------ mitjak Pretty cool indeed. A question though: how much of a need is there for a service like this? Beyond the more mainstream artists and festivals, most of the artists whose shows I've seen have typically had more respectful audience members who didnt put recording with their cellphones ahead of enjoying the show. ------ jwblackwell This is really awesome. I hope you don't have any issues with copyright though. Best of luck with the project! ------ mrjasonroy Absolutely amazing, great job. I just got chills from watching the National and feeling like I was back there. ------ balbaugh First thing I thought of was the Nine Inch Nails fan project "This One Is On Us". It works. Very cool and I wish you all the best. <http://www.thisoneisonus.org> <http://www.ninwiki.com/This_One_Is_On_Us> ------ fat0wl Does anyone believe that this is done algorithmically? All the examples I checked seemed to be really poorly sync-ed, & as a DSP engineer I don't believe this task to be incredibly difficult... would also be cooler to have a seating chart to click around to make sense of perspectives ~~~ chartley It's all algorithmic but the flash player only seeks to the nearest key frame (every 2s) so that's why it isn't flawless. This can be overcome ... but I'd prefer to work on the seating chart thing - thanks! ~~~ fat0wl Ah, didn't realize the flash / keyframe limitation. Best of luck! very cool idea. ------ mitchellhislop This is one of the coolest things I have seen. While there are some little bits of feedback, I can admit that I spent the last 30 minutes watchings concerts, amazed at how great this felt. MPAA: More of this, less of SOPA. If you give us great ways to get content, we will pay for it. ~~~ brettwelch I'd love to hear your feedback, Mitchell... And thanks for the kind words. ------ aslewofmice Absolutely one of the better ideas I've seen lately! An original idea with a lot of wiggle room for future growth. I think it could be pretty cool if users had the ability to reference a higher quality audio source (when available - something on Archive.org or uploaded mp3s). ------ inspiredworlds Great concept and like how you can change views! Been following them since they were veokami. ------ autrefoius Maybe it's just me, but the site rick-rolled me on each concert I tried to check out. ~~~ brettwelch Sorry about that. It only happens when the JS borks out completely (which is rare), when JS is turned off, or when you're using a really old browser (which i assume you're not). If you're inclined (I completely understand if not) can you tell us the error that the console in Chrome or Firebug gives you? ~~~ autrefoius The error I'm receiving on Firefox Aurora 10.0a2 (2011-11-27) is: VKLog is not defined [http://switchcam.com/assets/js/utils/facebook.js?ver=2011112...](http://switchcam.com/assets/js/utils/facebook.js?ver=20111129-223208) Line 81 VKLog.dlog("checkSessionStatus()"); It does seem to work with Adblock disabled, so I'd guess a subscription is blocking something essential. ~~~ chartley Interesting, thanks for poking around! I don't think we use anything dodgy (except maybe Facebook libraries) but I'll see if I can set up that configuration and debug it. Really appreciate you taking the time to write this up. Cheers, Chris ~~~ BrandonM I'm having the same problem. I think it's a bad idea to use Facebook libraries for critical functionality. A lot of people (myself included) block Facebook resources from loading on external sites to decrease their ability to track user activity. ------ PaulJoslin Cool concept, fairly good execution. I think I would advise not to just focus on concerts, but potentially other mass events, e.g. sporting events. I guess you're using the audio stream to do some form of sync / time stamp though, so that may limit potential uses. ------ njloof Is music a requirement? I'm trying to add Henry Rollins' spoken word at Coachella from April 18 2009, but your YouTube search always seems to fail. I can see the videos on YouTube just fine if I search for myself. ------ jkap I had the idea to do this (albeit, manually) a while ago, syncing the audio from Justice's "A Cross The Universe" with Youtube video of the concert it came from. Really cool to see it done, though! ------ wittjeff Watching Ocean's 11 last night it occurred to me that other contexts in which intelligent multi-camera stitching might be profitable are casino security and retail loss prevention. ------ catshirt this is awesome. seriously. maybe you could package the technology in a way that lets other platforms use this without youtube. i am reminded of the original Color app. ------ minikomi Maybe a next step could be a video app which had some kind of time code embedded in the resulting video - for much easier syncing. ------ devinmrn Great work, hope you can handle the traffic that is coming your way. I would be surprised if you didn't get bought by Google. ------ berberous Mind blowing. I don't know that I'd ever really use it, but this is super cool and really well done! ------ nico Looks a lot like Hadza <http://hadza.com/> (ex Wesync) ------ unreal37 I want. Love the idea. Site is down so I can't tell if it works. But plus 1 for the idea alone. ------ citricsquid My out loud comment when I tried it was "Holy shit this is genius if it works". ------ ChrisArchitect Great stuff. This is like Photosynth for videos! Remember Photosynth? ------ lisper Ummm... am I missing something? Every video I click on is a rickroll. ------ pirko Cool idea but when I tried "Arcade Fire - Austin City Limits" 2011 [http://switchcam.com/event/arcade-fire-austin-city- limits-20...](http://switchcam.com/event/arcade-fire-austin-city-limits-2011/) it was far from correct. ------ giulivo to me, it looks amazing some techie questions, how does it work? how do you get to know which videos are actually part of a specific event? how do you match the video with the actual song? ------ smackfu Too bad some artists apparently take down concert videos. ------ nodata Excellent work! It says a lot that the music industry didn't invent this. ~~~ grabble That's because they're too busy suing people to innovate. ------ tomkinstinch Very cool. What about other applications? News reports? ------ meatsock great idea. do you have any solution to all of the shaky and unsteady video? ------ loboman Amazing, thanks!! ------ gmatty wow. super cool ------ aDemoUzer very cool. worked swell. ------ georgieporgie This is awesome for two reasons: 1) it's just plain cool and 2) it finally gives a reason to tolerate annoying people who hold up their cell phone cameras during concerts. ~~~ plytheman It's funny because watching a concert I thought how cool it was that when someone had a camera or phone in my line of sight I could simply switch to another unobstructed view. Then I realized the chances were good that my new view was coming from the very camera I switched views to avoid. ------ saltwatershane This is freakin awesome! Keep it up! How big is your company?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The bursting of the Bitcoin bubble - petethomas http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/10/virtual-currencies?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/burstingofthebitcoinbubble ====== joelthelion It's going [back up](<http://sd-12155.dedibox.fr/~joel/btc/mtgox_weekly.png>)! Seriously, bitcoin is simply too new and too revolutionary to settle in just a year. We need to give the concept a few more years before it can reveal its full potential. ------ kiba FYI: Things in the bitcoin world can change really fast. The price of bitcoin at the time of this comment is $3.12 USD. ------ davidklemke The speculative bubble that burst was one of the best things to happen to BitCoin as it meant people stopped using it as a investment vehicle. Once people are done speculating with it then it can taken more seriously as a real currency rather than being yet another alternative currency experiment. ------ maaku Heatmap for financial chart? Awesome.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
3D Bezier Curves on Canvas - binarydreams http://cssdeck.com/labs/bjiau4dy ====== chinchang very cool 3D feel. A little tweak in line widths as they come and go would made them look better. ------ SEJeff Impressively smooth on my iPwn	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Telix clone - sysoleg http://www.ath0.net/ ====== zorked Well, as good a time as any to remember an old exploit. Back in the old days, to put the modem back in command mode, you had to send it +++ and wait one second without sending anything. Hayes, a modem manufacturer, owned a patent on this "and wait one second" idea. Some manufacturers had to implement this idea without that one second. Then came the Internet, and with it the ICMP protocol, which is a neat way to make a remote connection repeat stuff back to you. And lo and behold, you could send a ICMP packet with data that contained "+++ATH0" and when echoing back the packet your modem would pick it up as a command and disconnect. Same goes for IRC /ctcp ping commands, and many other protocols. ~~~ JdeBP You might enjoy [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664979) . ------ karaterobot My first computer was a 386 SX, which came with a modem, but I didn't know what that was at the time. I was 12 or so, and didn't know computers could talk to each other over the phone line. I discovered Telix while dorking around in DOS, but it made no sense to me. Some time later, I was talking to the guy at Radio Shack (!) and I mentioned this mysterious program. He knowingly nodded, said "plug one end of this cord into your wall jack, the other into the back of your PC, then type the following command..." Cut to a year later, I'm running a BBS out of my bedroom, learning to write door games, and scripting for MUDs. I can draw a pretty straight line between Telix and my future career (even though Terminate was cooler). ------ torgoguys I saw the title and thought, "This is probably some other product named Telix, not the one I know about." And then I clicked on the link and it all came back to me. So. many. hours. using Telix back in the day. I eventually switched from Telix to Telemate because of its limited multitasking. I LOVED the BBS scene. Good times. Good times. ~~~ jamiesonbecker Can't remember which, but I think Telemate also had programmable macros that I used to jump in and out of hyperspace in one of the multiplayer door games.. ------ nsenifty Back in India, we had a (somewhat cheap) shell internet plan offered for students. You dial into a phone number that dropped you in a ISP shell from where you could use lynx or email. The problem was that our state-owned phone provider had a "courtesy" beep every 3 minutes to let us know we're being charged another unit, which would cause the modem to hang up. I remember setting up Telix to record the session, log into my Hotmail, open each email and scroll all the way down all in 3 minutes, and then read the emails from the session log. ------ psim1 atdt8675309 OK In the 90s, my modem terminal of choice was Terminate. It's still available! [http://www.terminate.com](http://www.terminate.com) ~~~ fullstop I used telix until I was able to download Terminate. Nostalgia overload going on over here. Do you remember HS/Link? Being able to chat with the sysop while downloading blew my mind at the time. ~~~ blakespot Nice, I will check this out on my Tandy 1000HX BBS machine. I haven't found an ideal terminal program for that config. I actually thought you typed "Terminus," which is the terminal program I used on the Amiga 1200 back in '92\. Today, I use Radigan's predecessor to Terminus, JR-Comm on the Amiga 1000, which is the system I use most frequently for BBSing. Some of these systems can be seen on my BBSing page: [https://bytecellar.com/bbsing/](https://bytecellar.com/bbsing/) ~~~ icedchai Yes! I remember JRComm! I used that up until 1994, on my A500 then A3000. Not sure why I never bothered to upgrade to Terminus. ------ l8arrival Hey guys, this is Colin, the author of Telix. A friend of mine sent me a link to this thread. I just wanted to send a shoutout to everybody here. It's pretty cool and gratifying after all these years to see people still remembering and talking about Telix! ~~~ jquast Thank you for all the memories !! ------ tssva Minicom which is available for most posix systems including Linux and macOS is modeled on Telix. My personal favorite DOS terminal program was Commo. It was totally customizable using macros. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commo) ~~~ EvanAnderson I used the heck out of Minicom when I finally made Linux my "daily driver" back in the early 90s. When I finally did get dialup Internet service I ended up using "dip"[1] to script the logon to the ISP's terminal server (a Xyplex, if I remember correctly). I remember that the terminal server answered for finger and showed you the usernames of the logged-on users, their logon and idle time, and their serial port numbers. I remember complaining to the ISP when I was getting busy signals dialing into the modem pool and, when I finally did get on, seeing users logged-on two or three times with multi-hour idle times. [1] [http://ibiblio.org/gferg/ldp/man/man8/dip.8.html](http://ibiblio.org/gferg/ldp/man/man8/dip.8.html) ~~~ icedchai The good old days.. I remember using dip! I helped to build a few ISPs. We used Xylogic Annex terminal servers at one place. The second ISP used USR digital modems (I forget what they were called?) By the time I set up the third one, we'd outsourced all dialup to a third party network. ~~~ EvanAnderson I knew a guy who ran a small ISP in the Dayton, OH area. He went from having banks of external modems on POTS lines connected to multi-port serial cards attached to a Windows NT Server 3.51 machine to an Ascend router with a PRI and "digital modems" (CODECs in DSPs, no doubt) to finally using an outsourced dial provider, all in the space of about 18 - 24 months. I wish I'd been a little older and a little more business savvy at the time. It was clearly a wild time, and was probably lots of fun. ~~~ icedchai I remember working in the "server room" of one of the early ISPs. There were about 100 individual phone lines coming off the wall, each going into a modem. It was like a river of phone cable. Each modem also had its own serial cable and power brick, too, of course. The bricks were pretty large, so there were power strips chained 3 layers deep. It felt about 100 degrees in there (no AC or cooling of any kind.) Thinking about it now, I'm surprised the whole place didn't melt down. ------ ccoyle I loved the BBS era. Commo by Fred Brucker was my modem progam of choice. Hook in Zmodem for downloads and you had a hot setup. ------ operatorius [38,38,40,40,37,39,37,39,66,65].forEach(key => document.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent("keydown", {keyCode: key}))) ------ icedchai I miss the BBS days... sometimes. I used to use JRComm on the Amiga. Before that, it was Apple Access II on an Apple IIc. ~~~ EvanAnderson A friend of mine hosted a BBS on an Amiga in the early 90s. I was amazed by the machine's multitasking. He could actually use his computer while simultaneously hosting the BBS. (Eventually I think I got DESQview for my PC and could pull off a kinda-sorta approximation.) The BBS software he ran was Dungeons and Dragons themed, and as I recall it mixed exploring and combat along with the mundane BBS activities-- messages, downloads, etc. I think that your experience points in the game-side ended up translating to BBS-side privileges, too. I should do some searching to see if I can dig up some details. It was unique across the various BBS's I called. ~~~ icedchai Yes, I also ran a BBS from my Amiga! I wrote it myself in C when I was a teen. The Amiga was amazing for the time, and learning about the OS was so much fun. I still play around with emulators now and then to take me back to that time. ------ th0ma5 I recently found a bunch of Procomm Plus logs where I had typed back and forth with some local friends. ------ imdsm alt-z for help _Cries in MacOS_ ~~~ earthboundkid In some regions, the option key on Mac keyboards is labeled as "alt". E.g. [https://www.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3504584/Mac- Keyb...](https://www.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3504584/Mac- Keyboard_thumb1200_16-9.jpg) ~~~ jedieaston If you press Alt+Z on the Mac, you get this: Ω. Fn doesn't override it either. ~~~ vasac What happens if you pick Unicode Hex Input from System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Input sources? ------ acheron Remember Telix played C-E-G on the PC speaker when it connected? ------ telebone_man I don't know but if you go into the input box and type on your keyboard... UUDDLRLRBA It pops up a cute little rainbow ~~~ joosters Hold down Return after typing it for a very blinged-out window! ------ mrlonglong Does anyone remember RoboComms to get mail off FidoNet? ------ cocktailpeanuts what is this? ~~~ gruturo The Telix terminal interface. I spent so, so much time on it in the 80s, discovering BBSes, other people and later exploring the worldwide X25 network. Also, from the page's source code: // UUDDLRLRBA! var kkeys = [], konami = "38,38,40,40,37,39,37,39,66,65"; :) ~~~ blauditore I have a hard time finding information about Telix. How did this work, e.g. how would one "discover" other people? ~~~ fullstop Usually you'd find one BBS through word of mouth, and that one would have listings of systems which were hopefully a local number. There usually had just the one line so users were limited to a certain number of minutes a day before they were no longer permitted to sign on. Sometimes a shareware game or new "Demo" would make to to a BBS and it might take you a week or two to download the entire thing because of time limits. Some systems gave you extra time if you uploaded new content to encourage sharing. It was kind of a neat system, and I miss how small it was. ------ ck2 ha that's some fantastic nostalgia but ATV and ATI commands not working to my disappointment ------ gameswithgo whoa that takes me back. ------ snvzz I clicked expecting an open source clone that I could run on the same hardware. How disappointing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How can a guy from Western Europe start a life in Russia/Ukraine? - boeien I want to find a job in Russia or Ukraine. I have been fascinated about this part of the world since I was 10. It's my dream to live and work there for at least a couple of years of my life.<p>I'm willing to go to great lengths to reach my goal. This is why I started learning Russian (currently at A2/B1) and have devoted much of my traveling time (about 9 months in total) in Russia/Ukraine. To succeed I think I need a job first. That's why I quit my job (12 years in financial/banking sector) and applied to 30+ relevant vacancies. This has resulted in only one second round interview.<p>Considering the investment/return ratio it seems nearly impossible to find a job in Russia/Ukraine.<p>What else can I do? ====== hackermailman It's nearly impossible for Russians and Ukrainians to find a decent job there too, you'll need to work remotely unless you plan on making $3/hr like @Homakov made as a Rails dev in Russia. Get a remote position with your EU citizenship look at boards like jobspresso.co even for just answering support emails. ~~~ alltakendamned My understanding was that in Kiev a senior dev could easily make ~3000 USD. ~~~ hackermailman Could yes, if they had a good network and weren't fired after the probationary period being paid $400-650/mth (avg salary in Ukraine is $200/mth) in order to be replaced by cheap incoming graduate students. Senior software dev at EPAM in Lviv makes $10kUAH/mth to start which is ~$375USD. This is why outfits like Toptal have so many Ukraine/Polish/Russian developers since the lowest wage on Toptal is still at least 2x what they would make domestically. ~~~ badpun Dunno about Ukraine and Russia, but here in Poland it's standard for senior- ish devs to make $3k-$5k per month. More than that is also possible, but uncommon. ------ danielvf Do you have a pile of expat Russian/Ukraine friends? If so, they’d be the first ones to ask. Otherwise, if you live in a US or U.K. metropolitan area, they are pretty easy to find. Also, have you visited as a tourist already? ~~~ boeien @danielvf - I have a couple of Russian/Ukrainian friends here which have given me tips and have asked around a bit, but that has not lead to anything yet. Also I know some 'countrymen' working there, but with the same result. Perhaps I need to expand my network further, thank you. I have spent around 9 months across the whole of Russia and Ukraine of which around 2 months each in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Kiev. ~~~ danielvf Best of luck to you then! ------ poushkar Have you considered applying to privatbank.ua/ru/work? It's quite a modern big bank, I am assuming it should be interesting to work there. ~~~ boeien @poushkar: I have considered applying there, but haven't done it yet, because I didn't see any relevant vacancies. Normally the success rate of sending open applications is quite low, but I guess it is worth a try. Thanks for the tip. ------ genbit few ideas: \- find local dev/IT shops and offer your services as a sales/project manager. With your English and if you have a good network from your financial/banking sector - you should be able to find a good fit. \- it's hard to find a job in Russia even for locals if you don't have network/connections. what are your skills? What vacancies are you applying? ~~~ boeien @genbit, thanks for your answer. You could say I am an expert (valuation and risk wise) in Interest Rate Derivatives and various other (more simple) financial products such as FX, loan/depos, stocks and bonds, etc. I have been responsible for translating the business needs into requirements for IT departments and Financial Engineers. The roles I had were more informal than what you see in the typical business analyst roles in IT companies. I have also been training colleagues in Front Office, Market Risk and Product Control departments on these valuation and risk topics. As an IT person you might think this is not real programming :-), but I have built various Excel VBA tools for the department. Education wise I am educated in Investment Theory & Investment Management. Meaning that I should know how pension funds and asset managers should invest their money in the financial markets. Also, I have been investing and later on trading on various products in the financial markets since the age of 13!, while I am now in my mid thirties. I have mainly applied to business analyst, financial analyst, business analyst/project manager, risk analyst, investment analyst roles.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
JavaScript Allongé is free - raganwald http://braythwayt.com/2013/10/01/javascript-allonge-is-free.html ====== etrinh Go. Read. This. Book. Now. This is a must-read for any developer who wants to know Javascript better. This is the book that taught me everything I know about prototypes, method decorators, and functional programming in Javascript. Sure, I'd read countless other Javascript books, but Reg has a way of explaining things in a way that connected the dots for me. This is probably the only programming book I've re- read cover to cover a dozen times or more. I'd also strongly suggest you throw a few bucks Reg's way for the ebook (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) version of this book. I only know Reg through his writing, but he sounds like a great guy. The fact that he's releasing this gem for free is pure madness on his part. If you couldn't yet tell, highly recommended. ~~~ raganwald Can I quote you on this? :-D ~~~ etrinh Absolutely. ------ soapdog Hi, My name is Andre Alves Garzia and I am a Mozilla Rep (a.k.a. Volunteer) working on Firefox OS awareness. I wrote a quick guide for Firefox OS development that is also available for Free with a CC license on Leanpub at [https://leanpub.com/quickguidefirefoxosdevelopment](https://leanpub.com/quickguidefirefoxosdevelopment) I think your book is really great and I would like to add it as a recommended reading on the next iteration of my quick guide if that is ok with you. Thanks very much for the hard work, your book is a wonderful resource! Cheers ~~~ raganwald It is very ok with me, I'm flattered! ------ raganwald Direct link: [https://leanpub.com/javascript- allonge/read](https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read) ~~~ peterarmstrong Congrats Reg! ------ pedalpete I'll be checking out the book now, but I'm wondering how many people are intrigued by the name rather than turned off by it. As a Canadian, I should have had some exposure to Allonge, but sadly I do not, so I didn't know if this is a framework, methodology, etc. etc. Javascript Allonge is free, but that doesn't tell me what Allonge is. Javascript Allonge book is free. Ok, what is it going to teach me. I'm happy to give it a read, and the reviews here are great, just wondering if you might have more success as an author with less cryptic titles. Hope I don't come off sounding like an ass. ~~~ GeneralMayhem It's a coffee pun. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungo) ------ edanm This is going right on my reading list. And as always, it's great to see more good free technical books out there, and it's great to see a fellow HN'er succeeding. Seeing them together is just amazing. Serious kudos! Edit: And while this was obviously not the intent, this absolutely made me go out and buy the book. Both for the gesture of support (and the actual monetary support), but also because it's nicer to have this in .mobi format. So as often happens, karma wins. ------ lxe At the end of [https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read#leanpub-auto- val...](https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read#leanpub-auto-values-and- identity), it states that when you do this: var ouroboros = []; ouroboros[0] = ouroboros; //=> [ [Circular] ] Examining ouroboros and ouroboros[0] with '===' will show that they are different. But isn't that wrong? Comparing a reference of 'ouroboros' to whatever's in 'ouroboros[0]', which happens to be a reference of 'ouroboros' will return true. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the statement? ~~~ anonymoushn It looks like this text is about the section slightly above: [2-1, 2, 2+1] === [1,2,3] [1,2,3] === [1, 2, 3] [1, 2, 3] === [1, 2, 3] ~~~ ajanuary Aah, rereading it, it looks like it is. The ouroboros section is an aside about how confusing combining arrays and references can be. ------ ritchiea Thanks for this! You are a great writer, I read Coffeescript Ristretto and it was a big help. I appreciate the rigor you bring to technical writing. I actually bought Javascript Allonge after reading Coffeescript Ristretto but it's always great to hear more good information is available for free. ------ homosaur Reg: Is there a way after reading the book to donate a few bucks in a tip jar? It's unlikely that I ever purchase this ebook but I would maybe like to toss a 10 spot your way for the value I will extract from this. ~~~ raganwald Donations to the EFF are always an appropriate way to thank someone for making their work free: [https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate) That being said, a more "personal" thanks can always be made by sending PayPal directly to [email protected]. Thanks either way! ------ alessioalex I bought the book yesterday and it's definitely worth it. I would buy it again even if I knew it was free. It's in my top JavaScript books, along with others like Maintainable JavaScript, Testable JavaScript and Effective JavaScript. @raganwald I hope you plan to write other JS books as well, you're one of the most original && intelligent authors out there. ------ pnelson Thank you. Just this past weekend I came to the realization that, after using JavaScript on and off for over 10 years, I don't actually _know_ JavaScript. Not even close. I'm sure I'm not alone. Anyway, I've just skimmed through your offering and it looks like an entertaining read. This came at a good time. ~~~ orand JavaScript is the one language developers think they can use without having to actually learn it. :-) ------ SeanDav As someone who paid real money for this book, I am not sure how I feel about this... ~~~ raganwald Amongst other reasons, I chose to publish the book through LeanPub precisely so that if anyone every feels like they regret buying the book, there is an avenue for them to get a no-questions-asked refund. Check the web site for the specific terms. You don't have to justify anything to me or anyone else: If you personally feel uncomfortable, I personally want you to get your money back. You can always change your mind and buy it again if that's what you want to do. ~~~ SeanDav That is very kind of you, but my comment was slightly tongue in cheek. I usually buy books that I read and learn from, even if I can get them for free from some pirate site. Your book is excellent and I wouldn't dream of asking for my money back. ------ acjohnson55 Damn, I just paid for this book 3 weeks ago! But for those who haven't read it, it was money incredibly well spent. I have a much greater understanding of JavaScript's batshit crazy semantics and FP techniques. It will make you a better programmer, regardless of whether you use JS regularly or not. But if you do, I think this book is as close to capturing the true soul of Javascript as anything I've read. The examples are very well thought out, and the writing style is a joy to read. And if you like it as much as I did, I hope you'll kick a few bucks the author's way. Well done Mr. Braithwaite! ~~~ nnnnni Hey, at least you supported the author! ------ dlo83 Bought the book a few weeks ago. Have not finished yet, but it's an excellent read thus far. I knew it was a must-read after hearing Reg's interview on the Javascript Jabber podcast. ------ arityfn You werent kiddint when you said this book would someday be offered free on the javascript jabber podcast. As someone who was waiting for this day, thanks!!! ~~~ raganwald If you were waiting for it to be free, then I can say with certainty that I did it for you. ------ rybosome This is great news! I haven't read the book yet, had been meaning to pick it up for some time now. Reg is such a gifted writer; he manages to make a very effective point, built up organically through relevant examples. I always feel challenged to learn something, and I really enjoy his writing style - I've begun writing, and the challenge makes me appreciate his work all the more. Can't wait to read this! ------ brudgers I've started reading it this morning, and I find the first part of the book to be a clear, concise and practical introduction to the mechanics underpinning functional programming. Love or hate or indifference for JavaScript aside, this looks like an excellent _programming_ book. Thanks, Reg. ------ bdfh42 Brilliant book - and was a bargain at its launch price (I know I enjoyed it) - now fantastic value and everyone with any interest in JavaScript should read it. ------ joshuacc This is awesome. I've been a happy reader for quite some time now, and I'm glad that even more people will be able to read this excellent book! ------ poxrud Great idea offering the online version free but charging for the convenience of an ebook file. I wish more authors would do this. ~~~ raganwald I will probably make the ebook free eventually. I have already offered free online copies of my combinators and coffeescript books, people like that. ~~~ xauronx I heard you on a podcast recently and just wanted to say that it was the best, most entertaining and inspiring podcast I've heard. Don't want to sound like a fanboy, but you're pretty awesome. Thanks for the book! ~~~ Kiro Which podcast was it? I want to listen. ~~~ xauronx [http://javascriptjabber.com/070-jsj-book-club-javascript- all...](http://javascriptjabber.com/070-jsj-book-club-javascript-allonge-with- reginald-braithwaite/) I'm not sure if you'll find it as great as I did, but there it is. ------ Willyfrog I had it in my whishlist, so now it's bought :D Thank you for "forcing" me to buy it! ;) Enjoy a nice cup of coffee ------ dmamills Amazing book. Just picked it up a few weeks ago. ------ cjbprime Thanks, Reg! ------ eulerphi A rant about Mozilla, a non-profit FSF company and then corporate sycophantism for GitHub? ~~~ raganwald Do you have a question or an opinion to share in more objective terms? I have difficulty understanding what idea you are trying to convey. ~~~ ne8il This should be the standard auto-reply to most HN comments (or internet comments in general).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The top ten mistakes made by n00b car buyers - kirpekar http://autolicious.posterous.com/the-top-ten-mistakes-made-by-n00b-car-buyers ====== stretchwithme I bought my last car by calling the various dealerships and asking to speak to the fleet manager. I had the exact model, options and color all decided beforehand. Then you just take the cheapest deal. If you go in and talk to a salesman, there's another mouth you have to feed. Don't talk to them when you go to sign the deal with the fleet manager either. And if you need to take a test drive after you've narrowed your choices down, don't go to the dealer for a test drive. Just rent the car and take your time. Just google "rent a toyota" or "rent a tesla" to find out how.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Should I use a QR code? A bot can help you decide - HipstaJules https://www.messenger.com/t/shouldIuseaQRcode/ ====== Piskvorrr 1\. No. Tada! A botless, static solution. No-server! ;o) ~~~ HipstaJules That's lean! ~~~ Piskvorrr And mean! Finite-state machine!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Don't Let Congress Order Internet Companies to Spy on You - zoowar https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=497 ====== cjboco Instead of our government trying to spy on us, perhaps we should try to turn the tables and enact some more laws and rules that lets the citizens spy on them. ~~~ noarchy Governments don't like it when it goes the other way. [http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2008566,00.ht...](http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2008566,00.html) ------ silentOpen From <[http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1981:>](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1981:>); `(h) Retention of Certain Records- A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication (as defined in section 3 of the Communications Act of 1934).'. (b) Sense of Congress- It is the sense of Congress that records retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18, United States Code, should be stored securely to protect customer privacy and prevent against breaches of the records. So while I don't like the slipperiness of this slope (or the logic of the argument), the May 25, 2011 text only appears to specify non-radio-transmitted connection records as retained. This means wi-fi, phone, satellite are "safe" where "safe" = "not yet". As I read it, the authors then make a wish that these records be stored "securely" where "securely" = "no one will ever be liable for a breach". We seriously need an attribution and karma system for Congress. ~~~ DavidSJ And how does your ISP know whether you're using wifi? ~~~ silentOpen This bill is "only" retaining connection records for every wireline connection. The cell phone oligopoly already know everything (and cooperate) and commonly available consumer internet access is governed by onerous terms of service. Why does my cable company need to know my SSN? The "but only if the user address assignment is over publicly open radio" concession is for the cafe owner with free wifi or public government-operated access points. I guess free wifi will be the only libre internet access. It appears that the lawmakers who drafted this legislation do not understand the (in)feasibility of their language or understand all too well the consequences of implementation. An elected representative is a public servant. Being a representative requires sacrifice. When will we ask our representatives to sacrifice their privacy of communication so that they may represent the people's will more perfectly? Who is pulling the strings? Are they inside or outside of government? ------ ineedtosleep Out of curiosity, do these messages ever do anything other than potentially fill up a government official's spam filter? Not trying to troll here, just genuinely curious about these letters' impact. ~~~ bsiemon My understanding is that one of the jobs of congressional staffers involves sorting and analyzing these sorts of messages. ------ joshmlewis You can go here to also vote and put your word in plus see others comments, <https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr1981> I do work for them before someone mentions it but it's a cool platform. ------ willidiots I'm against anything involving more information gathering, but I'm curious - can anyone explain how this differs from existing CALEA requirements? ~~~ JoshTriplett Almost nothing to do with each other. CALEA requires telephone services to support wiretaps. This would require ISPs, businesses, wifi access points, and anything else sitting between you and the internet to keep a log of dynamic IP addresses and other such connection information. ~~~ palish I thought they had to keep logs of dynamic IP addresses already. I know for a fact that coffee shops are required to keep such logs (due to Sept 11th --- discovered this during a phone conversation with a local coffee shop's "router provider"). ~~~ runningdogx Did you ask the router provider to cite the law requiring them to keep logs? ~~~ palish No... I may as well explain what happened, to put it into context. I was about 19 at the time, and sort of naive. I was trying to figure out why the local coffee shop needed to pay so much money for their internet service. One of the recurring costs was support for their router, which seemed kind of crazy to me at the time (being a tech geek). This was after I had just discovered and fixed a security vulnerability in that router --- I had brought my girlfriend's MacBook to the shop, and noticed I could connect to their payment processing computer (due to the router being misconfigured). That computer had a text file filled with hundreds of full plaintext credit card numbers. So anyway, I went to the owner and put in some time to help him fix this, and that's how I wound up in a position to question "why the heck does this router cost so much per month?" I was toying with the idea of just replacing the whole thing with an inexpensive Linksys or something. (I realize how bad of an idea it is now --- but hey, I was 19.) So I wound up on the phone with one of the sales guys from the router company. He started rattling off (good) justifications for their router: per-customer bandwidth limiting, etc. Among those reasons was "and after Sept 11th, coffee shops are required to comply with <some impressive- sounding regulation name>, which requires them to keep logs of which computers are using their internet, and when". I don't remember anything beyond that, sorry. ------ known With the proliferation of Internet and Cell phones people can make informed decisions and directly vote on Bills/Laws in Congress.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Behind the 'Bad Indian Coder' - Mister_Snuggles http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/behind-the-bad-indian-coder/280636/ ====== cratermoon My impression of many of the 6-week coder camps springing up in the US is that they will bring this rote learning but knowing nothing style of education to US programming aspirants.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Electric Car Drives 375 Miles on a 6 Minute Charge - bishvili http://www.allcarselectric.com/blog/1050863_electric-car-drives-375-miles-at-55-mph-recharges-in-6-minutes ====== hugh3 Interesting, but severely lacking in technical details. What kind of batteries does this car use? How expensive are they? What kind of special-purpose charging infrastructure is required? Have any crazy tradeoffs been made in order to make this possible (for instance, does the battery die after a few dozen charge cycles?) ~~~ 1053r stolen from slashdot, which stole it from the comments in tfa: Translated from this page: [http://adacemobility.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/das- wunder-von...](http://adacemobility.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/das-wunder-von- berlin/#more-744) [wordpress.com] "Technical Data Audi A2 DBM * * Subject Empty weight (including driver) 1260 kg Perm. Total weight 1600 kg Battery lithium-iron-polymer (260 Ah/380 V) cell voltage of 3.8 volts Battery weight about 300 kg Charging time about 4 hours due to mains phase current in the household (380) battery requires 6 minutes (future solution) Life time 2500 charge cycles (without loss of capacity) = Service life target: 500,000 km Top speed 160 km / h 5-speed sequential gearbox (race gear: shifting without the clutch) E-motor 300 Nm torque" So, the 6 minute charge is future/theoretical limits of the battery. The actual time is 4 hours; which is still very impressive. Sincerely, Neil ~~~ AgentConundrum _(260 Ah/380 V)_ Please correct me if I've got the math wrong. I'm not really familiar with this area. 260 Ah/380 V = 98,800 Wh, or 98.8kWh Though I don't pay my own electricity bill, I looked the rate up for here in Halifax[1] and the rate is CAD$0.11796/kWh (flat rate). That means you could charge this for about CAD$11.83. Not too shabby. Also, if I'm reading this right, there is another option to pay based on time- of-day usage. The 11pm-7am option is CAD$0.06028/kWh[2], making the total roughly CAD$5.98 per charge. [1] - [http://www.nspower.ca/en/home/aboutnspi/ratesandregulations/...](http://www.nspower.ca/en/home/aboutnspi/ratesandregulations/electricityrates/domesticservicetariff.aspx) [2] - [http://www.nspower.ca/en/home/aboutnspi/ratesandregulations/...](http://www.nspower.ca/en/home/aboutnspi/ratesandregulations/electricityrates/domesticservicetimeofdaytarriffoptional.aspx) ~~~ jacquesm As soon as everybody would start driving EVs that price will not remain though, after all increasing demand would surely drive up the price. ~~~ 124816 We currently have large excesses of power at nighttime, (production cannot be scaled down and back up in a 24hr period) so the effect could be mitigated by that. ------ tocomment This sounds about three times better than existing electric car batteries. Does this mean we can put this battery in cell phones and laptops and get three times the usage?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Failure-Oblivious Computing (2004) [pdf] - vezzy-fnord https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/osdi04/tech/full_papers/rinard/rinard.pdf ====== stcredzero Famous story from Kent Beck: When asked to come onsite to the C3 project to optimize their daily payroll batch process, which was taking 3 days instead of 10 hours, Kent asked for some datasets and verified results. He was told that the system wasn't producing correct results anyways. His response: "Well, in that case I can make it _real_ fast!" The C3 project was the "birthplace" of Extreme Programming.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Clock of the Long Now - ColinWright http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collections/2013/07/31/the-clock-of-the-long-now/ ====== salgernon I've always been fascinated by these functional time capsules, intended to communicate ideas rather than just entertain people with the novelty of historic artifacts. One such project relates to how to communicate danger (nuclear waste) to a society 10k years hence - one possible answer being: you don't bother, they'll just have to learn to avoid it. [http://www.wipp.energy.gov/fctshts/warned.pdf](http://www.wipp.energy.gov/fctshts/warned.pdf) [edit] this is a nice summary of the full report, with a link to the original document (350pp) [http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place- of-...](http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/) ------ e3pi Nice looking guilloche escapement train with complication, but for very long term durability, I'd back the Jura's molecular biologists certifying DNA's proven reliability.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
AWS price reduction - kpras http://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-price-reduction-42-ec2-s3-rds-elasticache-and-elastic-mapreduce/?sc_ichannel=ha&sc_ipage=homepage&sc_icountry=en&sc_isegment=c&sc_iplace=hero1&sc_icampaigntype=pricing&sc_icampaign=ha_en_PriceDrops_2014_03&sc_icategory=none&sc_iproduct=none&sc_idetail=none&sc_icontent=default ====== xxxmadraxxx Unnecessary overuse of the word "time" in the first paragraph [5 occurrences]. Please have a re-write on my desk by 09:00 tomorrow.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Startup Sets Out to Bring Google-Style AI to the Masses - cyphersanctus http://www.wired.com/2014/12/new-startup-sets-bring-google-style-ai-masses/ ====== xixixao Having examples just executable from the website is invaluable, especially to excite more people. For fun: Relatedness of Sentences (beta) 1 - not related at all 5 - an almost perfect paraphrase Two men are taking a break from a trip on a snowy road Two men are taking a break from a trip on a road covered by snow 4.05 Two men are taking a break from a trip on a road covered by rocks 4.13 Two men are taking a break from a trip on a road covered by mushrooms 4.23 Two men are taking a break from a trip on a road covered by hobbits 4.27 Plenty of work ahead :) ~~~ 31reasons Several children are playing with the leaves Several leaves are playing with the children : 4.26 Indeed! ~~~ matheweis Yea, I also wasn't impressed: "a few guys are drinking water at the mall" -> "stuff" : 4.22 lol ------ lispm > “deep learning,” teaching machines to recognize images and understand > natural language using software that operates a bit like the networks of > neurons in the human brain. 'understand natural language'? Very far from it... > I saw the movie, where the main actor's wife was so angry - but I was having > a great day Result 99% negative... > he was hit hard > he played a hit single Relatedness 4.5, from 1-5 ------ hashtree A solid group of talent, welcome to the club. I am interested to see where the "deep learning" start-ups end up in ten years time with such a wide-array of problem sets and industries. ------ danvoell Am I the only person who is worried that AI start-up companies are going to use AI to insert "deep learning" into every pitch deck possible? ~~~ 31reasons Deep learning has become a buzzword that every CEO on the planet is going to put in his/her presentations. e.g Deep learning will allow us to identify new opportunities and capture more value from existing markets..blah blah blah. ~~~ rrrx3 is this the sexy re-brand that Machine Learning has been waiting for? (honest question.. are they the same thing?) ~~~ Houshalter They are closely related but entirely different approaches. Most machine learning is relatively simple statistical models. Deep learning means ridiculously large models. Sometimes they have millions of parameters and require rooms full of GPUs running for weeks to train. But the capacity means they can learn far more complicated functions (like machine vision or language.) ~~~ crazypyro Machine learning isn't an approach, its an entire discipline. Deep learning is just a specific category of implementation of a subset (neural nets) of machine learning. They aren't entirely different approaches, considering deep learning is a form of machine learning... ------ tonydiv Having spoken to Sven a few times, I think they are targeting industries/applications more specific than their website appears :) If anything, I would consider this to be a competitor to Context Relevant and Alchemy API instead of Clarifai. ------ slntdth7 Wait til the machines rise against us	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Markdown Calculator Builder - markyc I made a calculator builder called TextCalc ( <a href="https://textcalc.com" rel="nofollow">https://textcalc.com</a> ) that uses:<p>- markdown text formatting<p>- markdown-like form elements<p>- excel formulas for the calculations<p>feedback welcome ====== adriansky Nice idea. Is there a way to embed this on a blog like Jekyll or any other that supports markdown? ~~~ markyc I think so, you'll get an iframe that you can paste in your site, should work in Jekyll too	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple Begins High Sierra Automatic Rollout - ingve https://512pixels.net/2017/11/apple-begins-high-sierra-automatic-rollout/ ====== sarreph It is a shame to see Apple using the same tactics as iOS with macOS, which in my opinion a different beast when it comes to upgrades. I really regret upgrading to High Sierra, because — thanks to a still unfixed graphics driver issue, my 2014 rMBP reboots/lags/breaks when using the GPU. Fortunately, I managed to remedy it with a beta Nvidia driver; without a pro- user mindset, I can only imagine how many people are frustrated by this issue alone, not to mention their apps breaking as a result of a 'forced' upgrade! High Sierra has the same lack of 'internal polish' as iOS 11, and as a result, it's going to leave a lot of users scratching their heads in anger. Part of me misses the days when getting an OS X update was an event that required a trip to an Apple Store to pick up (read: pay) a DVD :) ~~~ AHTERIX5000 I'm having significant problems with High Sierra on MBPR 2013. WindowServer memory usage can get up to 5-8 GB before it starts to consume insane amounts of CPU and the system basically locks up and I need to reboot the system. Also simple application drawing starts to fail too, I've encountered visual errors like this [https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-2...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-23-2017-12-41-55.gif) in multiple applications, Xcode's console/stdout window breaks often. Quite interesting features for a stable release indeed. ~~~ eklavya This bug frustrated the hell out of me and was fortunately fixed in 10.13.1 update. There are a couple more window manager related bugs (I think), it crashes and logs me out frequently while watching videos in VLC. ~~~ danieldk I was running into a bug with Sierra where the Cocoa version of Emacs would sometimes trigger a bug in DisplayServer that made it use 100% CPU. Fortunately, that is solved in High Sierra. Unfortunately, I have some other fun regressions: \- Preview has become pretty much unusable. It crashes often when zooming PDFs. It also often doesn't linearly go through pages/slides when pressing the down key when a thumbnail is selected. \- The other day my MacBook Pro (2016) showed the charge icon, but it didn't actually charge. I noticed when it was at 5%. Unplugged and plugged the charger and it works again. \- Keynote doesn't open (some?) presentations produced with PDF2Keynote anymore. This worked fine in the previous version of Keynote. ------ vlunkr I feel like I'm seeing a trend here. An OS reaches a very stable point where users are happy. But the company needs to keep pushing updates to stay relevant and generally makes things worse. I think it's why people were stuck on Windows XP for so long, and now Windows 7 will be the one people hold onto as long as possible (if they weren't automatically upgraded). The most recent versions of iOS and macOS are in the same boat: the feature list is uninteresting to most people, but the update is pushed on them, and there's a good change it will break your install/slow things down/break some apps. I haven't bothered updating to High Sierra, since after installing Sierra I was left wondering what I had gained. I disabled Siri after the first week of never using it. Side note, it's annoying that Apple ties app updates to OS updates. One of the big selling points this time seems to be the new photo app stuff, like you can't just release that for everyone? /rant ~~~ scoot > the company needs to keep pushing updates to stay relevant and generally > makes things worse It isn't the company that feels the need to stay relevant, it's the UI designers & developers. They have to keep changing thins to justify their existence. ~~~ obmelvin Well considering corporations aren't sentient beings and are made up of these employees it's the same thing. ~~~ scoot No, it's the difference between the company being relevant to the market, and the employees being relevant to the company. That isn't the same thing. ~~~ mygo but corporations _are_ people. It's still about people being relevant to people. Just internally instead of externally. ------ GeekyBear If you do not want your Mac to automatically download updates: uncheck "Download newly available updates in the background" in the App Store section of your computer's Control Panel. [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207251](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT207251) ~~~ gammarator I found this too late--I was traveling overseas and purchased metered internet --woke up to find 5/12 GB gone... ------ blunte I regret upgrading. My Mac was wonderfully stable before the upgrade. Now it periodically crashes, as in full hard crash/reboot. Sometimes it fails to recognize one of my two external monitors, and when I wake it from screen saver or screen off (energy saver, but with laptop still running), it flashes the three displays a while and fumbles around trying to decide what goes where before _finally_ allowing me to unlock. And after I unlock, all my windows have been rearranged and shoved onto one display. I find no improvement or redeeming value in High Sierra. It's almost as bad as my new Windows 10 laptop next to it... in fact with the crashes it's now even worse. Apple has been on the path of self destruction, dare I say, since Jobs died. He may have had some goofy ideas, but apparently his dictator like control and obsession with details was worth more than I realized. Sadly for us users, especially developers, we'll soon have no OS that works great all the time. ~~~ fvargas I experienced a similar disappointment after installing one of the Sierra security updates. It introduced some external display issues [1] which to this day have gone unfixed. I've spent hours with Apple support, both in chat and over the phone, explaining the issue and providing them with debug data. They told me multiple times it was being looked into by engineering and would continue to update me. But time and time again they would schedule a follow-up phone call that never came or tell me I'd receive an email follow-up that would never arrive. I also echo the sentiment that it's difficult finding a practical alternative. [1] [https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/277967/major- issue...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/277967/major-issues-with- multiple-external-displays-after-upgrading-from-macos-10-12-3) ------ mailslot I've been a satisfied Mac user and developer for nearly two decades. Perhaps I'm lucky, but I never had a single OS update problem during this time. Not a one. Not until High Sierra. This update is so bad, I'm actually abandoning the platform entirely. I've been shopping for new PC hardware since I installed this disease. ~~~ chmaynard Agreed. After using macOS High Sierra for a few days, I was in shock and decided to downgrade to Sierra immediately. Downgrading macOS can be difficult, and in this case it was also necessary to restore the HFS+ file system. Fortunately, I had a good backup and enough spare time to do it correctly. ------ donatj Given how much worse High Sierra has been for me performance and stability wise I’d be quite upset if I’d been tricked/forced into installing it. For instance activating accessibility zoom freezes the entire system for 5-10 seconds before it kicks in. It’s horrible. I am also regularly frustrated with file system changes taking up to 30 seconds to show up in Finder. I presume this is a side effect of APFS. ~~~ matt4077 If we lay all these complaints of "the update is worse" end-to-end, from the first OS X to today, we'd get some sort of eternally crashing MC Escher OS :) ------ nayuki This is not unlike Microsoft's aggressive push to automatically install Windows 10 a few years ago. ~~~ laurent123456 This has became the new normal it seems. Just like it's acceptable to reboot a computer without a user's permission, losing all their work (or to start it in the middle of the night and not switch it back off). This is purely something that these companies do for their own good without any regard for the user. They probably think "What are you going to do about it? Install Ubuntu?" ~~~ collectively Do for their own good? I see this as for the collective good, as most of the people hurt by unpatched software are NOT microsoft but people, small businesses, and the victims of the resulting botnets. Obviously if you know what this is you can turn it off. ~~~ marksomnian The issue with having an off switch is that non-tech-savvy people will blindly follow some instructions to disable it and will get caught by a major security vuln. Case in point: when Chrome throws a TLS error, you could type "danger" to bypass it, but they had to change it because businesses started _teaching users_ to bypass errors blindly. Not exactly apples to apples, but similar enough in my mind. If users blindly disable updates, they won't be updated when there's a major security patch. ~~~ Trav5 A good reminder that if a software company is given enough trust to auto update, keeping that trust us important. Seems the big boys have been breaching that trust a lot lately. ------ spruce-bruce This article complains that clicking a button that says "install" starts installing. ~~~ slobotron Complaint is more about unprompted 5.3GB download. ~~~ Waterluvian I'm not upset with any one device because I'm sure they all have an option to disable auto download. But there is now so much auto downloading that goes on in my house (I can think of 15 devices top of my head) that my wifi often can't reliably stream Twitch or YouTube. I think I'm at the point in the tech story of my home that I would love a UI that shows total and per-device usage history. With knobs to throttle each device on a temporary or permanent basis. ~~~ manyxcxi I’ve got a Ubiquiti Edge Router Lite as The Router for my house. Not sure if it does exactly per-device but if you enable it, it can show traffic per host/ip, site ‘category’, etc. It’s quite a nice little piece of kit. Speed-wise,it’s also very good. It’s plugged in directly to my FiOS and I’m maxing out my 150/150. ~~~ nerdponx How is it possible to tell what category a piece of traffic is? ~~~ wereHamster Depends on which categories you want to have. You can use the TCP port (http vs bittorrent vs email, or individual games which often use a well-known port for communication), deep packet inspection (eg. to distinguish between normal web and HTTP video streaming), reverse IP lookups to detect location of the remote endpoint or what company it's assigned to (through AS number for example). ------ eref The upgrade to 10.13.1 has effectively locked my SSD in read-only mode because reading from it would always cause an APFS kernel panic (both under 10.13 and 10.13.1) also making it impossible to boot from it. It took me several hours to figure that out and to restore my data. I now downgraded to 10.12.6 and I am not missing anything. I think I am going to switch to Ubuntu as soon there is a comparable laptop to MacBooks from ~2015 (perhaps in 1-2 years?). This kind of nonsense is just not worth my time and money when I just need Firefox, ZSH and Emacs anyway. ~~~ nicksergeant Try out a Thinkpad X1 Carbon. ------ jerkstate I also don't like how much they are pushing for me to install IOS 11 on my 5S. I know it's going to be unbearably slow but I intend to keep this phone for another year, so I want to stay on IOS 10 ~~~ Niten You intend to use your phone for a year without installing any security updates? Some people like living dangerously, I guess. For the rest, it's a good thing iOS strongly encourages people to keep up to date. ~~~ krisdol I have a 6s and regret upgrading to 11. Slow and unstable. Frankly I don’t do enough sketchy crap on the phone to care about security updates as much as I’m supposed to. ~~~ 0xffff2 It always amazes me how subjective adjectives like "slow" and "unstable" are when referring to software. I too have a 6s (plus), and iOS 11 has been just as fast and stable as iOS 10 in my experience. This kind of disparity makes a lot of sense in the PC world, where everyone has slightly different hardware. I can't quite figure out why it's still common on a platform where there is relatively no hardware variation. ~~~ krisdol I mean if I had devices side by side of different OSes, I’m confident I could measure it. Time to open applications, like the phone dialer and messages, is noticeably slower than ever before for me. Another issue is that now when I open my recent calls, it shows a cached image of its last state for a few seconds before it refreshes with the most recent state. Unfortunately, in those few seconds, I usually already clicked the contact I wanted to call back, only to see the screen refresh after my click and find out I’m calling someone I did not mean to call. This is the same annoying way that Safari treats the back button, but I’m sad to see that pattern creep into other apps. I’d rather see a loading screen than a false view. ------ godzillabrennus __* WARNING __* I upgraded at launch on my Mac Pro with an OEM Apple RAID card. The installer will update your firmware then install. After install it won’t boot. Turns out they forgot to put the drivers in for the Apple OEM raid card. High Sierra cannot see any drives attached through the card. Apple claims to support these older Mac Pro computers for this upgrade but can’t give me an eta for when they will add support back in. If you have an older Mac Pro your system will be bricked by this upgrade. ------ alfonsodev The entry model of MacBook Pro comes with just 250GB, I personally struggle to keep 30GB free (I need to have Android SDK and iOS SDK installed) When having less than 20GB the OS gets slow, so I usually run DaisyDisk to find what can I delete, I didn't like to find the high sierra installer there. On the side note, I didn't update to High Sierra because it seems that there are issues with XCode 9 (slow simulator) so I can't risk. ~~~ wereHamster The mistake here is to use an entry-level model for development ;) ~~~ bluedino My Xcode install alone is 75GB Apple still sells a machine with a 128GB drive ~~~ userbinator I don't use Apple software much but I understand that Xcode is Apple's equivalent to something like Visual Studio --- which takes several GB, but what exactly in Xcode needs 75GB? Does it somehow include all versions of iOS and macOS ever released? ~~~ wingerlang I'd assume runtimes for various iOS systems (think 3gb for iOS 11, 3gb for iOS 11.1, 11.1.1 etc) from many many versions ago. Same with simulators. It is very very likely that he could just delete unused ones and cut it down to 20gb Xcode itself is ~5gb I think. Or 10. ~~~ gurkendoktor My Xcode.app is 15 GB, and depending on how many different devices you connect, the iOS Device Support folder will balloon rather quickly. 75 GB sounds pretty high, though. ------ dreen Our IT dept just sent us an email NOT to upgrade if OS asks. Wonder if the holdout is the new filesystem or something else? ~~~ masklinn I have not seen anything bad about the new FS, I _have_ heard everything bad from the OS itself. I had held off of Sierra because it felt half-baked and hoped High Sierra to be a Snow Leopard/Mountain Lion/Cap, but it's really not looking good. It does not help that I have one of the "dead dGPU" 2010 series, and with every new release I dread more and more that gfx won't be able to lock the system in "integrated only" mode. ~~~ StephenMelon Never had random reboots or graphical artifacts on screen before on OSX but my iMac has been very unstable since the High Sierra update. I’m lucky I’m not using that machine for work or I would be raging on a daily basis. I’m not an “Apple are doomed”-er but this is the poorest Apple OS release since the black screen of death that plagued iOS8. You seem to generally get about 3 years of use from an iOS device before the CPU can’t really keep up with the OS updates. I couldn’t recommend upgrading an iPhone 6 to iOS 11 as my wife’s 6 Plus has basically become unusable. Maybe part of the problem is that no-one in Cupertino will be using a 3-4 year old iPhone or a 2012 Mac on a daily basis? ------ mistercow A tip if you do upgrade, especially from an older macOS and you're using Apple's Mail app: back up your filters. I procrastinated and ended up upgrading from Yosemite (presumably a less well thought out upgrade for obvious reasons), and Mail helpfully deleted all of my filters. Fun times. ------ jmull This seems reasonable to me. An automatic download that size can be an issue in certain circumstances, but why is this blogger just assuming Apple hasn’t done anything to address that? E.g., perhaps it doesn’t automatically download if you’re low on disk space. Perhaps they’ve even done something clever to determine when it might cost you download tolls and avoid it then too. I mean, if you use the internet much at all you are very likely involuntarily downloading a lot more than that in the form of ads and their associated video/audio, images, and tracking code. At least (as the blogger mentions) it’s generally good for people to be up-to- date. It’s just reality that there are so many people who simply won’t unless it’s easy and without a little prodding. I think people manufacture outrage at Apple for the attention it get them. ~~~ sago They haven't. I moved house three weeks ago, and was using a short-term cellular internet connection to stay in touch with emails, update version control, etc. The automatic download blew through all my bandwidth, and I needed to top up. I was able to control other downloads, no ads no video, etc. But I had no clue what had used all my bandwidth until it was done. ~~~ tedmiston This isn't really a problem with Apple's approach here as much as using a limited cellular data plan on macOS which opens a whole can of worms since you can't easily restrict which apps, especially daemons, have network access like you (mostly) can on iOS. You also can't really restrict whether loading a simple web article these days is a 5 KB download or a 5 MB download. The desktop web is just not mindful of bandwidth costs today since most cable connections have been unlimited historically. Hopefully this is a change we see a similar simple control over in the future. You might try something like Little Snitch if you really want to lockdown network traffic not initiated by yourself, however, there are also just so many background system services trying to use network that this can be a bit time-consuming to setup. ~~~ sago :D - My fault, of course! It has worked fine before. Most background stuff checks for updates, downloads small stuff, I figure < 500Mb a day for gmail, my git repos, checking news, messaging apps: 5.6 Gb is an obnoxious amount. Not only size, but bandwidth. If you're really saying we should all be fine with and expect multigigabyte downloads happening at arbitrary times, without our consent, then I think we have a very different model of computing ethics. ~~~ tedmiston I didn't say it was your fault — I only clarified why the expectations you have don't align with the reality of OS X, and moreover any desktop operating system, today and over the past decade. It may be worth re-reading my comment as I'm not arguing the interpretation you described: I didn't mention ethics and only described the reality of the situation we have today and one approach for addressing it. ------ kanishkdudeja Gone are the days when Apple products used to work flawlessly. Struggling to understand how a company nearing a trillion dollar valuation can't push out stable updates for it's platforms. Even iOS (Apple's cash now) 11 is buggy as hell. ------ intellix Also regret upgrading. Loads of graphical glitches, volume controls randomly stop working, mouse slows down when taking screenshot and my laptop is absolutely crawling performance wise since updating. Worst release ever ------ krallja Seems too early. My laptop wouldn’t reboot until I unplugged my external miniDP monitor. ~~~ pentae If the rollouts anything like the utter debacle that was iOS 11, they shouldn't be forcing major OS updates down peoples throats. ------ jgowdy Yeah, let’s break everyone’s Thunderbolt external monitor support, not just a few people. Enjoy the video corruption on external monitors my friends. ------ hownottowrite The upgrade process itself is a little hit or miss with OSX. I had my own personal experience with that today. In my case, the automatic installer didn't like FileVault, which rendered my mbpro a shiny brick. In relative terms, it was easy to work around in recovery mode but I can imagine the pleasure a non-technical user would feel at waking to find their beloved mac turned into a shiny brick. ------ j_mes Still waiting for Dark Mode on Mac OS. My eyes bleed with the white interface and Notifications bar being white! ------ protomyth Have they fixed RAID1 on the Mac mini server? Last time I looked it wouldn’t install. ~~~ lloydde I came to ask a similar question, can macOS High Sierra now be installed on a AppleRAID set? (Not sure why it is called “AppleRAID”, guess that is they brand software RAID0) Looks like not based on recent comments on [https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/78908](https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/78908) ------ atomicnumber1 I see lots of complaints about High Sierra being buggy and pain in the butt. But I've had no such issues. Infact I've found it to be really polished and breeze(as was too be expected). So much so that I upgraded my file system to apfs. And mind you, I'm running Hackintosh. And, I seemlesly upgraded it from Sierra. P.S. I'm sure now that I've mentioned it, something's about to go horribly wrong. ------ exabrial Unfortunately my mom fell for this and the upgrade did not succeed destroying her operating system install. Hopefully her documents are still there; she really enjoys looking at pictures of her kids and grandkids. Apple seriously needs to take heart of this message: [https://youtu.be/e_hnG7kuam8](https://youtu.be/e_hnG7kuam8) ~~~ majewsky > the upgrade did not succeed destroying her operating system install. You should use a comma there. You probably meant "the upgrade did not succeed, [thus] destroying her OS install". But without the command, it means "the upgrade did not succeed [in] destroying her OS install", which is the exact opposite. ~~~ majewsky s/command/comma/ ------ sidcool Since I updated to High Sierra, my Java plugins in Safari have stopped working. Now those are required for VPN connection. Apple support says to re- install macOS, but I am not convinced. Also there are some weird bugs popping up. What really rocks is the copy/paste. It's blazing fast. ~~~ mrsteveman1 > my Java plugins in Safari have stopped working. Now those are required for > VPN connection. Is it common for VPN access to be handled this way? What's the advantage over issuing a certificate or just using a username+password? ~~~ sidcool Yep, there needs to be a client side program to route all the traffic through VPN, isn't it? And while there may be better programs, Java is pretty much I know of as being used in many companies. ------ ralphc I'm confused, does the switch from HFS+ to APFS happen when the upgrade happens, or is it a separate step you do or not do later? My macs are on rotating HDs, sounds like some of the problems are with this. ~~~ scarlac It happens automatically as a part of the upgrade. ~~~ ralphc [http://osxdaily.com/2017/10/17/how-skip-apfs-macos-high- sier...](http://osxdaily.com/2017/10/17/how-skip-apfs-macos-high-sierra/) According to this, SSDs are converted automatically, HDDs are left at HFS+, and with some command line magic you can get the installer to not convert SSDs. ------ bitL Apple seems to suffer from cloning envy even if it makes very very little sense. It first started with iOS copying Windows Phone's look (ugh!), even if their original design was considered the golden standard and everybody was copying it. Then they adopted weird 16:9, which Google promptly used and jumped on Apple's original format. Now they took "black magic" tricks from Microsoft that had massive backslash from their userbase and MS still didn't recover from them. This tells me that Apple's originality is now gutted, the ship is rudderless, the company went beyond "bozo horizon" and MBAs with no vision took over. Sad, but expected. ------ therealmarv still having graphic errors on 10.13.1 with Intel HD 5000 graphic cards in fullscreen quicktime videos on external monitors: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/70jaci/this_has_star...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/70jaci/this_has_started_happening_after_getting_the_gm/) ------ lokedhs My MBA is still on 10.10 with no intention of upgrading. It has an almost full 64 GB SSD, so I hope that will stop an automatic update. ------ Overtonwindow I have a Macbook that still runs Mavericks and I'm quite happy with it. I know it sounds conspiratorial but I've never been able to shake the forced obsolescence tag when it comes to Apple. I have a laptop. It works very well. I don't feel the need to upgrade or update the software, because I don't want to lose functionality that works really well for me. ~~~ abritinthebay Then you are missing years of security patches. Your call there but... seems like a risk ~~~ mring33621 Which is better: vulnerable and usable or less vulnerable and less usable? ~~~ Overtonwindow There's one element there that might be missing: Vigilance. Vulnerable, sure, but with great care it can be managed. ------ iambateman On High Sierra, is anyone else having TextEdit freeze-crash every time you try to save? ------ JustSomeNobody This kinda <del>pisses me off</del> makes me a little angry. I've a 2014 rMBP and, given the issues I've heard talked about, have no desire yet to upgrade to HS. Them pulling a Microsoft and auto downloading the OS for me is consumer unfriendly seeing as how HD space on Macs cost a premium! ------ twic Joke's on them! I'm still using Mountain Lion! ------ znpy If Microsoft had done the same (downloading 5.21 gigabytes of software without asking the user) everybody would have lost their mind. Just saying. ------ drivingmenuts I can live with automatic IOS upgrades, because at the end of the day, my phone will still function, even if I lose all the apps. However, I lose my laptop ... I am screwed (I can't afford backups right now). I also have software that I paid rather a large amount of money for (back when I could afford it) that is incompatible with High Sierra and I cannot afford to upgrade the software. So, I'm kinda stuck between a rock and hard place here.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Pricing niche products - speps https://kevinlynagh.com/notes/pricing-niche-products/ ====== whack When eBay first started, I loved the idea of auctions as a way to set market prices. From an economic and game-theory perspective, it is so optimal! Clearly as later examples like Amazon have shown, auctions don't make sense for most product categories. I believe this is mainly due to psychological reasons. Decision-fatigue is a real thing. People dislike having to think hard. In a fixed-price sale, the buyer just has to ask themselves one yes/no question: _" Would I be happy buying this item for $X?"_ This is a very simple question to answer. In a sealed-bid auction, people have to ask themselves _" What $X am I willing to pay for this item"_, which is a tremendously more complex question to answer. In fact, from a game theory perspective, you should never put in a bid that you're "happy with". You should put in a bid where you're exactly neutral between buying-vs-not-buying. Otherwise, you're leaving money on the table. This is asking people to make purchasing decisions whose outcomes will leave them explicitly _not happy_ \- a state of mind that every person hates putting themselves in. Couple this together with the fact that the buyer doesn't even know whether they won the auction, until X hours/days later. And during this period of time, they are under a state of uncertainty, which is another mental state that people generally hate. I think that for very expensive, non-time-critical and hobbyist items, an auction may work great. People may actually enjoy pouring effort into it because it is their hobby. But for any item that people just want to buy-and- move-on, auctions are a horrible mechanism. Perhaps one day when AI assistants make all our purchasing decisions for us, auctions will become the norm, but certainly not today. ~~~ catherd On top of decision fatigue and needing to know the market, losing auctions gets expensive fast if you value your time. ~~~ specialist aka transaction costs Book I read about market design estimated that only 30% of commerce was done in an open market. Relationships, fulfillment, quality, service, returns, etc are all factors too. All those non-price intangibles that the Freedom Markets™ zealots ignore. ~~~ JanisL This book sounds interesting, what is the name of this book? ------ ghaff With respect to the high price, it seems pretty simple really. Some people have a fair bit of money that they're willing to spend on their enthusiasms. This wouldn't even be a notable question if, instead of mechanical keyboards, we were talking "designer" handbags, shoes, custom-made suits, etc. The auction question is more interesting. Auctions are well accepted when there's clear scarcity or uniqueness in what's being sold. With manufactured good, we at least harbor illusions that there's some relationship with cost. But for niche items, that's not really true of course. ~~~ closetohome Well I guess that's sort of the answer to the author's question about why auctions aren't used more often. The same way we (most of us anyway) wouldn't trust a company that begins with a crowdfunding campaign, selling your items at auction makes it look like you've done no market research and have no business plan. And I'm reluctant to back a company without business sense or a plan. ~~~ ghaff >I'm reluctant to back a company without business sense or a plan. Depends on what I'm buying really. I don't really care if an artist has a business plan. Indeed, I figure they probably don't or they wouldn't be an artist. But a manufactured good that I might expect support or replacement for defects for? Sure. By and large, I don't want an artisan laptop. ------ CommieBobDole These things have become so esoteric and expensive because the mechanical keyboard hobby is undergoing a more intense version of what happens to most hobbies/pastimes; the purpose of the hobby has transitioned from primarily "making/using the thing" to "obtaining and displaying ever more extreme versions of the thing to impress other people who know about the thing". I feel like this is an outgrowth of the basic human desire to form groups and define an in-group and an out-group; people start a hobby because they are interested in whatever, but after a while there develops an (often arbitrary) right way and wrong way to pursue the hobby, cliques form, and after a while participating in the hobby becomes an exercise in demonstrating that you've bought/made/done the right things and are therefore worthy of being in the in- group instead of the out-group. I think this is so strong in the mechanical keyboard community because there's not a lot of "there" there; mechanical keyboards are nice to type on, but there's no core competitive activity that they're used for - you're not spending $1600 on a keyboard to improve your typing speed and accuracy 1.2% so you can have a shot at winning the big annual World Typing Tournament in Las Vegas. The mechanical keyboard community feels to me more like the streetwear or sneakerhead community than, say, R/C planes or surfing or whatever. ~~~ SuperPaintMan Very much signalling, you want something that sets you apart from other users and if that means custom CNC'd cases, with harvested switches that have been lubed using the finest tears mounted on a custom plate. So you have something to ogle and show off to the others. And that's before we get into the scarcity territory that sees secondhand TGR Alices going for over 5K. It's weird, a good chunk of people buy my Georgis [1] and _don't actually use them_. It's a strange feeling to have something bought only because it's different and to be collected. I think keyboards are to be used, not hoarded personally but in this community it's very common to own at least a dozen boards. It's very weird. [1] [https://www.gboards.ca/](https://www.gboards.ca/) ~~~ criley2 It's funny how on hacker news apparently buying a fancy keyboard for your home where no one can see it is "signalling", but if you point out that wearing Apple watch, holding iPhone, and displaying those ear buds is also signalling/branding/status symboling, I am generally very aggressively downvoted. I'd say buying a mechanical keyboard with RGB lights and nice switches is probably 100X less signalling (several orders of magnitude) than buying a $300 phone for $1100 and wearing gaudy white ear buds. It's very rare personally that I see other people's setups. It's not like people lug around $300 keyboards with their laptops. But walk down any popular street in any major city and I bet you can tell who is signalling that they're part of the apple brand. ~~~ dsabanin Did it ever occur to you that people buy Apple stuff because it’s just good/better? ~~~ criley2 Did it ever occur to you that people buy mechanical keyboards because it's just good/better? (And P.S. subjective ideas of good/better are what they are, but no fair objective analysis of price and value would agree with you. A thousand dollar phone is a pure status symbol and owning it has nothing to do with a rational attempt to achieve value per dollar) ~~~ umanwizard I own a $1000 phone and avoid as much as possible other people in public seeing it, because I don't want it to get stolen and I think being recognized for owning a "status symbol" is awkward. Is it really so hard to believe that some people buy the most expensive iPhone simply because it's the best phone available on the market? ~~~ criley2 "Is it really so hard to believe that some people buy the most expensive iPhone simply because it's the best phone available on the market?" I can believe that you THINK it's the best, and worth the money -- that's literally what advertising is for and how status symbols work -- but of course I would reject any claim that any $1000 phone is worth it on the merits. (Example, this 'pro' branded flagship phone comes standard with a bottom-of- the-industry 32GB of space, a laughably inferior specification for 2019 flagships where 64gb is standard and 128gb base is available. That's objectively the worst, not the best). ~~~ CDSlice The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro both have a base storage of 64gb. If you are going to claim that a phone is overpriced at least get the specs you're complaining about right. ------ Palomides I think the author underestimates how amateurish many people selling keyboard parts are (i.e. rarely fully or never committed to the work as their employment, and without any experience in sales, manufacturing, marketing, distribution). Optimizing pricing or marketing strategies is not, afaict, deeply considered. Money is consistently left on the table. Look into the madness of first-party 'artisan' keycap sales, for example. To be fair, there's nothing really wrong with this, since it is just a hobby for most people involved, and these sorts of products really often are just making something you want to exist and selling a few more to meet minimum order quantity. ~~~ _jal As you say, this is not a massive commodity market. A lot of the folks, if they've been involved for a while, know each other. People gift each other things all the time. It is a market, but a lot of the participants have motivations other than profit-maximization. ------ random3 There's even Keycon [https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=98877.0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=98877.0) If you want to see the full range and get a sense of what this is about: [https://old.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/](https://old.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/) [https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/](https://old.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/) 1.6K seems a bit steep. You can find most kits in the low 00s However mechanical keyboards are popular with gamers and more about collectibles / art than anything, so price becomes less relevant. If you're after ergonomics and efficiency Keyboard.io and Ergodox offer decently priced pre built split keyboards. I personally find the keyboard.io camera mount genius - take a look at a few setups here [https://community.keyboard.io/t/what-does-your-rsi- helping-s...](https://community.keyboard.io/t/what-does-your-rsi-helping- setup-look-like/1603/29) More resources: [https://unikeyboard.io](https://unikeyboard.io) [https://clueboard.co/](https://clueboard.co/) [https://www.dygma.com/raise/](https://www.dygma.com/raise/) ~~~ cestith My Keyboard.io Model 1s are still my two favorite keyboards. I backed them on KickStarter and I'm glad I did. I'll still point out this article to Jesse and Kaia to make sure they're mindful of the option for future models. ~~~ dmix The example on [https://keyboard.io](https://keyboard.io) using RGB looks so tacky. Why mix light coloured wood with a rainbow RGB look? A simple vintage or black keyset would be more than sufficient. A big part of mech keyboards are they designs and sadly both keyboard.io and Ergodox aren't the prettiest. I'm curious why there's no companies producing economic split keyboards at scale and with a clean look. Edit: the link above to [https://www.dygma.com](https://www.dygma.com) looks nice and simple, closer to what I'm looking for. Although it's still bought into the annoying RGB-everything trend. ~~~ cestith The lights have several preset modes. That picture is just one of them. Some of them are single color. Some "breathe". The board is also microcontroller powered and runs an open source OS that takes modular plugins. You could set your own static or dynamic lighting pattern. I goes you could also paint or stain the case if you wanted. ------ phaus I have a $600+ keyboard so I'm a part of this hobby. However, only a part of this can be explained by the expense of manufacturing at a small scale. The hobby fully embraces the drawbacks of the small scale and intentionally does nothing to try to improve it because the exclusivity drives prices up to an insane point. A typical group buy for a popular case sells out in minutes or days time after time. Clearly some of the exclusivity is artificial. An aluminum case that costs $300 is often 99% as nice as one for $1000. There are designers lauded as geniuses that make cases that are almost identical to generic ones. It might have some kind of logo or inlay or a different color of anodized aluminum. Aftermarket they'll be worth insane amounts of money. And with keycaps pretty much the entire thing is artificial exclusivity. $300-400 aftermarket for a set of keycaps is not unheard of. There's nothing wrong with any of this, but as a happy participant I have to say the diminishing returns show up hard and fast in this hobby. Its all about fashion. My $60 GMMK, with 20 minutes of easy modifications, a $30 set of keycaps, and a $90 set of healios switches was the smoothest linear keyboard I've ever used. If you want clicky, the same setup with a $30 set of Box Jade switches will get most people the best keyboard they've ever used. Mx blues feel like rubber domes afterwards. Interesfing article that talks about some of this. I recommend reading it. Why did I pay $600+? I wanted an Ergodox split keyboard with helios switches + backlighting, to see if my wrists would feel better, and I didn't think I was ready to build a kit that required soldering. My Keycaps cost 170 of that. They are modelled after the Space Cadet keyboard from an old LISP Machine. This was uneccessary obviously but I liked them. ~~~ ghaff >the diminishing returns show up hard and fast in this hobby. Of course that's true with lots of things. Cameras, audio equipment, video gear. Whenever I go into B&H Photo in NYC I'm always struck by how quickly the prices go up as you transition from pretty serviceable amateur gear to the pro stuff. ~~~ flmontpetit Seems less like diminishing returns and more like mass hysteria at this point. The only people I personally know of who are as detached from the rest of the market are those guys who collect Telecasters. ~~~ TheOtherHobbes Also vintage synthesizer collectors - although that market tops out around $150k, which is cheap compared to the most expensive one-off Steinway Grand piano models, which go for between $1m and $2m. And high end audio - turntables for $650k, etc. ~~~ flmontpetit I think there's a difference between "enthusiast market segment" and "investment commidities". Also even Yamaha grand pianos aren't typically purchased by individuals. More like venues, etc. AFAIK most of those prestigious Steinway models wind up in the lobbies of luxury hotels. Point is those things justify their prices in a way that $1500 keyboards don't. But honestly I'm being cynical for no reason here. Those guy can spend money on whatever makes them happy. I am in no place to judge. ------ equalunique It's disappointing how so much money is being poured into "mechanical keyboard kits" that simply re-create the old ANSI/ISO layouts that are rooted in old limitations from the days of the typewriter. Alternate layouts & ortholinear/ergonomic designs should be the forefront of the movement. All this focus on outdated designs makes the community "accessible" but also holds people back. The emergence of row-staggered 40% boards is a particular disappointing anachronism. Don't think ortholinear boards can compete? OLKB boards usually sell several thousand every time a group buy runs, and the OLKB main store has a several-month long wait list. People who buy keycaps for these can end up spending $140 for 140 keycaps, 48 of which they'll ever even use... $200 minimum if they don't want Qwerty. The demand is there. People dream about that old GITS typing scene, but we'll never achieve it when our instagram influencers are always hyping this kind of stuff. Japan at least has the right focus - Corne, Helidox, Lily58, Biacco42, and NumAtreus were all created in the past couple of years, with countless more coming. ~~~ ghaff >Alternate layouts & ortholinear/ergonimic designs should be the forefront of the movement. Ehh. There are a lot of good reasons to have layouts that are fairly common across all the equipment you'll use. From what I've seen, while there may be some advantages to different layouts and configurations, very few things are so compelling as to warrant a wholesale change outside of some niches like court stenographers for which specialized training is justified. ~~~ yummypaint I don't think consistency is an issue unless other people need to use the unusual equipment. For example I think most people who use dvorak on their personal system have no trouble at all switching back to qwerty as needed, at least that has been my experience. ~~~ ipqk I'm a 15 year dvorak user, and I can no longer type on qwerty keyboards at all — it's just hunt and peck really. But qwerty keyboards on the phone are just fine. ------ tentboy I am the owner of several keyboards whose total price is a few thousand. Most of that comes from one rare board which can fetch $3k+ in the aftermarket (TGR Jane V2 CE). I really have a hard time explaining to people my purchases because it is just something I like for some reason. I love the customization and I liken it to having a project car... something I am saving up for right now. I have also attended meetups and met a ton of great people through the hobby, so it is not just all throwing money around there is a social component. Happy to answer any keyboard related questions! ------ lewisflude I'm in the $600+ club too (Kepler that has a full brass bottom weight 6+kg, Kepler 65 with it's forged carbon top etc.) It's a really strange hobby. A bunch of people who really value and love keyboards, the thing that sits between a human and a computer, a tool that many (developers, writers, gamers) use every day for hours on end. Similar to how someone might invest in a nice knife if they love cooking, luxury-priced tools are quite a common category you see in hobbies. The community is nice, and the pursuit of "endgame" continually drives supply, demand and the prices that go along with it up consistently. Next year, I wouldn't be surprised if we see several new $1000+ keyboards playing around with new finishes, materials and designs that cater to the high end of the hobby. ~~~ phjesusthatguy3 HN lambasts audiophiles every time stupid expensive audio gear comes up, yet here we are paying $hundreds for gimmick keyboard stuff. SF developers making $100k or two a year just aren't in the same money league of the audiophiles spending $thousands on speaker wire. EDIT: I'm not mad at any of the above groups I've mentioned; everybody gets their kicks from something, as well they should. I'm just mentioning what I see. ~~~ james-mcelwain The key difference being audiophiles often fail A/B tests comparing audio quality. You would _definitely_ notice how nice an expensive mechanical keyboard feels. Whether you think that is worth luxury pricing is another story, but the quality is at least more immediately appreciable. ~~~ antoinealb I would be interested in seeing an AB test of keyboard enthusiast between say a 200$ keyboard and one that is 5x as expensive. Audiophiles also claimed that they would _definitely_ notice a difference. ~~~ dwild I can't speak for him and I'm not saying I agree with this, but I believe what he means is that what they buy it for is actually what they get. Audiophile are buying it for better audio, but the quality isn't actually better. Keyboard enthusiast buy it for different materials, finishes, color scheme, sets of switches, sets of keycaps, etc... They all can be done in a better or inferior quality. I wouldn't agree with it because it's mostly defining the object by its aesthetics features. ~~~ james-mcelwain Yes, this is what I'm saying. I'm not suggesting that the margins of quality are worth a 5x price point (it's not), but it's not quite the same as some of the voodoo beliefs among audiophiles that a 20k tube amp makes an appreciable difference. As a disclosure, I own expensive audiophile gear, but, again, for the aesthetics primarily. I would be much happier with audiophiles if they just said they like the aesthetics. ------ artiscode Oh wow, I have been living under a rock. My friends and family consider me a mechanical keyboard enthusiast/geek because I have two mechanical keyboards and a simple 6 switch tester that I used prior to purchasing my first mechanical keyboard, the CM Masterkeys Pro S RGB. I've tried explaining why I ordered a tester, why I chose Cherry MX Blues, but I don't think I managed to get my point across. So here I am, having spent around $250 on both my keyboards, an outrageous amount in the eyes of my non-technical friends and mom. At least my wife supports me, telling me she doesn't understand, but she likes seeing me so hyped and enthusiastic about it. Turns out I haven't spent that much! Interesting article and even more interesting discussion here on HN... I find it hard to justify paying $1,668 for a keyboard, but then again - it's an enthusiast market and I see the appeal. ~~~ rland Your wife and family got off easy! You could have developed an affinity for... I don't know, boating, or restoring vintage Ford Mustangs, or watch collecting. There are some things that people -- even the regular "non-rich" \-- spend _insane_ amounts of money on. ------ d--b One point that is not much discussed here is that software programmers earn generally quite a lot of money, and do tend to spend less on luxury items than bankers, which often means they have some cash on hands for this sort of things. The custom keyboard kit is like the banker's rollex. ------ terrellm I so want to get into mechnical keyboards but most of my work is done on a 2015 MacBook Pro and I'm so efficient with the large trackpad - I rest my palms on the laptop and can reach everything with just a pivot of the wrist. I tried the Magic Trackpad, but I kept having to move my forearm and it just slowed me down too much. What kind of mouse or trackpad is everyone using with these $xxx - $xxxx keyboards? ~~~ miceexpert > _What kind of mouse or trackpad is everyone using with these $xxx - $xxxx > keyboards?_ Mice with holes. Your mouse must have holes. [https://i.redd.it/i5s6j18i3hp31.jpg](https://i.redd.it/i5s6j18i3hp31.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/DSW0lvH.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DSW0lvH.jpg) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14d68Wgwevs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14d68Wgwevs) [https://en.reddit.com/r/MouseReview/](https://en.reddit.com/r/MouseReview/) ~~~ pjc50 That looks like a cleaning nightmare waiting to happen. ~~~ knd775 If I need to clean a mouse that I've been using for less than a few years, I am going to reevaluate my personal hygiene. After that, it's going in the trash. ------ dfabulich How would you apply a Vickrey auction to SaaS subscription pricing? The article gives an example for keyboards, where ten keyboards are for sale, and the top-ten customers pay the 11th price. But how would I apply this technique to software subscriptions, where I'd be happy to sell any number of them to willing buyers? ~~~ tomerico If you'd like to estimate your demand curve, you could run experiments where your landing page shows different price points to different users. ~~~ dfabulich But I'd love to know how much each individual customer is actually willing to pay! ~~~ underwater Sounds like enterprise pricing with the stereotypical "contact us for pricing" text? Also, having product tiers allows you to segment the market, which is another method to have people land closer to their maximum comfortable price. ------ sova Really fantastic write-up and, "why the hell not get a flushed out demand curve?" duh! Brilliant! We sell an online digital product that is subscription based. Do you think such a mechanism makes sense there, too? ~~~ kragen It might be harder to convince your subscribers that your servers can only support 10 subscribers. They might band together to buy an account for a proxy server. Maybe if you're selling something inherently limited, like sponsorship banner space, or indulgences in inter-user conflicts (“we guarantee to ban any non- core-supporter who reports your account as abusive”). ~~~ sova It's a language learning curriculum in our case, so individual progress is tied to the subscription, making it undesirable to share (but possible s'pose) ~~~ kragen Could you auction off private tutoring time? Or being first in line to pick the other website user you get to practice language with. ~~~ sova That's a great idea, like 50 hours of one-on-one tutoring available this month, and get private bids for that! Thanks! Let's keep brainstorming ^_^ ------ chinhodado A technical question, how was the Vickrey auction done to ensure that you can't just enter a bogus high price? ~~~ rhinoceraptor At my company we're doing something similar. Since the scale is a bit higher (several hundred items available) we're doing credit card holds to ensure buyers aren't doing this. If anyone backs out, it makes it a logistical nightmare to work out the new winners. Of course, it also makes it a bit tricky if you want to edit your bid, since card holds can't be modified after the fact (except for hotels/restaurants). It looks like in this case, the scale was small enough and the buyers/seller have enough trust not to make bogus bids. ------ PeterStuer Why do exclusive wines fetch several hundred a bottle when in double blind tasting tests oenologists fail to differentiate them from 6€ supermarket wine? Why does the same Malaysia made shirt go up in price 50x if it gets a top brand label attached a opposed to a cheap generic brand one? ~~~ dubcanada Why does the same Malaysia made shirt go up in price 50x if it gets a top brand label attached a opposed to a cheap generic brand one? This one seems like a stretch. Top brands have a level of quality that is much different than a random Walmart brand. When you get to the differences between a $100 shirt and a $1000 shirt is when you stop finding a large difference. But there is usually a vast difference between a $5 shirt and a $50 one. QA of the shirt, material, quality of the sewing, quality of the printing, type of ink, things like shirt hangers, environment friendly material, fit, type of pattern, etc. ~~~ TrackerFF I'd say that when you're buying a $1000 t-shirt, there are around 3 different options: 1) High-fashion brand item. This is usually a middle-of-the-road item with steep designer markup. Gucci, Tom Ford, etc. 2) Collector item. It could be a $5 shirt which has suddenly become very expensive due to collection-value. Supreme, etc. 3) Hand-made small scale luxury brand item, using rare materials (Vicuña blends, extremely fine wools, etc.). They still have a markup, but more justified than those in 1). Loro Piana, Stefano Ricci, etc. ------ ekingr The Matt Levine-style "People are worried about custom keyboard market liquidity" made me laugh aloud! [https://www.bloomberg.com/topics/money- stuff](https://www.bloomberg.com/topics/money-stuff) ------ eddieh This doesn't surprise me at all. Guitars are sold for thousands of dollars. I've been making the argument for years that someone should create a bespoke keyboard business. I don't want to start that business though, I want to be a customer. I spend all day working on a computer, why shouldn't I be as comfortable and efficient as possible with a custom designed and professionally built keyboard? In my scenario the possible keyboards go well beyond picking mechanical switches and caps. Because I'm in the minority that actually likes the low travel and stable feel of the MacBook Pro keyboards, but the layout sucks and they don't make a standalone version. Essentially I want a modern keyboard with Meta, Super, Hyper in additional to Control, Option, and Command. And I want the keys moved too. I don't care if nobody else in the world would want this keyboard—the only thing that matters is that I want it. And I'd pay $1,000 - $3,000, maybe more for it. ------ sebastianconcpt Technique to discover the market price: _A Vickrey auction is a type of sealed-bid auction. Bidders submit written bids without knowing the bid of the other people in the auction. The highest bidder wins but the price paid is the second-highest bid. This type of auction is strategically similar to an English auction and gives bidders an incentive to bid their true value. The auction was first described academically by Columbia University professor William Vickrey in 1961 though it had been used by stamp collectors since 1893. In 1797 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sold a manuscript using a sealed-bid, second-price auction._ ------ pmarreck Today I learned about the Vickrey Auction (and related auction strategies such as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey%E2%80%93Clarke%E2%80%9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey%E2%80%93Clarke%E2%80%93Groves_auction) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_second- price_aucti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_second- price_auction) (which is used by Google AdWords!) ------ Tepix I've followed the Keyboard.io Model 01 crowdfunding campaign (they have the best writeups!) with a lot of interest. I'd probably buy two of their keyboards if they'd offer a German keyboard layout. They are $329 each. For that price, I expect a perfect product. A keyboard that looks equally tempting (but involves a lot of soldering and other work) is the Dactyl keyboard ([https://github.com/adereth/dactyl- keyboard](https://github.com/adereth/dactyl-keyboard) ). ~~~ random3 Keyboard.io is one of the nicest pre-built ones. You can fully customize the layout of the Keyboard.io and get blank keycaps [https://community.keyboard.io/t/whats-the-latest-info-on- key...](https://community.keyboard.io/t/whats-the-latest-info-on-keycap- sets/2445/26) You can get a barely used one for ~250 just watch their forums. I've got one 1-2 months ago after playing with a Kinesis. The keyboard is really nice. The firmware and software ecosystem around it is powerful but still lacks usability (you write plugins in C although they have a really nice graphical interface to configure it). [https://github.com/keyboardio/Kaleidoscope](https://github.com/keyboardio/Kaleidoscope) ------ dwoozle The keyboard community isn’t weird at all. People love getting deep into a hobby because people like to feel like they have expertise and depth. When they get deep into a hobby, their level of commitment seems insane to a person on the outside. I can’t fathom why someone would spend $1000 on sneakers or $1000 on a keyboard or $1000 on a golf club or $1000 at the strip club. But everyone has their hobbies. ------ gre The hand model is putting the "P" key on the "O" switch. ------ Dude2029 You always end up buying more than one, despite their extreme durability. ~~~ C1sc0cat Its the Bike Number Rule: The correct number of bikes to own is n+1 .While the minimum number of bikes one should own is three, the correct number is n+1 , where n is the number of bikes currently owned. ~~~ papreclip I was just thinking this fad reminds me of the fixie fad from a few years back. ~~~ C1sc0cat At least you don't have to wear lycra to use them - unless you want to :-) ------ reaperducer I wish there was a niche that involved making replacement keycaps for Macs that brought back the Apple logos on the Command keys. ~~~ _jal The cease & desist letter would hit the advertiser's inbox before the first order. ------ mamurphy Why was the title shortened on HN to remove reference to mechanical keyboards? I think the subject matter is both relevant and helped generate interest in the thread. Also, most of the comments are about mechanical keyboards at this point. ------ octorian I still remember thinking that having a Das Keyboard was a splurge. But in this world, it might as well be a Logitech that no one talks about. (That being said, I've only used Das Keyboards at home and work for the past 6-7 years or so... I'm not really sure what I'd actually gain by seeking out one of these more "boutique" mechanical keyboard brands, and there's so many I'm not even sure where I'd begin anyways.) Its also a shame that none of this nonsense actually helps any of us when we're using a laptop away from a desk setup. ~~~ rhinoceraptor You aren't really getting anything, at least past the $300 mark. The functional advantages of higher end boards are dye sub/double shot key caps, programmable firmware, better switches, better cases, and alternate layouts (Ergodox, Ortholinear boards, etc.). ------ DoreenMichele _Given these benefits, why aren’t such auctions more common in artisan manufacturing niches?_ I had never heard of Vickrey auction. Knowing how to make some high quality artisan product in no way guarantees one also business savvy. In fact, it probably reduces the odds you know such. _The first two sound like “people are dumb amateurs who don’t like money”_ Being a "dumb" amateur is sufficient. No need to act like lack of savvy means you _don 't like money._ ------ overthemoon What, really, are the benefits? I used a friend's mechanical keyboard and it felt nice. Is that it? Is it necessary to spend 100s to get a good one? The whole thing seems insane to me. No judgement, I spend money on other stuff, it just doesn't make sense to me personally. I typed this on a mac keyboard people seem to hate, so maybe it's Stockholm syndrome. ~~~ TulliusCicero You can definitely get decent mechanical keyboards for less than a hundred bucks, though they'll cost more than 'regular' keyboards. This is the one I currently use: [https://www.amazon.com/HyperX-Alloy-FPS-Pro- Ultra-Compact/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/HyperX-Alloy-FPS-Pro-Ultra- Compact/dp/B074F5L8GQ/) I bought it after I found out that my previous TKL mechanical keyboard didn't work for the new Starcraft hotkey layout I was learning. One or more function keys was not remappable in software. ------ alyandon For those that would like to try a mechanical keyboard without necessarily investing $$$$$ in one, I'm quite happy with my ~$60USD 104 key Tecware Phantom with Outemu brown switches. Much better than any membrane based keyboard I've used in the past and not so expensive that if you end up not liking it you feel like you have wasted a ton of cash. ------ rmbryan I suspect a set of shill bidders may be at work here. Is there a way to guard against the seller inflating prices by bidding? ~~~ gnomewascool I think that for a Vickrey auction, the worst that a malicious seller could do, by injecting "false" bids, is (assuming the number of items sold is _n_ ), raise the price from the value of the _n+1_ th bid to just under the value of the _n_ th bid. (Otherwise they'd end up with unsold stock.) ~~~ detaro Unsold stock could still be more profitable if the bids fall right, although could of course be noticed depending on the product and audience. At the core, at least everyone winning is always going to spend less than they bid. ------ rjmunro It seems tricky to do this more than once per product. What happens if you've sold the first batch and it went so well you make a second batch? Do you refund the first batch buyers with the difference in price between using the profit from the second batch? ~~~ wmf If something is advertised as a limited edition then more shouldn't be made. Other than that... That's the same the kind of self-defeating thinking that leads to artificially low prices in the first place. Everything has to be judged based on the information available at the time (e.g. there might not be any more batches), not in hindsight. People are willing to pay to be first in line, so let them pay. ------ m3kw9 It is not used often because most times people want things to be deterministic. If I press buy, I own it, not I may or may not get it and have to wait to see with a fear that it may constantly lose out. ------ daniel-cussen If you look at it as a writing utensil (makes you faster or better at writing) and as an office status image (like a fancy pen) it makes a lot of sense. Pens go for thousands. ------ leksak Not related to the content but kudos on the site styling. Haven't opened it on anything that is not a mobile device (yet) but it was very pleasant to read. ~~~ d7gibo Agreed - I'd like to use the theme if it's available. ~~~ lynaghk Author here --- you're welcome to copy whatever you want from the unminifed CSS: [https://kevinlynagh.com/stylesheets/style.css](https://kevinlynagh.com/stylesheets/style.css) ------ epx How much a Model M, or better yet, a Model F, cost in today's dollars? ~~~ cyanov Unicomp manufactures Model Ms and sell the 104 keys for ~$108 (inc tax+ship). Haven't checked the Model F in awhile, but they're still rare and expensive. ------ purplezooey At least it's metal. It looked plastic at first. ------ xer0x Keycult is so good!! ------ edisonjoao this is real ------ void445be54d48a Wasteful. ~~~ ogre_magi How so? The money spent on the keyboards isn't destroyed. It goes to the manufacturer who presumably spends it on housing and food and medicine and stuff. What's being wasted? ------ omarhaneef I hate to nitpick but I assume you want to know: "I cannot understate the benefits of knowing the demand curve." I think you mean "I cannot _overstate_ the benefits of knowing the demand curve." Because you seem to imply that it is a good thing to know the demand curve. ~~~ 0wis Why, on a seller standpoint, would it be a bad thing to know the demand curve ? For me it is actionnable marketing data, I cannot see a way in which it’s not good. Even if you not use it directly, it is still data on your customer base that can help you understand them more... ~~~ minitech > Why, on a seller standpoint, would it be a bad thing to know the demand > curve ? Dunno, but it only makes sense to use “understate” if you think it is a bad thing. The comment is about a wording mistake. ------ Altheasy There will be always stupid person who would waste 1668$ on this bullshit. ~~~ C1sc0cat And there will be the unlucky (stupid) person that ends up with RSI at 35 ~~~ anonuser123456 There is no evidence for a causal relationship between keyboard usage and RSI. ~~~ Filligree It's more common among computer users, isn't it? Though that alone isn't enough to define a cure. ~~~ anonuser123456 It's not even correlated with keyboard usage, so no not more common. ------ in_hindsight Wow, so the author basically suggested to use the auction to sell the keyboard at $1668 instead of $500 because it’s not market clearing price? That’s borderline evil ~~~ guidoism If this was medicine, or tampons, or something people really needed, then yes. But extremely high-end mechanical keyboards? Not really evil. It's a Veblen good. ~~~ pessimizer Agreed. Milking conspicuous consumers for as much as you can is good for the economy in general because it gets people with a lot of parked money to spend more.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Crosswords don’t make you clever - nitins http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/08/quick-study-neuroscience ====== peterwwillis I went to a conference on Multiple Sclerosis with a friend who has the disease, and one of the much-hyped research topics (this was a few years ago) was how more and more papers are finding a link between low levels of Vitamin D and severity of the disease. Essentially, vitamin D may lesson symptoms or even make you less susceptible to the disease. This is a pretty good article about natural vs supplemental Vitamin D intake: [http://www.marksdailyapple.com/vitamin-d-sun-exposure- supple...](http://www.marksdailyapple.com/vitamin-d-sun-exposure- supplementation-and-doses/#axzz2cWFDNpxb) ~~~ lifebeyondfife An example: Calcium is required for good bone strength/density. However, Vitamin D deficiencies mean the body can't absorb enough calcium. With regard to the "natural vs supplement" argument, some people are very pale and susceptible to skin cancer. It may not be safe for everyone to get enough Vitamin D through natural means alone. ~~~ Dewie Pale skin also means that you need less sun exposure to get enough D vitamins. ~~~ peterwwillis Source? A very pale person may burn in 5 minutes. It doesn't make sense that your body would speed up the synthesis of cholesterol just because your skin has less melanin or is more sensitive to UV radiation. Also keep in mind that no matter how much is synthesized it's up to the liver and kidney to make it into a useful hormone. ~~~ mason55 Melanin blocks sunlight which reduces vitamin D synthesis [http://essays.backintyme.com/item/4](http://essays.backintyme.com/item/4) _> The lightness adaptation enhances calciferol (vitamin D) synthesis. Too much epidermal melanin for the latitude blocks UV penetration essential to the dermal synthesis of calciferol or vitamin D._ If you have less melanin then more sunlight reaches the lower layers of skin which increases vit D synthesis. ------ mathattack I'm not sure I buy this. Wouldn't this suggest that natural athletes are better students? My limited sample size suggests that most of the best students I've known have not been athletes. Most have been musicians, though. I admit this could be correlation rather than causality. I fully admit that teasing out correlation and causality is very difficult in situations like this. ~~~ lcedp Meaning if you want get better at math... practice math, not crosswords and not running. Crosswords make you better (primarily) at crosswords. Running - at running. But the idea is that math + physical activity suppose to make your better (at math inclusively) then math + crosswords. ~~~ mathattack I do buy this. It would be interesting to see them quantify math * 2 versus math + running. ~~~ ncphillips It's been done, and math + running wins. Check out Tony Schwartz the Power of Full Engagement. In it he talks about how you can't just go go go at the thing you want to get good at, you have to take breaks and do completely unrelated things, like running. If you don't, you'll burn out. ~~~ flagnog way back in the dark ages, before the Playstation and XBox and Nintendo, I conducted my own empirical studies using coin-operated arcade games. I found that after a couple of hours, my reflexes plateaued, then degraded. I had to go do something else for a couple of hours before I could come back and do better. ~~~ rmk2 Another really easy way: I have a simply memory game on my phone, 6x4 fields. If it is too late or if I am tired, I will make more mistakes and take longer to memorise things. On the other hand, I can turn and solve it much more quickly when I am fresh and well-rested. Also, if I play a number of them at a time, they start to run together, again resulting in worse results. ------ ltcoleman I 100% agree with this article in my own life. Went through a huge lifestyle change, and noticed my entire life and cognitive ability grow once I started exercising, getting out more, and really experiencing life with friends and family. If you want to be lazy that's fine, but after having my eyes open to a better, more energetic, more intelligent self, I would never go back to the couch and bon bons ------ JackFr Edit: This is odd. The link currently leads to a different article than it initially did. Initially it was not Q & A with the author, but rather references to literature mostly behind paywalls and the gratuitous reference to female orgasms, none of which are in the current article. That being said, I still believe that the bulk of this research is bullshit, but it's a little unfair to switch the article, so my comment no longer makes sense \------- While the presence "neuroscience" should be enough to set off your bullshit detector, the fact the the author couldn't go two paragraphs without undermining his own point indicates that the title should really be "Nothing to see here". Luckily the author throws in a gratuitous and creepy reference to female orgasms to make sure readers won't feel ripped off having wasted 15 seconds reading this crap. ------ tokenadult A current book review of the newly published book _Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience_ [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/brainwashed- neuroscience...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/brainwashed-neuroscience- and-its-perversions/) goes into some additional detail about what we can know, and can't know, from current neuroscience research. The best of current neuroscience research helps us know what is flat wrong about earlier preliminary findings from neuroscience research, while the worst of current neuroscience research feeds on the hype hooks in the science news cycle [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174) to tell us things we want to believe even if they aren't true. As always, we have to discern what's established fact and what's speculation in reports about new research findings. [http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment- design.html) ------ rickdale In my experience, there is time for gym workouts, sun bathing, crosswords and Mozart. What would be interesting would be studying how these four activities affect brain waves doing them in different sequences. For example, listen to Mozart, then workout, then crosswords, then sun bathe, reverse the order tomorrow and then continue to switch it up and see if you can optimize activities based on when you do them and what you were doing previous to the activity. ~~~ jonnathanson My guess is that the same principle applies to crosswords (for example) that applies to lifting weights: you have to keep ramping up the difficulty in order to realize the benefits. If you're just doing the easy/comfortable crossword puzzle every day, you're not challenging yourself. A cognitive task that is actually _challenging_ will probably yield a lot better results. Learning a new language, studying a new level of mathematics, taking up a new hobby, learning chess, etc. Every time a task becomes trivial, you need to increase the difficulty or find another task. As for "listening to Mozart," that strikes me as an extremely passive (i.e., cognitively untaxing) activity. I've always been highly skeptical of the putative benefits of listening to music, because the brain is extremely good at "tuning out" ambient sounds. I'd be more inclined to believe there's some benefit if the listener actively attempts to listen _and_ perform another task simultaneously. Trying to keep attention focused on two very complex tasks at once is challenging; simply kicking back and letting music stream in the background is not. I'm sure there are creative benefits to listening to complex and stimulating music, but one needs to be actively engaged in the music. ~~~ dredmorbius _As for "listening to Mozart," that strikes me as an extremely passive activity._ My lay theorizing on this: certain types of music (and much of the classical repetoire) helps relax the mind. We spend far too much of our time being grossly _overstimulated_ , and I've found that a great many of the typical stimulations in a Western experience (advertising, technology, popular music, city streets, etc.) simply _wear_ at me. Nature, nonlinear landscapes, classical (or earlier) Western music (there is some awfully annoying non- western music, Indonesian gamelan being very high on the annoyance list for me) help immensely in this regard. Just as strength training is stimulus for growth that comes during recovery, I suspect music may be part of the downtime which helps the brain and/or emotional / stress aspects of the body recover. Meditation or similar practices might operate similarly. Total armchair theory here, but it's what I've got. ~~~ jonnathanson As armchair theory goes, it's not a bad one. Taking it one step further, I could see how classical music might activate / operate on some of the same brain patterns as certain sleep cycles. Sleep is well known to be our brain's equivalent of garbage collection and recovery. ------ callum85 How does the content of this article justify the straight-up factual assertion in the headline? This is just a thing about some guy speculating about some stuff. The headline implies a conclusive clinical trial result. HNers should know better than to upvote this kind of shit. EDIT: I wrote the above when the title was "Gym workouts and sunbathing do more for your brain than crosswords and Mozart" and the link was to a different URL. ~~~ hmahncke Not mentioned in the article, but since you asked: Cognitive training outperforms crossword puzzles: [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0061624) Crossword puzzles aren't protective against cognitive decline: [http://portalsaudebrasil.com/artigospsb/idoso068.pdf](http://portalsaudebrasil.com/artigospsb/idoso068.pdf) [PDF link] ------ thehme I am glad to finally find an article that has made it into the popular media, which will aid in debunking a lot of those false claims made by people/companies who just want to make money out of people’s gullibility. There are commercials on TV for some website that claim their mind games will improve your brain, possibly knowing there is no science to back that up, but you have people spending their $$/time sitting at a computer playing games, rather than at the gym or exploring our world’s beautiful outdoor spaces. The “funny” thing is that science is showing that the benefits of motherly nurturing, exercise, social interaction (not social networking online), exposure to sunlight, etc. are all things we all know too well from experience and yet, there are some people/companies still trying to sell us things/services to achieve things we can get for FREE. ------ eksith Crosswords indirectly affect my performance. I don't think they make me clever either, but they do calm me down and help me settle into whatever area I'm in. That helps me take the edge off of what I'm about to say/present. It's not quite the same as staring at a flashlight (a la tablet/laptop). The paper and pencil in my hands have a dramatic effect on my mood. Add a cup of coffee on the side and I'm a completely different person after a crossword. I'd say a noticeably more lucid (even without the added coffee), calm and collected individual. ------ frank_boyd "Relevant": [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Diy0RNe_c](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Diy0RNe_c) ------ radarsat1 I wouldn't say, though, these activities are mutually exclusive. ------ chrisdl but it might help with alzheimers [http://puzzles.about.com/library/bl021108.htm](http://puzzles.about.com/library/bl021108.htm) ------ brianbreslin it's too bad half the links cited in this article say (paywall) behind them. /rant ~~~ thehigherlife It's too bad on a site that exists for upstarts and tech minded folk looking for a way to monetize their projects people complain that good interesting content costs money. /rant ~~~ gwern The links to research we are talking about (as opposed to journalists trying to summarize research for pop sci books) is stuff whose production is funded almost entirely by entities like governments and charities, and where the 'publisher' does not do much but enjoy exorbitant profit margins thanks to paywalls. If the publishers and their paywalls disappeared overnight, Open Access would pick up the slack pretty well. So no, monetizing is not really necessary here. ------ Dewie \- Unprotected exposure to sunlight also prematurely ages ones skin and increases the risk of skin cancer. I'm curious if there is some unique property with sunlight that makes you smarter, or if it is just the fact that you get D vitamins from sun exposure. If it is the latter, I can get D vitamins from my diet instead. Personally I've lived 61 degrees north for most of my life and I don't think SAD has been a problem for me. \- I've suspected and read from others that all the fuzz about classical music is mostly the result of some kind of high culture bias - I have a hard time believing that people have studied the effects of classical music to the same extent as something like rock or techno. I wouldn't be surprised if studies show that listening to your favourite music has overall more benefits compared to listening to classical music whether you like it or not. ~~~ freyr The cited scientific study was actually performed on nocturnal animals (rats), and the scientists found that long exposure to _light_ caused the rats stress: "...the brain of nocturnal rats generates a stress response to a long-day photoperiod, contributing to depression..." Somebody must have extrapolated from this result that, since humans are diurnal, long periods of darkness would cause us stress and depression. There is no direct mention of Vitamin K (or for that matter, any healthful benefits of the sun) in the cited study.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Chrome Hides WWW and HTTPS:// In the Address Bar Again - WalterSobchak https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chrome-hides-www-and-https-in-the-address-bar-again/ ====== CompuHacker I had strong objections to this behavior the last three times Mozilla and Google did it. ~~~ sieabahlpark Google is on a streak of making changes and ignoring backlash ------ lunias URI schemes and subdomains and never "trivial". Neo-Luddism is not a good look on technology company. If you want, Google, go ahead and spin-off 'Chrome: Baby's First Browser'. I'm sure it will be heavily exploited and contribute in part to the technical illiteracy of new generations. I really wonder if these "simplifications" are actually engineered to keep users in the dark as to how things work so that they are left dependent on third parties to continue delivering addictive magic. How about a browser with no address bar? Just two buttons, "sexy time" and "pew pew". That'd be pretty clean.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Does lifecasting compete with religion as a way to keep you well-behaved? Does it also encourage people you meet to treat you better than they normally would? - amichail ====== randallsquared While you don't have any other responses yet, I think this is an interesting question, though possibly somewhat off topic for news.yc. Either lifecasting will promote good behavior on the part of the lifecasters, or they'll eventually stop worrying about it. I myself expect everything I say or do to eventually be public knowledge to anyone who wants to know, with increasing data processing tech, and try to govern my life accordingly. ------ BrandonM I thought that's what personal consciences were for... no religion, lifecasting, etc. necessary.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Healthcare contractors point finger at Obama administration - acephd http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24658892 ====== hga I suspect there was a garble in here, HHS's CMS was the "quarterback" (senior vice president of CGI Cheryl Campbell used that word in her prepared testimony), specifically they took on the role of integrator and integration testing. Except that CGI Federal has testified by letter ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606243)) that the White House was thoroughly involved.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Gaming Google Search Trends - x0ner The other day I was on Google and noticed some amusing Google trending suggestions and it got me to thinking, is it possible to game that system? I know it's Google and all, but if you create a big enough (consistent) flow of searches, is it possible to get what you want to show up?<p>One could easily write a couple browser extensions and nix scripts to constantly make the same query over tor, proxy servers and legitimate networks over and over again at random times. The whole thing could run forever and in time one would think the trend would get picked up by Google and get inserted.<p>I can only imagine Google protects against this by looking at the patterns of the searches and checking to see if their relevant (ex: major disaster, crazy event). I sure they also include trending suggestions based on location, so even if it worked, how would you see it?<p>Creating the extensions, tools and other scripts wouldn't take that long. The whole thing in the rawest sense should be as simple as a open url, make query, close url.<p>Thoughts? Participants? ====== danielamitay This other article on HN shows that in Q4 2007, there were large spikes in seemingly normal search terms: [http://nikgregory.com/2010/11/bizarre-google- trend-search-sp...](http://nikgregory.com/2010/11/bizarre-google-trend-search- spike/) I wouldn't read too much into Google's protection against search trends. Google cares about its search algorithm, but probably not as much about the trends. Clearly if you do your programming and distribution correctly, Google shouldn't be able to figure out that it was calculated. If anything, they should look at how organic the follow-through on those searches are: If the user searches for something, do they actually click on it or was it just a search? But then again, checking if the user follows through technically shouldn't factor in, after all, how many people click through to something after searching for "Weather New York, NY"? (Although they probably check if at the very least the HTML was displayed, using their JavaScript). Getting legitimate, unconnected searches is enough effort. Unless you choose a quite obscure search term, you should need quite a large volume in order to game the system in some sort of profitable/notable way.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
“The worst factory reset process I've ever seen” - doener https://twitter.com/security_craig/status/1141708213001293825 ====== justwalt While I agree that the method is pretty bad, I think the video is about as top notch as it could have been given the reset method choice. You’re meant to use the video at the same time as you’re performing the reset, and it gives you a timer to help out. Also, the changes are synced with the moments he says “on” or “off.” ------ joshstrange Dear god I thought that video would never end... Turn off for 2 seconds, Turn on for 8 seconds, Turn off for 2 seconds, Turn on for 8 seconds, Turn off for 2 seconds, Turn on for 8 seconds, Turn off for 2 seconds, Turn on for 8 seconds, Turn off for 2 seconds, Turn on for 8 seconds, Turn off for 2 seconds, Turn on for 8 seconds, Turn off for 2 seconds, Turn on for 8 seconds...... My Sengled bulbs just require I essentially strobe the light like 5 times or something like that which isn't great but it's better than this. ~~~ dmitrygr > My Sengled bulbs just require I essentially strobe the light like 5 times or > something like that which isn't great but it's better than this. unless you have kids tall enough to reach the light switch ------ whymsicalburito This video caused a good amount of lost productivity in my engineering department yesterday. It was worth it tho haha ------ NikkiA This is absurd, the bulbs don't need to be hermetically sealed like incandescents were, so just put a tiny little 'reset' button somewhere rather than all this stupidity. ~~~ JaimeThompson While the reset procedure is too much there does need to be a way to reset bulbs are out of reach. ------ CosmicShadow Did they pay the guy to say it that many times or just put it on repeat to save money? ------ sodomak Usually this is called "Easter egg". ------ tropo Not everybody with access to the light switch should be able to take control. This is a security problem. ------ jamexcb "You need to complete this procedure after the new moon, during waxing crescent!"	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Yelp advertising is a rip-off for small advertisers - evo_9 http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/06/yelp-advertising-is-a-rip-off-for-small-advertisers/ ====== _sentient As the owner of a small business, I can confirm that this happens purely as the result of ignorance on the parts of business owners. I've been advertising on Yelp using their cost per click program for about a year now, and was paying about $3.50 per click up until a couple months ago. I recently got a number of sales calls from reps that attempted to sell me on their new impressions program. They wanted me to pay them $600 for 1000 monthly impressions. I quickly ran the numbers and figured that even if I assumed a generous 5% click through rate, I would still be paying nearly 3.5 times more per click than I was with their PPC program. I would need to be getting a CTR of 17% just to break even, which is highly unlikely. And that's without considering the addition of an onerous 12 month contract, which I didn't have to sign under their PPC program. Their impressions program does come with an added benefit though, which is the removal of competitors ads from your Yelp profile page. I'm sure this helps overall conversion rates somewhat, but there is no way it has enough impact to justify the massive increase in cost per click. Ultimately though, my PPC ad impressions have gradually dropped off despite maintaining the same ad budget with Yelp. This is because they give display preference to business owners who have signed up for their impression-based program. I can only assume that means they have managed to con enough ignorant business owners into signing up. I'm both vexed and pleased with this development. :) ------ sedachv I worked at Matchcraft, which has the best tools out there for buying ads for local businesses and provides the software for a lot of Yellow Page/directory sites. Most of their revenue comes from the directories, but originates from small, local businesses. I got to know the "local business" business and the players quite well, and this doesn't surprise me. We always tried to get the best conversion rates for the small businesses, but the sales tactics of some of the local listings companies are not in good faith and their customer churn rates reflect that. WRT reasons to not get into local, it's not that the big sites like Yelp and Groupon are sucking their small business customers dry, it's that they can't help it. The only way to reach these small businesses is with large sales forces. The process just can't scale. "Local" is an absolutely horrible business to be in and I doubt anyone will ever crack it (hasn't worked for the past 15 years...). If you want to sell software to shops and restaurants, sell to franchises. You might say OpenTable is an exception and cracked "local", but it's not - they effectively built their own franchise network of restaurants by giving away turnkey reservation system terminals to restaurants. ~~~ stevenj _The only way to reach these small businesses is with large sales forces. The process just can't scale. "Local" is an absolutely horrible business to be in and I doubt anyone will ever crack it (hasn't worked for the past 15 years...)._ What about Craigslist? It seems to have scaled some local small business needs (e.g. jobs and housing). I think local is tough because there just isn't a big market for many of the things small businesses are trying to sell. But as we've seen, if you heavily discount them, that changes things. ~~~ true_religion Jobs and housing are different because people actively search for them. People _need_ shelter, and _need_ income. They need food too, but they don't necessary need to go to a restaurant---much less a particular one of many in the same flavor variety. If you're trying to sell something people don't have a stake in taking up, you need a sales team because they won't search for you. ~~~ sedachv That's a good explanation. Note how craigslist works for apartments and jobs postings, but not events (nothing works for events, the other favorite "local" startup idea). The quintessential small business owner we had was the plumber. People _need_ plumbers and _search_ for them, but how do you get them into your directory? I don't know how well craigslist works for plumbers, and I don't think we ever considered craigslist as competition. ------ wtvanhest "Even as Groupon’s toughest critic, I can list scenarios in which it makes sense to run a Groupon. I cannot think of any scenarios where I would advise businesses to advertise on Yelp at these rates." If I owned a small business I would want to ramp my customer base quickly since I would have a variety of other expenses which would be killing me until my revenue was high enough. (Fixed monthly costs like insurance, rent, utilities etc.) Yelp is a service I and many other people are using more and more to decide where to eat, shop, even use the dentist. Yelp is not charging for just an ad for a user, they are charging for an ad to a Yelp user who has the ability to put a yelp review up which can help drive business in the future. It is important to get Yelp users to try your business so you can get those stars so you can get more customers. No business owner is worried about getting bad reviews since they naturally believe their service/food/etc. is the best in the market so that isn't a factor either. So, yes on a CPM basis this is a terrible deal, but on a CPM basis for a yelp user the economics might look much differently. ~~~ goodweeds The main reason to advertise on Yelp is extortion. If you don't pay Yelp their extortion fees, they only allow a small number of reviews for your business, and even worse, their algorithms pushes the negative reviews to the top. One of my friends' businesses currently has 200 "filtered" reviews and 19 posted reviews which in itself makes his business look incredibly shady (sure, he runs a dispensary, so he might be shady, but that's besides the point). ------ robryan I think they can get away with this because to someone who is thinking about ads in an offline way, outdoors and newspapers etc the language makes it sound like your getting 3000 ads for example. When you think about it in terms though that your newspaper ad, while beng one ad, was seen by thousands of people. ~~~ jcnnghm A Yelp impression is much more valuable than a newspaper impression. When people see an ad on Yelp, they are generally looking for a place to eat right now. They are trying to make a purchasing decision. When they see an ad in a newspaper, it is generally incidental. In addition, newspaper CPM is based on distribution, it's pretty likely that only a small percentage of those papers are read cover to cover, and only a small percentage of those readers look at any individual ad for more than a second. The last time I looked at newspaper advertising, a 1/4 page for one day in a paper with a distribution of 40,000 was about $600. If you are advertising a restaurant, I think you'd be better off giving the money to Yelp. ------ hughesdan Many of the comments I'm reading here assume a much higher level of ignorance on the part of small business owners than is really the case. While it's true the average SBO typically does not understand internet advertising, they do understand ROI. They know how much they spend on various forms of advertising. And they know if they're getting a good return because they see the impact the next day in their cash register. And more importantly, they talk to their customers to find out what's working. The irony is, with all the sophisticated technological tracking we can implement with our startups, we often know less about what forms of advertising is producing results than does a supposedly unsophisticated restaurant owner. Ignoring Yelp's 'extortion tactics' for the moment (I'm not qualified to comment on those accusations), I don't think they could sustain premium prices for long if the ads were not yielding commensurate results. ------ int3rnaut There was a great comment in the VB comments about how the ads are more distinctly targeted--and that makes a lot of sense and is reason enough to pay a bit more per CPM, but in no way should it be a 100x type situation that is going on. Oddly enough, there was a post the other day featured on HN about how not to get into "local" because of issues like Small Business Owners were not likely to adopt-- I can't help but think part of the reason there is this apathy at that level is because all of these titans of this industry are sucking their early adopters dry with reckless cost demands. ------ dude1231 Don't use Yelp advertising. The problem is that you pay this crazy rate, then when you search for your business name (even verbatim), they throw an ad for your competitor above the search result for your business. Way more effective for a business to use Adwords and get like 100,000's impressions for the same price. Also the staff at Yelp advertising don't know shiat. Throw them a mildly technical question and they'll answer it like a politician. ~~~ antoncohen > Way more effective for a business to use Adwords and get like 100,000's > impressions for the same price. I've never in my entire life picked to go to a local business based on AdWords. When I want to find a local business, a restaurant, dentist, gym, etc., I always go to Yelp. If the business isn't on Yelp I will never know about them. The Yelp ads are highly targeted. If a business doesn't already have a strong presence on Yelp, the best way to make me aware of their business is to advertise on Yelp. Maybe the article was written by someone who doesn't use Yelp. It mentions that it's a negative that the Yelp ads link to the business's Yelp page. To me that is a huge plus. If the ad linked to the business's website I would never link on it. In general local business sites are pretty useless, the Yelp page is generally much more useful for finding out about the business. Hours, phone number, neighborhood, map, reviews, price range, dress code, that's all info I want, and it's usually hard to find on business websites. If that info is readily available I'm more likely to go there. ------ matdwyer The scary thing is that enough people blindly pay this rate. If they didn't, they'd lower it to a more reasonable level... ~~~ 18pfsmt Last week I met with a friend of a friend that owns a commercial door distribution and installation business. He's been in the business for 20 years, but is clueless about anything internet related. I went over his monthly bills for advertising (all of it) and web hosting costs. Turns out, he spends about $3,500 per month on hosting and advertising. Most of the advertising is for DEX, and his site is a crappy little static site. I don't think the average small business owner really understands the internet, and I don't think the average HNer really understands small business. ~~~ codenerdz However expensive his hosting/advertisement is, I hope he is able to justify it by attributing increase of sales/revenues from this expense. ------ valgaze Rocky Agrawal is the same writer who masterfully took down Groupon's S-1 & noticed something strange was happening with small coffee shops who ran Groupons: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/09/groupon-single-worst- decisi...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/09/groupon-single-worst-decision/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Manned Orbital Laboratory: the Pentagon's cold war plan to put spies in orbit - EwanG http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/31/real-story-of-the-secret-space-station.html ====== rjsw The Soviet Union did put spies (and a gun) into orbit [1]. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz) ~~~ dogma1138 In b4 some one says that guns don't work in space, they do even your everyday firearms. All propellants contain an oxidizer otherwise it won't work the amount of oxygen in the casing is miniscule and would not support any chemical reaction of note.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft Releases Bing for iPad - thankuz http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/04/07/microsoft-releases-bing-for-ipad/ ====== thankuz Official Bing Post: [http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/20...](http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2011/04/07/bing- for-ipad.aspx) Also, TechCrunch: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/07/bings-flair-for-visual- sear...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/07/bings-flair-for-visual-search-comes- to-the-ipad/) And, GeekWireNews: <http://www.geekwire.com/2011/microsofts-ipad-app-bing>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I'm doing contingency planning in Japan. Would you guys like an AMA? - niels_olson I'm a Navy doc and at lunch a couple of weeks ago was told to be on a plane for Japan in the morning. We've been working 24/7 for a while now. I'm ostensibly here as the doctor, for anyone who has a sniffle, hernia, breaks a leg, etc, but very few people come to sick call, and since I have a BS in physics, I have gotten to actually participate in policy and planning decisions, at least at the operational level (no direct line to POTUS, sorry).<p>IF you want me to, I can ask public affairs about an AMA. Maybe if you post some questions, we can meditate on it a bit (that and it's slow here right now, which is a good thing). ====== inoop This is not Reddit. ~~~ lachyg Oh come on, if it's interesting, and somewhat relates, I don't see how it's not acceptable for this to be on HN. ------ petervandijck What are the things that the people on the ground worry about most/work hardest on, and how does that compare with what's being focused on in the media? ------ jamesrom Boring question, but for the morbidly curious, what has been the worst medical affliction you have seen while in Japan? ------ geuis Can you define what an AMA is? ~~~ il It's a reddit thing (ask me anything).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Magic Name – Find the name of every email subscriber, without asking - samtoday https://learntemail.sam.today/blog/magic-name/ ====== petercooper I don't know how _this_ system does it, but I've done this with FullContact before (and [https://clearbit.com/](https://clearbit.com/) will do it too). I have a few hundred thousand people and get about 50-60%. Recently we tried using this data in the "To" field of emails we sent but it actually caused open rates to go _down_ for some reason, so still figuring that one out. Investigations with a few users showed using the full envelope caused emails to go into different inboxes than were expected, but if you can do it from the get go it would be a great technique. ------ hultner How is success rate measured? I tried it and got an empty answer. > Informal name: > > Full name: > > Hope that it has worked well! > … ~~~ samtoday Success rate is the % of people who we can find a name for. So you didn't encounter a success :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: placezombies.com - rhaydon http://www.placezombies.com ====== rhaydon We used a node.js implementation behind a varnish server. Also, we made a fun little launch video here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQKq7HH5pzo> ------ mbijon Zombies? Where are the ninjas?!? That's right, you can't see the ninjas coming.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why aren't there more women in tech? Wrong question - Mystalic http://news.cnet.com/8301-33617_3-57402766-276/why-arent-there-more-women-in-tech-wrong-question/ ====== gamechangr Maybe because women aren't as interested??? It seems like that gets missed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Develop a Node.js app with Docker - abh1nav http://blog.abhinav.ca/blog/2014/06/17/develop-a-nodejs-app-with-docker/ ====== Human_USB Would this not be cleaner? [https://gist.github.com/JasonSwindle/15a380eb707488dffd77](https://gist.github.com/JasonSwindle/15a380eb707488dffd77) ------ rphillips Check out nave [1]. It will simplify your docker nodejs setup. [1] [https://github.com/isaacs/nave](https://github.com/isaacs/nave) ------ zeroviscosity When can we expect part 2? ~~~ abh1nav Within a week or so	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lab colleague uses cracked software. Should I report it? - lightonphiri http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/79603/6023 ====== jarnix If I reported every time a company where I was working was using cracked software... I hate using cracked software to make money but I don't think that we should "report" though.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Karnataka state elections 2013 - Consolidated results in one csv - raghava Karnataka state elections 2013 - Consolidated results in one csv (https://github.com/rghv/kar2013election-results/blob/master/Karnataka_2013_election_results.csv)<p>Wanted to go through the consolidated list of Karnataka (a state in India) 2013 legislative assembly election results, for a quick analysis of trends and patterns (number of votes, candidates etc). But could not find any such consolidated list. So wrote a small script to fetch the data from eciresults.ap.nic.in. Made it into a csv so that others could use too.<p>Source: https://github.com/rghv/kar2013election-results<p>Written in Python hence anyone could use and extend/modify as required. Code isn't pretty but does the job. ====== raghava CSV: [https://github.com/rghv/kar2013election- results/blob/master/...](https://github.com/rghv/kar2013election- results/blob/master/Karnataka_2013_election_results.csv) Source: <https://github.com/rghv/kar2013election-results> Clickable links ------ shashidanandjha Good work. Thank you	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Boston-area hackers looking for work? - jsomers I've spent the last three months working at PHOTON Consulting, a photovoltaic market research firm based in Boston, and I've been asked to help find a replacement before I leave. They're looking for a smart young hacker with an interest in renewable energy (and maybe finance).<p>They pay well; they work in a nice office on the 50th floor of the Hancock tower; it's a small company, and you'll learn a ton quickly; they are generally a group of savvy, motivated people; they encourage entrepreneurial employees and are open to whatever technologies/environments you prefer; you will have a healthy budget should you need it; etc. I am only leaving to pursue other projects, and would happily stay if I wasn't otherwise committed.<p>The job itself will involve (a) translating some of their most important and complex models into fast, stable, extensible code; and (b) building interactive interfaces to those models for their clients. There is an opportunity to personally build some serious products for large companies in the sector.<p>Rubyists, Pythonistas, Haskellers, Ocamlers, etc., etc., all welcome.<p>If that sounds interesting, or if you have any questions about the position, you can e-mail me at [email protected]. ====== waqf It's illegal to be looking for a "young" hacker, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that by that you simply mean "naïve".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
AMD Ryzen 3000 announced - DuskStar https://www.anandtech.com/show/14407/amd-ryzen-3000-announced-five-cpus-12-cores-for-499-up-to-46-ghz-pcie-40-coming-77 ====== zanny No mention of it, but the pressure should still be on AMD to open source or allow firmware disable of their Platform "Security" Processor. I would really like to be more enthusiastic for my next build to use something like this, but all my computers are presently trustable in a way new platforms with proprietary coprocessors that haven't seen me_cleaner support cannot achieve. It really sucks to give Intel money - its not like they support the me cleaner project and are actively antagonistic to third parties disabling their backdoors - but at some point it stops being a matter of principle and becomes one of practicality. I can disable the unwanted parts of the hardware on one platform and not on the other. ~~~ StudentStuff AMD's PSP is ARM TrustZone, there is no way AMD could open it in their current chips, they don't own the IP and ARM is vehemently opposed. Due to the outcry, they are more likely to build their own secure enclave/supervisor processor in the next major rework of Zen, which they would own the IP of. ~~~ walterbell There are open-source TrustZone implementations (OP-TEE). AMD could drop Arm and move to a RISC-V based secure enclave. Google is developing OpenTitan as open hardware based on RISC-V. ------ tmd83 I'm really looking forward to this. But one issue with current AMD cpu is that you have to buy a desktop GPU even when you are not doing any kind of gaming and such. I know intel iGPU haven't been terribly good but for work they are good enough and is one less part and cheaper to boot. For same performance a Ryzen 3rd gen + gpu might still be cheaper but the price advantage gets reduced. I haven't really seen that mentioned much I wonder why is that. I do love the potential for Zen2 + 7nm. The 65w of 3700x and the high frequency of the 3900X both suggest interesting potential for the future. One could end up seeing that the Ryzen 5, six cores might have higher overclocking headroom. Then there's of course Navi, the first new GPU core in a long long time. ~~~ jdietrich _> But one issue with current AMD cpu is that you have to buy a desktop GPU even when you are not doing any kind of gaming and such._ AMD just aren't selling many CPUs to business desktop system integrators, partly due to dubious tactics by Intel to keep them out of the market. If you sell most of your CPUs to enthusiasts, it just doesn't make sense to squander die area on a crappy iGPU. Gamers obviously want a fast GPU, but so do most creative professionals - Photoshop is heavily GPU accelerated, as is Premiere and Resolve, not to mention essentially all 3D modelling and CAD packages. Scientific computing is also rapidly moving towards the GPU. GPU performance has a surprisingly large impact on day-to-day responsiveness, because all the major browsers use GPU compositing. The market for fast chips with crappy iGPUs just isn't as big as it used to be, nor is it particularly accessible to AMD. The Athlon and Ryzen APUs make a great deal of sense for the current market, offering a good balance of performance between CPU and GPU. I expect to see 6 and 8 core Ryzen chips with Vega GPU cores as part of the Ryzen 3000 generation, which will further close the gap. ~~~ josteink > AMD just aren't selling many CPUs to business desktop system integrators, > partly due to dubious tactics by Intel to keep them out of the market. If > you sell most of your CPUs to enthusiasts, it just doesn't make sense to > squander die area on a crappy iGPU. I'm a developer, and I want fast build times. I don't need a dedicated GPU for that. Right now I'm squandering money and power on a dedicated GPU which is probably idling at 0.0000001% rendering a composited 2D desktop in its sleep. ~~~ djsumdog Same here. I recently did a Ryzen 7 build with a Thin-ITX board. [https://penguindreams.org/blog/louqe-ghost-s1-build-and- revi...](https://penguindreams.org/blog/louqe-ghost-s1-build-and-review/) I have a separate gaming machine, and would have rather just used the integrated for my Linux machine. It doesn't look like AMD is refreshing their APU lineup at all in this release. Did I miss it, or are there no APUs in the list? ~~~ mroche The APU/mobile chips typically come later. Raven Ridge chips were released after their desktop counterparts, and the Zen+ (12nm) 3000U series mobile chips were announced only a few months ago. ------ ksec At close to 300 comments, I am surprised there is no mention of what I thought was the most important and surprise, 32 to 70MB L3 Cache. A lot of people focus on Core and Thread as well as IPC. We already knew what improvement IPC could do, we already knew what we could do 32 Thread. None of these are really new. But 64MB of L3 Cache? In a consumer CPU at a price that I would hardly call expensive ( I would even go on to call it a bargain ). We used to talk about performance enhancements and cache miss, we now have 64MB to mess with, we could have the whole languages VM living in Cache! ~~~ pedrocr _> we could have the whole languages VM living in Cache_ When dual-core processors came out someone said you could now have one core run your stuff and another run the anti-virus. That was widely joked about. This feels a little close to that. Having more CPU cache than we recently had RAM ending up being used for programming language overhead. ~~~ ncmncm Agreed. For those of us using VMs, the extra cache in each package is enough for the working set of the systemd we are obligd to run in each VM. Looking back to the 8M total RAM I had on a Mac SE/30, running A/UX Unix and a MacOS GUI comfortably, the sloppiness of modern productions is a disgrace and an embarrassment. What galls is not the wasteful extravagance. It's the failure of imagination that makes such meager, pitiable use of such extravagance. We make, of titanium airframes and turbojet engines, oxcarts. ~~~ ksec Agree with both the comment above, but do we really have a solution? It is a trade off between Cross Platform, time to market and development resources. And unlike any other scientific and engineering industry, Software Development doesn't even agree on a few industry standards, instead everything is hyped up every 2 years and something new come around and becomes a new "standard". And we keep wasting resources reinventing the flat tire. ------ gigatexal Yup. Just waiting on the benchmarks from independent reviewers and to see how XFR in this generation works but I’ll be getting a Ryzen 9 if everything checks out. 24 threads will be amazing for local development (microk8s, and others) when I’m not gaming and save me from having to build a separate box. ~~~ WC3w6pXxgGd What will you be doing that will actually use 24 threads? ~~~ gameswithgo A common developer scenario can involve a few things that will eat a lot of threads: 1\. playing some background music 2\. running a local database 3\. running a local webserver 4\. running a browser 5\. running an ide 6\. running all of that stuff concurrently while testing the backend code 7\. doing builds which are multi threaded in near linear speedup fashion in many languages/environments. I don't know if 12 cores 24 logical is going to make that scenario feel overall better than 4 cores 8 logical, but I do know that 4x8 feels much much better than 2x4 in my own use cases. #7 alone can be a really, really big win for long compiling projects. ~~~ dkersten Yeah, my docker setup alone runs a ton of processes. Aside from docker running a copy of my stuff, I often have tests auto-running, a separate REPL to try stuff out in, my editor, slack, music, browser. It all adds up and a bunch of cores/threads definitely makes everything run more smoothly. ------ burtonator Man.. Loving this. Going to get the Ryzen 9 I think. My current machine is an 8 core i7 At 3.6Ghz and boost to 4. Having 12 cores without the hyperthreading issues with intel and boost to 4.6 is going to rock. ~~~ tracker1 i7-4790K myself, going to hold out a couple months longer to see if they get the 16core r9, or a new Threadripper out. ------ lettergram Finally! I’ve been using a Ryzen 1800x since it’s release. Unfortunately, it has some stability issues and I’ve been waiting to upgrade on the Ryzen 3000, 7nm line. This is going to be a solid 75%+ boost to performance, given I regularly max out my machines threads. Pretty amazing improvement in 2 years. ~~~ m0zg Could be that it'll still continue to have stability issues. For some reason Ryzens are extremely picky when it comes to memory. There's really no guarantee that 3-rd gen will resolve this issue. It's to the point where e.g. Corsair makes memory specifically designed to work with AMD CPUs. This memory typically contains Samsung B-die chips which work fairly well. ~~~ coder543 No, the stability issues they're talking about are on a release day 1800X. It's not memory issues, and I've _never_ had memory issues with either of my Ryzen processors. This is the issue they're certainly talking about: [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen- Se...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-Segv- Response) And it is _assuredly_ not a problem with any Ryzen processors manufactured after the very first few months. ~~~ readittwice Well, there are some stability issues with my ryzen 2700x. At first there were CPU freezes in idle on Linux: [https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683). After applying workarounds, I still see some strange crashes, not sure if at least some of those are still related to the CPU hangs from the bug above. TBF this might not be the CPU's fault. This is all quite annoying to me and time intensive to investigate (where do I even start?). Even though I really like AMD's tech I am quite frustrated and I haven't had these problems with my previous Intel builds so far... ------ gratilup Now imagine a Threadripper with the Zen2 cores, higher IPC and frequency would be certainly welcome. Have the 32 core 2990WX and it's an incredible CPU for compiling large C++ programs, running big test suites and never having to worry about running too many tasks at the same time. ~~~ empyrical Conjecture on my part, but I wouldn't be surprised if we also see a 64 core Threadripper - there's going to be a 64 core Epyc: [https://wccftech.com/amd-7nm-epyc-64-core-32-core-cpus- specs...](https://wccftech.com/amd-7nm-epyc-64-core-32-core-cpus-specs- benchmarks-leaked/) Although they may save it for a "Zen2+" or something similar, like they did with 32 core Threadripper ~~~ bitL I am specifically waiting for 64c Threadripper. Would be also great if 32GB UDIMM ECC became available by that time to bump up RAM from 128GB to 256GB. That computer could then last a decade. ------ jaytaylor It's not clear to me from TFA: Do any existing AM4 mobos / chipsets have support for full PCIe 4.0 bandwith (64Gbps)? Or will the existing mobos be limited to PCIe 3.0 (~5-6Gbps)? All of the five processors will be PCIe 4.0 enabled, and while they are being accompanied by the new X570 chipset launch, they still use the same AM4 socket, meaning some AMD 300 and 400- series motherboards can still be used. I was just reading about PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 yesterday [0], and some quick research indicates only a week ago it was announced some current AMD boards do support PCIe 4.0 [1]. Would be awesome because the rate when transferring terabytes across SSD RAID arrays will see a 3-10x increase from ~500-600MBps to ~1.5-6GBps+. Fantastic! [0] [https://videocardz.com/review/pci-express-riser-extender- tes...](https://videocardz.com/review/pci-express-riser-extender-test) [1] [https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/400-series-pci-4-0-bandwidth- bi...](https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/400-series-pci-4-0-bandwidth-bios-support- ryzen-3000) ~~~ wtallis Existing 300 and 400 series boards may be able to operate at PCIe 4 speed for the CPU-provided lanes (as opposed to the ones routed through the chipset that you can't upgrade), however signal integrity issues may limit this to just the slot closest to the CPU. So far, I haven't heard about any particular boards that have been validated for a specific number of slots working at gen4 speeds. Whatever you're using for an SSD RAID array will probably get in the way of using gen4 speeds, since you likely won't be able to get gen4 speeds over any cables or risers without redriver chips. ------ p1mrx It will be interesting to see whether they can match Intel in single-threaded performance across the board, and not just some carefully-selected benchmarks. This would be the first time since the Core2/Athlon64 days. ~~~ sadris I'm begging for a good single threaded CPU that isn't $600 ~~~ ianai Read that often here tonight. Is there a killer app for single core performance other than UI/UX? ~~~ PureParadigm In all seriousness, I've been wanting better single threaded performance for running a Minecraft server. ~~~ ehnto What kind of player count are you getting? I have been running 4 players with one of the most taxing modpacks on a mid tier digital ocean VPS with no hitches. Not many players I guess but in case you were curious if you could use a VPS. Even when we had multiple excavators sending thousands of entities through sorting pipelines it was stil doing surprisingly well. ~~~ imtringued A max size reactor in minecraft consists of 50000 Tileentities and it only produces a few million RF/t enough to power a handful of max tier void miners. Thousands isn't exactly impressive. ~~~ ehnto Well we had a max size reactor powering our excavators so I guess we had those entities too. I didn't realise it took so many entities to run. Not to mention the hundreds of other pieces in our worlds automation puzzle and it was all spread out quite far apart, with chunk loaders maintaining the networks presence. Things were routed, crushed, smelted, crafted and eventually stored or utilized, all automatically. ------ DiabloD3 I watched the keynote live. I'm sold, my desktop is most likely going to be a Ryzen (although not the 8/16 monster, come on, it's a desktop, if I need high core count, I have stuff at work for that). ~~~ shmerl I don't mind 12 cores / 24 threads on my desktop. Makes compiling Mesa, Wine and Linux kernel a lot faster. ~~~ eugene3306 Cool, but we haven't seen compiling benchmarks yet. 12 cores might be bottlenecked by dual-channel memory. ~~~ shmerl Would be good to see some benchmarks. ~~~ agrover agree. Hopefully the seventy megabytes of cache between the two chiplets will help... ------ loser777 Biggest surprise seems to be the 65W 8/16 3700X. Hopefully that means a bit of overclocking headroom. ~~~ DuskStar Considering that the 105W 8/16 3800X only gains 300MHz base and 100MHz turbo for the extra 40W, I'm not sure that's the case. Still almost certainly what I'll be replacing my 4790k with though ~~~ tracker1 Going to wait a couple more months to see if 16c 39xx shows up, or a new Threadripper... also on a 4790k. ------ hsivonen What's the outlook for AMD to provide the kind of performance counters and performance counter accuracy that is needed for rr? ~~~ mkl For those curious like me: [https://rr-project.org/](https://rr-project.org/) It's a debugger from Mozilla that works by recording and replaying program executions. ------ fencepost My question is how is their architecture doing regarding the assorted speculative execution baked-in issues and what kind of impact is there on the AMD processors compared to comparable Intel CPUs? ~~~ xvector Frightening lack of press around this. Basically all of Intel's and AMD's lineups are centered around high thread count right now. Completely useless if I can't reasonably enable SMT. ~~~ makomk AMD's chips apparently don't have the security vulnerabilities that make SMT unsafe to enable on Intel chips - they released a white paper explaining why MDS etc aren't possible and what exactly the boundaries are on their chips: [https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/security- whitepap...](https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/security- whitepaper.pdf) It just didn't get a huge amount of press coverage. ------ jdsully I didn’t see any word on whether the vector units are still half width. That’s still a major performance advantage for Intel. ~~~ phonon They announced they doubled the floating point, so I assume that means full width per clock. Hear it here. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0Q75xCwDU&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy0Q75xCwDU&feature=youtu.be&t=5810) ~~~ jdsully Ah cool! Hopefully the BMI2 instructions are upgraded too. ------ Epopeehief54 Takes guts to stick with that core count and at least you get to enjoy the full 70MB of cache. Good thing Blender and Cinebench all fits inside that, not sure you can ever say the same for productivity workloads. I guess AM4 also means no real improvements on the PCIe lane count: Would love to see real and IF switches to give a bit of flexibility and what they plan for a new Threadripper. ~~~ muxr > I guess AM4 also means no real improvements on the PCIe lane count The new Ryzen 3000 CPUs support PCIe Gen4.. so while the number of lanes will remain the same, their bandwidth could be doubled. Just announced Navi GPUs also support Gen4. ------ sandworm101 Looks like that 499 will include a cooler too. Id probably not use it (liquid cooling is better imho) but an included cooler is a perk. ~~~ radicsge It is amazingly cheap (compared to the intel's 1.1K), wonder what could be the reason behind it. ~~~ sandworm101 They probably have something secret to counter intel in the 1k range. Probably 128 cores spread across a square-foot of silicon. Enough output that you can boil your coffee while gaming. ~~~ sq_ Isn't that what AMD GPUs are for? They'd be eating their own market share for PCs that double as frying pans/ovens! ~~~ snvzz If you're basing that comment on TDP, think again. NVIDIA redefined TDP to their convenience, to mean something more like "averages". So their numbers can't be compared directly. Always look at third party measurements. I'm looking forward to Navi's, while on the topic, as they've announced large improvements in power efficiency. ~~~ sq_ In response to what you said about Navi, I'm also excited about that. I'd really love to see some really strong competition to Nvidia's offerings that might be able to give them a good fight. Their dominance and tendency to push for proprietary features seems quite bad for the industry as a whole. ------ IlegCowcat My guess: standing by for a last 2019 or 2020 refresh. AMD simply doesn't have to play their full hand right now to be competitive. Going to 16 core on AM4 looks to be trivial on paper since they're already doing 12 core: just a matter of clock speeds and core voltage to make it happen inside of AM4 parameters. ~~~ tracker1 My guess is their chiplets may have defective cores that are being disabled, and they aren't getting high enough yeilds on 8-core chiplets to release a 16c pair CPU yet. I doubt they'd hold back on offering a significant bump over Intel's current offering with a 16c/32t mainstream cpu. ------ psnosignaluk I’ve really been looking forward to these chips. The 2700X was pretty close to Intel in 1440p benchmarks, so I’m looking forward to what the likes of Gamers Nexus have to say about overall performance, specifically in line with performance elements like frame render time. Not that it really matters to me. I’ll have one of the 8 core chips on a micro-ATX X570 and build up a system around that. I’ve purposely held off building a new desktop because of Ryzen 3000. In a Ghost S1 or NCase M1, it should be the ideal CPU for a powerful SFF build. ------ PaulBGD_ I'll probably still get it since I've been waiting for it to release, but a bit disappointed they couldn't get 5GHz.. I'm curious what overclocking could be done here. ~~~ dralley Despite being behind on frequency, it seems they've totally caught up (and maybe surpassed, not enough info to know yet) Intel in IPC, and even the 3700X will have more than double the cache of the 9900K So we'll have to see what the benchmarks look like but they might not be as far behind as the frequency gap would suggest. ~~~ PaulBGD_ That's true, if more software starts taking advantage of multiple threads it'd probably be better than most of Intel's offerings. ~~~ mort96 What software which requires a lot of processing power currently doesn't take advantage of multiple threads? Games are increasingly parallel, browsers do most non-JS things in parallel (and obviously run each tab in parallel), compiling code and video rendering eats CPU cores like crazy. ~~~ gameswithgo yeah a lot of people will assert that games don't benefit from more threads, but, if you fire up fortnite or battlegrounds and look at your cpu grapsh, you will see at least 8 of them working pretty hard ------ shmerl 12 cores with 105W TDP - good improvement over 8 cores with same TDP for Ryzen 7 2700X. ------ techntoke Nothing mentioned about their "G" series. ~~~ snvzz They already launched a new generation of that recently, based on Zen+ with Vega. The previous one was pre-zen+. Their gpu+cpu chips are always based on the more mature tech. ~~~ Marsymars The only Zen+ based APUs are mobile/embedded-only though. Desktop APUs are all still pre-Zen+. ~~~ techntoke The 2200/2400G is Zen-based. ------ joeleisner I'm excited for these CPUs to come out; I've been yearning to get away from Intel after they've continually shot themselves in the foot, and these models price/performance are really selling team red to me. ------ harry8 What is the interthread latency between cores on a ryzen? Something like: [https://gitlab.com/hal88/interthread_latency](https://gitlab.com/hal88/interthread_latency) I get in the ballpark of 250 cycles on an intel $whatever (it's been pretty stable for a while) for cores on the same package full round trip, (hyperthreading off). mean = 255, 247 (ignoring blowouts) max: 4898276 min: 93 (cyles) ------ bashwizard Nice. I guess it's time to upgrade from my old 1700X. ------ auvi I really expected a 16C/32T Ryzen 9 though. ~~~ jlawer Potentially is a yield issue / segmentation issue. Releasing the top SKU as a 12 core instead of 16 core part gives AMD: 1.) Still the highest core count "Mainstream" part. I would expect Intel to fire back with a higher IPC / thread performance part rather then try and ramp core counts. Outside of productivity, content creation and server workloads I really don't see the need for anything past 6-8 cores right now. 2.) Lets AMD keep the flawless chiplets for Ryzen 7 where there will be high demand. While providing a way to move more 6 core chiplets. They can change the product mix once yields improve. I would imagine that there is likely better margin on Ryzen 7 (1x chiplet) rather then the R9 (2x chiplet). 3.) Keeps more of the Threadripper line viable for those that need high cores (especially if you don't require the extra memory bandwidth). 4.) Sells a bunch of CPUs now, while keeping the ability to quickly respond to Intel if needed (or as a spoiler around the Intel 10nm release) ~~~ NightlyDev 1) Intel won't be able to, at least not until they finally manage to get the new architecture out. Heat is already a huge issue for intel. 2) AMD might be saving perfect core chiplets, but probably mostly for use in EPYC as the margins are higher. 4) I expect 16 core am4 to arrive someday. ~~~ jlawer Good point on EPYC, I had assumed these would be using a different design like earlier generations, but the chiplet design makes this not only possible, but likely where the best chiplets are going. I agree that 16 core will arrive this generation, but I could also see it being 6 months or so. I have also wondered if it is waiting for a second generation I/O die with an enhanced memory controller to feed the extra cores. ------ gravelc Is there any clarity on how much RAM the 3900X supports? Presumably can do 4x32GB, which would make for a great little bioinformatics workstation. Am very excited with this chip and Windows bringing the full Linux kernel - can do everything I want at home with just one fairly cheap PC and no dual booting. Good times! ~~~ jaytaylor Are 32GB sticks of fast registered DDR4 still absurdly expensive? ~~~ gravelc Still not cheap - $200 for DDR4-2666 up to $350+ for DDR-3200 from what I can see on Newegg ------ deathtrader666 We've had 32 cores from AMD, yes.. But what about 64 cores like Intel's Knight Landing Xeon Phi? ~~~ wyldfire Well the Phi is sold/packaged as an accelerator so it's not quite the same. But I was pretty sure i had seen >= 32 core Xeons (though those were likely with now-nerfed HT so kinda moot). ------ andy_ppp Any chance I can have a Mac Mini with a 3700X in please? ~~~ vbezhenar AFAIK Apple has zero macs with AMD cpus. Also I've heard about issues running macOS even in virtual machine on AMD hardware. So I have my doubts about that. You're more likely to have RAM Mac Mini. ------ saltminer Did AMD talk about VME instructions? I'd love to be able to run a Win 9x VM again. ~~~ sebazzz Running a VM is already possible. Graphics acceleration is what the real issue is. ~~~ saltminer I'm referring to virtual 8086 mode enhancements. They're broken on Ryzen 1- and 2-series chips, AMD responded to my bug report saying they had no intention of fixing them in microcode updates. You wouldn't notice this unless you tried to run older OSes in a VM, like DOS-based Windows, or some applications in DOSBox. ------ jxi The Ryzen 7 3700X looks like it hits a sweet spot. 65W TDP, $330, almost as fast as a 9900k. Was originally planning to go for the Ryzen 5, but with these specs it seems silly not to go for the 3700X. ~~~ TheOperator Also with CPU performance starting to taper off I think people need to also start think of their computers as longer term investments. I think the 8 core makes sense. Even my phone has 8 cores now... ~~~ zelon88 I've been hearing this for a long time, but the "taper" isn't really a taper in all markets. In consumer markets, yes the taper is very real. Infact I bet you could take one $500 machine off the shelf of Wal-Mart every year for the past 5 years and benchmark them all within 15% of each other overall. But it isn't really visible when money is no object. If it's not the cores getting faster it's the core-count going up. Moore's Law is really easy to beat if you focus on making your CPU die's larger instead of their transistors smaller. ~~~ alkonaut Also for at least one part of high perf computing, gaming, the trend has been that more cores now actually count in modern engines. Couple of years ago you wanted a couple of cores but single thread perf was the big thing. Now some modern game engines scale very well beyond 4 cores. Presumably they have shifted to some sort of work-item based system instead of having fixed threads for subsystems (rendering, AI, ...). So upgrading from a 4 to 8 core a few years back was expensive and mostly not worth it for gaming, whereas now it might actually give the huge speedup the core count would indicate (Obviously for gaming this just means moving the bottleneck, but still) ------ vbezhenar No 5GHz, I'm disappointed. Was considering switching to AMD, but Intel looks better. I'll wait for Threadripper announce, though, may be they'll release something powerful. ~~~ jaytaylor This may be an oversimplification. There is more to it than just megahertz or gigahertz. The most important metric in this case is work done per clock, on average. ~~~ vbezhenar I don't believe that AMD made better architecture than Intel in regards to performance. They might be similar, but definitely not 10% better. So in the end it comes to frequency (and core count for niche tasks). ~~~ abdulmuhaimin just based on the previous gen benchmark, the perfomance/clock of Zen+ cpu is better htan intel offering. What makes you say it isnt so? ~~~ vbezhenar [https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen- core-i9-9...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen- core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-review/7) this page compares 9900K and 2700X. 9900K should work at 4700 MHz with all cores loaded. 2700x should work at 4300 MHz. So the difference is roughly 10%. And Intel in most benchmarks scores more than 10%. ~~~ the_why_of_y Those benchmarks were done 3 or 4 Meltdown microcode mitigations ago... the problem with Intel CPUs is, they become slower the longer they're exposed to security researchers. ~~~ vbezhenar Not everybody uses those mitigations.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2 (PBKDF2) -- A JavaScript implementation - shawndumas http://anandam.name/pbkdf2/ ====== pixelcort Cool! This produces compatible output to node's crypto.pbkdf2 API[1]. [1]: [http://nodejs.org/api/crypto.html#crypto_crypto_pbkdf2_passw...](http://nodejs.org/api/crypto.html#crypto_crypto_pbkdf2_password_salt_iterations_keylen_callback)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dad and The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming (2012) - dodders http://blog.stephenwyattbush.com/2012/04/07/dad-and-the-ten-commandments-of-egoless-programming ====== greggman > Critique code instead of people – be kind to the coder, not to the code A fellow co-worker taught me by example to try to always phrase each code review comment as a question. Instead of > This loop never terminates Write > Does this loop terminate? Instead of > There's no test for this condition write > Is there supposed to be a test for this condition? I'm probably not thinking of good examples but for some reason, more often than not, the direct comments came across as "you screwed up!" where as the questions instead made it feel like I was discovering my own mistakes rather than have someone tell me I made one. It's probably subtle and maybe some people will think it's dumb but I really appreciated it. It felt like it went a long way toward me feeling like saw my own mistake and fixed it before I checked it in instead of the direct approach which made me feel stupid and embarrassed. I've tried to adopt that approach (though it's a struggle to remember to apply it). ~~~ saraid216 I feel obligated to mention that this strategy, while it often works to some degree, sometimes doesn't work. For people like me, phrasings like that sound passive-aggressive. I prefer the strategy of wrapping my sentences in things like, "I think" or "I prefer". So, I'd write, "This loop doesn't seem to terminate." or "I think that this condition needs a test." It's an implicit admission that I could be wrong and an invitation to push back. Just as often, I'll walk over and say, "Could you explain why you did that to me?" This is especially acceptable when it's agreed that a good review requires the reviewer understand what's going on. ~~~ AlyssaRowan I feel the way I communicate has been influenced strongly by voice training - I've noticed in particular I say "I feel" a lot in similar circumstances. (Apparently, valuing emotions above thought is some paragon of femininity? I'm not sure I agree with that.) I am reluctant to go for the direct "wtf?!" response, because as above, it bruises egos and people get defensive - and that is unhelpful to actually resolving issues. I tend to phrase it as "Perhaps I'm confused, but...". (One advantage of this is that sometimes, I _am_ wrong, and this gives someone an opportunity to explain why, and in the process hopefully re-examining their thought process and testing it just in case.) I think I caught that pattern, as well as excessive usage of "though", from a good friend. One interpretation of this is that perhaps I've spent nigh-on 2½ decades being confused. <g> There is, however, a place for the genuine WTF. I reserve it for "there's no way you could be that stupid" situations, like someone cheerfully telling me about the 256-bit encryption they used, and my discovering it's RSA-256. The management-by-Perkele has however seemed to work to keep the Linux kernel clean up 'til now, although they don't really want to _insult_ people. ------ pjmorris Always good to see Jerry Weinberg's work mentioned. I tried reading 'The Psychology of Computer Programming' when I was in college, it didn't grab then. Finally read it 15 years later, and realized that the material there would've especially helped in my first couple of jobs. Also... my dad was 45 when I came along. I didn't get to spend much time with him before he was gone, but every moment was valuable and is cherished. I still try to make him proud, and suspect your dad would be proud. ------ danso The best part of this list is that with some tweaks, the commandments can pretty much apply to any field of personal and professional pursuit. One rule I might add (and one that is also easy to apply elsewhere): Remember that far more time will be spent _reading_ your code than writing it. Grokking this not only has practical implications for how you write code (suddenly, the importance of style guides becomes clearer), but it makes you realize that this is how projects get built: programmers re-using libraries that contain encapsulated, clear functionality. Realizing that someone has to read your code -- even if that someone is mostly just _you_ \-- requires a modicum of empathy...and more often than not, this aids in the design process. A common complaint about learning via something like Codecademy is that you might learn the syntax and how to solve problems...but you don't get much guidance on how to apply that knowledge to real projects. I think part of this is because with Codecademy, you're only writing code for the auto-checker to compile and test. Once you start writing code for _humans_ to comprehend and re-use, it becomes easier to see how code becomes a real-world project. ------ greenyoda Jerry Weinberg wrote those "commandments" in 1971. (It's sad that the article gives a link to his book but never mentions his name.) It's interesting how well they've kept their relevance over the years, despite the huge changes in the practice of programming. However, we who do the programming still keep on forgetting these things and need to be periodically reminded of them. ------ mfisher87 I have these on display at my desk. I've always wanted to know how to encourage cultural adoption? What are the arguments against these rules? There must be some. My reasoning about these rules is that they derive from the idea that as teams of programmers, we're professionally motivated (and being paid) to produce the highest possible quality results. To that end, these rules compensate for human biases and faults to maximize quality. Many of the practices you've read about some companies enforcing, such as "there are no bad ideas" or "no stupid questions" can be related back to these rules under the same reasoning. None of us do a perfect job of compensating for our human faults and biases, so some rules help to improve our performance. My dad also passed away very early, soon after I finished college, and I credit him for making these rules so easy to follow. ~~~ dasmoth > What are the arguments against these rules? There must be some. I don't actually find this set terribly objectionable, at least when they're treated as guidelines rather than rules, but I'll have a go anyway. Excessive focus on issues like this is seen as a symptom of a managerialist culture. While few developers I know would object to the ideas that everyone has something to learn, and that apprentice and journeyman coders should be supported and encouraged, there is -- sometimes justified -- suspicion that the real agenda is to commoditise developers and turn programming from a craft into a factory-floor activity. Or, to refer to another article that's on the front page this morning, to turn antiwork into work. The kind of things that get put in place to "compensate" for ego are rules which value maintenance over re-writes, and third party components (even if they're only a tenuous fit for the problem) over in-house development. While I agree that there are biases to be aware of here, dismissing every proposal for a re-write or new internal development as egotism ends up shutting down discussions about the actual trade-offs. ~~~ mfisher87 >While I agree that there are biases to be aware of here, dismissing every proposal for a re-write or new internal development as egotism ends up shutting down discussions about the actual trade-offs. I'm not sure how this behavior could be attributed to any of these rules. Could you elaborate further? ------ sporkenfang When I read things like this, it strikes me particularly that my dad is one of those rocket people the author is talking about. I'm glad he's done what he has to put things in space so that maybe someday people can go places other than the Earth on a slightly more than part-time basis. All dad-boosting aside, this is a brilliant list, and I'm glad to have it, OP! ------ Animats The trouble with egoless programming is that you don't get promoted. ~~~ Joeri Not true in my own case. I believe that being appointed team lead was a direct result of applying egoless programming principles. ~~~ Consultant32452 Is "team lead" a real position defined by HR that comes with a pay raise higher than whatever the most senior dev title is? If it is, that's awesome. I've never actually seen that in any place I've worked. It's always more responsibility without pay, which I consider a net negative. ------ dllthomas _' No matter how much “karate” you know, someone else will always know more.'_ As stated, there is always at least one person for whom this is not true. However, even for such a person it is likely the case that there are still people who know things they don't, and the rest of 3 continues to hold: _' Such an individual can teach you some new moves if you ask. Seek and accept input from others, especially when you think it’s not needed.'_ ------ Almaviva Am I really that rare that I treasure people above all others who will speak to me directly if they don't like something? With the themes in this article and others like it, are they how you should behave if you want to meet your own goals, or about how people you're subordinate to prefer you behave, in order to not rock the boat too much? ~~~ mwfunk The thing is, EVERYBODY thinks this about themselves by default, not just you. Nobody is sitting there thinking that they wish people would just sugarcoat everything for them and be as passive-aggressive and indirect as possible. Likewise, everybody probably feels like they have to be this way when interacting with other people, and that that can be burdensome sometimes. It can be very, very different when you're actually in that situation though, and your boss is giving you the Torvaldsing that you always thought you wanted. If there is even a teensy part of you that thinks your boss is a jerk, or that they don't respect you, or that you know more about whatever it is that they're Torvaldsing you about, that part of you is being given a golden opportunity to assert itself really hard. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but it's human nature and why spark the flint if you don't have to. I thought I was completely immune to this kind of defensiveness for most of my life, and it wasn't until I got into my 40s that I realized that it was always there. Another way of looking at is, what is gained by being as blunt as possible, as opposed to the rules in this article? I'd say nothing. Nothing recommended here makes communication any more ambiguous or time-consuming. In fact it's about being more clear about what exactly you are discussing. ~~~ Bahamut There are different approaches to being direct - one can be brutally blunt while still having the recipient maintain dignity. I prefer this approach in general - the trick is if the person does not take it well, then you stress that it is not personal, or meant that they are necessarily a bad developer. It is shocking to be on the receiving end, but it forces the person to think about it more and internalize it better. I have seen it give great results for people's subsequent code, including my own. The developers have all thanked me for it and feel the approach has helped them grow immensely. ------ a3n I agree with everything on this list, but in case someone takes things too literally, I would change this: Fight for what you believe, but gracefully accept defeat. to this: _Advocate_ for what you believe, but gracefully accept defeat. Sometimes "fighting" for what you believe can turn in to just fighting. ------ datashovel Great list. When I first became involved in programming as a career, I got this unexpected and uneasy impression that people in the industry (extrapolated from my real- world experiences early in my career) were generally passive aggressive about how they handled conversations about code and how they agreed or disagreed with others about how the code should "be". I think those groups of people would have benefited greatly from this list. Simultaneously it would have prevented alot of the angst I experienced as a young developer. ------ toolslive '''Don't feel a "winner" when having corrected, don't feel a "loser" when having been corrected, and banish all feelings of mutual competition.''' [http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EW...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD683.html) ------ UserRights A little late to the party, but I would like to ask: is there still some research going on in the areas of psychology and programming? Not AI, but how the state of the programmers mind affects collaboration, the quality of the code and the general outcome of projects? Any hints and links would be very appreciated, thanks! Have a nice sunday! ------ phprocks Highly recommend picking up the book (The Psychology of Computer Programming) I have a low attention level, and one of my favorite things about this is you can really jump around and pick up the chapters from anywhere. Also despite the title of the book, its actually a very light and entertaining read. ------ kbwt This has been posted before. A moderator might want to add (2012) to the title. ~~~ dang Thanks, we added that. Reposts are fine on HN when a story hasn't had significant attention in the last year or so. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) ------ pvaldes I came here only for the promise of elves typing a keyboard at superfast pace... ------ digi_owl Something for everyone in that. ------ raverbashing It seems to me this list, while having positive ideas, reeks of condescendence. it's mostly about how you are "much better than everybody, that's why you have to play cool with everybody" What is missing is a healthy dose of "why do you think your ideas are better than everybody else's?" Readability is mostly _subjective_. Code quality, maintainability, etc, are mostly subjective as well. So don't give me that BS "I'm just trying to get the best code possible" when it's your opinion Sure, I'm not saying that something like xx = strinvcatpfr(yy * zky_eng) can't be improved, but beyond a certain point it's mostly about taste and endless nitpicking ~~~ mhomde I wouldn't say that those things are "mostly" subjective, that sounds like a defensive argument. I'm pretty sure there are good objective metrics both for readability and maintainability, they might not be the only aspects but calling it subjective is going too far. For instance maintainable code could be said to minimize side effects, be somewhat modularized and be as compact as possible while being readable. I find it hard that anyone could claim the opposite and be right "as a matter of taste" ~~~ raverbashing "I'm pretty sure there are good objective metrics both for readability and maintainability, they might not be the only aspects but calling it subjective is going too far." I think you explained better what I mean. I'm not denying the good objective metrics (for example, one of the aspects would be following Pep8 in Python) But _beyond_ that it's mostly about subjectivity. So, evaluate on the objective metrics as much as possible, but don't waste my time saying that "A is better than B" when it's mostly a subjective aspect ~~~ i_s This is very true. My brother just told me about a class he took on C# in which the teacher gave him a C on an assignment because of 2 things: 1) he had a using statement that reached far into a library, and 2) he used the "var" keyword. The program was correct otherwise.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ghostly Compatibility: Cross Browser Transparancy with CSS - simplrdes http://www.cherrysave.com/web-design/ghostly-compatibility-cross-browser-transparancy-with-css/ ====== hellotoby "-khtml-opacity is used in Apple’s Safari, and in other KHTML-enabled browsers." This is factually incorrect. Safari has supported the CSS3 selector Opacity since version 2.0 (currently at version 4.0).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mid-stack inlining in the Go compiler - dcu https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Wcblp3jpfeKwA0Y4FOmj63PW52M_qmNqlQkNaLj0P5o/edit#slide=id.p ====== throwawayish In case someone else is wondering: What is being called "mid-stack inlining" here is what is generally understood by the term "inlining". ~~~ CUViper The presentation makes a distinction between mid-stack and leaf inlining, and apparently it was only done on leaf calls before because this is less confusing in backtraces. ~~~ Ericson2314 The point is, as usual, Go is trying to catch up to what everyone else has had for years. The use of non-standard terminology here is suspicious, raising the question that the Go people are trying to hide the fact that they are playing catch-up. ~~~ enneff Comments like these are so depressing. Someone does a bunch of work to improve the Go compiler and writes a presentation to share their approach (primarily so that other people working on Go can understand and extend it), and gives it all away for free. This is textbook open source citizenry, which should be applauded. But instead, you come along and criticize them for being too specific with their terms (!!) and also accuse them of being deceptive. This is not a marketing exercise. There is no conspiracy here. ~~~ vorg > writes a presentation to share their approach (primarily so that other > people working on Go can understand and extend it Perhaps Ericson2314's gripe is that it's being posted (and upvoted) on HN, rather than just a Go-specific forum (e.g. reddit.com/r/golang), and by implication it's intended to be read by a more general audience. ~~~ enneff Well that's just silly. People post random stuff to HN all the time. That something is appears here does not mean that HN is the intended audience. ------ zamalek This is absolutely fantastic work. Since I've learned about continuation passing style (which Go channels could _probably_ be formally transformed into), I've been convinced that there's a better way to do codegen. Better calling convention, better stack representation, better instruction architecture; I'm not yet sure - it's a nag continuously at the back of my mind, almost as though it's at the tip of my tongue. In this specific case, it must _surely_ be possible to inline a continuation with some foreign architecture. I'd _love_ to see some literature on the more experimental end of this stuff, if anyone has it. ~~~ pjmlp Are you aware of "Compiling with Continuations? [https://www.amazon.com/Compiling-Continuations-Andrew-W- Appe...](https://www.amazon.com/Compiling-Continuations-Andrew-W- Appel/dp/052103311X) ~~~ hinkley That's an interesting read. One of only a handful of tech books I've read twice. It's thin and doesn't repeat itself all that much so if you read it twice it's still faster than reading most tech books once. More recently though I heard someone proved mathematically that CPS can be transformed one-for-one into one of the more conventional models. That doesn't mean it might not still be easier for the humans to deal with however. ------ sheeshkebab Jvm/java had that for a while in its JIT - it's nice to see it to coming to Golang. Byproduct of that could be little hacky things like this below that make code faster by restructuring code a little [https://techblug.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/java-jit- compiler-...](https://techblug.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/java-jit-compiler- inlining/) ------ chillydawg 9% faster, 15% bigger. I'll take that! ~~~ DannyBee FWIW: This is actually not that great, but it's a good start. You should be able to get about 15-20% with about 3-5% binary increase size. In fact, with ThinLTO, we often see that gain with binary size _decrease_ from smart inlining choices. (The heuristics for inlining take a very very long time to get right and tune) The issue they will next hit is that inlining is going to make the compiler slower until they tune the heuristics well. ~~~ kevincox If I'm understanding the increase is mostly due to the "debugging" info that is added, not necessarily due to more code. ~~~ DannyBee I strongly doubt this. It doesn't say this in the preso, and ... 1\. The compiler is a lot slower, which is usually from code growth and not debugging info growth. If the compiler is that much slower from debugging info growth, they have larger issues :) 2\. Usually people do not include debug info sizes in binary sizes, because DWARF/et al info can be stripped and put alongside the binary (IE it doesn't even have to be part of the binary) ~~~ sythe2o0 It does say this. One of the last slides says 4% of the additional size came from adding more debugging information, excluding anything to do with the new inlining. ~~~ DannyBee "If I'm understanding the increase is mostly due to the "debugging" info that is added, not necessarily due to more code. " vs " One of the last slides says 4% of the additional size came from adding more debugging information, excluding anything to do with the new inlining" So no, it doesn't say that it's "mostly due", it says ~25% is due to debugging information. ------ micah_chatt What impact would that have on build times? I know a lot of work has gone into getting back to 1.4 build times, but would the added work of inlining prolong builds? ~~~ lazard The compiler got a bit slower: [https://github.com/golang/go/issues/19386](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/19386) Those numbers are just for my CLs that fix stack traces but with mid-stack inlining still off. Turning it on makes builds noticeably slower: $ time ./make.bash real: 45.32s user: 118.67s cpu: 5.85s $ time GO_GCFLAGS='-l=4' ./make.bash real: 64.51s user: 167.04s cpu: 7.12s We'll need to tweak the inlining heuristic to find a good balance between performance, build times, and binary size. ~~~ Sunset Please have a switch where I can sacrifice build time for maximum possible runtime benefits. ~~~ chriswarbo The compile-time/run-time tradeoff is interesting. Getting the "maximum possible runtime benefits" probably calls for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superoptimization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superoptimization) :) ------ YesThatTom2 The presentation redacted the stats about how this affects Google performance. I bet it saves enough CPU hours to pay the author's salary many many many times over. Good job! ~~~ edgyswingset Maybe? I'm under the impression that the vast majority of Google's software is not written in Golang, though. ~~~ SEJeff But even 1% of their software being go would still see more use than most software you or I write in our lifetimes. dl.google.com has been golang since 2013. Imagine the traffic that application gets! [https://talks.golang.org/2013/oscon- dl.slide#1](https://talks.golang.org/2013/oscon-dl.slide#1) ------ ainar-g Whoah, nine percent? That's a lot! Now I wonder if the improvement better or worse on non-x86 platforms? ~~~ lazard We measured 10% improvement on ppc64. ------ dap This is interesting work! That said, it's a little disappointing when runtimes require custom algorithms or metadata to walk the stack and construct a stack trace. It makes it harder to build debuggers that grok the state of multiple runtimes (e.g., the Go code and the C code in the same program). This also affects runtime tracing tools like DTrace, which by construction can't rely on runtime support for help. ~~~ aclements We plan to expose all of the inlining information in the DWARF tables so debuggers won't have any problems with this. Internally, the runtime uses a different representation just so we can make it more compact and optimized for the runtime's exact needs. This way, you can also strip the debug info without breaking the runtime's own ability to walk stacks. ~~~ CUViper Isn't that what `.eh_frame` is for? ~~~ mnemonik .eh_frame is DWARF with a couple tiny tweaks ~~~ CUViper Right, but it's an allocated section that doesn't get stripped like debuginfo. ------ snovv_crash It looks like most of the improvements are in string formatting problems. I'm curious if better heuristics will help other areas as well. ------ cetinsert As someone who now professionally uses go on a range of mips devices, I, for one, do care about any binary size increases! ------ spullara It doesnt look like this solves inlining library calls? ~~~ aclements Go already performs cross-package inlining, so it can already inline library calls. (This is relatively easy to do in Go compared to other languages because packages must form a DAG. Compiling package A writes out enough information in the object file for A that compiling package B that depends on A can inline calls to functions in A.) ~~~ DannyBee "Compiling package A writes out enough information in the object file for A that compiling package B that depends on A can inline calls to functions in A" So it records the calling convention, architecture flags, alignment, and other ABI pieces etc? As well as an estimate of instruction-level inlining cost, summary info about arguments, etc, so you effectively decide whether inlining it will help or hurt, without having the IR around to try? FWIW: Writing out the info is usually not the hard part, actually, and is unrelated to the DAG-ness of the packages. GCC is just the perennial example here, but they refused to write it out for years for political reasons, not technical ones :) ~~~ aclements "So it records the calling convention, architecture flags, alignment, and other ABI pieces etc?" No. At the moment it records the AST in the object file, because the inliner works at the Go AST level. In the future it may instead record the SSA representation (which would obviously give better cost estimates; the current heuristics are really extremely simple). "FWIW: Writing out the info is usually not the hard part, actually, and is unrelated to the DAG-ness of the packages." The DAG-ness means it's always available when compiling the call site, even if it's a cross-package call. It means you don't have to do it at link time. ~~~ pcwalton > The DAG-ness means it's always available when compiling the call site, even > if it's a cross-package call. It means you don't have to do it at link time. Why is it any harder to do at link time? (I've implemented this in a production compiler, and choosing whether to do it at compile time or link time was a trivial decision.) ~~~ DannyBee traditionally, this required a linker that understands there is ir in the files. in practice, i don't believe this has been a problem for many years now (and again, was only a problem in the open source world, so saying it's related to the language is kind of strange.). Every good production C++ compiler has had some form of link time optimization for many years. IBM's, for example, has been happily cross-optimizing between C++, java, fortran, PL/IX, etc without any issues, going on at least 15, maybe 25+ years now (I know it's 15 for sure, i suspect it's closer to 25).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Wordpress on a Retina Display - tathagata http://tatx.me/wordpress-on-a-retina-display/ ====== lwhi Is there any benefit to providing specific customisation beyond pleasing a subset of users who have a proprietary retina display? I feel slightly at odds with providing something that can only be enjoyed by people who choose to purchase from a single manufacturer. ~~~ tathagata OP here. Retina displays are catching up really fast and it is not tired to Apple at all (although the term is). A retina ready blog will look better on most new HD-ready Android tablets, like the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD, and phones likes the Galaxy S III many others.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is there anyone here who has sold software via Gumroad? - thesoonerdev 1.What do you sell? 2.How did you promote it? 3.How was the overall experience? ====== vram22 I haven't sold any yet, but am going to try. Just setup my Gumroad page and uploaded a first product, mainly as a test: [https://gumroad.com/products/vi_quick](https://gumroad.com/products/vi_quick) It's a vi quick-start tutorial I wrote a while ago. (Yes, vi, not vim :) It was before vim was very common.) I first wrote it at the request of two sysadmin friends and colleagues of mine, who were transitioning from Windows to Unix, and they later told me they found it useful in getting up to speed with editing files using vi. More small products (apps and ebooks, on programming topics) are in the pipeline and I hope to release some over the following weeks and months, one at a time. ------ helen842000 I sold a WordPress plugin for writers via Gumroad, sold a handful. This is compared to selling hundred of other types of basic products like pdfs, ebooks etc via the same platform. I promoted the plugin on ProductHunt, Twitter and via friends - not really directly with the intended audience which was a mistake. It was a fun experiment but I think most people are unfamiliar with buying software in that way. For the customer it doesn't seem like it will be a product that is supported. ------ sjs382 About 6 years ago, I wrote and sold a dumb little modification for WP- eCommerce that added additional details to admin emails. I think I charged $20 one time fee. I promoted it in forums and Q&A websites that asked specifically for the feature. I think I sold 10-ish total? I was young. ------ david90 Yes, we sell MakeAppIcon Desktop on Gumroad. Overall they provide a nice looking store and easy integration. But it's hard to do trackings over the store.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Solar power is now cheaper than nuclear - brkumar http://www.ncwarn.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/NCW-SolarReport_final1.pdf ====== rvcx No, it's not. The position paper (from an organization whose whole mission is to push solar and get rid of nuclear) simply makes up a bunch of number. <http://v.cx/2010/07/lying-about-solar> ~~~ kaitnieks Also, this: [http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/07/gullible- reportin...](http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/07/gullible-reporting-by- new-york-times-on.html) ~~~ sasvari Pro-nuclear advocate as the first post is pro-solar, this one is just the opposite. both posts are nonobjective, there's still quite a lot of _religion_ involved in the discussion. ~~~ rvcx The top post is claiming something that is not true. The responses are pointing out that the claim is bullshit, but they are _not_ making claims of their own. Suppose I were to claim that Sasvari owes me one trillion dollars, based on no reliable evidence whatsoever, and Sasvari were to deny it, pointing out the lack of evidence. Are both sides in this scenario equally "religious" in their stances? ------ lispm Here in Germany we add half of this years world's photovoltaic solar panel production. Much of that is installed by small consumers, houses, farms, factories. This gets us away from the huge expensive centralized energy production. Panel by panel. A new nuclear power plant has not been built in he last twenty years and is not planned. Thus we can concentrate on bringing the price of renewable energy down. The new reactors that are under construction in Finland and France are both much more expensive than planned and are coming years late. France also has to invest several hundred million Euros per reactor to keep them running. They haven't done much for those - a full fifty reactors. Here in Germany we need to spend some ten more more billion Euros on closing old East German reactors and for cleaning up an experimental storage site for nuclear waste. That experiment has failed. Spectacularly. Billions and billions that could have been invested in clean and renewable energy. ~~~ confuzatron Hmm. Except that ' _huge expensive_ centralized energy production' produces electricity much more cheaply than the solar panels. If this wasn't the case, the German government wouldn't need the _huge expensive_ system of subsidies for PV. By all means spend lots of money to encourage production of more expensive electricity, but don't pretend it's cheaper. ~~~ roel_v Can someone post numbers on the amount of subsidies that are given by the German government? The Belgian system of paying out for each 1000 kW produced is gradually being phased out; For those installed in 2008 and 2009 you got 450 euros, this year 350 and over the next few years this will decrease to 150 I think. Plus you can deduct a mortgage used to buy solar panels from your income. I modeled this fairly extensively a few years ago and it turn out that yields of 7% on the investment are expected. My parents are making more than that because of lots of sunshine over the last few years and higher energy costs so more savings. It's an awesome investment, and unparalleled in its risk class. ~~~ mtr I've done some consulting in the area but don't have any hard numbers at hand right now. But basically, it's lots of money. If the subsidies are taken away then the market collapses. Germany isn't the sunniest country in the world yet was (is?) the largest market. Spain had a recent boom, which was followed by a bust when the subsidies were removed. France has been playing catchup in this area and they were proposing subsidies that would reduce each year to better match reductions the cost basis of PV. They were predicting ~20 years for solar to reach grid parity. A more interesting debate is whether governments should be interfering in free market forces to push some technologies over others. ~~~ roel_v Oh sorry what I meant was more how much an individual can make on these subsidies. I know the aggregate is significant and not in relation to the immediate effects. I think it's also, on a rational level, quite clear that the redistributive effects of the subsidies are of dubious nature and politically motivated; every tax payer contributing to elevated savings yields of those with 20k to spare or the creditworthiness to borrow as much ranges from silly when one is in a forgiving mood to outright immoral when one is not. Maybe I was diverting the conversation, I was just pointing out that those who installed PV panels in Belgium got a very nice yield on their investment. I haven't run the numbers with the latest payouts and panel costs (PV panel cost has come down significantly already over the last few years) so I don't know the state of the art. I was interested in comparing subsidy schemes with other countries. (as an extra data point, the Netherlands provides only a fixed subsidy for PV panels, and there's a fairly low ceiling to the total that can be paid out a year; based on a first come, first serve system. The period to recuperate the investment is about 20 years, which is quite long; in Belgium one can earn back the investment in about 6 years and everything after that is pure profit). ~~~ mtr I apologize in advance for another short comment, but your reply leads to another interesting point: should entities (individual, companies) be using payback period as a criteria for investments? Everything I learned in b-school pointed us towards using NPV as the best metric, but many entities still use IRR or payback period. I'll try to follow-up tomorrow with some numeric examples so you and everyone else can see the implications of various methods. But the stuff I saw from calculations in France (the most generous market for building-integrated photovoltaic installations) was on the order of 10 years. Your 6-year payback seems a bit optimistic but I last looked into this stuff 8 months ago and things may have changed. ~~~ roel_v No, payback period is a silly metric, and my 6 years do account for opportunity cost :) Actually I tried to make a product out of this. The website is still up on <http://www.solar-profit.info/>. It's in Dutch but the screenshots speak for themselves. I never sold a single copy, for one because my market is about 500 customers big, and second because I didn't manage to explain the concept of time value of money to my leads (installation companies for PV panels). So yeah that's the answer to your comment. Payback period everybody understands, and that's the only thing it has going for it, but unfortunately it's such a big advantage that you still need to use it if you want to convince some markets. ------ rbanffy That's easy - you just impose expensive environmental regulations on top of building nuclear reactors and, suddenly, solar power becomes cheaper. With a couple iterations, even hamsters in cages will surpass nuclear. How green is solar panel production, BTW? ~~~ dmfdmf > How green is solar panel production, BTW? The term "green" is probably too vague to answer that question. However, I once read (a long time ago, so no link) an article on some research that reported that EV solar was net-energy negative, i.e., if you add up all the energy that went into producing EV solar panels and subtracted the energy output over its expected lifetime it was negative. This is not true of hot- water type solar just EV solar panels. Of course the conclusion rested on numerous assumptions but they used conservative assumptions and argued that EV is _not_ an energy source and would need some wild breakthroughs in reducing the energy costs to manufacture or a huge jump in energy output efficiency neither of which, as far as I know, has happened. Edit: I got that reversed, Energy Output - Energy to make < 0 ~~~ Retric Times change, 50,000Hz Computers used to be top of the line and cost thousands of dollars, but try selling such things today at those prices. The value of electricity produced over a modern solar cell’s lifetime > cost of that solar cell today so clearly they take less energy to produce than it takes to make. However, ROI is more than just getting more money back than something costs the payback time is important. PS: Granted, Ultra high efficiency solar cells built for the space program still cost a lot. However, they are producing energy _in space_ so the incentives change. ~~~ rbanffy dmfdmf's point is that it takes more energy to make a solar cell than it will ever produce during its lifetime. I am not sure his numbers are current (he made the disclaimer), but it has nothing to do with energy pricing. My worry is not whether photo-voltaic is net-positive, but whether the production actually reduces pollution. For what I know, they are very close cousins of computer chips and those factories were not particularly "green". ~~~ Retric Energy is a complex topic, so calculating the actual energy costs to produce something is hard because different forms of energy have different value. EX: heat pumps don't generate energy even though they can output more BTU's than an electric heater. However, electricity cost to generate other types of energy works as a shortcut to a lot of this stuff. So generally if something costs X$ to manufacture it takes less energy than X$ worth of electricity. As to being green; PV is not exactly a single technology with a single type of environmental impact. Assuming you recycle the cells, PV can have a very environmentally friendly footprint, but the factory must also take care to avoid a wide range of pollution. PS: It’s hard to talk about energy without using enthalpy, entropy, and other thermodynamic concepts. If my point is not clear I can try a more detailed explanation. ------ csf_ceo In Australia, we have one of the cheapest electricity prices in the world. Wholesale(national pool price) is about USD 65 per MWh + Network charges. But Solar PV electricity is 1/3 cheaper than the Retail price of electricity _WITHOUT ANY SUBSIDIES_. The current Peak Retail price (Midday - 8.00pm)is circa USD 0.29 kWh (Aust$0.32kWh) and the 'real' unsubsidised cost of solar PV is about Aust $0.21 kWh. With the current subsidies the price is _NEGATIVE_ $Aust 0.50 kWh (USD -0.45) Yes, we get paid to produce through grants and a Feed in Tariff ~~~ stcredzero If Australia is on the ball with infrastructure and government policy, your little private continent might end up a bastion of energy stability in the post peak-oil world! You have your own deserts with lots of potential for massive Solar Thermal. Add some high-tech distribution, and you're in a very enviable position. ------ pragmatic They sell solar panels in Menard's now, _freakin' Menards_ (A mid-western version of Lowe's/Home Depot). I think they cost 300+ for 60 watts. I for one would love to put a bunch of solar panels up on my house, just for the cool factor. Not to mention, centralized power is vulnerable. Terrorists, grid failure, etc. Something so vital should be so centralized. I'm going to dub the coming DIY power generation "Cloud Power", remember you heard it here first. ~~~ stcredzero What the south needs now are cheap 12 volt AC units. Install some solar PV, and have regulation circuitry that turns it on when the panels are producing enough juice. This would still save a ton on summer AC power costs, but it would be (relatively) cheap. (No batteries! You'd have to have a hefty capacitor for startup surge power, though.) ------ nickpinkston As has been pointed out this study is filled with a lot of stats and little methodology. They assume that solar tech is getting cheaper and cheaper $/KwH (quite valid), however they seemingly think that nuclear is frozen and the tech costs are rising. I think it could be argued that the lobbies subsidizing both sides are causing each trend. Westinghouse wants subsidies so more plants are sold, however that also increases the tendency to over-build. A friend of mine in their nuke dept. said this very true. Compare western to foreign nuke prices. Also, the green movement has every interest to encourage increasingly strict nuclear regs that make it difficult to make new ones while they support solar subsidies. All of this leads to nuclear power going up in price while the tech remains underutilized. This report shows these price trends, but does little to elucidate the underlying causation in them. ------ tocomment Is solar still coming down in price? What kind of bothers me is even if the panels were free it would still probably cost $10,000+ to have someone install them on my house, thus I'll probably never be able to do it :-( ~~~ jodrellblank What bothers you (in the present) is that if solar panels were free (they aren't), it would probably cost (a number pulled out of thin air with no research, therefore deliberately chosen to be high enough to annoy yourself) to install them on your house, which you predict negatively that you wont be able to afford ever. Are you always this cheerful and optimistic? Have you considered ... being happier? ~~~ tocomment Wow, when you put it like that it sounds ridiculous :-) I'll try to have more optimism for the solar industry .. maybe in general too. ------ mikelele This is a bunch of anti-nuke nonsense written by non-experts in the energy field. ------ Daniel_Newby Base load. ~~~ akira2501 Also W/m^2	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Engineering the Extinction of 40 Species of Mosquitoes - olalonde http://rockstarresearch.com/engineering-the-extinction-of-40-species-of-mosquitoes/ ====== zachrose This links to Janet Fang's article in Nature: [http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html) The thesis of that article is that nothing of ecological significance would happen without mosquitos, but the examples given don't seem even close to conclusive. We know many species of fish and birds that eat mosquitos and mosquito larvae. From a few minutes of internet surfing, it doesn't seem like anyone knows whether other insects would take their place or and how quickly that would happen. IANA biologist, but maybe fish and birds can survive a couple months while something takes the place of the comparatively short-lived mosquito? In any case this whole idea seems totally under-researched. ~~~ esturk From the first article, it mentioned that we have eradicated similar disease vectors like screwworm and melon fly before, so what have been the environmental impact of that so far? ~~~ jacquesm What percentage of the next level up on the food chain lives off mosquitoes? What percentage lives of screwworms and Melon flies? I have no idea about the answers, but if there is a significant difference there then that might be where trouble could come from. The problems really start at the reservoir hosts, the mosquitoes are just the transmitters. Controlling the reservoir hosts might be more feasible than eradicating 40 species of mosquito, it sounds like a very ambitious plan to me. Panama had only 2 problematic species around the (prospective) canal zone. Eradicating those mosquitoes to allow construction of the canal to proceed without the crews succumbing to Malaria or Yellow Fever was a huge success: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_measures_during_the_cons...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_measures_during_the_construction_of_the_Panama_Canal) ~~~ mapt Does the fact that we have done this thousands of times now, accidentally, without any knowledge of the species being affected, make it any better? Does the fact that essentially all of the interspecific dependencies in the temperate and Arctic zones have shifted completely in response to simple climate change since the last glaciation, make it any better? ~~~ coldtea > _Does the fact that we have done this thousands of times now, accidentally, > without any knowledge of the species being affected, make it any better?_ It sure does not. After all, tens of thousands of species have gone extinct in our watch. Who knows how many of those were due to having done "this". > _Does the fact that essentially all of the interspecific dependencies in the > temperate and Arctic zones have shifted completely in response to simple > climate change since the last glaciation, make it any better?_ Nope. And I seriously doubt they have shifted "completely". ------ NIL8 I live in a mosquito infested area and I have had malaria. Personally, I would love to see the end of all mosquitoes, even if it meant losing a few fish species. However, even with an incredible amount of research and preparation, eliminating mosquitoes would have an untold number of effects. One effect would most certainly be the exponential growth of the human population. This could be a more difficult pest than mosquitoes. ~~~ derekp7 This is actually addressed in the article. If people are reasonably certain that all their children will survive to adulthood, they tend to have fewer children. ~~~ MisterBastahrd Supply and demand, I guess. A higher survival rate is going to mean more competition for resources. Increased competition yields higher prices. Higher prices usually mean parents decide to have less kids. Of course, I think industrialization plays a huge role too. If you have a family in an agrarian third world country, then more kids equal more labor, and as long as that kid is healthy and productive, having him is a net positive for income. ~~~ im3w1l But there are less children, less teenagers, less everything, so your hypothesis doesn't hold water. Let me put forth another hypothesis. Lower mortality means investing in your children has a lower risk. This means you can invest more in your children. Further, lower mortality means lower risk that all your children die, so you don't need to get lots of children for "diversification". ~~~ MisterBastahrd I don't think you understand how population growth works. ------ hansjorg Radiolab recently did a bit on this (Kill 'em all): [http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em- all/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-all/) ------ king_jester Every time I read an article about this kind of thing, the big selling point usually refers to political and economic ease of eliminating a species of mosquito compared to other trying to fix distribution of medicine and improving infrastructure and health care access. This seems kind of backwards to me. Wouldn't working on the distribution problem be more effective than eliminating mosquito species? Obviously this is a much more difficult problem, but improvements in this area have benefits beyond disease elimination and treatment. That such things are difficult to achieve via current philanthropy efforts seems to highlight such philanthropy as flawed and in need of adjustment. ------ qwerta Article quotes 6 digits numbers to exterminate mosquitoes over large areas. I believe that is within reach of local governments. Even Kickstarter campaign could fund it. So the question is more when, rather then if. ------ Camillo According to the article, only a small fraction of mosquito species carry diseases harmful to humans. Are there predators that depend solely or mainly on those specific species for food? Could other species take up the disease vector role if the currently harmful species were eliminated? ------ DustinCalim I don't think it's possible right now for us to predict how the world would change if there were no mosquitos. I expect they play some important role that we don't yet understand. Bees come to mind ~~~ andrewchoi One of the takeaways of the article for me was that it's a small subset of all mosquito species that are conveying this disease. I'm not an ecologist, but wouldn't the elimination of one sort of (disease vector) mosquito lead to a different (non-disease vector) species taking over the niche in the ecosystem? ~~~ nn3 Some other mosquitos would likely take over the "human" niche yes But if the Malaria parasite is gone they may not be infected. If it's not gone the parasite would eventually adapt to the new mosquitos. ------ jrkelly Oxitec are the ones to follow in this space. Really awesome work: [http://www.oxitec.com](http://www.oxitec.com) ------ coldtea > _Engineering the Extinction of 40 Species of Mosquitoes_ Hmm, to me it sounds like: Screw science (which takes time), let's apply half-learned stuff in real life instead and see what sticks. E.g let's apply what little we know to extinguish mosquitoes we don't like, despite not fully knowning the ecological consequences of our actions. Hopefully we won't have to deal with the mess (or there won't be a mess). After all we did something similar before. If you do something once and it turned out OK, then even if you don't understand it, it will always come out OK in any other context, right? ------ ISL “What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!' Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.” ~~~ afarrell A warm sentiment to be sure, but wonder if it also applies to the orcs marching across the Pelennor, whom you know are intending or enslaved to deal death. Do they also deserve pity and mercy? If not, then why do mosquitos? ~~~ ISL In the quote above, Gandalf only advises that one should not strike without need. In the cases of both mosquitoes and orcs, it's not at all clear that xenocide is requisite to ensure the safety of humans or the many dwellers of Middle Earth. ------ ricardobeat "Engineering a major environmental fuck-up"	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
“In exchange for my honest and unbiased review” - apsec112 https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site:amazon.com+%22in+exchange+for+my+honest+and+unbiased+review%22 ====== ColbyJackRat I like that reviewers are required to put this on Amazon now, it lets me know which products not to buy. ~~~ fallinghawks I wish we could filter these out of the review and rating results. ------ nefitty Is this a thing now, linking to search results for a term? I saw this with image results for exploding hoverboards. I don't like it. ~~~ matheweis It seems to have triggered the Google captcha for me... ------ Jedd One of my (language) pet peeves is when someone opens with 'Honestly, ...' When it's appropriate I suggest to them that everything they say without that prefix might therefore be assumed to be otherwise. I suggest 'Candidly' or 'Frankly' if they mean they're about to be blunt. Or just avoid any kind of qualification entirely. Usually I'm ignored, of course. But this is a particularly unpleasant arrangement of words -- an inherent and obvious contradiction, whereby independence of bias is claimed in spite of, and in conjunction with, proof of bias. I wonder at the kinds of readers (of reviews or otherwise) who find comfort in such a disclaimer. ~~~ ghusbands It's a common idiom indicating straightforwardness. It does not imply a dishonesty in other sentences. ~~~ Jedd There's lots of words that mean straightforward (to be frank / blunt / candid / brutal / clear / straightforward / abrupt / etc) but honesty is something else entirely. The comparable phrase 'To tell the truth, ...' is even less ambiguous (yes, it's idiomatic, but that shouldn't let you ignore semantics). As for amazon reviews I rarely expect people to be especially honest -- if they self-assess as being extra honest despite swag, that's less compelling. ------ afandian What is this meant to show? I just get a Google homepage. EDIT: From a desktop browser it's a search results page for the given query. ~~~ ghusbands A search for: site:amazon.com "in exchange for my honest and unbiased review" ------ blairanderson well thats awkward. ~~~ raus22 "I received this product for free or at a discount in exchange for my honest and unbiased review." Free OR at a discount.... I like the, "I don't care about anything I write" disclaimer :) ------ leeoniya tangentially related: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1001250201](http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1001250201) [http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1001388321](http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1001388321) go to the actual product pages and read the full reviews, the excerpts on the above pages are weak sauce.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
When bad UX is good - _4bcr https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-05-02-when-bad-ux-is-good ====== eyelidlessness There is a wide range of intentionally "bad" design in vogue, where "bad" may be one or more of: \- Opaque, confusing, vague or misleading \- Garish, over the top or ugly \- Ironically reminiscent of older design trends that were embraced in earnest at the time In video games, "retro"/pixel art styles are wildly popular, sometimes because story and gameplay are more important to the creators, sometimes because it was seen as a nearly lost art. In web design, there have been several recent waves of "retro" trends embracing the styles once found on Geocities/Angelfire or even the original Myspace. There have also been several variants of "brutalist" design with oversized and unusually placed design elements, clashing or exceedingly drab colors. Such brutalist design has been embraced even by mainstream sites like Bloomberg, and in a lot of ways the novelty has worn off and it's just part of a resurgence of design diversity across the web after a long period of uniformity. In other GUI software, intensely oversaturated colors (like those found in iOS since its "flat" redesign) were mocked mercilessly when introduced but seem to have almost become commonplace. Like anti-humor, anti-aesthetic is sort of an oxymoron (as TFA points out). It turns out a lot of things that seem like they would be unappealing are actually quite appealing to at least a subset of the population. I am quite fond of a lot of "brutalist" design and find intensely oversaturated colors (in balance) pleasing to look at. ~~~ agumonkey to me pixel art revival ticks a few boxes: \- it's toyish, games got an adult tag since ps2/ps3 but to me games are games. \- it's abstract, the run for photorealism can jump over the shark too. I like to play with representations and not absolute recreation of a thing. When playing honestly, I don't even have the time to enjoy the specular reflections or whatever BDR shader you cooked. It's mostly impressive on still images. \- it makes people seek other ways to surprise you instead of relying on the usual ultra capable 3d engines that often do the same thing but different skins. ~~~ pier25 It's also convenient for low budget indie game devs. Pixel art is cheap to produce and 2d games are much easier to develop. ~~~ rezoner Quality pixelart is more expensive than 3D assets. You get all angles and bone based animation from a model while you have to draw every animation frame in every angle manually with 2D approach. On top of that a 3D world brings easier customisation and reusability of assets. ~~~ thebean11 Is quality pixel art more expensive than _quality_ 3D assets? I really don't think so. ~~~ chii Poor quality 3D assets still work OK. Poor quality pixel art is very ugly. So if you can only afford poor quality, 3D is much better. ------ folkhack This is a weird read. I think what the author means is that sometimes your design needs to "step out of the way" of someone else's design. This happened all the time for me in my early-20s doing band websites where there was usually album art, merch, logos, etc etc that were highly stylized... was it a bit of a challenge to deal with those assets? Sure... but when I realized that I just needed to "get out of the way" as the UX strategy things got easy. Frankly, looking at the site that is being discussed I would call it "good UX" for being simple and "getting out of the way" of the original artist's work (which is the point of the site anyway). I do criticize making me download 2-3Mb pictures when they should be thumbnails though - but really outside of that gaff it's a fine site. TLDR: Going on a "bad UX" rant feels disingenuous/silly when most designers would absolutely consider this good UX for getting out of the way of the original artist's work. ~~~ claes-magnus Your estimate is correct: I try to keep out of the way best I can. The covers are amazing if you ask me. It would be stupid to 'compete', and I am not even a designer. Besides, they did not want the 'professional' feel - they wanted the 'shop' described in the about page. As they add more content, the site will look like this shop and will be hard to use. This is why I use the oxymoron. But I guess I tried to make a more general point. Sometimes my feeling is that blogs, small businesses such as this one, well... pages, in general, are overly complicated. Both in terms of technology and interface. Overly complicated is unfortunately often spelled professional. And professional often means the quite opposite of personal. Headache Comix just want to post stuff. Actually, one comment was that they don't care if things, in the end, would be hard to find given way more content. And that the people reading the magazine expects this. No, even wants it. Like walking in a museum as they should be (in my view), paintings all of the place - not perfectly aligned, not perfect degrees and lots of whitespaces and so on. :) I don't know if this explanation helped to clarify my take here, but... yeah. I guess this is your point also, kind'a. And thank you btw! But I disagree with you about the 'silly' part. I actually think this is an important question. If it is true that some sites are overly complicated without good reasons, what then? :) Also, I make the case that the Web should house these sites as well as more 'professional' ones. That's the beauty of the Web if you ask me. ~~~ folkhack Before I respond to your points - I conflate UX and design in my mind as I see UX being a subset of design by definition. > Sometimes my feeling is that blogs, small businesses such as this one, > well... pages, in general, are overly complicated. You're not alone in this, and good design is achieved when you can't take anything else _away_ from something because the only components that are left are necessary to function. > Overly complicated is unfortunately often spelled professional. Ain't that the darn truth =\| > But I disagree with you about the 'silly' part. I actually think this is an > important question. If it is true that some sites are overly complicated > without good reasons, what then? As a design-capable engineer I think you're painting with too wide of a brush in this blog post... and even against your own interests/ego. Sorry to get preachy but I love engaging people on these topics for learning. You state: "and I am not even a designer" \- but you clearly are capable of solving a visual problem in a functional way. At some level, you are now a designer. And, frankly, it feels like you're dealing with some impostor syndrome here. Your post felt like it was weird with "bad UX is good" then positing a very good example of UX that problem solves in an appropriate way for both your client and your audience. You did an outstanding job of creating functional design, which is aesthetically pleasing, given the constraints of the web/the original art/etc. The simplicity of it all means that it is functional to both your client and your audience - _I can 't stress this enough._ If I were to write a post on your post it'd be entitled, "designer hits mark 100% for client/audience but isn't sure it's good design because we over- complicate UIX in 2020". Or, "Let's all stop being so pretentious because people are conflating simple functional design with bad design..." Sorry if I sound aggressive. It's just a damn good site and I refuse to even remotely label it as "bad" outside of your image optimization issue. > Also, I make the case that the Web should house these sites as well as more > 'professional' ones You're talking to someone who browses neocities daily because it's interesting so 100% agree! \--- All-in-all sorry if I was too harsh but I think you're being too harsh on yourself by writing this. As a 15 year design professional - You nailed it, and I'll be happy to crucify anyone who thinks otherwise. This is the definition of "good design". Period. Just - whatever you do. Keep doing what you're doing - we need more people with your same design ethos out here building great tech experiences that are respectful and tasteful like your Headache Comix site. <3 PS: Fix those darn images. <3 ~~~ claes-magnus Thanks! Will fix the images. Promise. Imposter syndrome. I feel it all the time as a programmer. But I don't if it's a necessarily bad state. Doesn't it matter how we relate to it? This is my view. Only if we give in, and don't try because we feel imposters it's a bad state. I am not saying it's a good state, but still - it's a state that can very productive! Well, another discussion... but it's a very interesting one. ~~~ folkhack Confidence will get you everywhere - be confident in your skills! People buy into people - not tech/resumes. I struggle with the same thing myself... SOME impostor syndrome is healthy and it sounds like you are handling it in good way =) ~~~ claes-magnus I agree. On the other hand, the world would be more... Nice... if confidence did not rule everything. But yeah, you're right ------ hirsin A favorite from a local pizza shop that opened recently [https://dinostomatopie.com/](https://dinostomatopie.com/) \- very much intentional. The design credit tucked in the bottom links to a nice writeup on making this site, but currently has an cert error - [https://www.madebyneversink.com/](https://www.madebyneversink.com/) ~~~ bradknowles Their pizza may be good, but if their website exhibits all the worst features of GeoCities from way back when, they are certainly never getting any business from me. You wouldn’t buy a vehicle made yesterday that had all the worst features of the original Ford Model T, would you? ~~~ mercer Your analogy would perhaps make sense if there's a documented causal link between a pizzeria's shitty website and the quality of their pizza. Did I miss some ground-breaking research on the matter? ------ tyingq Berkshire Hathaway's site is interesting. [https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/](https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/) ~~~ ReactiveJelly I'm not in on the joke... Why is there a Geico ad? With no affiliate parameters, even? ~~~ dave5104 > GEICO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway that provides > coverage for more than 24 million motor vehicles owned by more than 15 > million policy holders as of 2017. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEICO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEICO) ------ Legogris Nothing the author brings up is really “bad UX”. “Bad visual design” or “ugly”, perhaps (though I don’t think so), but User Experience is only very loosely correlated with “looking good”. If the end result is good for the user, it’s not bad UX. (Similarly, you can be a great graphics/web/UI designer but horrible at UX) ~~~ masswerk I do consent. It's actually about having an experience – as a user, which is why we may understand it as a user experience, intentionally a rather strong, opinionated one. ------ vulcan01 I’d argue that the ‘bad UX’ he talks about here _is_ good. It’s good in the sense that it fits with the theme. Just as <insert tech company here> has a modern, ‘good UX’ website, to convey that their products are cutting-edge, the ‘bad UX’ described here fits perfectly with the magazine’s theme. ~~~ claes-magnus Thanks. That was my intention, for good and bad perhaps. :) ------ bsanr >The only difference between the Web of old and the modern Web is that the wild Web sometimes is harder do find due to the instrumentality of the Google search engine, for good and bad. For a brief period of time, every human with an internet connection had access to a significant portion of the sum total of previously-preserved human knowledge. Web 2.5 has pushed us backwards. After several years now of being unable to easily find relevant results using Google, DDG, etc., I had the crushing realization that, near 30 and for the first time in my life, _less_ truly useful information was available to me, to the average person, than had been before. This should scare people. Powers that are obfuscating both their rationale and the mechanics of their means are making a play for our collective knowledge base. ~~~ resu_nimda Can you provide some examples of this? What types of information are you looking for? Personally I have not found this to be the case, for example I have effortlessly gained tons of information from instructional videos on YouTube that would have been much harder to obtain otherwise. Are you saying that informational resources are being forcefully taken down? Or that their rankings are artificially lowered in search engines? ~~~ fock search for some exotic aircrafts on google (e.g. "Polikarpov I-3", "Polikarpov Il-400") - all you will find is wikipedia, scale-model ads and the odd pinterest (which isn't usable without an account and often doesn't show what was advertised on the page). I saved some pics when I was building the scale model some years ago and I'm unable to find half of them in a google image search today after scrolling so far that google is putting in non-I-3 polikarpovs for like all pictures... Also I think there was at least one "book" on the type but I'm unable to find any in the first 10 google search pages (who does that today...). For the latter I've had "bookmarked" an altervista-blog full of pictures - it's still ranked high in pictures, but basically invisible in search. Duckduckgo is worse, it only has wikipedia-fakes... And after this small experiment I'm reall frightened and staring at my bookshelf for resolve, in parallel searching for the HN article where people recommend "civilization rebuilding" material... ------ jdnordy This is a good post and it came at a perfect time. I am currently developing my own personal website. The aesthetic of this one is in the ballpark of what I am shooting for. I am also planning on including a section for writing. I am curious thought, how do people suggest I create new articles and upload them to the webpage? Do I just write the article in html? Or should I create a form that I can submit posts through? Also, how should I store them? Should I store them as an html file or txt file in s3? I'm not too familiar with storage for blog posts. If anyone has some good site recommendations or references, I would appreciate it! ~~~ activatedgeek A highly relevant thing for your search is something known as the Jamstack [1]. People typically use "Static Site Generators" to create blogs which relies more on content than on fancy login flows or database connection flows. Those flows are still possible but Jamstack allows for a low bar high ceiling scenario when you are starting to build your own blog. To compare the endless list of static site generators, what they are and how you write posts, go to StaticGen [2]. My recommendation: \- Pick "Hugo" for a great out-of-the-box experience with fair flexibility. \- Pick "Gatsby" for virtually unlimited flexibility with React-based generator. [1]: [https://jamstack.org](https://jamstack.org) [2]: [https://www.staticgen.com](https://www.staticgen.com) ~~~ ficklepickle I second Hugo. It builds my personal site in 71ms. Coming from JS-land, it was so fast I thought it was broken. ------ jdeisenberg On this page: [http://headachecomix.com/about](http://headachecomix.com/about), the image headache1big.jpg is 1584 x 2153 and has a size of 3,594,579 bytes. This takes a long time to download on a slow connection. This is definitely bad UX, but I seriously doubt it was intentional. There’s deliberately bad aesthetic, which I don’t mind, but this is bad design because it wastes bandwidth. The image could be resized to the display size without losing its visual impact, and it would save users a lot of time. ~~~ claes-magnus A valid point. Will fix! The archive is intended to be like so by request. The idea would be caching. They count on people to clicking on all the covers. If it's this is the case or not, I don't know. But their target groups is very narrow on the other hand. This 'argumentation' is not valid though in the case with the picture at 'about'. And that's my fault. I will fix this. So yes, you're right. One could argue the same is true for the images at the 'about' page. But yeah... ------ deltron3030 >What I mean with an anti-aesthetics, is that they wanted the design to look good but not too good. They wanted a specific sentiment for the site and this sentiment excluded 'professionality'. The right word for it is appropriateness I think. Texture created by randomness is appropriate in this case, of the kind you find in actual comic stores that get packed with stuff organically over time. Or think of your room when you were young, it's an anti systemic human touch. ~~~ claes-magnus Yeah, and I can't disagree with anyone who enjoy deltron3030. ;) Deltron 3030 is an epic album! ------ _josh_ > They wanted a specific sentiment for the site and this sentiment excluded > 'professionality'. I think sometimes people can be less trusting of the "professionals", and instead prefer something a bit more independent. In a previous role we'd built some flashy new landing page + initial flow designs, highly polished, to replace some pretty ugly ones. Our customers were perhaps people who'd had bad experiences with some of the big brands. As everything at the company was very data-driven, we put the new designs live in an A/B test with the existing ones. It didn't take long to get the statistical significance to prove that the old scrappy designs converted way better. That was an eye-opening for me; Always done A/B testing where I can since then. ------ simonw My favourite example of bad UX that worked is MySpace profile customization. Customizing your MySpace profile was done by pasting chunks of CSS into one of the fields on the "edit profile" page. It was an accidental "feature" because they didn't understand XSS - but they added filtering and kept it. This is a TERRIBLE way of offering customization. But it worked, because it encouraged people to share tips. Having a custom profile became a status symbol, and friends would help each other figure out how to do it. It occupied this weird space where a difficult flow with a desirable reslt encouraged social participation and gave people a huge sense of achievement if they could figure it out. ------ aasasd [https://lingscars.com](https://lingscars.com) is one of the epitomes of this sentiment. (The mobile site is very different, best to see the desktop one for the full experience.) ------ battery_cowboy Anyone anyone says 'aesthetic', I instantly feel like they don't care about usability or UX. I use reader mode most of the time on the web, for almost every page, and I've never thought that I wanted to see some flashy colors, fancy fonts, or moving/animated elements. When I read an article, I want to get the content immediately, in a dark theme, with a readable font and size/spacing. Instead, i get 3 popups, 2 banners i can't close, a bright white background, some crap webfont, several MB of ads and social media garbage, etc. The web has _devolved_ from what it was without the 'flash'. ~~~ identity0 Good for you. Most people, however, care a ton about the aesthetics of a webpage. And most people don’t even know what reader mode is. Also, not sure how your second paragraph is at all related to the article. ~~~ battery_cowboy Any citations to your claim that most people care 'a ton'? I think most people would prefer simpler stuff over the flash if they could see the benefits but i have no proof, so i won't claim it's a fact. The reader mode note was simply to say I prefer the text only style. The second paragraph is there because this article is talking about a simple web page, and I'm complaining that more sites don't do simple styles. I'm not sure why you had to be so condescending about my comment, maybe you're a designer? ------ saagarjha (The actual title doesn’t phrase it as a question.) ~~~ claes-magnus You're right! Sorry, missed this. :) It should not be a question mark in the title. There is none in my post ------ mikewhy A good few years ago now, I was working with an illustrator/artist developing a few websites for bands like Cuff The Duke, PS I Love You, and Bahamas. Nothing was shared between sites, lots of cutting up pngs for link headers, cryptic navigation, all that stuff I have to avoid doing now. It was probably the most fun I had working with a designer. ------ hnarn One of my favorite UX anecdotes is how apparently Snapchat is purposely made to be confusing to keep older people from using it. I'm not sure if it's ever been verified but anecdotal evidence would seem to suggest that if that was the plan, it has worked. ------ gitgud > _" The Web is built to house both megacities and small taverns. And we know > it works just fine."_ This is a great analogy for the web, hopefully it will remain true without succumbing to authoritarian control. ~~~ claes-magnus Thanks. :) This makes me worried as well. Even though I know this, I always tend to, at the moment, forget the limitations some countries have. China, Russia, Iran, and others. There such tendencies, or views only (so far), in Europe where I live, that seems to think this is a good thing. Not as extreme perhaps. But like: in relation to values x, y, z the content and values a, b, c are bad and because they are bad they should be removed. And no, not speaking about things like child pornography. The difference between liberal values in general and others is that liberal stance (interpreted very broadly) allows criticism of the liberal stance, while we know from history that totalitarian states and ideologies such as communism, fascism, and so on solve things with bans and by burning books. I know what kind of world I want my children to get older in... I'd rather have them interested in communism at 15 and radical. That they have the possibility to browse the Web for texts on communism than an authoritarian control saying communism (or some other ideology) is wrong and removing such sites. And the Web is best aligned with a liberal stance. I write more about my view here: [https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-04-28-the-web-is- ama...](https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-04-28-the-web-is-amazing). But I want to add - even though I've been active in the Swedish liberal movement for a while - that market economy when too far also threatens the Web. ------ identity0 I like this post a lot. It’s rambly, but you can tell that the author has been mulling it over for a while and it just feels very personal. It feels like I just got a glimpse of the workings of the author’s mind. ~~~ claes-magnus Thank you! ------ dkdk8283 Craigslist stands as a solid example. It’s been the same forever, and I’m glad. It’s simple, I already know how to use it, etc. Kudos to them for not falling into the productivity trap of constantly changing UIs. ------ jimmaswell I can't believe such a simple site somehow ended up with node and markdown thrown in. Why would PHP or even plain HTML not be sufficient? ~~~ claes-magnus Markdown is way easier to use for people who don't like technology. And I don't PHP. Perhaps it would've been better but I did not suffer from writing 30 lines of code. However, I guess it would be possible to still combine Markdown with PHP? But even though you are skeptical, I think most people (especially people who are not familiar with technology) prefer writing Markdown... ------ busymom0 Shouldn't this be called bad UI and not bad UX? Actually, not even "bad UI". More like "rough design". ~~~ claes-magnus I don't think so, but perhaps you're right. UI is included in UX as one of many considerations. Depending on what consideration should be emphasized we may need strong UI, or we can solve things like I do on my blog (herebeseaswines.net) - I deliberately put "about" and the "archive" at the bottom. :) In my view aesthetics is a more problematic term. But it is very useful, in aesthetics we have arguments on we have arguments on why things are (as someone say they are). In this, we have to have many considerations. For instance, I try to justify the aesthetics of blog here: [https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-04-21-the- aesthetics...](https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-04-21-the-aesthetics- of-my-blog) ------ netdur any ‘bad UX’ is a 'good UX' if people actually can use it. ------ ah-zeep i like how the contact emails resolve to "404", nice touch ~~~ claes-magnus Haha! I fixed this one straight away. :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Version Control and Higher Education - jsiarto https://medium.com/education-today/78dc8e3f66f1 ====== greenyoda I haven't met any developer who was incapable of learning a version control system on the job. Why should universities spend the student's _very expensive_ class time to learn about this? That time would be much better spent learning about fundamental knowledge such as algorithm design rather than learning about a specific tool that could be obsolete by the time the student graduates. Also, in a first semester course on programming, learning version control is a distraction from all the other things you need to learn to write a working program, like programming language syntax and building a mental model of how program execution works. (Not every CS student gets to college already knowing this stuff!) Which is not to say that universities shouldn't make these tools available and encourage their use for class projects. But that doesn't require them to "integrate version control into their curriculum" like the article suggests. The documentation for git is freely available on the web and anyone who wants to can read it on their own time and ask their fellow students about it. The larger philosophical question here is whether higher education is a vocational program for creating good "team players" who are productive with the current technology on the first day of their employment, or rather to provide an education that teaches them fundamental knowledge and how to learn new things on their own. Side note: I've taught a first semester CS course in a well-known university, so I have some experience with the difficulties that even some very smart students face while trying to pick up the basic concepts. Adding in version control would have made it harder for some of them to successfully complete the course. ~~~ genetik > Why should universities spend the student's very expensive class time to > learn about this? To turn this around, why should businesses pay former students to learn about this on the job instead of paying them to be productive? From my experience, there's a large number of developers (both young and old) out there who are very capable programmers, but seem to not spend any of their spare time learning things on their own after leaving school. It's insanely frustrating having to teach new junior developers how to properly use a tool like git when they've never even been exposed to version control, all while they're supposed to be productive. It really can become a waste of company resources. Are they capable of learning version control on the job? In most cases, absolutely, given enough time and buffer for mistakes. However, I believe, as part of professional development in the field they chose, it should be something they learn outside of work and preferably before getting the job. University seems like a very valid place to at least introduce and encourage use of version control systems early on, if not at the very least in a higher level course. ~~~ greenyoda _"To turn this around, why should businesses pay former students to learn about this on the job instead of paying them to be productive?"_ Because it's expected that entry-level employees don't have a lot of experience. It's even possible that these young people have taught themselves all sorts of useful things on their own already, but haven't gotten around to teaching themselves version control or the particular database system or development environment that your company uses. I think it's a better investment to hire someone who is smart and a fast learner than it is to hire someone who happens to know the particular tools you currently use. In the software field, we've somehow decided that it's normal for entry-level employees to have lots of practical experience. But in most other jobs, that's not the case: they learn at their employers' expense. How many new hires on Wall Street have ever used a bond trader's workstation? How many newly-hired railroad employees have ever driven a train? How many newly-hired lawyers have ever represented a client in court? ------ andrewflnr One way or another, I feel they should come out of college knowing something about version control, but not in the first class. I can easily believe greenyoda that trying to learn programming and, say, git at the same time would be a disaster. I'm tempted to say you should just warn them that at some point it's going to be part of their class workflow, but I don't think that would fly bureaucratically. At the same time, it would be weird to just have a class in "version control"; it only makes sense in the context of another project. So maybe make it part of a lab-style class, with a focus on individual instruction, and RTFMing. Then I get to my internship and have to learn Team Foundation Server... Sheesh. ~~~ jsiarto This is the case in the classes I teach. We use Git as the primary vehicle for submitting assignments and tracking work. I usually spend the first week introducing students to the Linux shell and interacting with Git and Github. ~~~ kux Why not assign something like <http://try.github.io/levels/1/challenges/1> as homework instead? ------ Kristories I strongly agree. I met new graduates and some developers, 60% who don't understand about version control system. ~~~ tacticus I also agree. I've met university lecturers who didn't know version control more recent than RCS existed. ------ jarofgreen I blogged a response: [http://jarofgreen.co.uk/2013/05/why-programmers-should- learn...](http://jarofgreen.co.uk/2013/05/why-programmers-should-learn-git/) Basically, I think it's important to teach Git (or other Version Control) to students because what you are really teaching them is good development practices. These take time to learn and get used to and Uni's absolutely should be teaching them. The whole issue of "students should be able to teach themselves git" is a bit of a red herring, IMHO. ------ klancaster One of the classes I teach is at the senior undergrad level, and they have been thrilled that I have them use version control. Many have commented that they wish that they had known about git in earlier classes, as it would have saved them when they screwed up their programs. ~~~ jarofgreen This comment is so good I quoted it with citation, hope you don't mind. [http://jarofgreen.co.uk/2013/05/why-programmers-should- learn...](http://jarofgreen.co.uk/2013/05/why-programmers-should-learn-git/) ------ gnuvince At the University of Montreal, one teacher introduced Subversion in a Software Engineering class and another Git in a compiler class. Version control _is_ taught at university, it just depends which university. ------ Pxtl Oh, I thought that was going to be about code written by education people. Actually, it's a larger problem - I'm constantly shocked that _anybody_ who writes documents for a living (code or otherwise) is relying on the filesystem. My wife's a teacher where her department pools their lesson plans and tests and whatnot and I'm constantly harassing her about the importance of setting up some kind of VC to keep track of all that crap. ------ stevewilhelm The git log could be a gold mine for researchers studying how CS students learn CS concepts and programming techniques. It could also be used to detect cheating. ~~~ snogglethorpe commit d6abf62d1981a6c16029d10a5ecbe0c5c494322b Author: Biff Joe <[email protected]> Date: Thu Mar 28 12:21:11 2013 +0000 Change copyrights to my name (woo, dodged a bullet there!). commit 9c66001752f643e8f2a3453662352cf26402cee3 Author: Biff Joe <[email protected]> Date: Thu Mar 28 12:03:01 2013 +0000 Change variable names. commit e9b9a740ca52e6fc2843d2d5aed2865c56ace45a Author: Biff Joe <[email protected]> Date: Thu Mar 28 11:39:44 2013 +0000 Import Nigel's code. ------ 6d0debc071 This is like those mandatory undergrad computing courses where they teach you to use word by typing into an open document. If you can't figure it out with a few minutes and access to the help files, maybe computers just aren't your thing. ------ stevewilhelm I feel many of my upper division projects would have benefitted from having the ability to branch and try a new approaches safe in the knowledge they could be easily abandoned if they failed to bear fruit. ------ jgh This page also doesn't scroll with chrome on my nexus 7 ~~~ asynchronous13 Same, I'm wondering what kind of bug makes that happen. ------ abraininavat Who are these CS students who need their hands held to such a degree? A simple, _You should consider using version control for your projects. Try git or subversion. It will come in handy later in your career_ at the beginning of an introductory programming class should be all that's necessary. A CS curriculum doesn't teach students how to touch-type either, nor should it. I'd suggest to people doing hiring that the candidates who haven't even heard of version control (which some other posters have mentioned interviewing) are ones that you don't want to hire. You should be glad to have the easy selection criterion. ~~~ jsiarto I agree completely, but I also teach non-CS students mostly in design. If version control is a foreign concept to some CS students, it's not even on the radar of most of my design group.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Pirate Bay - Take-Down Notices from Apple, Microsoft, Dreamworks and more. - aolczak http://thepiratebay.se/legal ====== stephenr they are very big in the letters back to lawyers/companies - do you think they're still so "f*ck you, we are invincible" from their jail cells? ~~~ ChuckMcM Well since their humorous responses go back to the early 2000's I suspect they have a bit more experience at this. One of two things are required to enforce laws across sovereign nations, a co- operative government or a occupying military force sufficient to displace the indigenous military. While the US may have the latter, they don't have the former.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I Am The Guy Getting Screwed By The Affordable Care Act - csdrane http://kiddynamitesworld.com/horses-mouth-guy-getting-screwed-affordable-care-act/ ====== gee_totes This is a confusing article to read because the author never makes clear _why_ he is the guy getting screwed; what his particular circumstances are, how they are different from other groups of people who might be benefiting from ACA, and what other groups of people similar to him might be getting screwed as well. Without this context, I don't know what to take away from this article. ~~~ dalke To be fair, it's not a stand-alone article but rather one in a series of posts. In an earlier one the author wrote "I'm in that tiny minority that already buys his own individual coverage and will lose access to doctors and hospitals I currently use. I'm in that tiny minority who won't have a hospital within 20 miles of his home."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
28,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Crisis - doener https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html ====== beamatronic There's enough different people in different industries, counting various things, that you can't really hide the truth for very long. If you have enough different kinds of metrics, you can paint a very clear picture of trends.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask YC: Anyone want to make a website? - breck I'm bored. I've got some skills. Ideas? ====== mattgauger Boredom relieving sites?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
HN opinion: NetKernel - mml http://www.1060research.com/netkernel/ ====== mml Was recently asked to provide an opinion on it. I don't have one yet, but am leaning towards "perfect for the architectural astronaut in need of further layers of abstraction, which is, of course, the obvious solution to every problem" Was curious if HNers had any exposure to this architecture?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Thirst for stories that vilify Muslims has eroded basic principles of journalism - DanBC https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2018/09/the-times-muslim-christian-child-foster-care-tower-hamlets-court-ruling-ipso ====== DanBC One of theproblems in this case is the strict privacy given to children in family courts in England. More about that from the excellent Transparency Project: [http://www.transparencyproject.org.uk/the-muslim-foster- care...](http://www.transparencyproject.org.uk/the-muslim-foster-carer-case- the-final-chapter/) The Times reporting was severely distorted. More about that here: [https://www.byline.com/column/68/article/2281](https://www.byline.com/column/68/article/2281) ~~~ baud147258 Regarding the muslim foster care story, since you're apparently better informed than I, do you know where's the dad in that story? ~~~ DanBC Sorry, I don't know. UK social services should strongly prefer the father over a foster placement, so if he was around they should have allowed the children to stay with him. They can only remove the children from him if "nothing else will do" to keep the children safe. Having said that,there has been a worrying rise in child protection proceedings recently.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Which is the best laptop for a programmer in the market today? - saching90 ====== LeoSolaris "Best" is a very subjective term. Depends on what kind of programming you're doing, what works well in my opinion would be: Web dev? Something with a big enough screen that you're comfy and a keyboard you like. Application programmer? Add a good processor to compile the code quickly, a solid state hard drive, and a large amount of ram. Think "More than usually advertized" and you're in a good ballpark. Game dev? Stick in an excellent graphics card that is under a year old on top of the last two answers. For the last two answers, that is, of course, if you want the compile times to be as short as possible so you can be as productive as possible. If you're just hacking around and learning any of these, then get a good middle of the line laptop that is ergonomically pleasing to you. For learning, is it more about budget than anything else. Single biggest thing to look for is the solid state drive. Technically speaking, one can code with a pen and paper, though doing that is usually called math. Anything more than that is just going to make the process smoother and faster. ------ ressaid1 macbook pro	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Five lists of six things about Rust - mmphosis https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/214016.html ====== jumperjake To me, the biggest improvement Rust brings to the table is its sane defaults. This, coupled with its type system, makes handling outcomes something you opt out of. As I continue to use of Rust, I keep finding myself avoiding `if` statements in favor of the `match` statement for this reason alone. ~~~ hermanradtke And then you start pipelining all the match statements... Rust almost starts to look functional. ------ StefanKarpinski I know this doesn't add much, but I love everything Graydon Hoare writes, especially about programming languages. ------ cpeterso > Six ways Rust is fundamentally different from how it started > ... > 3\. > LLVM: strengths (amazing optimization) and weaknesses (narrow semantics) Did Rust originally use a custom code generator instead of LLVM? ~~~ pcwalton Sure did. I think it's still in the git history, boot/back/ or something.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon.com’s secret retail empire - aj http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/08/amazon-com-multibrand-retailer/ ====== jonafato How is this in any way a secret? Sure, they don't go and shutdown sites and disrupt services for months while integrating acquired companies like Google does, but the bottom of the amazon.com home page lists their sites. Amazon buys sites that do well independently, and they do it publicly. For some anecdotal evidence, see the kindle for sale on woot.com when Amazon bought them. ~~~ corin_ "Secret" being a hyperbole, they meant "little known". I'm betting that if you surveyed the general public, few would be able to name even one of these other brands. ~~~ lukifer Arggh, language dilution is frustrating. I wonder if someday "secret" will colloquially come to mean "public information", similar to what happened to the word "literally". :P ~~~ lepht Whoa whoa, your 'language dilution' train stops here. Secret's latin root is secernere, _literally_: > without; aside, by itself Also, no complaining about language degradation while also using emoticons ;) ------ lepht > Only Endless.com, a shoes-and-handbags site launched in-house, and Small > Parts are “powered by Amazon.com,” a status which means Amazon.com customers > can use their accounts on those sites. I know at least Audible also has this functionality, so it's pretty safe to assume this isn't a comprehensive list or portrayal of Amazon's second party brands and sites.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Preview your website on iPad - pmattos http://ipadpeek.com/ ====== bkrausz All it does is load your site in an iFrame...it does nothing with user agents or zoom. Basically the same thing as resizing your browser. ------ avgarrison This is a neat little app, however I was able to see flash!! ------ TheBranca18 It doesn't use the UserAgent either. ------ fisadev hey, this has already been posted! Repeat my comment: it supports flash. FAIL ------ forgotmypasswd uh, looks nice, except that ipadpeek supports flash, but the ipad does not	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Marshall Islands replaces the US dollar with its own cryptocurrency - vinnyglennon https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/23/17384608/marshall-islands-cryptocurrency-us-dollar-usd-currency ====== jonfelske Will be interesting to watch this become a trend.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The View from Olympus: A 4GW Impeachment? By William S Lind - ScottFree http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/guest-article-the-view-from-olympus-a-4gw-impeachment/ ====== a3n > The military problem is really quite simple, and need involve virtually no > shooting or destruction. You just put the cities under siege and wait for > the starving people to come out. It won’t take long. WTF?!? And then what do you do with all these blue city Democrats? (They must "obviously" be Democrats, right?) Put them in camps? Taunt them? Re-educate them? Final solution them? All these people talking about civil war (I hear it occasionally at truck stops) remind me of a dog chasing a car. OK, you caught it. Did you "win?" What are you going to do with it? What's your _plan_?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Pizza Effect - polm23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_effect ====== svat Wasn't expecting to see this here. I created this article about 10 years ago, when I was a lot more active on Wikipedia. Every time I remember this article I keep expecting it to get deleted sooner or later, but somehow it's made it this long. Mostly a matter of finding and adding enough references that mention the phrase I guess. (Some of the recent additions don't…) One thing I'll point out is that the effect as originally described is about things that always existed in their place of origin, but became more popular / accepted (improved in reputation) after gaining a warm reception/prestige elsewhere. (The examples here of things popularly associated with X culture despite not originating in place X are interesting too, though!) Edit: Sorry for a tangential aside, but I just looked into the history of this article, and IMO it's representative of many Wikipedia articles (and not how either the general public or Wikipedia regulars think articles get written): • Here are the first 3 years, where basically things were cleaned up and a couple of examples added, but the article was still substantially in its original (poor) form: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pizza_effect&type...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pizza_effect&type=revision&diff=581515546&oldid=367842361) • Then a single edit by another user substantially “refactored” it and cleaned it up: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=585383004&oldid=58...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=585383004&oldid=581515546&title=Pizza_effect&type=revision) • Another 6 years where nothing much changes fundamentally, except for a few additional examples: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=943600315&oldid=58...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=943600315&oldid=585383004&title=Pizza_effect&type=revision) The article has 102 revisions, and all of them have contributed to its present form… who would we say “wrote” it? See the late Aaron Swartz's “Who Writes Wikipedia?” at [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia) ~~~ ronenlh Swartz's article mentioned at the end is interesting, and contradicts Wales' study, who measured by number of edits per contributor instead of number of contributed words per contributor. "When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing things like changing the name of a category across the entire site — the kind of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it’s the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content." ------ franciscop There are a couple of those I know: \- White sangria. "Sangria" literally means "bloodletting", and has been traditionally made from red wine. But white sangria has become popular overseas and with tourists, and now many Spanish restaurants also offer white sangria. \- Eating paella at night. Traditionally in Valencia, the paella was to be eaten only at lunch time and never at dinner time. This is because it's rice- based, so it's too heavy to go to sleep afterwards and dinner time is fairly late. But a lot of tourists want to eat it at night, so restaurants serve it anytime. There's even light joking among locals when seeing someone eating paella at night "I'm sure they are tourists". I'd guess countries where there's a lot of tourism have a lot more of this pizza effect than others. The inverse would be "Yoshoku" in Japanese, which is heavily adapting the foreign dishes to local tastes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Dshoku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Dshoku) ~~~ IanCal > it's too heavy to go to sleep afterwards I find this very interesting as I'd class heavy meals as exactly the kind of thing that would leave you lethargic and sleepy after eating. ~~~ peterburkimsher I find it interesting because I thought people have a siesta after lunch. ~~~ plafl Lot of people avoid it precisely because of indigestion. The really good siesta is before lunch. ------ DoreenMichele I've largely stopped trying to say anything like "I do x because of y cultural influence." Like: "My mom's German, so..." I often have no way of knowing if my mom does that thing because it's a widespread thing in German culture or if that's just a thing my mom does and it's got little or nothing to do with her being born and raised in Germany. (I've run into Germans who do the opposite of something my mom does that I thought was representative of German culture and been told their way was the norm in Germany. I threw my hands in the air and made my peace with "not everything my mom does is representative of most Germans.") We routinely think X person is from Y culture, so X person is representative of Y culture and it's frequently just absolutely not true at all. Fascinating that this fact leads to the works of essentially cultural outcasts coming home again and being embraced as "one of us" and someone we are proud to claim as a representative of our culture when they were originally "that loser we want nothing to do with, so they had to leave the country to succeed." ~~~ rfrey The one thing I learned from the Ukrainian and Polish elders in my life: the people in the next village are idiots and have no idea how to make proper pierogis. ~~~ fit2rule I have a theory about language, which I've formulated by living all over the world for 50 years. It goes like this: If you have two villages, maybe separated by a lake, or by a mountain, and one village has goats, the other has sheep - or maybe one of these villages has brown goats and the other just white goats - or maybe there are a couple of cows in one and a coal mine at the other - then it doesn't matter how close these villages are, they will fight for their own dialect, which will eventually become a new language. (Austria problems.) ------ mrspeaker I overheard a US coworker explain that "Australians say 'dollar-y-doos' instead of 'dollars'" \- because they'd heard me say it a bunch. But I got it from The Simpsons making fun of Australians... so now it's kind of actually true. (there's still no truth about Fosters Beer or "Bloomin' onions" though!) ~~~ ConsiderCrying I'd wager the same is true for the "drop bears" meme, right? I've seen it on Reddit and trying to google it turned into a rabbit hole of Reddit threads that all eventually resulted in "it's a joke, duh" but with enough time passing, I'm sure some Australians have picked it up as a joke in real life. ~~~ whatusername drop bears pre-date reddit by decades.. ~~~ ConsiderCrying Oh, didn't realize that, sorry. Point still applies, though, I suppose - an internet meme ascending its initial uses to become widespread. ------ scott_s My personal favorite example of this is when any character in The Simpsons, other than Homer, says _D 'oh!_ They don't say it because Homer said it. They say it because Homer said it, then _our entire culture started saying it_ , so it's only natural for other characters in the show to say it. ~~~ krallja Dan Castellaneta told Conan that the script is written “d’oh” when anyone other than Homer says it. Homer says “(annoyed grunt).” ~~~ mikewhy It's even baked into at least one episode title: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala$Annoyed_Grunt$cious) ------ mirekrusin My favourite is salmon sushi which was introduced by norvegian marketing/business guy in 80s and now it's pretty much a symbol of japanese sushi. ~~~ dkdbejwi383 Same thing with Bailey’s (the whiskey cream liquor). It was invented by a marketing consultancy in London’s Soho. About as Irish as bratwurst. ~~~ seanhunter It's made with Irish whiskey. It's pretty definitely more Irish than bratwurst. ~~~ dkdbejwi383 You can make bratwurst with Irish pork ️ ------ avelis Another good example not listed is the burrito. The burrito in the US isn't a thing in Latin America. However, it is pinned as being Latin food vs Latin- American food. I guess the disqualifying difference is most don't travel to Latin America looking for an amazing burrito. ~~~ p1necone That's only really true because the areas of the USA where the Burrito is common were part of Mexico until very recently. Burritos are definitely a Mexican invention. ~~~ BigBubbleButt > That's only really true because the areas of the USA where the Burrito is > common were part of Mexico until very recently. Texas and California were made states over 150 years ago, and Arizona and New Mexico were made states over 100 years ago. In the scheme of American history, this is not "very recently" at all. [https://www.vox.com/2015/5/1/8525335/burrito-history- inventi...](https://www.vox.com/2015/5/1/8525335/burrito-history-invention- america) In fact, it seems plausible (if not probable) the burrito was invented after all of those states became part of the US. ~~~ readarticle In the scheme of human history it’s very recently, doubly so for an isolated population distributed across massive swathes of land that are far away from DC and DF alike. ~~~ BigBubbleButt It's very recent in terms of human history, but we're talking about American and Mexican history. The American Southwest wasn't settled by Mexicans until ~400 years ago. ------ lizardking I wonder if there is a growing influence from the American craft brew scene back onto Europe. Last time I was in Italy I went to a place that made their own "American IPA". ~~~ fnord123 I'm not a beer historian but I think the American craft beer scene is a 'thing' because home brewing was legalized in 1978 and it took this long for a fabric of breweries in the US to develop to mirror what already existed in Europe or any other country. I think the influence of American IPA is quite limited and only adding to the selection rather than altering how others do anything ("influence"). That said, Duvel has a triple hop beer which tastes awful, so maybe I'm wrong and the hop fetishism is contagious. ~~~ thequux Duvel triple hop is, indeed, vile, but there are other Belgian breweries that are taking on the IPA and doing an outstanding job of it; Brussels Beer project comes to mind immediately, but I'm sure that there are others. I'd take a BBP Delta IPA or Dark Sister over nearly any American IPA. That said, the IPA style was originally British; it's called an "India" pale ale because they added a ton of extra hops to preserve the beer well enough to make the trip to India. It then got brought to the US, who picked a metric (IBU) and optimized it beyond repair, and the American take on IPA has certainly made it back to the UK (e.g., a good half of Brewdog's repertoire) ~~~ fnord123 They stopped making Dark Sister. And that was more in line with an English Porter. ------ 1-6 Psy - Gangnam Style is a classic example of the pizza effect. Koreans like Psy before his hit and he was just a simple comedic singer. He's a legend now. ------ Angostura This one surpised me: > The Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City was inspired by an event in the > James Bond film Spectre, which was fictional at the time of the film's > production ~~~ jordigh Yep! Mexican here, I added that example! And I think it's really cool! Day of the Dead has an interesting, very modern history. The celebration keeps evolving, traditions being born before our very eyes. I'm pretty sure the coolness of skull face-painting in DotD is also a recent foreign influence, but I can't find a clear source for it. I just remember the first time I saw it was in 2008 during a Halloween party and I thought, wow, that's like the sugar skulls from Day of the Dead, cool! I didn't recognise it as a tradition but as something new. ~~~ yellowapple Day of the Dead is one of my favorite holidays for very similar reasons. It's fun watching it evolve and expand in real time year after year. It's that perfect intersection of novelty and tradition, and all the while reframes mortality in a refreshingly positive light. And besides, who doesn't love dead bread? ------ jedberg There's a whole bunch of Chinese food that was invented in America that is now being imported back to China. Basically all the deep fried items. ~~~ 4cao Other than "General Tso's chicken" and "Chop suey," what else do you have in mind? ~~~ jedberg Fried wontons, orange/lemon chicken, Crab rangoon, egg foo young. All of which seem to be available in China now. ------ jdtang13 Yep. It's so true when it comes to Indian philosophy. There is a ton of revisionism and strange understandings where people pretend an idea invented in 1800s is ancient. It's also somewhat true for China and Japan. ~~~ throwaway17_17 Do you have any quick sources for the Indian perspective. I was arguing with a co-worker the other day about some of the, to my mind, odd statement they had made about Vedic practices and yoga, but didn’t have a concrete citation ready. ~~~ jdtang13 Advaita Vedanta is the keyword to use for most modern day, Neoplatonistic Hindu philosophy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta) My understanding is that, although this teaching was technically formulated in the 8th century AD, it became popular and gained widespread resurgence in the West around 19th century. Hare Krishna movement and Theosophical Society come to mind. My guess, as a hobbyist historian, is that most everyday Hindus practiced normal, layperson devotions to humanized gods rather than truly believing in a universal soul that underlies the entire universe. Basically, any time someone tells you that Indians and Chinese people believe in "philosophy" rather than "religion", they are probably bringing in a Western orientalist bias. Actually, unsurprisingly, Eastern people are actually just religious. There is no woke philosophy going on except for the elite scholars and religious monks. ------ bristleworm I've got a question regarding the Pizza story: where in italy is "american" pizza supposed to be considered a delicacy? ~~~ timendum Answer: nowhere ------ thedogeye What about Apple buying Next to get the operating system created by Steve Jobs? ------ chinesempire Except that pizza has never been a poorman's food in Italy, it was a kind of bread. Still mostly is a popular inexpensive food, in many places is also a traditional food, not a delicacy as the article says. The only contribution to pizza toppings from America has been tomato, that arrived to Europe after Cristoforo Colombo went there, specifically in Central America. Before that pizza was white, but not less flavored, we have historical documents that date back pizza before the year 1000 in a place in Italy (Gaeta) which is well known for its olives (and consequently olive oil) mozzarella cheese and fresh vegetables, besides having one of the most idyllic seaside in Italian's west coast. Pizza in North America has never been a thing before late XIX century. ------ Yhippa > The Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City was inspired by an event in the > James Bond film Spectre, which was fictional at the time of the film's > production. I had no idea. I honestly thought this had been going on for years prior to that movie. ~~~ 205guy That intrigued me as well, so I went to read some Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead)). Day of the Dead is a southern Mexican celebration that evolved from the assimilation of native culture (Maya and meso-American) into the Catholic calendar (all Saints/all Souls days). It wasn't celebrated much in Mexico City and northern Mexico until recently, pushed on in part by the government celebrating more indigenous culture and creating a national holiday, and then the movie. ~~~ yellowapple Sounds a lot like how Yule and Saturnalia (among others) got rolled into what we now call Christmas. ------ Ididntdothis At least the Italians took pizza and made it into a very good dish compared to the US version which is way overloaded, cheesy and greasy :) ~~~ anthonypasq Anyone that trashes US pizza has no idea what they are talking about. Dominoes is not American pizza as much as McDonald's are not American burgers. Go to an actual good pizzeria in New York and if you still complain about it, im going to assume you are lying. ~~~ zoonosis Just an single data point, but this Italian thinks pizza from Naples is way better than pizza from New York [1]. [1] [https://youtu.be/OUo4MUSY0v4?t=149](https://youtu.be/OUo4MUSY0v4?t=149) ~~~ RandallBrown Kind of a weird video. It basically comes down to "This isn't Neopolitan Pizza so it's not as good." Neopolitan pizza has a whole association that certifies restaurants and Lombardi's isn't on that list. It's no surprise that the pizza will a different style. It's also pretty funny he mentions that in Italy they fold their pizza, when that is practically _the_ defining characteristic of New York style pizza. ~~~ KozmoNau7 Neapolitan pizza is one thing, Roman pizza is another, and much more akin to New York-style pizza. One type is made in big rectangular pans and sold by weight, it's similar to Focaccia. There is also a round style that is thinner and crispier, which is the best IMO. Fold and eat. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_pizza](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_pizza) While I do enjoy a good old-fashioned Neapolitan pizza, I much prefer the Roman style, specifically the round thin style and by extension the NY style. ------ chrysoprace This makes me wonder if there's a similar term for things that are created outside of the country that it's associated with that doesn't get reintegrated into said country. For example, I (a Danish person) had to ask my Australian friends what an "Apple Danish" was as it's similar to, but quite unlike anything you'd find in Denmark. ~~~ microtherion When we moved back to Switzerland, we encountered an example of this: During the Mad Cow epoch, alternatives to beef like kangaroo and ostrich meat became somewhat popular here. So in a Mexican restaurant in Zürich, we saw "Kangaroo Fajitas" on the menu, a dish that has the distinction of being unknown in both Mexico and Australia. ~~~ chrysoprace That's really interesting! Always good to see unique new fusions. ------ mc32 Something maybe related but different is cultural divergence and ossification among home country and emigrant cultures and language. Often the culture or language in the home country progresses but the emigrant version resists change or changes slower. But it also depends on degree of assimilation by emigrants to the dominant culture in their adopted countries. ~~~ joshdick There's a good example of this in my South Philadelphia neighborhood: The Italian-Americans here speak Italian with the accent of a southern Italian from a century ago, frozen in time. Italian accents have progressed in Italy over that time, but not among the immigrant communities here. ~~~ RandallBrown I've read articles claiming the American accent is closer to what the British sounded like at the founding of the United States than what they sound like now. ~~~ tidenly Things like the spelling of cheque are prime examples of this. We mock the Americans for their simplistic spelling, but in actuality we took "cheque" after America had split off already in an attempt to sound more French and eloquent. American drawl accent is also closer to older English than lots of modern English accents. ------ btilly My favorite example is that Caesar salad was invented in Mexico by an Italian named Caesar Cardini. ------ csours Can you think of any of these for programming languages? ~~~ officemonkey Ruby became far more popular in the US. Especially after Rails kicked adoption into high gear. ~~~ viklove Rails didn't take a good thing and make it popular. It took a shit thing and gave people a reason to put up with it. There's a reason no one uses Ruby outside of Rails... ~~~ twic Most Rubyists i know have the opposite opinion - Ruby was great until the great unwashed horde of Rails devs showed up. ------ DonHopkins They have New York Pizza in Amsterdam. How long until they re-re-import it as Old New York Pizza in New Amsterdam? [https://www.newyorkpizza.nl/](https://www.newyorkpizza.nl/) ------ troymc If you like learning about the history (and science) of the world's foods, check out the podcast _Gastropod_. [https://gastropod.com/](https://gastropod.com/) ------ pmarreck Could this possibly happen at an individual/personal level too, such as when an actor does a role that they get completely typecast by? ------ mgraczyk Interesting and good to have a name for this thing. This seems to happen all the time in tech as engineers and ideas bounce between big companies. Some examples that come to mind: * Stories from Snapchat to Instagram, back to Snapchat with replies * App switching UIs iOS -> Android -> iOS with gestures * Home UI Facebook -> Twitter -> Facebook (current beta) ------ anonu This concept is about the globalisation project which has been growing steadily for the last century but has been stopped by the rise of populism. Somehow the coronavirus reminds us that we are still way more connected globally than politicians would like us to be. ------ Lucasoato Is it true about Pizza? :/ ~~~ moron4hire I think it's really hard to say much of anything about the influence of different cultures on food, especially anything regarding flatbreads. Every culture has some form of flatbread. Every culture has figured out "we can put other foods in/on-top of this flatbread". They figured it out thousands of years ago. Once you have the basic mechanic figured out, do the exact inputs matter that much, especially when you consider how varied the inputs can be within a specific, arbitrary category? There is the common, bad-highschool-history meme of "(The Earl of Sandwich/his personal cook) invented the sandwich". Or, every culture has a tradition of picking up food with bread, for thousands of years, and it's not that big of a deal. A grilled cheese sandwich is just a Western European quesadilla! One of my favorite ways to get people to scoff at me is to call polenta "grits". Yes, yes, "different strain of corn". But honestly, there are so many other variations in polenta/grits preparations that the specific strain of corn is really a minor drop in the bucket, and mostly amounts to regional availability. I know folks who will go nutso-spendo over "shrimp on a bed of polenta" but think "shrimp and grits" is cheap-food. ~~~ davidw My wife is from the heartland of 'polenta' country in northern Italy, and it is absolutely "commoner food". ~~~ moron4hire Yeah, I live in Northern VA. We have a lot more dollars than sense here. We also like to white-wash southern food. Here in the DC area, for how it's prepared in dishes, polenta is definitely "rich-person's grits". ~~~ davidw You can combine polenta with something quite fancy, and that's not unheard of in Italy. But it's also something that was a staple for the poor. ------ tus88 Like reverse culture shock. ------ wesleybatista Today a Chinese friend told me that people from China are getting the Corona Virus on other countries instead of China. Could this be considered a Pizza Effect as well or is there a better word for that? ------ duke360 sorry for the scarcity of intelligence of this comment but ... LOL ------ 76543210 Italy was seriously disappointing for food. Small and expensive quantities. The food was quite simple but they had big emphasis on the ingredients. I still found it lack luster on most occasions. ~~~ hugi Pretty much the opposite of my experience. One might even go so far as saying Italy is large and diverse and has many different areas with multiple restaurants of varying quality. ~~~ magic_beans I was given cheese and buttered bread on a short regional flight in Italy. Leagues better than any cheese or bread I'd ever had in the United States. ------ eecc Uhm, sorry but no. Pizza has never been looked down in Italy. Because most Italians have most often been poor and miserable wretches that couldn’t afford to look down onto any kind of food in the first place. Perhaps just during post-WW2 we had some form of cultural colonization and shame of the past that - peaking in the ‘80s - made us love and ape anything Made in USA. Food, music, movies... just look here [https://youtu.be/fJ8o26ovKjM](https://youtu.be/fJ8o26ovKjM) But no, even thinking that the “origin culture” is just claiming as own American-made derivations is frankly shameless hubris ~~~ vraivroo You misunderstood. It's not "Pizza" that was looked down upon in Italy, it was "toppings on pizza". There are 3 official types of Neapolitan pizza, for example, and none of them have any of what Americans would traditionally consider "toppings". Putting anything other than tomato sauce, mozzarella, and seasonings on a Neapolitan pie is, simply, "looked down upon". ~~~ viklove > Neapolitan pie It's a bit ironic you would put these two words together in your comment. No one would call a Neapolitan pizza a pie -- that word probably originates from deep dish (aka Chicago style) pizza, which actually resembles a pie. ~~~ RandallBrown Pizza pie was used for decades before the invention of the deep dish. [https://www.crustkingdom.com/why-is-pizza-called- pie/](https://www.crustkingdom.com/why-is-pizza-called-pie/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hey guys What do you guys think of this website me and my friend made? - erikbatista http://bethemindset.com/ ====== SamPutnam Erik, [http://bethemindset.com/app.html](http://bethemindset.com/app.html) looks good. ------ andrewclunn So many videos at once made me think it was broken on my tablet at first.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
From zero to 1700 subscribers. 3 weeks. 7 growth hacks. $0 marketing cost - AladdinPS https://medium.com/@happyaladdin/from-zero-to-1700-subscribers-3-weeks-7-growth-hacks-0-marketing-cost-5e212b5e9a61 ====== AladdinPS These are my most favorite growth hacks of July. Growth Hack #5 5 SEO hacks for the 2nd largest search engine Youtube is bigger than Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL combined. 1\. The longer your video is, and the longer a viewer spends watching the video, the higher your ranking. 2\. Name the actual file with your keyword before uploading the video. 3\. Add closed captioning. 4\. Be the first to comment. 5\. Automate backlinks with ifttt.com Source: [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/advanced- guide-youtube-se...](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/advanced-guide- youtube-seo/128847/2/) ~~~ AladdinPS Growth Hack #4 How to drive more value for your SaaS? Let manual job happen. Then offer automation for payment. Once the user has unfollowed 25 people by hand, for example, remind them that they can easily and quickly unfollow everyone that doesn’t follow them back with just ONE click for only $9.99! Source: [http://www.slideshare.net/lincolnmurphy/growth- hackingb2bsaa...](http://www.slideshare.net/lincolnmurphy/growth- hackingb2bsaasmarketing) ------ AladdinPS Will be happy to answer any questions. Also would like to know your opinion, which growth hacks would you use in this case?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Concatenative Programming Matters (2012) - jasondenizac http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.mx/2012/02/why-concatenative-programming-matters.html ====== Scaevolus The elegant minimalism of Forth is inspiring-- how many other languages can fit their REPL and development environment into a few kilobytes? However, I find implicit arity to be the largest barrier in reading concatenative programs. To understand what a line of Forth code does, you need to understand both what each function does, and how it manipulates the stack to accomplish it. That's more memory pressure than an imperative language like C, where the flow of data and computations is obvious. It's exacerbated by the tendency to factor a single function into many simpler ones. In a team, the increased memory burden also requires more communication for shared understanding of code. Many concatenative languages eventually grow support for local variables, since it's _incredibly_ awkward to implement certain algorithms when you have to do stack juggling to use a variable in a computation. ~~~ evincarofautumn This is true, but it’s also important to realise that Forth is not the only direction. ;) It’s been a while since I wrote this article, and there are a number of things it doesn’t address, such as the practical concerns you mention. It’s much the same issue as comes up when dealing with large assembly projects, or dynamically typed ones for that matter. Knowing what’s going on can be difficult to discern without a deep understanding of the overall system, and bugs have a tendency to hide in obscure places. And speaking of assembly, Forth _is_ essentially assembly code for a virtual stack machine. Or an actual stack machine. I’ve been idly working on a statically typed concatenative language for a long time now, partly because I intend it to be taken seriously sometime in the next decade, but mostly as a learning experience. It’s designed to address many of these concerns—particularly, enabling programmers to focus on data flow by framing it as a functional language. (E.g.: don’t shuffle stacks—use combinators and/or locals.) However, I continually run into problems with the type system. Typing of concatenative languages is not well researched and is surprisingly difficult. I’m not a type theorist by any means, but at this point I’m probably the world expert on concatenative type systems, simply because there are so few people working on the problem. If anyone would like to help out, I’d love to chat by email (username@gmail). ~~~ qznc Cat is concatenative and statically-typed. <http://www.cat-language.com/> ~~~ evincarofautumn Sure is. Its type system just suffers from some limitations that I’d like to remedy in my own language. ------ saljam Forth is brilliant, but my favourite concatenative language is PostScript. Most view PostScript as nothing more than a dated binary format for vector graphics. However, writing plots and diagrams in pure PS is incredibly flexible and pretty easy once you build up or find enough libraries to do what you want. Postscriptbarcode[0] is an example of a good library. [1] is a good guide to writing PS by hand. What is PS does lack, however, is a modern debugger (or interpreter with decent error reporting) and package management. [0] <http://code.google.com/p/postscriptbarcode/> [1] <http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/graphics/manual/> ~~~ colanderman I went on a PostScript kick a few years back. It's amazing what you can tell printers to do: <http://fstutoring.com/~chris/postscript/> ------ antirez One thing I did in the past with concatenative programming that was very fun to work with, was an engine of genetic programming. Among the other features of concatenative programming languages there is that it is trivial to create a random program that is valid, and also to mix different programs together. Not that doing genetic programming with s-expressions is so hard, but it is definitely possible to create very simple and fast implementations with CP. ~~~ gnosis You might be interested in taking a look at PushGP: <http://faculty.hampshire.edu/lspector/push.html> ------ snprbob86 Warning: Shameless self promotion I implemented a concatenative DSL for Clojure called Factjor [1] inspired by Factor [2]. Clojure is to Lisp what Factor is to Forth. I used Factjor to implement DomScript [3], which is sorta like jQuery re-imagined as a concatenative language like PostScript. I also gave a talk on both Factjor and DomScript at Clojure/West. Slides are available now [4] and a video will be available on InfoQ soon. [1] <https://github.com/brandonbloom/factjor> [2] <http://factorcode.org/> [3] <https://github.com/brandonbloom/domscript> [4] [https://github.com/strangeloop/clojurewest2013/raw/master/sl...](https://github.com/strangeloop/clojurewest2013/raw/master/slides/sessions/Bloom- Concatenative_Clojure.pdf) ------ sparist Very important article! Preach it. I remember discovering the Joy language (and combinatory logic) and being blown away by the elegance of being able to express programs just by composing functions. It was a pretty big epiphany to learn that when functions pop arguments from and push results onto a stack, the "application of a function to a data value" could be treated equivalently to "composition of a function with a 'constant' function that pushes a data value onto a stack". That led to the subsequent discovery that the data stack is extra "scaffolding" that can be removed: using prefix notation instead of postfix allows the program to be represented in memory as an actual composition of partially applied functions, each of which takes the remainder of the program as an argument and returns an output program. This led to the creation of Om [1], which I believe is the "most concatenative" language for this reason. [1] <http://om-language.org> ------ michaelfeathers The only thing that bothers me about the concatenative languages I've seen is the stack. It is a global variable. You don't have the bounding (this is your part of the stack) that you have in languages that have an enforced frame for procedure/method calls. Sometimes I wonder what a concatenative language would look like if operations could only access things given them by the immediately previous operation and if those things were read-only. ~~~ abecedarius One thing it could look like is Backus's FP. I made a concatenative variant of it back in the 80s, and just rewrote the essentials this afternoon: <https://github.com/darius/peglet/blob/master/examples/fp.py> In my earlier dialect I added a form of local variables, just enough for better readability without really changing the semantics. ------ smosher _This is impossible to do with any other type of language. With concatenative programming, a parallel compiler is a plain old map-reduce!_ This statement (in context) draws a defining line around what is and isn't concatenative, and the statement by Norman Ramsey should have been refuted succinctly with a derived definition: Composable expressions with associativity. ------ tmcw This would be much better reordered. The lead 'why concatenative programming matters' is only answered halfway through, after the reader is expected to trudge through lambda notation. Why it matters: it's the basis for interpreters of languages you use. Then explain why, then explain what it is. ~~~ mjn For some audiences I'd agree, but I think the current presentation works well if the target audience is people who already believe that functional programming matters, but are skeptical that concatenative programming is an interesting or important concept. For that audience I think the presentation starting from the familiar type-signature notation is effective. ------ AlexanderDhoore I especially liked the comparison with unix pipes. Whereas Powershell is kind of an attempt to make command line scripting OOP. This could be applied to create the next generation of unix shells... I'll have to think about this. ~~~ beatgammit Hmm, interesting. I've been thinking about a Haskell-based shell, but the flow of concatenative programming might be a better fit. Maybe I'll have to play with this idea this summer as well... ------ elliotlai You meant Arrows <http://www.haskell.org/arrows/> ~~~ evincarofautumn I might be wrong, but I think a concatenative language can’t be represented using only arrows, because arrows aren’t sufficient to express dynamic function application. You can think of monads as arrows with the “bind” function of a type like (a × (a → b) → b). That’s precisely the type of the common concatenative “apply” combinator that lets you do anything useful. The lifting of application is what allows you to treat terms (objects) as actions (morphisms). Without it or an equivalent combinator, you can’t write context- sensitive computations or manipulate concatenative quotations in any meaningful way. ------ SagelyGuru Good stuff. I never thought that the old POP-2 ideas would become fashionable again ;)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
FLIR – Thermal Imaging Device for iPhone 5 - ry0ohki http://www.flir.com/US/ ====== hoopism Relevant: Turn cheap FLIR into expensive FLIR imager: [http://hackaday.com/2013/11/04/manufacturer-crippled- flir-e4...](http://hackaday.com/2013/11/04/manufacturer-crippled- flir-e4-thermal-camera-hacked-to-perform-as-high-end-model/) Kickstart Phone Thermal Imaging: [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mu- thermal-camera-a-great-...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mu-thermal- camera-a-great-tool-to-save-on-energy-costs) [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyrawson/ir-blue- therm...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyrawson/ir-blue-thermal- imaging-smartphone-accessory?ref=card) ~~~ smackfu From that indiegogo, this kind of thing always gives me pause: "We'll send you a Mµ Optics Thermal Imager for $125. ... This represents $200 off the MSRP." ~~~ hoopism Not endorsing... I just had looked into some options awhile back. ~~~ smackfu Oh, I was just talking about selling something at or below cost initially but then having a much higher MSRP, then saying that "clearly there's a market there." Just seems like a lot more people would buy this as a fun accessory at $125 than $300. ~~~ ynniv 100% markup is pretty standard on nice hardware. ------ devindotcom I took of pic of one in action last night: [http://imgur.com/vT4vl2o](http://imgur.com/vT4vl2o) Seemed pretty responsive. Good enough to capture the residual temperature from someone touching a table. Not pro level stuff obviously but worth exploring for basic thermal imaging applications it seemed to me. ~~~ dsego Good enough for seeing what PIN was typed on the atm machine? ~~~ blacksmith_tb You mean, so you can 1) mug the cardholder, and 2) try all the 4x4 combinations (or 5x5 for mine), which I believe will get the card eaten after a small number of failures? Seems like it would be much useful for snooping pinpad door lock codes, which often don't seem to care how many errors you enter in a short period. ~~~ dsego Good point. Real criminals attach an inconspicuous cam and a skimmer to the machine. ------ nwh All down to the resolution. Judging by the product binning on the rest of their cameras, this will be a 4x4 pixel sensor. The real URL for this submission should be — [http://www.flir.com/flirone/](http://www.flir.com/flirone/) ~~~ fennecfoxen While they didn't say anything about the specs of the infrared part, the device seems to include a VGA camera for the multi-spectrum blending mode. If the infrared camera is similar... well, it won't win your infrared photography any awards at the art show, but it's not the worst. Postscript: A nearby link to Hackaday talks about a 320x240 resolution that was firmware-limited to some fraction of that on the cheaper model. I'm going to throw out a wild-ass guess that they'll have a similar sensor here. ~~~ nwh It'll probably be the exact same sensor, the question is can the software be hacked to make it anywhere near useful? If it's cheaper than their cheapest normal camera (it is) we can only assume it will have a significantly lower gimped resolution as a result. ------ dfc Imaging is going to be the next "big" ITAR battleground. I think the "Camera Wars" will stir up more public controversy than what we had with the Crypto Wars. _Crypto is not the only munition in disguise._ ~~~ teuobk Thermal imaging sensors have been export-restricted for some time, though the details depend on the type of sensor. Here's a handy chart from DRS Technologies, which makes thermal sensors: [http://www.drsinfrared.com/Support/ExportGuidelines.aspx](http://www.drsinfrared.com/Support/ExportGuidelines.aspx) ~~~ dfc I recognize that there have been imaging restrictions in place for some time. It is not just thermal imaging, there is a frames per second ceiling, but I do not recall the number. I think the "Camera Wars" are around the corner because the prices are coming down dramatically not because of new legislation. ------ kscottz As someone who has spent the past month fighting with FLIR customer support to get a $5000 camera working robustly and correctly I doubt that this will be a good product. We have dozens of FLIR cameras and at least a quarter of them have been sent back for re-calibration. We're about to send one out for the second time. Also, forget about open source support. ~~~ devindotcom This is meant to be pretty basic. Can you think of anything that could replace it? It seemed to work well when I demoed it, but for pro stuff obviously you wouldn't want to rely on it. ~~~ kscottz The FLIR machine vision cameras for industrial applications are driving me nuts. To a degree all machine vision cameras can be persnikety when you want to try and use them with FOSS software like ROS. Right now we are fighting with non-uniform correction of the cameras. Basically this is the camera's auto exposure. It consistently gets all out of whack. Also the GigE IP stack on the camera was a righteous bitch to get working. Once you buy the camera you have to spend a small fortune for an GigE SDK that doesn't even work on anything but CentOS. We ended spending a whole weekend doing some basic kernel patches to get the damn thing to kinda work on Ubuntu. All of this is to say, it will probably work, but don't plan on building after-market apps on top of the camera technology. ------ RankingMember For some reason I'm tickled that the security application of this add-on is illustrated by a man lurking around the side of a Scion xB in a parking lot, as though the user constantly has the app up and is holding the camera in front of them everywhere they go. ------ aaronem Shouldn't this be titled "A FLIR camera for your iPhone 5", or something? It's a backpack, not a modification of the phone itself. ------ cjoh I'm reluctant to buy something like this that'll become useless the moment I decide to change/upgrade phones. ~~~ userbinator Agree, plain USB (i.e. something like a webcam) would be a much better interface. On the other hand, if this really catches on, and the sensor technology cheapens, in a decade or two we may start to see generic webcam-like thermal cameras from China showing up in the $10 range... which would be rather fun. ------ smackfu Interesting that they aren't using the built-in iPhone camera for the visual spectrum part, but are still using their own. (FLIR uses a visual spectrum camera to do edge detection, and then overlays that on the IR image to make it easier to see what is going on.) ~~~ fennecfoxen This way the visible and IR cameras are right next to each other. ~~~ fancyketchup And they don't have to worry whether the two cameras are pointed in the same direction. And they don't have to worry about the pointing shifting over time. ------ callmeed What distances is something like this accurate to? I just ordered a 3DRobotics Iris and I'm interested in mounting some thermal/IR/multi-spectral imaging to it ... could something like this work from the sky? ~~~ devindotcom I tested one out last night a little bit, guy said it was about half as accurate as a normal retail FLIR model (accuracy in temp differentiation, which surely has an effect on distance). Here's a pic: [http://imgur.com/vT4vl2o](http://imgur.com/vT4vl2o) I was too absent minded to ask about distance specifically. ------ seanalltogether Is there anyone that does photography where the R in RGB is replaced by thermal values? I've always been curious what the world would look like if our red cones were replaced with a thermal cone cell. ~~~ 001sky There is multi layer (channel) color infra-red film that does what you are asking. Ad for digital, the technology is slightly different, but explained here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography#Digital_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography#Digital_cameras) With modified D200s being one choice, [http://gmv.cast.uark.edu/photogrammetry/photogrammetry- hardw...](http://gmv.cast.uark.edu/photogrammetry/photogrammetry- hardware/nikon-d200-ir/) and this another: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinePix_IS_Pro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinePix_IS_Pro) ------ benbojangles If anyone can send me a sample of the Lepton camera module so I can connect it to my microquad, that would be awesome. Message me if you can help.thx [email protected] ------ ramses0 I wish they mentioned pricing. Of course IR cameras exist, the thing that makes it interesting is how much it might cost. ~~~ ry0ohki Says "under $350" [http://www.flir.com/flirone/press/assets/Discover/FLIR%20ONE...](http://www.flir.com/flirone/press/assets/Discover/FLIR%20ONE_Launch%20Release_FINAL.pdf) ~~~ mikegreen The i7, one of the lower priced units is around $2k, so if it can do the same thing (appears to be the same resolution) it is a win. ~~~ arrrg What makes those cameras so expensive? I assume it’s the customer base (industrial applications, small customer base compared to the consumer market) that makes them expensive, not so much the cost of actually making them at scale. ------ 001sky [http://www.flir.com/flirone/](http://www.flir.com/flirone/) is the more direct link. ------ gchokov Why would anyone need this? ~~~ esw I have a 100 year old house that I've been remodeling, and this would enable me to easily find air leaks. I'm skeptical that it will enable me to find studs through horsehair plaster (they show visible studs in the gallery), but it will certainly make it easier to locate the position of forced hot water pipes in the walls and ceilings. ~~~ bronson You can clearly see the studs in in the second picture: [http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/flir-e4-thermal- imagin...](http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/flir-e4-thermal-imaging- camera-teardown/msg345222/#msg345222) That's a 1927 house with plaster & lath walls. ~~~ angersock I like this application--would be handy for anybody doing repairs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bend It, Charge It, Dunk It: Graphene, the Material of Tomorrow - nickbilton http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/bend-it-charge-it-dunk-it-graphene-the-material-of-tomorrow/ The material has the potential to change the electronics industry, and recently researchers have focused on how to produce it commercially. ====== n0rm Congratulations NYT! You've published the 1000th hype article on graphene. I wonder which lobby is desperately trying to get their graphene products approved.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Make a video of any word forming out of candy - bemmu https://customanim.com/ ====== solarkraft Thanks to Captain Disillusion I know how this is done (obvious in hind sight, but cool to learn): The movement of the marbles is pre-rendered and you can color the marbles in the end result right so at the beginning the distribution looks random, but everything falls perfectly into place. ~~~ theclaw For those not aware Captain Disillusion is an impressively well produced youtube series mimicking the vibe of 90's kids TV, but for an adult audience. The Captain uses Blender for the 3D effects in his videos, and did a great presentation at the Blender conference last year [0]. The type of effect used to create these candy words is covered in the "Marble Sorting Machine" video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em- pVICrnqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em-pVICrnqM) [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qSTcxt2t74](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qSTcxt2t74) ------ BrentOzar I would cache the default animation. You’re doubtlessly getting hammered by folks just running it (like me) to see what it looks like, only to get stuck waiting for a GPU slot to render the same word again and again. ~~~ kumarm Yes. 90% of people are going to render Hello without changing text. ~~~ notelonmusk Click on "example animation" to get this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyWqcY_oyo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyWqcY_oyo4) ~~~ BrentOzar Right, but that doesn't solve the UX problem. If you try to render hello, it should just go to that video. ------ flaque I love that not only does it work with emoji, but it gets the colors of the emoji correct. ------ andrewstuart From "There are 16 jobs ahead of yours", to (eventually) "There is 1 job ahead of yours" To "Lost connection to server, please try again in a bit." Ouch. ~~~ bemmu I'm sorry. I was running out of memory on the queue server, so had to restart the server many times while fixing it. Instead of caching all the render results in memory, they are now being served from disk instead, which should solve the issue. ~~~ jmkd Super excited to see results but reporting same issue just now... ~~~ jmkd And fixed, thank you this is great fun! Font choice possible? ------ huhtenberg Nicely done, but getting stuck at Waiting for GPU server slot, there are None jobs ahead of yours... with a progress bar not longer even crawling. From the console: websocket open app.js:189:14 Got text message: progress: GPU render server received target image... app.js:203:12 Got text message: your ticket is xxx app.js:203:12 Got text message: progress: Waiting for GPU server slot, there is one job ahead of yours... 4 app.js:203:12 Got text message: progress: Waiting for GPU server slot, there are None jobs ahead of yours... 61 app.js:203:12 onclose ~~~ bemmu Thanks, took me a while to find the issue. I had a feature where if the same client (by IP address) starts another job, their previous jobs are deleted. But after I added secure websockets support by proxying through nginx, all IP addresses from the server's point of view became "127.0.0.1" and every job would just be deleted when a new one came in, because they all had the same IP. ~~~ uranium I keep getting countdowns from 8 or 15 to 1 [or partway there], and then "onclose", with the UI saying "Lost connection to server, please try again in a bit". For variety now and then I get a 502 somewhere in websocket setup. When it is counting down, it takes 100+% CPU. The sample render looks really cool, though. Nice project; thanks for sharing it. ------ tobr “Designed while making love to a bunch of old men”, what is that supposed to mean? Edit: I guess it’s some kind of frivolous random quote generator. Confusing and awkward. ~~~ bemmu Yes, it's a random byline generator. I had fun with it while making this, getting a new byline every time I tested the site. I replaced it with a real byline now. ~~~ tobr I think it’s just that the one I got was attention grabbing in the wrong way, enough that it was hard not to interpret it as being somehow significant for the whole site. I think the whimsy/random thing can work, but putting sexual references in there just makes it feel immature. ------ gabcoh This is really well done. I was wondering if it is open source or if it ever may become open source? I would love to see how it all comes together. ~~~ detaro Given that comparing multiple previews, the _locations_ of the pieces doesn't change, I'd guess the animation data is saved or reproducible. Given an input text, the text is turned to an image, overlaid, the pieces are colored matching the image/the colors matched to piece IDs, and then the animation is rendered with the colors applied to the pieces from the start. ------ paulproteus I might have broken it by adding an emoji heart ️ into my message! If so, apologies. ~~~ paulproteus I removed the emoji heart and rendered the message successfully. :) Thanks! The recipient was happy to get it. ------ andrewstuart How does this work behind the scenes? Seems rather alot of work to put text on candy - can you explain the purpose of it more please? Presumably it is made with Blender at the back end judging from the random quote generator "Created while running away from a squad of offensive drunk guys who are fans of the black skills of Blender." UPDATE: This looks like an interesting thing - I'd like to hear more about it - but I've tried several times to render and it always eventually loses connection to the server. It looks like it was too early for it to hit the front page of HN, some more scaling testing was needed. ~~~ PavlovsCat I have no clue how it works, but I know how I'd do it: 1\. render the animation a bunch of blobs falling and coming to rest, once 2\. save a mask for the pixels each blob occupies on each particular frame 3\. note the position of each blob in the final image. 4\. pick a color for each of the blobs according to their position in the final image and the text (or image) you you want to display on the blobs 5\. go through all frames of the animation and color each blob ------ AstroJetson I got it to work and my grand child liked the "Haunted M&M's" that make their name Thanks! ------ Pfhreak Pretty fun doing this with unusual unicode characters, like the various emojis. ------ WheelsAtLarge Very cool. It would be nice, if you could add a behind the scenes page on how you did it. ~~~ mappu This part of Blender's physics animation is deterministic, so you can get this effect by running the physics animation forward to the last frame; recolor the target candy; then go back to the start again. All Blender functions are exposed by a Python API. ------ remram > there are None jobs ahead of yours... Sounds like I'll be getting it soon then :) ------ flippyhead Very nice! I've just made a birthday "card" out of it ;) ------ GistNoesis Have you looked at the possibility of doing it client-side ? ------ Marshall222 I'm a video maker and this is very cool! Good job ------ sixothree That was fun. Thanks for sharing. ------ joshmn Super cool. How's it work? ------ mattmaroon How long did that take you to make, ballpark? ~~~ bemmu I'd estimate 2-3 weeks of actual rendering and coding, plus 2 years of having "I wonder how you could make a rendering such that..." bugging me at the back of my mind.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
"X for Y" Startups - mgirdley http://girdley.com/2013/06/10/x-for-y-startups/ ====== IsaacL I hear this a lot, but I disagree. 1\. Firstly, take startups where the founders had an original idea, but they pitch it as "X for Y". Is this a bad thing? Many people will say that they should pitch it on its own merits. The thing is human communication is all about reducing an idea to concepts the listener already understands. I used to work on a startup that was an online freelancer marketplace based around social connections. I could also describe it as "eLance meets Linkedin". The latter gets the idea across even though it's not a _perfect_ description. Doesn't matter. If I'm dealing with someone who hears a lot of startup ideas, or has a low attention span (eg the typical investor), brevity trumps accuracy. 2\. What about startups that use the "X for Y" template to _generate_ business ideas? This might seem a bit more questionable. But if a certain model worked for one industry, why can't it be adapted for another? Uber's model of combining the best features of a marketplace and a high quality service firm worked well for taxis. Could it work for other markets? onefinestay is Uber meets AirBNB. Exec is Uber meets TaskRabbit. You get the idea. And it's clearly not true that Uber are the company best positioned to succeed in those markets, as they have no business selling hotels or personal services. ------ shebson One of the examples given of a startup that created a new category is Angellist. I generally agree, but it's worth noting that Angellist has embraced being described as "Facebook for startups" and "Facebook for companies": [http://betabeat.com/2011/09/angellist-gains-prestige-as- it-b...](http://betabeat.com/2011/09/angellist-gains-prestige-as-it-becomes-a- facebook-for-startups/) ------ daniel-cussen Note that Youtube was originally the Flickr for video. It has done a fair bit better than flickr. [http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/16/video-coming-to-flickr- soon...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/16/video-coming-to-flickr-soon-really/) ------ anandkulkarni Parse pitched itself as "Heroku for Mobile." Seems to be an effective shorthand to convey what you do.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
OWASP Developer Guide - arunc https://github.com/OWASP/DevGuide ====== tptacek The "Cryptography Guide" under the "Build" section of this work is truly a work of... some sort. [https://github.com/OWASP/DevGuide/blob/master/DevGuide3.0/03...](https://github.com/OWASP/DevGuide/blob/master/DevGuide3.0/03-Build/0x11-Cryptography.md) ~~~ jessaustin Perhaps the idea is to annoy knowledgeable people enough that they will rise up and edit until OWASP is left with an actually-decent reference? ~~~ wglb This has been its state for quite a few years now. ------ christianbryant I really want OWASP to be high quality and up-to-date because I feel like there are too many commercial efforts out there; it takes away from the old school hacker community spirit to see all these books on Amazon, hack this, and hack that. OWASP folks are really great people, and I feel like there could be more urgency and edge to what they do. ------ InAnEmergency Since it appears to be completely non-obvious what is going on here, this is an in-development update of the current development guide ([https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Guide_Project](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Guide_Project)). More info in that link. ------ theboss This is like....seriously one of the worst documents I've ever read. ------ jbranchaud Is the meaning of OWASP a commonly known thing? I've never heard of it and their GitHub repository README fails to expand on its meaning. ~~~ tptacek It's a community of web application security professionals of varying sorts. It's a very weird organization. ~~~ werkshy I don't understand why web professionals are publishing their work in .docx format, whatever the standard of the writing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday - wmf http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20207.0 ====== kwantam The poster makes some good points about the inconsistencies in Mt. Gox's handling of things, but it seems to me that he's ascribing to malice what is well explained by incompetence on the part of the person or people running the site. The security practices are appalling, and their lack of clarity on the counter-party issue is damning. If I were Kevin---or, indeed, any customer of that exchange---I'd take my money and go elsewhere. Still, it's pretty astounding how myopic the rest of the Mt Gox forum users appear. They're taking a situation that's beyond a doubt the fault of the Mt Gox admins and getting ready to lynch a dude who seems to have acted rather reasonably (intentionally not exploiting a known loophole to exceed the withdrawl limit, reporting his disposition immediately to the site's maintainer, et cetera). ~~~ vl >fault of the Mt Gox admins Mt Gox is run in such amateurish way, it's appalling. In real life, with many brokers you trade doesn't close in 3 days and as such you can't withdraw proceeds from the trade for 3 days (but you can use the proceeds to continue trading). In this situation Mt Gox is effectively both exchange and the broker. Not to have rule in place to block funds from recent transactions is like people who designed it never traded real stock with real brokers. ~~~ bobz The three day settlement rule applies to the NY equity markets. Other markets, including NY fixed income products, run under different rules, including same day settlement. And this isn't a fraud prevention measure, it's a legacy of the days when settlement included someone carting a stack of stock certificates from one bank's vault to another. Lastly, most traders trade on a contractual basis, not a settlement basis, so their trades are considered binding as soon as the agreement is in place. ~~~ Nrsolis There are some other important differences: 1\. In the US, most exchange operators are the counter-parties to all trades. They also interact with settlement and clearing services that ensure the verification of proper ownership and conveyance of securities. In the old days, something like a third of all trades failed to meet the three-day window because some part of this process would fail. 2\. There are very very specific rules regarding how the orders are crossed (buy and sell side) and which orders take precedence in the (limit order) book. It looks like the MtGox guys didn't think this through and the trader in question took advantage of this naivete on the part of MtGox. 3\. Most exchanges are "brokered" to facilitate trades while MtGox is more like a swap-meet. Brokered exchanges are more expensive to trade in but they have the advantage that brokers can "know" how to get price-improvement based on market conditions. In short, they are "informed traders" vs the "uninformed traders" you see in most post/notice markets. When the informed meet the uninformed, you see situations like this where someone takes the whole shebang home. Personally, I find it amusing that the Bitcoin fanboys are clamoring for intervention here. It's almost like they are getting to the idea that a strong regulatory environment is a /good/ thing for the free market. If this were the cryptopunk/libertarian paradise that everyone dreams of for Bitcoin, there would be /no/ recourse. ~~~ pdovy I'm not sure where you're coming from with #2. Most exchanges use price-time priority to determine execution order. From the description the best bid was $0.01, so obviously he would get filled first at $0.0101. The real problem is that the market was able to descend to that level to begin with. There should have been some sort of circuit breaker limits in the Mt. Gox system that would have halted such a massive decline, similar to what exist in the US equity and futures markets. As to #3, really the only thing that matters in terms of exchange access in the US is that you satisfy the appropriate compliance burdens (broker-dealer status) and can pay the fees required for naked access. That may be good selection criteria for "informed traders" but it certainly isn't any guarantee. ~~~ Nrsolis What I meant in #2 was that there are market structure rules about things like minimum price improvement levels and how widely a buy or sell order is circulated before finding a cross. The HFT guys are masters at exploiting the market microstructure to extract alpha. Google SOES bandit if you need further examples. As for #3, naked access is a relatively new invention and the rules are sufficiently constructed to virtually guarantee that only implicitly informed parties are ever going to see "naked" access. Circuit breakers (actually the lack of them) is one of those things that enabled this to occur. The party in question essentially copied a strategy that was used by the HFT guys to soak up the offer. The seller got liquidity but it came at a very dear price. And that's really the issue here: circuit breakers are a compromise between liquidity and price discovery. If the exchange suddenly sees that price discovery is trending outside of a range, they shut down trading. If the problem is a systemic market one, then this probably is a good idea. But if price movement is because of new information, then all the circuit breakers in the world wont help you because as soon as trading resumes, the new regime will be in play. ~~~ pdovy An order with 1/100th penny precision isn't usual for currencies, but I see your point. Either way, this was a very unusual situation. Why were there so many people sitting at $0.01? If you're going to play that game, why not jump on at $0.011 or $0.02? Hell, pretty much anything < $1.00 you could probably safely assume would give you a profit as long as you were willing to bet you weren't watching the demise of the BTC. ------ haberman The community that for months has been preaching the virtues of the currency nobody can control is suddenly arguing that a middleman should roll back a bunch of free-market transactions. I decided a while ago that arguing against the "bitcoin has no problems" crowd was futile: people are too enamored with the idea to see problems like this until they happen. ~~~ danboarder It's not a BitCoin problem, this entire episode revolves around one exchange (MtGox) and its security problems. Mt Gox Exchange =/= BTC Currency Nasdaq Exchange =/= USD Currency ~~~ william42 Out of curiosity, how big is Mt. Gox compared to the other bitcoin exchanges? ~~~ rmc MtGox has about 90% of the bitcoin change market. ~~~ dedward I'm probably thinking of something different - but wasn't it clear in the bitcoin protocol itself that if a single actor controlled a majority percentage of the bitcoins out there, the model falls apart and is at risk? ~~~ rmc Sorry, we have our wires crossed. You can still transfer bitcoins from one person to the other. An exchange is a website that allows you convert bitcoins in USD. MtGox controlled about 90% of the BTC↔USD conversions. ------ wiredfool So, There's something like 21 million bitcoin possible, and 6 million 'in circulation' now. A sell order comes in for 1/12 of total amount of outstanding bitcoin. And the system processes it, flashcrashes, and. 3) Profit, I guess. or 4) rollback. That's something like what would happen if someone dumped 1 trillion USD onto a bond exchange. There are only a couple entities who could do this. So how did 1/12 of the value in this ecosystem wind up in one account at Mt Gox? I'd have to think that it's likely an insider/early adopter. (or Mt Gox itself?) There's a limit on the number of entities who could amass that sort of 'fortune'. ~~~ romland Or it could, again, be stupidity by MtGox: This was a "test account" that had no real user attached to it. After all, if the trade is internal on MtGox, it's just a double in a database. If that is the case, then hell yes, I can see why MtGox would want this rollback. ~~~ dangero That's a really good point. Who says that there really was anyone with that many bitcoins in their account? Maybe someone just hacked the database, put 500,000 btc into an account, and then sold them on the market? We know the user database was dumped, so why shouldn't we think that someone edited the account balances too? ~~~ dkokelley The way I understand bitcoin is that you can't simply sell coins made by adding them to a db record. Perhaps the MtGox system can artificially generate the appearance of those coins, but the actual validation of the transaction by the network would have failed. ~~~ dangero The way I understand Mt. Gox is that they have a giant pool of real btc. They are the "owner" of these btc. So, for instance, if your account says you have 3000 btc, then your 3000 is just an entry in a database, and the only time that actually becomes a bitcoin is when you cash out the coins from Mt. Gox. At that point, they give you the amount of coins that you requested to be withdrawn from their giant btc pool. So, in other words, there aren't actually any specific bitcoins that are assigned to you specifically. You essentially own an IOU for 3000 bitcoins that you can cash out at any time. That's also why they can roll back transactions, because no bitcoins are actually transfered in their system, only database entries that state who owns how many bitcoins. That's why I think someone could update an account's bitcoins balance to any number, and then sell them on the market, because you're not really transferring bitcoins. You're transferring IOUs for bitcoins in a database. Judging by the amateur security issues they've had lately, I think it's highly unlikely that they have the right controls in place to catch something like that automatically. ~~~ Gormo Or, to analogize, your MtGox balance is a gold certificate, MtGox is the bank with the actual gold in its vault, and someone just robbed the bank. ------ sliverstorm What on earth is all this talk about "attacks" and "rolling back the market"? This is how currency works; we've just been witness to one of the darker parts. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not legitimate. Even if it's illegal to manipulate the US Dollar, it is most certainly legal to manipulate the BitCoin, whose express purpose was to be _wholly unregulated!!!_ ~~~ bradleyland There's been a lot of talk about regulation, but I read something earlier today that I found rather surprising: "Unlike stocks, futures or options, currency trading does not take place on a regulated exchange. It is not controlled by any central governing body, there are no clearing houses to guarantee the trades and there is no arbitration panel to adjudicate disputes. All members trade with each other based on credit agreements. Essentially, business in the largest, most liquid market in the world depends on nothing more than a metaphorical handshake." - 1 So basically, the method of bitcoin exchange isn't all that different from ForEx. What's happened here is that the trading house has taken a fall, but doesn't appear prepared to take it on the chin. I don't know much about Mt. Gox. Any guesses as to whether or not they're insured? If this turns out to be a case of Mt. Gox's systems being hacked, are they liable? What's most interesting for me is the irony on display. Bitcoin, Mt. Gox, and the whole ecosystem were established on principles like lack of regulation, anonymity, and un-traceability, yet here they are, hoist by their own petard. [1] [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/06/SevenFXFAQs.as...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/06/SevenFXFAQs.asp?partner=aol-d) ~~~ sethg I suppose this makes sense... the US government doesn’t really care if you get fleeced buying or selling British pounds, and the British government doesn’t care if you get fleeced buying or selling US dollars. ------ johnzabroski Very good synopsis by Kevin. However, he has two technical mistakes in his post from a security perspective: 1) We don't know the attack vector. For example: If Mt Gox has a SQL injection vulnerability, then a sophisticated attacker will not waste their time doing a rainbow attack on a random user. Instead, if the account balance is not encrypted and the key kept secret, then the attacker simply needs to do a SQL injection attack that returns the account with the largest balance: select top 1 t1.account_id, t1.balance from Account t1 order by t1.balance desc Instantly, the attacker knows the largest balance. This automatically reduces the attack space. This is a standard trick attackers use to bypass even needing to guess a password. 2) Compounding this issue, it seems Kevin is right, the attacked account had a naive password susceptible to a rainbow attack. According to rumors, this attack was a pooled account that mediated all the assets traded on the exchange. This implies that MtGox used a password susceptible to a rainbow attack to secure the master account. To answer Kevin's question, what user would amass $8M in bitcoins and use a bad password? The system administrators. 0xDEADBEEF. Postscript: I have never traded or owned bitcoins, or even signed up for an exchange. I just find the security breach fascinating! ~~~ vessenes Unless this was changed in the last six months, the administrators did not amass bitcoins in their own accounts; each account had its own balance. ------ evgen Reading through the forum posts is really quite illuminating. The childishness of the bitcoin miners/traders is understandable given the demographic that this system appeals to at the moment, but the stunning naivete and downright ignorance of the law that is on display from the Mt. Gox admins is the most remarkable thing to me. At this point I am expecting bitcoin to die not due to its inherent failures as a currency but due to the incompetence of the major bitcoin exchange. ------ lubos he claims that $1,000 daily limit at MtGox is broken and you are able to withdraw as many times as you want as long as each withdrawal is under $1,000. the most interesting part I think is that he was actually able to withdraw 643.27 bitcoins (much more than usual daily limit) when they were for around $1.55 each which means withdrawal limit for BTC was calculated at current market prices. If this is all true, then hacker is probably banging his head against the wall now because he was likely able to steal millions without any hope being ever caught. or did he? MtGox claims he got away with only $1,000 worth of bitcoins however if he took them out of the exchange right after the crash when their market value was around $0.01... oh well, there is something very fishy going on here. I suspect MtGox doesn't have enough bitcoins to back their accounts now. If you see in upcoming days people complaining about MtGox not willing to physically transfer bitcoins back to their traders, it will be more than obvious. ~~~ drivebyacct2 Well, the OP here is actually claiming that the hacker made away with the btc, if I'm to understand his accusations correctly. ------ ISeemToBeAVerb I think people trading in Bitcoin need to keep perspective on what they are actually doing, which is participating in an experiment. No investor with a sane mind would consider Bitcoins a solid investment decision. Unfortunately, ideas like this tend to attract both extremely savvy people as well as a bunch of lazy people who would otherwise be lapping up "Make 10,000 a week with Clickbank" e-books. There will likely be many more stories in the same vein as this one. In my mind, the wealth of this discussion isn't who is right and who is wrong, it's the fact that we're recognizing the current faults in a new and ambitious system, in the hopes that we can make a better one in the future. ------ cpeterso > Two months ago we migrated from MD5 hashing to freeBSD MD5 salted hashing. > The unsalted user accounts in the wild are ones that haven't been accessed > in over 2 months and are considered idle. Once we are back up we will have > implemented SHA-512 multi-iteration salted hashing and all users will be > required to update to a new strong password. I'm quite surprised that a service with accounts holding millions of dollars would store passwords without salt or a stronger hash algorithm than MD5! ~~~ nullc FreeBSD MD5 is pretty strong— Its randomly salted and runs 1000 iterations of MD5. None of MD5's weaknesses are especially relevant in this context. The most important thing is the how slow it is, and it's likely that if they'd taken defaults bcrypt would actually have been faster. The saddest thing is that many of the people howling about MD5 are proposing weaker alternatives like straight SHA-512 with a static "salt" embedded in the source code. In fact, MTGOX almost deployed such a replacement in their upgrade until they were cluesticked by people screaming to not invent you own cryptographic functions. ~~~ derobert I don't think you understand how fast MD5 is. On the order of 10 billion MD5/sec is doable for very cheap. If you're going after millions, getting multiple graphics cards is a no-brainer. See, for example, <http://www.golubev.com/gpuest.htm> ------ sunchild Sounds to me like the admins at MtGox are, at the very least, amateurish, and shouldn't be trusted with millions of dollars in escrowed funds. ~~~ FlowerPower Millions of fantasy dollars. ~~~ michael_dorfman Which are (subject to Mt Gox's rules) convertible to real dollars. ~~~ ceejayoz Subject to Mt Gox's holdings of real dollars, too. ------ gte910h A thief can't pass good title on stolen goods: If you buy a stolen item, it is not yours, it is still the original owner's. Doesn't matter if it's a bitcoin, a car, or a quarter. The sale was not legit, it should not stand. The rest of the rollback is fuzzier, but on this gentlemans coins, a seizure should occur. [http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/corpsec/blogs/bus-law- an...](http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/corpsec/blogs/bus-law- analysis/archive/2011/06/15/rights-in-collateral-and-estoppel- under-u.c.c.-article-9.aspx) ~~~ jacques_chester The exception to this rule is a "bona fide purchaser for value without notice". If someone has no reason to believe that property is stolen and buys it, then it's their property now. So sorry. I'm still confused about whether or not bitcoin transactions are traceable. If they have deniability, it might be impossible to prove/disprove that you knew the goods were stolen. Of course, I am neither a lawyer nor a crypto specialist and this isn't legal advice. (In particular, the rules vary depending on whether the property is realty, on whether you have a Torrens system, whether you have fused equity and what your local courts and legislatures have decided). ~~~ Tichy Uh, is that really so? So I can steal whatever I want, as long as I can sell it off fast enough? Say I am 99 years old and have only one week left to live. What if I go on a car stealing spree and steal Porsche cars for my extended family. Then I sell it to them for a symbolic 1 cent each, claiming that I have collected them over my lifetime and now want my family to benefit. ~~~ jacques_chester You've misread me. You, the thief, are still on the hook for your crime. The buyer, if they really are a bona fide purchaser for value without notice, is not. Your family would probably not meet the test, as this would be the first time they've heard of the Porsches. (IANAL, TINLA) ~~~ Tichy Yes, what I mean is that if I was 99, I wouldn't care much about being punished for being a thief. I could therefore make a lot of people happy. If not my family, then maybe I could go Robin Hood, steal from the rich and sell cheaply to the poor. I can't imagine that it works that way. I can believe that as a buyer of stolen good without knowing they were stolen, you won't be punished. But you will still have to return the stuff. I am not a lawyer either, though. If it works as you describe, let's found a guild of 99 year old Robin Hoods... ~~~ nkassis SO if I understand this correctly, by buying the coins at ridiculously low prices and the fact that in the post he said it was weird and he tried to take advantage of it. Would he not completely fail the test? ~~~ tedunangst He doesn't know they are stolen. It could have been a legit attempt to panic the market by someone hoping to recover their losses plus some profit in the recovery. It's not illegal to ride along. ------ ersmith What I find interesting is that everyone is saying what needs to be done when no one seem to be sure what really happened. The first thing that needs to happen is an investigation into what really happened (perferably by some outside party). At the same time Mt. Gox needs to undergo a security audit and overhaul as it seems like no matter what happened, they have some major security issues. I also find it interesting that the person who supposedly initiated the trade has yet to be heard from. Their story would really help clarify things, not to mention that they have not been heard from yet makes it seem as if there is no such single user... ------ juiceandjuice "Every major exchange breaks trades. Too bad for you, consider yourself lucky if you don't get sued for the 643 btc." I'd _love_ to see how this would go down in the courts. ~~~ jacques_chester "You may not be interested in the law", goes the saying, "but the law is interested in _you_ ". Bitcoin is meant to be unregulated, but MtGox and its identifiable customers all have legal personality. The main challenge would be identifying jurisdiction, but after that I suspect usual laws would be found to be applicable. (IANAL, TINLA) ------ marckremers "If I had to store that much there, even temporarily, I would use a password so long it would make War and Peace look like a Twitter message." - Brilliant ~~~ kd0amg Wouldn't it likely have a hash collision with a much shorter password though? ~~~ gojomo It would have many collisions with many shorter passwords. But almost certainly not any collisions with _very simple_ and _very short_ passwords. The hash output space is sufficiently large. Someone who (given infinite time) found a brute-force collision would likely find one of the shorter preimages first – you aren't really gaining anything by going ever-longer, after your preimage choice has as many bits as the hash output. But if the attacker truly needed to brute-force it over the entire 160-bit (SHA1) or larger (other hashes) output space, unconstrained by usual simple- password-like limits on what to try as preimages, that's impractical, and you've achieved your goal... even if you overdid it on the input. ~~~ saalweachter I suppose the defender could have a rainbow file of his own and purposefully choose a password which didn't hash-collide with a password of < N characters. ~~~ politician That's a fantastic idea for a web service. Google, are you listening? ~~~ gojomo Doubt that'd be worth the effort/storage, even in the case of a weak, unsalted hash like MD5. Take N to be 10, assume 7 bits per character. Then all 10-character passwords fill no more than 2^70 of the 2^128 MD5 space. Any 11-or-larger character password then has a less than 1-in-2^58 chance of colliding with any shorter password. (That's how much larger the full space is, from which each longer- password hash will be drawn.) That's 1-in-288-quadrillion for us decimal apes. The service would probably never deliver a useful warning before MD5 falls completely to a preimage attack. The analysis for such a service only gets harsher for 160/256/512 bit hashes. ------ nupark2 If there is real money in bitcoins, then there should be a real engineering staff running a real, secure trading platform. ~~~ spitfire Sounds like a market opening there. Who wants to start an exchange? A true exchange, so you wouldn't have to front a dime, except for the virtual server. IE: You're only matching orders and taking a cut, not putting any skin in the game. ~~~ zokier Bitcoin wiki already lists several exchanges. What would a new one do to make a difference? ~~~ spitfire Stability. People will pay for a known quantity. If you create a clear, well defined entity there very well may be an opening in the market for another bitcoin exchange. In fact, i'd say there absolutely is an opening and I presume the market will grow over time. Skim 0.75% off each side of the transaction and you're looking to be in good shape. Particularly as btc trading activity increases. ------ brown9-2 Why would anyone keep $8,000,000 USD in an account where you can only (according to the operator's "rules") withdraw $1000 USD a day? It would take 21.9 years to withdraw the full amount of that account. ~~~ wmf The $1,000 limit is only for unverified accounts. Also, it's possible that the BTC was transferred into the account months ago when it was worth vastly less. Or the BTC was accrued through trading. Or it wasn't a real account... ~~~ _ikke_ According to MtGox they attackers ran into the $1000 limit, so it was not a verified account. ~~~ danssig This part of their story was made up to cover themselves. The "attackers" didn't run into any limit. They sold off a bunch of bit coins. A legitimate user bought then and then (sensibly) tried to get them out of the system, hitting the limit. ------ swah The stolen user hasn't reported until now, it seems. From one of the comments: "It was definitely all our bitcoins that mtgox had in one account! I remember a few days before, people saying that some big bitcoin movements on bitcoin monitor were from mtgox, and the quantity being moved was around 400 000 to 500 000 bitcoins. No single user lost that quantity, it was our coins, from all of us!" ~~~ vessenes This is absolutely not how the Mt. Gox database works. I know because I have access to the source code of the site. You can't post a trade from 'all' accounts; if a large trade pushed the price down, then a large trade pushed the price down, and that trade was executed from a single account. Given Mark's statement that the logins which had been dormant for more than a few months were the easily rainbow-table attacked ones, it seems that someone had sent in a lot of bitcoins and then stopped using the system for a while; they apparently had a weak / rainbow-table vulnerable password. If that's the situation, I'd call this a medium-sophisticated attack; better would have been to drive prices down slowly over a day or so, then use other hacked accounts to buy them up cheaply and withdraw over BTC. That might have taken some time to notice and unravel. As it is, it looks like someone tried to flash-crash the market, then send out $1,000 worth of BTC at very low market rates, so a lot of BTC. Someone who would do this intrinsically believes in the resilience of bitcoin by the way, which is interesting. I'm not sure how they would plan on dealing with the taint on their coins, though. They'd have needed some sort of high-volume laundering service; none of the ones I know have enough volume to deal with this. ~~~ marshray _This is absolutely not how the Mt. Gox database works. I know because I have access to the source code of the site._ All that source code you're looking at means nothing if the attacker gained arbitrary SQL execution on the database. ~~~ vessenes If you had sql injection rights in the database, there would be no need to trade; you would just insert a few nice rows in the db for yourself, mark yourself 'super trusted' and then initiate a withdrawal. This wasn't a SQL injection attack in my opinion. ~~~ marshray Hmm, but what if the attacker wasn't in it for the $currency? What if he were in it to destroy Mt. Gox, as they say, "for the lulz"? Making all their customers angry and causing a run on their escrow accounts might just do it more effectively than trying to withdraw whatever could be obtained through their online trading platform. ~~~ barkingcat I agree - I think this has the earmark of a competitor exchange - to crash and destroy Mt. Gox so they can take the business. ------ pash Canceling trades disincentivizes traders to fill the dry side of the order book during a liquidity crisis. That alone makes cancellations bad policy. If you're worried about so-called erroneous trades, you should disallow market orders; make all traders provide an explicit buy or sell price and there is no such thing as a bad trade except in the event of systems failures. ------ alvarosm You should have moved the coins out. Now they're reverting the trades because the alternative is accepting liability for their awful security (which is probably, well, still awful). Bitcoin trading is the wild west, if you behave like Jesus Christ you're just going to get nothing out of it. What I mean is that in such a risky business you shouldn't feel guilty ripping people off, they had it coming after all, it was their choice. UNLESS, of course, you're having second thoughts because you're related to the hacking and backed off when you got nervous, seeing how far the prices went down and how the massive buy order did manage to go through... just a possibility, no offense. The fact that you gave them your id and didn't behave like a shady guy is irrelevant as long as it's impossible that you be proven guilty, in fact that's exactly how the clever shady guy should be behaving... like "not guilty", because money is usually traced in the end, and you want to look like a saint when that happens. So, their position about contacting you is perfectly reasonable and natural; to them you might be related to the hackers anyway and anything they say to you (nothing they could say would be good- a conversation with them would be full of unanswered questions) is likely to end up in a public forum. Not good pr. ------ illumin8 This guy doesn't really have a leg to stand on. Just like when the flash crash happened on the real stock market, transactions are going to be rolled back. One thing that has become abundantly clear from reading all of the comments on the Bitcoin forums is that the investing knowledge of most BTC traders is much less than your average equities, fixed income, or ForEx trader. MtGox is a pretty low budget operation, but even a low budget operation isn't just going to let someone steal the equivalent of $10,000,000 USD and not reverse the transactions. It would be like your bank telling you "sorry, someone transferred money out of your account without your authorization, but we're just going to let them keep it because, hey, they won it fair and square by hacking your account." (As I write this last line I realize there was recently a court case regarding this exact issue, ETF fraud, but it occurred over many days and the company had authorized an agreement that they would check their account balance daily for fraudulent transactions.) ~~~ mbreese I had transactions in the flash crash that weren't rolled back and I lost a big chunk of cash (well, for me). I just don't see how an exchange that doesn't have builtin failsafes/circuit breakers can just roll back trades. I think that in this case, the exchange should be liable. He was just exploiting the market. ~~~ davemabe There are trades that get "busted" (i.e. rolled back) every day in the US stock markets. I've had it happen several times. This is part of normal market activity. In my experience it has seemed pretty subjective - some trades that I thought for sure would have been busted weren't and others were. There's some speculation that when some more powerful market participants (read: Goldman Sachs) are on the losing end of a questionable trade they complain to the exchange and get the trade busted far more frequently than when it happens to less powerful participants. ------ kees A bitcoin exchange is a shady business, no regulation exists. So it is a freespace for criminals and hackers. You hustle or you will be hustled. This guy should have made a withdrawal by any means. In the bitcoin business only your wallet file counts, the rest is just a big hustle. And please forgot that you're able to sue somebody over a bitcoin dispute. ~~~ bradleyland Would you be surprised to hear that ForEx (the method of exchanging currencies like the USD, EURO, and YEN) are also unregulated? "Unlike stocks, futures or options, currency trading does not take place on a regulated exchange. It is not controlled by any central governing body, there are no clearing houses to guarantee the trades and there is no arbitration panel to adjudicate disputes. All members trade with each other based on credit agreements. Essentially, business in the largest, most liquid market in the world depends on nothing more than a metaphorical handshake." \- [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/06/SevenFXFAQs.as...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/06/SevenFXFAQs.asp?partner=aol-d) ------ mbreese If I were this guy, I'd have my attorney try to get an immediate injunction in place. It seems like mtgox is just making this up as they go. ------ Astrohacker There are two sides to this story. Here is Mt Gox's response: <https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20250.0> ~~~ rapind I don't get the significance of the logins. The hacker logs in every 15 minutes. What are the chances someone who makes a trade with him logs in a few minutes after one of his logins?? I'd say the odds are pretty high... and that log doesn't mean anything. ~~~ bluelu And I bet there are hundres of other users loging in at that time as well. ------ unreal37 The law clearly is on the side of rolling back the transactions. Just like Amazon.com can refuse to fulfill an order for an 50 inch LCD TV that was accidentally priced for $1[1], and a bank can withdraw money from your account that was accidentally deposited there[2], and just like the NYSE can nullify mispriced orders[3], its clear Mt Gox can legally do the same. Transactions can be rolled back and are in the real world all the time. It has to be that way, to maintain fairness in the system. Do you think this guy deserves $5 million worth of bitcoins because of the work of a hacker? Uh no. His rationalizations for his behavior are astonishing. Assuming he is not the hacker, he got caught up in the excitement of buying cheap bitcoins (as we all would have), realized after the fact he probably did something wrong, and through contacting Mt Gox and coming out to the community he was hoping to get away with at least some profits. He shouldn't be able to keep any of it. Sorry Kevin. [1] [http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/thread.jspa?thre...](http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=124006) [2] [http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/BetterBanking/B...](http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/BetterBanking/BankErrorInYourFavorYourProblem.aspx) [3] [http://www.thestar.com/business/markets/article/806459-- regu...](http://www.thestar.com/business/markets/article/806459--regulators- reverse-trades-after-market-meltdown) ~~~ danssig >The law clearly is on the side of rolling back the transactions No it isn't, there's no precedent for this because it hasn't existed before. The nearest thing I can think of is when that fake letter was sent out about some company causing the stock to tank. Did all the people who bought the stock when it was low have their transactions rolled back? Because that's what happened here, someone used highly technical means to cause an artificial price dive and one guy was able to take advantage of it. It's not at all clear to me that he should give _any_ of it back. ------ blhack This reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend a couple of days ago about network affects. Once a system gets too big, the nice people that started it start getting screwed by the people who don't understand (or care about) the founding ideals. The problem with a trading house like Mt. Gox is that some people assume that all of the players are altruistic (these "some people" being "me", somebody with a technical, non-financial interest in bitcoin). What happened here is just natural selfishness: the person that executed this buy order knew that the market was crashing, and that something was going wrong, but decided to exploit it regardless. Then trying to withdraw $5 million USD from Mt. Gox? I guess it's just crowd psychology. "If I don't exploit this market, somebody else will!" It's sad, and it's just my naivety showing here, but bitcoin looks like a nerdy sandbox from the outside (casually reading about it on HN); it's a place for crypto/economics geeks to play around with finance. Of course it isn't, and the actions of this [very greedy] person demonstrate that. So why do I want to use bitcoin? What advantages does it offer me over USD right now? Before seeing this crash for the last couple of days, it felt like the advantage was that bitcoin users were mostly geeks, and mostly trustworthy. The regulation that bitcoin is avoiding is starting to look pretty darn appealing. How stupid/childish of me is it to daydream about a world where somebody saw this crash happening, did exactly what he did (or maybe put in the buy order at exactly $0.02), held the bitcoins until the crash ended, then just gave them back to the sellers at cost? ~~~ anigbrowl _Before seeing this crash for the last couple of days, it felt like the advantage was that bitcoin users were mostly geeks, and mostly trustworthy._ Yeah whatever. 90% of the people using Bitcoin don't believe in the Federal Reserve system or fiat money and just want anonymous online cash transactions. There is nothing wrong with such beliefs or desires, but the idea that such people are on a higher moral plane is the complaint of a naive person at best. ~~~ Produce On the other hand, holding the belief that everyone is morally identical is even more naive. ------ perfunctory Regulating the exchange has nothing to do with regulating the currency. I don't see how exchange regulation contradicts the bitcoin philosophy. Having said that, regulatory rules should not have retroactive effect. ------ jrs235 Has it occurred to anyone that the reason Mt Gox may want to rollback the transactions is because the account that was hacked belonged to Mt Gox or someone affiliated with Mt Gox??? ~~~ danenania I think this is ~99% certain based on how it played out. ------ danssig Wow, Mt. Gox sound like a bunch of criminals. Did everyone see the link (posted 2 or 3 times) where something shady happened before and they just moved jurisdiction so they couldn't be sued? I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they did this whole thing themselves to steal some bit coins. ------ swah Is there a place one can play with HFT (or just automated trading) in the bitcoin market? ~~~ Devilboy MtGox has a trading API ------ muyyatin Interesting, MagicalTux said earlier they would not rollback transactions of this type: [https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=18858.msg237804#ms...](https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=18858.msg237804#msg237804) ~~~ bluelu I bet this was his personal account and he used an easily breakable password there. He has all interest to do a rollback there ;). ------ Tichy I don't see the problem with a rollback. Couldn't the legal users just redo all their transactions? It sounds to me, as the first commentator on bitcoin.org says, that someone would like to keep their fat booty. ~~~ pbhjpbhj > _I don't see the problem with a rollback._ Suppose I gamble my life savings, buy Kleenex shares. Tomorrow a report comes out showing that using paper tissues causes allergies and prolongs colds. The shares tank ... I'd like a rollback please! Strangely enough the guy that saw the report first and shorted those shares making millions doesn't want a rollback. Of course he wants to keep the money, he traded correctly on what was apparently a correctly operating exchange and won. That's how this sort of gambling works. MtGox screwed up. Why would they allow a transaction that crashed the exchange so easily? ~~~ Tichy The difference is that the BTC being sold were stolen. It is a completely different thing from what you describe. If tomorrow it was discovered that the BitCoin protocol has been hacked and BitCoins are worthless, a rollback wouldn't be justified. ~~~ pbhjpbhj > _The difference is that the BTC being sold were stolen._ First up, who stole the bitcoins from whom? Second, why allow trades that you know that you won't honour and will instead want to roll back? Third, rarely the bank loses, why do they get a do-over just because they lost at playing at forex? ~~~ Tichy "First up, who stole the bitcoins from whom?" Allegedly one account with a lot of BTC was hacked. The Bitcoins were stolen from that account. ~~~ pbhjpbhj There doesn't appear to be any evidence. People on the Mt.Gox forums are sceptical because the amount traded appears to be equal to the entire Mt.Gox trading volume (from the little I've read). The speculation is that it is either Mt.Gox himself/themselves, an account representing the entire volume of all Mt.Gox traders or some other buyer who has been in from the start and has somehow escaped the notice of the other traders (this last option also accounts for the ability to break in as the account security apparently was very weak and hasn't been forcedly enhanced). ------ elb0w I work at the NYSE, anytime something like this happens there would be a roll back. You cannot have a functioning stock market without this feature it would be chaos. ------ RockyMcNuts sure seems like the best of all possible worlds... a currency based on nothing of tangible value, no central bank to try to keep it stable and stem panics, no real economy or legal infrastructure behind it or army to protect them if they existed, transactions easily traceable (even reversible), prone to speculative fever and vulnerable to security issues. ------ ZipCordManiac That was a great read. If I was Kevin I would give the coins back and not do business with MtGox any longer. It's clear their systems are not secure enough to handle these kind of transfers. It wouldn't surprise me if MtGox was influenced by organized crime, they are in Japan and the Yakuza love these kind of quasi-legal schemes as of late. ~~~ danssig According those that forum (same thread) they're only in Japan to escape fallout from a previous scandal. ------ benedikt Since there is quite a bit of money involved one might wonder if someone is trying to profit. One could take this even further, put up his best tinfoil hat and ask how much control MtGox has or had over the market. Is that possible scenario? ------ charlesju This is largely irrelevant. As long as Mt. Gox has the capacity to do option 1, the impacts of option 1 exist or should exist already. ~~~ knorby In what way do they have that capacity? That they let him and others clear trades (and made no policy against it) in the window between the trade and rollback, and that their policy pretty much doesn't give them the power to do rollbacks, I don't see how that can fly. As far as I can see, the only real option that Mt. Gox is to let all the trades go through this time and then let the trades go through. It is the only way that Mt. Gox will avoid several million dollars (USD that is) of liability. ------ nextparadigms Didn't MtGox say they'll rollback all transactions from that time period, including the legit ones? ~~~ cdcarter Yes. He's complaining about that decision. ~~~ swah He also mentions that no stolen user has reported, and that its hard to believe a single user held that much money. ~~~ pbhjpbhj It seems possible that Mr (or Mrs) Mt. Gox is playing them all big-time and attempted to do something clever, messed up and got found out. Of course if you can change the rules and roll back the game at will then you can do what you like. /cynical ~~~ danssig Given their track record this seems very possible. ------ DiabloD3 As a Bitcoin forum moderator, I'm debating if I should nuke the thread, or move it to the comedy section ------ drivebyacct2 Sounds like a good reason to be as anonymous in your interactions with mt.gox as you are with anything else when using BitCoins (no judging here). If I was on a public IP, it'd be very hard for me to not sprint with that much coinage. ------ ignifero I wonder what's the next coin when people get bored of playing with bitcoins? ~~~ wiredfool I have some bytecoins over here. They're worth roughly 8x a bitcoin. ~~~ rbanffy My bytecoins are worth 9 bitcoins each because they are parity-checked. ~~~ politician Whoa there. Your parity-checked bytecoins are only worth 7 bitcoins each (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-bit_clean>). ~~~ rbanffy Dammit. I was counting on the market not realizing this. ------ noduerme I don't think o' Kev needs to worry about Mt. Gox thinking he hacked their site. They know who executed the sale; it was them. I don't know why nobody mentions this, but it seems rather obvious that Mt. Gox just dumped all their own bitcoins and bought them back supercheap, apart from a relatively minor 500k worth that they can now "roll back" from his account. I had a thread last week on HN where I was downranked severely for asking what mt. gox was, i.e. if it was a mountain, in what was a sort of snarky, derogatory tone (I'll admit it). I would like that thread upranked now thx. ------ napierzaza TL;DR Bitcoins are possibly even more flawed than any other kind of currency. There is one person who controls the flow of Bitcoins and can unmake transactions it doesn't like. ~~~ danenania You are confusing the currency with the exchange. It is definitely a weakness for bitcoin that a shady exchange has captured 90% of the market, but this problem isn't inherent to bitcoin. It seems likely that in the wake of news like this, new exchanges will be created to try to capitalize on MtGox's misfortune, and the exchange landscape will broaden. As long there is someone, somewhere willing to put up products or state currency in exchange for bitcoins, bitcoins will have their value. The best case scenario for bitcoin could be for MtGox to go down in flames because if it bitcoin held its value, it would prove that its fundamentals are sound, and its price is based on legitimate demand for an anonymous medium of exchange, not pure speculation. If a MtGox collapse _did_ cause a bitcoin collapse, it would show that bitcoin is not the real deal, just the result of a speculative frenzy. This may be hard to stomach, but it's better than continuing to ignorantly pile money into a bubble so fragile it can be popped by the guessing of a single password. In my opinion this guy, if he really wants the best for bitcoin, should sue MtGox hard if he honestly thinks what they did is wrong/illegal/breaks contractual agreements. Let bitcoin sink or swim on its own merits. ------ bonch What's with all the sudden HN coverage of these silly internet fun bucks? ~~~ sorbus It's been going on for a while. Since midapril, there's been a minimum of two stories about bitcoin each and every day[1]. There was, for a while, suspicion that it was an attempt to boost interest in bitcoin, and get more people using it - astroturfing, more or less - but I'm increasingly convinced that it's just because stories about bitcoin tend to be upvoted, and it's often an interesting topic. Well, ignoring the fact that there's very little left to say about it, anyways. [1] Based on a search for "bitcoin" on HNTrends, <http://www.hntrends.dotcloud.com/> ------ ignifero I 've seen people spending even more on useless novelty items, so no big deal. ------ rorrr I don't get it. Who was did he buy the coins from at such a low price? ------ johnx123 I'm lost. Can somebody please brief what is bitcoin? ------ cbpavel how about buying some miles from wwww.getAmile.com ? :) ------ rick888 The problems here with Bitcoin come across as the same problems with piracy: Bitcoin are just bits on a computer. Just like piracy, when we copy bits from one place to another, is it really "stealing"? Anyone that says "yes", better double-check their stance on software piracy as well. ~~~ noonespecial 2 copies of a movie can exist simultaneously and both still have value. The bitcoin network exists so that only one copy of a coin can have the value. They are fundamentally different things, even if their physical instantiation happens to be "just bits". ------ zbanks Although I can completely understand why this guy (the sumbitter?) disagrees with MtGox's solution, I thought it seemed perfectly reasonable. Even though MtGox never stated they'd interfere, _being hacked_ is unexpected enough to allow some leeway with follow-up. If the flashcrash happened organically, I doubt MtGox would revert the trades. ~~~ kelnos It's not that they never stated they'd interfere, it's that they explicitly stated they would never interfere by publicly disclaiming any role as a counter-party. If they were hacked, it's their responsibility to make things right with the party that was hacked, and not interfere with anyone else's accounts/trades. Anything less does severe damage to faith in the exchange, which tends to lead people to only keep money and BTC in the system for as long as they need to to make a trade, and then pull it out. That's not good for the exchange or the economy. ~~~ zbanks Although I understand your perspective, and I agree that they have to do _something_ to "make things right," I'm still inclined to accept the rollback. As much as I hate to use analogies, its the best way I can think to explain my reasoning. If someone (a hacker) robs a bank (user on MtGox), and they throw the money on the ground as they fleeing the scene of the crime, only for it to be picked up by bystanders (profiting users), what do you do? To me, simply returning the money (rollback) seems to be the simplest effective solution. Maybe I'm being too utilitarian, but it seems too complex to add additional funds into the system, especially when we're talking about nearly 10% of the entire value of BTC. Additionally, it establishes a strange and dangerous precedent: hackers can get away with upsetting the market. And who can make sure the hackers & profiteers aren't working together? I don't think there's really much you can do to repair faith in the exchange in the immediate future. More importantly, people will keep money as BTC the exchange if it is value is stable (or deflating). Even now, I'd be more worried about the market than hackers. I'd love to see an insurance company spring up. It'd require major capital, but it'd really help strengthen the value of BTC by providing security and resolving nearly all of these issues. (Things I'd do with $1M...) ~~~ sneak In your analogy, the bank is actually MtGox, the organization in actual possession of the coins, NOT the user.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Imagotag – Electronic Shelf Labelling - speeq http://www.imagotag.com/ ====== n0rm Biggest product killer for these is the need for IT management. Prove to retailers that your product is install-and-forget or they'll shy away from the unpredictable maintenance costs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Project Management tool for dev teams. What's the word these days? - badbanana I've had experience with Jira (which has all the schnazzy charts, customization and integrations, but slowness and usability seems to be a common complaint) and a bit of Trello for personal stuff.<p>There's Trello, Github Projects, Youtrack, Wrike, daPulse, Asana, Pivotal Tracker, Basecamnp, Blossom and the list goes on.<p>I get that each probably has its pros/cons, but has the landscape changed in the recent years so that some are clearly ahead of the rest of the pack?<p>E.g. is there any reason to use Jira anymore with all these other options?<p>Thanks ====== briandear Github Projects is my preferred tool of choice. You have have repo-level as well as organizational-level Kanban-style boards, it has a nice integration with Github Issues and basically eliminates the need for yet-another-tracking- tool. If you need slightly more features, Zenhub is a nice way to use Github -- though I liked Zenhub, Github projects does what we need. Our team size is 5, so I can't speak for what's useful for larger organizations, at least not from recent experience. However, Github Projects might not please the micromanager -- you can't lock down permissions to prevent those pesky developers from moving their own cards across the board like you can with Jira. Jira seems to be a continuing hit with the micromanager-type PMs that busy themselves with robust reporting and tracking minutes while, in my experience, Github Projects (or Zenhub) seem to be popular with teams that just want to move quickly with minimal manager overhead. So my vote goes to Github Projects, with an honorable mention for Zenhub as it has some features that some might find useful (like estimations and epics.) I'd rather choke on a chicken bone than be forced to use Jira (or any of that suite of products) again. Obviously, I'm biased towards lighter-weight tools with fewer "features," so opinions will vary. ------ venusiant I'll add one more to your list, Taiga, [https://taiga.io/](https://taiga.io/) . I started using it a couple of weeks ago with a small team and I really like it. It does burn down charts. And there is a self-hosted option. ------ wchrisn Have a look at orangescrum. Its quite simple and easy to use for managing small teams	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Cloudflare Makes It hard to access website to promote it privacy pass extension - Nitishshah700 Cloudflare new techniques to promote there privacy pass extension, make it very irritating to surf the web.<p>Every single site i visit that use cloudFlare, i have to submit google ugly recaptcha, which is a real PITA ====== jgrahamc This is simply untrue. We have not changed anything to "promote Privacy Pass". ~~~ Nitishshah700 but you have made it irritating for user without privacy pass to vist site that use cloudFlare, creating a environment that force user to install privacy pass. ~~~ jgrahamc How are you connecting to these sites? ~~~ Nitishshah700 normal Internet connection , no vpn or proxy, just an ad blocker ------ kinderjaje I found it frustrating as well ~~~ Nitishshah700 me too, and the worst thing is that, i am surfing those side from same ip, browser, location and even the same session, just open a another site in a new tab and again the same ugly captcha. It simply mean that cloudFlare is forcefully trying to sell there so called " privacy friendly" browser fingerprinting extension to user.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do you keep up the energy to work on side-projects after work? - eddieschod Curious about what other people do to maintain the energy (and money) to work on side projects after work. What's your side project working schedule like? ====== parallel_item An omnipresent underlying sense of anxiety and rage caused by something or other in my past that is useful for work but not useful for building relationships! ~~~ kenny87 Michael Jordan was great at doing this. His hall of fame speech is filled w/ anecdotes about him turning slights into motivation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzBMGXfK4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzBMGXfK4c) ------ potta_coffee My strategy is just to push myself to get _something_ done, even when I don't want to. So, the other night I wrote an SQL query. It was probably 20 mins of work, but it brought me closer to finishing the project. Other days, I'll end up "feeling it" and putting in several hours on a project. So, small increments plus the occasional big push. ~~~ mpfundstein true. my whole side project output yesterday was a shell script that monitors if another process is running and lights an led on the raspi if yes :P 40 min work. But one step closer to the goal ~~~ schappim What is the goal? ~~~ mpfundstein Self riding rc car :-) i thought it would be a ‘simple’ side project... 2 months ago ------ hanselot I don't, I would also like to know. I get home, feel like satan drained my soul all day and sedate myself to continue the vicious cycle the next day. ~~~ kwhitefoot Sounds like you are in the wrong job or the wrong company. If the day is that bad every day you need to consider moving. ~~~ anon8794578 Either that, or it's just mentally exhausting to be productive for a full day. It might not be that the job is bad, but rather that the amount of energy for certain kinds focus and tasks is limited. In that case, if the desire to do side projects is great enough, I suppose the correct solution would be to try going for a somewhat shorter work week. ~~~ hanselot I think I have reached a critical point in my career where I have to choose whether I work to live or live to work. I prefer the prior, so I will be going that route. I'll be resigning on Wednesday. ------ jcahill84 I have an hour commute to my real job, so I use that to hack on my side project before and after work. Setting small goals has always helped me keep up the energy to move it forward. When you're working in really small time chunks, it's important to make sure you have something achievable to accomplish. You're not going to be able to do things like "finish the sign up flow" in one night, but you can do things like "finish the authByPassword() method" and still be moving forward. As for the money aspect of it, that's simple, just don't spend any. Bootstrapping is all about doing more with less, so don't spend anything until you absolutely have to. When you do finally start writing checks, make sure you're spending on things that will have the highest impact. ~~~ SenHeng I tried that last year when I had a 2 hour commute. It doesn't work well if you have to get off every half an hour to switch trains. Or if you can't get a seat. ------ itamarst Why do you want to work on a side-project? 1\. If it's to learn more, I would instead suggest focusing on learning on the job. It's more realistic, you can get more resources, etc.. E.g. I've found learning new programming languages much easier at work than in my spare time: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/09/learn-a-new- programm...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/09/learn-a-new-programming- language/) 2\. If you want to create a side business, I've done some combination of working half an hour each morning and increasing my personal time by negotiating a part-time job. An interview with someone who has negotiated shorter workweek at many companies: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time- programmer...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer/) ------ dookahku I don't usually go home. I stay in the office and use a separate laptop or go to a coffee shop. I know if I go home I'm just going to sleep immediately. Then Ig et up in the middle of the night and get more tired. Using S.M.A.R.T. goal system ([https://www.yourcoach.be/en/coaching- tools/smart-goal-settin...](https://www.yourcoach.be/en/coaching-tools/smart- goal-setting.php)) is helpful, too. "I will resolve this 1 bug." "I will scope out this feature" "I will wireframe this UI" "I will start and tabulate this survey with these 2 questions" These are all helpful and can be easy to finish. ------ onion2k Regarding energy, I do what I can when I can, and I don't stress about things taking a long time. Regarding money, I don't spend any. Between free services, free/promotional tiers of paid services, and open source tools, there's rarely a need to spend anything until your project is generating cold hard cash. ------ jrudisill Some things have made a difference for me: \- Working on side projects that have less overlap with work and scratch technical and creative itches that aren't a part of my day job. \- Getting in the habit of sitting down to do some small task every day. Some days that turns into a multi-hour super-productive hack fest, sometimes it's writing a piece of copy and that's it. Now that I'm in that habit, I put in a really productive session about 2x per week on average, but I try to not care about that statistic. \- Setting easily achievable goals every week, and trying to consistently surpass them (examples: add an 'about' section, write a query) \- Getting serious about working out and eating mostly right fixed the afternoon doldrums for me. I normally do weights and cardio in the morning before work and a jog/yoga/swimming after. ------ mjmj I work from home which gives me about 30-60 mins extra compared to those that commute. Often I’ll work a bit in the morning. Then at night once my 7mo old goes to bed I work for another 1-2 hours before sleeping. I leave all my editor and terminal windows open so I can quickly switch back to my side project as needed during lunch or while other software is building or off the clock. I always make sure to workout, sleep plenty and eat right which tremendously helps my mental fatigue. Also I quit my high stress job and work for a company with much more relaxed work environment so my daytime work is fun and doesn’t burn me out. But I agree, it’s not easy balancing life, family, passions, future aspirations. It’s like a wheel you’re trying to keep balanced and round and things will always give and take. ------ imhoguy Sometimes I do mornings, but then I don't have enough focus capacity left for work. Best so far is 4 day work week - Friday is exclusive for me, weekends for family. Pay-cut is 20% but I gain 50% more time off, time is money too. ~~~ maxxxxx I have asked for a 4 day week at my company but they wouldn't do it. This would be my dream. ~~~ itamarst Like I said elsewhere, it's possible (though not _easy_ ). This guy has done it multiple times over past 15 years: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time- programmer...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer/) (I also wrote a book with more stories and advice, with a whole chapter on negotiating part time work based on my experience and that of others: [https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/](https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/)) ------ blihp Work on things you enjoy/want/need and don't feel like you have put any more effort into it than you find rewarding (from whatever metric matters to you: fun, money, etc.) It is a side-project after all and not your main gig. If you're feeling too exhausted/no time/other is getting in your way, identify what exactly the issue is: \- is it other personal stuff/hobbies? (ask yourself why your side projects rate below these... are you willing to re-prioritize?) \- is it family? (unless you have buy-in/support from them, you may be screwed esp. if you have a S.O./kids... sorry) \- is it the day job? (ask yourself if its really work maxing you out or pressure you're putting on yourself. If it's truly external pressure from work, devote all of your free time to getting the hell out of there ASAP: life's too short) \- etc. etc. The bottom line is to figure out where your time/energy is going. Assuming that the side-project is something you want to do, it should not be too difficult to find at least some time for it or understand exactly why you're not making progress. Having covered all that, here's what I'm thinking might be going on from the way you phrased the question: do you really _want_ to do the side-project(s) or do you just feel like you should because it seems like everyone else has theirs? If that's the case, you really shouldn't be bothering with a side- project... it's not for everyone. ------ nicksalt I've always found huge success in the mornings and huge flops in the evenings. ~~~ hackermailman Morning side-project hacking here too, even though I'm not a morning person. 5am your brain is fresh from sleep, there is no social obligations, no phone calls to answer, and you have a time limit for motivation so often plan your projects better. ------ otakucode The way I see it, when I have some free time I have some choice in which ways to spend it. If I spend it doing some things, I end up with something to show for it, something I can look at later or point to and say "I did that." Other ways leave me with almost nothing. And I just get bothered by that. Now, it's important to note that I am very broad in my sense of 'something to show for it.' Being well-read, having a wide experience with cinema, etc are things that I credit as artifacts worth accumulating. So most of my time gets split between learning and building things (software, mostly, as that's where my talents lie). ------ nickthemagicman I take the opposite approach. It's NOT good to work on side projects after work. That's reserved for the weekends. Spend your after noons doing other stuff. Excercise, other hobbies, talking with ppl at a bar, etc. ------ i_made_a_booboo I tried doing it nights and weekends for 3.5 years and with a young family, I made advances in my skills but never produced anything meaningful. I'm working with someone else now to create a product and so I took a week of annual leave to try out what it was like doing my own thing full-time and vlogged about it. [https://youtu.be/-VkkZOiIL10](https://youtu.be/-VkkZOiIL10) It was so good the next day back at work I handed in my notice which is what the following video is about! [https://youtu.be/rrP_yHV19bA](https://youtu.be/rrP_yHV19bA) ------ musgravepeter I'm lucky since I am by nature an early bird. I work on my side project for an hour or so _before_ work. Also a few hours in the morning on the weekend. IIRC this was how Scott Adams found time to draw Dilbert when he had a full- time job. ------ l_tonz Buy a PS4 and put it next to your PC. At least to me, playing video games give me some energy and some escape after work. After that, I tackle small 30 minute tasks. Don't take side-projects too seriously! ------ pascalxus The key to keeping up motivation is some sort of success or reason to think you'll be successful. In the beginning, us entrepreneurs are filled with confidence (or dillusions depending on how you look at it). It's this confidence that keeps you going. But, as reality sets in and no one uses your app, you begin to realize it's not going to work. I guess thats why they always recommend release soemthing early , so you can get some small measure of success: at least get some positive feedback to validate your idea. ------ mrdependable Sheer force of will. After working at a computer all day, sitting at a computer and working late into the night is the last thing I want to do. Thinking of the alternative, which is spending my life working for someone else, is my main motivator. I can't see myself doing that forever, and I know things won't change unless I put in the work. So I do my day job from 9 - 5, hang out with the family from 6 - 9, then work until 2am. ~~~ itamarst As I mentioned in another comment, you can negotiate a shorter workweek. I've done it, others have as well - see link in my other comment. ------ ha-shine A hack I found that's useful for me is to keep a daily log. I list down what I have achieved in a day no matter how small they may be, e.g adding contents to company wiki, clearing a jira ticket, reading an interesting article, etc. I keep the log in a simple text file for each day, in a repo on github. I always find the urge to add something to this log whenever I get back home. ------ billconan I'm also a morning person, sometimes I devote my morning time to side projects first. And I leave my actual work to the later part of the day. But if I need to work on my sides during the evening, one trick I found is making my room extremely bright, making me think that it was still daytime. I also force myself to be away from my bed. As soon as I lay down, there is no way I can get up and be productive. ------ djinnandtonic Don't try to do anything meaningful if you have less than 2 hours in a sitting to devote to your project. Block off a 4-hour window every weekend, and take a day off once per month where you put in a full day. I find trying to work on projects after work just leads to a bunch of time wasted context switching, and 'not unwinding' can be seriously bad for your mental health. ------ snr I just do stuff because I believe in the idea and the stuff needs to get done for the idea to materialize. ------ silveroriole Only work 4 days. I put more value on my free time and learning than on money I don’t spend anyway. ------ epiddy I find that NOT turning on the TV and NOT cracking open a beer helps me to focus on the side project. ymmv ~~~ Sileni If I can hold my willpower together for the first 30 minutes after I get home, I usually do alright. If I open absolutely any distraction within the first 15 minutes after I get home, my night is shot. It's funny how much of my time is dictated by momentum alone. In a sad, "Do I actually have free will?" kind of way. ------ tytytytytytytyt > Curious about what other people do to maintain the energy I work on something that's actually fun. ------ riku_iki Do something you are really excited about. Excitement and inspiration bring you energy. ------ jadeydi Want to learn more things and earn money ------ Bulbasaur2015 learn to recharge whenever you want and you can. take powernaps, or go for a walk or a shower ------ throwsaway89 I have felt whenever i had to push myself for the side project it always failed. The drive for me came from inside because the road ahead is long. Also waking up early helped alot	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Secret Huawei enterprise router snoop 'backdoor' was Telnet service - mr_toad https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/30/huawei_enterprise_router_backdoor_is_telnet/ ====== DevNullDevice I long for the day when security is the default state. I wonder if legislation could help address the never ending stream of things like this. ~~~ pysxul A efficient legislation would be to ban chinese made electronic ... Not sure how realistic this is	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Gaming like it’s 1979 - shawndumas http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/07/ion-icade-hands-on-gaming-on-the-ipad-like-its-1979-video/ ====== sdfx It's great to see how ThinkGeek uses April Fool's day as a way to gauge customer interest. They did this before with their Tauntaun sleeping bags which they produced/sold after a lot of positive feedback to their April 1st joke. ~~~ e1ven I think that has been a great deal in the past, but these days it seems frustratingly obvious that the April Fools Day posts are sometimes little more than market research. It seems to take some of the humor out of it. Also- While the orig. idea was by ThinkGeek, the production isn't by them for this product, it's a third-party. ~~~ phuff I worked under the same corporate umbrella as the thinkgeek guys before :) If I'm not mistaken, all of their production is outsourced. In this case, though I think the design is partially outsourced, too, since it's a little more complex than a guitar shirt with the bluetooth and all. I don't really think the April fools stuff is being explicitly used as test marketing, btw, though I think it's a neat side effect. Those guys just really like April fools stuff. ------ davi Interesting how much money there is to be made mining the disposable incomes of adults nostalgic for the pleasures of childhood. ~~~ bcl Tell me about it. My wife recently discovered that her mom kept the family's Fairchild Channel F system 2 and she is now scouring the net for games. She even had me teach her how to solder so she could fix the old controllers. ~~~ LostInTheWoods2 Wow. Where can I find a woman who not only enjoys gaming but can solder. ~~~ eru bd had to make his own, i.e. teach. ------ keithburgun I love how it's considered this great awesome thing that you "can" spend lots of money on BUTTONS for the damn thing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Fixing Pay to Win - stcredzero http://www.emergencevector.com/blog/2015/6/10/fixing-pay-to-win ====== sharemywin I didn't realize this was about games at first. ~~~ emergencevector It's about MMOs in particular. I'm writing one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Research team has isolated the Covid-19 virus - 52-6F-62 https://sunnybrook.ca/research/media/item.asp?c=2&i=2069&f=covid-19-isolated-2020 ====== jrace One step forward. Hopefully a positive outcome of this pandemic will be better global corroboration.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Harvard Researchers Find A Creative Way To Make Incentives Work - thomaspun http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/10/harvard-researchers-find-a-creative-way-to-make-incentives-work/ ====== bking I can see where this would be effective. The question is whether you can convince a company to believe the hype, pay money up front, and put in extra effort at the end to recoup that money if the goals aren't met. To anyone who isn't open to new ideas it is hard to invest in ideas like this because they would be automatically labeled as a pipe dream.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I'm a business guy with a prototype looking for a hacker - dowork77 Throw away account for privacy.<p>me:<p>* I'd consider myself a business guy or a product guy. * I taught myself just enough Ruby on Rails to create a prototype. * I'm looking for a hacker to help me iterate to the next level.<p>you:<p>* interested in sports (weightlifting, crossfit, olympic lifting, etc.) * basic design skills (you like simplicity) * RoR skills * wants to make $$$ (no ads) by charging for a good SaaS product<p>Please ask away for other questions, email in the profile. Prototype link will be sent to people interested. ====== WalterSear JMHO but if you aren't going to open the kimono quite a bit wider than that, I don't think you'll get many takers. ~~~ dowork77 What should I add?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Jobs for an AI undergrad - aiundergrad I will shortly be graduating from a top UK university with a BS in Artificial Intelligence. The skills I have aquired are very diverse within the field, spanning machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, with a healthy dose of programming (parallelism etc) thrown in. Would anyone in industry be able to give me an idea of what sort of work awaits me as a new graduate? Getting a PhD in some combination of the areas mentioned above interests me too. What would be the effect on my employability and earning potential?<p>Thanks. ====== checoivan Depends on what you like doing:) My major was on AI on college and ended up not not doing anything related to it. More than your CS schoolwork background, I found that previous work, demos, and internships help you getting a job. In my situation I couldn't take my internship offers because of personal reasons (needed to stay with the family back home) but building demos and cool stuff helped more than the list of classes I took. NLP is applicable on search problems and query processing . Computer vision is good if you know a lot and are good with graphics ,on companies that do game programming, graphic apps like autodesk, but this field is though to crack. Machine learning and datamining is good for startups, a bunch of places are doing data mining these days, or at a product like Oracle or MS SQLServer, but this groups are though, really , really though. ------ dstein Two words: Stock Market. The stock market is the absolute perfect application for A.I. There's a giant amount of data, both historical and real-time. There's patterns, predictions, and emotions all balled up into a type of game that humans aren't very good at -- but it would be a perfect game for a smart computer to play. ------ Rhapso I am soon to be in a similar position, and am asking similar questions.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The new archive.org - bpierre https://archive.org/v2 ====== aw3c2 Awww why... This looks incredibly cluttered. Infinite scrolling is a terrible idea in an _archive_. If you use the list view instead, you get a very hard to scan "3 narrow lines for 1" design. The site is very broken if you don't have Javascript enabled. I am scared how CPU intense it would be on my mobile or cheap netbook. The details of collections don't even display any items. Where is the list of files inside an item? Previously there was a nice table. Now everything seems to focus on images instead. IA hosts a lot of things that are not visual. Music, texts, data. Those seem like second row citizens now. The cover of an album tells me .. nothing about the music itself. For an archive, I think this is a rather bad interface. The technical implementation seems very un-archivey and more suited to a "dumb user" discovery interface built upon an existing well-presented archive. :( PS: The categories and tags on the side are a nice addition. If someone from IA reads this, I think at least [https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php](https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php) is not using output buffering which might make user's performance much better. Overall the site is very very slow. edit: Some comparison images. Old: [http://i.imgur.com/gJXgJhI.png](http://i.imgur.com/gJXgJhI.png) New default: [http://i.imgur.com/JOEoAiu.png](http://i.imgur.com/JOEoAiu.png) New list: [http://i.imgur.com/m2d1Gf4.png](http://i.imgur.com/m2d1Gf4.png) Old: [http://i.imgur.com/X7e2s5T.png](http://i.imgur.com/X7e2s5T.png) New: [http://i.imgur.com/9HsrQO1.png](http://i.imgur.com/9HsrQO1.png) ~~~ xanderstrike > The site is very broken if you don't have Javascript enabled. I agree with all of your other concerns, but it is not the responsibility of the web designer to accommodate people who selectively disable parts of their website. If you turn off CSS, or the color blue, your experience will degrade, but that's 100% your fault. The same is true with javascript. It runs quite well on my 1.8ghz Atom netbook and my Nexus 5. The JS they're using doesn't seem that expensive. ~~~ charonn0 True, but no one wins if the user leaves your website frustrated. Gracefully degrading in absence of a full-fledged scriptable web browser should be considered best practice. ~~~ textfiles Graceful degredation is definitely a plan. ------ sirn My first impression: wow, looks minimal. This is a nice change. I like it! Then I read the comment here and realized _the page hasn 't fully loaded yet_. The fact that above the fold part loads almost instantly (including top menu which worked right away) is very nice, but I'm not quite sure about the rest. It's slow, heavy and really hogs up CPU when it's loaded. ~~~ Mahn Oh, wow, had you not mentioned it I would have guessed that there _was_ a part below the fold. ------ droithomme The page here has 13.5MB in assets for the initial load, including a 7.9MB top html file. Takes 29.5 seconds to load, assuming all extensions and plugins like adblock are disabled, otherwise it seems to never complete loading. In both cases, it pins one CPU at 100% while it loads. ------ Mithaldu The new archive.org is over 8MB of HTML, quite impressive. Snark aside, i'd like to read a post about what they changed and why. For example i see they almost entirely removed the previously prominent links to the forums. Why is that? ~~~ maaarghk It does say on the top right that this is a beta site, so it's probably a weeee bit early to be making comments about "the new direction" and all that. ~~~ pbhjpbhj Well beta means feature complete and considered ready to ship excepting as yet unspotted last minute bugs from testers ... so it's way too late to have input to the new direction, the new direction is at beta stage set in stone unless the update is scrapped. ~~~ vertex-four > Well beta means feature complete and considered ready to ship excepting as > yet unspotted last minute bugs from testers No, that's a release candidate. A beta is considered feature complete, but potentially not, and almost definitely somewhat buggy and/or non-performant. It's also often not undergone any major form of usability testing, and will often need to be modified to incorporate the results of that. ------ asaddhamani I agree with the general sentiment of this thread. This redesign was not needed in the first place. The new website is _incredibly_ slow to load, and the infinite scrolling thing absolutely sucks. While I can see all my uploads with the old(better) website, the new one doesn't seem to work. Just says "Fetching more results", and then nothing happens. With the tabs, if I try to list my uploads by, say, text, it reloads the page and switches the tab to collections, and then I have to click the Uploads tab again to see the filtered results. Same when I remove a filter. Even on my workstation computer with a nice overclocked CPU, I can see the CPU usage jump to the top whenever I load the site. The website takes 19.90s to load with cache disabled, with ~200 requests and 6.5MB of data transferred. The older website takes 4.21s to load, with 18 requests and 280KB of data transferred, in contrast. Meanwhile, features like the ability to playback WARC files that are uploaded by users don't seem to be getting any attention, but a feature like that would make so much sense for a site like the Internet Archive. I can see they provide a player for media files, why not provide something for WARC files too, then? As a heavy user of the site, the redesign(at least at the current state) will only ever hinder my experience, I can't see it being helpful in any way. ~~~ db48x A WARC might have been put into the Wayback Machine; do a search there for the url. Failing that, there are proxies you can run locally that let you access the content of a WARC as if you were browsing the original site. [https://github.com/internetarchive/warcprox](https://github.com/internetarchive/warcprox) is even by IA themselves, so clearly they're working on it. A viewer that let you browse the contents of a WARC the same way you can do for a zip would be really nice, but it's probably a separate project from redesigning the site. In fact, browsing zip files (and a bunch of other similar file types, of course) was added only a few months ago. ~~~ asaddhamani True, the WARC file might have been included in the Wayback Machine, but I meant something different. I'm specifically interested in the ability to specify which WARC file I want to play back. I think an example would be better than me trying to explain it. Have a look at [https://webrecorder.io](https://webrecorder.io), it lets you play back any WARC or ARC file, you just have to provide the URL. I know this is outside the realm of a redesign, but if IA could add something like this, it would be a big UX improvement. ------ ANTSANTS This looks fancy and Web 2.0 and pinteresty and whatnot (and has the page size and CPU requirements to prove it), but it still has the fundamental problem of the old archive.org: it thinks portals are still relevant to the internet. They're not. One person or organization can't meaningfully organize all of the world's information, it's not worth trying. It's like saying "we're bringing the Dewey Decimal System into the 21st century." No, rigid hierarchical classification just doesn't cut it any more. Just focus on archiving the information, improving the search mechanism[1], and _staying alive_ , and let the community handle curation and discovery. [1] Merchanisms? Sorry to weeb out, but they should really look at Danbooru (NSFW) sometime. Tag-based classification and search works extremely well when (1) the users submitting the content aren't the people that made the content, so there's no conflict of interest encouraging them to try to game the system by spamming tags and whatnot, (2) there are strong guidelines for what is and isn't acceptable, what is and isn't subjective, and (3) the users are as dedicated and passionate as anime fans and archivists are. Let the users contribute objective tags, add support for subjective/personal tags ("pools" in booru lingo) that don't show up in search results but provide a way for users to curate, and for the love of god let them "fave" things and see their friend's favorites, and participation on archive.org would explode overnight. ------ domas You can provide feedback/comments directly to them by clicking "exit beta" in the top right. ------ textfiles Jason Scott, here. Disclaimer: I work for the Internet Archive (although I don't speak for the entire Archive) and I'm vaguely gung-ho on the place: [https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/527549181175427072](https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/527549181175427072) I am also, as part of my job there, one of the largest individual uploaders of data to archive.org - I've added hundreds of thousands of individual items (texts, movies, music, websites) since I started working there in 2011. So, moving on. Welcome to the new user interface beta. I'm glad to see people toying with it, and the commentary and complaints are very, very welcome. As a smallish organization with a lot going on, the responses from people really digging down in the beta are very appreciated. First, I'll say that the Beta interface is a "true" beta - it's the result of a lot of internal work, arguments, and discussions, but nothing is 100% set in stone. This isn't a beta like Gmail or a FPS trying to determine the rate of firing of the chaingun weapon: this is a lot of best-approach attempts at a whole range of goals. There's bound to be lots of responses from a lot of camps that are now coming forward. (For example, the new site has accessibility issues that need to be addressed.) If the term "beta" has been wrecked, stick with "prototype". The internal name was V2, so I tend to keep calling it that. V2 is the first major redesign of the main archive.org site in over a decade. And part of the conditions of this project (done by a handful of people) were to keep the old site (retroactively called V1) running, and mostly unchanged. That was a whole bucket of headache that isn't even obvious when you come into the site. (Anyone who has done this knows how it can be). With over 20 petabytes of data on the site, and millions of items and objects, spanning the whole environment without downtime is a feat in itself. So there's a whole range of philosophies being approached, but just getting the backend into a shape where it could sustain a new interface to it was a lot of non-obvious work. Moving to the site as it is now. Definitely slow. Definitely a shock. Definitely some great choices, some which might seem like head-scratchers. There is a designer, with a vision (his name is David) and there's been approaches to all the intended known shortcomings of V1 Internet Archive in this prototype. One of the issues with Archive.org that's been an issue is non-responsiveness for different platforms - you got one site and that was it. Another was a lack of visual interface as an option. Now there is one. The tagging and metadata efforts were spotty before now, because you were not really rewarded for doing so. The V2 site uses these tags and metadata extensively, and will continue to. This has been a nightmare for me, frankly - I've had to add logos to the 1,200 collections of items I've been uploading, and I'm doing descriptions as well as tags. But under the new system, the chance for finding things has increased exponentially. There are definitely cases where I have to swap back to V1 to get kinds of "work done", because as an intense power-user, I do all sorts of grandiose work. But then again, 99% of my interaction with maintaining and adding content to the Internet Archive, I do through the API, and specifically through a python command-line interface we've had a developer working on for over a year: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/internetarchive](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/internetarchive) I've uploaded many thousands of items, analyzed and upgraded their metadata, and done search-and-modify runs by the hundreds with this tool. It's being constantly updated. In the future, I expect us to see multiple improvements to the interface - one which is much more bandwidth and processor friendly, a version of the "view" (we have image and list right now) that is optimum for researchers, and so on. But I'll stress again: \- This is a prototype which was done with a pretty small team who had to keep the old site running as smoothly as possible, while doing essentially a decade of upgrade in one swoop; \- Now that it's "proven" that it works, refinement by the truckload needs to happen \- Your comments are not just welcome but encouraged \- Increased interest in the archive and the materials, and working together to find ways to access the petabytes of data in a meaningful way is not just a nice side benefit, but a vital core of the Archive's mission Thanks for reading. ~~~ walterbell Thanks for the additional detail. > > [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/internetarchive](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/internetarchive) Can anyone use the API key, e.g. does it require auth for both upload and download? For upload, is an archive.org userid sufficient, or is a separate API key needed? Will the new metadata be available via the API? Onsite searches are usually less successful than a Google search with site:archive.org. Within the archive, it has been near impossible to create a URL-based search query that will find all editions of a given title/work. Will the new site/tagging help? Thanks to the entire archive team for a precious resource. ~~~ textfiles Anyone can generate an S3-like/API key. They have the same rights and restrictions as someone using other methodologies. So, for example, you can upload into the general Audio or Texts collections, but you can't upload, say, right into the Grateful Dead archive or the CD-ROM collections we have. In the future, we hope to have it that accounts will be assigned and de- assigned by some credential different than the current somewhat-binary approach we have now, but that functionality doesn't exist yet. So basically, upload is constricted like before. Download, however, is as unconstricted like before. ------ danbee This is practically unusable in Safari on my MacBook Pro. It's a shame because once it actually loads it looks quite nice! ------ TomGullen I love archive.org. Has my first website ever on it, no way would this exist without archive.org any more! [http://web.archive.org/web/20020726224013/http://www.gamezon...](http://web.archive.org/web/20020726224013/http://www.gamezoner.com/) ------ bgutj The only thing I've tested with the new beta interface is the ability to search all books for a particular word or phrase at the top level. This has not been implemented. If I am looking to write a biography about a particular person, for example, who is mentioned in passing in n books in the archive and I search for this person, I will find a very small amount of these books, perhaps even zero. If I go to a particular book, I can search -inside- that book for words/phrases. I would like to do with the raw text from all books. ------ bane I with there was a word stronger than love for what I feel about archive.org. It's one of the amazing promises of the Internet come true. If I have one criticism of archive.org it's that things are impossible to find, even if you know they have them - this redesign doesn't solve this problem. I think the principle problem is that what should be a meta-layer on the organization, the provenance of a collection of stuff, is often used just as often as an organizational scheme as media and subject type. And example. I'm looking to see if they have "A calendar of dinners, with 615 recipes" by Marion Harris Neil. Where would you suppose this book would be? If I go to "eBooks and Texts" I'm simply met with a wall of collections, none of which are subject area organized, is it under Microfilm, or Canadian Libraries? Boston Library Consortium? Who knows? I'll never find it by browsing and the way books are collected is pretty much useless. Unless I _know_ there's a copy under "Canadian Libraries" I'll probably not find it. Sure I can search for it, "A calendar of dinners" gives me 3 results! Turns out it's buried under the following Archives: "Toronto Public Library", "The Library of Congress", "Cornell University Library". Notice that none of these are the crumbtrail I used to find it the first time on accident (Canadian Libraries)! How about Omni Magazine? Is it a "Text"? I'm not sure, even today. I _do_ know if I go to texts and search all texts for "Omni" I get it back. But it's part of "The Magazine Rack" and "Additional Collections" which I still have not figured out how to just navigate to. These are just texts, video, audio and other media types are similarly hard to navigate and find stuff. There's little pleasure in browsing archive because if you find something, it'll be by accident, not because you navigated to some pocket of cool stuff. Good luck seeing what SF books they have and browsing it. That's actually a collection I'd care about. I also like old radio shows, and those are scatter shot all over the site. Unless somebody basically just uploaded an entire series at once, good luck piecing it together. Right now, about the only way I know something is on archive.org is because the person who uploaded the item mentions it on a podcast or something. I'm almost tempted to just start a meta-website of some sort to start organizing stuff I care about to that other people like me can find it. It's kind of a mess, and it's given me a lot more respect for what librarians have largely solved in the physical world. ~~~ db48x Interestingly enough, at the open house last night they talked about how they want to shift focus a bit and make it easier for people to do exactly that. They've gotten really good at storing things, and at digitizing them, and now they need to be better at letting people curate and organize collections. Of course, as it stands anyone can make a website of their own that links to and/or embeds anything stored in the archive, but I gather that hasn't happened often. ~~~ bane > Of course, as it stands anyone can make a website of their own that links to > and/or embeds anything stored in the archive, but I gather that hasn't > happened often. Yeah, and I've even debated it enough to think about doing it myself. For me at least, it feels kind of wrong to just put up a site that curates and organizes somebody else's collection. I'd also be worried about going through the effort and then having archive.org change the link-to urls or rules or whatever (even though they're a benevolent organization) and then have to go through all the effort again. It _really_ is a lot of work to find stuff on archive, even when you know it's there. And again I attribute that to too much effort to keep track and give credit for the provenance of an item rather than organizing it in a reasonable way. As much as I'm glad that the Universal Library (Million Books Project) donated their work, it doesn't do anything for me as a user when I'm trying to find the Collected Stories of William Faulkner. I think a better way would be to categorize the archive like any other library, and then for each individual work, provide alternative scans/recordings/transcriptions, etc. and a link to the donating organization that goes to a page that _then_ gives you links to everything they donated. But honestly, it's a fairly mild inconvenience. Most of the stuff they host is fairly long-dwell. Once I find a book or whatever, I'll be tied up with it for quite a few days and don't need to be bouncing all over their site several times an hour. ~~~ db48x Yes, probably they need to simply talk about this possibility more, or more prominently. If you already know what you're looking for, then feel free to simply search for it; you don't have to browse through the categories it might be in, or the subjects it ought to be listed in, or any of that. Likely the only reason why it isn't in the places you looked is just that nobody has gotten around to applying the right metadata to it. This is simply a fact of life; there are millions (or billions, if you squint a little) of items in the archive, and most of them don't have all the metadata that they ought to have. I wouldn't worry about stepping on their toes by organizing things better. It's not actually a collection until someone organizes and curates it; until that happens it's just a pile of stuff. IA has always operated on the assumption that it's ok to just have a pile of stuff if the alternative is to have nothing at all. Given the size of the pile there's no way they could ever organize everything themselves, even assuming that there's one obvious right way to organize things. ~~~ bane > IA has always operated on the assumption that it's ok to just have a pile of > stuff if the alternative is to have nothing at all. Absolutely. This definitely helps keep things in perspective. And their pile is priceless and staggering. It's amazing to me that there are more things on IA to keep me entertained, for free, than I could ever possibly experience in this lifetime. ------ taejo There's an escaping bug: at [https://archive.org/details/movies](https://archive.org/details/movies) I see "Arts & Music", etc. The download links for movies (and I guess other files) should set their disposition to download rather than playing in the browser. ------ 72deluxe Isn't infinite scrolling a memory hog? ~~~ acdha It's a risk but implementers can take the sting out of it. Browsers aren't currently smart enough to do things like unload decoded <img> memory for things which aren't visible but you can avoid the worst of it if you use a CSS background-image (which browsers _do_ unload) and a visibility test on scroll to avoid loading things which aren't visible or soon to be visible. This works as far back as IE8 so it might be worth the hassle. ~~~ 72deluxe Thank you - very informative. I would not have known the behaviour of browsers with regard to that - is there an established standard or accepted behaviour documented somewhere? I'm guessing that the CSS spec only dictates how things should be shown and not what browsers can do with off-screen items. ~~~ acdha Correct: the only way to know for sure is to test it. I think a few minor extensions could make that a lot easier – e.g. a CSS :visible selector and support for background-image: attr(…) ~~~ 72deluxe Thank you. The massive amount of testing is surely what hampers web development? Years ago in the dark ages people dreamed of cross-platform apps; the three main players in this market (desktop only) now are Windows, Mac OSX and Linux (to a tiny extent). Writing a cross-platform native app is no longer a massive exercise in frustration (see wxWidgets or Qt). Someone thought Java would solve all our problems, but it seems to have fallen out of fashion, and everyone pins their hopes and dreams on cross-platform apps with websites, but surely the effort is far larger: testing on 3+ browsers per OS at least! I don't see how everyone copes. ------ glomek Yikes! That's different! But it still doesn't have the one feature that I've been wishing they would implement forever. In a collection of audio files, I wish they would provide a podcast feed. It would be so nice to be able to listen to Old Time Radio shows as podcasts. ~~~ aw3c2 That's a great idea, be sure to mail them about it at [email protected]! ------ wj I like it. I was looking at it for thirty seconds and came across two collections that I didn't know existed. Great to discover new stuff and I can still search if I know what I'm looking for. ------ butwhy I've been waiting for something like this to happen, as the old design just looks old and doesn't encourage me to use it. But.. I'm sure haters gonna hate. ~~~ userbinator If you're looking at the Internet _Archive_ , then you should very well expect to see a lot of other "old" things besides the site itself. ------ frik Direct link to the WayBack Machine: [https://archive.org/web/](https://archive.org/web/) ------ davea37 Is the old one available anywhere? ;) ~~~ aw3c2 Just click "exit beta" in the top right corner and please leave feedback. ~~~ TheLoneWolfling How do I leave feedback? ~~~ aw3c2 If you click the exit beta button there is a form. ~~~ TheLoneWolfling There wasn't when I clicked it...? Exit beta takes me straight to the old version without any form or anything showing. ~~~ textfiles If you aren't getting the form, you can write [email protected] with any thoughts or comments you have and they'll be forwarded to the dev team, who are gleefully swimming in mail as we speak. ------ calinet6 Increase.. spacing... between top icons... and labels.. _twitch_ Sorry, designeritis. ------ ooooak > server: nginx/1.1.19 > Powered By: PHP/5.3.10-1ubuntu3.2 why 5.3 ? and ubuntu3.2 !!! ~~~ db48x Eh, that's not the version of Ubuntu that they are running; the whole thing is the php version number. There is a general convention among Linux distributions to backport security fixes to the older versions of software that come with their older releases. In this case, Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) was released with PHP 5.3.10 plus some security patches, available in the Ubuntu package repository under the name php5 with the composite version number 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.14. Their website doesn't list a newer version of this package ([http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise- updates/php5](http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise-updates/php5)), so possibly they're ahead of the official Ubuntu releases. The reasoning for this is that while it might be nice to upgrade in order to get new features, new bug fixes, and new performance enhancements, these potential benefits are often outweighed by the very real cost of testing everything to make sure the upgrade doesn't cause regressions. Backporting the security fixes makes sticking with a base version possible. I imagine that upgrading is pretty low on their list of things to do; it would have to get them some nice benefits, and nothing about php is ever nice. I'm a software engineer myself, and I upgrade individual libraries far more often than I upgrade the actual programming-language runtime (or compiler), simply because that's where you get the most benefit (usually a fix for a specific bug, but sometimes a new feature will be tempting) for the least risk.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bilingual Babies Get Head Start -- Before They Can Talk - dangoldin http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090413-bilingual-babies.html?source=rss ====== tokenadult Thanks for submitting the interesting article. I was surprised to read that parents in Europe are wary of bilingualism. It is TIME-CONSUMING to maintain both languages at a high level, especially if literacy is expected in both languages and the languages are not cognate. We are trying to keep up Mandarin (not a NATIVE language for either parent in our family) and English (my native language) in our family of four children, and our children have plenty of interests that take a lot of time and attention (hacking on the computer, for my oldest), so literacy in Chinese is a struggle here where there is such a sparse supply of reading matter in Chinese. But it does seem worthwhile to make the effort. An additional point: keeping multiple languages in use is easier for everyone in a family if each language is cued by particular situations, for example speaking to someone else who only knows one language the family knows. And sometimes habits can form patterns of language use even among multilingual people. For example, my wife speaks their joint native language with her two parents. She speaks a different language, the official language of her country of birth, with all five of her siblings. She can speak that language with me or with my children, but tends habitually to speak English (my sole native language and one native language of my children) with us. My children have varied in what language they speak to one another depending on what country they were living in at the time. ~~~ vijayr I guess its a little more difficult to be multilingual in primarily english speaking countries. But in countries like India (where I'm from) anybody who has gone to school can speak and write at least two languages, in most cases, 3 or more. This is possible because, every state in India has its own language, then there is a national language, and then there is English. So it becomes English + Hindi (national lang) + mother tongue (Tamil, Telugu, Marathi etc). That said, those languages all have very limited scope, just within India. Not much useful for a career abroad. It does help in becoming a better language learner though. ------ dangoldin Something that might explain this is that bilingual parents tend to be smarter than average so their child is more advanced to that. Also, with 40 babies I am not sure how strong the results are. ~~~ jgrahamc Do you have some statistics to back up your first point? What makes you think that's the case? Also, the article was referring to bilingual teaching of babies (i.e. a conscious decision on the part of the parents to speak one or two languages to the child). ~~~ dangoldin Not at all so you may be right. I guess I was just thinking that more knowledge makes you more intelligent. In America I would expect skilled immigrants to be bilingual and I think there is some data to show that immigrants tend to be more intelligent on average than the people in the country they left. Your second point might also be an explanation - parents who want to teach their children a second language might be more caring about education and might contribute a lot of other benefits to the baby. ~~~ pcc As to your first point; there are many counterexamples where the people that remain in their country are as multi-lingual on average as the people who emigrate. I would venture to say that level of ambition, education, opportunity & safety are more the factors influencing who would choose to emigrate and who wouldn't (or for whom the process would be administratively facilitated, since countries usually have profiles of desired immigrants), so I don't think its possible to infer a direct relation between language and intelligence by looking at skilled immigrants.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Greenhouse gas emissions from the largest US industrial plants fell 2.7% in 2017 - DoreenMichele https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-emissions-carbon/u-s-greenhouse-emissions-fell-in-2017-as-coal-plants-shut-idUSKCN1MR2J4 ====== jphalimi Bottom line, clean energy is getting cheaper so it cuts emissions of bigger emitters. Purely economical side-effect. I think the bigger picture would be to look at solar panel installments and their overall contribution in the energy package of the US. Hints: "Solar accounts for 55% of all US electricity added so far in 2018." Source: [https://www.businessinsider.com/more-solar-power-than-any- ty...](https://www.businessinsider.com/more-solar-power-than-any-type-of- electricity-2018-6) And in the same article: Solar cost lower than coal in North America since 2013: [https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5af0a65e19ee8624008b4...](https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5af0a65e19ee8624008b498d-960-720.jpg) ~~~ ksec So basically US is moving in the right direction regardless of the Paris agreement? ~~~ jphalimi No. Withdrawal of the Paris agreement led to other political initiatives such as oil and gas projects, such as Keystone XL or new EPA (de)regulations, that could have been avoided. Here again, a consequential drop in emissions does not mean that there is a political effect. Policies such as the Paris agreement are looking for long- term effects, rather than fluctuation deriving from a specific economical situation. ------ natch It’s annoying that most studies, statistics, laws, etc. related to coal plants omit things like coal fired cement plants which are also huge contributors to pollution. ~~~ Retric It's not irrelevant, but the cement industry only consumes around 4% of global coal production. Further, coal fired cement plants are rather efficient because they can directly use the high temperature heat energy vs converting it to electricity. Prioritizing alternative sources of electricity first is simply a better use of resources. That said, in aggregate such things are important. ~~~ natch Good to know (especially the second part)... I hadn’t thought about it that way. ------ philipkglass In related news: 9 October, 2018: "One of oldest coal companies in US files for bankruptcy" [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/one-of-oldest-us- coa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/one-of-oldest-us-coal- companies-files-for- bankruptcy/2018/10/09/ec8d00e6-cbf2-11e8-ad0a-0e01efba3cc1_story.html) 17 October, 2018: "Mission Coal files for bankruptcy—5th coal company in 3 years" [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mission-coal-bankruptcy- marks-5...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mission-coal-bankruptcy-marks-5th- coal-company-in-3-years/) ------ howinator Title is misleading. Overall emissions didn't fall, rather, "Greenhouse gases emissions from the largest U.S. industrial plants fell 2.7 percent in 2017" ~~~ petermcneeley [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_States#/media/File:US_CO2_Emissions_1980-2012.png) [https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon- dioxide...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide- emissions-from-1999/) Looks like its going down to me. This is energy only.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NASA will send a balloon the size of a football field to study how stars form - pseudolus https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/27/us/nasa-balloon-asthros-scn-trnd/index.html ====== RunningDroid NASA's press release: [https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7712](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7712)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap - akandiah https://www.simonsfoundation.org/features/science-news/unheralded-mathematician-bridges-the-prime-gap/ ====== ColinWright Discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5734480> Also submitted many, many times: [https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%2...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28mathematician+prime%29&sortby=create_ts+desc&start=0)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Spolsky - Where there's muck there's brass - wmorein http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/12/06.html ====== fauigerzigerk There are two types of muck though: Muck that cannot be avoided and becomes a hard problem that must be solved => brass. Muck for which there is a known way to avoid it, and solving it is just a short term fix with shrinking demand => legacy. Data cleansing/integration is an example for the first kind of muck. I believe on-premises server-side software belongs in the second muck category. As a startup, think hard before you do it! ~~~ kirubakaran Some pains need to be solved and some need to be managed. Startups tackle the first type better. ------ staunch PG already claimed the yorkshire-muck-brass analogy for startups: <http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html#f4> But damn does it bare repeating. A recent experience for me has been creating some plugins for blog software. It's insanely painful making them work reliably with thousands of subtly different sets of platforms/versions/themes/plugin combinations. I've learned first hand from users how much they value it, and I'm not going to give up, but wow is it ever agonizing. I almost pity my competitors for following. There's tons of money to be made in creating Wasabi-like abstraction layers for all sorts of similarly hairy systems. I know I'd gladly pay for ones that would spare me. ~~~ Tichy I think the old Yorkshire men already claimed the muck-brass analogy long before Paul Graham or Joel Spolsky ;-) ~~~ staunch Hence the additional "for startups" qualifier... ------ iamelgringo Yeah, but creating a web app that gets 1 million+ users isn't an easy feat, either, Joel. You say it can be done with 3 guys and an iguana. Well, that's only if the 3 guys +/- iguana have spent the better part of the last few years learning Python + Django/RoR, MySQL or PostGres setup installation and administration, Unix administration, SSH, Apache/Lighttpd/Nginx configuration and administration, Memcached, Perlbal or Pound, Mongrel, and perhaps Amazon web services like EC2 and S3. Really, if you're not proficient or able to quickly learn these technologies, good luck with your iguana. And, after spending the majority of the semester dealing with nightmares associated with the "Enterprise" web stack--ASP.NET, J2EE and Oracle--creating a web application is muck. Why else is Big Co. willing to shell out millions of dollars for a startup that has created these web apps and succeeded in attracting customers? Because Big Co's aren't doing it well at all. They're mired in muck. Hackers willing to learn and use a non-Enterprisey web stack will find that they can walk on top of that muck and find brass. Selling shrink-wrapped software isn't the only way to make money. ~~~ Goladus The key is that if you're going to stick with server-side apps you need to solve other hard problems. ------ fleaflicker he must be desperate to hire new people--he's been posting essays at a blistering rate. i can't blame him though--joelonsoftware is a great recruiting tool. ------ brlewis I bet diversity of PHP installations is the source of his support issues, not the diversity of Unix installations. There's plenty of software that runs fine on diverse POSIX-compliant operating systems. ~~~ run4yourlives Except when you're missing package X or dependency y. UNIX is designed to be a configurable, custom system. There's nothing wrong with that, but I believe him when he blames UNIX/Linux and the multitude of varying installs cause him the most grief. You can't pin it all on PHP. ------ Tichy I wonder if they could reduce the support costs for the installable version by selling complete servers with the software pre-installed? ~~~ iamelgringo They could sell a virtual appliance that comes pre-configured. Something that they could run on top of VMware or Xen. Or, perhaps a they could sell a pre-configured server. But, then they're supporting the OS that they're selling, and they might not have the flavor of *nix that the company wants. ~~~ marcus An awesome idea, haven't encountered any businesses that use this approach but it would definitely have quite a few advantages. Most projects should probably avoid VMware as otherwise the cost of at least the most basic VMware license gets piled on top of each sale and at ~200USD that can be a significant increase. But in any case it can be a great compromise between the clients issues of data privacy and response time versus the supplier tech support expenditures. Would have upmodded twice if I could :) ~~~ iamelgringo Thanks, I'd love to take credit for it, but there are at least a dozen companies that are already doing this: <http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/cat/131> Tell you what, if you go with the idea and make a buhzillion, you can buy me a beer sometime. ;) As to the cost issue, adding $200 onto the purchase price of an enterprise appliance is peanuts. Most enterprise software sells in the $1000 - $100,000 range depending on what you're selling. In fact, you can charge even more for bundling it with VMware. "It's a feature!" Another plus for doing it this way, the very fact that you're using a virtual appliance makes your product buzzword compliant. "Virutualization" makes your product tre' cutting edge--very sexy for CIO types to talk about how they just spent $50,000 on the latest tech. ------ andreyf insubstantial and fluffy? three kids and an iguana? Is this a thinly veiled diss at YC?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dark Patterns are designed to trick you (and they’re all over the Web) - robin_reala http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/07/dark-patterns-what-are-they/ ====== brudgers Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12180072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12180072) ~~~ robin_reala Huh, missed that and ‘past’ didn’t show anything up. Thanks. ~~~ brudgers The 'past' link uses Algolia and Algolia runs on its servers on its own metal for performance. For the same reason, Algolia distributes its servers and data. I suspect that Hacker News is tuned toward availability over consistency in regard to search, I mean a dupe probably isn't the end of the world. By which I mean that a dupe isn't the end of the world.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A couple’s elastic dance in Brutalist Berlin [video] - brudgers https://youtube.com/watch?v=5WwTQikJI7U ====== Zenst I like watching these types of things twice, once with the soundtrack and again muted. Certainly changes perspective more in some things than others and I'd recommend try watching it without the audio first and then with. Wonderful soundtrack. But one thing that kinda struck me towards the end of this, I kinda had a deja vue of the many fragrance adverts. Anybody else get that kinda vibe at the end and expect some bottle of perfume/fragrance to appear? ~~~ hrudham Funny you should say that: I actually do the something similar with with music videos. DJing is a hobby of mine: I learnt very early on just how much a video can influence how feel about a song. An amazing video can make an average song look good. You probably don't want to play that song at a gig though. ------ MH15 This is really cool! I appreciate when HN brings cultural activities I otherwise wouldn't experience into this fold. ------ throw_away Heh, someone finally followed the line "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" to its logical conclusion. ------ frabbit I like it, but..... it seemed too much like a series of individually beautiful pieces cut together with nothing more than the same soundtrack to hold them together. ------ paulinus No lightsabers? ~~~ Zenst Oh that would be sacrilege and misappropriation of a religious symbol, jedi would be boycotting in their droves outside all showing going something like this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsvbYKr19ng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsvbYKr19ng) /s ------ downshun What's this wiggling about?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Startup lessons learned after two and a half years - dcancel http://blog.latentflip.com/post/33902095607/startup-lessons-learned ====== Alan01252 First I really enjoyed the post. I'm even more intrigued now though, you have 100 paying customers at a maximum of £12 pound a month, this is only £14,400 a year. Between two of you?!? How long can you continue to live like that? How do you live on that amount of money? Have you thought about raising the price? ~~~ philip_roberts Hi Alan, There are a few extra factors at play here, \- Our price is somewhat anchored by the accounting packages we integrate with, but we do intend to try and push that price up eventually (I should add: by adding more powerful features, rather than just hiking it). \- We offer founder plans for people keen to support us (think kickstarter) which works out about 2-3 worth of lifetime value up front, and has really helped us month-to-month. \- I was still working a full-time, then part-time, job for the first 10 months or so. \- We were partly incubated for a year or so by my co-founder's web design company, which allowed him to keep drawing a salary from that and gave us an effectively free office. Although we are now both full-time on Float. \- We've spent a number of our weekends this year helping start an incubation space (by literally knocking down walls) which has got us free office space while it's being finished off (<http://techcube-ed.tumblr.com/>). \- We have raised a tiny amount of money, which obviously helps. \- We live in Scotland which I am sure has a much lower cost of living than London/the Valley. \- I have a _very_ supportive wife who works full-time. ~~~ Alan01252 Thanks Philip, I find myself letting the fear factor of not having money completely control my life and actions. I am very impressed by anyone who's able to overcome this fear. Your story is truly inspiring, and I wish you the very best of luck! ~~~ philip_roberts It's not been easy. It took me a long time to get up the courage to leave my job, and fear of running out of money still paralyses me from time to time. Fortunately my wife is amazingly supportive, and my cofounder is less paralysed by little details like running out of money than I am and helps me forge-ahead. ------ philip_roberts Hi everyone, I didn't post this, but I am the author. Thanks for all the kind words on the post. As far as Float goes, it currently only works with www.freeagent.com, so if you are a FreeAgent user, feel free to sign up. I am (as we speak) working on integration with www.xero.com, and there's more detail on that here if you want to try the beta: <http://floatapp.com/xero>. All thoughts and feedback on either the post of the product are more than welcome :) Thanks! Phil ~~~ kfk Hi Phil, I am probably in a position similar to yours 2 years ago: I am working and learning to code on the side. Could I ask you how did you get the integration with xero and freeagent? I am working on an app too (vendors and orders management) and I keep wondering how to reach out potential customers. ~~~ philip_roberts We are listed here: <http://www.freeagent.com/developers/goodies> which drives some traffic our way. FreeAgent and our customers have mentioned us on twitter/blogged about us sporadically over the last couple of years. Don't just wait. We are still working on our Xero integration (I only really started on it last week), and I stuck up <http://floatapp.com/xero> so we could collect emails of people who wanted to try the beta, and we've got ~70 replies (mostly from accountants) by sharing it on twitter/facebook/linked in/Xero's support forums. ------ fabiandesimone I think you should really invest in your website. I did not know about Float before, but so it happens that I´m shopping for a financial/accounting/cash flow app and I got to be honest: Float might work and maybe is all I need but your site really does not convey the value it might provide me if I become a user (I´m refering to the home page, the tour page does a bit better but you could improve it by tweaking a few things) I suspect your metrics might have some key info relating to what I´m about to tell you: grab the whole tour page and include it below the Start your free trial in the home page. See if that helps your conversions. Good luck! ~~~ philip_roberts Hi Fabian, We are currently quite focused on our target marget of FreeAgent customers, and Float is not currently mass-market (yet) but you are right. We recently released a page, more like you are suggesting, for Xero customers here: <http://floatapp.com/xero> what do you think? ~~~ fabiandesimone Your words: When you’re working on your product, you’ve got some beta testers, it looks shit but you’re making progress, and you’ve a huge list of things you want to do, it’s easy to put off marketing. “We’re not ready for loads of customers yet” “We’ve too much to do to be marketing” “Let’s wait till the product is great, then marketing will be easier” The truth is, marketing is really hard. It takes time to work, it can be hard to know when it is working, and you don’t see instant results so it doesn’t feel very productive. Getting started earlier, and doing a little as you go along is, I think, a much better strategy than waiting till you launch. It gives you time to learn about what works and what doesn’t, it let’s you learn about the process and get better at it, and it gives your marketing time to work. Market the hell out of the app man! EDIT: What I meant to say is that as you put it marketing is very hard (I know, that´s what I do) so don´t narrow it down. Go for it, right now! ~~~ philip_roberts Fair play sir, fair play. ------ vignesh_vs_in Its quiet a big feat that tht OP moved from writing first line of code to lauching a company in 10 months. Wonder how did he manage it? I have been writing code/Mobile apps for 2.5 years still scared to take the leap. ~~~ philip_roberts Just launch. Seriously what's the worst that can happen. I say that like it was easy, it clearly wasn't, but you just have to suck it up and try it. ~~~ vignesh_vs_in I am finding it hard to figure out the right co-founder. All my coder pals are risk averse :(. I have made a decision to quit my day job on 31/03/2013 no matter what. will keep you guys updated on the journey. ~~~ philip_roberts Somebody else just emailed me asking basically the same question, and looking for my advice. My immediate thoughts were: \- Do you need a cofounder immediately, or can you just try and do less. I know that's easier said than done, but scale back your projects into what you think the most important pain/solution is and focus on that, and see if you can get some traction. It will be easier to convince someone else to join you if you can get some traction. \- Similarly: don't look for people to take a big leap, break it into smaller steps. Do you know anyone who would do something for an evening a week. Or hack on something at the weekend. Treat it more as a fun side-project, and people might be more excited about getting involved. Then once they are in, and you have some momentum, try and grow the committment (that's basically what we did). ~~~ swastik I agree with this. I'd try and learn the basics of coding, put together a prototype and get some initial feedback. It will be much better to seek a co-founder at this point, who can help you complete the product and launch it. It's not easy, and it is going to take time but that's probably the best way to go about it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Natural selection has trouble explaining this bugs horns - commonskangaroo https://www.popsci.com/natural-selection-doesnt-tell-whole-story/ ====== dogdigdig Maybe it has altogether some ither function	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Working Programmer's Guide to Type-Indexed Values - Hank_Lenzi http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/37 ====== mgreenbe A neat trick, but---as one of the commenters points out---manual dictionary passing is a bit much. I would love Haskell, but for laziness...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Guess programming language by „Hello, world“ snippet - krasnoukhov http://helloworldquiz.com/ ====== nxn Trying to pick between omgrofl and lolcode with one life left can be likened to deciding which color wire to snip. ~~~ qbrass They look nothing alike, but I saw the LOLs in Omgrofl and instincively hit the LOLcode button before really looking at the code. ------ mapleoin This is the wrong kind of Chef: [https://github.com/krasnoukhov/langgame/blob/master/models/v...](https://github.com/krasnoukhov/langgame/blob/master/models/variant/data/chef) Which makes me wonder how they scraped their data... ~~~ tinco Wrong kind of Chef? What do you mean? Looks like Chef to me.. ~~~ mapleoin I was expecting something more like this: [https://github.com/opscode- cookbooks/apache2/blob/master/rec...](https://github.com/opscode- cookbooks/apache2/blob/master/recipes/default.rb#L20) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chef_%28software%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chef_%28software%29) ~~~ tinco ah, but that's ruby ;) ------ jstanley Scored 2400, was pretty fun. A problem is that some of the languages are indistinguishable. I'm pretty sure the example I saw for Logtalk would be perfectly acceptable Prolog. ~~~ krasnoukhov Nice! Are you sure that this example is acceptable for Prolog? [https://github.com/krasnoukhov/langgame/blob/master/models/v...](https://github.com/krasnoukhov/langgame/blob/master/models/variant/data/logtalk) ------ wldlyinaccurate Wow, this made me painfully aware of how few languages I know. I hadn't even heard of some of them! ------ itry Played a couple of times, hoping to see a snippet in "Holy C" by Terry A. Davis, which unfortunatly didnt happen. Apart from that - nice game! ~~~ krasnoukhov Feel free to send a patch here! [https://github.com/krasnoukhov/langgame](https://github.com/krasnoukhov/langgame) ------ Sufon Great game, hadn't heard of some languages! Maybe I will have to read something of them... ------ bobdvb Broken on the latest Opera for some reason. ~~~ krasnoukhov Works fine for me on 12.16. Screenshot? ------ hater92 good job mates ~~~ krasnoukhov Thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
U.S. Hopes "Internet in a Suitcase" Will Offset Internet Censorship - curthopkins http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/us_hopes_internet_in_a_suitcase_will_offset_intern.php#.TfakikNi4ds;hackernews ====== ChuckMcM I sure hope you can buy these that work inside the US :-) ------ ltamake It's funny to see the US government pretend to care about Internet censorship. ~~~ simonsarris <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)> "Originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory" They also operate proxies for China. They clearly care. ~~~ walrus I'd say parts of the US government care, but not all of it. ~~~ w1ntermute Yeah, like ICE. ------ antihero Unfortunately the "freedom" of the US has been corrupted by corporate interest, and thus whilst this is in some ways admirable, there is absolutely no way a sane person could trust the US government again. ------ trotsky That's great as long as you're interested in your internet access being provided by US intelligence. ------ Joakal Related: <http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox_DIY> ~~~ Natsu I wonder what they'd do if the dissidents they were trying to help used it for copyright infringement as well as all their normal communications? ------ freddealmeida I'm hoping we can get this in countries with draconian censorship - such as where they confiscate websites outside of the courts or due processes. Much like the US. boom. Irony strikes back. ------ r0s It's hard to lend this effort any credibility after telecom immunity, and the PATRIOT act renewal this year. ------ blhack It's really really cool to see this :). I'm sure everybody here remembers, but back in 2009, lost of geeks were clamoring for ways to try and provide internet to Iranian protestors. Something exactly like this is what we were always daydreaming about on IRC, and wondering why the CIA hadn't already built. In the modern world, "bombing" a country with these things could be a very very liberating thing for the recipients. ~~~ smallblacksun If the US distributed these in Iran, the government there would probably consider anyone using them a US agent and arrest them. ~~~ blhack How would they know? The point is to drop enough of them (mount them to cheap drone aircraft if you want to, like hobby-grade stuff) that it covers the city in wifi. It's not literally a suitcase, and it's not something that you take back to your house and plug in to. It's something that is transmitting from a few blocks away. ~~~ throw_away if governments can detect even the passive reception of signals ([http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/06_june/24/licensing_detector_vans.shtml)), I don't think it would be too difficult to pick up who is talking to these devices. Or, even if they can't, fear of detection would probably keep a large chunk of the populace compliant. Which isn't to say that such devices wouldn't be useful. Just that they'd be far more effective in situations like Egypt or Libya than in ones like Iran or China. I think they'd be even more useful in the hands of someone like the Red Cross. ~~~ Robin_Message I am not a physicist, but that's detecting reception of (I think FM) UHF and requires specialised equipment. Detecting Wifi which uses a spread-spectrum modulation at a higher frequency would be even more difficult. Add to that the existing, allowed Wifi networks that probably already exist which overlap the banned ones. The real problem in security is usually human factors — loose talk, spies, informers, interrogation — not technological ones. ~~~ throw_away But the thing is that using a wifi node is not passive reception. And while wifi uses spread spectrum, in order to be accessible to the people you want to reach, you'd need to make it available using common protocols. The authorities need only go war driving for these nodes, connect and then watch the tcpdump output. Corporations do this now to detect rogue access points, so I don't think it's beyond the means of a sufficiently motivated government.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Iceland drills 4.7 km down into volcano to tap clean energy - dnetesn https://phys.org/news/2017-05-iceland-drills-km-volcano-energy.html ====== chris_va I'd be careful about getting too optimistic. Conventional geothermal is about 4-5 cents/kWh, on par with natural gas in the US. The dominant capital cost is drilling a large well (you need volume), and so geothermal plants are generally only built in areas that require shallow (1km) wells. Well costs are ~quadratic in depth. Given how much money has already been spent optimizing drilling for the oil&gas industry, along with how cutthroat that market is, I don't see the cost coming down significantly. As a result, deep geothermal will likely be limited to niche regions like Iceland. And you need deep geothermal to scale it past the existing locations. I would love to be wrong, since geothermal checks all the boxes for renewables and is also suitable for base load power, but I don't see an obvious path forward short of a drilling tech miracle. (source: Climate and Energy R&D group) ~~~ Beltiras Don't bill deep geothermal as any sort of green. There are usually emissions that have health consequences for the population around the power plant. The corrosion of the pipes bringing steam from the drill site to the turbines is massive. Drilling that deep and pumping water into the hole ups the risk of earthquakes. (source: I live in Reykjavík and have witnessed first-hand the increased stench from the Hellisheiði geothermal plant) ~~~ mrbabbage I don't disagree with you—I've been to an 800 MW geothermal facility in northern California and was taken aback by the giant heaps of sulphur everywhere—but other renewables come with their own downsides. \- contemporary photovoltaic panels require all sorts of strange metals to make, which have environmental impacts via mining. This might change with new materials. Solar also tends to have quite high carbon dioxide impacts due to the manufacturing process. These are obviously way less than gas or coal, but about double compared to other renewables and nuclear. \- hydroelectric is notorious for destroying huge ecosystems stretching far above and far below the dam and its reservoir. Hydro is so bad that California doesn't let large projects count in the Renewable Portfolio Standard. It's tough; there's no perfect energy source. ~~~ crdoconnor "contemporary photovoltaic panels require all sorts of strange metals to make" Certain kinds do (e.g. CdTe and CIGS), but not the kind that you'd put on your house. If modern solar panels required significant amounts of rare earths they wouldn't be as cheap as they are. "Solar also tends to have quite high carbon dioxide impacts due to the manufacturing process." About 30g/kwh of CO2 vs. coal's ~900g/kwh, and a lot of that is simply because it is usually currently made without green power (i.e. it will go down). "It's tough; there's no perfect energy source." There's a lot of half truths told about really good energy sources. ~~~ mrbabbage Yeah, coal is obviously WAY worse than solar vis a vis carbon dioxide. I'm not disputing that. But compared to other renewables, it doesn't do as well as you'd expect: \- wind: 11 g / kWh [1] \- nuclear: 12 g / kWh [2] \- solar PV: 45 g / kWh [3] \- gas: 450 g / kWh [4] Of course, 12 g vs 45 g is NOTHING compared to 45 g vs 450 g (and coal is another 2x atop gas!), so I'm making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill. [1] [http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_wind.html](http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_wind.html) [2] [http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_nuclear.html](http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_nuclear.html) [3] [http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_pv.html](http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_pv.html) [4] [http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_ngas.html](http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_ngas.html) ~~~ crdoconnor Gas actually contributes more to global warming even than coal does because of the methane (~100x as powerful a warming gas as CO2) also released during extraction: [http://inhabitat.com/updated-cornell-study-shows-fracking- ca...](http://inhabitat.com/updated-cornell-study-shows-fracking-causes-more- global-warming-than-coal/) ~~~ Filligree On the other hand, methane breaks down fast. It's only an immediate problem; if we didn't release more CO2 than could be absorbed, then we'd have a fairly decent methane budget as well. As it stands, of course, it makes everything worse. ------ Robotbeat And geothermal energy is a too-often-overlooked technology. It's not intermittent like wind and solar. It's more like nuclear but without the emotional baggage. As we try deep decarbonization, we're going to need more things like geothermal (or nuclear) or we'll end up spending like 2 or 3x as much money over-building solar to provide enough power even on cloudy winter days, building many more wind turbines, etc. The hard part isn't getting to 60-80% clean energy, it's getting that last 20%. Geothermal helps a LOT with that. (As does nuclear, which is why we should be protecting existing nuclear assets until fossil fuels are eliminated... The existing ~20% of our electricity in the US produced by nuclear will make deep decarbonization multiple times cheaper than relying solely on wind and solar alone, plus accelerate deep decarbonization by a decade.) An interesting idea is to build geothermal and solar at the same site. Consider areas where these two maps overlap in high potential for both: Geothermal: [http://www.smu.edu/~/media/Site/Dedman/Academics/Programs/Ge...](http://www.smu.edu/~/media/Site/Dedman/Academics/Programs/Geothermal%20Lab/Graphics/SMUHeatFlowMap2011_CopyrightVA0001377160_jpg) and Solar: [http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_us_june_dec2008.jpg](http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_us_june_dec2008.jpg) Places like New Mexico and southern Colorado are good fits for this. A problem with geothermal is if you draw heat too fast from the ground, the output will decline over the years. If you stop drawing heat, the ground will warm back up and then when you start again, output will be higher than it was when you stopped. So there is some sense in conserving geothermal power when demand for it is low. So the idea is, you draw from solar when the Sun is shining and draw from geothermal when it's not. By being co-located, you can use the same grid infrastructure and get higher utilization out of your powerlines. You've essentially converted some of your solar energy into a baseload power source. Or you can think about it as enhancing the output and lifetime of your geothermal power source. (And it's possible that if you have a LOT of extra solar power, you could run a resistive load underground, using the ground as a makeshift thermal battery.) ~~~ Declanomous From what I understand, the big hurdle for 100% renewable is not replacing the power stations that provide base load power, but rather replacing peak load power stations. Hydro is often used for that, but in the Midwest the peaker stations are almost entirely run with natural gas. Replacing those often involves some way of storing energy that you've generated in a renewable fashion. The issue is that storing large amounts of energy is not easy, especially when you live in an area that could be described as flatter than flat. ~~~ Diederich Mr. Musk said that the world would need about 100 gigafactories in order to produce enough batteries to level out solar production off hours. One factory is producing batteries now, and Tesla is announcing three or four new gigafactory locations by the end of the year. It's a start. ~~~ adrianN Do we even have enough Lithium to supply 100 gigafactories? Recycling Lithium batteries is still quite difficult. ~~~ Robotbeat Yes we do, and no it's not, at least not the way Tesla is doing it. Because they're using a standardized cell and standardized packs, they can easily automate the careful recycling of a lithium cell. ~~~ hwillis Tesla actually does a single/two step recycling process that incinerates/electrolytically separates the metals from the graphite/hydrocarbons/lithium. The lithium containing fraction is sold as clinker or aggregate. Rocks, basically. Only the steel, nickel and cobalt are really recycled. ~~~ Robotbeat I'm talking about the newer process they're developing at the gigafactory. But you're right that lithium is so cheap at the moment (getting it from salty brines) that you don't really need to recycle it. The other metals, sure. But push comes to shove, you could pull it from ocean water. Won't ever be economically competitive with brines, but it's also not too expensive if that were the only option. ~~~ hwillis copying my other comment: >Lithium is one of the most prevalent elements on earth. Spodumene (rocky lithium ore) is likely to be a very important economic source in the future as it is much more common than the brine currently used to manufacture batteries. Brine requires a water pump to extract, spodumene requires mining like any normal mineral, but it's found in extremely high quality deposits in the US including single crystals up to 47 feet across. That means higher quality lithium in addition to greater availability. >Spodumene is ~6-7% lithium by mass and is mined in an open pit, so no worries about soil or water pollution. It's separated from other rocks by grinding, flotation, and then acid. Very few people like acid in their industrial processes but I will note that lithium production uses way less hydroflouric acid than oil refining. The final stage uses sulfuric acid and while again acid is never good, sulfuric acid is one of the most-used and most-produced chemicals. Most minerals require sulfuric acid for extraction. It comes in a bottle of drain cleaner. Mining lithium rock is as economically painless as buying blasting powder and excavators, and as environmentally painless as... well nothing. The pollution is basically negligible. I didn't know the gigafactory was gonna do component-level recycling, that's pretty cool. I think it should be relatively easy to separate the metals from the SEI and graphite/lithium in a recoverable way, but processing the SEI has to be pretty complex. Maybe acid would do it- at that point it would probably be worth it to recycle the lithium but you'd have to set up an entire process line just to be able to add it to raw feedstock ore. It'll take a LOT of battery recycling before that's more profitable than selling it as clinker. ------ tonystubblebine When I was in sixth grade I entered a science contest to invent a new form of clean energy. Mostly I entered because I was getting a B in my science class and needed extra credit to get up to an A. And the thing I "invented" was literally what's in this article, geothermal power. Pump water down near magma, have it turned to steam, have that steam come rushing back up to power turbines. The problem with my invention was that the company sponsoring the contest was a geothermal energy company. I'm still proud of myself though, because I thought of the idea independently and it is a pretty damn cool idea for how to get energy. ------ rconti Iceland has discussed building a ~7TW (I think?) cable to transmit power to the UK. At least in Reykjavik, hot water is piped directly into homes and used for heating (radiators) as well as hot water (with attendant sulfur smell). My host there told me "my wife doesn't like the smell so, we use heated cold water instead". I had to think for a few seconds to parse the phrase "heated cold water". Oh, right, that's what I call "hot water" :) It's so abundant, they don't mind the waste. Just leave the windows above the radiator open, the radiator keeps the room warm, you get fresh outside air inside, and the convective flow keeps the air moving. That chilled water is sent back to the geothermal plant and pumped back into the ground to replace the water taken out. IIRC there are definitely been geological issues (earthquakes) as a result of this whole process. ~~~ avar Most of your comment is wrong. They've been discussing building a 1GW cable. 7000 times smaller than 7TW. A 7TW cable would be enough to transmit Iceland's yearly electricity production 700 times over. It produces ~10GW per annum. Hot water is not piped directly into the homes in Reykjavík, it's heated up "cold" water, with artificially added sulfur. See another comment of mine here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14274085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14274085) In Reykjavík the water you use is not recycled in any way, it's pumped into a sewer from there into the ocean. It's definitely not pumped the >50 km back to Nesjavellir for reprocessing. ~~~ rconti Thank you for the corrections. I was in the datacenter but now I've googled it and found the information about the 1GW cable: [http://www.atlanticsuperconnection.com](http://www.atlanticsuperconnection.com) I'm very surprised to find that the hot water is heated cold water. Where is it heated? Offsite, with geothermal plants, I must assume? Otherwise I'd be VERY confused about how my host would not know that he had 2 separate water heaters. Seems quite odd that a local would not know this, but I guess that's how rumors work. Is the hot water in radiators similarly offsite-heated water? ~~~ avar I interpreted your comment as saying that hot water was piped directly into homes from a natural source, but I see now that you may not have meant that. There are exceptions, but generally hot water is piped directly into homes in Iceland from municipal heating. There's no domestic water heaters. There are dual hot & cold water pipes everywhere. The hot water that comes out of the tap is from the same source that's in the hot water radiators. In the case of Reykjavík the hot water is initially cold water heated at Nesjavellir[1] and at [2] you can see an article in Icelandic about the pipe. It's 27km of 80x90cm pipe that can transfer 1600 liters of 100 degree hot water per second. Here's the pipe on Street View: [https://goo.gl/jFzvYN](https://goo.gl/jFzvYN) The reason they heat up cold water is simply because most of the time when you find an abundant natural heat source it doesn't also come with an abundant natural water source. Therefore you pump cold water in, mix it with the heat, and pump out hot water. I don't know what fancy technology they use for this at Nesjavellir, but in some rural areas this setup is literally just a coiled pipe dropped into a hot spring. 1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nesjavellir_Geothermal_Power_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nesjavellir_Geothermal_Power_Station) 2\. [http://www.verkis.is/verkefni/veitur/vatnsveitur/nesjavallar...](http://www.verkis.is/verkefni/veitur/vatnsveitur/nesjavallaraed) ~~~ rconti I did understand the water to be piped directly into homes from a natural source, which is what my original comment reflected. However, in retrospect, that may have been a misunderstanding on my part rather than what my host literally told me. I perhaps combined the concept of municipal hot water and the sulfur smell into a concept where the hot water was actually geothermal water -- rather than normal water heated by geothermal power. I did see one of the very large geothermal plants, but am having a hard time remembering where it was. Either on my way to/from Thórsmörk, along the golden circle, or on a drive to Snaefellsnes. Thanks again for your insight! ------ devrandomguy That's pretty dwarfy! But, can they pump magma to the surface, to defend their rocky fortress? I just hope that they are being careful not to drill through any adamantine formations. [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Raw_adamantine](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Raw_adamantine) ~~~ logfromblammo Praise the miners! I firmly believe that the technology to pump water that turns the waterwheel that powers the water pump (and also something else) _must be_ extracting geothermal energy. We just don't see the details. %% It would be a whole lot cleaner (and friendlier to the framerate) to have a 3x3 geothermal power plant building with a magma reservoir under one tile, and a water reservoir under another, which transmits power to mechanisms or axles touching it, and maybe also pressurized steam to any pipe touching it. ------ cmbuck Yes, this seems much better than coal/oil, but isn't there a finite amount of heat under Earth's crust? Have we studied what would happen if we cool Earth's internal temperature by extracting heat in this way? The Magnetoshpere which protects us from radiation is generated by the magma under the crust[1]. Eventually, if we interfere with the magma currents too much, don't we run the risk of damaging our magnetosphere? [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field#Physi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field#Physical_origin) ~~~ rb808 Also excuse my ignorance - but does the heat released warm the Earth's atmosphere? I realize it doesn't create greenhouse gases, but wonder if the newly released heat would make a difference to sea & air temperatures, or just gets radiated away. ~~~ hwillis It actually warms the atmosphere infinitesimally _less_ than other methods of generating power (aside from solar, wind or hydro). Normally when you burn something to generate electricity the excess heat is released into the air. The same process, with the same efficiency (in fact, slightly better), still happens in geothermal but it also very very slightly reduces the amount of heat coming up from the earths core elsewhere. ------ Reason077 _" The Institute of Economic Studies at the University of Iceland said in a February report that the country will not be able to abide by the COP21 climate change agreement signed in Paris in 2015. Greenhouse gas emissions are rising in all sectors of the economy, except in fisheries and agriculture, it said."_ This is unfortunate. Given Iceland's cheap & abundant renewable energy (2X Norway's electricity production per capita!), they really ought to be following the example set by Norway and prioritising Electric Vehicles through tax policies, etc. It would be easy to build excellent charging infrastructure for EVs in this island nation - instead you have hordes of tourists driving around the ring road in smelly diesels. I do see a few Nissan Leafs around Reykjavik and Akureyri, but there is barely any public charging infrastructure for driving between cities and tourist attractions. ------ NicoJuicy Does anyone know where phys.org has their articles from? I suppose it has something to do with Elsevier. Since a LOT of their articles has to do with students and universities. Overall, they publish a great amount of "copy-paste" articles, either from other news sites and/or student papers. I am 100% sure their reports don't write original articles, just rewrite from other sources. It looks to me that Elsevier has found something new with the information they are tapping from (students/universities) PS. The source of their article now is : [https://techxplore.com/news/2016-10-geothermal-power- potenti...](https://techxplore.com/news/2016-10-geothermal-power-potential- iceland-drilling.html) PS2. Elsevier seemed my best guess, since a lot of articles discuss research from students. Other articles are a rewrite ------ zoom6628 Interesting . NZ has had a geothermal plant for decades that is situated in a volcanic area (and right next to tourist hotspots of Rotorua and Taupo). They force cold water down and use the steam to drive turbines. No idea on the efficiency but the fact its been operating for decades would suggest its good enough to be viable. ------ Teknoman117 I'm at a loss a bit, are they directly tapping underground sources of hot pressurized liquid and not using some form of heat exhanger? How would they deal with various minerals dissolved in the water from gumming up their turbines or heavy elements escaping into the environment? IIRC there was one geothermal plant (in one of the nordic countries, i don't recall which) sitting by hotsprings that had to replace their piping every few months due to mineral deposits... random thought: Could geothermal power be considered nuclear power considering half of the Earth's internal energy comes from decaying radioactive isotopes? ~~~ perlgeek > random thought: Could geothermal power be considered nuclear power > considering half of the Earth's internal energy comes from decaying > radioactive isotopes? Only to the extend that all power is nuclear power. Solar power: the sun is a huge fission reactor. Coal: ultimately got its energy from the sun. Etc. ~~~ IanCal Nitpick: the sun is a huge fusion reactor. ------ avar There's an English language summary page from the company itself at [https://www.resourcepark.is](https://www.resourcepark.is) ------ greatNespresso This looks like the beginning of the shinra to me ------ thatwebdude Makes sense, some neighbors in the Midwest have been heating their homes, driveways, etc. with geothermal heat pumps. Same principle, I suppose. ~~~ Robotbeat Not at all! Very different principle. "Geothermal" heat pumps are just using the ground as a thermal mass. There's no extraction of the energy from the Earth's interior, with such a heat pump, just using dirt as a thermal buffer (between the seasons). It's actually super annoying that the same word "geothermal" is used for both. If I were emperor of the world, I'd ensure that the proper "ground-source heat pump" were used instead of the criminally misleading "geothermal." Ground-source heat pumps are not energy sources, they consume energy. What Iceland is doing is actually developing an energy source. ~~~ Sharlin Iceland has also been utilizing its geothermal resources for centuries. Currently circa 22% of their electricity and 87% of the heating and hot water needs are met using geothermal energy. ~~~ accountyaccount The sulfuric smell in the hot water takes a little getting used to, but it's pretty amazing that it's naturally heated in most places throughout the country (though, a bit easier in such a tiny country). ~~~ avar The sulfuric smell in the hot water has nothing to do with the use of geothermal power. Most tourists think so because they've only been to or near the capital area. Reykjavík artificially adds sulfur to its hot water to reduce the corrosion of their hot water pipes. I can't find a source for that in English but there's one in Icelandic, it's the "Vinnslutæknileg vandamál við vinnslu jarðhita" section. 1\. [http://web.archive.org/web/20160813045634/http://www.samorka...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160813045634/http://www.samorka.is/doc/1368) ~~~ accountyaccount This seems contrary to most tourism information, and that PDF is pretty much the only source I can find... interesting. So they intentionally make their hot water non-potable to prevent corrosion (the bulk of tourism info recommends not drinking the hot water)? Seems like Iceland could really use some sort of myth/fact information as they continue look to grow their tourism. ~~~ baq You should never drink hot tap water from any source unless you boiled it yourself using cold tap water in a kettle somehow anyway. There's increased likelyhood of bacteria and trace heavy metals from whatever heating equipment was used. Totally not worth it. ~~~ robocat Probably OK to drink if you use a gas or electric califont (zero hot water storage). ------ idlewords Do you want to get firemonsters? Because this is how you get firemonsters. ------ awqrre It would be cool to 3d print rock structures using magma from below ~~~ hwillis geothermal doesn't use magma, which would destroy the borehole. Its just a hole into very hot rock somewhat near magma. It's still far enough away that water/steam can flow in between the rocks. Steam is what comes up the hole. ------ mmwako Someone more knowledgable than me, please correct me... if they are drilling a hole in the ground and making steam come up from said hole, doesn't that heat up the Earth's crust and atmosphere more than the previous condition without the hole, therefore contributing to higher temperatures (and climate change), making it not that "clean" after all? Maybe cleaner than carbon/petrol, but not ideal for the current context. ~~~ devrandomguy I'm probably no more knowledgeable than you in this area, but I have a free morning, and this is interesting. My hypothesis, is that the heat that we produce or release to generate usable energy, is an insignificant factor in global warming, compared to the solar heat that we trap with greenhouse gases. Let's find some quick simple stats and do some arithmetic, to figure out how much we are directly heating the surface of the Earth. According to Wikipedia, the global energy production for 2012 was about 5.616e+20 joules, or 156 petawatt-hours. The Earth has about 1.386e+21 liters of water on it, and I will assume that that water represents the bulk of the relevant thermal mass, when considering weather patterns and sea level. Now, let's estimate the heating caused by that energy. According to www.bickfordscience.com/03-05_State_Changes/PDF/Specific_Heat.pdf, 4,184 Joules of energy applied to 1 KG of water will raise its temperature by 1 degree Celsius, and this scales linearly with mass. Assuming that Earth-water averages out a density of 1 KG per liter, our 5.616e+20 joules, applied over a year to our 1.386e+21 liter water mass, would heat that water by 1.036e-38 degrees Celcius. It has been a while since I've done a dimensional analysis, and the scale here are so extreme that I can't tell if my result is sensible. However, if my assumptions are reasonable and my math is correct, and the processes that I have chosen to ignore are insignificant (i.e. radiation into space over one year), then all of the heat that we release in the generation of the global energy supply, has a negligible impact on the temperature of the planet. ~~~ ajnin You multiplied instead of dividing somewhere, the result should be : dT = 5.616e+20 / 1.386e+21 / 4,184 = 9.684e-5, or about 1 ten thousandth of a Kelvin. So still insignificant.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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