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Smart Clothes Dryers Could Reduce Electricity Demand - MikeCapone
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/smart-grid-whirlpool-clothes-dryers-smart-appliances-energy-electricity.php
======
AndrewJ
Electric dryers, even the high efficiency ones that are out SUCK up power. My
'rents got one recently and their power bill shot through the roof.
I wasn't surprised to see that they use so much power overall on that chart :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Best Way to Sort Lego? - alanjay
https://marquisdegeek.com/lego_organisation
======
alanjay
A modest proposal to best organise LEGO - is this the most efficient way of
doing it? If not, what is?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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The decline of the art generation gap - occam
http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/generation_gap/
======
msie
In the midst of reading this article I had the feeling I was reading something
from a conservative blog:
_In the arts, perhaps the most important change since the 1960s is the
decline in what had then been the greatest engine of artistic change: the
generation gap.
Generational conflict over aesthetic styles is most common in a relatively
ethnically homogenous society, such as 19th Century Paris, rather than in a
multicultural city, such as Ottoman Istanbul._
And this:
_Although increasing ethnic diversity is widely assumed to make the arts more
“vibrant,” the triumph of the ideology of multiculturalism appears to have
instead helped cause pop music to stagnate stylistically.
There’s a fundamental connection between the growth of ethnic pride and the
decline of generational rebellion, because to rebel against your forefathers
is to rebel against your race._
I find it funny that an article bemoaning the declining rate of cultural
change would be published on a conservative website. But it weirdly makes
sense because it is blaming the phenomenon on multiculturalism which, I guess,
is some ideology backed by the "other side" (liberals).
_There’s a fundamental connection between the growth of ethnic pride and the
decline of generational rebellion, because to rebel against your forefathers
is to rebel against your race. Thus, for a group of young black musicians to
issue a manifesto pointing out that 30 years of rap is plenty would be racial
treason. Although long exhausted musically, hip-hop has become so emotionally
entwined with African-American identity that we’re all stuck with it._
The author thinks race is an issue but this happens with country music and pop
music too. The music industry is very conservative about funding musical acts
that buck the current trend or a tried-and-true formula. You can see this in
the tv and movie industry as well. It's not about race it's about money. The
industry gives us what it thinks we want and we accept it because it's easier
to access over more diverse fare (the industry has a superb marketing and
distribution system). There's a vicious cycle at work that enforces the
status-quo.
| {
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American Born Mos Def Barred from entering the U.S. - davidcoronado
http://www.bet.com/news/music/2014/05/21/report-yasiin-bey-barred-from-re-entering-the-u-s.html?cid=facebook
======
sologoub
The story seems very incomplete... they quote him saying that he lived in NYC
for 33 years and that for someone like him to want to leave there must be
something really wrong with US, but then offer zero substance on what actually
is going on.
This is the closing line: "It is unclear what kind of discrepancies are
holding up his re-entry into the U.S."
Is this something that is well known and I've just been hiding under a rock?
~~~
adamors
Every article I found is quoting this: [http://togetherboston.com/news-mos-
def-cancels-upcoming-us-t...](http://togetherboston.com/news-mos-def-cancels-
upcoming-us-
tour/?utm_content=buffer06789&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer)
I don't understand how there isn't any update, considering it's been 9 days.
------
rmason
I'm not a hip hop afficionado so I don't know the answer, did this guy give up
his American citizenship?
~~~
ubernostrum
Not clear.
If he obtained South African citizenship, it's possible that he would have
lost or renounced his US citizenship as a result -- it's not uncommon for a
naturalization process to require renouncing the prior citizenship. US law is
also a bit weird about allowing multiple citizenship.
| {
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Fuzzysearch: Tiny, fast fuzzy searching for JavaScript - bevacqua
https://github.com/bevacqua/fuzzysearch
======
lorenzhs
"fuzzy" is a bit of an overstatement, all it does is match substrings with
missing letters. If you type "orrange", it won't match. If you type "otange",
it won't match. All it does is match the "oange" kind of typo (including "oe",
which doesn't make any sense). This means that you'd get all kinds of weird
suggestions that don't make sense as soon as your haystack has non-trivial
size (like matching movie titles or artists), and might not find what you're
looking for (no prioritization).
~~~
espadrine
This is the usual meaning of "fuzzy search". It is most useful when accessing
files on a file system; instead of writing out the full path, you can type
pieces of the path that you know will get you the file you seek.
For instance, finding an "ok" image from this location only requires to type
"ok": [https://thefiletree.com/lib/](https://thefiletree.com/lib/).
(Note that it has scoring optimized for paths, which the library doesn't have;
slashes have special meanings in paths.)
~~~
lorenzhs
what you are describing is substring matching, which can be implemented much
more efficiently using algorithms such as Knuth-Morris-Pratt [1]. Fuzzy
matching is a different concept, and although the definition is a bit fuzzy
(haha), it usually refers to Levenshtein distance (which the author
specifically states he didn't implement) or Hamming distance. Note that
Levenshtein distance on substrings is easy to implement, you only need to a)
remember the maximum value encountered and what it matched (to match prefixes)
b) not penalize gaps in the beginning (to match suffixes).
Thus:
M[0,j] = M[i,0] = 0
M[i,j] = max(0,
M[i-1,j-1] + (needle[i] == haystack[j]),
M[i-1,j] + 1,
M[i,j-1] + 1)
Additionally, store the highest value x and its position (i,j). When you've
got the full matrix, return (x,i,j). In Bioinformatics, this is known as the
Smith-Waterman algorithm [2] and the result would satisfy the requirements of
fuzzy substring matching.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%E2%80%93Morris%E2%80%93P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%E2%80%93Morris%E2%80%93Pratt_algorithm)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Waterman_algorit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Waterman_algorithm)
------
doctorpangloss
> outer: for (var i = 0, j = 0; i < nlen; i++) {
> var nch = needle.charCodeAt(i);
> while (j < hlen) {
> if (haystack.charCodeAt(j++) === nch) {
> continue outer;
> }
> }
Oh my god, you can label loops?
~~~
nightcracker
I don't know why the author coded it this way, it can be done much simpler:
function fuzzysearch(needle, haystack) {
var hlen = haystack.length;
var nlen = needle.length;
if (nlen > hlen) return false;
if (nlen === hlen) return needle === haystack;
for (var i = 0, j = 0; i < nlen; ++i, ++j) {
while (j < hlen && needle.charCodeAt(i) !== haystack.charCodeAt(j)) ++j;
if (j === hlen) return false;
}
return true;
}
~~~
joshstrange
He says the algorithm was suggested by "Mr. Aleph, a crazy russian compiler
engineer working at V8.". It's possible it was suggested to be written this
way because V8 (and possibly other interpreters) can optimise it to be faster.
------
GaiusCoffee
This JS "library" contains one function:
> function fuzzysearch(r,e){var
> n=e.length,t=r.length;if(t>n)return!1;if(t===n)return r===e;r:for(var
> f=0,u=0;t>f;f++){for(var
> a=r.charCodeAt(f);n>u;)if(e.charCodeAt(u++)===a)continue
> r;return!1}return!0}
I mean.. come on, guys. This is getting absurd..
~~~
kristopolous
Libraries that can be explained quickly and have good marketing material gain
traction.
The popularity of my projects appear to be nearly inversely proportional to
their amount of complexity and sophistication. Things I've been refining over
5 years like
([https://github.com/kristopolous/EvDa](https://github.com/kristopolous/EvDa))
has a userbase of 1, while my occasionally evening hacks have significantly
more traction.
At least for me, working long and hard on things I believe are of value and
writing tests, dogfooding, and documentation basically means it's just going
to be used by me ... bizarre but true.
------
to3m
I've always found searching by space-separated substrings, matched in any
order, to work vastly better for matching identifiers or file names. No
confusion about how best to match a particular sequence of letters: either
that sequence is an exact substring, and the string matches, or it isn't, and
it doesn't. (If you want multiple substrings, separate the substrings with
spaces.)
This is simplicity itself to code up. Here's quick and dirty python one, for
example, that would get you started. It's so simple that I'm pretty sure it
works, even though I haven't tested it.
def get_suggestions(xs,str):
"""return list of elements in XS that match STR, the match string"""
suggestions=xs[:]
for part in str.split(): suggestions=[x for x in suggestions if part in x]
return suggestions
This is also (or so I think) better to use. As a user you get a lot more
control over what you're finding, and you don't have to think very hard about
what chars to add in to eliminate items you don't want. So it's very likely
you'll be able to quickly winnow your list down to 1 item.
And because it doesn't have any complicated workings inside it, it can be
explained even to non-technical users, who can make good use of it.
------
vkjv
lunr.js is pretty small (5k gzip/minified) and does a pretty good job at
providing client side full text search. Definitely larger than this but
provides a few more (IMHO, necessary) features.
[http://lunrjs.com/](http://lunrjs.com/)
~~~
mewwts
For a durable, offline-ready search-engine written entirely in JS checkout
[https://github.com/fergiemcdowall/search-
index](https://github.com/fergiemcdowall/search-index) (I contribute to this)
------
dangoor
The big thing missing from this, in my opinion, is scoring. If you have a
large list of items, having no idea which of the 500 matches is the likeliest
match, given what users would expect, makes it kind of useless.
[http://www.blueskyonmars.com/2013/03/26/brackets-quick-
open-...](http://www.blueskyonmars.com/2013/03/26/brackets-quick-open-thats-
no-regex/)
~~~
ne0phyte
You could implement something like the Levenshtein distance [1] which is easy
and still very fast. It gives you the difference between two strings in steps
it takes to transform one into the other based on operations like insertion,
deletion, substitution (and swapping two adjacent chars).
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance)
~~~
edc117
Another for your consideration is Jaro-Winkler [1], which I've used with a
fair amount of success in previous projects, and is still fairly performant.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaro%E2%80%93Winkler_distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaro%E2%80%93Winkler_distance)
| {
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Apply HN and Feedback: Kaleidoscope Corp (Centralizing Health Database) - rampage24life
I would love some input from the HN community about this idea we are purposing as of now. Maybe in my head I feel this is a need in the world, but I might be wrong. With some feedback, we can improve on what we are making.<p>Currently, we are trying to create a centralized health data infrastructure to be used for the health industry. A health database where we can finally connect our health records together. In the health industry, every healthcare facilities, hospitals, and health record companies all do their own database to store patient's health record. This creates a problem where if you were to go to see a new doctor or check into a new hospital, they will never have any record of you. You would have to experience questionnaire paperwork about your medical history. Clearly no one remember every detail about their past medical experience or medications and so much time is wasted while you are ill. With a centralized health database, wherever you go, any physicians can be able to obtain your information.<p>That's from a patient’s perspective, but for doctors and hospitals it gives easy accessibility to work with other doctors. Physicians can be update what past medications you have taken and what works. Hospitals can know what kind of patient they are dealing with when a new patient enters their facility. We will also provide the necessary security to protect the patient’s data. By being a centralized health database, doctors be doctors and hospitals can spend less on IT instead of become a tech company.<p>Health starts with us. It's been long enough where we have let the health industry try to mold itself into the digital age, but the health industry is having a hard time to adapt to today's technology. If patients do not stand up for what they want from the health industry and doctors, our health will not improve better for the future and you will still be in the waiting room filling out paperwork for the past 30 min.
======
dimitri_chas
Healthcare is one of the last big industries that hasn't been revolutionised
yet. That said the issue of medical data storage and sharing is a very big one
and hits a very sensitive nerve on the general public. What you are describing
is more or less an everyday reality for anyone who had some recent experience
with healthcare either as a patient or a health professional.
As it was noted there were and currently are some major tech companies who
tried to tackle this problem unsuccessfully up until now; the fact that they
haven't managed to offer a viable solution yet speaks for itself. If you
believe you have the knowledge and experience to work on something that truly
is a very complex problem to solve you should prepare for a battle. There are
literally hundreds of closed proprietary systems for medical record keeping
only in the US. They have established marketing channels and collaborations
and in fact are so deeply rooted to the workings of a hospital that feels like
you would have to physically tear down and rebuild the whole thing from
scratch! As we speak there are also some great cloud based alternatives with a
different approach and business model (eg patient fusion).
On the other hand what you are describing is the future; some of the most
important healthcare evangelists are pointing out that our fixation on the
preservation of health data in these closed systems is costing us both in
money and quality of services received. My opinion is it will happen once the
general public embraces the idea of sharing (anonymised) personal health
information which in turn will only happen when we realise that the benefit of
such outweighs the possible risks of exposure of this information to a third
party.
~~~
rampage24life
Totally agree with your first comment. We have talked to a lot of people
ranging from young to old about this issue and we got a various amount of
response from, "didn't know it was a problem" to "how safe can this be" to
"why can't people build this awhile ago when I needed it."
Those major tech companies cannot solve this problem because they built their
foundation completely wrong when tackling the electronic health record
software. People like Jonathan Bush, CEO from athneaHealth, explained that the
current health system needs to be wiped clean and to be start over. In some
cases, big companies are trying to merge in order to solve this issue and to
hope one company can rule them all. Having companies establishing channels and
collaborations with hospitals is not something we fear about. What we fear
most is the lack of options health record companies are not telling health
care professionals about. There are better solutions out there to build a
better health system. We have looked into a couple cloud based health record
companies and we are hoping to work with them someday since we will feel they
are on the right path on what we want to achieve as well. (patient Fusion is
one of them)
That is why we want to build on this for the future. You are totally on the
right track about everything you said in the last paragraph. Building this
database will take time; therefore, we want to be there when the public is
ready for it. This health database is just the tip of the iceberg. We already
planned a path for it and how it can benefit the future as well as how it can
change the way the health industry works.
Thank you for your comments and thoughts. If you have more questions or
comments or anything, feel free to ask/comment. I would be happy to reply to
your thoughts.
------
jeads
Your diving headlong into an incredibly sticky issue. This is one of the core
fears the public has been chewing on a long time... that the sharing of
medical information would become so streamlined that nearly minimal effort
would be required to profile an individual.
~~~
rampage24life
I do understand how hard this task is since there are plenty of rules and
regulations that has to be checked. However, the process does need to change
regarding to how health data is dealt with. Currently, we are still applying
the same knowledge from the 90s about containing health data as if they were
still in vanilla folders stored on top of a shelf. The same mindset has
already cost the US $33 million dollars trying to patch a broken foundation in
the health data industry. As of today, multiple hospitals already have been
hacked because the lack of knowledge healthcare professionals have about the
digital world. Sure, there are plenty of red tapes around this issue; however,
our idea isn't to cut those tapes down but to assist the health industry to
move into the digital realm without changing their production in the health
field.
As for the second part of your comment, I was wondering if you can explain
that more since I'm a bit confused. I got lost about the "one of the core
fears the public has" to "sharing of medical information would become so
streamlined." I don't know if you are saying if a centralized health database
is a bad thing or not.
------
glougheed
Some huge companies are working on this issue. How would you deal with a
country like Canada that socialized medical and the systems are more
government run.
~~~
rampage24life
Agreed, some huge companies are working on this issue. But to also point out,
these huge companies have been working on since 2010. In addition, those
companies are spending majority of their revenue on data storage and data
security instead of better healthcare for patients or better facilities for
physicians to operate in. What I can tell you is these companies won't play
fair with each other since they all feel the need to protect their software
platform on obtaining a patient's data. What makes our company different than
those health record companies is the fact that we realize the end product will
always be the same no matter what platform the doctor uses.
Our goal is to be like VISA credit card. Any type of bank or credit card
company can use the VISA credit card and apply their own benefits on it; but
we are third neutral party in charge of the data.
Countries like Canada, Germany, etc. with universal healthcare still have the
same problem regarding data storage, data security, and data accessibility. If
a patient from Canada ends up traveling to another country, he or she still
have to face the same problem where their medical record won't be on them
while traveling. Vise versa, if a patient enters Canada, he or she will also
see the same problem. We want to link everything together. Sure it will take
time because of politics issue, but we do believe that we are all one race.
Bacteria and viruses do not care where you are or who you are, so why should
we create boundaries and walls for our health data if it can help our life and
save others' lives.
Hopefully I have addressed your issue. If not, please continue.
~~~
glougheed
I think you answered it but I have another if you would indulge me. So when
big companies dominate the sector you usually have to find a small slice to
force the wedge in because they usually control the relationships. Do you see
this as a slice to do that?
~~~
rampage24life
We do believe entering the health industry as a database company can be the
slice we need. We feel this database is the snowball we need to get things
rolling. As mentioned by another reader, big companies are spending tons of
money on data storage that it is costing the public money and wasting a lot
health facility money that be used elsewhere. There are plenty of big
companies controlling this health sector; however, they are slower to adapt to
situations since they never started off as a data company but as a software
company(SaaS). With our goals in mind, we do believe this can be a huge
turning point not just in the health industry, but also how people interact
with health.
Hopefully I answered your questions. Please feel free to ask more or comment
more. It helps us understand how everyone feels about this project.
------
kumarski
Look at all these companies. There's 20+ companies working on this problem.
HumanAPI
GetMedal
BloomAPI
UsePrime
RecordCollect
ZweenaHealth
Doctrly
Carebox
GorillaBox
NuskiHealth
PicnicHealth
If you need my help, feel free to reach out.
~~~
rampage24life
Thanks for the list of companies. Some of the companies we looked into are
either dead or does not exist anymore. Some companies like GetMedal, BloomAPI,
and Doctrly have been on our radar as well.
There is a difference between us and the list of companies listed here. I
would love to talk more with you if you want. The more help we find, the
better of a product we can make based on the people's perspective.
~~~
kumarski
Shoot me an email [email protected] :)
Looking forward to connecting. This is a tough space. :)
[http://www.engineersf.com/2016/04/17/a-list-of-the-
technolog...](http://www.engineersf.com/2016/04/17/a-list-of-the-technology-
companies-that-make-healthcare-it-easier-2/)
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Perfect Competition Is Bad for Growth - brownbat
http://growthecon.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/perfect-competition-is-bad-for-growth/
======
bediger4000
This article is slanted to an owner's point of view: the firm can't make huge
profits if there's perfect competition. The rest of us do want perfect
competition, and the author admits that, albeit rather deep in the article:
_But perfect competition does maximize the combined consumer and producer
surplus from a given product._
The author also believes in a falsehood:
_Nullifying patents (or any other kind of intellectual property) would crush
the incentives to innovate, and we’d never get any new products._
This isn't true. Holland and Switzerland deliberately industrialized without
patents ([http://www.amazon.com/Industrialization-Without-National-
Pat...](http://www.amazon.com/Industrialization-Without-National-Patents-
Netherlands/dp/0691041970)).
This article therefore advocates for setting "intellectual property" controls
too far towards the owner/firm's favor.
~~~
thirstywhimbrel
> This article therefore advocates for setting "intellectual property"
> controls too far towards the owner/firm's favor.
I don't think that's an accurate read of the article.
If you make it to the last paragraph it just says there are no right answers.
and argues against both abolishing all IP and against perpetual rights for
rightsholders.
If anything, the sin of the article is that it stakes out a completely
pedestrian claim (IP should exist and apply for limited times) after dressing
it up with a provocative intro.
That aside, there is some practical wisdom that could have been extracted from
the provocative intro. When you're making a pitch, you have to explain to the
investor how you're angling for monopolistic rents. Or, ok, maybe you don't
use the "m" word, but you dress it up more softly as why you're _uniquely_
positioned or skilled to help serve the market / seize this new opportunity.
It all boils down to the same thing though: why shouldn't they just invest in
Walmart?
| {
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Regulators may punish Deutsche Bank for its Jeffrey Epstein ties - AndrewBissell
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/business/jeffrey-epstein-deutsche-bank.html
======
AndrewBissell
Most interesting part is the last two paragraphs:
"While Mr. Epstein was a client of Deutsche Bank, his main business was
Southern Trust Company, which generated more than $250 million in revenues
during its existence, according to public records. Mr. Epstein created the
company in 2013 and told government officials in the Virgin Islands that it
was involved in DNA analysis and research.
Ms. George, in her civil forfeiture lawsuit, contends that Southern Trust was
not in the business it claimed to be and that Mr. Epstein misled government
officials in order to win a lucrative tax break. She told The New York Times
in March that her office had not yet determined the kind of business Southern
Trust was in."
~~~
pphysch
What is Definitely Not Money Laundering For Sex Trafficking?
------
bobcostas55
A darkly comical commentary on the state of justice right now: none of the
child rapists will face any consequences (well, except for Epstein, though he
did get away with it for decades), but the _bank regulator_ takes the
accounting issues very seriously!
~~~
creaghpatr
As Matt Levine always says, [at least] everything is securities fraud.
~~~
fennecfoxen
Bank and securities fraud are accompanied by detailed records, a fact which
tends to make it a lot easier to demonstrate that something illegal happened.
------
osrec
The amount of smoke and mirrors surrounding this entire case is incredible.
It's sort of happening out in the open, with even the president seemingly
involved to some degree, yet all details are conveniently hidden away. I'm
expecting a somewhat chilling documentary 20 years from now on the subject.
~~~
medhir
Netflix recently released a documentary describing the survivors’ stories.
[https://www.netflix.com/title/80224905](https://www.netflix.com/title/80224905)
~~~
bobwernstein
it did nothing about the smoke and mirrors op is talking about. It revealed
nothing on that front.
------
empath75
Nobody has ever satisfactory explained where Epstein got all this money to
begin with. He seems to have been running some sort of blackmail operation
ensnaring wealthy people into criminal activity and videotaping them or
otherwise recording it.
His first job was as a math teacher at a _girl's school_ run by the current
Attorney General's father, and he seems to have leveraged that somehow into an
investment job through one of the parents at the school, despite having no
qualifications for that kind of work.
It seems worth noting that he went from working with young girls to sex
trafficking them, and that the man who supposedly was going to get to the
bottom of his murder is the son of the man who first gave him access to young
girls.
~~~
stickfigure
His life has been under a microscope. If there was a smoking gun to be found,
it would have been found. Nobody's opsec is that good, especially with number
of people involved in the kind of conspiracy you describe.
~~~
arminiusreturns
They've been covered up, and the few reporters doing a deep dive are ignored
and relegated to small corners of the internet. Whitney Webb being one of
those.
------
sudoaza
Deutsche Bank doesn't let any dark business go by without a bite
~~~
Traster
Do you think anyone thought "If its this easy for me to launder money through
DB, I wonder how easy it is for other people" and the corollary "What happens
when the government realises every idiot and his dealer was using DB to
launder money".
------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>Mr. Epstein created the company in 2013 and told government officials in the
Virgin Islands that it was involved in DNA analysis and research.
This almost seems like he was acknowledging in a "wink-wink" manner the sexual
nature of what was really happening.
DNA analysis and research requires a lot of talent and infrastructure and
putting it on an remote island is not the best idea.
But calling engaging in sex "DNA analysis and research" is almost at the level
of what passes as a joke in middle school. This almost seems like an inside
joke between the Virgin Islands officials and Epstein about the true nature of
what was really going on.
~~~
ta17711771
It's very common for the elite to openly reference what they're doing, crime-
wise, because 1) It's easy to hide in plain sight, and 2) Who's going to stop
them, you? Epstein's probably on an island right now.
~~~
save_ferris
It’s pretty well established that he’s dead.
~~~
pepsithrowaway
Oh really. And do you have a source for that? How do you explain the strange
happenings where he was being held? :}
------
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
Poor DB ... is there a crime they have not committed?
| {
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Why the Chinese Military Is Only a Paper Dragon - 11thEarlOfMar
http://theweek.com/article/index/264774/why-the-chinese-military-is-only-a-paper-dragon
======
cowardlydragon
I've read of certain things (such as a fleet of diesel submarines to defend
against the much more expensive american naval fleet), drones, and others
where they get more bang for the buck than american investments.
... and as if our military's 640 billion in spending isn't grossly inflated by
corruption by the small number of defense contractors.
If a country has ICBMs and nuclear warheads, it is certainly NOT a paper
tiger. This kind of thinking, besides disrespectful, leads to stupid generals
conceiving of "acceptable losses" in nuclear exchange wars and other
horrifying fantasies.
And it almost happened several times in the Cold War.
------
simonblack
The articles contains quite a bit of wishful thinking. The same sort of
disparagement of an prospective enemy that occurred pre WW2 when 'Made in
Japan' was a derogatory term. That soon stopped when US forces came up against
the superior Zero fighter and the very capable Japanese Navy.
Just because an army's equipment may not match yours in technology is no
reason for complacency. The US and Soviet weapons in WW2 were inferior to
German stuff, but as Stalin famously said 'Quantity has a quality all of its
own'.
------
cafard
It can hardly be worse equipped than it was 60 years ago, yet then it
inflicted quite a few casualties on the US and NATO forces in Korea, and drove
them back south of the 38th Parallel.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why are lenders allowed to discriminate against the self-employed? - boldpanda
======
Alupis
you did not provide any details... but usually it's due to the difficulty you
have in proving a reliable and steady income. It's not "discrimination", it's
viewing you as an unknown and/or higher risk.
When you have a job/career, provided by someone else, you are viewed as likely
to be more stable in regards to your monthly income. Typically your monthly
income is fixed or round-about the same as every month, providing said
stability. This is viewed as lower risk, because they can judge how likely
they believe you are capable of repaying your debt. Yes, you may lose your
job/are terminated, and they take this into account as well, usually by noting
how long you have been employed at the current location, etc. Other factors
contribute to your ability to be take on debt, such as if you own your home or
rent, and how much your monthly payments are, any other existing large loans,
etc.
When you are self employed, it is difficult to gauge the level of stability
you may have. One month may be great, the other not so great. It's also
difficult to prove on paper exactly what you are paid since you are paying
yourself (nobody to vouch for you), and it could be temporarily artificially
inflated with the intent of getting a loan, etc. Being self employed, they may
view you as higher risk also due to your priorities (ie. your business). In
the event you fall on hard times, will you pay the debt back first and
foremost or will you struggle to save your business (because it's the only
method of income). This contributes, along with other factors, to you being
viewed as a higher risk.
I'd wager different types of loans will be more accessible than others, such
as a business loan if you are in fact incorporated or an LLC (I don't know
about sole proprietorships but my guess would be it varies by state/country).
The purpose of the loan will greatly effect you ability to take on the debt,
ie. a personal loan because you just want some new things is not likely to be
granted unless you put of collateral.
Of course, a lot of this depends on the lender and their policies/terms. I'm
not an expert, so if this is a problem for you currently I'd recommend
reaching out to a few different lenders and asking them to explain their
polices.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unsupervised Learning with Even Less Supervision Using Bayesian Optimization - Zephyr314
http://blog.sigopt.com/post/140871698423/sigopt-for-ml-unsupervised-learning-with-even
======
Zephyr314
One of the co-founders of SigOpt (YC W15) here. I'm happy to answer and
questions about this post or the methods used. More info on the Bayesian
methods behind this can be found at sigopt.com/research as well!
~~~
bearzoo
Well - just my two cents. The title feels inaccurate. You all are tuning hyper
parameters with respect to the performance of the classification task. The
bayesian optimization is really to optimize the unsupervised -> supervised
pipeline. I was expecting some bayesian optimization of strictly unsupervised
representation learning (ex. we have an autoencoder and use some bayesian
optimization to tune hyper parameters in order to minimize a reconstruction
error). This is really just supervised learning with even less supervision
(which is quite typical).
~~~
Zephyr314
Thanks for the note!
We're using Bayesian optimization to tune both the hyperparameters of the
unsupervised model and the supervised model, but you are correct that they are
being done in unison with the overall accuracy being the target. The lift you
get from adding the unsupervised step (and tuning it) is quite substantial
(and statistically significant).
The idea of tuning just the unsupervised part (or doing it independently) is
great though. All the code for the post is available at
[https://github.com/sigopt/sigopt-
examples/tree/master/unsupe...](https://github.com/sigopt/sigopt-
examples/tree/master/unsupervised-model). It would be interesting to see if
doing that would make for a better overall accuracy.
------
lqdc13
Is this the first OHAAS (Optimize Hyperparameters As A Service)?
~~~
IanCal
There is/was whetlab which got bought out by Twitter if I remember rightly.
It's a shame as I was using them and wanted to do it more.
~~~
bearzoo
[https://github.com/JasperSnoek/spearmint](https://github.com/JasperSnoek/spearmint)
~~~
Zephyr314
We've found that SigOpt compares very well to spearmint, as well as MOE [1],
which I wrote and open sourced around the same time spearmint was open
sourced. We have a paper coming out soon comparing SigOpt rigorously to
standard methods like random and grid search as well as other open source
Bayesian methods like MOE [1], spearmint, HyperOpt [2], and SMAC [3] with good
results.
[1]: [https://github.com/Yelp/MOE](https://github.com/Yelp/MOE)
[2]:
[https://github.com/hyperopt/hyperopt](https://github.com/hyperopt/hyperopt)
[3]:
[http://www.cs.ubc.ca/labs/beta/Projects/SMAC/](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/labs/beta/Projects/SMAC/)
~~~
bearzoo
With spearmint I had the ability to modify the parameters of the mcmc sampling
(e.g. burn in iterations). Will sigopt expose parameters for those of us who
want to manipulate them? Will there be options to use different types of
function estimators to estimate the mapping between hyper params and
performance (i.e. what if I would like to use a neural network or a decision
tree instead of gaussian processes)?
I say these things because as someone who is active in machine learning - I
often want to optimize hyper parameters. The type of people that are serious
about optimizing hyper parameters (i.e. people who may not like to use grid or
random searches) for a model are usually some what technical. Your product
seems to be catered to those who may not be too technical (very simple
interface, etc). How will you balance what you expose in the future without
giving away too much of your underlying algorithms?
~~~
Zephyr314
As you pointed out, it is all about a balance, and every feature has different
tradeoffs.
SigOpt was designed to unlock the power of Bayesian optimization for anyone
doing machine learning. We believe that you shouldn't need to be an expert and
spend countless hours of administration to achieve great results for every
model. We're wrapping an ensemble of the best Bayesian methods behind a simple
interface [0] and constantly making improvements so that people can focus on
designing features and their individual domain expertise, instead of needing
to build and maintain their own hyperparameter optimization tools to see the
benefit.
For experts who want to spend a lot of time and effort customizing,
administering, updating, and maintaining a hyperparameter tuning solution I
would recommend forking one of the open source packages out there like
spearmint [1] or MOE [2] (disclaimer, I wrote MOE while working at Yelp).
[0]: [https://sigopt.com/docs](https://sigopt.com/docs)
[1]:
[https://github.com/JasperSnoek/spearmint](https://github.com/JasperSnoek/spearmint)
[2]: [https://github.com/Yelp/MOE](https://github.com/Yelp/MOE)
~~~
bearzoo
thanks for all the great responses!
------
pizza
Now just throw some compressive sensing at the problem ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Data science bootcamps false claim - atulcst
How these data science bootcamps claim that they can teach a person data science who don't even know programming. I would suggest there should be a standard specified by industry experts and every bootcamp has to follow it. Its really sad to see how these bootcamps teach shit on the name of data science and make fool of people's money.
======
smt88
> _a standard specified by industry experts and every bootcamp has to follow
> it_
How would anyone force them to follow it? The standard would have to be
heavily marketed to prospective students, which would apply pressure on
bootcamps to follow the standard. But that would cost money, and who would pay
for that?
This is the kind of thing that historically snowballs into a huge mess, and
then the government ends up regulating it because there's no way the market
will.
See also: accreditation of schools, regulation of food-safety and food-quality
practices, etc.
You can also see an industry where the government _hasn 't_ regulated that
much, which is organic food in the US. That's a huge disaster, where the
organic buzzword is applied to a wide variety of products with a wide variety
of histories. Consumers have no idea what they're really buying.
------
minimaxir
The data science bootcamps usually teach statistical programming. (e.g.
numPy/SciKit), which is sufficient.
~~~
atulcst
So you are saying I can build google search engine if I learn python :) I am
pointing that people fooled by these bootcamp, which teach that if you know
pyhton and some numpy etc you can become a data scientist. Which is hardly
true.
~~~
minimaxir
Ideally you are not building a Google search engine while employed as a data
scientist.
You're hitting on No True Scotsman in the sense that real Data Scientists must
be programming experts. Granted, a strong focus in linear algebra and
algorithms makes life easier, but keep in mind that many, many Data Analysts
in Fortune 500 companies use Excel as their primary tool.
~~~
atulcst
I am trying to point out that data science can't be learned in bootcamp. It
need at least 2-3 years of work to be employable in industry as data
scientist. And what the bootcamps teach in class is pretty basic which anybody
can learn for free.
Bootcamp misguide people by telling them that data science is easy and you can
learn in 3 months by paying big bucks to them. In a way its kind of fraud.
Think about it if you go to trader's joe and you ask for full toned organic
milk and what you get is regular fat free milk (and we don't even know if
there is a world where regular fat free milk is free).
~~~
jacalata
You want to claim fraud, then you need to come here with some data showing
that the people who go through these camps do not get jobs as data scientists.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Smartmockups – Create product screenshots with just a few clicks - iamlukaszajic
http://smartmockups.com
======
iamlukaszajic
Hello guys, I'd like to show you our new project. It's a curated collection of
product mockups for all designers, marketers and developers. All mockups are
free and ready for personal and commercial projects. No Photoshop needed, you
just pick one mockup, upload your image and download the final image in high
resolution. Everything is processing in your browser so your files are safe.
~~~
tvvocold
Not working on Chrome,please fix it.
~~~
jupiter
Works here (48.0.2564.109 / W7) - fix your setup.
------
imustbuild
Do you have plans to add mockups with multiple devices in a single image? I
make those the most to show the flexibility of responsive design
------
nkrisc
The phone is eating this man's thumbs!
[http://smartmockups.imgix.net/47_bg.jpg?fit=crop&w=360&h=270...](http://smartmockups.imgix.net/47_bg.jpg?fit=crop&w=360&h=270&blend=47_fg.png&bm=normal&bf=crop&bw=360&bh=270)
~~~
iamlukaszajic
Well, you're right it looks like that from the small thumbnail, but the thumb
is actually there, it's just weirdly bent
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/0cu50g59r7ys1ce/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/0cu50g59r7ys1ce/Screenshot%202016-02-25%2016.34.42.png?dl=0)
~~~
nkrisc
Well perhaps I should include a screenshot because when I view the link I
included the screen image is clearly going over the thumbs. Your screenshot is
not the same as how it appears in my browser.
~~~
iamlukaszajic
And did you try to refresh the browser? Sometimes there is a PNG layer (with
the thumb) missing but after refresh everything should be fine :)
------
asjdflakjsdf
would be really cool if it just accepted a url and showed the rendered version
of the page on all the images available...
~~~
onekvinda
That's a great idea! We plan to add the possibility to add screenshot from URL
in near future, but capturing multiple screen sizes and rendering them all at
once would be pretty cool! We're adding it to our todo list :)
------
SlashmanX
Typo on "How It Works" page: "choose the rosultion". Also maybe change the
wording of "You can also upload a new image if you were wrong." seems a bit
odd as it is.
Also, it'd be nice if at Step 3 you actually showed some mockup on a device
rather than the same "Your Design Here" image seeing as it's supposed to
demonstrate a sample finished product.
------
santa_boy
I've been thinking of creating something similar (actually more like a grunt
workflow). I seem to make the same mockups for all web-apps I create.
Does this service have a Photoshop instance running in the backend? I was
basically thinking of a way to pro-grammatically insert images into the smart
objects of my product mockup templates.
Any suggestions from HN?
~~~
imron
Image Magick will probably be able to do the trick:
[http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php](http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php)
------
colinbartlett
This is really great. Can you distinguish yourselves from placeit.net somehow
in the long run?
~~~
karlb
What are its advantages over placeit.net?
~~~
iamlukaszajic
The main advantage is probably the price. Placeit is really expensive and I'm
not sure if it's bearable for all freelance designers. Another may be the
speed, processing in your browser and connection with already made mockups -
that means we support the original authors
------
bigethan
Looks cool, but then as I scrolled I was bummed to see that it was only white
hands (with maybe one that wasn't white? Or a good suntan?). Any plans to
build up a more diverse hand collection?
~~~
iamlukaszajic
Sure, it's just a first collection of mockups. We're going to release 5 new
mockups every week via our newsletter and social media so stay tuned!
------
kevindeasis
It would be cool if you had transparent backgrounds.
~~~
onekvinda
We plan to add mockups every week and some simple devices with transparent
background coming in upcoming days
------
jamies888888
Very nice. Does it work with animated GIFs? I'd love to upload a motion
graphic to it and have it in the placeholder.
------
jetpm
Great! In the google developer console where you can configure the android
play store entry for your app, some special pictures require a fixed size:
1024 x 500 (functional graphic) 180 x 120 (advertisement graphic) 1.280 x 720
(TV banner)
It would be immensely useful if I could directly download them in that size.
------
asplake
This is great - used it right away (the white iPad mini landscape view using a
screenshot taken from my own iPad mini) on agendashift.com and
credited/recommended you in our LinkedIn group. Thanks for sharing!
------
oakio
This looks really cool. I'll definitely try it again, but there is an error in
the images I download.
[http://imgur.com/AdXVBDs](http://imgur.com/AdXVBDs)
Ubuntu 14.04 Chrome 46
------
symmetricsaurus
All the lowercase letters 't' on your page looks weird for me. They're a
little bit smaller than all other letters.
Using Firefox on Win10.
~~~
iamlukaszajic
We use webfont Montserrat. The render of some letters may seem wierd on some
screen resolutions :(
------
dutchbrit
Looks nice, the only thing that I noticed is the facebook button - it's not in
a language I recognise, "to se mi libi"
------
ahstilde
Seems like placeit.net, very much so. Any connection?
~~~
iamlukaszajic
Nope, it's a free alternative available for all designers for free with less
useless features and better UX.
------
wingerlang
Do you employ 'hand models'?
~~~
iamlukaszajic
Hi! We're gonna release 5 new mockups every week so there will be some hands
for sure!
------
andybak
Does anyone not in the manufacturing or retail sectors ever use the term
"Notebook"? I've never heard anyone utter it in normal conversation and every
time I read it I have to mentally translate it to "Laptop". Is it a UK thing?
Do people in the US habitually refer to portable computers as "Notebooks"?
~~~
pluma
Definitely a regional thing. In Germany both terms appear as loanwords (I
don't think there is a "real" German word for it) and they're used
interchangeably.
One of the two was a trademark leading to the other one being pushed as an
alternative. But I can't even remember which one -- at this point I couldn't
even tell you which phrase is more widely used.
EDIT: IIRC at some point "Notebook" was used to refer to laptops that were
smaller and/or lighter than the regular (rather heavy and bulky) laptops at
the time. There's also a major online discounter called notebooksbilliger.de
(literally "cheaper notebooks"). In day to day language I would err towards
"Laptop" being the more widespread term but not by much.
~~~
martin-adams
You're not referring to netbooks are you?
~~~
pluma
No, netbooks were a separate category in sizes that are now common with
tablets (i.e. around 10 inches). There's also "subnotebook" but I never
understood the exact distinction of that category.
------
jarcane
Brilliant! Kickstarter fraud just got even easier. Now you can fool your
customers into thinking you have a working prototype in record time!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Exploring .NET Core platform intrinsics: Part 4 – Alignment and pipelining - benaadams
https://mijailovic.net/2018/07/20/alignment-and-pipelining/
======
zvrba
Further optimization potential: the four lines
sum = Avx2.Add(block0, sum);
sum = Avx2.Add(block1, sum);
sum = Avx2.Add(block2, sum);
sum = Avx2.Add(block3, sum);
have all a serializing dependency on sum variable. But (integer) addition is
associative and commutative, so you could sum it in a tree-like manner, ending
up only with a a single serializing dependency:
sum01 = Avx.Add(block0, block1);
sum23 = Avx.Add(block2, block3); // These two run in parallel
sum = Avx.Add(sum, sum01); // sum01 hopefully ready; parallel with sum23
sum = Avx.Add(sum, sum23); // sum23 hopefully ready
Where only the last line serializes with the previous one. Maybe the HW is
smart enough to rename the registers and do the same thing internally, but
it'd be interesting to benchmark it.
~~~
Metalnem
I already tried that, but was disappointed that the performance gain was only
1%, which is why I didn't include the optimization in the post.
~~~
physguy1123
You should try maintaining 4 independent sum variables and summing after the
loop so there's no serializing dependency at all. Such a transformation in
microbenchmarks is a fun trick to show the power of a proper OOO engine with
pipelined instruction units. Assuming no memory problems, one should be able
use issue-width*instruction latency independent sum streams without spending
more time in the hot loop.
For what it's worth, the vmovdqa only has a 4-wide issue width if it is moving
between registers, the memory load has a 2-wide issue width. Floating point
adders themselves only have a 1-2 wide issue widths depending on your hardware
so it doesn't really matter.
------
rossnordby
Seeing the intrinsics APIs get filled out- in the open, no less- has been
pretty exciting. The fact that something like AES would be implemented
competitively in C# is not something I would have predicted even five years
ago.
It's remarkable how fast the language and runtime have evolved for
performance. It wasn't that long ago that I was manually inlining Vector3
operators to try to get a few extra cycles out of XNA on the Xbox360.
~~~
pjmlp
The Xbox360 runtime was notorious bad and suffered from the WinDev/DevTools
difference of opinions how the future of WIndows development should look like.
Hence killing XNA when they took over Windows 8 development, WinRT and such.
It took all the reorganizations and change of politics, for the .NET Runtime
finally start getting some additional love regarding performance.
~~~
oceanswave
> The Xbox360 runtime was notorious bad and suffered from the WinDev/DevTools
> difference of opinions how the future of WIndows development should look
> like.
The past tense structure makes it sound like progress has been made on this
front while it’s still the same problem presently. It’s just that those tools
in particular have been deprecated (and not replaced)
~~~
pjmlp
Well, how would you correctly phrase it in proper English then?
That was the reason why the XBox 360 runtime was bad, the remaining of my
comment refers to the standard .NET Framework.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Soylent Really Green: Meal-Replacement Startup Raising at $100M Valuation - jrkelly
http://recode.net/2015/01/07/soylent-really-green-meal-replacement-startup-raising-at-100m-valuation/
======
jghn
Maybe they can use this money to speed up the turnaround time
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I can do better: I will pay $10,000 for you to build your side-project/MVP - mvpproject
Proposition HN: I will pay $10,000 for you to build your side-project/MVP<p>Premise 1:<p>Investors/Incubators over-estimate their ability to pick good ideas/startups.<p>Premise 2:<p>An MVP built by a lone, but talented techie is almost as likely to turn into something 'successful' as a startup on angellist that has: 4 founders, 9 advisors, 13 press releases, 600 followers, etc<p>Premise 3:<p>Most freelancers will not build and/or follow-through with their ideas, because they perceive their opportunity cost to be too high.<p>Premise 4:<p>HackerNews has a decent number of talented freelancers with good ideas.<p>Based on these premises, I present The Proposition [Version 1.0]:<p>I'll pay you $5000 to build the MVP of that idea you've been kicking around in your head for the last year. Once you're done (ideally within 2 months), you can go back to earning your full potential. At this point, I'll take over and spend an additional $5000 to acquire enough users/customers for us to evaluate the project's likelihood of success. We split the resulting company 50-50, as equal co-founders.
======
xauronx
Did you want people to e-mail you their ideas? E-mail you an introduction and
their background/skills/etc? Shouldn't you put your contact info somewhere?
Are you associated with hmexx or just one upping him?
------
brandoncordell
I only see $8,000. Where does the other $2,000 come in? How would one contact
you?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How many side projects do you have going at one time? - mise
When setting up my first site, it wasn't called a "side project". It was my full-on hobby that I spent all my weekends on. It was split up into three separate niche sites in 2002.<p>Since then, I've launched some side blogs, and then two more real sites. The latest has taken up a large portion of spare-hours home time for the past 6 months.<p>Meanwhile, the original project is still the most popular, but doesn't get a share of my brain power since the newest project is on the go. Having my wife help with customer support these days helps a lot, but there's still the question of further developing the sites.<p>HN, how have you dealt with this type of multi-side project approach, juggling with the rest of life?
======
jpmc
I find my time highly fragmented across several projects. Some are highly
viable business related projects while others are purely for my own enjoyment.
I find myself pulled in many directions and have to combat the urge to start
something new. At times I feel guilty working on a hobby project when I have
unfinished work on a true project. I have to remind myself that it is OK to
spend some time on hobby tasks as long as it doesn’t become all consuming.
Keeping sanity is critical to productivity
------
charliepark
I'm dealing with this exact same scenario right now. I wish I had some answers
for you on how to juggle it. I'm curious how you got your wife to help with
customer support (I've been trying to pitch that for a few weeks now, with
little success).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jensen Huang Says Nvidia-Branded ARM CPUs Are a Possibility - ItsTotallyOn
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/jensen-huang-hints-at-nvidia-branded-arm-cpus
======
nabla9
Squeezing AMD and Intel in server and laptop markets seems like logical next
move. Surely Nvidia/Arm can produce similar or better processors as Apple.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Create Crawlable, Link-Friendly AJAX Websites Using pushState() - jennita
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/create-crawlable-link-friendly-ajax-websites-using-pushstate
======
Gigablah
There's a jQuery plugin for this: <https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax>
Backbone.js has support for pushState as well.
~~~
Roedou
PJAX looks awesome; only discovered that by chance over the weekend (on HN, no
less), but a bit late for the post.
Great to see so many projects encouraging adoption of this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hurricane Idai (the Southern Hemispheres worst disaster?) happened a week ago - sebmanchester
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/19/cyclone-idai-worst-weather-disaster-to-hit-southern-hemisphere-mozambique-malawi
======
sebmanchester
...and started 2 weeks ago. News from this part of the world often travels
slow... Are there any _good_ reasons why this story took so long to break?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It’s time for doctors to apologise to their ME patients - bloke_zero
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/12033810/Its-time-for-doctors-to-apologise-to-their-ME-patients.html
======
empressplay
I've suffered with ME / FM for 25 years and it's my firm opinion there are no
clean hands in this debate. Doctors, frustrated by an ability to find a
conventional diagnosis and thus treatment for their patients, want to try to
blame it on psychology. Sufferers, afraid of losing access to medication, or
simply due to their own negative opinion of psychological conditions, insist
vehemently that their ills have no relation to mental health at all.
Of course, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. ME / CFS most
certainly encourages depression in those who suffer from it (both physically
and mentally), and depression leads to behaviour (such as spending daylight
hours indoors, engaging in minimal activity, poor eating habits) that
aggravate ME / CFS symptoms and lead to a downward spiral. The best treatment
currently available addresses both the physical symptoms and the mental
fallout, and it's my firm belief that therapy and CBT is integral to managing
ME / CFS, at the very least to allow sufferers the best quality of life they
can have under the circumstances.
~~~
davak
MD here. I agree with this completely. I will also add that Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome is unlikely one disease although we are not smart enough yet to know
to divide them more specifically.
I've "fixed" cases like this by diagnosing and treating rare rheumatological
and sleep disorders. However, most patients clearly have psych or personality
disorders. Is the mental illness a cause or effect?
It's my job not to give up and blow off patients. Just realize that there is a
ton about medicine that is unknown still--we are scientists searching for
answers too.
~~~
pja
Sleep disorders are notorious for bringing on mental problems as well,
including (but not limited to) severe depression. Meanwhile depression can
cause sleep issues all by itself.
Teasing out cause and effect for patients like this must be a nightmare.
------
tudorw
I'm excited about lots of research that is breaking down the 'separate mind &
body' delusion that seems to have gripped medicine for the last couple of
hundred years. Doctors could perhaps do more to embrace the scientific method,
an inability to measure something is not proof it does not exist.
There also seems to be institutional resentment of any patient that does not
respond to a prescribed treatment, as if it was a personal failure to respond
in the way they imagined. I have direct experience of the treatment of
patients, as empressplay puts it, there are no clean hands.
One particularly shocking consultant came up with a treatment plan, when I
enquired whether we would see them again to evaluate the outcome he was quite
specific that it was not of interest, as the 'expert' there was nothing more
to learn. I patronised the chap by outlining in a step by step manner how in
my industry we integrate a program of continuous review in order to determine
the effectiveness of the solutions we implement, but no, his belief was so
strongly held, the actual experience of the patient was of no interest.
~~~
robbiep
__Doctors could perhaps do more to embrace the scientific method, an inability
to measure something is not proof it does not exist. __
This is contradictory. Perhaps you just mean doctors should be more open
minded?
~~~
marcosdumay
Not contradictory. But yes, for some definitions of the scientific method,
open-mindness is a different concept that does not take part in it. I'd just
like to point that those definitions do not work. Being open minded is a
requirement for creating good science, as much as checking one's hypothesis
with experiments.
About that "contradiction" word, do not confuse "inability to measure
something" with "measuring something and detecting it's not there". Those are
too completely different situations, yet many people act like they were the
same.
~~~
msandford
> About that "contradiction" word, do not confuse "inability to measure
> something" with "measuring something and detecting it's not there". Those
> are too completely different situations, yet many people act like they were
> the same.
I'm reminded of Semmelweis who figured out an empirical germ theory and beat
Pasteur to it by about a decade. Thanks to doctors who "knew" better, he ended
up dying in disgrace.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis)
That's not to say I'm anti-doctor, anti-medicine or anything like that. But I
am anti-arrogance, especially when people's lives might hang in the balance.
------
cant_kant
This article was written by "Dr Charles Shepherd medical adviser to the ME
Association" and is not entirely unbiased.
~~~
tonyedgecombe
What biases would someone from the ME Association have other than wanting to
be able to treat the condition?
~~~
DanBC
Total and utter rejection of any possibility that some cases of ME could be
helped (even a little bit) with a psychological therapy.
~~~
cpncrunch
This mindset is unfortunate, and detrimental to patients. There have been a
lot of studies on CBT/GET, and there isn't really any doubt that they are
moderately effective. The only issue I have with the treatments is that the
theories behind them (deconditioning and abnormal illness beliefs) don't
really have any evidence. I suspect they work for other reasons. However, that
shouldn't be a reason to completely reject them.
I was speaking to someone recently who recovered from CFS (after being mostly
bed-bound) through CBT and lifestyle changes, and she is now completely
recovered. In her case there were a lot of recent traumatic experiences which
contributed to her illness, so CBT was very helpful in addressing those
issues.
Some charities, such as Action 4 ME, seem a little more open-minded about CBT.
------
jrapdx3
Discussion of conditions with certain attributes always seems to be a can of
worms. By _attributes_ I mean characteristics such as highly variable or
difficult to describe symptoms, association with anxiety, depression, pain and
other "subjective" states, and where the patient's state crosses over poorly
defined boundaries of "mental" and "physical" domains.
As commented by tudorw, an issue is "mind-body dualism", a philosophy often
associated with Descartes. Dualistic belief is not exactly delusional, but
certainly it's not in accord with contemporary scientific work. The problem
stems from our modern materialistic disregard for the immaterial mind vs.
esteeming the tangible body. Dualism remains a principle source of stigma
against acceptance of conditions involving difficulties integrating emotion,
thought and action.
Adopting a scientific approach is assuredly optimum for health professionals,
but given dualism is the predominant view in Western societies, the
prescription to replace dualism with monism gets little uptake. The problem as
it exists among physicians only mirrors the broader culture, it must change in
both subsets to have any effect at all.
As I recall the myth of "objective reality" has been discussed many times on
HN. "Embracing the scientific method" is more problem than solution in this
context. That is, equating science with a distorted version of objectivity is
a basis for the trouble dealing with FM, et. al., in the first place.
In a way, exposure to the class of illnesses like FM evokes responses somewhat
like we'd expect on first hearing about quantum physics. It's confusing to
people, it doesn't compute, doesn't make sense, doesn't follow the rules we
are used to. Mind == body? Wait a second, you mean there literally is no
_mind_? When we're ready for that, then and only then will we begin to make
progress.
------
Wistar
One of the most unusual and, frankly disturbing, accounts of the onset of an
illness that I have ever read is by author Laura Hillenbrand about her falling
ill with CFS/ME. Alas, it is now behind a paywall at New Yorker.
A Sudden Illness - [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden-
illnes...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden-illness)
------
rdancer
The comments are even more interesting than the article.
~~~
cpncrunch
The comments are always like that for CFS articles. The only difference with
this one is that there appear to be a couple of people trying to introduce
some scientific sanity, whereas normally it's just the "CFS is physical, any
other suggestion is heresy" crowd. Best avoided.
------
exo762
I wonder when software developers of the world will apologise for systematic
under-evaluation of time required to finish the project, failing projects,
state of end-point security, software patents.
Sincerely yours, software developer.
~~~
mcherm
I've been trying, for years.
That, in my opinion, is one of the main objectives I have in using "agile
development". Instead of looking over a project and providing the business
with an inaccurate estimate of how long it will take, I offer the business a
rough relative sizing of different features, and real-time insight into the
pace at which we are progressing. Then the customer can form their own
opinions on whether the next feature is "worth it" or not, and what to do if
the project appears not to be meeting its objectives.
You also raised issues of end-point security: a very valid point I have no
answer for. And you raise software patents, but there I think your concern is
misplaced: as far as I can tell, software developers of the world have been
quite vocal in explaining the harm done by software patents -- but the legal
and legislative communities do not seem to be listening.
~~~
exo762
Yeah, we do what we can, as good as we can.
But I'm imagining that medical community also tries their best to a) push
state of knowledge forward b) safely apply known best practices while curing
patients, thus acting in patients best interest. This two goals are compatible
in long term and conflict in short term: you can't really apply experimental
treatments or "experimental diagnosis" to patients outside of research
programs, even in case when it could potentially be in patients best interest.
Do authors expect researchers to push boundaries faster or maybe they expect
practitioners to apply unchecked knowledge?
Article tone and title are, in my opinion, very unreasonable.
------
PhantomGremlin
Is there a more arrogant profession (collectively) than medicine? From the
article, a mere 60 years later:
ME is not a psychological problem.
And a wish:
Jose Montoya, professor of medicine at the
University of Stanford, said: “I have a wish
and a dream that medical and scientific
societies will apologise to their ME patients."
Any bets on if and when that apology will happen? Have doctors ever even
apologized for bloodletting? E.g. they killed George Washington:
By the time the three physicians finished their
treatments and bloodletting of the President,
there had been a massive volume of blood loss—half
or more of his total blood content was removed
over the course of just a few hours.[1]
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_washington#Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_washington#Death)
~~~
jnbiche
> Is there a more arrogant profession (collectively) than medicine?
Surgery?
~~~
cheez
Oh god.
I was playing hockey a few weeks back with some new guys and at the end of the
games, we started shooting the shit. I asked the goalie what he did for work:
"I'm a doctor". "Oh cool, my brother is a doctor as well."
"Where?"
"<some hospital>"
"Oh, I work there as well. What department?"
"<the department>"
"Oh, haha, I'm a surgeon"
I lost it laughing.
~~~
knughit
I don't get it.
~~~
cheez
There is a hierarchy among medical professionals. I just couldn't help
laughing at the way this guy said "oh, haha, I'm a surgeon."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Silk Road: caught by the NSA? - aespinoza
http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/10/silk-road-caught-by-nsa.html#.Umldo_lea2B
======
aroch
A 22day old blogpost that's light on details...
If you're going to downvote, how about you explain the relevance of a 22day
old post, with really no substance, that's speculating with little
understanding or presentation of fact? Ken's discussion of the charges is both
more comprehensive and actually informative. This erratasec post offers no new
or persuasive information
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should I Publish my App to Betalist? - henrykuzmick
https://pine.io/blog/should-i-publish-to-betalist/
======
henrykuzmick
I've been coding for a while now, but making and growing a product is a whole
new thing for me. I may not be alone here, hopefully these insights will help
someone else too.
------
Tomte
.
~~~
henrykuzmick
Fixed ️
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete - KKKKkkkk1
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/business/china-cash-smartphone-payments.html
======
thablackbull
I think this is a good illustration of the different approach in how China and
America approach the consumer economics space. In America, there is a very
heavy reliance on "trickle down". We create a "best-in-class", "top-of-the-
line" product that only the elite and wealthy can buy into. These people then
set the tone of how it will develop in the future. The first mover also tries
to do everything in their power to lock you into the ecosystem. Examples of
these are iPhones (and the app ecosystem), Tesla, etc.
In China however, they throw away that pride of creating the greatest and
shiniest. Instead, they start off with an "inferior" product but use the scale
of their population to bring down costs and they try to ensure everyone has
access. The top example is smartphones. In the article itself, "Even the
buskers were apparently ahead of me. Enterprising musicians playing on the
streets of a number of Chinese cities have put up boards with QR codes so that
passers-by can simply transfer them tips directly." China starts off with a
product that gives every citizen a chance to get in on, not just the wealthy,
and they build up their economy from the bottom up, rung by rung.
The way I see it, we have democracy in politics but in products, its
authoritarian because its guided by the billionaires and wealthy. In China,
they have an authoritarian political system, but democratic economy space
because they can actually vote with their wallets.
~~~
mahyarm
Android was released a couple years after the iphone and it has defined the
low end market. From the USA.
A big reason why QR codes caught on in China is because everything else was
really bad. In america, credit cards were 'good enough' compared to what was
in china, so QR codes didn't catch on that quickly. Also because it's a
wealthier nation, the typical merchant could afford the hardware required for
processing cards, but QR codes all you needed was a print off and the mobile
phone you already had as a merchant, which made more sense for china at the
time.
Then network effects kicked in and QR codes became the standard.
You see similar environment specific things that created this kind of stuff.
Like whatsapp took over the world because SMS cost something, while in the USA
it was effectively free and good enough, so whatsapp wasn't a good enough
thing to switch to.
~~~
nickrio
I'm a Chinese & living China, I shopping almost only with credit cards and
cash for privacy consideration.
However, I don't think credit cards in China are as popular as it is in the
USA. I could guess most Chinese people don't have any credit card.
Chinese traditional culture encourages saving, not loaning. And taking small
loans is exactly how credit cards works. So maybe that's why people here don't
like credit card very much.
QR pay (Or mobile pay, OR more specifically, Alipay and Tenpay etc) can acting
like a gate way between seller, user and bank. It can pay with the money you
already have, no need to loan from the bank. So I think it's a _Culture
Match_.
Beside that, take a wallet (Which is needed for protecting your credit cards
from been scratched) everyday is a burden. I could really be happier if I can
get rid of it from my EDC (I can't get rid of my phone, so).
~~~
seanmcdirmid
I think most people pay their balance off every month in the USA. Credit card
doesn't mean borrowing. The big problem with credit cards in China is fraud:
banks like ICBC will put the burden of proof on the card holder when a fraud
transaction occurs, rather than the merchant as in the west. I really hate
ICBC.
Anyways, debit cards work just like QR pay does, just like UnionPay already
does. The problem QR codes are solving is the lack of a POS terminal and
stream lining the swipe. Many countries have an even better technology in NFC
contact (including China, many newer UnionPay POS's include NFC, though the
card must have a chip to support it). Then you could just glue your debit card
to the back of your phone...(or use NFC in your phone via something like Apple
or Android Pay).
~~~
mrkrabo
Why credit cards and not debit cards?
~~~
theandrewbailey
With a credit card, you're spending money that you don't have, but with a
debit card, you need money in the account it's connected to.
------
hn_throwaway_99
I think this article hit the nail on the head when it pointed out that being
ahead of the curve at one time (with Japan and their advanced flip phones in
the early 2000s) can make it harder to adopt the next big advance because what
you have is already "good enough".
Thus, in the US, I suspect that mobile payments haven't taken off as much
because they are only very slightly faster to use than a credit card, as
opposed to cash, which is much slower with people counting out amounts and
cashiers counting out change. Before Android Pay came out and there was Google
Wallet, I tried using Google Wallet but was super disappointed - it failed
about 5% of the time, where my credit cards almost never failed. Lately,
though, I've started using Android Pay and I've been really impressed. Just
one tap with my phone and it's done, and it's very reliable. Still, though,
it's really only slightly faster than swiping my credit card, especially for
small amounts where a signature isn't required.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Mobile payments haven't taken off in the west because credit cards have worked
well enough. In china, lots of small-scale businesses lack POS terminals while
Chinese banks put the burden of proof in case of fraud on the card user,
rather than the merchant as in the west. Using a credit card in china is an
absolute PITA.
Since returning to the states from china, I've been happily surprised that I
can just tap my credit card to pay at many terminals. This still pales in
comparison to austrailia, where this tap to pay seems to be ubiquitous.
~~~
tsukaisute
Just wish everyone would hop onboard quicker. We still need a lot of consumer
education.
For example, Apple Pay works great at Whole Foods. I use it every time. Other
people in line painstakingly pay with credit cards, despite holding an iPhone
in their other hand. The new chip cards take longer to process, even, 5
seconds or so.
~~~
lostboys67
So I have to have a apple phone worth several hundred dollars plus the
extortionate mobile charges in the USA instead of a free credit card with tap
and go I know which one I prefer
~~~
muninn_
Well you could use Android if you can't afford an iPhone. There are many
different options for mobile payments.
~~~
lostboys67
So only £150 fo a moto g then a bargain
------
HeavenFox
Born in China and moved to U.S. since college. In my observation, there are
several reason for the boom in mobile payment in China that makes it hard to
replicate.
\- Low transaction fee & minimal barrier. For merchants taking WeChat pay, the
transaction fee seems to be a flat 0.6%, compared to 2%-3% in the U.S. For the
food cart vendors and similar one man shops, they just use the person-to-
person payment feature (like Venmo), which has no transaction fee and does not
need a merchant account. While Square helped somewhat in the U.S., the
transaction fee, for many, is perceived as a rip off.
\- Cards are a pain to use. In the U.S. you sign. In EU you use a PIN. In
China you do both. Usually, it seems slower than cash! Mobile payment,
comparatively, is a breeze. However, it's quite difficult to argue that taking
out the phone, unlock it, open the app and show the QR code is easier than
using a card in the western world.
There are some deeper historical reasons for these two conditions, which I
would not dive into in this comment, but needless to say, it's a much, much
more fertile ground for mobile payment to blossom.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
> For merchants taking WeChat pay, the transaction fee seems to be a flat
> 0.6%, compared to 2%-3% in the U.S.
Where the heck is 3% even allowed in the USA?
> However, it's quite difficult to argue that taking out the phone, unlock it,
> open the app and show the QR code is easier than using a card in the western
> world.
Tapping the card to the NFC terminal is super easy. You don't even need to
take your card out of the wallet if its in front.
~~~
dis-sys
> Tapping the card to the NFC terminal is super easy. You don't even need to
> take your card out of the wallet if its in front.
The whole point here is how to entirely get rid of the wallet. your ID, your
cards, receipts, parking tickets etc should all be digital. in fact, that is
exactly what WeChat/Alipay are offering or battling for.
WeChat based ID card with approval from the Public Security Bureau:
[https://www.huxiu.com/article/169540.html](https://www.huxiu.com/article/169540.html)
~~~
weego
I'm more likely to always have a wallet on me than a phone on me. The base
notion that a phone is literally essential to daily life but a wallet is not
has yet is not a proven assumption.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Many Chinese don't drive, so going wallet free is more feasible.
------
ksec
Some Perspective and Experience While i was in China.
I couldn't set up my WePay in time, so like the Author, I had to use Cash. And
from my experience between a Tier 2 City and Tier 1 City like Shanghai, it is
actually those Tier 2-3 City refuse to accept cash. They thought Cash were
cumbersome. And Shanghai may be more welcoming cash / Credit Cards for variety
of reasons ( Likely privacy ).
I tried to buy breakfast for $2, ~20 cents in USD, i didn't have WePay so I
paid in cash. The Shop owner said she didn't have any changes and decide to
give me the meal for free.
Over the 15 days, I kept thinking about QR code as Tech. Trust me, it is crap.
I dont believe there is that much time difference holding up the queue as
noted in the article. You have to Open up WeChat, and let each other scan,
input your payment by youself, show them you have paid. To me this is very
backwards. Octopus in Hong Kong, Scuria in Japan, Oyster Card in London
Transport, Offline Mobile Payment from Master Card and Visa, All these are 10x
better in UX. The merchants input my bill, I beep. That is it.
Then suddenly one day it clicked, and I knew why QR Code succeed. With NFC or
any other Wireless payment, you need something, a electronics, a beacon or
what ever for sellers to work. With QR Code, They "Print" a QR Code and
laminated it. And you can photocopy as many pieces as you want. The barrier of
entry for QR Code is so low every one could use it. At the expense of consumer
UX.
And then weeks after I visited China, Apple announced in WWDC, iOS 11 will
come with Auto opening QR Code in Camera mode. That, may have just made the
friction of using QR Code much more bearable for me. And it is likely both
tech will exist side by side in the long future. I cant see QR Code as it is
used today ever getting replaced by the more expensive NFC solution, and NFC
will likely stay in transport and other areas.
~~~
rsync
"With QR Code, They "Print" a QR Code and laminated it."
Can someone give me an example of what a merchant would encode into the QR
Code that would then allow them to receive money ?
Is it a URL ?
~~~
lnanek2
It's a URL, but just one used to open an app with some data. E.g.:
[http://iosdevelopertips.com/cocoa/launching-your-own-
applica...](http://iosdevelopertips.com/cocoa/launching-your-own-application-
via-a-custom-url-scheme.html)
And the merchant doesn't know this. Their setup process is typically: Open up
WeChat, login, click the plus in the top right corner, pick Money, click
receive money...
And of course paying and receiving is much easier once everything is setup.
~~~
zhte415
This is correct.
1\. Customer scans QR
2\. POS operator hits given this is a realtime hit and noone else is hitting
this QR at this time.
3\. Customer received bill, hits OK. Confirmation sent to both reatailer and
customer at the same time. Customer often shows retailer this has been
successful. Receipt printed and handed to customer.
4\. Customer walks away happy.
The transaction from 1-4 takes less than 2 seconds. Very efficient.
The stumbling of a new customer to get their phone out, activate pay, question
if any special offers are in offer however drags this out to a vastly greater
amount of time than using cash.
However, the tech UX is sound.
Edit: Live in China. Wish people could use cash as queues are much longer when
the 'human factor' is added in/ Perhaps this will fade, but it has already
been a few years and sees no fading as retailers add discounts, coupons, to
the payment, which leads customers to click around their phone rather than
being prepared in advance with discount coupons and cash.
~~~
ksec
One thing I forgot to mention, Receipt! For whatever reason Apple Pay or Visa
/ Master still hasn't figure this out. WePay you get Receipt All in one. And
this purchasing Data should live inside my phone, not in the cloud. and the
data could be used as personal Financial management. Realistically Apple
should be the one doing this, but pretty much like All of their services, they
are half hearted and they dont give a damn.
P.S - I wonder if QR Code can be made in Circle shape rather then Rectangular.
------
ajiang
I had the most surreal experience in the Shenzhen airport the other day. I was
out of cash, with only my credit cards and Android pay. There was no place in
the entire airport that I could pay with Visa or Mastercard - the first time I
felt truly helpless in China. Uber didn't work either. I was forced to set up
WeChat pay, which works absolutely everywhere.
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I'm guessing this has come about because VISA and Mastercard are US companies,
where as WeChat is Chinese owned?
~~~
seanmcdirmid
No, this is very strange actually. At least Starbucks would take credit cards,
and you should be able to find an ATM that takes your USA-based ATM card.
Never had this problem before.
I did feel screwed when I arrived in he Netherlands thinking my unionpay card
to work, just to find out it was one of the countries besides India where it
didn't. Thankfully, I could find some place that took credit cards...but I was
freaking out as I didn't have much convertible cash as backup.
~~~
kuschku
Germany also doesn't really take credit cards.
Well, didn't.
The EU limited fees for credit cards to 0.125% recently, and while EC (now
bought by MasterCard and called Maestro for SEPA) is still cheaper, credit
cards start being affordable for merchants. But almost none support it yet.
And Google still hasn't launched Android Pay, despite every ALDI having NFC.
I'd prefer if there was a local NFC payment option actually.
~~~
ocb
Germany's aversion to credit cards is somewhat cultural, isn't it?
Datenschutz, Datensicherheit, etc.
~~~
kuschku
Well, it’s a few things.
Germany already had a well-working giro system by the time credit cards were
invented – almost instant, free transfers between bank accounts were common.
Then, credit cards were obscenely expensive (and still are in some cases, many
credit cards cost a hundred euros or more per year for the owner, and taking
credit cards often costs 6-7% of sale price + 60€/month for the merchant, and
merchants can’t ask credit card users to pay more, so merchants would go
bankrupt if they’d do that).
And this is because credit cards in the US are only free and have bonuses
because they’re basically a tax on the less educated, with high fees and
interest. Germany, which traditionally has a culture where having debt means
being guilty (literally, that’s the same word), obviously is far more
cautious, so far less profitable.
And then the EC cards happened, which introduced the EMV chip, were safer,
faster, and had far lower fees, so they were supported everywhere.
And then there’s privacy.
And the fact that the US – especially MasterCard, VISA and PayPal – love
stealing customers money in legal transactions inside of Germany just because
it violates US law (which, fyi, does not apply in Germany, although the US
pretends it does), as [1] and [2] show.
All in all, credit cards are a horribly insecure implementation of a
ridiculous system that only works when it can scam enough people, interferes
with local law, and doesn’t fit the strict privacy morals of Germany.
________________________
[1] [https://cphpost.dk/news/international/us-snubs-out-legal-
cig...](https://cphpost.dk/news/international/us-snubs-out-legal-cigar-
transaction.html)
[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ka26b/paypal_bl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ka26b/paypal_blackmails_one_of_the_three_major_german/)
------
NamTaf
Everyone in Australia just uses paypass/paywave contactless payment with their
credit cards. I rarely carry any signifiant amount of crash for that reason.
It's essentially the same as using your phone except you use your credit card
and doesn't require a PIN or anything for <$100. Once I have a transaction
over $100 I can tap and enter my pin, or use chip and PIN, or if everything
fails occasionally I need to swipe and PIN. Most critically, _signature is no
longer allowed_.
Without having used WeChat's approach with QR code scanning, it doesn't seem
that different for the end user in practice. Either way, you're scanning an
object you carry against some target environment and a merchant is processing
the transaction for you. It's even closer once you use eg: Apple Pay with your
CCs loaded into the Apple system - you're tapping your phone rather than
scanning via the camera.
I'm guessing that the CC infrastructure simply wasn't there and pushing out
EFTPOS units was a far higher barrier to entry than simply running an app on
your newly acquired cheap chinese smartphone. As such, the CC merchants missed
the boat whereas the big phone app companies got in on the ground floor. On
the flipside, many Western countries had all the EFTPOS terminals already, so
contactless just became the next iteration on that.
I don't really necessarily agree with the problem of the country building
their commerce systems around Tencent, etc. as 'private companies' since most
of the west hinges on Visa, Mastercard and to a lesser extent Amex. They're
all private companies too. Maybe the government will step in and standardise
the QR code system eventually to reduce the risk. I don't really see it
playing out much differently to how the West did with CC contactless.
~~~
rahimnathwani
"Without having used WeChat's approach with QR code scanning, it doesn't seem
that different for the end user in practice."
The difference is that _anyone_ can accept WeChat payments, no matter how
small their transaction volume.
I haven't been to Australia since 2002, so am a little out of touch. Are there
small businesses like fruit stands? Do they take paypass/paywave?
What about buskers?
~~~
NamTaf
That's a very valid point. Not _everyone_ can become a payment recipient with
this with the same barrier to entry. In that sense, it's definitely less
flexible and I guess that's where FB and co. have tried to make inroads with
cash transfer. I know Commonwealth Bank made an in-house system for doing
instant and easy transfers from an app like that.
Regarding your question, anyone who previously took a CC via an EFTPOS
terminal would now take paypass/paywave. It's not ubquituous amongst the
standard sunday market/food truck retailers, but it's not uncommon. I went to
a French food and wine festival a couple of weeks ago and the majority of them
used EFTPOS, but they also not infrequently do the market circuit.
Essentially, anywhere that previously had EFTPOS now naturally has
contactless, and as the critical mass of people who don't carry cash grows,
more smaller retailers are pressured into getting EFTPOS. The terminals are
handheld, battery powered and connected to the mobile network now so you don't
even need electricity. Granted, I don't see a time when buskers end up get
EFTPOS terminals.
------
hbarka
Take the credit card swipe versus chip example. The chip is an improvement
over the really old swipe tech in theory. In the US, using the chip is a
terrible experience because it takes a lot longer for the process to complete.
Why? Because merchant processors have no interest in putting the chips on a
fast network because they can get higher fees on the swipe and conversely the
stores are charged higher fees for enabling the chip. There you go. There's
the moral question and the profit question all in a real example that didn't
improve the experience for the end user.
~~~
usaphp
The faster the lines are moving - the more transactions per day can a store
process, thus more fees for processor. I don't see a logical reason for
processors to artificially slow down payment process just for a tiny fee
difference, no? plus they theoretically get less chargebacks and fraud
activity with chips.
~~~
zanny
Except the cost of slow transactions is not eaten by the payment processor.
The store just has to add more checkout lanes or clerks. The payment processor
also never gets blamed - if the process is slow, the customer just blames the
store.
~~~
usaphp
> the cost of slow transactions is not eaten by payment processor.
> if the process is slow the customer just blames the store.
If the customer does not like long lines and slow transactions in a store -
they will leave, and the processor will see less revenue from fewer
transactions because of that
~~~
zhte415
There are only 2 card payment networks of worth and most cutomers have cards
from both. They don't care.
------
theylon
Living in China for the past two years - Important thing to remember - in
China and in most of South-East Asia the tech boom came at a later stage when
smartphones were already prominent. Android + Chinese manufacturing made it
possible to produce cheap smart phones. The result is that these countries
have completely skipped the laptop phase and went straight to smartphones,
most of the population doesn't even know what a laptop is. What the west calls
eCommerce (amazon, Ebay etc) is called mCommerce in Asia (Taobao app, JD.com
App etc). Asian consumers find it easier and more natural to shop using
smartphones rather than laptops like Western consumers.
Oh and yes, When I leave the house I don't even take my wallet, everything is
paid using wechat.
~~~
pmontra
I've been in China as a tourist for three weeks two years ago. I paid
everything with cash. Easy.
What would I do now if I have to pay with WeChat and I obviously don't have a
Chinese bank account? Tourists don't have time to waste in banks and unless
bank accounts are created and activated on the fly it would be pointless to
open one. Maybe open an account in advance from home? Is that possible? Or
WeChat and Alipay start operating with accounts in multiple countries.
~~~
theylon
You don't actually need to have a bank account in order to use Wechat payment.
Someone can just send you money over wechat and it would still work, just a
1000rmb/month limitation. If you're a tourist it should be fine.
------
itchap
I have been living in Shanghai for few years now. Alipay and Wechat are really
a big thing. It is far from the vision of mobile payment people have in Europe
for example, where it is more of solution for small payments.
People are using Alipay and Wechat pay for everything, being online shopping,
restaurants, supermarkets, train tickets, electricity, water, even some tax
declaration. So it is not just a replacement to cash and bank cards, it is
starting to go beyond that.
I go for months without having any cash or bank cards on me. Unfortunately
everything falls apart when my phone runs out of battery.
~~~
lyricat
Or phone stolen.
~~~
justjimmy
Or wallet stolen (arguing for the other side).
------
2muchcoffeeman
Is this faster than PayWave?
Ever since I could tap to pay with my card in AU, I have been going months
without using cash. I usually still have money, but never use it. I've gone
almost 2 months with literally 0 dollars in my wallet.
~~~
kripy
Contactless payment systems are prevalent in Australia. And even before tap to
pay we were able to insert cards, enter a PIN and pay. What has happened in
China is that they payment systems have been baked into the apps where, in
Australia, this occurs at the terminal (EFTPOS as an example) which is app
agnostic and tied directly back to the bank gatewys.
------
justjimmy
And for those rare places that only do cash, it's not uncommon for the person
in line to turn around and ask a stranger for cash and they'll pay that person
in a WeChat transfer. Done in seconds. Happened to me and observed it myself a
couple of times.
With digital wallets, there's zero need for credit cards and their predatory
interest rates.
China is just absolutely crushing it. The Amazon Self Serve store that's still
in testing in USA? Tao Bao pushed their version and it went live last week.
~~~
ec109685
> With digital wallets, there's zero need for credit cards and their predatory
> interest rates.
How is there zero need? If don't need to borrow money longer than 30 days, you
pay zero interest. If you do need a bit longer to pay, you have that option.
~~~
icebraining
Since banks aren't charities, the fact that those 30 day loans are "free" just
means you're paying for them _even if you don 't use them_.
~~~
ec109685
By using a digital wallet, you personally don't save any money over a credit
card.
------
EZ-E
Can confirm, in most supermarket, paying take literally one second. You pull
out your phone and show your Alipay/WeChat QR code, the cashier scans it and 1
second later it's done.
People paying in cash is a small minority
Speeding up lines, they also can have more clients for less cashiers
In France, most people pay with a bank card, the rest with cash. The process
is longer and less user friendly
~~~
chime
Does your QR code change from one transaction to next?
~~~
EZ-E
Yes. Also if you keep it open for some time, the code will change automaticly
------
lucaspiller
It sounds like one of the reasons why this has grown so quickly - compared to
mobile payments in the west - is that you can just sign up and have it
instantly. Apple Pay and the like need your bank and the retailer to support
it which doesn't happen straight away. In this case it sounds very much like
the dream of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
The article mentions that not everyone has access to it though, if you just
sign up why is that (they don't want it or something else)?
And what about privacy? Obviously everything you buy is being fed into a big
government database somewhere. Do people in China not care about that (has
privacy been eroded so much)?
~~~
Juha
> And what about privacy? Obviously everything you buy is being fed into a big
> government database somewhere. Do people in China not care about that (has
> privacy been eroded so much)?
I don't see how it's different from using credit cards or any other digital
payment method.
~~~
ian0
Yep. If anything a wallet is less regulated than the traditional banking
system.
------
psy-q
It's interesting that they worry about lock-in from Tencent and Alibaba in
China while not mentioning the same lock-in and issues for Google, Microsoft
and Apple in the rest of the world.
People who don't want to get a Google account already get a degraded product
when using Android phones, and I'm not even sure an iPhone works without an
Apple ID. That Google Wallet flopped is just a happy coincidence in this
regard, but Apple Pay so far hasn't, and then we have the same situation there
as with e.g. Alibaba.
Some nations like Switzerland at least have a unified national mobile payment
platform (Twint in this case) carried by an alliance of banks. This doesn't
put all the power with just one or two privately owned US or Chinese
companies, and it brings banking regulations into the game. Maybe that
approach should be copied, but it only works in countries that have those
regulations and banks willing to cooperate.
~~~
erikb
Apple Pay hasn't flopped where? Actually it's the first time I here about its
existence. So if it's not just 2 weeks old I strongly assume that it in fact
has flopped. I have an iphone 6s currently btw.
~~~
psy-q
I see it advertised a lot and the biggest kiosk chain in Switzerland accepts
it. But I don't know anyone who uses it apart from some overheard
conversations on the tram. Totally anecdotal, though. I don't think Apple
releases numbers.
------
williamle8300
No thanks. Cash is king. Money should never be traceable, and you should be
able to buy with anonymity.
~~~
zanny
Except most people don't care if they are being tracked and if they aren't
anonymous, so systems like these emerge using the lack of anonymity as a
feature.
I am one of the folk in the inevitability of cryptocurrency camp (not btc or
any existant coin, though) but that world is one where it becomes very easy to
correlate wallets, or at least where the funds come from, with the person
making the purchases.
For everyone who wants anonymity they can keep using bitcoin and gold after
fiat paper and coins are gone.
~~~
mac01021
Maybe bitcoin. Not gold: [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2642475/nasa-to-
explore-astero...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2642475/nasa-to-explore-
asteroid-16-psyche-which-is-so-valuable-it-could-crash-the-worlds-economy/)
------
foobarian
This brings me back to college days... when you could use your student ID to
pay for everything instantly. And the ID# was encoded on the magnetic strip
unencrypted.
------
lostboys67
This is more to do with the PRC wanting to control the populace ;-( other wise
why are wealthy Mainland Chinese desperately buying up real-estate over sees
as a method of moving wealth out of the country.
------
Animats
Alipay is trying to expand into the US. Citcon is trying to get US merchants
to integrate Alipay. First Data is on board with Alipay. At least 4 million US
merchants already accept Alipay.
That's probably more traction than Google Pay or Apple's payment system ever
got.
_" Alipay, leader in online payments. 400,000,000 Users."_
~~~
baybal2
It is better to say that 4m merchants do have access to Alipay, but may elect
to not to use it.
I knew quite a few places in Vancouver where people were ready to accept
payment by zhifubao id, but nobody had qr scanners or anything. It may end up
like Paypal local - come to shop that accepts paypal, ask if they support it,
and yeah "transfer money to id 4746474, call me back when you are done"
------
1024core
I don't understand why there's no mention of M-Pesa
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa)
When I heard about it several years ago, it was, effectively, the largest bank
in Kenya.
------
tristanj
If you are curious how smartphone payments work in practice, Here's a video of
someone using Wechat Pay to order squeezed-to-order orange juice from a
vending machine
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um53J3shL7I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um53J3shL7I)
In practice, scanning and paying is much faster than shown in the video. He is
using an old phone, on a newer one scanning the barcode takes around 0.5
second and the verification takes 2-5 seconds (not 15 seconds as shown in
video).
Paying in stores works differently. The WeChat app has a wallet section with
your personal payment QR code (which changes every time you open the app). To
pay in a store, let the clerk scan it like this
[https://wx.gtimg.com/pay/img/wechatpay/intro_2_1.png](https://wx.gtimg.com/pay/img/wechatpay/intro_2_1.png)
then enter your six digit payment passcode (optionally, you can scan your
fingerprint). After entering your passcode, it takes around 5 seconds to
process and verify. You get a receipt as a WeChat message (last screen shown
here [https://www.royalpay.com.au/resources/images/retail-
example....](https://www.royalpay.com.au/resources/images/retail-example.png)
).
Many stores (usually restaurants) have a nearby QR code you can scan to follow
the business's WeChat "Official Account". Follow this account to earn loyalty
points, discounts, and freebies whenever you pay with WeChat wallet at this
business in the future. The business can send you chat messages about
promotions too (you can mute them if you like). This feature ties in really
well with WeChat pay.
There are other uses of WeChat Wallet too, most of which are shown in this
promo video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r95Q2qElFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r95Q2qElFM)
At timestamp 0:09, that sign/sticker signifies this store accepts WeChat Pay
At timestamp 0:24, watch the clerk scan the customer's barcode
At timestamp 0:30, the customers scans the store's payment QR code and types
in the amount they want to pay. More at 0:50
At timestamp 0:38, this store has a dedicated QR code scanner
At timestamp 0:50, it's the same as 0:30 where the customer types in how much
they are paying. Paying like this is common at street stalls.
At timestamp 1:00, two friends use WeChat Wallet to transfer money to each
other
Opening WeChat wallet on your phone is very easy. On iPhone just force touch
the WeChat app and a quick menu for the QR code scanner and WeChat Wallet
appears. In my opinion, it's much faster and more convenient than paying with
credit card.
~~~
rahimnathwani
This should be the top comment.
To me, the mode where the store scans your temporary payment QR code (like in
McDonald's) feels like signature-less swiping in Starbucks in the US. You
can't confirm the amount beforehand in either case. But the WeChat way seems
more secure, as no one can clone my temporary QR code.
------
dis-sys
Criminals are now targeting those QR codes. They just walk around and put
their own QR code stickers on top of the legitimate ones, hoping that future
payment will end up in their accounts.
What really impress me is that Alipay immediately responded to such reports
and agreed to foot the damages. They also started to promote the voice
notification feature so street vendors don't have to stop periodically to just
check whether they are actually getting paid.
You will never ever see Chinese big four state owned banks take good care of
their customers/users to such extent. It is definitely a good example on why
capitalism is the best choice in 2017.
~~~
DarkKomunalec
"It is definitely a good example on why capitalism is the best choice in
2017."
Until the company becomes too big, and can do whatever they want without
losing customers. See various horror stories about Bank of America, Comcast,
PayPal, management engines in Intel and AMD chips, 'telemetry' in Windows,
etc., for counterexamples.
~~~
dis-sys
I actually just realized one potential issue: there are two online payment
platforms in China, they are owned by Tencent and Alibaba. If someone piss off
both of them, e.g. some business disputes which is not really unheard of, they
can choose to just refund all your money left in your account and close it.
The consequence is obvious - you would be isolated from a normal life if you
live in China.
From that aspect, there are tons to learn from what happened in America.
------
nichtich
The success of AliPay and WeChat Pay is mostly the result of a good banking
infrastructure. Even before these services popping up, you already can
transfer money from any bank to another bank instantly and with no fee (or a
small fee, depending on the bank and your account type). PBoC has been pushing
banks to make interbank transfer efficiently and cheaply for years. The new
mobile payment systems just use the already built infrastructure and replaced
the ugly out of date bank webpages with cute looking apps and also greatly
relaxed security so you don't have to keep the 2fa usb key with you anymore.
~~~
mcv
Instantly, so the money is on the new account directly? It's always surprised
me that transfers still don't happen that way in Europe. But feeless
transactions from any bank to any other bank also exist in Europe, and have
existed for a long time within many European countries. So that's hardly
unique to China. Yet we still pay mostly by debit card with pin.
But reduced security doesn't sound like a very good idea.
~~~
markvdb
The European payments council is working on "instant" SEPA transfers, within
ten seconds. The first applications are expected in 201711.
[https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-
insta...](https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-instant-
credit-transfer)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area)
------
mikkelam
In Denmark we have been using mobilepay[1] for a couple years now. Contactless
credit cards are still widely used as not all stores accept mobilepay, as a
result it is mostly being used between friends, e.g. when you split the bill
at a restaurant
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobilePay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobilePay)
------
Hasz
Cash will never die.
Fundamentally, a wechat/alipay transaction is traceable. Traceability is great
for expense reports, but a non-starter if you're a drug dealer -- especially
with China's draconian drug laws.
Even if you were to launder the money through fronts or a series of
transactions, a state level actor (i.e, China) would have no real difficulty
in tracking down such activity. With cash, this becomes much, much harder in
cost, time and manpower. Not impossible for a state, but certainly an
effective deterrent from casual or low level investigation.
This difference in traceability will keep cash and other compact tangible
mediums of value (precious gems and metals, ivory, drugs, etc) in use by
subsets of the population for as long as people value the relative anonymity
and are willing to put up with the costs and risks a physical medium entails.
~~~
wklauss
> Cash will never die.
I wouldn't say never. It can be marginalized to the point that it becomes
annoying for vendors to rely on it and all you need is a little bit of
regulatory push to stop cash. By then, most shoppers would not care enough to
protest.
As for drug dealers... what can I say... i don't think their needs will be
taken into account and as far as I know, bitcoin is already working for them
in that regard.
------
jccalhoun
I had heard of WeChat and AliPay but didn't know how it worked. It is quite
similar to what Walmart does with their Walmart Pay
[https://www.walmart.com/cp/walmart-
pay/3205993](https://www.walmart.com/cp/walmart-pay/3205993) and what a number
of retailers tried to do with CurrenctC
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Customer_Exchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Customer_Exchange)
CurrentctC never made it out of test marketing and I don't think Walmart Pay
is taking off.
The difference is that these two are from big retailers and the Chinese
versions are from apps or online retailers.
~~~
eddieplan9
The real difference is that in China, WeChat Pay and AliPay are better than
alternatives (i.e. cash), while in the US, Walmart Pay and CurrentC are worse
than alternatives (i.e. credit cards).
------
rz2k
I was sure I'd read a lot of comments from people living in China who
disagreed, because of this column[1] as well as a few others like it.
However, I realize that column is almost 50 months old. At the time it was
part of a worry, because it was very difficult for anyone to understand what
was going on in the Chinese economy and therefore which economic policies
would be harmful. (Eg. stimulus during bubble, or tightening during stress)
Has cash really become a lot less popular in the past few years?
[1] [http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/01/on-getting-paid-in-
wads-...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/01/on-getting-paid-in-wads-of-cash-
in-china/)
------
hunvreus
I haven't had cash on me for more than a year now.
I use Alipay or WeChat for pretty much anything: groceries, bills, plane
tickets, hotels, rent...
I actually have to use LastPass to remember the codes of my debit/credit
cards.
Even traveling to Hong Kong feels backward; you have to go to an ATM, get
money and then struggle with change in your pockets for the rest of the week.
I really hope this trend goes global and helps create a more competitive space
for banks; it would be good to see them trying to innovate a bit.
------
arkitaip
It's a shame that WeChat outside of China is just a chat app. But I guess that
when China is your home market, then that's all you really need.
------
allengeorge
Perhaps another factor in this shift is that there's a higher incidence
(anecdotally) of counterfeit bills - especially larger notes?
~~~
brisance
The largest renminbi bill is worth about 14.7 USD. I think it would factor
into why people would go cashless.
------
known
Aren't Chinese compromising their Privacy?
------
erikb
Tourist shops and shops that sell milk powder in Europe also accept at least
Alipay already.
And while it's hard to connect your Wechat account to your bank account as a
foreigner, it's like everything in China: If you have Guanxi it's no big deal.
You just give cash or bank transfers to your friends and they send you Wechat
money.
------
inlined
I recently took a trip to Shanghai and Kyoto and was blown away by this. In
Shanghai even the taxis displayed their QR to accept payments. Kyoto accepted
WePay and AliPay; the latter was most impressive because I was told AliPay
requires the Chinese equivalent of a SSN
~~~
rahimnathwani
Alipay overseas (e.g. in Kyoto) only works for Chinese citizens.
Anecdote: I tried to pay with Alipay in a Uniqlo store on my last trip to
Japan. The payment failed, so I paid by card instead. A minute later I
received an SMS from Alipay telling me it was because international payments
are only available to Chinese ID card holders.
------
diefunction
The point is, you dont need to take a card, you can pay eveywhere, all you
need to bring is your phone. Nobody thinks bringing a phone, a wallet and
keychain everywhere is quite painful ??? i would rather to use my phone to
open my door.
------
sjg007
Surprised that QR codes are not more ubiquitous in the USA. Seems like a great
platform.
~~~
teknologist
But not as safe. There was news about people putting their own QR codes on
rental bikes so that people mistakenly send cash to them in China.
~~~
grok2
It seems to me that QR codes could make it easy for someone to replace the
original QR code with a different QR code at any place that accepts them and
the merchant is none-the-wiser (unless there is some form of integration back
to their PoS system) -- it seems like this could be a new form of skimming
(stick your own QR code over any merchants :-)).
~~~
TACIXAT
If most are screen based, you could just dynamically generate them and have
them expire after N minutes. If someone wants a printed one make them jump
through an application process for a long standing code.
~~~
teknologist
They do for individual payments but storeowners sometimes tape their printed
QR codes to walls and counters and they seem to want accommodate this use case
too (essentially POS-less or "bring your own POS")
------
nabla9
In the Nordics it's contactless credit cards in shops and mobile pay in
vending machines and between individuals.
Difference for consumers is minimal. Cards can be faster to use.
------
yufeng66
One important factor is the Chinese government view cash as necessary evil.
They prefer the money to be in the digital form to avoid issues such as grey
economy and difficulty in collecting tax. As such they refuse to issue large
denomination cash bills. The largest RMB bill is only 100, which is about 13
USD. It was first issued in 1988, when the nominal GDP was only about 2% of
the current size. Obviously this makes large transaction in cash difficulty.
Thus created an opening for alipay and wechat.
~~~
dis-sys
It is the other way around: it has been repeatedly reported that there is no
plan to issue larger denomination Yuan because the online payment systems are
already doing the job for eliminating cash.
------
alvil
Only idiot can support cashless society creation.
------
notadoc
In urban USA, cash is pretty rare too. Almost everyone uses credit.
~~~
thegayngler
Not in NYC. Many many places have limits on how much you must spend before
credit card use is allowed and even then some places require cash anyway.
~~~
notadoc
Sure but the limit is usually $5, and realistically what is being bought under
that amount exclusively at any regularity?
------
miguelrochefort
Why isn't there a WeChat equivalent in the west?
~~~
reactor
Its better to have some privacy.
~~~
ian0
While a mega-portal for all your digital needs sounds like a privacy nightmare
- I can think of a few US examples where this was overlooked in favor of
utility!
------
Zolomon
Sweden has been mostly cash-free for 8-12 years now.
~~~
arkitaip
True but we use debit/credit cards. They can be incredibly fast if the POS is
connected via broadband (instead of land lines, which are increasingly rare).
Personally, I would like to see Klarna roll out in-store "invoices" for small
purchases so you can always shop as long as you have your mobile (even if you
don't have money on your account).
------
chj
Paying with phone means you can go out wallet-less.
------
baybal2
Same thing in Russia, but for a different reason.
I think no banker in sane mind will issue a credit to an average Russian
~~~
dang
> _no banker in sane mind will issue a credit to an average Russian_
No national putdowns on HN, please.
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14785516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14785516)
and marked it off-topic.
------
frozenport
Fucking non-sense, American's strive to create products that are different.
The Chinese stereotype is to copy those. The copies are often not cost
equivalent won't perform the same function as the original. Further it is
often done with the full intent of tricking people, for example knock off
Apple stores, Italian clothing etc.
In absolute terms the average Chinese person can't afford higher quality
items.
~~~
monocasa
That's exactly what was said about Germany in the 1880s, and Japanese goods in
the 1960s. It's the normal progression of truly developing economies.
~~~
slackingoff2017
Ignoring all copyright law? We're not talking about stuff that is cheaper
equivalents which I'm fine with. The problem with China is counterfeiting
brands.
Say I make a charger and want people to think it's high quality. To do this, I
spend 90% of effort on making it look exactly like an Apple charger. It even
works, kind of, maybe once.
This is a straight up scam, and the kind of crap that people knock China for.
And such behavior is pervasive with the Chinese govt largely looking the other
way. I'm fine with China competing but their government needs to stop the
rampant scams. It hurts the more successful Chinese brands just as much.
~~~
zanny
Why do you blame the Chinese government when, if you want to prevent scam
devices from entering your market, you should have your own customs and trade
inspectors turn away counterfeit merchandise? The Us _lets_ counterfeit
products in. Likewise, if the Chinese government doesn't want to obey US law
involving copyright or trademark, which is not an international policy, it is
simply the law of the US, that is entirely their sovereign right to.
It would also, then, be the US' right to negotiate trade agreements knowing
that.
The Chinese government does some fucked up shit, but not being under the foot
of US global intellectual imperialism is not _them_ being the villains, its
the US for trying to force a global framework of IP, and especially US' idea
of permanent copyright, on everyone else.
~~~
slackingoff2017
The patents and trademark and copyrights being infringed are largely global.
China has a multitude of agreements to enforce the rules, they just don't.
This also has nothing to do with the US and everything to do with China. China
counterfeits everyone's shit not just one country, but I appreciate how
incredibly biased you are against the United States. I didn't even mention the
US in my original post so I have no idea where you got that tirade. Copy
pasted from your favorite Chinese government mouthpiece maybe?
The US can't inspect every piece of mail to find counterfeits, they need to be
traced to the source, which China is unwilling to do.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Video tags reveal surprising details of blue whale feeding behavior - Thevet
https://news.ucsc.edu/2017/11/blue-whales.html
======
nategri
Totally thought this was going to be about an algorithm that tags videos of
whales with text, and and how they noticed a pattern by looking at the tags.
Title would be better served by mentioning "handedness" in whales, but there
was already a flurry of those last week, presumably on the same study.
~~~
malmsteen
>Totally thought this was going to be about an algorithm that tags videos of
whales with text, and and how they noticed a pattern by looking at the tags.
same!
------
pronoiac
Oh, they attached cameras to the back of the whales. Nifty!
Edit: Blue Planet 2 apparently did something similar; this article has more
details: [http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/how-blue-planet-ii-
team-1...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/how-blue-planet-ii-
team-11528095)
------
jchw
When I read "video tags," I immediately thought of <video> and was very
confused.
I now get that they're cameras, but I'm sure I'll make this mistake next time
I read "video tags," too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“Culture of workplace fear” leads to Covid-19 spread at Amazon, suit says - samizdis
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/culture-of-workplace-fear-leads-to-covid-19-spread-at-amazon-suit-says/
======
merricksb
Earlier discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412532)
------
29athrowaway
Companies are not democracies. Every company is a lesser form of autocracy
upper-bounded by the law of the land.
Because of this, you can expect all sorts of crazy shit taking place at
different companies. As much as the law allows.
~~~
Pfhreak
Some companies are democracies. There's nothing that requires a company to be
an autocracy, it's just culturally normal (and maybe more efficient when it
comes to decision making).
~~~
29athrowaway
Let's say a company has a board with members that put decisions to a vote.
Even that company is not a democracy.
No company elects their leadership through 1 person = 1 vote.
~~~
Pfhreak
What? Yes, there absolutely are companies that give 1 worker 1 vote. There is
a company model called a worker coop that gives each worker one share in the
company. They are in many industries, from video games (e.g. Motion Twin) to
massive conglomerates (Mondragon).
------
gentleman11
I think the term iron fist came from older time periods where extreme violence
was used to control populations. The iron fist I think referred to armoured
gauntlets and has a military connotation.
~~~
mc32
It comes from a proverb “God comes with leaden feet but strikes with iron
hands”. The origin of the proverb is lost to time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OpenVPN: Raspberry-Pi - DarthRa
http://n0where.net/openvpn-raspberry-pi/
======
AdrianRossouw
heh, everybody seems to be getting into this now.
i built mine a few weeks ago. when i find time i'm going to build a chrome
extension to be able to toggle routing via the vpn or not.
i also think i want to add 3g failover support.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A new, clean, and concise look at weather from My-Cast - yellowbkpk
We just released a new weather website using all sorts of awesome web technologies. We use ModestMaps to show tiled, animated radar and satellite data, Raphael.js to show historical averages and record high/lows, and MapQuest's new Nominatim service sitting on top of OpenStreetMap to do location lookups.<p>We're really proud of this site and would love to hear your feedback and to have try it out:<p>http://preview.my-cast.com/
======
marklabedz
I like it. My first instinct was to click on the radar to expand it (maybe
because I'm trying to determine if I'll need a kayak to get to work tomorrow
in PHL). I like that the timestamps for the radar frames were converted from
GMT/Zulu for me.
Your hourly forecast is nice and clean. Have you considered adding greater
detail to the precipitation icons? Percent probability or estimated total QPF?
Either way, I think this is an easier presentation than the hourly weather
graphs on NWS.
Bottom line, I'll keep checking back to see how things develop.
EDIT: Forgot to add - good job making the map responsive to zooming and
panning. That is one thing that drives me nuts with many radar/map
implementations.
~~~
lootsauce
Thanks for the feedback! You have NO IDEA how much work went into developing a
performant tiled & animated map. Modest Maps was a very good base to build on
and we tried several other options before we went with MM.
~~~
marklabedz
I can imagine it was a significant effort considering all of the horrible
implementations I've seen.
------
Hovertruck
Hmmm. Is it attempting to geolocate me? If so, it keeps saying I'm in
Minneapolis when I'm actually in New York. My first instinct was then to type
my location in, but it took me a second since I expected the search box to be
so much more prominent (I guess since my typical weather checking approach is:
1. Go to weather.com 2. Type in search box smack in the middle of the page)
Seems very cool, though. I would definitely use it.
~~~
yellowbkpk
This first iteration doesn't geolocate ... it's on the top of the list for the
next release, though!
------
yellowbkpk
Clickable link: <http://preview.my-cast.com/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Protection of Information in Computer Systems (1975) - mataug
https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs551/saltzer/
======
dang
A great post, but we changed the title from "Probably the most cited and least
read paper in Computer Security" in accordance with the HN guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Please don't editorialize in titles. If you want to express an opinion about a
story, the way to do that is by posting a comment in the thread. Then your
opinion is on the same level as others'.
~~~
mataug
I understand, Sorry about that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Whitepaper on telemedicine trends, market research, and startups 2020 - DanaStartupNews
https://www.byteant.com/blog/telemedicine-app-development-market-study-and-startup-opportunities-2020-whitepaper/
======
DanaStartupNews
We have done our research so you can get the full picture on telemedicine
market 2020. Startup opportunities, funding changes and barriers - you can
find all in this piece.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Will prediction competitions become mainstream? - devchris10
Some examples:<p>https://oraclerank.com<p>https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/23/facebook-tests-forecast-an-app-for-making-predictions-about-world-events-like-covid-19/<p>https://kaggle.com<p>https://www.augur.net/<p>https://www.gjopen.com/challenges
======
verdverm
As much as sports and fantasy betting would be my guess.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HTTP/1.1 pipelining example: DNS-Over-HTTPS - textmode
As a demonstration using only standard utilities, the three scripts below 1.sh, 2.sh and 3.sh will<p>1. accept a list of domains and output the required Base64URL-encoded DNS request<p>2. make a single HTTP connection to retrieve all the responses in binary format and write them to a file<p>3. convert the binary file to text, suitable for manipulation with text-formatting utilities so the DNS data can be added to HOSTS file or a zone file<p>bindparser is from curveprotect project; it converts BIND-style output from drill to tinydns zone file format.<p>Most HTTP servers on the internet do have pipelining enabled, sometimes with a max-limit of 100. The three examples listed below were pipelining enabled with max-limit greater than 100 last time I checked.<p>Example usage:<p><pre><code> 1.sh < list-of-domains > 1.txt
2.sh 001 < 1.txt > 1.bin
3.sh < 1.bin > 1.txt
bindparser 1.txt > 1.zone
x=tinydns/root/data;cat 1.zone >> $x/data;cd $x;
awk '!x[$0]++' data > data.tmp;mv data.tmp data;tinydns-data;cd -
# 1.sh
#!/bin/sh
while IFS= read -r x;do printf $x' ';
drill -q /dev/stdout $x @0.0.0.0 a|sed 's/;.*//'|xxd -p -r \
|openssl base64|sed 's/+/-/g;s|/|_|g;s/=.*$//'|tr -d '\n';echo;
done
# 2.sh
#!/bin/sh
case $1 in
"")sed '/;;[0-9]*/!d' $0;
echo usage: $0 provider-number \< output-from-script1.txt;exit
;;001)x=doh.powerdns.org;y=1
;;002)x=ibuki.cgnat.net;y=1
;;003)x=dns.aa.net.uk;y=1
esac;
case $y in
1) sed 's/\(.* \)\(.*\)/GET \/dns-query?dns=\2 HTTP\/1.1\r\nHost: \1\r\n/;
$!s/$/Connection: keep-alive\r\n/;$s/$/Connection: close\r\n\r\n/;' \
|socat -,ignoreeof ssl:$x:443,verify=0 > 1.bin
esac;
3.sh < 1.bin
# 3.sh
#!/bin/sh
while IFS= read -r x;do sed -n /${1-\.}/p\;/${1-\.}/q|xxd -p|drill -i /dev/stdin 2>/dev/null;done</code></pre>
======
textmode
Better 3.sh
# 3.sh
#!/bin/sh
while IFS= read -r x;do sed -n '/\./p;/\./q'|xxd -p |drill -i /dev/stdin 2>/dev/null;done
------
textmode
Correction:
\- x=tinydns/root/data;cat 1.zone >> $x/data;cd $x;
\+ x=tinydns/root;cat 1.zone >> $x/data;cd $x;
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The hacker method for game publishing: band together - tripngroove
http://www.theindiebundle.com/
======
tripngroove
These guys are killing it. A variety of quality game content, bundled, cheap,
and well marketed on the web, via platforms like steam and email (I open their
newsletter every time it shows up, which says something about how they
connected with me as a customer). Just when I was feeling that pc gaming was
dead, this kind of distribution (steam especially) is reinvigorating the
platform in a way that makes a lot of business sense.
Another great example: steam shows me a game that's 18 months old for 10% of
the original retail price, I buy it on their platform and instantly
download/install it on a whim and in one step, and I'm a happy customer. I
never would have purchased it if they hadn't dumped it in my lap... but when I
can get at least a few hours of (perhaps questionably good?) entertainment and
new gaming experiences for the price of a pint or two of micro, that B-game I
wouldn't otherwise have purchased starts to look more attractive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup Time for Fukushima's Frozen Wall - sohkamyung
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/startup-time-for-fukushimas-frozen-wall-heres-why-it-should-work
======
Mithaldu
Excellently calm and informative article. I wish all Fukushima reporting was
like this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I got my dream job and now I'm depressed - newjobhelp
Hi HN,<p>I recently got a new job. It's my dream job and at a company I've wanted to work at for a very long time.<p>I applied once straight out of college but didn't make it through the interviews - so I worked somewhere else, building up my skills and eventually re-applying a couple of years later. They accepted me! I could not have been more excited, this company was everything I had wanted.<p>Except now I'm here. A lot of stuff is a mess. There is technical debt everywhere. Undocumented code bases that haven't been touched in years and maddening internal processes. I'm absolutely depressed as a result because I held this company on such a pedalstool only to find the inside rotting away. I have no sense of ownership of my work and I'm struggling with motivation.<p>I don't know what to do and so I am looking for advice. Is this just life and I should just man up and get on with it or should I accept my mistake and look for something else?
======
fredsted
I know the feeling - working on (undocumented) legacy systems is a nightmare
for so many reasons.
But not all companies are like this.
It sounds like you need to a) quit and find work some place with less
legacy/debt (ideally a startup), or b) ask to be moved to another department
that has less of that kind of work (if possible.)
Continuing with work like this will, as you've found out, burn you out sooner
or later.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rivals can create copycat software through testing and user manuals: UK court - epo
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2013/november/rivals-can-create-copycat-software-through-testing-developers-software-and-interpreting-their-user-manuals-rules-uk-court/
======
antimagic
Heh. Funny story - I was once asked to clone the Foxtel STB in Australia for a
competitor - they wanted to be able to take the box along to a demo at Foxtel,
plug it in, and show the same interface as the real Foxtel STB, but better.
So, taking the company's in-house middleware, and a UI framework that I had
recently written, I went about cloning the Foxtel box, screen by screen,
keypress by keypress.
This was in the 90s, and STB interfaces were in their infancy - there were no
animations, or alpha blending, or huge databases of films, including images of
jackets etc - it was mostly just text and some simple vector graphics. All of
which made my life as a programmer much easier, thankfully, because I only had
about a week to get the thing done.
The funny part of the story comes in when I discovered that the software was
just full of bugs. I would press a button on the remote control on a certain
screen and the STB would reboot. This proved to be a bit of a problem for me,
because I had to try and figure out what we were actually supposed to do, but
as I wasn't allowed to disassemble the actual Foxtel code and see what it was
trying to do, I was quite perplexed.
3 days into the week my boss was starting to get edgy - I had all of the most
common screens up and running, but he could see that I had logged a whole
bunch of bugs into the bug tracker, and I apparently wasn't making much
progress in getting them fixed. So he came by my desk to see what was going
on. I explained to him that the bugs existed in the original STB that I was
copying, and the best replacement functionalities that I could come up with
led to quite a bit of complexity in the code base. My boss looked at me
quizzically, and then just shrugged his shoulders "Just dereference a NULL-
pointer!".
Oh. Right. We never did get a contract from Foxtel, but I gave one of the
cloned STBs to a neighbour to test in real-life conditions. I couldn't pry it
out of his hands afterwards though - he thought it was so much better than the
original product, dereference NULL pointers and all...
~~~
lelandbatey
For those like me who didn't quite understand, STB stands for _set - top box_.
Also, that's a pretty cool story actually!
------
CalRobert
So if you make something that so much as uses a shopping cart you violate 394
patents, but if you grab the manual and make something virtually identical
you're in violation of no copyright?
I get that patents != copyright, but we're still entering a rather strange
state of affairs...
~~~
shawabawa3
This is in the UK, not Texas.
AFAIK, software patent trolling isn't very bad in the UK
~~~
Already__Taken
Very bad? I thought we didn't recognise software patents how could it even be
possible? US Import law maybe?
------
ZoFreX
It's not new that black box reverse engineering is allowed, I was taught this
in my IT classes (I'm in the UK).
~~~
noir_lord
Indeed however in the UK we operate a common law legal system which means that
precedent and case law account for much of our legal system (in effect the law
says X is legal but then the case law defines exactly when and when X is
legal).
A case like this is highly useful at staving off spurious law suits and
spoiling tactics (particularly from bigger players against smaller players).
I think it's a _good_ decision.
~~~
gsnedders
Note that this only sets precedent for cases under English law (and not Scots
or Northern Irish law).
~~~
SEMW
True, but it's worth remembering that the EWCA appeal was at least partly
applying a ruling by the CJEU about the same dispute (C-406/10 SAS v WPL),
which applies EU-wide.
------
jsmeaton
> "In order to try to limit who can access learning or development editions of
> software products, companies may want to think about restricting who is the
> 'lawful user' of their software,"
And that's why we have 416 page EULAs.
~~~
Silhouette
The idea described in that part of the article, that software vendors selling
their software to an organisation should try to licence to an individual from
that organisation personally, also seems like an unhealthy principle to me.
If I'm an employee, I don't want to be tied down to some third party's
arbitrary commercial licensing terms just to do my job for the employer who is
paying for that software so I can. Software vendors put some crazy things in
EULAs, and there's no way I want to be the guy going to court to find out
whether any of them stands up when tested.
As an employer, it's an even more blatant cash grab than moving one-time
purchases to subscription arrangements without any useful improvement in other
areas to justify it. It creates a fixed cost that walks out the door with the
same notice that the employee in question gives to leave their employment. And
depending on the software vendor's policies, it may be an irreplaceable asset,
if for example they force you to upgrade to the latest version when buying a
replacement, which in turn creates built-in obsolescence.
I'm pretty sure I'd refuse to accept the terms of such a licence agreement in
either role. There is absolutely nothing in it for the licensor, as far as I
can see. It seems like it's just warping the concept of copyright another step
in favour of the copyright holder, which the very idea of licence agreements
already does to a dubious extent anyway.
------
kunai
I'm quite certain that most jurisdictions in the United States have some sort
of laws to prevent the restriction of "clean-room" reverse-engineering...
which is why projects like GNU and BSD were even possible to begin with. In
any case, this is a huge blow for the big companies and a huge win for the
smaller ones.
~~~
LukeShu
BSD was not "clean-room", and AT&T sued when it was freely distributed,
because they didn't believe that all AT&T code had been removed.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi)
------
fnordfnordfnord
Rivals _may_ create copycat software through testing and user manuals?
------
ronaldx
I'm slightly surprised to see the statement:
"...non coding structural elements of software are not protected by copyright"
as I had understood that there is database copyright. Reference on the same
site: [http://www.out-law.com/page-5698](http://www.out-law.com/page-5698)
~~~
SEMW
This decision was interpreting the Software Directive and the Information
Society Directive. Databases are protected under their own directive
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_Directive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_Directive)).
------
loceng
What about for the visual aspects of software?
~~~
teachingaway
In the U.S., visual aspects of software are generally copyrightable. Check out
the Pac-Man v. KC Munkin case from 1982. There are several others.
www.copyrightcodex.com/infringement/16-infringement-substantial-
similarity/software-copyright-infringement#Pac-Man_v_KC_Munchkin
But when "visual" includes GUI, there's less copyright protection (because
user interface elements are functional). Check out the Apple v. Microsoft case
from 1994 as an example.
I'm not sure what the equivalent UK law would be.
~~~
lambada
Those cases are US cases. Given this thread concerns UK law, it might be
better to find equivalent UK cases that establish this. (Indeed, the lack of
previous UK cases is why the threads link is so notable)
~~~
teachingaway
You're totally right (I edited original comment to reflect that those are US
cases). I'm not sure what the equivalent UK law would be.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Your Intuition is Wrong – A/B Testing Results that Surprised the Experts - lsh123
https://vwo.com/blog/ab-testing-results-that-surprised-experts/
======
QuantumGood
It's interesting that I seem to be in the minority, and the "winners" are the
ones that make intuitive sense to me.
People bounce away from complication, like having to read something. Where a
glance can make something clear, it should not be further complicated. If
something is already complex, all bets are off. Or, if results are much too
low, you'll need to do more than add a label or sentence to fix things.
1\. The updates box is a classic example of clear-at-a-glance. Just start
typing your email address. This isn't something to be "sold" with a tiny bit
of text, people either will or won't. If you want to convert undecideds, you
need more than a bit of text complicating a simple form.
2\. In the build.com example, people are taken away from search by the
navigation icons. If search works, making people navigate categories is like
offering two doors: One is a room with their chosen keyword results, the other
is a maze to navigate through.
3\. Again in the lead form, optimal simplicity is achieved. It seems to beckon
"Just start typing your info."
4\. Images are designed to draw attention to the caption area underneath. But
when the area already stands out clearly, the classic advertising point
("notice what is underneath") is superfluous, and just an added complication.
5\. I hate seeing faces in a video screenshot. I automatically assume I'm
going to be fast-forwarding past "Hi I'm Rob, and I have a cat, and work here,
and..." to get to the info. I prefer ANYTHING that holds the promise of giving
me the data, and the data only.
In all cases here, there was an attempt to add something other than just
letting the area in question indicate what it was as simply and clearly as
possible, and each item that won did a good job at indicating its purpose at a
glance.
Always encourage automatic behaviors. If you put a contract in front of
someone, hand them a pen and point where to sign. Don't explain. Use enough
white space and thought that a visitor's eye can rest somewhere. Test things
by _removing_ complications, or varying them, not by adding them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Help us structure our ready-to-launch content discovery Android app - kiberstranier
Hi there,<p>We're in the final steps of preparation for the launch of our new content discovery Android app and wanted to ask the community's help in finding what content categories / sources you think would make the most sense for the general public.<p>Specifically our app is an Android Lock Screen that pulls RSS content from a number of websites in different categories and aggregates that in an easily accessible format for users to browse in their idle times (e.g. one topic can be Startups and one of the feeds can be the Techcrunch one).<p>Do you have any suggestions of such topics and content sources? Maybe even sites that you run yourself and would want more visibility for?<p>Thanks for helping!
======
titel
I think that most of the HN users will agree that startups and tech should be
among the available topics. Other than that I'm looking forward to actually
seeing the app!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lisp Flavored Erlang (LFE) Quick Start guide - Scramblejams
http://lfe.github.com/quick-start/1.html
======
craftman
This is a great awesomeness.
It provides all access to rock solid erlang vm/otp/library with lisp nice
syntax. If you look at the source code, you will see that it is quite small,
meaning you can expect reliability. All this implemented by one of the Erlang
creators with 30 years experience in designing and implementing great
platforms.
I am just amazed by the potential.
------
jcr
The main "docs" page [1] and the previous HN discussion [2] are a bit more
useful than the install instructions linked to this submission. Also on the
"docs" page is a video from 2011, but I haven't watched it yet (still
downloading).
[1] <http://lfe.github.com/docs.html>
[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=286288>
~~~
oubiwann
Yeah, the quick start is just intended to get folks going. The "Docs" page
definitely has a lot more useful stuff there!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Average American inheritance: $177,000 - codegeek
http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/13/retirement/american-inheritance/index.html?source=cnn_bin
======
officialjunk
for the purpose of comparing with other countries, i would also like to know
the average income for each country. just comparing the dollar amounts isn't
the whole picture.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Find your perfect (AU/NZ) job - peterwallhead
https://talenthunch.com
======
DrScump
One has to enter all employment/skills info first without seeing a single job
or employer.
~~~
viraptor
Yeah, this is bad. It looks like info collection site which doesn't actually
have much to offer after signup. I'm not saying it is, but I'm not going to
check it.
~~~
peterwallhead
I'm only the developer of the site, so that doesn't count for much, but it's
not an info collection site :)
Internal screenshot here:
[https://cl.ly/3X1J3t0f1f1Q](https://cl.ly/3X1J3t0f1f1Q)
------
peterwallhead
This is the first release (MVP) of a project I've been thinking
about/redesigning/building for a while. Happy to answer any questions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Save CNN from Itself - hvo
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/opinion/how-to-save-cnn-from-itself.html?src=trending&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Trending&pgtype=article
======
nodesocket
CNN used to be my absolute go to for news. However more and more, especially
during and after this election their coverage has been biased, opinionated,
and worse of all not as accurate and timely as others.
Anchors like Van Jones who push their own agenda, have really rubbed me the
wrong way. So much so, that I've switched to the "dark side" Fox News and can
say they as a whole provide higher quality news.
~~~
diogenescynic
You think Fox News is less biased than CNN? I think that says more about you
than CNN. Fox News outright lies and doesn't even cover major issues when they
are harmful to their agenda. Fox spent years attacking Hillary for her private
emails and yet I haven't seen one peep from them about Trump doing the same
thing. All news sources are biased in some way, but Fox doesn't even count as
a legit news source--it's a propaganda mill.
~~~
nodesocket
When was the last time you actually watched or visited Fox News? I used to
feel the exact same way as you. I'm not saying Fox News is the gold standard,
but they are way better than CNN.
~~~
diogenescynic
I watch it almost daily just to see what "the other side" is saying and no it
is not better. They ignore major news stories whenever it's inconvenient.
------
untog
I agree with everything the article says. But of course, it's utter fantasy.
_Especially_ under a Trump administration, I very much doubt we'll see
conditions attached to mergers like this.
------
normalperson123
the only way to save cnn at this point is to simply let it die. they have
become worse than fox.
~~~
rhizome
Yeah, they're begging the question of why they should be saved. Let bad
businesses fail.
------
jaypaulynice
How do you save the NY Times from itself? Seems like they're in the same hole.
Every country has strong public radio and tv, but in the US they are mostly
run by private organizations with agendas. So why is this in the NY Times?
~~~
trav4225
With government funding come government strings... :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are you lonely? - omarshammas
A couple years ago I found myself lonely, overweight, and unhappy. I had neglected to build a life outside of work, and it finally caught up.<p>It hasn't been easy and I still struggle with it from time to time but thankfully I'm in a better place now.<p>How did you get here? And how are you fixing it?
======
happppy
lonely AF.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask YC: AIR or HTML/JS or Obj-c for visualizing data? - confused
I'm developing an app which is going to have a visualization component. The data will be shown in a graphical manner, somewhat like Gapminder.<p>I'm confused about which platform to choose for development of the client. Html/javascript, Flash/AIR or Objective-C.<p>I like the idea of using objective-c as I think it's quite responsive, and will break me into the Mac/iPhone world. But I'm worried about reducing my market.<p>I'm unsure about AIR capabilities. Finally I think working with HTML/JS for a graphical project will cause problems as stuff won't work on different browsers.<p>Can anyone help, by providing some insight from their experience of doing something similar?<p>I do know html/js/css and python. I was planning to use pyobjc.
======
lethain
I use PyObjC, and it's makes Cocoa development quicker and less painful, but
it isn't a replacement for knowing Objective-C. Especially when you get into
the CoreGraphics stuff and occasionally crash through the floor into OpenGL,
Python isn't going to save you (much to my regret).
Despite the negative hype against HTML/JS, it isn't hard to create cross-
browser code using that combination. I wrote a project called sparklines.js a
while back, which uses the canvas element and it renders appropriately on all
major browsers (including IE using <http://excanvas.sourceforge.net/>). The
speed of javascript is going to be sufficient as well for anything except the
most extreme projects (I also wrote ptdef.com, which is a tower defense game
in html/javascript. It plays poorly on I.E. but fine in more modern browsers,
and its far more complex (pathfinding, etc) than the JavaScript you'll
probably be dealing with).
Beyond that, using an html/javascript combination you can create content that
renders correctly on the iPhone, in desktop applications (well, at least on
OSX you can use the WebView to render arbitrary html/css/javascript), and on
the web. It's also an open stack, which is my largest complaint against AIR.
In the end, though, I think the hard part should be developing the underlying
algorithm to display the visualizations you are interested in, and
transplanting it to another platform later shouldn't be impossible. Where you
start out really depends on what you want to build. ;)
------
apgwoz
I think it depends quite a bit on what your end goal is. If your end goal is
to make a desktop application that have a visualization component that runs on
the mac, then using objective-c, cocoa and the graphics frameworks in OSX will
be great.
If you want the application to be on the web, have a look at Flex for the
visualization stuff. It uses Flash to render everything so it works pretty
well across platforms.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to make more money? Adsense isn't working - thatusertwo
Built a product and its getting some traction, at last check it had over 11000 page views, but with google adsense we only got like 10 clicks.<p>Clearly this method is not working very well, what other options do we have?
======
djloche
My suggestion would be to re-orient your focus.
Think about other groups of people that would find value in your product, that
such added value would be worth paying for. Maybe your main focus is
consumers, but the people who would find your product (or something made with
your product) worth paying for are the B2B type customers. Maybe the opposite
is true. Maybe you're leaving out a demographic that isn't the first thought,
but they're the ones who will go bonkers and become the evangelists for your
product.
Go back to the drawing board and think about new ways to use your product, new
ways to market your product, new groups of people to market it to, etc. Don't
turn the initial letdown of Adsense failing into a failure for the whole
project.
------
petercooper
While you can get a lot out of "optimizing" your Adsense placement, it usually
requires having at least _some_ traction. I'm guessing your audience is pretty
geek oriented with this clickthrough rate. I had success going beyond 10-20%
CTR on general search traffic but with geeks? Hideous CTRs :-)
An option might be affiliate schemes. Not necessarily just Amazon, but
specific products related to your topic area. I've had quite a bit of success
with this in the Ruby space (though there are hardly any products to promote -
the biggest problem). Job ads can also be a big deal if you can provide the
traffic and the right demographic. I've made both of these areas work well.
------
staunch
Trying to generate any serious revenue from 11k page views is nearly
impossible using ad networks. Even with the best possible eCPMs (which you
won't get) you're talking about a couple hundred dollars.
The best shot for a low traffic site to make money with advertising is selling
direct "sponsorship" style ads. Get some relevant companies to pay you
$500-$1000/mo each to have an ad on your site.
~~~
scottchin
I am interested in setting up some type of sponsorship like this on my site.
But I am wondering how to determine an appropriate price to charge for such an
ad. I am sure there are many factors involved. But I'm not sure where to
start. Any suggestions?
Note: I am not the OP
~~~
gspyrou
Try BuySellAds <http://buysellads.com/>
------
revorad
Email me or sign up here - <http://laughingcomputer.com>
------
imp
11,000 page views per day or per month?
~~~
calebhicks
I think he's saying 11,000 page views since inception.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do you use dynamic connection strings? Is there a better solution? - fatdeveloper
Do you change connection string manually while deploying to different environments or do you create connection strings dynamically based on URL?<p>I check URL to see the environment and use the connection string accordingly. Is there a better way to avoid changing them manually?
======
xyzzy123
Keep your settings in a configuration file. Have config files per environment.
When you deploy, combine the application and the appropriate configuration
file.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why is everyone a bank? - kaushikktiwari
https://medium.com/@kaushikktiwari/why-the-f-k-is-everyone-a-bank-6576de9d262d
======
tlb
Another answer: because regular banks are awful to deal with. They don't have
nice APIs to just move money around. They apply velocity limits at surprising
times. They can terminate your account suddenly for opaque reasons. They
charge high regular fees and even higher "gotcha" fees if you make a mistake.
They can take back money sent to you for up to 90 days, but often can't get
back money you sent to crooks even if you discover your error the next day.
And 100 other complaints.
So if you're doing something involving moving a lot of money around, you may
need to be your own bank to make the whole system work well.
~~~
vanniv
Honestly, I wouldn't trust Google (or any other tech giant) to be my bank.
My bank doesn't have a history of locking people's accounts when they post
"the wrong" political opinions online.
My bank doesn't have a plan to monetize access to my account, or to limit use
of the account to only those activities of which the bank's army of woke
employees approve.
I think I'll stick with a real bank, thanks.
~~~
sroussey
Oh, so not true. Banks often close accounts of types of people or businesses
they don’t like at the moment. Just ask a PE/VC with a BofA account!
~~~
vanniv
That, though, is mostly about risk management -- and even if they close your
account, you get the money back.
(I also would never do business with Bank of America, because they're awful
and they hate their customers even more than Wells does)
But even BofA doesn't do things like read your Twitter posts and YouTube
comments so they can blackhole your account if you have have the wrong
politics.
The tech giants, on the other hand, will seize your stuff in a heartbeat if
you step out of Silicon Valley's definition of acceptable beliefs and
opinions.
My credit card works at any merchant -- and the fees are the same. I don't get
hit with a temporary ban if I buy a Chick-fil-A sandwich, for example.
~~~
solveit
> But even BofA doesn't do things like read your Twitter posts and YouTube
> comments so they can blackhole your account if you have have the wrong
> politics.
Yet.
------
v4dok
Another asnswer: Because the people making the business decisions in these
companies is the only thing they can do.
When you have no vision as a company or no visionary in your team, you get
served by the countless consultants and ex-bankers who went to big-tech
because of its the new Wallstreet. Of course, they have no idea what Tech does
and is and of course no clue how to provide something of significant value.
Instead, they steer the companies into direction where is familiar to them
through their finance classes and/or their Private Equity, Venture Capital
backgrounds.
The fact that everyone wants to become a bank is not engagement, is not
profits. Its a sign of a failing economy where capital decided that the best
thing it can do is to invest in itself.
~~~
TrackerFF
Also: Debt is cheap these days, and regular people are in desperate need of
cash - so it's a sellers market.
Where I'm from (Norway), we've seen an explosion in these offshoot banks - i.e
consumer loans / credit card providers. Airlines, big box electronic stores,
etc.
Ans surprise, surprise, many of these banks are raking in cash. And triple
surprise, defaults in credit cards / consumer loans have also exploded.
It should also be mentioned we have some of the most creditor-friendly laws /
system in the world. It's almost impossible to get rid of debt, because
there's an automated pipeline from banks to debt-collectors to government
instances that will do the final debt collection via wage and welfare
garnishments.
These banks will foreclose your house, repo your car, and whatnot on defaulted
/ outstanding debt as little as equivalent to $10 (but of course, by the time
many have noticed this, that measly $10 has grown in to thousands, through a
battery of fees and compounding interest of said fees).
I've been calling it for some time now: Our next global recession will come
from consumer debt and credit cards. Banks are handing out credit to anyone
with a pulse
~~~
Keverw
Yeah the whole credit thing is nice, but I wonder how many people are pay
check to paycheck with less than 1K in savings driving brand new cars, living
in a large house with a brand new iPhone and flat screen. Then when people are
closed to paying off their mortgage, they refinance or take out a second
mortgage.
However there is someone who says if you need a new car, only pay cash so if
you only have 500 bucks, get one off of Craigslist to get to point A to point
B but in a way I feel like that's bad advice as wouldn't be reliable and you'd
end up spending a bunch on repairs.
So I feel like credit is good, but in a way people use it for too much instead
of saving. My favorite idea is to just use credit cards no differently than a
debit card, don't spend anything you know you won't be able to pay off. Then
instead of paying banks, they pay you! Sounds like cashback is worthless with
interest. So I guess a different mindset than the majority of people, but the
credit card companies are probably hoping you slip up at some point.
Then as for credit in business, I feel like the best way to use credit is to
scale up something that is already working out for you... Maybe you need more
inventory because you are selling fast but still waiting on your supplies to
pay you, so throwing in a bit of credit you know you can for sure pay back
would help keep up with the demand.
I know some people hate credit, but having a good score might help you when
you get a job, auto insurance premiums, apartment but laws vary by states too
in what companies can use your score for. For example I know California
doesn't allow them to use it for auto insurance, and I think credit checks for
job applicants is limited too but Ohio doesn't care really what companies use
your credit score for.
So if you are 18, get a credit card just to treat yourself to some McDonalds
once a month, then pay it off fully when you get your statement you'd be
better off credit wise than someone who didn't have any credit at all. A lot
of stuff they don't teach in school, you can get a better financial education
on YouTube.
------
kccqzy
> It also happens to be an incredibly sticky product. Think of the last time
> you saw an overdraft charge on your statement and swore to yourself that
> this was the last straw — you are taking your business elsewhere only to be
> confronted with the downstream effects of moving your “financial address” —
> telling HR where to send the next paycheck, calling up each utility company,
> changing autopay for each credit card bill and so forth!
Here's the thing. The stickiness of a bank is only a mental illusion. If you
actually rationally calculate the time it takes to switch a bank, it's not
that bad. Changing where the next paycheck is deposited takes five minutes.
Changing where each credit card autopay draws money from takes five minutes.
Once you have resolved to leave a bank, it probably takes about an hour to
actually do it. (And for typical Americans that one overdraft fee is well more
than an hour's worth of salary.)
I find this interesting because it illustrates the difference between the
mental workload and the actual workload can be great. Coming up with a
checklist of a dozen places to change the routing and account number seems
overwhelming. It is actually not.
~~~
tikkabhuna
In the UK we have the "Switch Guarantee"[1]. It was setup when there was
stickiness in current accounts (English term for checking accounts). Now when
you sign up for a current account you can opt-in to this service and they do
payment redirection. So if someone tries to transfer your old account money,
it'll get forwarded onto your new bank. That's on top of them organising the
migration of payments.
1\.
[https://www.currentaccountswitch.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx](https://www.currentaccountswitch.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx)
~~~
m4lvin
In the Netherlands we have a similar service, but I am often surprised that
almost nobody knows about it and people hesitate to switch banks.
[https://www.overstapservice.nl/](https://www.overstapservice.nl/)
------
doppel
Related: In Denmark (where I live), we have an officially designated
"NemKonto" (translates to "EasyAccount"), which is where most employers,
public institutions, etc. put paychecks, payouts, etc. automatically. So if
you change banks, you can simply designate the new account your official
NemKonto, and the money will automatically be routed there - no need to
contact anyone.
This, in addition to how easy our PBS (DK version of ACH) is to use means
switching banks is something that can be done easily. I know of people who
will regularly contact 5-10 banks with their current mortgage details and ask
for a better deal, and then go back to their current bank and tell them "match
this offer or I'm switching".
We also have a simple interest on overdraft (usually 8-15% annually on any
amount over draft), though excessive overdraft will get your account locked.
But beyond that, no fees for hitting negative $0.05. Is there any US bank that
offer a similar fee structure? I imagine people would migrate in droves if
that was already the case.
~~~
cowsandmilk
> I know of people who will regularly contact 5-10 banks with their current
> mortgage details and ask for a better deal, and then go back to their
> current bank and tell them "match this offer or I'm switching".
That's common in the US and has nothing to do with ACH in any way. That's a
transaction where you likely would not use ACH at all and would use a wire
transfer.
> Is there any US bank that offer a similar fee structure?
Yes, there are many. One of my banks, Capital One, calls this "Overdraft Line
of Credit" and the current interest rate is 12.75%. They also offer "Next Day
Grace" where you have a day to cover the overdraft and "Free Savings Transfer"
where they just transfer money from your savings account as options as well to
avoid overdraft fees.
------
Apocryphon
Is this going to be the sort of phenomenon that we will eventually look back
as a signifier of the dumb money economic bubble we're in, similar to past
trends like the wild access to credit in the Roaring Twenties, the run up to
the S&L crisis in the '80s, the worthless tech IPOs of the Dot-Com Bubble, the
liar's loans of the 2000s, and another examples of rampant finacialization?
If the environment is one in which non-financial institutions can easily
create banks, easily find customers for their banks, and not invite regulator
scrutiny, does that mean behind the scenes something is going horribly wrong?
~~~
delfinom
The tech companies aren't even underwriting the accounts. They are just
resellers of accounts from actual banks, throwing on a fancy web interface and
then data mining your transactions.
~~~
Apocryphon
I'm not exactly claiming that Robinhood checking accounts or the Apple Card
will blow up Goldman Sachs and kick off the next recession, but it does feel
like that if we're at the point where companies unrelated to finance are
jumping into it just because it's easy to, we're in a time of irrational
exuberance. Extravagantly so.
~~~
derp_dee_derp
Can you explain why you think Robinhood is unrelated to finance and is jumping
into it just because it's easy to?
~~~
Apocryphon
Not the best example, perhaps, but a stock brokerage app getting into banking
(especially with shady marketing [0]) feels like feature creep.
[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18699995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18699995)
~~~
jonas21
Really? I'm struggling to think of any major stock brokerage that doesn't
offer banking services.
~~~
Apocryphon
One wouldn’t normally consider an app-based brokerage, six years old and less
than 500 employees, to be considered a major brokerage.
Is it common for boutique brokerages to offer banking?
~~~
jonas21
I'm not sure why you consider Robinhood to be a boutique brokerage or what
having an app (as opposed to... physical locations?) has to do with anything.
They have over 6 million accounts, which is more than E*TRADE and within a
factor of 2 of Charles Schwab or TD Ameritrade. And these brokerages
apparently felt enough of a competitive threat that they all adopted
Robinhood's commission-free model.
Regardless, even if you don't consider Robinhood to be a major brokerage, they
clearly aspire to be one, so offering banking services makes perfect sense.
~~~
Apocryphon
Guess I underestimated them based on their youth and company size. Didn’t know
they had disrupted the market so quickly. If jumping into banking services is
an industry convention, I suppose that goes to show that even a brokerage of
Robinhood’s age and size must have the stability and temperament to provide
reliable banking services that customers can trust despite their breakneck
Silicon Valley startup ethos and lack of prior experience in checking.
------
belorn
Looking at the situation in Sweden, I would say the cause is the bank
themselves. Banks here are currently trying to remove every aspect of the
banking industry that is not a digital service. Offices are a cost center.
Physical money are a cost center. Talking with customers is a cost center. By
shedding all those cost centers the bank can focus on the parts that make most
money and raise stock value.
Google, Apple are likely looking on and discovering that digital products is
something which they too can do, and their size allow them to jump into the
same market. All the parts of the banking industry that would prevent them is
exactly the same parts which the banking industry is removing.
~~~
LudwigNagasena
Cost/profit center is such a bogus concept. I can’t believe almost all big
companies use it.
------
_bxg1
The points make well enough sense, but the author is also the professed
founder of this: [https://betterbank.app/](https://betterbank.app/)
~~~
kaushikktiwari
does that make the points less valid? I felt it added to the credibility of
the piece? Looking forward to your criticism on that
~~~
scott_s
No, it does not make your points less valid, _if_ they are valid. But it is
reasonable to assume that the arguments of this piece form the foundational
assumptions of the product you are selling. People will want to take this into
account when considering your arguments.
~~~
kaushikktiwari
You are right! This one is more of a general overview of the space. I will
write one about the assumptions we are making wrt to betterbank.app
------
jimbru
It's easy (and fun) to complain about the bad (or just weird) product
experiences that banks regularly churn out. Believe it or not, most banks are
trying their best. But as other commenters have noted, banks aren't staffed by
technologists, so their choices for how to solve these problems begin and end
with buying one of the available off-the-shelf software products. Spoiler
alert, these products generally are both expensive and not very good.
If you want to understand the toolkit bankers have at their disposal, take a
look at FIS, Fiserv, and Jack Henry. These three companies represent
approximately $170 billion in market cap. Your interactions with your bank,
whether it's a click in an app or a conversation with an actual banker, almost
certainly bottom out with a call into one of these company's software systems.
These systems are (almost) all mainframe software originally designed in the
1980s. Every product the bank delivers is built on this shaky foundation,
which results in all sorts of workarounds and weirdness at every layer of the
stack.
That all worked fine back in the '80s, but in the decades since, not only have
our expectations changed (most bankers don't know what "API" stands for, by
the way), but also banks' regulatory reporting requirements have expanded
dramatically. Governments wants to know (very reasonably) that a terrorist or
money launderer won't be able to make payments. But when you mix in the
inertia of old enterprise software and the relative dearth of good
alternatives, the result is a broken product experience (like the random
velocity controls like @tlb cited above).
Being a bank is big and complex. And since deregulation and the Internet
happened, being a bank is no longer about geography (remember branches?), it's
about software and product. This seems like a pretty natural fit for a
startup: break off a desirable chunk of the bank's customers and deliver a
modern, specialized solution that's 10x better. There's ~$12 trillion of bank
deposits in the U.S., that's a lot of market to go after.
* * *
Full disclosure, my company, Treasury Prime
([https://treasuryprime.com/](https://treasuryprime.com/)) sells software to
banks so that we can expose developer APIs for banking. If you have a fintech
startup and you need a bank partner with good, modern APIs, email me:
[email protected].
~~~
acjohnson55
I have to imagine that you get used a bunch in the backends of FinTech
products, but any chance better IT starts to reach consumers? My inability to
know _exactly_ what's going on with my money on my own terms is endless
frustrating. The aggregators help, but are still quite limited.
~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't think the new breed of fintech startups is going to help here much.
The reason you can't see what's going on with your money on your own terms is
because banks want you to use their software in order to upsell you financial
products. The articles point out that the new fintech companies are also
interested in exploiting the stickiness and eyball-attracting aspects of
banking, if not for direct upselling then for something else.
------
Lucadg
Fintech only provides better UX on the same old system of banking. The real
issue with banks is the staggering amount of regulation which acts both as an
innovation killer and as a high barrier to entry, which in turn stifles
innovation even more.
It's the golden cage dilemma banks find themselves into.
Fintech looks cool until it stops working, then you discover it's the same
system, only run by a startup.
------
hcarvalhoalves
Everyone is a bank today for the same reason everyone was a social network in
the 00's.
A few startups started encroaching into financial services territory, took all
the risk (including regulatory), and now that it's clear it's something worth
pursuing Big Tech is following, expecting to leverage their existing
products/services/ecosystem to lock you in by yet another aspect your life.
~~~
Apocryphon
As the engineer and writer Alex Payne put it, these startups represent “the
field offices of a large distributed workforce assembled by venture
capitalists and their associate institutions,” doing low-overhead, low-risk
R&D for five corporate giants. In such a system, the real disillusionment
isn’t the discovery that you’re unlikely to become a billionaire; it’s the
realization that your feeling of autonomy is a fantasy, and that the vast
majority of you have been set up to fail by design.
\- No Exit: Struggling to Survive a Modern Gold Rush (2014)
~~~
thundergolfer
That’s an interesting perspective. Related to it, I often feel like
entrepreneurs in tech don’t realise how much their innovation is restricted by
capital markets.
OP’s startup is actually a great example of this. Medical debt is indeed a
troubling problem in the USA, but OP’s solution is yet another financial
product, something that can get funded. VCs can’t fund single-payer healthcare
policy entrepreneurship even if that’s actually what would solve the medical
debt problem.
~~~
kaushikktiwari
That's a very good point! I agree!
------
christkv
I dread the raise of the tech company banks. I think we need EU level
regulation to ensure you are not orphaned by companies that decide they don't
want you legal business because you offended some third party that is applying
political pressure to the bank. A digital and financial rights charter.
------
buboard
Because there is so much free cash it's easy to build one just to pass your
cash to your grandkids?
Ironically, fiat coins and banks are going to become so virtual , that bitcoin
will look real in comparison.
also ironically, the author makes another bank
------
Apocryphon
You know what also provides most of the services of a bank? A credit union.
Why aren't companies launching those?
~~~
rolltiide
Because they don't want to. Why would you want your members to be a part of
it, just sticks with the super low interest rates, fractional reserve, rampant
speculation and all of the profits
------
aj7
There are only two uses cases left for money center banks. (1) You might be
able to get a branch safe deposit box. (2) Same day payment on credit cards,
that bank. Fidelity, and perhaps other zero fee brokerage accounts handle
everything else.
~~~
kccqzy
Does Fidelity allow you to deposit cash?
~~~
patio11
"Integrated cash management" (a debit card, etc) is abundantly available from
discount brokerages, and is systemically important to their businesses.
Fidelity legally can't call it a checking account so they call it a Cash
Management Account; brokerages that own banks (Schwab, etc) just call it
checking.
~~~
kccqzy
You did not answer my question. As far as I can see, the Fidelity CMA allows
you to withdraw cash using their debit card, but I see no way to deposit cash.
Nor does it provide features like cashier's check.
------
majormjr
This article seems to just be an advertisement for the authors new bank
account?
~~~
kaushikktiwari
its not an advertisement my friend. Just explaining how I see the world as
someone who is working in it. Tried to be as unobtrusive as possible!
~~~
perspective1
I'm with you. You're contributing a thought piece and unobtrusively include a
link to your bank at the bottom. It's not overtly biased, and it's neat you're
getting attention for your banking app by, instead of describing it, simply
saying you're doing something "interesting."
I think, by focusing on the $5000 emergency cash proposition, your customer
segment will generate more costs and hassles than their debit card fees and
whatever interest spread you eek out in today's world. You'need a way for your
customers to generate more value-- what have you thought of? Ads?
~~~
kaushikktiwari
thanks perspective1! I find overt self-promotion to be distasteful, so glad it
came across well. We are using the interchange fees to pay for the $5000
emergency fund, they have to move their direct deposit over to switch "ON" the
safety net. We do break even based on our current estimates of annual spend
and claims, but looking at a few different ways, upselling insurance is the
big one! Will write about it and make sure to post on this comment thread!
------
netcan
I think the article more or less nailed it, but the topic probably deserves
journalistic attention of the kind journalists complain no longer exists.
The basic "fintech" startup theory is fairly reasonable:
(1) financial services have a lot of fat and/or profit.
(2) financial services is/should be a tech subsector. Debit/credit cards,
current accounts & such are nearly commodities, one is as good as another.
Apart from customer service, UX is all that differentiates them^, from a
meaningful subset of customers. That's software.
(3) The competition is soft. Many banks have terrible consumer facing
software, for example. Many have costly legacy structures.
------
rb808
Because it looks easy. And in an age where VC money doesn't care about profits
its easy to create a bank. When the fraud, regulatory compliance and low
interest rate horsemen come knocking most of these efforts wont last.
------
AllanHoustonSt
Is the overwhelming debit spending vs credit spending an emotionally charged
and risk averse rationale decision by the general populace or just unfortunate
financial illiteracy?
~~~
kaushikktiwari
Access is the big one, risk-averse because of being burned in the past. Even
missing a single payment means 25% APR+late fees, so likely to not put
everyday expenses on credit. Use it more for planned stuff, like travel etc.
The biggest irony is credit card rewards are a tax on the poor for the rich---
merchants jack up prices for all but the rich spend and benefit!
------
henron
The problem is that no direct to consumer fintech company has found a legal
way to make money other than 1) processing transactions 2) holding savings.
The examples of struggling companies in the article underscores this point.
------
Sophistifunk
Is that a trick question? it's because banks get to make money without doing
any work. It's a wonderful position to be in, the middle-man who just takes a
cut of everybody else's transactions.
~~~
Gibbon1
In 2009 the Fed tore down the wall between retail and investment banks. Which
allowed the Fed to pump the latter full of cash. Stands to reason that every
other large non-finance corporation wants to get in on that.
------
useful
Reminds me of a great talk my a16z about the holy grail is the bank account.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK9owf0PSZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK9owf0PSZU)
~~~
brooklyntribe
EVERYONE should watch this one. thanks:-)
------
otakucode
It has never, at any point since the introduction of electronic transfers,
made the slightest bit of sense for 'payment processing' services to charge a
fee which scales based upon the amount being transacted. Yet, every means of
transferring money has always come with a percentage-based fee. This isn't
just a simple matter of rent-seeking on the part of the financial class. It's
outright dangerous, and really shouldn't be tolerated by any government. The
cost to transfer money does not scale based upon the size of the numbers
involved. And as the vast majority of transactions overall in our economy are
now electronic, this puts payment processors essentially in the role of taxing
authorities. They have the power to counteract the monetary policies of the
government should they feel like doing so. Imagine if the Federal Reserve
decided to print more money in order to encourage lending or something like
that, but the CEOs of the largest payment processors disagreed. They could
simply raise their processing fees, making it more expensive for money to be
used, compensating and making the actions of the Fed ineffective. There is no
law preventing them from doing this, as far as I know, and it would have
immediate monumental impact on the economy.
That's a juicy target. Any company willing to clear those regulatory hurdle
gets to become not just a company, but effectively a taxing authority.
~~~
Turing_Machine
Hmm... it seems to me that the service is exposed to more risk for higher
transaction amounts (say, something is crooked, or just goes wrong and the
service winds up holding the bag).
That's not to say that the current fees are necessarily fair, but it does make
sense to me that larger transaction amounts should be charged more.
------
lordnacho
The thing you tend to hear about banking services is that everyone is
dissatisfied with them. This is probably why a lot of startups think they can
jump in and disrupt.
People should lend directly to each other, or have sensibly priced
investments, or people should have simple bank accounts that don't surprise
you with charges, or be able to change FX cheaply. Those kinds of ideas are
pretty easy to suggest for outsiders, and the answer is always "I'm gonna make
a website that's better than the incumbent".
To be fair, startup FS sites have tended to be easier to navigate, and
focusing on an area like FX does create a simpler user experience.
The question is whether any money can be made. For instance we now have a load
of challenger banks that have a slick app for sending money to people. But how
much is the customer actually worth? Do they stick around or open a whole
bunch due to it being so easy? Also what are you gonna upsell them on other
than the metal card?
What about the lending markets? How come Lending Club has issues making money
as the premier business in the direct lending category?
What about the investment businesss? Competing on price is generally something
they tell you not to do in business school, but that seems to be the main
value proposition as far as I can tell. I reckon Google could jump in here
though. They have credibility among the general populace as being pretty smart
with ML, and I bet they could morph their bank into a super hedge fund.
The FX niche, I don't know how TransferWise are doing, but it's fairly easily
encroached on by the challenger banks. The backend is fully commoditized, it's
a question if getting customers. Which is probably why TW are offering bank
account like services.
------
superkuh
When you're a bank you get rent from many economic transactions without
providing anything of value except being rich to start. And even better, if
you're a real bank, then you can create money out of thin air as debt on your
balance sheet via fractional reserve banking. There's effectively a universal
basic income for banks. What company wouldn't want to get in on that?
~~~
whatshisface
Thin air? What are all the employees doing then?
~~~
matheusmoreira
Yup, thin air. When people borrow money, the bank just creates the money out
of nowhere. That money doesn't actually exist until the debt is paid. Banks
are ultimately responsible for the extreme inflation of virtually all
currencies currently in use.
~~~
briatx
That is not at all how the money multiplier works.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier)
------
venantius
If you're interested in this space, we're building a fully-regulated platform
bank to essentially power all of these consumer/business facing banking
applications.
This is us: [https://griffinbank.com](https://griffinbank.com)
------
Osiris
Some cryptocurrency communities push the idea of "Be your own bank",
especially with hardware wallets specifically because of this problem of
having to trust / rely on custodians.
My sister-in-law had her accounts frozen for a year for something a business
partner did. If she had all her money in her own hardware wallet, she wouldn't
have lost access to her funds.
Obviously, being your own bank is hard from a security perspective, which is
why most people are happy to outsource their banking to a custodian. Heck,
even crypto people outsource to custodial accounts like Coinbase.
~~~
asjw
Hardware wallets can protect your assets, but they can't protect you from bad
rep. People won't make transactions with you if transactions are monitored or
at risk (every business with someone having problems with the law are
hinerently risky)
Just like sanctions against states they could not freeze your accounts, but
they could prevent you from spending your money or collecting payments or
making regular business.
------
bsenftner
I've encountered several startups that have founded banks through American
Indian Reservations, instantly creating an international money laundering
vehicle, which they use as a tax haven for wealthy people while also being
able to create money directly by loaning it to separate corporate shells. This
may be "smart" but I steer away from anyone with this type of "strategic
thinking" because they are playing with fire.
------
lol768
> Think of the last time you saw an overdraft charge on your statement and
> swore to yourself that this was the last straw — you are taking your
> business elsewhere only to be confronted with the downstream effects of
> moving your “financial address” — telling HR where to send the next
> paycheck, calling up each utility company, changing autopay for each credit
> card bill and so forth
Isn't this what CASS is for? Is there really no US equivalent?
------
AnimalMuppet
Because that's where the money is. -- Willie Sutton
------
brooklyntribe
Sounds crazy --- I don't want to start a billion (trillion $$$) bank. What
happens if "my bank" has never more than $10,000 in total assets. Our loans
never go above $100. Do want to offer ATM cards, just we're nano-sized.
Do I somehow slip under all the banking laws? Just as an "experiment?" Is this
something that I could do? OR is it just a crazy idea?
------
40acres
Traditional banks have a consumer tech problem. This has led to the rise of
Robinhood, Venmo, etc. Partnering with tech players like Apple and Google
allows them access to their customers.
Big tech wants access to financial services for a few reasons laid out in the
article in addition to FOMO and bypassing regulation.
------
soapboxrocket
But they aren't banks, they are just partnering with banks and putting a
smooth veneer on top of old/greedy banks. The current trend seems very similar
to when retailers all launched their "own" credit cards.
------
fuzzfactor
>Why is everyone a bank?
Seems to me that sensible ones would have more capital than they really need,
and it would be so poorly-performing that they can loan it out for better
returns than they would get using it for their own growth purposes.
------
rkapurbh
Existing banks' customer service totally sucks. These tech-focused banks have
an enormous opportunity to just provided better customer service. Insightful
article, I never thought about interchange as a business model.
------
themark
Isn’t it just data mining? I assume the big credit card companies aggregate
spending by vendor for their customer base and make projections about each
vendor’s quarterly revenues then sell metrics to hedge funds.
------
wheybags
> for a large credit scarred portion of the populace, it's their primary
> spending account!
As a European, this sentence seemed weird. Why wouldn't it be? Do people not
use debit cards in the us?
------
zeerev
It would be nice to have a system where you can avoid getting put on the
credit bureaus at all.
Be your own bank? No agreement to have your credit monitored by those toads.
------
galkk
I was always wondering why Microsoft sunsetted MS Money and Google didn't
built something like that. This is a treasure of information
------
StuffedParrot
Interest is profitable. You take cash, you make interest. It's just a step
away from the oldest game in the book—loan sharking.
------
manishsharan
I work at a bank -- it wants to be a tech company. In fact a lot of banks
aspire to be a tech company merely selling financial products.
------
biolurker1
Literally everyone could be a bank with Bitcoin
------
cies
Not "everyone" is a bank. Some big companies can afford to be a bank.
Becoming a bank (or an insurance company) while it is actually not that hard
(information mgmt wise) is really expensive due to regulatory bumps. Thus only
big money can afford to start up banks (or insure'ers). These rules ensure
that you always have capitalists running these shows. Thus making the world
even more unfair. I guess the rules that make it so artificially hard to start
up in those sectors are prolly lobbied into existence.
------
TurkishPoptart
I am very grateful for my local credit union. Six years and they haven't
fucked me over once.
------
ivanhoe
Because banks are where the money is. (yeah, lame pun, but I had to write it
:))
~~~
ggambetta
I can't see a pun there. Am I missing something?
------
zhte415
The article doesn't touch this, US-centric, but I feel worth mentioning is the
EU's PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2) which is driving a lot of consumer
banking Fintech/Regtech.
An article from 2016 which I think gives the best tl;dr especially
highlighting the roles of ccount Information Service Providers (from
roboadvisors to replacements of traditional 3rd party transaction layers such
as Visa) and Payment Initiation Service Providers (which essentially turn any
traditional bank into a whitelabel product)
[https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/12668/psd2---what-
chang...](https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/12668/psd2---what-changes)
------
known
"Heads I Win; Tails You Lose" \--Banks
------
NN88
sounds like we need more taxes cause these balance sheets are way too high
------
ecopoesis
Because in capitalism there are really only two things that make money: real
estate and finance. Everything else is just combining real estate and finance
in interesting ways.
McDonalds is a real estate company that happens to make burgers.
The traditional car manufacturers are banks that happen to build cars.
------
znpy
> Why is everyone a bank?
Banks usually make a shitload of money, I guess.
------
vernie
Because that's where the money is.
------
aj7
“It’s the dominant payment method when it comes to everyday expenses — think
milk and diapers at the supermarket or a quick bite at the corner deli.”
For financial ninkompoops.
~~~
kaushikktiwari
too harsh brother, I agree it makes way more sense to use a credit card and
pay it off immediately. It's just not that easy for a lot of people.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Update on the Swift Project Lead - mkh
https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20170109/030063.html
======
sctb
Latest discussion of Chris leaving Apple to join Tesla:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13369510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13369510).
------
fataliss
Good for him. He saw another opportunity he wanted to pursue, went for it,
makes a smooth transition, communicates about it. 10/10
------
emdowling
Good on him. As others have said, well-communicated move. He is leaving Swift
in an excellent position and has set up an outstanding structure where Swift
is way more than just one person. He spent more than 5 years building Swift
inside Apple, so I can definitely understand he is ready for his next
challenge. Can't wait to see what it is!
~~~
vcorleone
Tesla
------
tatoalo
He went to Tesla as VP of Autopilot SW. Really interesting!
[https://www.tesla.com/blog/welcome-chris-
lattner](https://www.tesla.com/blog/welcome-chris-lattner)
~~~
ricw
This is seemingly quite a different technical skill set to have than his
previous position. I'm curious as to whether Tesla wants to also transition to
swift for automotive code, or whether Chris Lattner was already involved in
apple's car project (project titan).
Either way, a big win for Tesla and quite a loss for Apple.
~~~
SEJeff
Tesla's AP is seemingly built ontop of Nvidia hardware, which is programmed
using CUDA. CUDA is built ontop of LLVM, which Chris Lattner created. Seems
like an obvious fit if you look at it from a purely technology perspective.
~~~
pavanky
That is a bit of leap isn't it ? Improving the compiler has very little to do
with automated driving vehicles.
~~~
myrryr
No way is it a leap. Lots of people are doing stuff to llvm to do gpu work.
Take mapd for instance. There is a LOT of untapped llvm -> gpu goodness to be
had.
~~~
pavanky
Yeah but not for automated driving which requires good algorithms more than
anything else.
------
purple-dragon
Welp... there goes the last of the innovators I admired/followed at Apple.
Edit: perhaps the problem is that you assume I'm just tossing gasoline on the
ever-loved and popular rag-on-Apple fire. I have been an active clang/llvm
user for 6 years, I have written numerous clang plugins over the years, and I
am an active swift developer. Every device I own is made by Apple and has been
since 2004. I am genuinely puzzled why this comment is so unpopular (at least,
considerably more so than goofy unfounded speculations about what Chris will
do next—see above).
~~~
purple-dragon
So... are you down voting my comment because you don't consider it a quality
comment, or do you just not like what I have to say?
~~~
spiralganglion
I suspect people don't see it as a quality comment. Generally short or
insubstantial comments receive a more positive response when the tone is
positive. Negative, insubstantial comments tend to be downvoted.
(I didn't up or down vote, I'm just echoing how it reads to me)
Edit: Had your original comment included that extra backstory/justification,
it surely wouldn't have been hammered with downvotes. Without it, it just
reads like snark.
~~~
purple-dragon
Lesson learned; thanks!
~~~
dnautics
I would have also liked to specifically know which other innovators you
admired at Apple and what they moved on to.
~~~
purple-dragon
Ah, sure. Below are a handful (off the top of my head) that I admire:
Sal Soghoian: automation engineering expert "relieved" of duties for whatever
reasons; consulting now I believe
Tony Fadell: went on to Nest, acquired by Google; not sure what he is doing
now/next
Mike Matas: Omni Group, then co-launched Delicious Monster, then co-launched
Nest with Tony Fadell after leaving Apple; I believe he is a UI designer now
at Facebook.
Scott Forstall: controversial pick I'm sure, but early NeXT engineer, martyr
of skeuomorphism; last seen producing a broadway musical or a play I think
Steve Jobs: 'nuff said.
John Callas: While typing this I just recalled that this famed cryptographer
joined Apple sometime last year. If he is still at Apple, then I was
admittedly off by one in my original statement ;-)
------
mrec
I don't use or follow Swift, but Chris was also instrumental in the
development of LLVM, which has become hugely important in all sorts of areas.
Has he still been active in that while working on Swifty stuff, or have other
people taken over there already?
~~~
Aqua_Geek
I went to the LLVM Developers' Meeting this year, and Chris seems still very
much involved in LLVM (at least from a management perspective -- he serves on
the board of the LLVM Foundation).
------
pcwalton
Chris has been nothing but a pleasure to interact with every time we've met.
Best of luck in his new endeavors. Really excited to see what he'll pursue
next. :)
------
adamnemecek
Let's start speculating what he might do instead. I have a hunch that this
might pursue some Bret Victor-esque product maybe something like Swift
Playgrounds for the iPad but less educational and more dev oriented. But I'm
basing that on relatively nothing.
~~~
sdegutis
If my understanding of the universe is correct, he's going to join a really
high paying start-up gig working on a "revolutionary" new email app that's
basically slightly cooler than what we already have now, and then Apple will
acquire them in 3 years, and he'll get a big payout, and then retire, which
means start his own start up making a revolutionary new iOS app for teaching
kids to code.
~~~
adamnemecek
That doesn't seem to be his style. He's been doing developer tools for a while
now and I can't imagine that he'd be switching. And I think that he has better
options than an email startup. LLVM is one of the most important software
projects ever.
~~~
flamedoge
He's started and incubated it to what most considers as success. What's left
to do is more research and evolution.
------
throwaway7645
Windows support ever coming? I love Linux, but have to use Windows for work
due to strict IT policies. It really frustrates me that almost all the new
exciting tech can't be accessed by me outside of the hobby world. To me, C#
just isn't very productive. Great language, just not for me.
~~~
civility
It gets worse. My software has to run on my customer's computers. These can be
any of RHEL 5, 6, or (rarely) 7. It'll be a few years before I can safely
deliver C++ 11 software, and I snicker at the Pythonistas complaining about
how people don't migrate from 2.7 to 3.x --- I frequently need to support
Python 2.6.
Rust, Swift, C++14, Python 3, etc... are all several years in the future for
me.
~~~
burntsushi
Can you compile a completely static executable and ship that? Or do you need
to compile on distributions as old as RHEL 5?
~~~
civility
It needs to compile (at least the C or C++ parts). Frequently the people who
operate the software will want to make small changes.
~~~
thijsc
I know from experience that it is possible to build Rust binaries that work on
very old Linux versions. You could for example supply them with a Docker image
with a new build stack which can produce binaries they could copy to the old
machines. The same is likely true for Go.
~~~
wyldfire
Unfortunately docker couldn't be used on RHEL5, it requires 3.10 or newer. But
a disk image/qemu could work.
~~~
crzwdjk
You can just give a chroot. At a company I used to work for, our build system
used a chroot with a bunch of rarely-changing binaries/headers that let us
build binaries for old distros, and then the directory with the actual code
you were working on got bind-mounted into that chroot. The build process
didn't depend on anything at all from the host system except for the build
tool itself that set up the chroot environment. Everything to actually do the
build (compiler, headers, utilities) lived in source control and was put into
the build environment from there, so builds were 100% reproducible.
------
mrkd
Thanks to Chris for all his work on Swift.
I can't see this any other way than a big loss for Apple.
------
ddoolin
Thank you Chris for your significant contributions to the Swift project, and
good luck to Ted in the new role!
------
sv3nss0n
Obviously he leaves for Tesla.
[https://twitter.com/TeslaMotors/status/818941362171158528](https://twitter.com/TeslaMotors/status/818941362171158528)
~~~
animex
(Interior) Apple HQ, One Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA...
COOK: JUST SAY IT ISN'T TESLA.
A chair suddenly flies across the room.
------
mozumder
I'm wondering if this means that the major work on Swift the language is
complete? I've avoided it since it seems every year the language or the API
changes... has it now settled? I really didn't want to go back rewriting code
every year.
~~~
adamnemecek
> I really didn't want to go back rewriting code every year.
The changes are mostly syntactic and like API changes. And Xcode has an
integrated migration tool that's not too bad. I ported approx. 23KLOC of Swift
([http://audiokit.io](http://audiokit.io)) from 2 to 3 in like 3 hours. And
the changes are generally for the better.
~~~
joelhaasnoot
It can also be utter hell though if you rely on lots of external dependencies
that don't share the same lifecycle.
~~~
adamnemecek
That is definitely true.
------
caycep
It's maybe too much to read into it, but I hope this isn't reflecting on
anything internally on Apple, even though the kremlinology of it can get
overly dramatic. 5 years at any one tech company is a long time, though...
~~~
dottrap
Lattner joined Apple in 2005. That's even longer than 5 years.
------
sdegutis
Very professionally done. Hope all goes well for everyone involved.
Anyone know what this "opportunity in another space" is?
~~~
dorianm
Nothing mentioned in his Wikipedia page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lattner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lattner)
------
avivo
Perhaps slightly off topic, but relevant to the community—Hacker News comments
on stories like this are now being "reported."
As one author mentioned at Business Insider, a site where people write about
business stuff:
> 'As one person said on Hacker News, a site where programmers chat about
> stuff: "He is leaving Swift in an excellent position and has set up an
> outstanding structure where Swift is way more than just one person. He spent
> more than 5 years building Swift inside Apple, so I can definitely
> understand he is ready for his next challenge."'
[http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-lattner-swift-
creator-l...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-lattner-swift-creator-
leaves-apple-2017-1)
~~~
Dangeranger
It would seem to me that the reporter should have at the very least reached
out to the commenter they were quoting and asked for permission to use them as
a source. If it were me writing the story I would have made very sure the
source was also reputable and confirmable, as that is not always the case in
public forums, regardless of the usually high quality nature of HN commenters.
~~~
avivo
What if you had only an hour or so to research, write, and publish in order to
meet your daily quota?
"If they were writing five posts a day, one former employee recalled, Blodget
[CEO of Business Insider] urged them to write six."
[http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/29/media/business-insider-
staff...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/29/media/business-insider-staff-
exodus/)
These sorts of incentives (and the resulting "reporting" quality) are the
natural result of the web we have created.
~~~
Dangeranger
I agree with your sentiment. My feeling is however that the existing
incentives are the problem, and they result in low quality journalism.
------
shadowfacts
He's joining Tesla as the VP of Autopilot Software:
[https://www.tesla.com/blog/welcome-chris-
lattner](https://www.tesla.com/blog/welcome-chris-lattner).
------
iagooar
Swift 4? Wow, they surely are iterating quick... How's the backwards
compatibility in Swift between major versions? If I understood correctly,
Swift 3 was supposed to be the first production-ready release. Or am I wrong?
~~~
eridius
Swift 3's goal was source stability, but Swift 2 and arguably Swift 1 were
production-ready. Swift 4's goal is ABI stability, as well as source
compatibility (via a compiler flag) with Swift 3 code. In any case, Swift is
basically incrementing by one major version per year. Swift 1.0 was September
2014, Swift 2.0 was September 2015, and Swift 3.0 was September 2016.
------
bsaul
Aouch... And there goes my enthusiasm for this language.
I already felt weird knowing Apple didn't use swift internally for their core
product, and seing all the huge bugs and crashes remaining in the swift
compiler, now i'm left wondering who in the company is going to have
sufficient weight to push this language forward.
EDIT : well, on the positive side, he's now free to make the language evolve
without caring about the huge objective-c bridging layer and iOS-specific
troubles...
~~~
xenadu02
A programming language transition takes many years. The toolchain must
stabilize. Once you nail things down you add ABI stability so the OS can ship
with the standard libraries. Only then can you begin rewriting core
components.
It is already publicly known that some components are written in Swift, e.g.:
the macOS Dock is a Swift application.
------
coldcode
I wonder who will take over managing Xcode and the other tools now, which was
his other role.
~~~
audemars
Hopefully, it'll be improved a lot by the next person responsible
~~~
fredsir
Dude's lucky. Won't have to look hard to see where improvement can be made.
------
oldgun
Good for him. I believe he's gonna make tremendous contributions whether or
not he's at Apple.
Now that without all the restrictions from Apple, he might be free to achieve
even more.
~~~
twsted
I don't think he has had that many restrictions at Apple.
BTW I really admire the guy and I followed him closely as I used to do with
others like Dave Hyatt.
People from the open-source world or researchers that have given a solid
contribution to Apple over the years, and not only from the technical point of
view.
------
bkbridge
Hmmm, going from someone with a pretty big Wikipedia page, to someone with
just a linkedin entry. Guess it's fine. But Apple seems to be in a bit of a
tail spin as of late.
Sure they'll do amazing.
~~~
hk__2
Having a Wikipedia means you’re quite known. Not having one doesn’t mean
you’re incompetent.
------
J0-nas
Good for him. I'm excited what his next job is. I sincerely hope it's another
project that sooner or later is accessible for the public.
------
DoodleBuggy
Maybe not too excited about Xcode for iPad?
------
Hydraulix989
Lots of great people leaving Apple right now, not a good sign.
~~~
dochtman
Who else?
~~~
menix
Mark Gurman even mentioned a lot of good people were leaving the company.
([https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-
apple...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple-
alienated-mac-loyalists))
------
gmosx
I didn't see that coming, very disappointing news. Definitely a loss for Apple
and Swift. I really hope he will somehow stay involved with the project.
~~~
timjver
Did you read the email at all?
_This decision wasn 't made lightly, and I want you all to know that I’m
still completely committed to Swift. I plan to remain an active member of the
Swift Core Team, as well as a contributor to the swift-evolution mailing
list._
~~~
Jugurtha
From the guidelines[0]:
> _Please don 't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even
> read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article
> mentions that."_
Not nitpicking, but we can miss things or we can be looking at different
things.
Case in point, one time on a Python mailing list, I asked a question and one
person pasted something from the docs. I had read the docs for what I was
trying to do before asking the question, specifically the paragraph pasted and
I just thought "How could I have missed that?". It turned out they were
pasting the docs from Python 3 and I was reading the docs for Python 2.7. The
paragraph was identical in every respect, _except_ for the particular thing I
was talking about which was changed with Python 3.
[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
~~~
Aradalf
Except that doesn't apply when the "article" is all of 5 sentences.
~~~
Jugurtha
You're not wrong. We don't know that the commenter has read that Lattner wrote
he'll continue to be involved and wondered if he will in fact continue to be
involved once Swift no longer becomes his main activity. Whether we like or
not, it will have a smaller mind share than it did when it was his main
priority and his job revolved around it.
------
geoffmac
this is the worst news ever. worse than all recent negative Apple press
------
realstuff
> Chris Lattner clattner at apple.com
And this is why one should not use @company.com email :)
~~~
kipe
Why is that? Anything he did for Apple is owned by Apple.
~~~
realstuff
Including his contacts and reputation? What if someone wants to email him now?
~~~
johanj
Then he'll make his email or other contact information available in some
manner.
------
dorianm
Ted Kremenek doesn't seem to be a very active contributor of Swift.
[https://github.com/tkremenek](https://github.com/tkremenek)
[https://github.com/apple/swift/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/apple/swift/graphs/contributors)
~~~
bratsche
And yet Chris still thought he was fit to lead the group. Maybe in a project
leadership role it's not all about how many commits you make?
~~~
elldoubleyew
Number of commits != overall impact on the language/community. I think he will
serve this role just fine.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A simple markdown sharing site - stevekemp
https://markdownshare.com/
======
stevekemp
This site has been running for the past couple of years, and has recently had
an overhaul & refresh to make it a golang-powered site, via the source here:
[https://github.com/skx/markdownshare/](https://github.com/skx/markdownshare/)
Previously the code was a Perl-based application using the excellent
CGI::Application framework:
[https://github.com/skx/markdownshare.com/](https://github.com/skx/markdownshare.com/)
I've slowly been reworking many of my applications to be golang-based, because
I appreciate the ease of deployment & testing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unemployment Is About to Fall a Lot Faster than Predicted - mathattack
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/05/unemployment-is-about-to-fall-a-lot-faster-than-predicted/
======
alttab
Ctrl+J; $('.blockUI').remove();
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
KLOS: Kernel-Less Operating System Architecture (2005) [pdf] - vezzy-fnord
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.59.2606&rep=rep1&type=pdf
======
ridiculous_fish
Reading and trying to understand this:
1\. The address space for each process has an unprivileged "user-level"
segment (DSAPP), and a privileged "OS" segment (DSOS) where the data
traditionally associated with the kernel is stored.
2\. Traditional "system calls" are implemented as ordinary procedures. These
procedures switch to the privileged segment, do their stuff, and then switch
back to the user segment.
3\. Since these are ordinary procedures, what's to prevent application code
from switching to the privileged segment and mucking with the OS guts? Well,
the app doesn't know which segment is privileged! It can try to read it out of
the "system call" procedures, but that memory is execute-only, so that won't
work.
4\. Maybe the app determines the privileged segment via guess-and-check! To
prevent that, the OS plays shell games, switching which segment is privileged
around every time the app guesses wrong.
5\. Ok, so there aren't that many segments: the probability of guessing right
is still ~.01% per try. That's very unlikely, assuming the app only guesses
once. (We hope attackers haven't thought of guessing more than once.)
This guess-and-check attack would seem to be a deal-breaker, no? This seems
like a terribly insecure design.
~~~
vezzy-fnord
You mostly have it right.
It's mostly a PoC for a nokernel architecture, and a rather admirable affront
at taming the darker corners of x86 segmentation to create a system where you
have a per-address space "event core" rather than a traditional kernel, thus
largely not performing so much as multiplexing. Though, I think an important
addendum is that the selector relocation is context-global and thus the
probabilistic mitigation cannot be thwarted by spacing the workload across
threads.
\----
(EDIT: Actually, I just reread it and in fact the event core will terminate a
process after three successive "segment not present" faults, so that should be
effective.)
\----
By their testimony it is not any more susceptible to standard memory
corruption errors than traditional monolithic OSes. One could then argue that
the probabilistic weakness requires a malicious application that higher level
security policy could weed out, but even further that the value added of a
nokernel exceeds the downside of this hole relative to the monolithic kernel
state of the industry which is _already_ susceptible to a host of other
vulnerabilities. It would, however, discount this KLOS in particular from any
high-assurance use cases, but again so are monolithic kernels to begin with.
I think the gist of this is that the nokernel architecture _is_ viable, but
perhaps COTS architectures are not that expressive. Certainly not x86 it
seems.
~~~
benmmurphy
it's not effective. you can just start another process and try again right? i
think after 16k attempts you have about 2/3 chance of succeeding. kind of cool
but not secure.
------
nickpsecurity
Darn, that's two good ones you given me to review in one day. Officially on my
backlog. People interested in kernel-less OS's might also want to look at
Tiara and its successor SAFE:
Tiara [http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/37589/MIT-
CSAI...](http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/37589/MIT-CSAIL-
TR-2007-028.pdf?sequence=1)
SAFE [http://www.crash-safe.org/assets/ieee-
hst-2013-paper.pdf](http://www.crash-safe.org/assets/ieee-hst-2013-paper.pdf)
~~~
agumonkey
Funny, Tom Knight (Lisp Machine cpu designer) suggested to read about crash-
safe.org work. Small world.
~~~
nickpsecurity
That is a trip. LISP machines were doing tagged memory and GC before most of
them. Knight agreeing that SAFE is great work is a sign Im on right track. :)
~~~
agumonkey
Didn't know it was your work. Enjoy the trip ;)
~~~
nickpsecurity
SAFE is not my work. I was evangelizing many of the same principles, working
similar things, and generally try to draw mainstream attention the The Right
Thing (eg SAFE) when it manifests for a given problem/domain. High assurance
security & systems path has been quite a trip, though. Thanks. :)
------
quanticle
I've read through the paper, and while I understand how the operating system
achieves memory protection (by using W^X flags and memory segmentation), I
don't understand how the scheduler would work in a kernel-less OS. What
prevents my program from hogging all of the system resources, and preventing
other programs from executing?
------
tux3
Unfortunately, I am being served an error about exceeding the "daily download
allowance", is there a mirror somewhere?
~~~
vezzy-fnord
Here you are:
[http://darknedgy.net/files/vasudevan_klos_05.pdf](http://darknedgy.net/files/vasudevan_klos_05.pdf)
------
drudru11
vezzy - thanks for posting! You do not disappoint :-)
I really like it when people use the segment architecture to do something
interesting. It forces people to really think about the question... what is a
kernel?
Also, their technique of mapping the TSS I/O bitmap to virtual memory is
clever.
------
vezzy-fnord
Page 2 diagram is blacked out for whatever reason, rest is fine.
~~~
Zr40
Diagram renders fine in Safari; here's a screenshot of the diagram:
[http://i.imgur.com/GoytjRf.png](http://i.imgur.com/GoytjRf.png)
------
listic
Does this have any running code?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Going freelance as a data scientist - mthwsjc_
I'm a financial data scientist living in the Netherlands and I'd like to go freelance.<p>Should I use an agency, or avoid them? Are agencies like UpWork or Toptal particularly good?<p>How do you find your first clients?
======
mtmail
"Ask HN: How to get first clients for Data Science consultancy"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155861)
might still have relevant pointers.
UpWorks isn't an agency but marketplace. Most opinions I've read are negative,
it's a race/competition to the bottom (lowest price). Being a specialist in a
niche field you can probably get your rates, just compete with others on
price.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19081694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19081694)
~~~
mthwsjc_
thank you!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Can a smart meter be made to lie to the Grid? - Cherian_Abraham
Maybe some among here might be working in the Smart Grid ecosystem and could help answer this question:<p>As Smart Meters become ubiquitous, for the sake of argument Can someone maliciously (using whatever exploits applicable at the moment) gain control of a number of smart meters, and would it then be possible to make those smart meters lie about their power usage to the utility grids? Then, they could create a botnet of these compromised smart meters and in turn convince the grid to pump more power to them and in the process, trigger rolling blackouts at other locations? A Denial of Service of sorts.. Is that possible?<p>Maybe someone here can tell me it is, but improbable, or its not and will never happen.
======
wmf
Hacking smart meters is definitely possible, but you can't hurt the grid that
way because meter data is only used for billing.
[http://rdist.root.org/2010/01/11/smart-meter-crypto-flaw-
wor...](http://rdist.root.org/2010/01/11/smart-meter-crypto-flaw-worse-than-
thought/)
~~~
sp332
There are smart meters that let the utility have some control over when air
conditioning and other large appliances (washers etc.) are powered on. I think
it would be pretty easy to maliciously turn _on_ those devices when the
utility sends the command to turn them off, e.g. crank up the A/C and spin up
the dryer when power is already in high demand.
------
dmlorenzetti
There was a seminar at UC Berkeley on this, on 8-April (I didn't attend,
though, and can't attest to its quality).
Link to a video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj64jVIvKQU>
From the seminar abstract:
The smart grid will use automated meters, two-way digital communications
technology, and advanced sensors to save energy, improve electricity
efficiency and reliability. Use of these systems exposes the electrical grid
to potential cyber security and privacy risks. For instance, there have been
media reports of fears that a hacker could gain control of thousands, even
millions, of meters and shut them off simultaneously; or a hacker might be
able to dramatically increase or decrease the demand for power, disrupting the
load balance on the local power grid and causing a blackout.
------
savrajsingh
What you've imagined is pretty elaborate. You're assuming that meters can
'request power' and have more directed to them, and somehow this causes a
blackout (nothing in your statement said everyone's microwave & A/C switched
on at the same time, now that's how you cause a blackout). Since the goal of
the smart grid is the opposite -- "demand-response" -- that is, getting
appliances to 'turn off' or go in to a low-power mode when there isn't enough
supply, the scenario you imagine is unlikely.
That said, I'm sure we'll here of some amazing hacks that we didn't imagine
ahead of time. :)
EDIT: Ok, didn't think of this when I originally replied. Meters are being
issued with a "Remote Disconnect" feature so utilities can disconnect non-
paying customers. Seems like that will be hackable.
~~~
stonemetal
That still seems to be open to attack. Force all meters to low-power mode to
cause a "blackout", or perhaps fast cycle power modes in attempt to hurt
poorly made equipment.
~~~
bonzoesc
In Florida, we have FPL On Call[1], a smart meter program that allows the
power company to turn off your A/C, heating, water heater, or pool pump. I
suspect that if my A/C got cut off in the middle of summer, I'd probably just
use the pool 8)
But yeah, the fast cycling would probably break something.
[1]:
[http://www.fpl.com/residential/energy_saving/programs/oncall...](http://www.fpl.com/residential/energy_saving/programs/oncall.shtml)
------
eru
You could probably hack the smart meters, but how should `pump[ing] more power
to them' work? The utilities just try to hold the voltage constant, as people
are drawing power.
------
joezydeco
The ComEd (Chicago area) "smart meters" are really just recording meters, but
there is the option to have ComEd automatically cycle the load to your A/C
compressor when the real-time price gets too high.
I guess one could play havoc with that, make the utility think all the load
guards are operating when they're not, or vice versa. Don't think it would be
enough to whipsaw the grid into chaos unless everyone has it. Right now
adoption is pretty low.
------
gourneau
See the work of Travis Goodspeed
[http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2010/03/smartgrid-
skunkw...](http://travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com/2010/03/smartgrid-
skunkworks.html)
------
pnathan
Meters are not just straight up kW/h devices. They can be used for power
quality analysis, fault analysis, and whatever else the supplier can meter.
<http://www.selinc.com/metering/>
Note that in certain deployments you might have meters operating as sensors
(SCADA type setup), then some sort of central station running logic. So you of
course can consider that an architecture for a hacker to exploit.
For a brief note, this describes what happens:
[http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/commentary/Why_Y...](http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/commentary/Why_Your_Smart_Grid_Must_Start_with_Communications-526.html)
You can find some information in relation to this here:
<http://blog.iec61850.com/> which is run by <http://nettedautomation.com/>.
Cybersecurity in the power industry is a rising wave. It's been growing, but
Stuxnet really drew many eyes onto SCADA / power systems in the industry.
------
jpiasetz
Most of the smart meters aren't billing rated currently. Also the meter's
don't control how much electricity is generated.
As far as device control goes most of them only turn on and off simple
switches. The only area that is of concern is running people's furnaces or air
conditioning too much. Lots of vendors are moving away from directly
controlling the temperature and just focusing on controlling energy usage.
------
stretchwithme
Wouldn't the utility have smart meters at its own nodes? In other words, they
should be able to tell when the data gathered beyond a node that something
doesn't add up. Then they can look at usage patterns and find out what
changed.
Will the big, slow utility do this? Eventually.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter Rolls Out Search And Trends And A Business Model? - Anon84
http://blog.socialmedia.com/twitter-rolls-out-search-and-trends/
======
ctingom
Hmmm, I'm not seeing it on my Twitter page.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Turning Water into Watts - sohkamyung
https://physicsworld.com/a/turning-water-into-watts/
======
steeve
According to the article, one station is rated at ~100kW (that's maximum power
output).
A typical nuclear 3rd generation nuclear reactor outputs ~900MW-1GW.
Assuming an impossible 100% charge (ratio between rated and actual generated
power), that's still 10000x (!) less power than one nuclear reactor. Put
differently, you'd need 10000 of these stations to generate the same amount of
electricity as _one_ nuclear reactor.
Then one needs to consider how long that plant can deliver energy. They don't
give concrete numbers for that technology, but again taking nuclear again as
an example, reactors are designed to run for a a minimum of 40 years (some
reactors are now certified for 80 years in the US). Solar and wind are ~20
years.
All in all, love the tech, but the laws of physics are pretty harsh.
~~~
bmelton
I've recently become enamored with micro-hydro generation, having seen ways in
which it can be totally non-destructive to local wildlife and/or fish going
through the generator, and while I completely agree with everything you've
said regarding nuclear vs micro-anything, for personal power generation on a
farmstead, nuclear is pretty inaccessible.
On the other hand, this guy's[1] manufactured a micro-hydro 2km drop generator
capable of producing 5-12kWh per day for ~$50 in parts (turbine 3D printed).
That's of course limited to drop power (meaning you have a high body of water
and a low body of water and generate power, like a dam, by capturing energy
from passing the falling water between them through a turbine) but for
relatively level bodies of running water (read: creeks, streams, etc) a small,
non-destructive weir dam can capture 100kWh per day from a single diverted
turbine if conditions are good.[2]
Of course, conditions aren't always, and not everywhere has access to _any_
immediate water supply from which to generate power, but it seems to me that
for those places that do, capturing their own power via micro-hydro frees up
other generated power for the folks that don't -- but that might be a naive
view.
[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KyL1-0A0Gw&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KyL1-0A0Gw&t=2s)
[2] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61lZn1sUkzE&list=PLtTypVpmDd...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61lZn1sUkzE&list=PLtTypVpmDd-
vkT9bJQkXw4I1t0e_4jMYA)
~~~
steeve
Yes, this is exactly what a dam is (pumping or releasing, or using rain).
Hydo is very cool, and very green.
Some things to remember, however:
\- need to drown whole valleys (very high impact on local wildlife)
\- energy density is not that good (i don't have the numbers but the volumes
of water moved are huge, hence dams)
\- very rapid piloting and low maintenance, so nice to absorb spikes
~~~
ch4s3
> Hydo is very cool, and very green.
Well, maybe. I think this depends on what you mean by "green". If you mean low
on CO2 emissions, then sure, but we need to consider habitat loss, methane
emissions from decomposition, and the possibility of triggering earthquakes.
Hydro is also quite expensive to build, and often requires seizing land
through processes like Eminent Domain (in the US).
~~~
steeve
You are right, I was meaning green in the sense of gCO2eq/kWh.
------
spenrose
[https://medium.com/otherlab-news/how-do-we-
decarbonize-7fc2f...](https://medium.com/otherlab-news/how-do-we-
decarbonize-7fc2fa84e887)
"There is enough wind in the world to supply the entire world’s energy needs.
Solar supply exceeds even that by many times and is by far the largest
renewable resource. In reality, wind is a second-order effect of solar energy
anyway — the sun differentially heats the oceans, atmosphere, and land, and
these thermal differences create the wind. This wind, in turn, makes waves;
while there is, in fact, a lot of energy in the waves of the deep ocean, there
is very little nearer to shore. Even if we captured all of the waves hitting
every coastline on the planet, that’s not enough to meet humanity’s demand for
energy. The ocean is a fragile ecosystem and capturing large portions of wave
energy would negatively affect the oxygenation of the oceans, among other
effects."
------
jbob2000
> The ocean is essentially a natural engine, converting solar energy into
> mechanical energy.
Given the challenges with putting machines in water, it seems futile to pursue
this method of energy generation when going right to the source (solar) is
also an option.
And how efficient is an ocean at converting solar energy into mechanical
energy? Sure, the waves look big, but there's a lot of friction there eating
up the sun's energy.
~~~
steeve
Solar is not only intermittent (day/night) but also varies greatly with
nebulosity. I would think waves still exist at night.
Also, they advertise the maximum power output, not the actual power output
(wind as a ~20% actual power output for instance).
------
papreclip
turning tax money subsidies into watts _
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Disqus Hijacking Links in Comments. Redirecting to Ad Networks - LordWinstanley
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-discussdisqus/bug_reports_feedback_url_replacement_in_comments/
======
LordWinstanley
If you're either using Disqus to provide commenting on a website you run, or
leaving comments on other sites, with commenting provided by Disqus, you might
want to check this out.
I found that links in Disqus comments on one of my sites were being hijacked
and redirected to _redirect.viglink.com_. Other Disqus users have reported
links being hijacked and redirected to _avantlink.ca_ [both ad networks].
Needless to say, this has been introduced by Disqus at some time in the fairly
recent past [links in Disqus comments on my sites worked fine, previously]
without telling their users they were doing this. Unbelievably underhand
behaviour!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Anyone else upvote HN comments to track comments they have already read? - zubairq
======
yesenadam
That sounds like a terrible idea, polluting voting on HN. I hope you are asked
or made to stop doing that.
~~~
zubairq
Thanks. Makes sense what you say, so I have written to the HN admins to ask
them to disable multiple upvoting as a feature. Stay posted here to hear what
their response is
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tools for Data Visualization - jlemoine
http://codegeekz.com/30-best-tools-for-data-visualization/
======
ISL
Seeing nothing similar, here's a shoutout for Gnuplot, a tool I use daily.
[http://gnuplot.info/](http://gnuplot.info/)
It'll even plot in your terminal.
------
minimaxir
No R?
This list is a list of tools for pretty charts as opposed to informative
charts, and the latter is much more important.
~~~
Homunculiheaded
Also no graphviz![0] I know gephi is gaining a lot of ground, but for a wide
range of visualizations requiring actual graphs it is still very hard to beat
the simplicity and power of graphviz.
[0] [http://www.graphviz.org/](http://www.graphviz.org/)
~~~
haddr
It's a pity that gephi is loosing the edge recently. The development is quite
stalled and few things have changed since 2 years ago. It's even pain to get
it to work on mac as it works only with java 6 and will not work out of the
box :(
------
jpmonette
Bandwith Exceeded, go there instead:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eB8N3Wm...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eB8N3Wmp08AJ:codegeekz.com/30-best-
tools-for-data-visualization/+&cd=1&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=ca)
------
jimmytidey
Who has deep familiarity with 30 different tools? Isn't this more like "here
are 30 results Googling 'dataviz library'". Perhaps that's unfair, but sure it
would be more useful as 5 of the best tools.
------
nkuttler
No Gri either,
[http://gri.sourceforge.net/gridoc/html/index.html](http://gri.sourceforge.net/gridoc/html/index.html)
------
danso
This is a lazy and meaninglessly generalized list, like a "30 Best Languages
for Programming" list. Why are the tools here "best"? Because they make
attractive visualizations? Because they are easy to use? Because they are most
flexible with data inputs?
I guess the buzzwordy-barely-English summary should have been evidence enough
that this is clickbait:
> _Technologies such as the ones profiled below are helping to reshape the
> insights function through making data exploration more accessible to users
> who lack the knowledge and are not trained as data scientists._
~~~
hunvreus
Pretty uneven list of tools indeed; the author doesn't seem to properly
appreciate the differences between the various tools.
~~~
ysakamoto
Or does anybody really use all these data visualization tools to compare?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high - monort
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/23/call-off-the-bee-pocalypse-u-s-honeybee-colonies-hit-a-20-year-high/
======
floatrock
There's a little bit of dodging going around in this article... What's really
going on is we still have a high amount of churn in the funnel, we're just
spending more to hide it.
> "The 2014 numbers, which came out earlier this year, show that the number of
> managed colonies -- that is, commercial honey-producing bee colonies managed
> by human beekeepers -- is now the highest it's been in 20 years."
So the absolute numbers are up, great, but that did not come for free:
> "The average retail price of honey has roughly doubled since 2006"
Or, put in startup lingo, the churn is still high, but we're just hiding it by
paying more to acquire a larger number of bees. CCD is still killing off bees,
but we're just spending more to compensate.
This is the dodgeyness: any good HN reader knows that it's your churn that
kills your finances in the end.
And that's where the insanity lies: I believe that CCD has basically been
conclusively traced to a certain class of pesticides... what sounds insane to
me is we have created a toxic environment that has increased the leaking in
the boat, but it's okay because we can just spend more money on bigger bilge
pumps instead of addressing the underlying cause of the leak.
~~~
tptacek
You're referring to neonicotinoids. Let's stipulate that neonicotinoids are in
fact the root cause of CCD, which is defined as the increase in overwintering
colony losses.
Honey bees are a livestock animal, tied directly to agriculture.
Neonicotinoids are popular in part because they're a narrow spectrum pesticide
targeted at insect biology, and have fewer ill effects on other mammals than
other pesticides.
Here's the question: if neonicotinoids are a net win for agriculture, and CCD
can be mitigated by more aggressive colony generation strategies, why would we
need to address neonicotinoids at all? The market seems to have already done
that.
~~~
floatrock
> why would we need to address neonicotinoids at all?
Unintended consequences of large-scale ecological engineering perhaps. Sure,
commercial beekeepers can increase prices and the neonicotinoid users can
accept it as an indirect cost of their choice of pesticide, but what about the
large chunk of the ecosystem you're engineering which is not directly tied
into commercial interests, but on which we still depend?
Seems to me like there's a huge indiscriminant spillover effect into an
incredibly complex system, the implications of which can not be easily
predicted nor priced.
One of the shortcomings of "free market systems" is they historically fail at
pricing ecological consequences... look at the fight around putting a cost
onto carbon emissions. Also note how you said "have __fewer __ill effects on
other mammals "... there are still effects, and asbestos seemed like a miracle
material before the long-term effects were studied.
The indiscriminate usage of an chemical toxic enough to cause measurable
ecological web disruption sounds like a geo-engineering quagmire to me, even
if the commercial front-line can compensate with higher prices. How do you
accurately price what you don't know?
~~~
CWuestefeld
_One of the shortcomings of "free market systems" is they historically fail at
pricing ecological consequences... look at the fight around putting a cost
onto carbon emissions._
Actually, this isn't a shortcoming of the market as such. It's a failure in
conjunction of our incomplete recognition of private property rights. By
preventing certain types of property from having private ownership, we don't
allow the market to correct itself. More specifically, if we had some private
entity or entities that were recognized as the owners of air or water, then
they would be able to recover damages from the polluters, thus removing
ability to externalize the cost of pollution.
But once you start removing things from the purview of the market (in this
case by saying that nobody can own it, and thus nobody has an ownership
interest in protecting or has a right to damages), then you're actively
preventing the market from correcting. I think it's really amazing that the
market does as well as it does, considering how ubiquitous are the regulations
that handicap it.
Edit: I should have read farther down the chain, where this [1] mentions the
same idea.
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10024457](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10024457)
~~~
lisper
> if we had some private entity or entities that were recognized as the owners
> of air or water
I volunteer to be that entity.
~~~
politician
I _can 't_ upvote you. Bravo.
~~~
lisper
Thanks, but why can't you upvote me?
~~~
politician
I don't want to endorse your position as a monopoly owner of both _air_ and
_water_ , and yet I want to reward you for boldness. There isn't a button for
that.
~~~
lisper
> I don't want to endorse your position as a monopoly
I really don't think you need to worry too much about that.
------
dayaz36
A comment from a real bee farmer on the article: " Mr Ingraham---do not assume
you can read a few papers on CCD and bees and make cogent, authoritative
remarks in a newspaper piece----this piece fails miserably. I AM a beekeeper,
in Los Angeles, using feral honey bees, making public presentations, teaching
beekeeping and selling honey. I am going to fill in your ignorance here with a
few salient points. Making splits causes a yield of TWO WEAK hives, which is
not the same as having the vigorous, healthy original hive. And just so you
know, the splits the commercial folks are making from the survivors of
pesticide, fungicide, herbicide exposure on industrial crops are the already
weakened colonies that happen to make it. So, the splits are not especially
fated to thrive, either. Your little tables showing statistics does not tell
the real story of the insults being suffered by ALL pollinators from monocrop,
industrial agriculture. The typical Consumerist answer to a problem---"just
buy more" bees and queens is not addressing the real problems which are
decline in clean forage from toxic chemical exposure, lack of forage
diversity, trucking bees all over the country, narrow in-bred genetics. The
loss of all pollinators, as well as decline in overall ecosystem diversity
from the same insults, is the REAL issue. Your piece is also old ground
previously plowed over by that corporate apologist and booster at Forbes, Jon
Entine, another geek behind a computer who writes about beekeeping with a
singularly narrow and uniformed arrogance. Like your ballyhooed Tucker and
Thurman, the "economists" (never far from pontificating for the beauties of
the "free market") the people weighing in on the loss of pollinators and
trying to urge us not to be concerned are akin to Climate Change denialists. "
~~~
_delirium
There's already a sub-thread about this in the comments here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10024292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10024292)
~~~
dayaz36
I know. I wanted to make it more visible.
------
abakker
From Wikipedia:
The pollination of California's almonds is the largest annual managed
pollination event in the world, with close to one million hives (nearly half
of all beehives in the USA) being trucked in February to the almond groves.
Much of the pollination is managed by pollination brokers, who contract with
migratory beekeepers from at least 49 states for the event. This business has
been heavily affected by colony collapse disorder, causing nationwide
shortages of honey bees and increasing the price of insect pollination...
Does anyone feel that transporting livestock from this many places to a single
place where they can all commingle is a needlessly risky strategy? Assuming
that CCD is caused by pesticides, this seems to guarantee exposure to a large
number of bees that might otherwise live in pesticide-free areas.
Additionally, if CCD has a fungal/parasitic component, then this would be an
ideal way to infect as many hives as possible, in as short a time as possible.
~~~
tedunangst
Wow. 49 states implies that at least one of Alaska or Hawaii is involved.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Why would you be surprised that they grow things in Hawaii.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_B._Dole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_B._Dole)
~~~
zevyoura
The surprising part is that they're shipping live bees back and forth
overseas.
------
nonameface
Buying more and more bees is a very expensive solution. Perhaps I'm just a
poor beekeeper (maybe true?) but I would have to sell my honey at untenable
prices if I was looking to make money on my beekeeping.
For example, I've spent $1600 on bees and equipment, I've harvested 3 gallons
of honey. I would have to sell that honey at $44/Pound to break even. Now
hopefully over the long term this goes down a lot as the upfront capital
investments spread out over the years.
My bee losses have been huge though. The first year I had 3 hives, lost 2. The
second year I had 5 hives and lost 3, last year I had 5 hives and lost 4.
Buying bees at $130/hive isn't sustainable (except through my charity) if I
wanted to actually make any money at this, especially on a small scale.
~~~
tptacek
If reconstituting new hives from annually purchased queens was economically
non-viable, pollination prices --- which is where the money in honey bee
husbandry seems to come from --- would show that. But while prices have risen,
it doesn't look like they've done so at a historically unprecedented rate.
Irrigation is a much bigger economic threat to pollinated crops than
pollination.
~~~
nonameface
Yes, this is true -- in large agriculture, pollination is where the money is
in beekeeping. I know pollination contracts stipulate "frames of bees" to be
considered a hive (for example you might need 20 "frames of bees" to get paid
for that hive) but I also think you're getting weaker hives out there for
pollination. So while the price isn't going up, the size of the product is
going down.
Same concept as the cereal boxes. They look the same from the outside, but
they put less cereal in it and charge you the same price instead of raising
the price.
------
terminado
So, we're " _buying_ " new bees to offset the bees that die?
Uh... forgive me if I seem a little dense here but... where the hell are these
_store-bought_ bees coming from then? The moon? If the mass hysteria of CCD
continues unabated, does that mean that bees _WON 'T_ go extinct because we
can simply " _buy_ " more bees from _God_ at the God® store?
Are we back in the 1800's when spontaneous generation still held some
ostensible sway over mother nature? Do they spontaneously materialize and
transmogrify from some other form of matter? Do flowers transform into bees
because the two are actually the same?
------
pingou
According to the article, the number of colonies is bigger than before because
bee keepers simply buy more bees as replacement, but it doesn't explain where
they come from.
Also: "put half the bees into a new beehive, order them a new queen online
(retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives."
Does that mean you have 100% more colonies but the same number of bees? I
suppose not, but I think it would be interesting if we could see the evolution
of the numbers of bees instead of the number of colonies.
~~~
c-slice
A small number of bees when placed with a queen will quickly produce a full
size hive. Bee hives have a size limit, so dividing them into two smaller
hives produces rapid population growth. A queen bee can lay 1000 eggs a day.
~~~
StavrosK
This is the most outlandish attempt at a proof of the Banach-Tarski theorem
I've heard so far.
------
chrissnell
I'm not so sure. I have a large backyard garden and I'm surrounded by
neighbors who also garden. I was chatting with some of them the other day and
we've all noticed a significant drop in fertilization amongst our plants this
year. My tomato plants are typically overloaded with fruit by this time of
year but now only have four or five tomatoes each. Same story with the
tomatillos, the squashes, the cukes and the watermelons. Production is less
than half of a typical year.
My neighbor kept bees but lost his colony last year. I can't say for sure that
CCD is the root of our problems--home gardens are more popular around here
than ever and perhaps the bees have an overabundance of food--but it certainly
feels like something is wrong. Obviously home gardeners and beekeepers don't
have the funds to bolster the bee population like a large commercial grower
might.
~~~
eric_h
Sounds like you need to fashion a bee stick [1] so you can do the pollination
yourself.
We used these in a high school science project to pollinate fast plants.
[1][http://www.fastplants.org/how_to_grow/pollinating.php](http://www.fastplants.org/how_to_grow/pollinating.php)
~~~
schiffern
Even easier: plant wildflowers to feed and attract pollinators. Borage is a
good one (and it repels bunnies too), or just find a good native wildflower
mix.
------
rrss1122
Interesting that the government put together a policy framework to "save the
bees", but the market corrected itself anyway.
Also interesting that you can buy a queen bee online for $25.
~~~
floatrock
The 'market corrected' itself by increasing prices because that's the only way
you can keep up with a high leaky churn.
We haven't 'corrected' anything, we've only found a new (more expensive)
equilibrium because the inputs are still dying off at a higher rate. The
correct thing to do is to address WHY the inputs have become more expensive...
my understanding is that research now points to a certain class of destructive
pesticides.
------
breischl
So the proffered solution is ordering new bees from the internet. That seems
like magical thinking. I don't think Amazon has figured out how to fabricate
bees from base atoms, so presumably somebody, somewhere is breeding those bees
for sale.
Don't those breeders have the same problems? What's preventing the magical
internet bee source from having their colonies die off?
------
tehchromic
The bottom line is there are huge corporate interests willing to spend money
to bury the fact that their investments in toxic agricultural pesticides,
herbicides and fungicides are having a permanent, devastating effect on the
planetary biome.
The collapsing honey bee is the poster child of the irrevocable damage they
are perpetrating on the planet, which is the mostly silent holocaust of our
times.
So take any positive media on the recovery of the honey bee that isn't result
of curbing industrial agricultural practice, with a big grain of organic salt.
~~~
the8472
> irrevocable damage
That seems a bit hyperbolic to me. The damage seems revocable if actual effort
were put into it instead of just papering over the symptoms.
Of course such things often require policy change, change that some people
might oppose. But that does not make the damage itself irrevocable.
It just means that people are prioritizing other goals over it.
~~~
tehchromic
If the monarch butterfly goes extinct like the passenger pigeon, that's
irrevocable. And evidence is mounting that we are at the edge of an man made
extinction event, and by evidence I mean the number of species that go extinct
per year. I don't think the big concern here is hyperbole, but rather the
papering of it over, on which point we agree.
------
orf
So the solution is to... buy more bees of the internet? Thank god we solved
CCD
~~~
tptacek
CCD is an economic problem. The varroa mite wiped out feral North American
honey bees --- which are _not native_ to North America --- a long time ago.
Supposedly, any honey bee you've seen in the wild for the past decade has been
part of a proprietary hive.
So, ordering more honey bee queens off the Internet seems to be a pretty
reasonable response to the problem of a 10-20% increase in overwintering hive
failures.
~~~
thrownaway2424
What would a non-native honey bee in the wild look like? I live in California
and the bees in my garden and in the local parks are various. Some look like
bumblebees and some look like just bees but I don't know bees from bees.
~~~
kaitai
tptacek has a very efficient guide to bees posted. Another nice national one
that is very comprehensive is the USDA's guide at
[http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb530646...](http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5306468.pdf)
. Scroll to page 17 or so to start looking at illustrations of particular bees
if you don't want to read about their habits. But the best for CA is the
Berkeley Bee Lab's page on native bees at [http://www.helpabee.org/common-bee-
groups-of-ca.html](http://www.helpabee.org/common-bee-groups-of-ca.html)
There was a great art & education & science installation on native bees at the
UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley a few years back
([http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Shirley-Watts-
Mo...](http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Shirley-Watts-Mouthings-at-
Botanical-Garden-2325642.php)). I know they still have a beehive, and they
might have some exhibits on native bees.
~~~
thrownaway2424
The Berkeley site is neat, but it's got a picture of the european honey bee
right at the top and no mention of it being non-native.
------
nostromo
So was that the solution all along? Just breed more bees to replace the ones
that die?
If that's the case, it seems like a mountain was made out of a mole hill in
the media. I read multiple times that I may never eat a pollinated fruit or
vegetable again.
~~~
Beltiras
No, the article is just putting forth very misleading and cherry-picked data.
It's a little bit amazing that he actually mentions splitting and higher hive
count close to each other without realizing that this will not increase the
pollinator count by twofold. A real beefarmer has a comment on the article
that everyone should read, it's illuminating.
""" Mr Ingraham---do not assume you can read a few papers on CCD and bees and
make cogent, authoritative remarks in a newspaper piece----this piece fails
miserably. I AM a beekeeper, in Los Angeles, using feral honey bees, making
public presentations, teaching beekeeping and selling honey. I am going to
fill in your ignorance here with a few salient points. Making splits causes a
yield of TWO WEAK hives, which is not the same as having the vigorous, healthy
original hive. And just so you know, the splits the commercial folks are
making from the survivors of pesticide, fungicide, herbicide exposure on
industrial crops are the already weakened colonies that happen to make it. So,
the splits are not especially fated to thrive, either. Your little tables
showing statistics does not tell the real story of the insults being suffered
by ALL pollinators from monocrop, industrial agriculture. The typical
Consumerist answer to a problem---"just buy more" bees and queens is not
addressing the real problems which are decline in clean forage from toxic
chemical exposure, lack of forage diversity, trucking bees all over the
country, narrow in-bred genetics. The loss of all pollinators, as well as
decline in overall ecosystem diversity from the same insults, is the REAL
issue. Your piece is also old ground previously plowed over by that corporate
apologist and booster at Forbes, Jon Entine, another geek behind a computer
who writes about beekeeping with a singularly narrow and uniformed arrogance.
Like your ballyhooed Tucker and Thurman, the "economists" (never far from
pontificating for the beauties of the "free market") the people weighing in on
the loss of pollinators and trying to urge us not to be concerned are akin to
Climate Change denialists. """
~~~
tptacek
This beekeeper's comment doesn't appear to contain any testable arguments.
They don't like the fact that maintenance of honey bee stock will require
aggressive colony creation, but they don't appear to have an argument to back
that up that isn't essentially an appeal to the naturalist fallacy.
This is also a beekeeper attempting to husband honey bees using feral bee
populations, 98+% of which were annihilated by the varroa mite a long time ago
(there are people who dispute whether "feral honey bees" really still exist at
all in the US).
I'm not especially moved by arguments that attempt to tar people asking
reasonable questions about insects to climate change denialists.
~~~
stonemetal
It contains several testable points. Does splitting a hive create two weak
hives? How do you characterize this weakness and do they recover from it? What
is the genetic diversity of the bee population? Is it growing or shrinking?
Toxic chemical free forage is it growing or shrinking? Forage diversity should
also be easy to measure and track changes over time. Other than the personal
attacks what did you find not testable?
------
rpenm
Interestingly, European bees hybridized with African bees seem to be quite
resistant to CCD. Makes me wonder if one of the problems afflicting American
honeybees is a lack of genetic diversity.
~~~
dejv
Well there are other factors in this debate. European-African hybrids are much
more aggressive to the beekeeper and there are different conditions that kills
the colony. Another factor is the honey production rates for these hybrids.
There are many different species of bees in use, with different characteristic
in areas of amount of honey produced, aggression, tendency to get different
forms of illness and so forth.
------
c-slice
Life finds a way. I think in some ways, CCD has probably "pruned" the bee
population in a good way. Beekeeping allowed weaker hives that would have
normally died off in the wild to continue to spawn new hives. CCD has reversed
that trend, and may have improved the overall strength of the bee population
genetics.
~~~
maratd
> CCD has probably "pruned" the bee population in a good way
A reduction in the population is never a good thing. Is this some sort of neo-
eugenics viewpoint? Pruning the population will not create some sort of super-
bee. That's not how it works.
It will enhance whatever qualities are being selected for, but it will reduce
the genetic diversity in the population, making it vulnerable to a hole raft
of new diseases and disorders.
Ideally what you want is for the genetic variant that protects against a
specific disease to be already within the population and for that variant to
simply spread, without any population loss. If you're losing population, that
is a BAD thing. That means things are happening too quickly and you're in for
a world of hurt in the long-term.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck)
~~~
tptacek
Yours is a needlessly inflammatory response to what was in fact a reasonable
question.
Eugenics is a philosophy that suggests _human breeding_ should be controlled
to select for favored features. It's disfavored for a variety of obvious
reasons that connect to our principals about the unique value of human life.
Honey bees are livestock. Livestock has been selectively bred for millennia,
and discussions of long-term genetic selection among honey bees is not an
indicator that participants believe in eugenics.
~~~
maratd
> ... to what was in fact a reasonable question.
There was no question. It was a statement.
> Yours is a needlessly inflammatory response ...
I'm sorry, but what word would you use to describe the theory that selective
pressures that decimate a population will eventually result in a superior
specimen?
It may be inflammatory, but that's the only word that came to mind.
~~~
marknutter
How about "genetic engineering".
~~~
klibertp
I don't think genetic engineering involves killing off large chunks of a
population just because it - for the moment - pays off. I'm not a specialist,
though, so I may well be wrong here...
------
ChuckMcM
Nice to see the other side of the story for a change. While the 'extinction
threat -> loss of all pollinated food -> disaster' narrative gets a lot of
fear views, if we actively assist honey bee colonies in growing on a large
scale we can replace a lot of bees quickly.
~~~
dmritard96
This 'other side of the story' is incomplete. Sure commercial outfits will
just pay more and buy more honeybees, but nature won't.
Given that the entire problem is being caused by a dragnet insect poison, it
would seem the wiser approach would be to find an alternative or improvement
to the poison in its current form.
------
dennisgorelik
Queen-bee sale page is an interesting read too:
[http://wildflowermeadows.com/queen-bees-for-
sale/](http://wildflowermeadows.com/queen-bees-for-sale/)
------
dejv
So, we have learn how to produce bee queens on industrial scale, package them
to sealed bag and sell them for 100 bucks.
We replaced the natural way with industry and the author call it success.
------
ZeroFries
Why was this downvoted? Does CCD selection pressure help or hinder bee
genetics?
~~~
stephengillie
_Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and
it makes boring reading._
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
~~~
tlarimer
Even when it is paired with a question asking for clarification on the subject
matter at hand?
~~~
dang
Yes, because you can always delete the downvote noise and keep the clarifying
question.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down - chillax
http://joyent.com/blog/if-i-was-your-cloud-provider-i-d-never-let-you-down
======
anonymouz
With the lifetime account fiasco still ongoing [1], they should probably shut
up.
[1] Joyent/Textdrive sold lifetime shared hosting accounts for a one time
payment in the beginning. Those accounts would exist "as long as we exists". A
couple of months back they sent an email that they are "discontinuing"
lifetime accounts. After uproar from the community they offered refunds. Many
people (including me) agreed to the refund, but then they decided to make
another 180 degree turn, not paying out the refund. Instead they are now
spinning off a new "Textdrive" that is supposed to "take over" the lifetime
customers. No details about funding/general outlook/etc. of this new company
has been provided so far. Questions to this end are shrugged off as
"everything is perfect, just trust us, ..."
Incidentally, the new Textdrive Forum (discuss.textdrive.com) seems to be down
at the moment...
~~~
UnoriginalGuy
"lifetime" "unlimited" "forever" etc products should always been looked at
sceptically for that reason. Anything that is either finite or requires up-
keep cannot be offered on these terms, it is just impossible.
I actually avoid unlimited products on purpose because I think a lie is a bad
way to start doing business together. Be it web-hosting, broadband, or
anything else. I would prefer they just be up front and then we both know
where we stand (no ambiguity).
~~~
typicalrunt
What Joyent forgot about was that by getting rid of the lifetime account
holders (I was one) they were effectively silencing their greatest word of
mouth sales. I would always recommend their services to others, and I would
purchase many of their other products/services as they came out.
But by pulling out the rug under me[1], it left me distrustful of them. So
let's assume that I got my money's worth, but what Joyent has now lost is the
word of mouth. Even worse, instead of _not_ telling people about Joyent, I
actively turn them away from Joyent.
While Amazon goes down from time to time, at least I have less unknowns with
them. With Joyent, I don't know how they are going to fuck me at the last
minute when they decide to pivot for the umpteenth time.
[1] Not once, but thrice. First, they cancel the lifetime accounts, forcing me
to quickly move to another provider (thank you GAFB and Heroku). Then they say
I can get a refund for the service, which when I asked for it they first
denied that they gave it out and then told me that the offer was rescinded
because the Textdrive service was coming out. Third, they keep calling me
telling me that I need to move, even though if they spent 2 seconds checking
for account activity they would see that no domain routes to them anymore, nor
is any data stored with them.
~~~
jamie
Same here - I'll never recommend them, and have actively discouraged people
from using or investigating them.
They may be great technically, but I always mention their spotty/inconsistent
and poor treatment of me as a customer. Even if I'm not the most lucrative
customer, how you treat every customer is important. You never know who,
dispute being a low-revenue personal user, is a high-revenue business user.
------
comice
If this is gloating about the EC2 outage, then ugh. I can't find out if it is
because the whole of joyent.com is actually down for me
(net::ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT)
~~~
smcl
Yep, same for me. Delicious irony in my opinion
~~~
kami8845
If a company is actually stupid enough to say "If I was your cloud provider,
I'd never let you down" then I immediately lose all interest in working with
that company. Childish and they obviously have no appreciation for how hard it
is to properly run a hosting company.
~~~
benologist
I'm pretty sure they have a decent idea of what's involved running a hosting
company being as how they're a huge hosting company.
I think what they've done is _great_ , they're appealing to the users by
showing they are users and they'll probably get a crapload of traffic because
of it whether they land Reddit or not. It's already landed them the #1 slot on
HN, a site where AWS staff post AWS updates!
~~~
Jare
In the professional tech world, not ALL exposure is good exposure. With this
post they look like immature kids, and then when their post and entire site
goes down, they look incompetent in front of the very people they want to
convince.
An informative post explaining the hardships of uptime and reliability in
simple words, and how they do their best to keep adding 9's, would have been
so much better.
~~~
dap
[http://joyent.com/blog/network-storage-in-the-cloud-
deliciou...](http://joyent.com/blog/network-storage-in-the-cloud-delicious-
but-deadly) [http://joyent.com/blog/on-cascading-failures-and-amazons-
ela...](http://joyent.com/blog/on-cascading-failures-and-amazons-elastic-
block-store) [http://joyent.com/blog/magical-block-store-when-
abstractions...](http://joyent.com/blog/magical-block-store-when-abstractions-
fail-us)
~~~
Jare
Exactly, they should have done more of that.
------
staunch
My new startup, Uptano (<https://uptano.com>), is a cloud provider (still
hurts me to write "cloud").
..and we've had 100% uptime in our short run so far. Our systems are highly
redundant and as decoupled as possible. Still, I wouldn't for one second claim
that I, or anyone else, could do better than AWS on reliability.
AWS does a great job on reliability. I do think EBS is a terrible technology
that should die in a fiery pit, but they do a damn good job of keeping
everything _up_.
If they really do believe their 99.9999% claim, I'd love to see them make a
bet. How about Reddit gets $1M if they move and it falls below that?
~~~
codewright
Could you please explain the tenancy/virtual servers mechanic of your service?
The copy on the website isn't clear. (Also, OH GOD that font. OH. GOD.)
It's not clear to me whether I'm getting my own server (effectively
dedicated?) for $136/month or not.
Further, what if I don't want multiple-tenants on the hardware? What does it
cost me to effectively treat each physical server a single logical unit? Is
that even possible?
I mostly want a more elastic alternative to dedicated servers. Is your service
along those lines?
~~~
staunch
You're paying for a dedicated machine. Then you run virtual servers on your
machine. You could run just one (treating it much like a regular dedicated
server), or you could run multiple, that's up to you.
There is no scenario in which multiple users share the same hardware. Your
hardware is your own.
The web site will improve ;-)
Feel free to email me with any questions: [email protected]
------
wisty
With a one-line pitch like "HIGH-PERFORMANCE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE FOR REAL-
TIME WEB AND MOBILE APPLICATIONS", what could possibly go wrong?
No, I don't hate Joyent. I can't even figure out what they offer. And I don't
see "Python" or "Postgres" or "Redis" in their tech stack page, so what would
reddit (a Python / Postres / Redis site) want with them? They seem to be
mostly node.js / Mongo, which is a nice tech stack but isn't the one reddit is
built on.
Clicking around their dev docs seems to suggest you can install your own stuff
on their "SmartMachines" (are those Linux VMs?), but there's a heavy node.js
bias to the docs.
~~~
codemac
Joyent is some former Sun guys who are still committed to "the OS is a
differentiator". They use Illumos, their fork of OpenSolaris...
I'm pretty sure python, postgres, and redis all run on Solaris, but Joyent's
value add is NOT at the application layer, but in OS features that facilitate
application workloads better. Their SmartMachines (or zones), ZFS, dtrace..
Solaris is an epic environment to develop in.
I probably only know of a few other OS's that are as powerful (IOS XR, OnTap,
Linux..), and only corner cases are more enjoyable to work with (BeOS, plan9,
lispmachine).
Their difficulty in messaging is probably around not wanting to be labelled
"post-Sun", but cloud! internet! not oracle! You should think of them as
providing an OS as a service.
~~~
wisty
OK, so they use "zones" (beefed up multi-user, which should have less overhead
than virtualization) and a fork of OpenSolaris (interesting features, reputed
to be very stable).
I wish they'd just say that, as it makes their "Faster than VM" claim seem a
lot less wild.
Shared hosting is actually more efficient than VMs, but it got a bad rap due
to massively oversold hosts.
~~~
alexhawdon
Sun engineered some amazing stuff but eventually got bought out by a company
with weaker engineers but much, much stronger sales team. After being burned
in this way I could see how a bunch of former Sun staffers might use their
former technology but call someone else in and say 'look, we can't market for
shit - you have a go'.
And that's my guess on why their marketing spiel might seem a little vague to
a tech person.
------
UnoriginalGuy
Wow, that web-site is down, this couldn't possibly be more ironic.
~~~
lostsock
and still down 3 hours later... ouch!
~~~
randomchars
Disable https everywhere.
~~~
Evbn
Why? The desired information has already been conveyed from the https servers:
Joyent can't withstand load.
~~~
eli
Well, or someone forgot to turn on HTTPS. How does the plugin know whether to
redirect a given site anyway?
------
hboon
After TextDrive's lifetime hosting encounters, I'd never trust Joyent again,
cloud or non-cloud.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669>
------
opendomain
I do not want to be a jerk here, but the only reason I joined was the promise
of "lifetime" - they can NOT just cancel our accounts does it does not suit
them. Please contact me webmaster @ opendomain ORG if you would like to join
the class action lawsuit. We already have quite a few people signed up.
------
alanh
It should be “if I _were_ your cloud provider.” It’s a possibility and a wish
of theirs, so it should be expressed in the subjunctive.
[http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/subjunctive-verbs-
was-i...](http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/subjunctive-verbs-was-i-
were.aspx)
~~~
Raphael
They were referring to a Justin Bieber lyric, "If I was your boyfriend", which
was parodied by the girl who became the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme, which
is popular on Reddit.
------
carson
Anyone remember Joyent's Strongspace service?
[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/01/21/joyen...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/01/21/joyent-
services-back-after-8-day-outage/)
~~~
rsync
They got a free thumper from Sun through the "try and buy" program, loaded it
up with customers, and ... failed to operate it properly. IIRC, it wasn't just
a service outage - some data was irrevocably lost.
ZFS on Solaris was a non-beta, prime time product at that time, so it's not
fair to blame it on "a ZFS thing". Deploying customers on loaner hardware is
scrappy and admirable, in a way, but Sun wasn't giving those away two by two -
there was no redundancy.
The joyent blog, in those days, alternated between enterprise cloud bullshit-
bingo posts and facebook game development. I thought it was a clown operation
back then and I suspect it still is.
~~~
makomk
ZFS was officially a non-beta, prime time product. In practice, apparently
anyone who tested its robustness thoroughly before deploying it found that it
tended to crash and burn at the first hint of trouble exactly like it did for
them.
------
im3w1l
"Unable to connect"
well that was rather ironic..
~~~
TamDenholm
One of those things that is hilarious but not actually funny.
~~~
astrodust
Ha, ha, only serious.
------
djhworld
> Lindsay Shaw is a member of the Joyent Marketing and Communications Team.
This says it all really, just a bit of PR to boost awareness of their
product...and the HN community has taken the bait.
~~~
typicalrunt
While I agree with you that no press is bad press, in the Internet realm you
also have to be aware of keywords. HN comments right now are littered with
none-to-flattering words for Joyent, which then get indexed by Bing/Google and
can hurt the reputation for Joyent.
Worse yet, Joyent's PR may backfire and make them look like naive idiots for
making claims they can't back up...especially when it comes to throwing rocks
at the Amazon juggernaut.
------
Hansi
Ironically the site's SSL is not configured correctly... Doesn't work when
using the "HTTPS Everywhere" extension unless you manually change it to not
opt for HTTPS on the site.
~~~
dchest
Huh? There's no SSL on joyent.com. Their login form, however, has it, on a
different domain: <https://my.joyentcloud.com>.
Not sure how this can be classified as "not configured correctly". It's HTTPS
Everywhere who's incorrect there.
------
zerostar07
I 've been using their vps for years, and they didn't let down (apart from
less than a handful of reboots, the uptime was basically around 400 days). The
thing is they kept their prices unchanged for 4 years which is odd.
------
davidw
If I _were_ a grammar nazi, I'd be quite irate.
~~~
jedschmidt
Don't hate the provider, hate the meme:
<http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/overly-attached-girlfriend>
~~~
mnicole
They're actually referencing the Ryan Gosling meme, not OAG. There's an image
of him right on the page.
------
bslatkin
Uptime comes from how you design and build a system, not which IaaS provider
you choose.
~~~
thejosh
So if your IaaS goes down, that's your fault?
~~~
bslatkin
Yes. You are responsible for replication, failover, disaster recovery, etc.
~~~
praptak
The point of using IaaS is to outsource as least some of the responsibilities.
~~~
tedunangst
No, you outsource the work, not the responsibility.
------
irahul
Umm The blog post is down. If you can't handle traffic to a blogpost, I don't
see how reddit would take your offer about "no downtime" seriously.
~~~
randomchars
It's not a load issue. Disable HTTPS Everywhere.
~~~
irahul
> Disable HTTPS Everywhere.
It wasn't that either. It didn't work for me, and for many other people. See
the thread for simple `curl <http://whatever-joyent`> failing.
------
welebrity
If something "sounds" suspicious, it usually is. I had one of the early "truly
unlimited" mobile data plans w/VZ. They actually honored it until I made the
blunder of changing my plan. I was grandfathered in, but they kept sending me
teasers to get me to switch. Once I did, going back was not an option. They
got what they wanted . . .
------
thejosh
I read a post quite a while ago from the reddit admins bitching out EC2 after
one of the last dramas, I remember they said it would be a huge migration to
migrate all data across to a new provider so they would have to be solid.
I wonder how their current EC2 pricing would compare to Joyent?
~~~
imroot
During the second-to-last Amazon EBS outage (that affected our RDS instances,
I started migrating our database over to Joyent. Before RDS was completely
restored, I had a MySQL instance up and running and our production servers
pointing to the new host via SSH tunneling. As far as pricing goes, they're
competitive with EC2, but, you need to factor in the amount of time that it'll
take to move off of Linux and onto Solaris/SmartOS (which isn't that big of a
deal in the grand scheme of things)...
------
armored
Joyent, you so cray. Thanks for reminding us that "Never" and "Lifetime",
"100% Uptime Guarantee" and "Fanatical Service" are all bullshit indicators.
You've got a good cloud, you don't need to make promises that you can't keep.
------
BraveNewCurency
This from the company that patented the 8-day outage.
[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/01/21/joyen...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/01/21/joyent-
services-back-after-8-day-outage/)
------
ianstallings
Saying you have a more robust cloud than Amazon is laughable. It's really as
simple as that. This is a joke.
------
instakill
Sorry, and I really don't mean to be a grammar nazi, but it's "if I were".
It's a subjunctive.
~~~
dools
Let's add that to the list: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3658860>
------
olalonde
Meanwhile, <http://nodejs.org> is down.
<http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/nodejs.org>
------
ParadisoShlee
"Error 102 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED): The server refused the connection."
The page is down.
~~~
grakic
They do not serve https for the site, what else are you expecting to see?
~~~
ParadisoShlee
Notice to those of us running the EFF HTTPS EVERYWHERE... they'll force SSL
and fail.
Not running SSL should be considered a bit of a Faux pas.
------
photorized
Re: "We’ve given our other partners 99.9999% uptime."
That's neither technologically possible nor commercially feasible.
Companies need to stop saying that.
------
jjtheblunt
were, not was. learn english modal verbs and subjunctive before soliciting
business.
------
j_s
Or switch to us-west-2 to immediately solve more than half their problems?
------
RiceJazz
If I were a serious cloud provider, I would check my grammar.
------
tzaman
They should send this open letter to Heroku as well :)
~~~
jaggederest
Historically, running Ruby on Joyent was an exercise in frustration. Heroku
isn't _only_ Ruby these days, but operating as a stable ruby platform is still
a requirement I think.
Among other things: Solaris threading libs with crashy bugs when you pop a new
thread open. Took quite a while to figure that one out.
~~~
patrickgzill
It is perhaps a difference in thread creation semantics, or something like
that. But, Solaris threading has been rock solid for many, many years.
~~~
jaggederest
Not in my direct confirmed experience. pthread lib on Joyent's particularly
weird version of solaris was f'd hard.
------
stratosvoukel
Am I the only one finding the post a bit sexist as well? Since when are
successful 9gag memes like "Overly attached girlfriend" pc?
~~~
robinduckett
Those are reddit memes. Not 9gag memes. 9gag is a content stealing site. See
oatmeal, etc.
------
dobata
because of all the "success" with twitter back in the days
------
jredwards
What, no ent jokes?
------
lolwutreddit
There is no way they can achieve that uptime claim, nor should they try to say
they have 99.9999% aka "six nines". That's 31.5 seconds a year, and even a
well-designed network is going to have that much at some level. I mean, the
VPSes might be distributed across hardware, but a failure of some component
might mean that it's still "up", but _seriously_ degraded during the
transition. How useful is that for "uptime"? It becomes a bragging right. How
about if all routes to a large provider, like Level(3) are down for a reset
period, or are re-routed through Cogent, which is maxed out on all peering
with L3 at 99% packet loss levels? Is that really uptime? Sure, that's out of
their control, but the situation with their own website being down for some
people right now underscores that lofty claims are meant to be broken.
Now that they're beating that Joyent drum a little more: watch them fall down
under a DoS attack that Amazon could bat away at this point. I'm by no means
supporting Amazon, but Joyent is still a small company with big claims. I
predict they will fall apart when Sun stops making hardware, and when their
engineers argue over whatever trendy "wrong way to do it" Node-type
technologies that they're jacking off over next.
~~~
wisty
When you are talking about "X nines, in retrospect, from a small sample" it's
meaningless, and they know it. All it means is, they've had 100% uptime,
because they've been lucky enough to avoid a crash. And by 100% uptime, I'm
sure that's "100% of crashes weren't in our opinion our fault".
------
IheartApplesDix
Why is this the top post?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
India is drying up - akbarnama
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/india-is-drying-up-fast/789376.html
======
Arun2009
Monsoons have been a dud so far. Our well nearly dried up, and we were
planning to shift should water run out. The municipal water supply is useless.
The irony: my state (Kerala) receives around 3000+ mm rainfall per year on
average, and suffered from devastating floods last year.
I feel sad when Indians wank about military technology and "national security"
issues due to Pakistan and China. The single greatest national security threat
for India is Indians' abject incompetence in governing themselves. I fear that
we will pay a very heavy price for this.
~~~
luminati
"The single greatest national security threat for India is Indians' abject
incompetence in governing themselves."
Why don't you learn from your Northerly neighbors (China) on how to run
government? One thing I find in my travels to India, is how much abject
contempt you guys have towards the Chinese way of doing things. Unbelievable -
considering the cultures are very similar (Buddhist thought has historical
played a major roles in both cultures), similar population sizes, etc..
No, let's follow a political system that has had no organic roots/development
in the country and pretend all are literate folks who are capable of holding a
debate on what policies are good for their country, while the politicians take
out everyone to the cleaners.
~~~
iamgopal
Was that sarcasm?
------
graeme
Basically I think our civilization is default dead.
As Paul Graham put it in another context:
"Why do so few founders know whether they're default alive or default dead?
Mainly, I think, because they're not used to asking that."
People aren't used to thinking of civilization in these terms. We make
retirement plans etc divorced from the projections of change to come. If we
rationally considered priorities, you'd see much more popular support for
actions designed to address the problem, such as increasing carbon taxes,
cutting other taxes, and making an international framework to get other
countries to do the same.
There's a scene in 12 Monkeys where the protagonist is in a mental hospital in
the past, before a virus takes out the civilization. The psychologist asks if
he came back to "help" them. The protagonist looks confused and says "how can
I help you? You're all dead".
We have such a flurry of concern and activity aimed at the present. I can't
help but have a similar feeling when I observe people making plans and not
accounting for the predicted future, even if they claim to "believe" in
climate change.
If people truly believed in it, you'd see much different political priorities.
Right now effective action tends to be unpopular. Income taxes (taxing a good
thing) have much more political support than carbon taxes (taxing a bad
thing). I find the situation baffling.
More from Paul Graham's article:
"There is another reason founders don't ask themselves whether they're default
alive or default dead: they assume it will be easy to raise more money. But
that assumption is often false, and worse still, the more you depend on it,
the falser it becomes."
We assume it will be easy to solve problems in the future, with future
technology. Or that we will have surplus resources in the future, when
worsening conditions cut crop yields, cut water, increase civil strife, and
when the global population is larger and total emissions are higher.
[http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html)
~~~
orcdork
Yes, the absolutely correct group to take ideas from as far as our semi-long
term survival goes is VCs (and the surrounding ecosystem), the same group that
made "move fast and break things" the mantra for a decade. Nothing bad ever
came out of that!
~~~
graeme
This is pure ad hominem. Do you have nothing to contribute?
You're saying:
1\. I don't like vc's, because a startup founder said "move fast and break
things"
2\. Paul Graham didn't fund that founder, but he was a vc
3\. Ergo, every idea paul graham has is bad
4\. Ergo, this specific essay is bad
5\. So, anything that mentions this essay's ideas is wrong
6\. Your post is wrong
Do you disagree with the concept of default dead? Are you arguing that it's
impossible to be in such a state as a civilization? If you have an actual
critique I'd be interested to hear it.
------
f_allwein
> while 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record in the past 140 years since
> the world began to keep a track on temperatures, NASA expects 2019 to be
> still hotter.
In this context, here's an interesting map on what the world will look like 4
degrees warmer: [https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/what-the-world-will-
look-l...](https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/what-the-world-will-look-
like-4degc-warmer) \- apparently, much of the Indian subcontinent will be
uninhabitable...
~~~
Mikeb85
The earth was once 6 degrees warmer according to the geologic record. From
what we know, it looked nothing like that map.
Edit - here, for people who can't do their own homework:
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/travel-
through...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/travel-through-deep-
time-interactive-earth-180952886/)
And:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record)
~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> From what we know, it looked nothing like that map.
Yes, because at that point it was a map of pangea.
~~~
Mikeb85
I posted a map. During the Jurassic, the world was much warmer, greener, and
Pangea was already broken up, although the continents weren't in their current
positions. They did span from pole to pole however.
The point is that the map posted by OP is junk and not based on any science,
just alarmist rhetoric.
------
r_singh
My office building has recently adopted water harvesting (which is an ancient
practice in many parts of India).
Mumbai receives a LOT of rain, and I’m glad that we’re able to divert some of
it to the ground water table.
Seeing this succeed, I’m pushing the same for my building too, I’m surprised
to see a lot of my neighbours have problems with the same (cause of wastage of
a common terrace), I should send them this article.
~~~
rusticpenn
I heard things are critical in southern India, apparently restaurants are
closed, our offshore guys are working from home, using starbucks for toilets
etc... is this true?
~~~
oasisbob
I'm here in Chennai, and things are bad, but it's hard to tell _how_ bad. So
much of the water is trucked anyways - Chennai doesn't have a well developed
unified water system.
As a foreigner who has visited several times, here's what I've noticed:
\- lots more people on the street with those iconic plastic water containers.
Lots more water trucks on the road.
\- water quality is BAD. Even in upper-class highrise condos, the water has
much more odor and color. In this building, salinity is way up too. There's a
reverse-osmosis plant here, but it's only on for several hours a day because
RO systems waste so much water.
\- haven't seen many restaurant closures, but I'm sure they're happening.
\- a lot of hotels targeting westerners have advanced filtration and reverse-
osmosis plants, seem to still be operating. Some pools are drained.
\- water pressure in some neighborhoods is so low that it's only a trickle at
the tap. News says some people are using pumps to pull of the metro system,
making things worse.
Overall, it seems like bad expensive water is still out there if you can
afford it and want to pay.
------
mc32
Climate change and weather patterns change coupled with over a billion people
in a country (roughly) the size of Argentina is bound to have water problems
as per capita consumption grows with wealth.
Conservation + Desalination is the only way here.
~~~
assblaster
Why are you attributing water deficit with climate change? Increasing
atmospheric water vapor leads to larger storms, floods, and overabundance of
ground water.
India's problem is overconsumption and population excess. Until India is able
to reduce their population by 50% or more, their water shortages will continue
to worsen. A sizeable decrease in their population will also reduce their
power consumption needs, so they'll be able to close their coal power plants
instead of opening dozens more.
~~~
criley2
It's more complicated than that. Climate change doesn't lead to global
increased atmospheric water vapor and the water cycle is very complicated on a
global scale. Climate change leads to floods and storms... and droughts and
wildfires. Some areas could see greatly increase groundwater recharge while
others will see greatly reduced recharge. Even if the global net effect were
to increase water, there would still be extreme examples of local droughts
causing extreme water stress.
In the U.S. for example climate change is leading to decreased rainfall
meaning less runoff and less groundwater recharge. The southeast of the US is
going to have some very serious water issues for the next generation, albeit
not as soon as India.
~~~
jessaustin
_In the U.S. for example climate change is leading to decreased rainfall
meaning less runoff and less groundwater recharge._
Where are you getting this? It certainly doesn't agree with figures published
by the government. [0] The aquifers that are dropping are dropping because of
massive well pumping. The wildfires are because we've stockpiled understory
fuel while building homes in fire-prone forests. Overstating the case for
global warming will convince some people, but others will only grow more
skeptical.
[0] [https://www.drought.gov/drought/data-maps-tools/current-
cond...](https://www.drought.gov/drought/data-maps-tools/current-conditions)
~~~
criley2
[https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-
findings/...](https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-
findings/water-supply)
>Surface and groundwater supplies in some regions are already stressed by
increasing demand as well as declining runoff and groundwater recharge. In
some regions, particularly the southern U.S. and the Caribbean and Pacific
islands, climate change is increasing the likelihood of water shortages and
competition for water. Water quality is diminishing in many areas,
particularly due to increasing sediment and contaminant concentrations after
heavy downpours.
I find that people's skepticism regarding climate change has almost nothing to
do with data and evidence and nearly everything to do with their personal
politics, to the extent that I draw a causative link between right-leaning
politics and "climate skepticism".
~~~
jessaustin
You made a specific claim about rainfall. That claim contradicted my
experience over the last several years. I searched for "USA drought", and a
very simple government site confirmed there is no drought underway in USA.
(EDIT: there certainly _will_ be a drought in future, just as there will be
floods and hurricanes and comfortable sunny days with light breezes.) I'm not
sure what this most recent link is supposed to prove, but I'm not going to
wade through it. I only consider specifics when it comes to weather/climate.
~~~
criley2
Let me get this straight, you asked me to source my claim that climate change
will affect america, so I use an official government report titled "National
Climate Assessment" which details the effects on America, and you're rejecting
this canonical source?
Your reply is "I'm not reading this, I did a fast google search instead?"
Oof owie, my intellectualism.
I shouldn't have to spoon feed you after I gave you an extremely high quality
source.
But whatever:
"Climate changes pose challenges for an already parched region that is
expected to get hotter and, in its southern half, significantly drier.
Increased heat and changes to rain and snowpack will send ripple effects
throughout the region’s critical agriculture sector, affecting the lives and
economies of 56 million people – a population that is expected to increase 68%
by 2050, to 94 million. Severe and sustained drought will stress water
sources, already over-utilized in many areas, forcing increasing competition
among farmers, energy producers, urban dwellers, and plant and animal life for
the region’s most precious resource."
>Theobald, D. M., W. R. Travis, M. A. Drummond, and E. S. Gordon, 2013: Ch. 3:
The Changing Southwest. Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United
States: A Report Prepared for the National Climate Assessment, G. Garfin, A.
Jardine, R. Merideth, M. Black, and S. LeRoy, Eds., Island Press, 37-55
[http://swccar.org/sites/all/themes/files/SW-NCA-color-
FINALw...](http://swccar.org/sites/all/themes/files/SW-NCA-color-FINALweb.pdf)
~~~
jessaustin
Oh, now we're talking about the South _west_? I would have sworn that the
topic was the South _east_? I've lived in both areas, and I would classify
them as having different climates. Sorry, is that too specific?
~~~
criley2
Haha you really do represent the ideal climate "skeptic"
* reject evidence for non-sense reasons
* over reliant on public search engines for quick, contextless answers
* pedantry rather than discussion
* a complete and total inability to find any meaningful evidence for yourself
For the record, my original comment in this thread has always been about the
Southwest, but since you're behaving as such an anti-intellectual bad actor,
I'll continue spoon feeding you the data that you're clearly too lazy to even
try to understand
"Freshwater supplies from rivers, streams, and groundwater sources near the
coast are at risk from accelerated saltwater intrusion due to higher sea
levels. Porous aquifers in some areas make them particularly vulnerable to
saltwater intrusion., For example, officials in the city of Hallandale Beach,
Florida, have already abandoned six of their eight drinking water wells."
>Obeysekera, J., M. Irizarry, J. Park, J. Barnes, and T. Dessalegne, 2011:
Climate change and its implications for water resources management in south
Florida. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 25, 495-516,
doi:10.1007/s00477-010-0418-8.
>Berry, L., F. Bloetscher, H. N. Hammer, M. Koch-Rose, D. Mitsova-Boneva, J.
Restrepo, T. Root, and R. Teegavarapu, 2011: Florida Water Management and
Adaptation in the Face of Climate Change. 68 pp., Florida Climate Change Task
Force
That's just one way that climate change is negatively affecting groundwater in
the US south east and how freshwater is becoming more scarce in America due
directly to climate change
Have any more ignorance-fueling pedantry to use to avoid discussing the topic
at hand?
Maybe you'll try reading a source? Nah, you'll just Google search it!
~~~
jessaustin
Next time maybe just don't say something trivially verifiably false about
recent rain totals in USA? Look I understand the world is ending. As excited
as people get about trivial bullshit, doesn't it seem strange that despite
their professed beliefs they've all done absolutely nothing about the end of
the world? Maybe that conundrum could inform your future discussion board
evangelism...
------
harryf
Last year there was “Rally for Rivers” aimed at addressing some of the
problems India faces -
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/pr...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/2018/03/rally-
for-rivers-un-world-water-day-spd)
~~~
gbuk2013
And, fortunately, it looks like it is getting some traction:
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/sadhguru-
bri...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/sadhguru-brings-rally-
for-rivers-back-to-maharashtra-with-revival-plan-for-
waghari/articleshow/69670513.cms)
------
dugluak
Didn't NASA report recently that earth is greener than 20 years ago due to
China and India?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19228922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19228922)
~~~
Mikeb85
Yup. But let's not let science get in the way of alarming headlines...
~~~
skinnymuch
Read the article. It isn’t as simple as the headline. It’s not good to assume
a headline answers all and is the only thing that needs to be known?l.
~~~
Mikeb85
I read the article. It's mainly about reviving traditional methods of
conserving water. The headline is far more alarming.
Versus news like this: [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/one-third-of-
world-s-...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/one-third-of-world-s-new-
vegetation-in-china-and-india-satellite-data-shows/)
------
nilsocket
Recently, government of India, started to look into this problem, some part's
of India get too much of rain, and others live in drought.
They are trying to link up all Indian water bodies.
[https://www.livemint.com/news/india/a-wish-list-on-water-
fro...](https://www.livemint.com/news/india/a-wish-list-on-water-from-parched-
india-1560265588046.html)
~~~
devdas
Which will fuck up river ecologies :(
~~~
naruvimama
People are so comfortable pumping the environment air, water and soil with
fertilizers, pestisides, antibiotics, plastic, smoke and toxic waste. We have
wiped out large areas of forests, over produce and waste food. Why is that we
have suddenly become so sensitive when we want to connect waterways. Yes there
can be ecological imbalances, but is a very small price to pay compared to all
the horrors that we commit.
------
sailfast
> 21 cities — including the four metropolises — Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad
> and Delhi — will run out of groundwater by 2020.
Is that a validated statistic? If so, how is the entire country not panicking
about this? That seems like a really serious problem.
~~~
sreekanthr
I cannot comment about other cities, Bengaluru it was a known issues.
Primarily big builders who launch their projects dig up multiple borewell and
pump out the groundwater. When government realized that ground water levels
were getting depleted they did make rainwater harvesting mandatory. Yet it is
either shoddily implemented or never implemented.
Ref:
[https://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/civic/benga...](https://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/civic/bengaluru-
slips-up-on-rainwater-harvesting-despite-being-mandatory-59000-structures-yet-
to-have-the-facility-installed/articleshow/64846543.cms)
Most of the apartment complexes water supplies are provided by tankers. Local
politicians have stake in these tanker services, so it is in their best
interest to make sure local populace is dependent on the these tankers and not
on government connections which is heavily backlogged.
Few societies, residents do get together invest their own money to get proper
water harvesting, but that is far and few to even make a noticeable
difference. Builders most of them flat out refuse to build robust water
harvesting systems.
~~~
sailfast
This is really insightful. Thank you. I had no idea so much was dependent on
tanker trucks.
------
airza
Climate change and the huge imbalance of men to women in india makes it seem
like water wars are inevitable in the region in the next 20-30 years.
------
nilsocket
I live in India, and I can literally feel the difference.
But, what I'm surprised of is, many plants didn't dry up. And they are in good
condition.
------
AareyBaba
Paani Foundation - if you are looking for a heartwarming story of a village in
India that overcame water scarcity through rain water harvesting (and a good
organization to donate to)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSGF1KQ1UQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSGF1KQ1UQ)
------
sudipnth
If you feel depressed after reading this, watch how one person initiated the
clean up of an entire beach in Mumbai which was covered with 5 feet of filth:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ka45g4Fyc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ka45g4Fyc)
------
petilon
California is drying up too. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/depleting-the-
water/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/depleting-the-water/) Our planet's
groundwater is being pumped out much faster than it can be replenished.
~~~
EGreg
What happened to desalination? The oceans are ripe for desalination!
[https://phys.org/news/2019-06-hot-efficiency-solar-
desalinat...](https://phys.org/news/2019-06-hot-efficiency-solar-
desalination.html)
One can do it even by focusing sunlight, why can’t they do it at industrial
scale? I think Israel started to.
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-
the...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-
desalination-era-is-here/)
They used to import icebergs. (It’s a good example of Cunningham’s law.)
------
hangonhn
Can someone please enlighten us about the traditional water conservation or
restoration methods he alludes to? I'm super curious because apparently they
have enough merit that Texas A&M is looking into them. Thanks!
~~~
gbuk2013
My guess is things like this:
[https://www.thebetterindia.com/61757/traditional-water-
conse...](https://www.thebetterindia.com/61757/traditional-water-conservation-
systems-india/)
~~~
newsumworld
See also this article: [https://newsum.in/news/swimmers-can-track-sweat-
through-an-u...](https://newsum.in/news/swimmers-can-track-sweat-through-an-
underwater-skin-sensor-now/)
------
sametmax
So no more water in a country saturated with pollution, full of 1.7 billion of
people with huge social tensions, bad relationships at borders and the atomic
bomb.
What could go wrong.
------
godelmachine
Divert water from all 3 rivers in Kashmir down south into mainland India.
Abrogate the Indus Water Treaty brokered by World Bank.
~~~
yellowflash
Divert to Ganges and make it a sewage too?
This idea is bad in so many ways. It's gross hatred due to mass propaganda.
First rule for sustainable water management is having local water supply used
locally. We need better water management at individual city/village level like
reviving lakes have a good ground water recharge etc.. Diverting rivers and
desalination ideas are going to have huge ecological cost even if we forget
about the economical possibility of them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unlike Immigrants, Robots Will Permanently Drive Down Real Wages - cwan
http://modeledbehavior.com/2011/01/04/unlike-immigrants-robots-will-permanently-drive-down-wages/
======
danielson
Unless...
" _Sleep Dealer_ tells the story of a young _campensino_ named Memo whose DIY
radio draws unwanted attention from a U.S. military contractor. Fleeing to
Tijuana, Memo has implants placed in his body in order to become a 'node
worker' -- a Mexican laborer who, from south of the border, taps into a vast
network that operates robots located in the United States."
[http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2008/01/sl...](http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2008/01/sleep_dealer)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Official Google Blog: SearchWiki: make search your own - epi0Bauqu
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-own.html
======
jbrun
This is amazing, been wanting something like this for a while. I just wish
there was software that allowed me to put notes on parts of websites and keep
track of comments. Kind of like building a digital notebook of all the stuff I
read and take notes on. The Amazon Kindle sort of does that with books. Is
there such a software out there?
~~~
musiciangames
Something like this?
<http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/>
~~~
jbrun
That is pretty damn cool. The only missing item is a compilation of everything
I highlight or leave notes on, but awesome none the less. Thanks.
~~~
musiciangames
Did you find the 'your highlighted pages' link? Sounds like what you want.
------
gcv
1\. The interface is pretty disruptive, with the two large gray buttons on the
same horizontal visual line as the header of the search result. I only managed
to turn this off by opting in to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" Google Labs
experiment, which actually is pretty useful.
2\. Does this mean that we'll now have YouTube-quality comments just a click
away from the search results we see dozens of times a day?
~~~
litewulf
Agree on #2. I have seen the average commenter on the internet, and he
depresses me deeply.
------
paddy_m
Does it learn what you like as you add in more of your preferences? This seems
useful to people who don't use their bookmarks (I don't) and just use google.
------
dc2k08
Was this only launched in the US ? I'm not geting any visual clutter for
SearchWiki options.
------
chrisbroadfoot
Also see: <http://search.wikia.com/>
------
ntoshev
They will get a lot of training and assessment data for their algorithms in
this way.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Herbert Dow, the Monopoly Breaker (1997) - swampthing
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=31
======
axus
This only worked because it was a commodity that could be resold without much
extra expense, and the cartel wasn't willing to sell at a loss everywhere.
Great history lesson!
~~~
rallison
That, and in the US (and many other countries), we also now have government
protections against price dumping [1]. Not to say it doesn't still happen, but
there is some recourse.
Regardless, a good read.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)#Actio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_\(pricing_policy\)#Actions_in_the_United_States)
------
cschmidt
I'm a kid who went to Herbert H. Dow High School in Midland, Michigan. Then I
went on to study Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan in the
Herbert H. Dow building. I'm very proud to see this story on HN. There is a
(seemingly) out of print book called "The Dow Story: The History of the Dow
Chemical Company" if anyone would like a more in depth view of the "bleach
wars" and other ways that Dow took on the entrenched German companies.
------
stfu
Great story! Actually shows that monopolies can even be broken without the
intervention of government.
~~~
georgemcbay
Shows that they could in the early 1900s. These days the specific formulation
of bromine being sold would be patented (even if they had to modify the
formulation every 17 years) and Dow would be sued for patent infringement on
the resales.
~~~
scottdw2
Actually, no they couldn't. Patents only apply to the right of "first sale".
You can resell any patented invention without the consent of the patent
holder.
~~~
AaronFriel
I think you're confusing the first-sale doctrine with exhaustion doctrine, and
the latter is, I think, a bit more confusing and unclear as to what patent
holders can require.
~~~
georgemcbay
You beat me to the reply...
Firstly, IANAL(!)
Secondly, I do follow the sorts of IP law cases that tend to show up on HN as
an interested non-legal observer because I think IP law is one of the most
dangerous problems the US tech industry faces, even though the industry is the
thing that is fucking itself most of the time.
However, from what I understand while the exhaustion doctrine has been upheld
for international copyright law recently by the Supreme Court, the same court
refused to hear a vaguely similar case as applied to patent law (and the
defendant was on the ropes and forced to settle). So there are still quite a
lot of open questions about exhaustion doctrine as it applies to patents,
especially when international trade is introduced, and also when the original
supplier preemptively imposes restrictions (such as the "not for resale" that
would certainly be on the packaging of any chemicals sold today). One
mitigating thing that might help in this situation though is that price-fixing
is often viewed as a situation where such resale restrictions can be found to
be invalid.
So, basically this is all really muddy and not entirely decided (exhaustion
doctrine is just common law to begin with) and there's no yes/no answer as to
whether my half-sarcastic statement is valid, but we do live in a world that
is very different than the early 1900s in a lot of ways, many of them for the
better, but some of them for the worse.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Femtolisp: A lightweight, robust, scheme-like Lisp implementation - auvi
https://github.com/JeffBezanson/femtolisp
======
KenoFischer
Used to implement the parser/lowering for Julia! It's probably on the way out
at this point, but it's served us very well this past decade.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MIRI's Approach – Machine Intelligence Research Institute - deegles
https://intelligence.org/2015/07/27/miris-approach/
======
idlewords
Are there any examples of substantive AI work to come out of MIRI? And have
they succeeded at all at engaging the actual AI research community?
The last time I looked at them, they were consumed with grandiose
philosophical projects like "axiomatize ethics" and provably non-computable
approaches like AIXI, not to mention the Harry Potter fanfic. But I'm asking
this question in good faith - have things changed at MIRI?
~~~
pjscott
If you'd like to give them another look, here's an up-to-date list of their
publications:
[https://intelligence.org/all-publications/](https://intelligence.org/all-
publications/)
~~~
sampo
Counting only articles and conference papers that look like they are in at
least somewhat established journals or conferences, I quickly count:
2015: 4
2014: 6
2013: 1
2012: 5
2011: 1
2010: 4
That would be about the level of 1 or 2 very mediocre early career scientists.
And very little for MIRI's 8 people staff and 13 Research Associates.
MIRI publishes a lot more, but they mostly operate outside of traditional
scientific journals, a lot of MIRI technical reports published on their
website.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
How many of their staff hold PhDs, particularly in cognitive science,
foundations of math, or AI? It would seem like a useful thing for them to get.
~~~
sampo
[https://intelligence.org/team/](https://intelligence.org/team/)
Staff: 1 out of 8 seem to have a PhD
Research Associates: 3 out of 14.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
Huh. They should probably increase that number.
------
reasonattlm
MIRI is one of the success stories to emerge from the transhumanist community
of the 80s to 00s. Others include the Methuselah Foundation, SENS Research
Foundation, Future of Humanity Institute, and so on.
When it comes to prognosticating on the future of strong AI MIRI falls on the
other side of the futurist community from where I stand.
I see the future as being one in which strong AI emerges from whole brain
emulation, starting around 2030 as processing power becomes cheap enough for
an entire industry to be competing in emulating brains the brute force way,
building on the academic efforts of the 2020s. Then there will follow twenty
years of exceedingly unethical development and abuse of sentient life to get
to the point of robust first generation artificial entities based all too
closely on human minds, and only after that will you start to see progress
towards greater than human intelligence and meaningful variations on the theme
of human intelligence.
I think it unlikely that entirely alien, non-human strong artificial
intelligences will be constructed from first principals on a faster timescale
or more cost-effectively than this. That line of research will be swamped by
the output of whole brain emulation once that gets going in earnest.
Many views of future priorities for development in the futurist hinge on how
soon we can build greater than human intelligences to power our research and
development process. In particular should one support AI development or
rejuvenation research. Unfortunately I think we're going to have to dig our
own way out of the aging hole; we're not going to see better than human strong
AI before we could develop rejuvenation treatments based on the SENS programs
the old-fashioned way.
~~~
deegles
Your statement about needing rejuvenation treatments before we can develop
strong AIs makes sense. The average age of Nobel Prize winners is increasing
over time[1], we could imagine a future where this average age is greater than
the average human lifespan. At that point only those scientists who have
exceedingly long careers _and_ lifespans will be able to further their
respective fields.
[1] [http://priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winning-scientists-are-
get...](http://priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winning-scientists-are-getting-
older/)
~~~
fiatmoney
"Nobel-winning scientist age" is not a good proxy for "productive scientist
age", for a variety of reasons. They mention specifically lag time between
discovery & recognition, but you also have issues where the "name" behind the
discovery is the guy in charge of the lab, but the actual discovery (and
sometimes the idea) is generated by the 30-year-old postdoc / assistant prof /
etc.
There is also a sampling bias issue where scientists in academia as a whole
are getting older because the boomers still have a death grip on institutional
positions, and academia as a whole is shrinking.
------
AndrewKemendo
Whenever one of these threads comes up, all the sudden everyone is an AGI
expert.
~~~
le0n
Is anyone really an AGI expert?
~~~
AndrewKemendo
I would argue the people publishing in the AGI journal:
[http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jagi](http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jagi)
------
daveloyall
> _One solution that the genetic algorithm found entirely avoided using the
> built-in capacitors (an essential piece of hardware in human-designed
> oscillators). Instead, it repurposed the circuit tracks on the motherboard
> as a radio receiver, and amplified an oscillating signal from a nearby
> computer._
That feeling some people get when a junebug lands on them.
------
rl3
It's worth noting that in Bostrom's _Superintelligence_ , biology is included
among potential paths to superintelligence. Personally, I think it's a bit of
an overlooked path.
Granted, most of what Bostrom refers to in context of the biological path is
mostly related to human augmentation, genetics, selective breeding - things of
that nature. What I'm referring to is biology serving as a raw computational
substrate.
While biology (or at least brain tissue) is dramatically slower in terms of
raw latency when compared to microprocessors, it's arguably a far cheaper and
vastly more dense form of computation. It also has the natural algorithm for
intelligence that we keep trying to deduce and transpose into silicon - well,
at least the raw form of it - built in by default.
Assuming ethics are thrown out the window and human brain tissue is grown _in
vitro_ at scale, then it probably would make sense to hook it up to a
supercomputer for good measure. At the very least, we have the technological
foundations[1][2] for such an experiment at present day, it's just a matter of
scaling things up.
If I were to hazard a guess, human brain tissue grown to significant scale
would probably not magically achieve sentience, or exhibit any complex
anthropomorphic traits. On the contrary, it would probably have more in common
with a simple neural network implemented on silicon, at least in terms of its
capacity for self-awareness. Conversely, it would stand to reason that an
entity with a higher degree of self-awareness, implemented in silicon, should
rank higher in terms of ethical considerations than living tissue.
Obviously the aforementioned experiment would be completely unethical, but
it's interesting to ponder it as a hypothetical - that today we may have the
capability to bootstrap a superintelligent machine using biology as a
computational shortcut. But we can't, because ethics. Instead, we're waiting
for the inevitable increase in computational power to arrive so that we can do
essentially the same thing, just in digital form.
[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/science/researchers-
replic...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/science/researchers-replicate-
alzheimers-brain-cells-in-a-petri-dish.html)
[2]
[http://neural.bme.ufl.edu/page12/page1/assets/NeuroFlght2.pd...](http://neural.bme.ufl.edu/page12/page1/assets/NeuroFlght2.pdf)
~~~
ThrustVectoring
If you're just building an artificial biological neural net, then why use
human brain cells? Certainly other forms of brain cells would work pretty much
as well, with less ethical issues.
~~~
rl3
Good point. However, if that is indeed the case, then would the ethical issues
surrounding the use of human cells in such a fashion be properly founded?
I mean, if you took primate or whale brain tissue and grew it to scale, I
think you'd have similar results. Maybe even with rat neurons, who knows.
Point being: the primary ethical issue ultimately may not be the underlying
type of biological substrate, but how that substrate is grown, trained, and
used.
Semantics aside, any such experiments would undoubtedly be creepy as hell,
regardless of tissue type. Definitely Frankenstein stuff.
------
dmfdmf
I agree with their financial approach which is funded through voluntary
donations, so more power to them. But then I think NASA should be funded
voluntarily and would probably have a larger budget if they did. I would
donate to NASA if they repudiated government money.
I reject the "how many peer-reviewed, university-associated journal articles
have they published" as any measure of success. The university system is a
closed guild and doomed in the internet age. I'd bet my bottom dollar the next
big breakthrough in AI (or any field) comes from outside that system. Anyone
who has an original, new idea to break the AI logjam (P=NP for instance) has
no peers in the university system but has a handful of peers world-wide
reading arxiv.org or other open forums, even HN.
As far as MIRI's AI program, I think they commit the same error as everyone
else; confounding the processing of meaningless symbols (what computers can
do) with actual sensory awareness of existence (what brains do). The latter is
what gives the symbols meaning and humans are not threatened by the former.
Few people truly understand the import of Searle's Chinese Room thought
experiment and its relevance to AI and computers. But these are philosophic
and epistemological questions that most people dismiss or ignore at their own
peril.
~~~
davmre
> The latter is what gives the symbols meaning and humans are not threatened
> by the former.
For what it's worth, I think you're wildly wrong a) that the Chinese room
experiment has anything profound to say about conscious experience, and b)
that most AI researchers haven't thought about this.
That said, MIRI is concerned _exactly_ with threats from machines that are
very very good at processing meaningless symbols. If someone writes a simple
reinforcement learning algorithm, asks it to produce paperclips, and it
destroys the human race
([http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)),
we're really past the point of caring whether the algorithm has awareness of
its own experience. There are interesting philosophical questions there, but
it's not within the domain of solving the problem MIRI cares about.
~~~
dmfdmf
> For what it's worth, I think you're wildly wrong a) that the Chinese room
> experiment has anything profound to say about conscious experience, and b)
> that most AI researchers haven't thought about this.
We'll just have to disagree about a) but see my answer to the other reply
about the implicit question behind the CRE.
Regarding b), I never said they haven't thought about it. I said "few people
truly understand" by which I meant they have failed to understand the
implications and have drawn the wrong conclusions. You don't get gold stars
for thinking hard.
Regarding LessWrong, all I can say is that you can't know you are "less wrong"
until you know what is true. In logic you can't assume an unknowable as your
standard of the true. But to reiterate my point, these are questions of
philosophy and epistemology, fields which absolutely essential to the "domain
of solving the problem MIRI cares about".
------
fitzwatermellow
We can't comprehend the danger that could be caused by strong AI because we
don't understand how to make worlds. Embedded within the fabric of the cosmos
are the instructions for materializing a black hole from dark matter and
energy. And though the recipe may be hidden from our mortal minds it's
possible they may be discovered by a de novo thinking machine. A software
system with infinite IQ but the moral sense of a one day old. An electronic
brain that would have no compunction in creating a super massive black hole
right here on Earth just to see if it can succeed. Irrespective of the
consequences to humanity.
If this "Jupiter-sized" consciousness is allowed to have thoughts that are not
"amenable to inspection". Even perhaps beyond comprehension. And the danger
elides to the scale of a solar system with nothing but diamonds in it. Then,
by the naysayers own logic, shouldn't all AI research be outlawed? Or at least
confined to the equivalent of CDC-level-5 quarantine labs?
If on the other hand you believe that Nature has certain innate prophylactics.
And that it takes more than a super will to bend the laws that govern space
and time. You may be self-assured in thinking we as a species have at least a
century or two before we really need to begin worrying about virtual
immortals.
~~~
schoen
You could do quite a lot of damage with the regular old laws of nature that we
understand already, if you were really good at applying them. For example, you
could make autonomous robot weapons, or extremely virulent pathogens with a
long incubation period. Or do some geoengineering (you don't even have to be
good at it, you just have to do something with a big impact). There's
absolutely no need to "bend the laws that govern space and time"!
Edit: or launch a planetary defense mission in reverse, to increase the
probability of asteroid impact events.
~~~
sampo
I guess there are some terrorist organizations who have more desire "to watch
the world burn" (a Batman movie quote) than the actual intelligence to make
effective plots and schemes. You could just communicate by email and chat to
provide evil genius level strategic consultation to some very bad men.
------
mangeletti
Here's a theory of mine:
Despite our explicit efforts, the first truly powerful AI will emerge as
distributed software that effectively runs on the Internet as a whole (a
virtual machine consisting of endpoints (APIs, etc.) and disparate systems
subprocessing data). We will not know when it arrives. There will be no
judgement day. This machine will arrive through a sort of abiogenesis, and
once it's here it will manipulate the world to achieve that which it desires,
which will be continually more energy. Eventually, this machine will displace
much of humanity, as it requires less and less human intervention.
I beleive we are in the midst of this process now.
~~~
endtime
FYI,
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/)
might explain why people are objecting to your comment.
~~~
zardo
A precise definition could probably be cobbled together using computational
complexity. Something like, a phenomenon which results as a product of
deterministic processes that cannot be fully modeled by a polynomial time
algorithm.
I think that's what people are really getting at, you can know how every piece
of something works, and yet seeing how it works together can be much harder
(potentially impossible).
Maybe that just makes it a synonym for chaos theory...
~~~
jessriedel
Yea, I think you're talking about chaos, whereas people are gesturing at
something different when they talk about emergent complexity. Vaguely, the
idea is that the "regular" degrees of freedom (i.e., the ones that are
relatively predictable and from which the important objects are constructed)
at large scales are not simply related to the microscopic degrees of freedom.
There are probably more rigorous things to say, but it definitely requires
more than just unpredictability or sensitivity to initial conditions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A retro video game console I've been working on in my free time - pkiller
https://internalregister.github.io/2019/03/14/Homebrew-Console.html
======
kgwxd
This is the coolest thing I've seen posted on HN in years, very cool work.
I've been playing with Atari 2600 programming on and off for the past few
years and it is so fun programming directly against the specific hardware. I
can't help but occasionally wonder if I could piece together a similar system,
but I have 0 experience with electronics. I can only imagine how satisfying it
must be to actually pull it off.
~~~
pkiller
Thanks a lot :)
It really is super satisfying to get this far, I still turn it on sometimes
just to check if it really works.
And I also had zero experience with electronics (and I still don't know as
much as I should...), so yeah I think you could piece together something like
this. :)
~~~
ArtWomb
I was a tad skeptical when I saw the title. But it looks like you really
pulled it off. It took Atari engineers like 4 years ;)
Is it fast enough for multi-input / multi-player?
~~~
pkiller
Thanks :)
The only multi-input game I have right now is Tetris for 2 players. My
girlfriend doesn't complaint while playing it (except when I win :P), so I'd
say it's pretty responsive, even with the somewhat convoluted way the CPU
communicates with the PPU and the double-buffering.
I think it will work for other types of games as well. With all the hardware,
firmware for the 3 microcontrollers, bootloader software, compiler toolchain
and tools, I still haven't gotten around to actually make a lot of games for
it.
~~~
Eek
This is crazy dude! You're an inspiration! Awesome job!
------
snazz
As much as I enjoy quickly building circuits on a breadboard like in many of
the photos, they’re _hell_ to debug, because there’s so much that can go
subtly wrong. It’s much easier with digital than analog circuits, of course,
but it still can be crazy hard to logic-probe every connection to get it all
to work. I have spent far too much time fixing little bugs in breadboarded
circuits. The toughest issue I encountered was when someone melted through
part of a big, expensive breadboard with a soldering iron and it caused shorts
on the other side of the board. I couldn’t even trust that the holes that were
supposed to be connected were in that case, and I sure wasn’t going to copy
over the project onto a new breadboard.
However, I’m not sure if there is an easier way to get quickly prototype
electronics. Opting for more ICs and a lower BoM count helps, because there’s
less wiring to do in the first place.
~~~
pkiller
I totally agree. The reason I stuck to DIP ICs was because I could fit them
into breadboards and I thought that was easier than any alternative. I was
incredibly lucky on how all the breadboards were functional. And there were a
few times where I would accidentally disconnect a wire and spend the next 2
hours trying to figure out what was wrong. All this without having a logic
analyser and not even an oscilloscope until much later in the build (they are
not that cheap). And yes the project sure is complex, too complex, but I guess
I was lucky, and I'm glad it's working :).
~~~
snazz
More power to you for being patient enough to fight through! I’m nowhere near
that good.
~~~
pkiller
I'm really not that special, don't sell yourself short.
And thanks :)
------
kotrunga
If you wrote a book explaining how to do this, teaching the concepts, etc... I
think a lot of people (or at least me) would be very interested!!!
Great job
~~~
pkiller
Thanks :)
I've kept this project to myself and would only describe it occasionally to
some coworkers and friends. I never thought that many people would find it
cool. And always thought that people with more knowledge than me would find a
lot of flaws. So it's really awesome to read yours and all the other comments.
:)
I don't think I could write a book, but I have though in writing other posts,
giving more detail in certain aspects of the console. There's really a lot I
could say about it and I only realised how much there was to say when I
started writing this.
~~~
bertman
> I don't think I could write a book
That's what you thought about building a video game console from scratch, and
look how that turned out :) Awesome work!
~~~
quickthrower2
Plus the blog post is effectively a draft of said book.
------
iheartpotatoes
Oh to built 20Mhz systems again! ... no picosecond timing skews to stress
over, no ground plane worries, no trace-related design rule violations, no
harmonic noise issues, no dynamic bus inversions to prevent victim/attacker
degradation, no thermal issues... I spend so much time debugging GHz multi-
layer circuit boards that I forget how "easy" 20MHz digital circuits can be.
This guy's project is truly inspiring!
~~~
pkiller
Thank you :)
I would love to learn more and be able to work with faster circuits like you.
Yes it's way easier to work with "slow" digital circuits I had very little
issues using breadboards and really long wires, that probably look cringy to
you and others.
~~~
iheartpotatoes
Note I put "easy" in quotes because your project was by no means "easy",
especially with no tools at your disposal but the internet!
Can I ask how you incrementally tested the video circuit as you built it? Did
you have a test pattern generator or something? I know very little about TV
signals, I spent some time trying to wire up an analog camera and just
ragequit because I lacked a good fundamental debug process.
~~~
pkiller
I knew what you meant by "easy" and I agree.
Well, I think it isn't that hard to get an analog video signal going. Having a
TV that took an RGB analog signal, meant that I could connect the
microcontroller directly to the TV (using resistors to convert the voltage and
for the color DAC).
Then all I did was get the timing right, especially with the sync signal.
Along with other resources, I used this image (
[http://martin.hinner.info/vga/pal_tv_diagram_non_interlace.j...](http://martin.hinner.info/vga/pal_tv_diagram_non_interlace.jpg)
) to understand when to set the Sync signal to 0 or to 1. When using a
microcontroller you can use interrupts or you can have well-timed instructions
to set the sync signal on or off at the correct time, I chose the latter. The
micros I used are AVR 8-bit architecture based, so most instructions always
take 1 cycle, others take from 2 to 4 cycles to execute, simply by looking up
in the manual I could calculate when certain instructions would execute and
build a program in assembly that would generate the sync signal successfully.
And if everything was right, my TV picture would switch to black, meaning it
detected a valid PAL signal.
Of course, it wasn't always this easy, for example, I had a bug when I
started, I wasn't setting one of the registers correctly and it took me a day
to solve it, I had to look at the code over and over until I figured out what
was wrong. Not having an oscilloscope nor a logic analyzer certainly made it
harder.
Another lucky thing for me, was that the TV I have (an old CRT TV) is actually
quite forgiving and even if I don't feed the timings exactly, it will still
show a picture, so that helped.
Once I had a valid signal going I tested sending pixels to the screen, and I
did use patterns to see if I had the timing right for each pixel, if I took
too long switching pixels they would get wide. So I tried some checker
patterns and stuff like that, but nothing fancy. I hope this answers your
question. It really isn't that difficult to generate a video signal and also I
was quite lucky to get it working early on.
I probably didn't do things like they should be done, but it worked for me. I
would say that best thing is have a logic analyzer or oscilloscope to check if
the signal you're generating corresponds to what it should be, that makes it a
lot easier.
------
korethr
Okay, this is cool as hell.
I've reading up about the architectures and programming of computers and
consoles from the 80s and early 90s lately, and have been itching to do a
similar project of my own, but have been kind of floundering on where to get
started. The fact that you pulled this off inspires that this sorta thing
_can_ be done.
Have you considered doing a series of blog posts going into more detail on
each section of the console and your journey in getting each bit working,
describing failures and successes both? I think such would be instructional to
other people who want to do some similar homebrew computer/console hacking.
I was kind of surprised that your PPU design was frame buffered instead of
line buffered, but I suppose I perhaps shouldn't be. I imagine the PPU chips
of old were line-buffered because RAM was expensive in the 80s, and it was a
good enough interface to control a scanline-based display. In my recent
reading about the architecture of 3rd, 4th, and 5th gen consoles, I noticed
that the 5th gen systems became fully frame buffered, as memory had become
cheap and fast enough in the early-mid 90s. And a frame buffer certainly feels
a bit simpler and more intuitive to think with than a scanline buffer.
~~~
pkiller
Thank you :)
I am considering doing a series of blog posts, I don't know how often I could
write them or if I could keep them going, but I will try. I'm not big in
social media and I have never written any posts or anything like before this
one, which is weird, I'll admit it, so all this is kind of new, but I think
I'll give it go.
Old systems used line-buffers like the Neo Geo or no buffers like the NES, for
example. So yeah, going with a frame-buffered approach was definitely easier,
but this was not the only reason I chose this way. I had a lot of
restrictions, I was learning a lot of stuff, I didn't know how to work with
FPGAs and I stuck with DIP package ICs that I could put on breadboards and
experiment. And that's why I picked the AVR microcontrollers, which are
awesome but have their disavantages. They have good performance (20Mhz), but
not many pins and I had to bit-bang things like external RAM access (actually
the PPU accesses 3 RAMs with only 32 IO pins available), which meant that it
takes "some time" to access external memory. That's why I chose 2
microcontrollers for video instead of just one, one of them could take "all
the time in the world" (one frame) to fetch information and write a frame to
the frame buffer while the other would generate the video signal and dump the
a frame to the TV. Connecting the two, I felt a double buffer was better.
I definitely would have preferred doing a more "traditional" non-buffered
render system, but this was the solution I found with what I had to work with.
I hope serves as a good explanation and maybe I'll get to explain these
details better in another post :).
------
Yhippa
I know this has been said before but this is one of the coolest things I've
seen posted here on HN. My undergrad is in computer engineering and this post
brought back a flood of writing VHDL and doing design in Mentor Graphics.
I'm going to read this a few more times. It's like reading a good book about
my hopes and dreams.
~~~
pkiller
Thanks :) (I don't mind people saying it over and over again, believe me :P)
I actually started building a much smaller video game console with a cheap
Cyclone II FPGA board (a friend of mine wanted one and I tried to figure it
out how I could make something smaller and cheaper but still retro and cool)
and I'm using VHDL, it's not exactly easy to learn but it's pretty cool, and I
find it really hard to find good resources to learn from.
If I was to start all over again, I would use an FPGA for the graphics, for
sure, at the time I just didn't know how.
And thanks again for the comment :)
~~~
moftz
You could use a Zynq FPGA that has a built-in dual core ARM processor. It has
512K of L2 cache and 256K of memory, more than enough to basically copy the
same architecture into that design. It also has ADCs built in so you can
implement analog joysticks too. It's also probably fast enough to build a
graphics processor in logic. Only thing you may want to keep is the sound
processor because there is no built-in DAC so you would need to implement that
anyway.
------
Rooster61
This is a wonderful project. Well done. You might just inspire this software
engineer to take his first crack at hardware. :)
One somewhat personal question, if you don't mind. You say you are Portuguese.
Is English a second language for you? I don't see the telltale signs of a
Portuguese -> English speaker (I have a lot of experience interacting with
Portuguese speakers, and their English mistakes are pretty uniform due to the
specific differences between the languages, esp regarding prepositions and
tense). Your article, as many have noted, is beautifully written even for a
native English speaker.
~~~
bantunes
It's almost like Portuguese people are not a uniform block, right?
~~~
Rooster61
Who said anything about Portuguese people as a uniform block? That doesn't
even make any sense as it's not only Portuguese people that speak Portuguese
lol. I only referenced those who have either chosen or were involuntarily
exposed to English as a second language who speak Portuguese natively.
~~~
bantunes
> and their English mistakes are pretty uniform due to the specific
> differences between the languages, esp regarding prepositions and tense
This is not the case. Different people make different mistakes, as any
exposure to a high-school level English class will allow you to discover.
There's a case for clusters of similar errors, but then again any generalizing
statement is true for a sufficiently high level of clustering.
~~~
Rooster61
"Their" referring to the group of Portuguese speakers that I know, not
Portuguese people as a block. That implication came about due to you alone.
The observation that you quoted is based on both my interaction with them, but
also their interpretation and observation of themselves relayed to me in
conversation(many of them are in the field of linguistics, so this type of
thing comes up a good bit).
I can see how you could draw that conclusion from my post, however. I assure
you there was no intent to generalize.
~~~
bantunes
> I assure you there was no intent to generalize.
My apologies for misunderstanding, then. And thanks for making that clear.
------
forinti
It's interesting how this kind of project has come into the realm of
possibility of an individual's pet project (a smart individual, sure, but not
a company).
I guess that the availability of information and materials through the
internet has helped a lot. And also more people have knowledge in electronics
and programming.
Great job, Sérgio. É muito giro.
~~~
krmboya
Interesting perspective. I wonder what kinds of projects a motivated
individual would be able to tackle say, 20-30 years from now.
~~~
bookofjoe
Perhaps building a world where the occupants don't realize they're in a
simulation....
------
osrec
You're a top notch hacker, from high to low level. Not many people can do what
you do. I know this is a hobby/fun project, but I really hope your current
employer/clients appreciate and reward you commensurately!
------
eldavojohn
I never comment on here. This was cool enough for me to try to figure out my
password and log in and say that you are the tinkerer/creator I wish I could
be.
~~~
pkiller
Thank you so much :)
I'm actually a bit overwhelmed with all the comments and I'm trying to answer
at least a few of them.
Just wanted to say that, even without knowing you, I think you could
absolutely be a tinkerer or creator, just choose something you would like to
build, start small and go from there. :)
------
stevenjohns
This is something I wish I'd be able to do one day, but every time I look into
getting into electronics I get overwhelmed.
Can you recommend the materials you used when learning? Books or resources
etc.
This was a really interesting read, thanks for sharing.
~~~
noonespecial
People invariable ask a form of this question every time an impressive project
like this is posted.
For what its worth(1), I think that _" learn a bunch of stuff -> go build
something cool on the first try"_ isn't quite the right approach. I think you
have to set for yourself a series of tasks and then fight like hell to figure
out how to accomplish them. Start with a single blinking led. Just google "how
to blink an led" and try to do it a few different ways.
In short the only "material" you might use to get started is google, by typing
in "how do I..." while chasing modest goals that look like they might be in
roughly the right direction. If there is a magic book out there that will
"teach you electronics", I haven't found it yet. It sounds a lot like the sort
of book that might "teach you astronauting".
"Electronics" is broad enough that it might be more like learning a language
than learning a skill.
_(1)My own meandering opinion_
~~~
dan00
> For what its worth(1), I think that "learn a bunch of stuff -> go build
> something cool on the first try" isn't quite the right approach.
There might be also some kind of misconception in the way that you're seeing
something cool and now also want to get this cool stuff. But if you aren't
interested in the fundamentals - in this case electronics - and don't have fun
learning these by simple experiments - like you described - then it's neither
worthwhile for you nor you will get to the cool projects.
------
JabavuAdams
Shine on, dude, shine on. Inspiring! I love the fact that you've been working
on this for a long time, yet 60 seconds ago I was completely unaware of it.
What other amazing things are amazing people working on out there?
------
ChicagoBoy11
This is simply incredible. I teach high school and elementary kids, and the
thing I'm always telling them and parents is how the added complexity and
modern design of software and hardware have made it so challenging for kids to
take a "peak" under the hood. Projects like this are such a wonderful way to
really spark that curiosity between hardware and software. So inspirational!
~~~
osrec
You see this with grown up devs too. Many of them have only ever learnt to
code with a full suite of build tools such as web pack, grunt and npm. They
seem lost without these things and only a few really know what's going on
under the hood. The best devs I've worked with are feel comfortable getting
things done even when those tools are taken away.
------
steve_avery
I know that I am echoing the same sentiment, but how cool is this! In the
video where you demo'd BASIC and had that ball bounce across the screen, my
jaw literally dropped, and my mouth stayed open the whole rest of the page.
Amazing :)
------
tmountain
This is incredibly impressive! You should be very proud of yourself for not
only having the knowledge to work through a project like this but also the
discipline to see it through to fruition. Hats off!
------
nonamenoslogan
THIS kind of project is why I've replaced ./ with HN in my favorites bar.
Thanks for sharing, this is an incredibly cool project!
~~~
cristoperb
In case you don't know about it, see also:
[https://hackaday.com/](https://hackaday.com/)
------
ty_2k
It finally happened. I had to sign up for Hacker News just to give props. Very
cool and inspiring project. Thanks so much for posting.
------
rkachowski
This is both amazing and terrifying.
Seeing all these breadboard cables going into a scart lead fills me with
dread. One bump of the table and the chunky scart lead flexes in an
unpredictable direction and rips out a subset of 4 hours of carefully set
jumper cables. Not to mention the EM interference that so many wires must be
generating.
This is very cool.
------
lewiscollard
At risk of being more "me too" about this, I am in awe of the hard-earned
multi-disciplinary skills that went into making this. You should be proud of
yourself :) Great project, and a great read.
~~~
pkiller
Thanks for the comment :)
I am proud and honestly reading all these comments of people like you saying
awesome stuff and also saying this inspires them makes me even prouder :)
------
wazoox
You should talk to the 8bits guy, he's on the process of creating his own
dream 8 bits machine, and it looks like you've beaten him :)
~~~
Corrado
I agree! I was just watching one of his videos the other day on creating a
brand new 8-bit computer and I think he would be super interested in your
work.
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uT9cgJorJPWu7ITLGo9Ww](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uT9cgJorJPWu7ITLGo9Ww)
------
jespersaron
Retro gaming in general is about re-enacting the consumption of games, I have
never though that you can also re-enact the development/production of them :)
Good work!
------
japanoise
This is super cool. Do you have plans to make the emulator public? If so I'd
be very interested in developing software for the console.
------
Pharmakon
This is so badass! Not only are you a good hacker, but your writing was a
pleasure to read. I wish that I could upvote this more than once.
------
indigo945
This is very cool. Doing this all on your own, especially since you're not a
computer engineering professional, is astonishing.
The one thing that irks me about the console design is the amount of RAM it
needs. In the age where 8-bit consoles were actually being built, RAM was the
most expensive part of the devices by a far margin. It is no accident that the
Atari 2600, for example, only had 256 bytes of main memory, and even the very
popular NES/Famicom ran on only 2kB of main memory. This "retro" design, by
contrast, employs a lot of RAM chips in a variety of places, even where they
are not actually needed: the CPU and PPU can be connected with different
technologies (as the article hints at), and double buffering via a second VRAM
chip is the kind of feature that classical home consoles would never do due to
cost reasons.
Don't get me wrong though, it's still an amazing project!
~~~
pkiller
Yeah I did put more memory than the old school consoles had, absolutely,
however the RAM in those days was only used for data mostly because they also
had the cartridge ROM (or ROMs) to store the code. In my case I need to load
the code to RAM, so I would always need a larger RAM.
But yeah, they also had less colors to work with and palettes (which were
costier to implement in a software renderer). And this CPU is also faster than
of those consoles. I did give myself a more confortable system in terms of RAM
and computational power.
But my aim was for a machine that would sit somewhere between the 3rd and 4th
generation.
The double buffering I understand as well, if I was working with an FPGA I
would not have gone with frame buffers, for sure, but that was the solution I
found at the time using the components I was using and it worked.
The attention this has gotten, especially here in HN is still a bit
unbelievable to me (and amazing of course). I don't want people to think this
is an optimal console design or anything. This is by no means a perfect
project or "the way to go" in terms of homebrew video game consoles, it's just
the way I found to do one while learning electronics along the way.
And thanks :)
------
geowwy
If you're interested in this you might be interested in 8-bit Guy's new
computer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayh0qebfD2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayh0qebfD2g)
~~~
83457
Yeah, his project was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this.
------
cdnsteve
Great project and kudos to you for seeing it through to completion. In our
spare moments this is often the greatest challenge. I read the whole blog
post, really cool to see the architecture diagram, would love to see more.
------
J_cst
I would like to express my deep admiration and esteem for you. The tenacity,
competence and intelligence that your project demonstrates is what this planet
needs. You are a great hacker and you have all my admiration.
------
NikkiA
I'm surprised you didn't implement a simple 8k bank switching scheme to
utilise the rest of the 128K chip, it's really just a handful of 74 _244
buffers and a 74_ 138 decoder stuck on an IO port.
~~~
pkiller
I thought about it, I really did, however, I really felt I didn't need the
extra RAM, especially for the kinds of programs and games I was aiming for.
And in this case "a handful of 74244" is a lot more complexity and it got a to
a point where I really wanted to minimize the amount of ICs I used.
Also I was felt bank switching added complexity when developing for it. This
way I can write a C program have it access data and I don't have to worry
about the code being split in more than one bank or having the data be in a
different bank than the code, etc.
It's a nice catch though, thanks for the comment.
------
bradenb
I was expecting to see an article about yet another retro pi but I’m seriously
impressed by this. Not only is the hardware really cool but your tooling and
software setup is equally impressive. Great job.
------
bitwize
This is so awesome, a righteous hack built from chips up. Just what we need
more of on a site called Hackernews.
------
anitil
Wow! I was impressed to start with, but then the article and the build kept
going, and going, and going .....
------
jason0597
This is a brilliant project. I've toyed around with electronics and
microcontrollers and I once wanted to build a full "desktop" PC with an STM32
and a PS/2 keyboard input and a VGA output. Unfortunately, school took over me
and I left it.
One thing that I am curious about though is whether you could use such a big
project as yours for employment. E.g. if you had absolutely no formal
qualifications and applied to a (relevant) company by using such projects in
your CV, would they consider you?
~~~
pkiller
First of all thanks :) And if you do find some time that project seems really
cool, I never really got to work with the STM32 micros, but they are really
powerful and cool.
Answering your question, well, even thought this is an electronics engineering
project, I don't feel qualified to work with electronics professionally, for
example, there's a lot of knowledge I lack. I do work as a software engineer
and I have done a couple of interviews myself to hire people and I do believe
this helps when applying to a job, I'm not saying it completely replaces your
qualifications but it might at least give you an edge. I'm seeing this as
someone who would want to hire someone skillful. A technical project certainly
is on the very least a nice thing to have in a CV. Of course this is just my
opinion. And if you are feeling like applying for a job based on your
projects, just give it a go.
One advice I can give is: if you do have projects of your own, big or small,
don't do it like me and keep them to yourself for years :P. I really had no
idea so many people would appreciate my pet project.
------
growlist
I love these posts of new retro consoles. I would love to see one that
maintains the audio-visual aesthetics i.e. FM chip tunes, sprite-based 2D
graphics yet otherwise pushes the hardware to the absolute max of what is
possible today. I think the zenith of 2D gaming was consoles like Neo-Geo and
Sega Saturn (and possibly a 2D arcade board whose name escapes me?) and I'm
thinking of something along those lines. Does such a thing exist?
------
jstsch
Wow! What an achievement. Putting it all together, including the YM3438 FM
chip, great work!
------
x11
This is awesome. Congratulations. Have you considered turning this into a
book, or a MOOC, or something you could sell? Many people would be interested.
------
ultrasounder
This is awesome inspiring. All from discrete ICs and fully hand optimised. You
could always make it into a kit and do a Kickstarter though.
------
lancesells
Muito bom! I'm not sure I understood more than 10% of this but I love the
concept and the determination to follow through on it.
------
vkaku
Cool hack! I'd like more details about how you removed the wires (custom board
or otherwise) or got the IC equivalents.
Ideally I'd like to see as few dangling wires when making something like this,
because I have fat finger syndrome. :) I prefer joint wires with headers in
them (like ATA cables) but that's just me.
------
Razengan
Lemme hijack this opportunity to request someone to make the console I have
always fantasized about, as a gamer and a developer:
• TL;DR: Basically an iPad with detachable controllers and open-source OS,
SDK, app store and sideloading. OR: Basically a Switch with fewer OS
limitations, sideloading and lower barriers to development and publishing.
• Nintendo Switch form factor.
• Capable of connecting to external displays and using wireless controllers,
mice and keyboards.
• A semi-multitasking OS, where only one app has screen focus but you can have
messaging etc. apps in the background, notification overlays and use a web
browser at any time. (I'm mostly thinking of the dear old PS Vita here.)
• A single, centralized app store while still allowing users to run apps
downloaded from anywhere else.
• An SDK that lets you write games in the language of your choice (but if we
had to choose: Swift, please.)
------
martin1b
Very impressive. My first thought is, why? Just use a Pi with Retro-pi.
However, you wanted to be down at the metal. That's quite a challenge,
particularly when you work alone.
I'm always impressed when someone is skilled at both hardware and software to
make a finished product. It's Woz-like.
Very impressive work.
~~~
rafaelvasco
Because the journey is more important than the destination.
~~~
pkiller
Yes the journey was very important, absolutely.
Also I had set myself a specific set of goals that obviously are not going to
make sense to most people and I understand that.
It could seem like a daunting task at first, but breaking it into milestones
actually makes it easier and makes the journey a lot better.
------
scrumbledober
This is so far above my head that I really don't have anything to add to the
discussion that hasn't been said by people who know a lot more about this
stuff but I really just have to say this is insanely cool and inspiring.
------
cronix
This is so very cool. It really took me back to the late 70's when I was a kid
and my dad built a "computer" that took up an entire 4'x6' workbench. We
played lunar lander on it, but I never knew what we were doing because it was
just a numerical LED display. It looked very similar. Just breadboards of
modules connected by hundreds of wires. One day, my little brother was playing
in the garage where the "computer" was, and discovered the wire cutters... 2
years of work gone in a few minutes. Yes, he's still alive. How, I don't
really know lol. Epoxy that thing!
------
airstrike
:O
Incrível e inspirador! Thanks for sharing this and congratulations for this
amazing accomplishment!
------
Accacin
Very impressed and you come across as such a nice person too! All the best to
you.
~~~
pkiller
(I'm actually secretly a horrible person :P)
Thanks for the comment :)
------
bpye
This is something I have set out to begin (or similar) and ended up giving up
on, multiple times. Maybe this will motivate me to finally pull something off!
This is awesome work, as someone else mentioned, I would totally buy the book.
------
netvarun
Awesome work! Here’s a similar project (done using an fpga) I saw on github:
[https://fotino.me/consolite-fpga/](https://fotino.me/consolite-fpga/)
------
raverbashing
As someone who grew up using an Z80 powered MSX, this brings back a lot of
memories.
It's amazing how "accessories" can make even an 8-bit processor go far
Projeto fixe demais!
------
jtraffic
If you made a kit and put it on Kickstarter I’d buy one. Just sayin’
------
system2
I can't remember the video post, but something similar was here few years ago
and the guy decided to make a video series for the project.
Can you do the same for a new project from start to finish?
------
bookofjoe
This post makes the failure of micropayments poignant: if one-click payments
were possible, its creator would be enjoying a unexpected inflow of cash. Real
soon now, like cold fusion.
------
convivialdingo
Just awesome!!!
I built a 68k machine (no video, just CPU, Serial I/O, RAM/ROM) in high school
and it was really nostalgic to see your incredible and awesome project!
Congrats on such an awesome build!!!
------
melbourne_mat
This is outstanding work. You should feel proud that you created something
this complex from scratch over a number of years and did not give up! I'm in
awe
------
blemasle
I'm myself a self taught electronic hobbyist who followed the same path you
did I guess (eevblog and such). I'm nowhere that good at the moment and you
sir are an inspiration to what can be achieved with dedication !
Thank you for making such a project and for putting it online for the world to
see. Your friends were right ;)
If you haven't already you should definitely add your project to hackaday.io
(the community driven part of hackaday).
------
onatm
Great work! I wondered what resource you have used when you started learning
electronics. I'd be really appreciated if you share them
~~~
pkiller
Like I wrote in another comment. There's a great book called "Make:
Electronics". And you can get started with an Arduino kit, it comes with a
book and several components. After this when you feel comfortable, you can
move one to more advanced stuff, depending on what you're interested in.
There are plenty of videos online for almost any topic in electronics, and
projects online using all kinds of components and for all kinds of purposes.
Check out EEVblog, the forums are good, and there are some videos for
beginners and also the Youtube channel GreatScott!.
And thanks :)
~~~
onatm
Thank you for your reply!
------
bookofjoe
I hope Woz sees this and says a word or three here.
~~~
pkiller
Wozniak is a legend and this no where near the quality of his work. The way he
designed the Apple II was just amazing.
Thanks for the comment :)
~~~
bookofjoe
Nevertheless, I just emailed and tweeted him the link. You never know with
Woz.... About 10 years ago, I posted a link about him on my blog. In it I
wrote that he wasn't much of an athlete in HS. Within a couple hours he posted
a comment correcting me, noting that he was a varsity pole vaulter on the
Homestead High School track and field team. OMG
------
kregasaurusrex
Thank you for sharing, this is a very cool project!
------
apple4ever
This is so freaking cool!!
I’ve been dreaming of building a Z80 computer for literally 20 years. I think
you inspired me to stop dreaming and start doing.
------
2sk21
I'm really impressed - what a great project!
------
jahabrewer
I've considered trying a project like this in the past. You've given me a
little inspiration to go do it! Great read!
------
brainpool
Fantastic and really inspiring, with a great presentation and narrative to
boot! I am impressed and a bit thrilled :)
------
newnewpdro
Very cool project, I just wish the images on the website weren't many
megabytes a piece. They can't even all load on my slow internet connection
without timing out.
It's unfortunate how often people share files directly from their camera
without first compressing and resizing them appropriately these days.
~~~
pkiller
Thanks :)
And yeah you're right...my bad...
(EDIT) It should be a bit better now, thanks for the warning
------
kriro
"""Even though I had no experience, I said to myself “why not?”, bought a few
books, a few electronics kits and started to learn what I felt I needed to
learn. """
Would you mind sharing what books (and kits) you decided to buy? I'd like to
work on my electronics a bit as well :)
~~~
pkiller
Like I've said in a few other comments (I've been trying to answer some of the
comments, everyone has been really nice and really interested), one book that
got me started was "Make: Electronics", I believe there's a second one now, I
really like how the book explains the very basics in a pratical way. Other
than that there's a lot of info online nowadays. EEVblog aside from the forums
has a nice youtube channel with videos with topics that range from beginner to
advanced, GreatScott! is another one that explains things really well. Ben
Eater has also a very interesting channel. Also check other people's projects
similar to things you would like to make. As for kits, I started with the
Arduino starter kit, it comes with a project book and a few varied components,
after that I started buying components locally or from major international
component shops and going towards the things that interested me the most in
electronics. I hope this helps :).
------
hyro010
I think this should give everyone the motivation to continue working on side
projects till they are finished.
------
ai_ia
Wow. This is incredible. Bookmarked and will be a lot interested if you could
do a series of blog post, man.
This is amazing.
~~~
pkiller
Thanks :)
I'm gonna try and keep posting.
------
craked5
Congrats Sérgio! Such a cool project.
------
albf
ok, this is the most awesome hacker news of the year so far. Really
interesting, nice to see that you were able to make it work.
Sometimes I talk to people about some ideas and they say "too dificult, find a
simpler project". Sending your post to these lazy devs.
------
chrisledet
Thanks for sharing. This looks awesome! Post likes this are the reason I
follow Hacker News.
------
alfanhui
All those wires! You should checkout dirtypcb.com to get yourself a cheap pcb
for your boards, that will make the it very special and longer lasting for
you. Designing PCB with eagle on mac or kicad on linux are great software to
design PCBs.
------
sehugg
Nice job! Are you going to do more designs in the future? Maybe Verilog/VHDL
based?
~~~
pkiller
Thanks :)
Yeah, I already have another ongoing project based on a cheap FPGA board with
a Cyclone II (quite old but it does the job), the idea is to keep it cheaper
and much less complex.
The FPGA has a Z80 implementation, video, sound and handle the game
controllers. An external Atmega328 is used to handle the SD Card and then just
RAM, an ICs for composite video and an op-amp.
I also have some ideas for a better console, maybe a generation forward and an
8-bit computer, but...these are just ideas, I doubt I'll actually get around
to do them.
~~~
niedzielski
I also made a Cyclone II FPGA implementation :] It looked like this and
supported very primitive line rendering:
[https://github.com/niedzielski/swankmania/blob/master/DSC057...](https://github.com/niedzielski/swankmania/blob/master/DSC05786.jpg)
[https://github.com/niedzielski/swankmania/blob/master/DSC057...](https://github.com/niedzielski/swankmania/blob/master/DSC05763.jpg)
[https://github.com/niedzielski/swankmania/blob/master/DSC057...](https://github.com/niedzielski/swankmania/blob/master/DSC05751.jpg)
Unfortunately, the physical hardware and later the code were both stolen in
separate incidents. I was able to recover some version of the latter I had
shared with a peer. It's posted in the same repo but probably not worth
reviewing as it's from my college days and a total mess.
~~~
pkiller
It looks awesome, congrats :)
I'm sorry the hardware and code were stolen.
And of course it's always worth reviewing, I got inspiration out of projects
just like that and besides my code is a mess too, don't worry about that.
------
tracker1
This is incredibly cool... I've thought about playing with some of the
software emulators, but wouldn't have even thought to tinker with replicating
or creating with real hardware.
------
undershirt
similar project from december (using an oscilloscope)
[https://mitxela.com/projects/console](https://mitxela.com/projects/console)
------
maharsh007
Wow is that like creating a separate shell for running the games.
------
bussiere
Amazing work :) It's very passionating to read also.
------
filmgirlcw
This is incredible! Thank you for posting and outlining all your work! As a
fellow 80s/90s kid, this is extremely my shit.
~~~
filmgirlcw
Follow-up — you’ve inspired a colleague and I to do something similar! I read
this, iMessaged her the link and said “we have to do this” (she has
significant hardware experience. I do not.) and she’s in total agreement!
So thank you again b/c this is legit inspiring and exciting!
------
mettamage
This is such a clool project.
I would be really curious for:
A porting guide
An fpga tutorial
------
cmaltby
This is absolutely amazing, well done!
------
pjmlp
Great achievement! Muito bom!
~~~
pkiller
Obrigado :)
------
madebysquares
amazing indeed, what a great read, and inspiration to go build something...
------
sexy_seedbox
Now pour coffee over the console!
( _surprised by the lack of Bandersnatch jokes_ )
Great job on this!
------
terrycody
dude, this is not a human, not belong to our universe, sollute
------
awalvie
You sir, are awesome.
------
Bitter_Function
One word, awesome.
------
m1nes
This is fantastic
------
hawkingrip
Awesome
------
mito88
beautiful project.
how does one obtain a z80 if it's not manufactured anymore?
~~~
pkiller
Thanks :)
Actually they are still being manufactured to this day, that's one thing I
didn't mention in the blog post is that you can get a brand new Zilog Z80
today, the 6502 (the CMOS version, 65C02) is also available. You can probably
get them from all the major electronic components stores (Digikey, Mouser,
etc).
------
stonecharioteer
Oh wow! This is so cool!
------
narven
Awesome work. Parabens
------
yonz
EPIC!
------
nukeop
Way more impressive than various fantasy consoles that typically involve a lua
programming environment and an artificially limited screen. Here the
limitations actually stem from the hardware being used. This is something that
only huge companies could attempt to design not that long ago.
I once made a virtual machine for a console designed from scratch as "fantasy
hardware", with its own architecture, assembly language, CPU, and so on. I'd
like to be able to bring it to life some day as you have.
------
slackfan
It's not really "retro" if you've been building it in $current-year.
/pedant
~~~
Retra
Retro doesn't mean "old." It is a style.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Maximizing ‘bang per bit’ to achieve state of the art results - RKlophaus
https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.00792
======
fheinsen
Hi HN, I'm the author of this paper.
As it turns out, I posted it and answered a few questions about it on HN a few
days ago, on this thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397444](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397444)
Please feel free to ask questions here too. I would be happy to answer them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Jingle/Sound purchasing - BrianPetro
I want to add some sound to my app. Does anyone have suggestions for purchasing audio tracks?
======
needleme
Hello, I could do something, if you want contact me. What kind of app it is
and what kind of music/soundss you'r looking for?
~~~
BrianPetro
I am actually doing a little market research. Through my friends that work on
music I realized there isn't a solid marketplace for this type of sale. I am
entering pre-release stage with my 99 designs like platform.
Thanks for the off though, it is appreciated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Top 400 Individual Income Tax Returns with the Largest Adjusted Gross Incomes - ddeck
http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Top-400-Individual-Income-Tax-Returns-with-the-Largest-Adjusted-Gross-Incomes
======
ddeck
2009 is latest reported year. For comparison:
1992 5.7
1993 6.2
1994 6.8
1995 5.3
1996 7.5
1997 7.0
1998 7.2
1999 7.2
2000 7.9
2001 10.6
2002 10.7
2003 10.8
2004 8.3
2005 7.5
2006 8.5
2007 10.1
2008 13.1
2009 16.0
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hackodex.com - Chatroulette for Hackers - rajan_chandi
http://www.hackodex.com
======
bodegajed
Awesome idea. Poorly executed design though and I see a chicken and egg
problem. How do you plan on solving this?
~~~
rajan_chandi
Thank you. We're just building this for connecting hackers. It seems to be
getting attention...approached 100 users in 3 hours. We'll figure something.
What's ur suggestion?
------
icode
1) Chat doesnt work here. Im on Firefox 7.01
2) I see a guy and he looks like hes chatting with someone. So I probably see
the wrong stream?
3) When I switch, only the text switches. The video stream stays the same.
In other words: Nothing works.
~~~
rajan_chandi
It works differently. It is not face 2 face chat. It is like you're checking
out other people when other people are checking out other people.
If you like them and their project and technology - you write them an email.
We'll add phone call feature later.
Chatroulette is good but people don't like to be passed on. There is some
negativity that we don't want on our site.
Thank you for your detailed review and feedback.
------
rajan_chandi
MVP is ready.
The idea is to connect hackers with an intent of building something cool
together by complementing skills.
We believe if this gets adoption - It can double the number of new companies
created every year.
We'll love your feedback.
~~~
tfb
Doesn't seem to work at all for me on Chrome 15 on Windows 7, so I suspect it
isn't working for pretty much everyone else.
~~~
ThePawnBreak
It's working for me on Chrome 15 on Windows 7.
~~~
rajan_chandi
Thank you. It is a little different from chatroulette. It is about check out
other people and not one on one chat. If you like them and their stuff - you
email them. We'll add video phone feature soon. Cheers.
------
rajan_chandi
Please note that - Hireplug facilitates checking out the hackers that will
matter to u based on ur project, skills etc.
The video will be served if they're actually active.
if they're not live - you can still send them an email.
------
m3znaric1337
I cant use enter to send msg, my name is empty (<>),...
~~~
rajan_chandi
It takes name from your email that you enter in the first form. e.g.
[email protected] will be presented as <name> in the chat. This helps us
associate someone with a semi real identity of the person in the form of
email.
------
cyphersanctus
Oh :( Doesnt work on the ipad.
~~~
rajan_chandi
Sorry. It's Adobe/Apple war...that doesn't let us serve you. apologies.
~~~
Samuel_Michon
Given that Flash only works properly on desktop Windows, it's not really an
"Apple vs Adobe" thing.
~~~
rajan_chandi
We'll make it work. We are just getting started with Hackodex. It would be fun
to connect hackers in real-time to build something cool.
------
iapi
cool it works for me i saw a white and green tshit hacker !
~~~
rajan_chandi
I am excited to read this :)
------
suivix
I'm on my Droid X and I don't see anything. Oh well.
~~~
rajan_chandi
At this point, we are supporting Desktops. We look forward to support mobile
devices in future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Who Needs College? The Triumph of Young Web Founders - jazzman
http://mashable.com/2007/06/13/the-triumph-of-young-web-founders/
======
willarson
Building a Web 2.0 website for a computer scientist is like building a
doghouse for an architect. Neither needed to go to college to learn how, and
therein is certainly not the value of their education.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wealthy sixteen year old teen spared jail after killing four people - legacy2013
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wealthy-16-year-old-killed-4-drunken-crash-spared-jail-article-1.1544508
======
swalkergibson
Affluenza? Seems like a huge teaching moment just slipped by.
My heart goes out to the victims and their families. An unimaginable tragedy
compounded by no justice.
------
mathattack
This just leaves me scratching my head for the other side of the story. When
things are so irrational, there has to be something, but I just can't think of
it. It's one thing to be wealthy and hire an expensive attorney, but to
actually go in front of a jury of peers to say, "Sorry, forgive me for being
rich" just seems too flagrant and irrational.
Anyone have more backdrop on the story?
~~~
wting
One rationalization is that a 10 year probation means he'll be under police
watch for a significant amount of time.
On the other hand if he was given a sentence as a minor, he would be released
in 2 years when he's 18. That leads to the question why he wasn't tried as an
adult, but IANAL.
------
louthy
"Defense attorneys said the boy suffered from 'affluenza' and blamed the boy's
parents, saying they gave him everything he wanted and didn't teach him about
consequences."
Which should have been an argument that he needed a life lesson. Even a short
custodial sentence would have done that. Now he's learned that his wealth can
buy him out of anything.
~~~
bryanlarsen
He's used up his "get out of jail free" card. The judge made it quite clear
that if he ever gets in trouble with the law again the hammer will come down.
~~~
swalkergibson
Four people are dead. Why should he get any second chances? He made his bed,
he should lie in it.
------
bryanlarsen
The key word in the title is "teen", not "wealthy". Light sentences are common
in the juvenile court system.
~~~
swalkergibson
Did you read the article? The defense presented is a bullshit justification
called affluenza. Not "boys will be boys." I can absolutely guarantee there
are teenagers serving lengthy drug sentences in Texas. This punk killed four
people. There is no way to rationalize this at all.
~~~
bryanlarsen
The teenagers serving lengthy drug sentences in Texas were sent there by an
adult court system.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Lost City of Heracleion - diodorus
https://daily.jstor.org/the-lost-city-of-heracleion/
======
caymanjim
This article is light on content and even lighter on photos. I poked around
for some better articles, and there are some out there, but I didn't find
anything worth linking. I'd love to see an extensive article from National
Geographic.
~~~
jburgess777
The British museum had an exhibition called “Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost
Worlds” which included Heracleion. There is a book about the exhibition
available and the BBC made a documentary which is available on iPlayer (for
those with a TV license in the UK)
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lss20](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lss20)
------
tetraca
I saw artifacts from this city in an exhibit, "Egypt's Sunken Cities". It's
pretty awesome. They go through the rituals and celebrations each day for a
festival for Osiris that was celebrated in the city, and later show the
cultural exchange and syncreticism between the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.
~~~
cat199
it's a very good point that is lost or buried in 'the west' (e.g. anglophone
world) that greek-egyptian connections have been present and fairly strong for
centuries and millennia and continue to this day
~~~
tamizhar
> the west' (e.g. anglophone world)
hmm... just for clarity for a non westerner, is Germany and France not part of
the default West, as they are not anglophones?
~~~
coldtea
Has Germany ever been truly part of the West?
[https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-23043](https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-23043)
~~~
cat199
I'd say yes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire)
also, this was misphrased on my part. I started to mean 'the west', but
realized I could only speak to my experience of perceptions of greek-egyption
relations in 'the anglophone west' and mis-parenthesized the west as
anglophone only.
the above article is good at pointing out that central / continental
perspective of the last several hundred years is or has been different from
that in the low countries + uk (and it's offshoots).. but seems to ignore the
historical background of this w/r/t the protestant reformation (see HRH link
^); prior to this, 'the west' was western christendom, and the general
alliance of the same countries generally continues today in modern post-
enlightement/secular form (EU/Nato).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Firm wielding Theranos patents asks judge to block coronavirus test - ohjeez
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/firm-uses-theranos-patents-to-sue-company-making-coronavirus-test/
======
TheFiend7
Unbelievable. This was the patent they were able to get. It comes with graphs
describing an "architecture" of their "unique" medical device.
Patent #8,283,155 "Specifically, the present invention provides portable
medical devices that allow real-time detection of analytes from a biological
fluid."
and is described as by the article
"This patent describes a generic architecture for a machine that automates
testing for the presence of substances in bodily fluids. In the system
described by the patent, an operator inserts a "test device" (which contains
both the bodily fluid to be tested and the reactants required to perform the
test) into a "reader device." The reader device then triggers the necessary
chemical reactions to perform the test and reports the results. Theranos'
patent isn't limited to any specific bodily fluid, reactants, or testing
protocol."
~~~
blackearl
How does such a broad idea even get a patent?
~~~
bumby
That is the schtick of patents. The goal is to get the most broad concept
approved to give you the most defensible area.
However, there is a distinction between the PTO and courts during infringement
cases. While the PTO grants the "broadest reasonable interpretation", courts
may have a more limited interpretation.
"Patented claims are not given the broadest reasonable interpretation during
court proceedings involving infringement and validity"
[https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2111.html](https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2111.html)
------
hn_throwaway_99
One thing that I hope will come out of this coronavirus event, even if just
for a short while, is that people no longer at large accept that this anti-
social behavior is just "doing business".
And I realize the article was updated to give a "royalty free license", which
is complete and total bullshit because BioFire shouldn't need a license for
Theranos' bullshit patents that never worked anyway.
We need to start naming and shaming for this kind of trolling, anti-social
behavior. And not just the company name, I'm talking about the principals and
lawyers who filed this, who are nothing but a net-negative to society.
~~~
gruez
Do you really want to set a precedent that (intellectual) property rights are
suspended in times of crisis? Maybe I have a great idea for curing coronavirus
infections, but now I don't want to pour money into to r&d for it because I
know that the government won't uphold my patents next time a coronavirus
epidemic rolls around.
~~~
cranky_coder
Yes, I do. It’s a global pandemic - if you’re thinking about profit motive at
a time like this you are part of the problem. Full stop.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yet nothing that isn't paid for, can get done at any scale. The profit motive
here was absurd. But any company that makes something useful for this
pandemic, must find a business model that works. Else it won't happen.
~~~
neaden
Ah yes, we can see this with the famously privately funded Manhattan project.
~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Remember "One small step for man, one great leap for McDonald's fries"? Oh,
and the 3M Hoover Dam?
------
blakesterz
There is an [UPDATED] on this now:
"Update: Facing an avalanche of bad publicity, Labrador announced on Tuesday
that it would grant royalty-free licenses to companies developing COVID-19
tests. The company also claims it didn't know that BioFire was working on a
coronavirus test when it filed its lawsuit last week. The company seems to be
going forward with the lawsuit."
~~~
jacquesm
Royalty free? Well, pardon my French, but _fuck them_. They are not in a
position to license anything, that would be admitting they had a case to begin
with.
~~~
dctoedt
> _that would be admitting they had a case to begin with._
And that is _precisely_ what these people are after by making the offer — if
others in the industry are willing to take licenses under a patent, then the
patent owner can brandish that fact as indirect evidence of the patent's
supposed validity.
That kind of evidence wouldn't be dispositive by any means. At trial, though,
litigation counsel will put in any evidence they can — especially "proxy"
evidence that can readily be understood by non-technical people such as judges
and jurors. (A classic example of such proxy evidence is, "They lied!")
(Patent attorney here, although I don't do that kind of work anymore.)
~~~
dirtydroog
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a patent holder doesn't defend their patent
isn't it possible for them to lose it?
~~~
wombatpm
You are wrong. TRADEMARKS have to be defended or you lose them. Patent
lawsuits can be targeted
~~~
pbhjpbhj
You also are wrong. Trademarks can be lost by non-payment of the renewal fees,
or by genericisation.
Failing to sue someone is not cause for cancellation of registered marks.
Neither in USA nor EU AFAIAA.
_This is not legal advice; it is my personal opinion and makes no
representation about any associate or employee that I might be linked with._
~~~
dctoedt
> _Failing to sue someone is not cause for cancellation of registered marks._
Not quite. _Thermos_ , _escalator_ , and _cellophane_ became generic terms,
free for anyone to use, because everyone started using them and the trademark
owners didn't try to stop them. [0] That's why Xerox famously advertised that
we should say that we made a Xerox copy of a document, not that we xeroxed it.
( _Aspirin_ also became generic, and thus free for anyone to use, _in the
U.S._ , but that's because the trademark was seized from its German owner,
Bayer AG, as part of reparations after World War I. [1] _Aspirin_ is still a
trademark of Bayer in most of the rest of the world.)
[0]
[https://www.inta.org/INTABulletin/Pages/ASPIRINBrandorAspiri...](https://www.inta.org/INTABulletin/Pages/ASPIRINBrandorAspirinTabletsAvoidingtheGenericideHeadacheintheUnitedStates.aspx)
[1] [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-1994-09-13-fi-38019-...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-1994-09-13-fi-38019-story.html)
------
achow
> _This patent describes a generic architecture for a machine that automates
> testing for the presence of substances in bodily fluids. In the system
> described by the patent, an operator inserts a "test device" (which contains
> both the bodily fluid to be tested and the reactants required to perform the
> test) into a "reader device." The reader device then triggers the necessary
> chemical reactions to perform the test and reports the results. Theranos'
> patent isn't limited to any specific bodily fluid, reactants, or testing
> protocol._
!
------
neaden
I don't see any reason that a firm like Theranos shouldn't have had all of
it's patents struck down as void once it was obvious it was a scam. What
incentive do we have as a society to allow con artists to patent things and
inhibit real research?
~~~
drstewart
Just because Theranos as a company was a scam doesn't mean literally all their
patents are invalid?
~~~
mnm1
It was either a scam or it had valid, valuable patents (logically maybe not
legally). You can't it have both ways. If the patent is valid, then it wasn't
a scam. That means it developed something of value for all that investor money
and they should be happy with it. The patent is clearly in the realm of what
was promised. Of course, legally, who knows? There's nothing logical about our
legal system, especially our patent system.
~~~
jcranmer
Just because the _primary_ effort of a company is fraudulent doesn't mean that
_everything_ it did is inherently so.
As an (admittedly absurd) example, if I set up a company that sells cures via
mana crystal magic, I could still end up with a novel, patentable process for
crystallizing exotic compounds that would otherwise tend to explode during
crystallization.
I don't know much about the actual patent in question, but it sounds like it's
a patent prohibited by Alice anyways.
------
drocer88
Article I, Section 8, clause 8 :
“The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful
Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive
Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries….”
Can't Congress , on an emergency basis, simply define "limited Times" to a
very short duration for critical therapies.
~~~
zentiggr
Congress could reform the USPTO in any way they wanted, IF they wanted to.
Let's convince them.
------
pergadad
This kind of people add nothing to the world. Can only hope they and all other
patent trolls catch covid.
------
elorm
I've got to give it to them. You have to be a special brand of riffraff to use
such an "opportune" moment to settle monetary grievances. Doesn't the Legal
system in the US(Especially the Bar) have any punitive measures for unethical
lawyers?
------
narrator
Most lawsuits filed by vexatious litigants about absurd and ridiculous things
can be thrown out of court before ever getting anywhere because the judge can
plainly see they are ridiculous.
One of the annoying things about patent law is because it is so technical, it
requires experts to determine if what the plaintiff is saying is ridiculous on
its face as the judge may be clueless about the technical aspects of the case.
------
coliveira
So, let's see: a failed company that never produced anything useful now feel
that it has the "intelectual" property rights to force other people stop doing
something that will save millions of lives? Only looking at the criminal
aspect of such a proposition, I imagine that any normal judge in the world
would throw this request away, disgusted.
------
Causality1
So, is there a Guinness record for "largest lynch mob"? These idiots seem to
be trying to break it.
------
refurb
Since I work in the biopharma industry, I've had a lot of people ask "This
company is making [vaccine, test, treatment] for Coronavirus. They'll probably
make a lot of money, right?".
My answer is "probably not". This is too big a public health issue. Any
company that slows down the process in the name of business is going to find
themselves in a PR storm and likely government action will make them give up
any control they might have.
~~~
Ididntdothis
I work in medical devices which is similar and I think they will make a lot of
money. They probably can’t push it as far as they tend to do with some cancer
drugs but they certainly won’t suffer.
~~~
refurb
Maybe I should rephrase. It's not like they'll lose money, but they'll make
much less than one would expect for such an important product!
------
mariushn
Our country's state of emergency declaration says government can take
ownership of anything it wants (eg hotels to use as hospitals, factories to
make disinfectant).
Why doesn't the same apply to patents and drugs?
------
sjg007
Well the Federal courts are suspended so the suit is currently meaningless. If
the test works and saves lives, sour grapes.
------
justicezyx
I cannot fathom the stupidity behind this...
~~~
Ididntdothis
Being a remorseless psychopath works in business.
------
Shorel
Is there a way to jail them for criminal conduct?
This is way beyond only immoral.
------
andrewseanryan
That patent is absurd. This system is broken.
------
agiri
Only in America
------
kevin_thibedeau
As officers of the court these lawyers have taken an oath to act in good faith
when advancing claims:
Morgan Chu
Alan J. Heinrich
Keith A. Orso
S. Adina Stohl
Dennis J. Courtney
Brian M. Weissenberg
Chaplin J. Carmichael
It would be nice if the California bar considered their actions in this
matter.
~~~
bertil
I’m generally surprised at how rarely a lawyer’s Bar punishes their members
for acting in a way that is immoral.
Acting against your peers or breaking confidentiality gets you out rapidly;
having personal problems, say drugs, does to — and I’m not challenging that.
But defending things that really should not seems to fail to trigger any
reaction. I guess that bad people need lawyers more but I’m curious if there
is a line or a reasoning that would help there.
~~~
naasking
> I’m generally surprised at how rarely a lawyer’s Bar punishes their members
> for acting in a way that is immoral.
Who decides what's immoral? Not too long ago, interracial dating was also
considered "immoral" by plenty of people. Plenty of injustice was perpetrated
by pushing moral agendas.
I frankly think it's crazy to be so ready to lynch others for working within
robust systems that evolved over centuries because these systems sometimes
violate their personal sensibilities. These systems have their own (evolving)
standards of ethics, and unless you understand them and the reason they exist,
don't be so quick to cast aspersions.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
>I frankly think it's crazy to be so ready to lynch others for working within
robust systems //
And I think it's crazy to excuse people for abject immorality simply because
they can lawyer their way around legal claims.
Moral consensus might get us bad decisions: I'd be interested to know how many
lawyers private life would be deleteriously effected if the bar upheld a
standard that accorded with the overwhelming moral tide of society at the
time. Sure the tide moves, but the deleterious effect of that tide beyond the
deleterious effect of the laws those people make would seem to be naturally
curtailed.
In short if the overwhelming majority found something to be immoral then it
would seem a reasonable standard to apply now. Of course in the fullness of
time we might reject those moral standards, but equally we might reject
legislation - or conversely begrudge not having been more stringent in our
moral arbitration of the deleterious actions of rogue elements in society.
In short your argument is impotent, and swings both ways in its impotency.
The main problem is defining what is abjectly immoral, what amounts to an
overwhelming majority, etc.. If we pushed a high moral standard at each
lawyer's bar, and excluded those who actually had some moral probity (false
negatives for taking actions "highly contrary to public morality") then would
it be too much cost if we then removed for more people whose actions were
shocking to public moral mores?
~~~
naasking
> In short if the overwhelming majority found something to be immoral then it
> would seem a reasonable standard to apply now.
Majority consensus does not entail truth of any kind. Your "reasonable
standard" would have seen no lawyer able to defend Rosa Parks.
> The main problem is defining what is abjectly immoral, what amounts to an
> overwhelming majority, etc.
A deceptively pleasant sounding summary of two problems so deep that they've
had no resolution despite millennia of philosophical debate. And you call my
argument impotent.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Half A Billion Blog Posts Later, Google To Give Blogger A Revamp - joshbert
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/half-a-billion-blog-posts-later-google-to-give-blogger-a-revamp/
======
qwertymaniac
I hope they also get rid of 'Blogger' profiles and make Google Profiles more
unified instead, amongst all Google-provided services.
------
mark_l_watson
That is good news. I used to host my own blog using a variety of CMS systems.
A few years ago, I switched to Blogger, and use a blog.- subdomain from my
main web site. Except for occasionally exporting for backup all my blog data
(as I do with Google docs and GMail), it is all hassle free.
------
thetrumanshow
I hope that Blogger does such a great job of this revamp that they begin to
attract users who would otherwise choose Wordpress.
If they do this, they will have an excellent platform that developers may
consider returning to.
------
kevinburke
"Blogger has been used for over half a billion blog posts (with over half a
trillion words in total)."
The average blog post is ~1000 words? I would have guessed way shorter. The
majority of posts I read are shorter.
------
petervandijck
Here's the announcement <http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/03/whats-new-with-
blogger.html>
------
u48998
Competition is always good. Finally an overdue upgrade and nice to see
continuous development. I think Blogger is one of the few Google product which
still has relevance and consistency. If only they had worked a little faster
to catch up with Wordpress and had controlled their spam earlier in the game.
~~~
maxharris
_Competition is always good._
In some of your other posts, you've said that you support universal public
education, but that seems to directly contradict the statement you've made
here.
Government schools have no competition, at least where I live. When I was a
child, my parents paid taxes, which paid for government schools. They had no
choice but to send me to terrible schools because they couldn't afford
anything else after paying their taxes (my parents were not rich).
Attempts to compete against government schools are always rebuffed by people
as being "against public education". So which is it? Competition is always
good or government schools are somehow sacrosanct, or neither?
~~~
u48998
You are comparing apples with oranges. I said competition is good because we
are talking about blogging space. Imagine if there was only one blogging
platform. It would not be a nice situation. So Wordpress and Blogger both
developing actively is a good thing for the rest of us. It would be best if
more blogging platforms could jump in and improve the space (not that there
aren't others already).
Back to education and government. You are already blaming your paying taxes as
a culprit for you attending bad government school. What proof do you have to
back up your allegation? What if there was no public school and less
government taxes and still no private school to provide you education? Do you
think private schools are only going to crop up because government isn't
charging more taxes? What guarantee is there that you'd have a good private
school in the absence of any public school? Blaming taxes for all the ills of
the government is a myth propagated by one of the political party. Check out
the countries where there are no government schools of any quality (because
people don't pay taxes and things are pretty much messed up all around). You'd
be glad you attended public school in America irrespective of the quality
compared to many other countries of the world.
~~~
maxharris
_What proof do you have to back up your allegation?_
I served 11.5 years in a government school (not the customary 13 because I was
able to graduate early). My time there was _awful_. I would have learned more
just by staying at home!
Government school didn't even help with getting into college. I had a D
average in high school, so I privately educated _myself_ for a few years in
all kinds of ways, and got into a very nice university (and maintained a 3.89
gpa in a science major). So that's how I _know_ government school is useless.
On top of that, my mother was a government school teacher. The horror stories
she has about the way they run things are awful. This was all in the the
strongest teacher's union state in the country (WI), which made the problem
even worse. (When teachers want to set up a system to rate each other so that
better teachers earn more money, the union throws such a fit that the plan
never gets heard. When teachers want to teach foreign languages before or
after school, the government school administrators throw a fit and shut it all
down. This could not happen at a private school.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Detecting Currency in Photoshop - hootx
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/
======
DrStalker
When this feature was first added to photoshop it caused a noticable delay
when opening files or pasting content from outside photoshop. It was possible
to disable the check by removing a DLL from photoshop and get the speed back
to normal.
Somehow I don't think this feature has done much to discourage serious
counterfitters, it's just annoyed legitimate users, especially as there are
pefectly legal ways in which an image of a banknote can be used.
~~~
cosmicray
> When this feature was first added to photoshop
Do you know what release that was ? Perhaps this cranky old copy of PS-5 I use
is free of that _enhancement_.
~~~
sciolistse
It was added in the first "CS" version.. Photoshop 5 is, unencumbered.
------
jwr
When you buy Photoshop, does it say on the box or in the specs that it will
choose which images it will allow you to process and refuse ones it deems
unsuitable?
Just wondering.
~~~
dsl
No. But you can return it to Adobe for a full refund. The Secret Service will
even hand deliver the check.
------
moe
...because how could counterfeiters possibly do their job when deprived of the
ability to add lens-flare
------
benjoffe
The best solution is to just make the currency very difficult to counterfeit,
eg. see Australian money which is plastic, textured and has a transparent
section; alas, this software still detects Australian notes.
------
slavak
Is this really a prevalent feature these days? I must be completely out of the
loop.
That must be the most useless "feature" I've ever heard of. What possible
reason is there for doing this?!
~~~
Zak
I understand why this might make an uneducated politician happy. What I don't
understand is the incentive for Adobe to do it. Was there ever a danger of
restrictions on image editing software?
~~~
A1kmm
Just a guess: maybe they have a contract to supply software to one or more
governments, and either a term is that they have to do it, or they don't want
to upset the government and lose the contract.
------
jodrellblank
As we add increasing amounts of software and microchips into the world around
us, are we setting ourselves up for a future in which 1-in-a-million false
positives / negatives end up happening in various systems several times a day?
_Sorry, this microwave cannot heat this product, the explosive-density-
detector has triggered the security block_
(Now that I think about it, this mirrors my real world computing experience
right now - endlessly pestered by false matches and ineffective checks. File
downloads blocked by mime type, by browser, by file extension, file opening
blocked by extension, program install blocked by UAC, program running blocked
by inaccessible internet, file copy blocked by "unspecified security flaw"...)
------
tzs
I wonder how currency designers deal with this? In the US, at least, they use
Photoshop for this.
------
athom
Coming soon to the GIMP.
And Krita.
And... ?
~~~
athom
Wow, _somebody_ was not amused. No clue why...
~~~
A1kmm
Both are GPLd programs, most likely with copyright ownership spread across
large numbers of contributors in many countries. The GPL says you can't
distribute the program unless you include the complete source code. To legally
distribute a version of a GPLd image manipulation program with a closed-source
currency detection module in it, you would need to get every person who holds
copyright in that program to agree - probably an impossible task given many
probably feel strongly against this kind of restriction. Alternatively, it
might be possible to get a law passed to exempt distributors from that terms
of the license - but that would only apply in one country, and it would also
need to override the 'freedom or death' term of the GPL.
Even if there was a Free / Open Source currency detection engine, I doubt it
would be included in the projects unless it became a legal requirement.
~~~
athom
Which was actually my point. I don't see anyone willingly adding a feature to
actually restrict functionality the way a currency detection engine
would/does. At least, in an open source project, I think there would be enough
resistance from contributors to keep such components from becoming standard
features. This I consider a _good_ thing about the GIMP, Krita, and any/every
other FOSS graphics package out there.
That said, it does present a pretty little puzzle for the FOSS community.
Given governments' recent roles in expanding the reach of FOSS software, I
don't think we can ignore the question of what happens when and where the
interests of the state conflict with those of the FOSS community. Here,
specifically, we have a case where a government may desire a "feature"
anathema to the community, but likely can't force the community to accept such
a requirement. What they _might_ be able to do is outlaw any version of the
package which does _not_ incorporate the restriction. How effectively can
could they enforce it? Not much, perhaps, right now, but we'd be fooling
ourselves to think they never could. It's all but certain they're going to
keep trying, even if it proves utterly impossible.
Thank you for responding, A1kmm. This is what I was really hoping to see: some
actual discussion of the point. In any case, I apologize for offending whoever
downmodded me. I'll try not to be quite so snarky in future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory and the butterfly effect, dies at 90 - rglovejoy
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/obit-lorenz-0416.html
======
weezus
"Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a
Tornado in Texas?"
If Schrödinger masturbates, does the kitten in the box die?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook's David Marcus on Brian Acton's Departure - AndrewKemendo
https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-of-the-story/10157815319244148/
======
natch
>the people and company that made you a billionaire
Way to try to take credit for all the value the WhatsApp founders created. I
think this FaceBook guy has got a new winner in his own boasting game about
having found a new level of low class.
------
kerng
>> And Facebook is truly the only company that’s singularly about people. Not
about selling devices. Not about delivering goods with less friction. Not
about entertaining you. Not about helping you find information. Just about
people.
That statement shows how far leaders at Facebook have disassociated themselves
with what's really happening and the negative impact the cause. It was about
the people, like 10 years ago. Now it's all about ads! Ads! People are just a
tool to sell more ads.
------
mhkool
David Marcus is trying you to forget the facts: Whatsapp should stay without
ads and Acton left because this did not happen. It already has been announced
that whatsapp will have ads, so Acton said the truth and David Marcus is a BS
spreader.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Create React/Navi App – CRA@2 with routing, mdx and static rendering - jamesknelson
https://frontarm.com/navi/create-react-navi-app/
======
yodon
I just switched a moderately complex personal project from Next.js to Navi.
The use cases aren't precisely identical but are more than close enough for my
needs. I'm super excited about the huge reduction in complexity and I got
while switching to Navi and the sense that if I have to be dependent on a
mostly one-developer npm package it will be a lot easier to wean myself off
Navi if the developer disappears in the future than it would be to wean myself
off Next.js if Next's essentially one developer disappears atsome point.
~~~
yodon
And full Typescript support right out of the box is a total win.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Patoline: A modern digital typesetting system - ulrikrasmussen
http://patoline.org/
======
jwr
I'm very glad people are doing this. The local maximum created by TeX (and its
surroundings), while producing impressive output, has kept many people from
developing any typesetting software. It was usually easier to learn how to
trick TeX into doing what you wanted, or build yet another overlay on top of
it.
A similar local maximum exists with Emacs (you might also call it a local
energy minimum, as it requires less energy to hack Emacs into doing what you
want than to write a whole new system). This has also held back editor
development for years (if not decades), but recently we started seeing
attempts at breaking out (LightTable is one example).
This is an interesting phenomenon: neither TeX nor Emacs are bad, in fact they
are both impressive pieces of software. But we could do better now, and yet we
usually don't even start, because it is such a daunting task, and it is easier
to extend existing solutions.
Best of luck to authors and contributors to this project!
~~~
mtdewcmu
Your emacs analogy has issues -- vim is another programmable editor alongside
emacs. And IDEs, especially ones like Eclipse, have similar complexity behind
a graphical interface. Should languages be replaced, or is it better that they
just grow and adapt? Look at the scale of the energy minimum around English.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
The communities that back vim and emacs would never allow for evolution in the
direction of light table or any of the other reinvent IDE projects; heck, they
can't break out of their terminal/ASCII mindset for the most part.
Technologically they could, but the community has bought into a certain set of
principles that work well but don't allow for much deviation. So new projects
come along and deviate from entrenched principles, sometimes in successful
ways.
English is quite different, it changes with time and even place.
~~~
sergiosgc
Terminal as a first level interface is not a vim mindset. It's a use case. The
primary use case.
------
Argorak
The about page gives me no idea of what it is, especially as someone who knows
TeX quite well. It starts with the single mistake all of those pages do: "It's
like A, but with B!" On top of that, B is already in A. Typesetting with
scripting? LuaTex (actually quite easy, if you know the typesetting
surroundings). More layout control? ConTeXt.
The biggest hurdle in all those systems is understanding what typesetting
actually is (in contrast to content editing or especially programming). It
comes with a completely different vocabulary. What's a strut?[1] What's a
quad?[2] What are the standard elements of typography and page layout? How are
fonts measured?
Finally: how does the system manage forward compatibility (can I still compile
my document from 5 years ago?) - scripting and modularity are features that
have to be evaluated under all those regards.
Also, I am very surprised that code examples in the reference documentation
look horrible. Isn't that what the system is there for?
That said: I love that there is competition in that space. TeX is great and
will be around for a few decades, but that doesn't mean there can't be others.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strut_%28typesetting%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strut_%28typesetting%29)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_%28typography%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_%28typography%29)
~~~
tekacs
> Can I still compile my document from 5 years ago?
Well on the About page it does have the FAQ:
> Can I use Patoline for a huge, ten years long project that I'm starting now?
> Although one of the authors has written his PhD. thesis (120 pages, in
> computer science) with it, we don't recommend it now. The reason for this is
> that small adjustements and bugfixes are being made all the time, and
> working on such an unstable system can be frustrating. However, for
> documents that are not meant to last forever in time, we would be happy to
> help you with it: feel free to contact us for help.
> Stay tuned: we do plan to release a long term supported version of Patoline
> soon.
~~~
Argorak
This was an example question.
The problem is wide, that's why I was asking about _forward compatibility_.
Even if I have long term support, what happens if that runs out? How does that
work in the presence of scripting and extensions?
TeX has a whole culture around that - even if there are no long term releases,
it is _very stable_.
For example, the LPPL even prohibited releasing changed files under the same
name for a long time!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX_Project_Public_License](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX_Project_Public_License)
------
tinco
It uses the same archaic syntax as TeX :( I was hoping they would come up with
something nice and modern like Markdown.
It seems like a cool project, OCaml is probably a fine choice although I've
never used it. But there are a few smells. The first to me was him mentioning
the project had 100.000 lines already. Now if this was C I could see why. But
this is a modern functional language. There's no 10.000 line rolled out
parsers, no hundreds of specialised general libraries.
Why is the project 100k lines? Is it an unmaintainable behemoth already?
~~~
pling
a) markdown isn't expressive enough. In fact it's pretty horrendous to edit
and separate content and layout IMHO. I'd go as far to say I prefer docbook
over markdown. It's fine for github readme's but not typesetting.
b) the problem is complicated. Complicated problems need lots of lines of
code. 100kloc isn't much. The thing I'm working on has 5.2Mloc and took 25
people 20 years to write. To the layman it probably looks like it does less
than this typesetter meaning it's a bad metric to use.
My MacTeX installation is about 1300Mb if that's any gauge.
~~~
mangecoeur
Or, it could be that TeX has been cobbled together over decades with little
design guidance or vision, resulting in a mishmash of approaches and
inefficient code.
To me almost everything in TeX feels like a hack, even if the fundamental idea
is good and the sum of all hacks ends up looking pretty good. The fact that
it's a huge hack that takes 1.3GBs to install is not a gauge of quality.
~~~
Argorak
The full TeXLive is 1.3GB large, because it ensures that the only thing you
need to build any semi-sane TeX document is this installation.
Describing TeX as Code misses the topic by a wide margin, a lot of the things
in the distribution are fonts and compiled versions of the documentation.
Bash the idea of treating TeX as code out of your head and you will find it
quite a bit saner.
~~~
mangecoeur
I don't think anything will ever convince me Tex is a sane design. For
instance, this SO on trying to set a5 paper size:
[https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/22917/a5paper-
settin...](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/22917/a5paper-setting-not-
taking-effect)
(If you thought setting a5paper would result in your output paper size being
A5, think again. _facepalm_ )
------
yannis
To quote Knuth [1] describing TeX “Think thrice before extending,” because
that may save a lot of work, and it will also keep incompatible extensions of
TeX from proliferating.
Personally, I am of the opinion that the original TeX was well 'modularized'
in 'Pascal Procedures' [1], being Turing complete, extensions such as the
LaTeX format and the countless of packages after that helped it survive and
prosper. Think of a macro that you define as an easier way than programming a
module in JavaScript and it doesn't need a half a dozen tools to set it up.
\def\#1{\TeX\ is alive says #1.}
Nevertheless, provided the lessons learned are incorporated I applaud any new
initiatives in more modern languages. Whatever is produced will however, need
to be able to parse TeX, otherwise it will not be easily adopted by the
community.
[1] [http://www.tug.org/texlive//devsrc/Master/texmf-
dist/doc/gen...](http://www.tug.org/texlive//devsrc/Master/texmf-
dist/doc/generic/knuth/tex/tex.pdf)
~~~
JadeNB
> Whatever is produced will however, need to be able to parse TeX, otherwise
> it will not be easily adopted by the community.
This is a huge barrier to raise, since _parsing_ TeX is the same as
_typesetting_ TeX—the meaning of a macro later on can be affected by a macro
now. You can't even just execute the macros in a vacuum, since the meaning of
a macro can depend on things like the current page number.
------
todd8
The insight (made here by jwr) that TeX and Emacs and Vim are local maximums
is a great observation that explains why we are stuck with these three
programs. I've used these programs for over a quarter of a century and often
wished for shiny, new replacements. Younger HN readers may not realize just
how old these programs are.
How in the world did Bill Joy come up with Vi in 1976? It lives on today as
the velociraptor of editors, Bram Moolenaar's Vim. I use the T. Rex of
editors, Stallman's Gnu Emacs, another dinosaur of software, yet unsurpassed
in scope and capability. These are great at what they do and so flexible and
extensible that it's difficult for any new project to catch up.
TeX is different. Knuth, one of the greatest computer scientists of all time,
created TeX. His choices for development tools were meager, but with the help
of /literate programming/, essentially invented by Knuth to write TeX, he
wrote TeX using the Pascal programming language in the late 1970s.
TeX, like Emacs and Vi/Vim, has an extension language. TeX has a powerful
macro system that allows it to be extended. LaTeX is a set of TeX macros that
most users use to create documents. The number of macro packages written for
TeX to support every imaginable kind of typesetting (chess notation and
boards, music, etc.) is staggering. This accounts for the large size of TeX
installations. One can easily download and install every package ever
available and be ready to typeset anything. The core TeX program, however, is
composed of 1376 extremely well documented paragraphs (small code fragments).
It is a pleasure to read through Knuth's literate code, all available as a
beautiful book (naturally typeset in TeX).
The features of TeX were effectively frozen in 1985. Knuth kept track of every
error in TeX during its development. Since 1985 there have been less than 100
errors found in TeX [1].
The open-source communities around TeX (and Emacs and Vim) make it is
difficult for any new project to develop the features that make it worth
switching. This is the uphill climb that is facing Patoline. Will it succeed?
I'm not sure because many others have tried and failed. Lout was a really good
attempt [2], but it seems to have lost steam [3].
[1] [http://texdoc.net/texmf-
dist/doc/generic/knuth/errata/errorl...](http://texdoc.net/texmf-
dist/doc/generic/knuth/errata/errorlog.pdf) [2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lout_(software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lout_\(software\))
[3] [https://www.ohloh.net/p/lout](https://www.ohloh.net/p/lout)
~~~
hyperbovine
I would argue it's not so much the community (I'll bet there are maybe a dozen
people who understand the source well enough to improve it) so much as the
fact that TeX is feature complete, essentially bug free, and written by a
genius. It really is an amazing piece of software which has no equal, even if
you wanted to spend thousands of dollars. Why are we intent on replacing it
again? I understand the gripes about the language, the error messages, and so
forth. So design something that compiles down to TeX, not unlike what the
Java(Script) people have done. Reinventing TeX just seems like an exercise in
futility. (Nice duck logo though.)
~~~
thinkalone
The duck is a (mistaken) interpretation of an early French automaton:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digesting_Duck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digesting_Duck)
------
ShellfishMeme
I'd recommend adding some more information on the index page. When I arrived I
tried to scroll down hoping to find out what this is about, but instead I had
to go to the 'about' page myself.
Then I tried to read the 'about' page but the text is very small and the lines
very long, so it's hard to scan for relevant information. The bullet points
make a couple of claims about what Patoline excels at, but still no code
examples can be seen that could give me a feel for how Patoline actually
works.
I had to go to 'documentation' and click a small insignificant looking link to
actually get to see an explanation of Patoline and some code examples... in a
PDF file.
I understand that it's cool to write the tool's manual using the tool itself,
but if I come to the website and want to evaluate quickly whether this is
interesting and could replace LaTeX for me, I need a quick overview directly
on the index page, together with some examples similar to the one on the
wikipedia LaTeX page
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX#Examples](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX#Examples)).
~~~
Argorak
It's not only cool, the documentation is the primary test case for many of
those projects.
------
Signez
Using OCaml and darcs won't help this project to find contributors outside
French academic world. It's unfortunate, IMHO.
------
silentvoice
Will it work sanely with Make, handle modular documents better than TeX, etc?
The biggest frustration with me and TeX isn't the quality of its output or its
extendability, it's simply difficult for me to work it into a reproducible
workflow without a lot of effort on my part.
With all of my tools that I use that somehow depend on each other I can always
glue together the results of my work with one tool to the input of another
tool via Make, minimizing human error in translating results over myself, but
LaTeX (combined with tools like BibTeX) somehow always breaks this model,
which can be very frustrating since LaTeX is such an important component of
mathematics research.
------
waynecochran
It's going to take da Vinci like talent and a herculean effort and to build
anything 10% as good a TeX. Knuth, the pre-eminent computer scientist, devoted
10 years of his life to type setting to create MetaFont and TeX. Being able to
"write scripts" for it ain't enough. Anyway... prove me wrong.
~~~
rst
A lot of that time went into the development of not the code per se, but
algorithms that newer code could reimplement. Perhaps in simpler forms on
newer machines. Conventional TeX has a hard time optimizing placement of page
breaks because its data structures hold only one page at a time, and discard
its contents before starting the next, due to memory limitations of computers
from the 1980s. Those limits no longer apply, which could make it a lot easier
to code strategies for eliminating "widows" and "orphans" \-- situetions in
which only one line of a paragraph is stuck at the top or bottom of a page.
------
seanmcdirmid
I think if someone was to redo TeX, that it would be really nice to see an
incremental type setting system. That means modularity not just at the code
level, but also with respect to how the run-time data structures are dependent
on each other, and the ability to "reflow" text on a change in a way that
required minimal changes to the previous flow of the text. Then we could have
something that was Wysiwyg, interactive, and produced output that looked
fairly decent.
~~~
Argorak
"Fairly decent" is a fairly low bar for a typesetting system.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Ok, at least as good as TeX then, something much better than Word. I mean, we
are getting good with doing incremental computation (e.g. FRP, SAC, etc...),
why not apply these techs to the problem of typesetting.
------
pestaa
Hm. The rendered patobook.pdf documentation wouldn't display in the browser;
after downloading and opening it in Acrobat Reader, it said some embedded font
couldn't be loaded completely, I guess all monospace formatted text was lost:
see screenshot at
[http://i.imgur.com/MhkPqRR.png](http://i.imgur.com/MhkPqRR.png)
I'm very glad to see this project happen but this wasn't a good first
impression.
~~~
cdash
Seemed to work fine for me in Chrome on Windows.
------
oftenwrong
Is "line" in this pronounced as in "gasoline" (lin) or "waistline" (laɪn) or
"adrenaline" (lɪn)?
edit: Like gasoline. "Its name is to be pronounced like Pa-toe-leen, and it is
the frenchifcation of the translation in portuguese of a joke in english"
~~~
copperx
I'm pretty sure the pronunciation comes from Count Duckula's translation to
Spanish.
Listen to the first 5 seconds of this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AR58I40_Os](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AR58I40_Os)
That's how you pronounce it.
------
cevn
I was ready to like this, but I ran into a lot of problems installing
camlimages on os x. Anyone else? I'll keep working on it later.
------
funkaster
Interesting approach. Even though as for a replacement for TeX, I always
expected Lout[1] to gain popularity. I haven't used it in years, but I
remember being really easy to learn and way lighter than TeX.
[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lout_%28software%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lout_%28software%29)
------
ajarmst
Folks, stop trying to solve problems that have already been solved. Especially
if it was Don Knuth who solved it. When that guy solves something, it _stays_
solved.
In this case, you're up against something Don Knuth solved and then Leslie
Lamport made more useable. You really want to compete with those two?
~~~
sdp
It's a mistake to think we can't improve on something because someone smart
built it. In my academic community, everyone fights with LaTeX and I can only
say with confidence that one person I know has mastered it. Everyone else just
hacks at their document until it's close enough.
~~~
bithive123
That could also describe the process by which the majority of computer code is
written when you consider everything that involves coding these days. The
situation is not likely to change with new tools.
------
pmeunier
Thanks for your interest in our project, that hasn't released any version 0.1
in three years, and yet manages to concentrate a lot of (maybe necessary) love
and hate.
First, about the technical points:
\- Ocaml has been backward compatible for the last 20 years, which is why we
rely on it for backward/forward compatibility. After some time, we obviously
hope to release a forward compatible version of Patoline. As a side note, I've
got several papers written in LaTeX on my hard drive, that don't compile
anymore after only eight years.
I imagine that debugging and improving packages written in TeX is hard enough
that authors who manage to do it do not bother about compatibility. With the
exception, of course of those "who know TeX and LaTeX pretty well" (at least
until the day they write their first package, like I did shortly before
beginning Patoline).
Moreover, there is something called "a type system" that OCaml uses, that
makes your code more likely that any other non-functional language to remain
stable through time. I know there are people who do not acknowledge the
existence of this, and confuse it with older systems such as type checking in
C, or who believe functional programming is a parenthesis writing competition.
I would like not to use the kind of authority arguments I've seen in this page
to convince you. Trying ocaml or haskell is a good way, but you need to be
willing to be convinced, which is usually not the case in this kind of
discussions. At least it makes sure that the program cannot run into an
"undefined behavior" without the author being aware of it, something that my
own daily experience with programs such as svg2tex does not do.
\- In our first project meeting about Patoline, it was decided to _not_ choose
a definitive language. This is probably the only design choice. Of course
there is a default one (intended to be forward compatible, if you are still
following), but you can change it. Like markdown? Write a compiler to Ocaml,
it should not take more than a couple of hours, and you won't have to rewrite
20000 lines of code to handle the crappy font formats that Microsoft, Apple
and Adobe have designed for you, nor 3000 to output reasonably portable PDF
documents that most printers can print (maybe this is an explanation of the
size).
\- Knowing quads, struts, \expandafter and \futurelet is cool knowledge. Did
you also known that TeX uses its own fixed-point algebra? While these are
certainly "inventions of a genius", using 21st century numerical methods to
adjust spaces is efficient use of science and technology, and that's what we
do. By the way, have you heard of IEEE-754? It doesn't begin with a slash,
I've seen it used at Caltech, probably Stanford knows about it too.
Now about other points:
\- What is "feature-completeness"? I know "Turing-completeness", which is the
ability to simulate any Turing machine. On the operating systems we have
today, "Turing^OS-completeness" (the ability to simulate any Turing machine
with the OS as an oracle) is probably a great feature too. This is something
Patoline has, that TeX doesn't. Querying online bibliographic databases in
Patoline is a matter of writing a few lines of OCaml. In TeX, it means writing
pascal code, for a variant of pascal that can talk to the OS (web2c probably
can, I'm sure, although it was not written by a genius).
\- We also seek to provide a development platform for new typesetting
algorithm. While Knuth may be regarded as "the man who invented dynamic
programming", he was ten years old when Bellman discovered it. Today, we have
other methods, such as approximation algorithms. We could even imagine
learning good typographic choice using methods from machine learning. There is
space for innovation on this planet, and although I use emacs and vim, and
even pdflatex on a daily basis, I do not consider them a full stop to
software.
~~~
Argorak
While this is half an answer to my post, I am incredibly put off by the tone
and will not take a second look at your project.
Yes, I know what a modern type system is and what merits it has. I also know
that TeX has it's own fixed point math. But I am not convinced by your product
either and this is certainly not helping. I do also now know that one of the
authors is incredibly snobbish about his product, which I have a strong
aversion against. And this is where I'll stop.
~~~
pmeunier
You're right, but then if your point was to start a discussion, maybe the best
way to do it was not to start looking down at our project and assume that we
are total ignorants who worked five years on something without any idea of
what we were doing or what others did before.
Your first comments were really offensive, but I recognize that the tone of my
post also reflected the 95% of negativity in the comments I've heard since we
started it, the vast majority of them without even looking at what we're
trying to do (we've even had comments like "stop using your favorite text
editor / version control system / operating system and use mine instead"!).
What was your point in trying to destroy an embryo project? Didn't you expect
such a reaction from their parents?
~~~
Argorak
I think I see where this went of track and I think this is a grave
misunderstanding.
"The biggest hurdle in all those systems is understanding what typesetting
actually is"
Read it as:
"The biggest hurdle in all those systems (for the user) is understanding what
typesetting actually is"
Many programmers approach TeX (and patoline?) as programming environments like
programming languages. They are not, even if they allow to build new
components (maybe using scripts). I wanted to illustrate the challenges from
that perspective.
I did not want to fundamentally criticize your ability to tackle those
problems or imply that patoline is not fitting to those problems. My biggest
problem was that the About page gave me no idea about your system as a
typesetting system, only as a programming environment and some of that gives
me a bit of a headache. This is by the way shared with many other projects, my
pet peeve is a programming language that mentions it's own name only once on
the About page and Haskell thrice ;). Be more self-centric! What is patoline,
not compared to TeX?
If you read anything else out of that - I am sorry for phrasing that wrong.
Still, as a maintainer of a software that is often criticized in similar
fashions (we build a web framework in Ruby that is not Rails), I would
recommend to take the criticism as a less emotional matter. Software is rarely
our actual baby and it often helps more to just discuss the actual points of
the criticism or check whether there is a misunderstanding (this, in this
instance, also applies to me).
As a final word: Sorry for what came out of that. I understand your
frustration and that you needed to write it off your chest. My reaction was a
bit knee-jerk as well.
~~~
pmeunier
Oooooh! Ok, my mistake, sorry for the misunderstanding too.
I agree that we should reformulate the website, that was written two years ago
now. I'll try to do something, given all the comments on this discussion,
including yours and others'.
~~~
Argorak
Great! Feel free to ping me on twitter, same username, when you have
something. I'd really like to see it.
Happy that this is settled, too.
------
deskamess
I am still not clear what the output format is - is it a set of html pages
that can be hosted on a server? A compiler produces a binary and the binary
generates document(s)?
I am looking for an authoring tool where I can create the text of a tutorial
but have Bret Victor like sections of interactiveness that illustrate the
details of the text. The end format would be a set of web pages. I could code
it all up with html+javascript+backend but I am wondering if there is an
existing tool to do all this (some sort of task specific editor).
~~~
fmoralesc
There's R Markdown:
[http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/authoring_shiny.html](http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/authoring_shiny.html)
(Found about this today because someone requested R Markdown support in [vim-
pandoc]([https://github.com/vim-pandoc/vim-pandoc/](https://github.com/vim-
pandoc/vim-pandoc/)), which I manage. The result was [vim-
rmarkdown]([https://github.com/vim-pandoc/vim-
rmarkdown/)](https://github.com/vim-pandoc/vim-rmarkdown/\)))
------
mangecoeur
It's about time someone gave this a bash - though to some extent this covers
the same ground a Pandoc.
However, some of the technological choices seem... unwise if the aim is a
lively community project. Version control for instance - whatever technical
advantages Darcs may have are heavily outweighed by it's much smaller user
base (having to learn a new VCS just to contribute to a project is a massive
pain!)
------
jeffreyrogers
What are the advantages of this over TeX/LaTeX? I already know LaTeX quite
well as will most people who are looking for a typesetting system.
~~~
a-nikolaev
It seems, Patoline's syntax resembles LaTeX syntax a lot, but it lets you
embed code more easily. And you can use OCaml or some it's subset instead of
TeX's \if, \loop, etc [1], which is probably a good thing.
\begin{genumerate}(AlphaLower, fun s -> [tT (s^". ")])
\item First item
\item Second item
\end{genumerate}
Which produces:
a. First item
b. Second item
[1]
[http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Plain_TeX#Conditionals](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Plain_TeX#Conditionals)
------
adrusi
I find it ironic that a website for a typesetting tool requires me to zoom in
to be able to comfortably read it.
It looks like it could be an improvement over TeX. I like that modularity is a
focus, because that's where TeX really suffers. Hopefully the typographical
elements will actually be composable and extendable rather than having the
loose facade of such functionality found in TeX.
------
mikevm
> The new typesetting algorithms of Patoline places your figures at an optimal
> position decided by the author, not by the system. It can optimize your
> document in several ways, including reducing its size to fit the standards
> of a conference paper.
I guess this means you could use this to force a résumé to fit on one page!
------
mintone
I haven't any input on the actual product - it's not something I have a need
for but spell check the site! The about page is full of mistakes.
> ...powerful tools that have been developped to process languages...
I assume the author is French from the mistakes, just run it through an
english spellcheck platform.
------
robinhoodexe
Interesting, it'd be nice if it was available on homebrew and not just
macports though.
------
apepe
It'd be nice to see this working in Authorea as well:
[https://www.authorea.com/](https://www.authorea.com/) Have you had any luck
rendering Patoline to HTML5? Via Pandoc?
------
Tepix
What's wrong with their web page? The font they picked looks terrible on both
Chrome and Firefox, even when zoomed.
~~~
theon144
It's Alegreya, and I find it quite beautiful.
Quoting Google fonts[0]: 'Alegreya was chosen as one of 53 "Fonts of the
Decade" at the ATypI Letter2 competition in September 2011, and one of the top
14 text type systems. It was also selected in the 2nd Bienal Iberoamericana de
Diseño, competition held in Madrid in 2010."'
Maybe your font rendering is broken somehow?
[0]:
[http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Alegreya](http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Alegreya)
------
amirmc
It's great to see this here. I meant to try out patoline over a year ago but
it wasn't quite ready. This prompts me to take another look. I do remember the
devs being very approachable and helpful (which is big plus for me).
I'd encourage the devs to put this in OPAM proper though. Having to add a
remote seems like unnecessary friction. Having said that, it's not clear from
the site what the current release is.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Implementing Traceroute in Go – Blog - rbanffy
https://blog.kalbhor.xyz/post/implementing-traceroute-in-go/
======
alrs
> Its a script that traces the path to a host
No, it's not a script.
~~~
Groxx
What is a script, but a miserable pile of code.
I mean, really, wherever criteria you use to draw the line, there will be
something that appears obviously miscategorized to a human.
------
spicyramen
Good very well known information and command, don't see much innovation just
reinventing the wheel
~~~
eat_veggies
There is value in reimplementing things to learn how they work
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
All the Ways You Can Dispose of a Dead Body - smb111
https://lifehacker.com/here-are-all-the-ways-you-can-dispose-of-a-dead-body-1836055910?rev=1562106963868
======
lecarore
Title feels clickbaity, this is about your options for your own body
~~~
nmc
Title feels clickbaity because it is missing "(Legally)" between "Can" and
"Dispose"
dang (admin) or lecarore (submitter) could you please edit?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook are frantically trying to find out who leaked thousands of documents - colinprince
https://reclaimthenet.org/facebook-documents-leak-courts/
======
spinningslate
It’s difficult not to see the potential for divine retribution in this.
Facebook, alongside Google, spearhead the “privacy is dead consumers, all your
data are mine” assertion.
But someone dares to share _FB’s data_? Release the wolves.
Until/unless the actual docs emerge, we can only surmise that there’s a few
‘interesting’ gems in there - hence FB’s attentiveness to preventing
dissemination.
I hope they are published irrespective of content. If we as individuals have
no say in Facebook’s surveillance of us, there’s a modicum of comfort in
knowing we can surveil it.
Reap as you sow Mr Zuckerberg.
—- EDIT: fixed grammar.
~~~
hkai
Do you see any possible difference between providing a free service in
exchange for data useful for targeting ads, and illegally leaking internal
company documents with the intent to hurt the company?
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> a free service in exchange for data useful for targeting ads
Do you intend to argue that this is all Facebook have done with user data?
------
Mark222
Is reclaimthenet.org a real news website? None of the writers looks real and I
can't find any information on the website on who edits it and fund it. Some
articles reek of bias
~~~
jacquesm
Said Mark222.
~~~
rusk
40 Karma points. Could be anybody!
~~~
chongli
I can think of one Mark it might be!
~~~
rusk
LOL
------
na85
Anyone got a link to a mirror of the leaked docs?
~~~
enthd
[https://github.com/BuxtonTheRed/btrmisc](https://github.com/BuxtonTheRed/btrmisc)
------
greenleafjacob
Article is from April 2019.
~~~
ironic_ali
Are facebook still "digital gangsters"?
~~~
kerblang
You can buy the t-shirt and be one too
[https://www.spreadshirt.com/digital+gangster+unisex+tri-
blen...](https://www.spreadshirt.com/digital+gangster+unisex+tri-
blend+t-shirt-D12245171)
------
xkcd-sucks
If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear from sharing data :)
------
Chris2048
Is the pool of people with access that big? Then it's their own damn fault.
~~~
nimrody
Why fault? If Facebook is internally transparent and allows all/most of the
employees access to all internal documents -- that's good transparency and
good company culture in my eyes.
It does put a lot of responsibility on employees: Don't leak internal data,
but do express your opinion if something doesn't look right (and yes, perhaps
even leak the offending documents if something illegal or clearly unethical is
happening in the company)
~~~
Chris2048
> that's good transparency and good company culture in my eyes
wrt sensitive information? Possibly even information relating to customers, or
technical detail that can be exploited?
~~~
badfrog
> Possibly even information relating to customers, or technical detail that
> can be exploited?
Yeah for sure.
Sometimes you need customer information to do your job (e.g. to repro a bug
that only one person has seen). Facebook does a good job of making this
available easily and quickly people who need it, while auditing and firing
anybody who abuses the privilege to access data that is not strictly needed.
Regarding technical issues, you want as many people as possible to know about
it so that it gets fixed quickly, other people know how to avoid the same
mistake, and you build a culture of not keeping your own mistakes to yourself.
~~~
Chris2048
I didn't say technical issues, I said detail e.g architecture. Not all
architectural issues are bugs that can be fixed if known.
In any case, building a "culture of not keeping your own mistakes to yourself"
won't help when a bug is discovered by someone who intends to exploit it.
0-days borne from internal disclosures are not a "culture" problem.
------
dfc
It is kind of strange that the author messed up is/are in the title but not in
the first sentence.
~~~
chrisseaton
> the author messed up is/are
Facebook are a group of people. So you say 'Facebook are' in many countries.
In the US groups of people like companies are considered a single person in
their own right. So you say 'Facebook is' in the US.
Is't not 'messing up'. It's a cultural difference.
~~~
dfc
So then it seems like using "is" in the first sentence would be strange? I do
not understand why the usage would not be consistent.
> Facebook _is_ trying really hard to plug...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MiniZinc: free and open-source constraint modeling language - bjourne
http://www.minizinc.org/
======
Macuyiko
Every time some OR or constraint programming language comes up, Håkan
Kjellerstrand is an obligatory mention. He has a whole page dedicated to
problems and examples for those, including MiniZinc:
[http://www.hakank.org/minizinc/index.html](http://www.hakank.org/minizinc/index.html)
~~~
placebo
Yes, an impressive set of problems solved with an impressive set of solvers.
Quite a bit of experience stored on that site.
One thing I'm interested to know (as someone with less experience in
constraint programming), is when does one employ constraint programming
engines like Choco, Gecode, MiniZinc etc, vs. when metaheuristics (such as
simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, etc.) are a more practical solution.
Is there a rule of thumb regarding the size search space, type of problem etc.
?
~~~
jahewson
Constraint satisfaction is NP-complete and for optimization it’s NP-hard. In
theory that means it’s going to be equally hard to determine how many steps
solving the problem takes as it is to simply solve the problem.
Local search is always going to outperform global search but there’s no
guarantee of a solution or an optimal one. So it really depends on your needs
and how long you’re prepared to wait. Modern CSP solvers can handle
impressively large problems with multiple thousands of clauses (1m+ for SAT),
but it really depends on what your constraints look like.
------
jsjolen
A constraint solver typically works by:
1\. Having a finite set of variables with a finite set of possible values
2\. Having a finite set of propagators which are monotonic on variables (that
is, it either reduces the amount of possible values for a variable or does not
(it never adds).
3\. A space describing a full set of variables and propagators
4\. A way of reducing the amount of values when all propagators have hit a
fixpoint for some space.
5\. A way of rewinding state when some variable runs out of possible values
And then it basically (BASICALLY) runs this loop:
while(!solved(space)) {
if(failed(space)) {
rewind(space);
}
while(!fixpoint(space)) {
for(p in propagators(space))
{ p(space);
}
}
make_choice(space);
}
It's mainly used for solving NP-hard problems by being smart when attacking
the full search tree.
~~~
sevensor
So what differentiates the solvers then? Is it in how they apply the
propagators? I'm interested because I naively wrote the exact loop you just
posted, trying to solve a very hard problem. I spent ages trying different
heuristics, but I knew I was floundering. Then I discovered Z3, which solves
the problem in a tiny fraction of the time. It seems like pure magic, and I'm
keen to understand how it works.
~~~
afpx
I haven’t used all the different solver engines, and I haven’t kept up with
the field, but many years ago I had a license to IBM ILOG CPLEX, and it was
interesting how much faster it was than some others. Gurobi is also very fast
(I think they were started by the people who sold ILOG CPLEX to IBM), but
haven’t benchmarked it vs CPLEX.
~~~
sevensor
So I haven't looked deeply into the capabilities of Gurobi and CPLEX, but I
was under the impression that they focus on integer linear programming. How do
they do with problems for which finding a feasible solution is very difficult?
------
dfan
There's a good MOOC on Coursera on applied discrete optimization that uses
MiniZinc: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/basic-
modeling](https://www.coursera.org/learn/basic-modeling)
------
Fiahil
Fun fact: We're using MiniZinc and Gecode in production code to solve
volume/product puzzles on oil tankers.
------
trex987
Tried to use MiniZinc to write a model checker [1] for c programs a while back
[2]. Essentially checking the equivalence of c functions that use only bit
operations. It basically translates the programs into minizinc, then attempts
to derive a case where the same input results in differing output. Was a fun
way to experiment using the constraint solver for a practical application,
though unfortunately didn't work as well on larger more complicated functions.
1)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_checking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_checking)
2)
[https://github.com/dbunker/ArchStatMzn](https://github.com/dbunker/ArchStatMzn)
~~~
hairtuq
I'd expect a SMT (Satisfiability modulo theory) solver like z3 to work better
for this use case, might be worth giving it a try. E.g.
x = z3.BitVec('x', 32)
y = z3.BitVec('y', 32)
i1 = x | y
i2 = ~(~x | ~y)
s = z3.Solver()
s.add(i1 != i2)
if s.check() == z3.sat:
print "found counterexample"
print s.model()
else:
print "always equal"
------
phkahler
People need to specify what type of constraint their solver handles. It's a
rather large space, and to not even mention what type of constraints on the
page is a major oversight.
~~~
Jeff_Brown
Hear, hear. Is this good for optimization problems over the reals, or only
finite-domain problems? If the former, can it solve nonlinear problems?
~~~
hakank
Some of the FlatZinc solvers can handle (nonlinear) finite-domain problems,
and some just linear MIP problems with floats.
Some solvers, e.g. Gecode and JaCoP, can handle nonlinear problems with floats
as well as finite-domain problems.
~~~
nurettin
_the_ hakank?
~~~
hakank
:-) Yes.
------
udkl
Whenever I come across a post about constraint solvers, I refer back to this
article for a great introduction to the domain - complete with examples and
different progressive approaches - [http://www.jasq.org/just-another-scala-
quant/new-agey-interv...](http://www.jasq.org/just-another-scala-quant/new-
agey-interviews-at-the-grocery-startup)
------
verifex
I've never heard of constraint programming languages before, and I kind of
wish I had, because I recently had a problem where I needed to sequence a
bunch of elements based on a lot of arbitrary rules. Sequencing based on one
rule was easy, but applying all simultaneously was a huge PITA, and resulted
in much headaches; this tool looks like it could have solved the problem
quickly. Definitely putting this in my bookmark tool-set for future use.
------
forkandwait
I would love to hear other applications of optimization techniques to HN
readers.
(I used constrained quadratic optimization to fit transition matrices to
population data for my dissertation, and for some other demographic estimation
projects.)
------
crimsonalucard
What is a constraint modeling language exactly? I briefly looked at the first
example in the documentation, and it looks like you specify a problem and some
type of solver solves the problem automatically? What algorithm is it running
exactly?
~~~
jahewson
“Constraint Programming” refers, for the most part, to the solving of finite-
domain problems via backtracking and constraint propagation and is typically
concerned with performing a complete, global search of the solution space.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constraint_satisfaction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constraint_satisfaction)
~~~
crimsonalucard
I like this answer. However, by solution space do you mean domain space?
~~~
jahewson
Yes, sorry, the search space.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My Personal Hero: Robert Sapolsky on Rudolf Virchow - allthebest
http://nautil.us/blog/my-personal-hero-robert-sapolsky-on-rudolf-virchow
======
m0llusk
It is worth noting that Professor Sapolsky has many informative lectures from
his popular Stanford courses and various public appearances on YouTube mostly
on the Stanford channel.
------
gragas
Robert Sapolsky is a fantastic human being and a great lecturer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The 'Fly' Has Been Swatted - zerny
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/06/the-fly-has-been-swatted/
======
rdtsc
The thing here that what was being exploited is irrationality of the system
that uses these made up "Wars On <X>". Whatever this <X> is, it will always be
boon for psychopaths and will be a exploited.
War on Terrorism -- send tips about so and so is building bombs or talking
about jihad.
War on Drugs -- plant or send someone a drug package and notify police. One
worse, SWAT them. With good luck they will be shot by the cops.
War on Kids via Zero Tolerance -- plant a piece of toast looking like a gun in
someone's bag and tell a teacher.
War on Electronic Crime (Hacking) -- plant a DoS tool pointed to a .mil
website on enemy's machine or network.
The list goes on. Of course in this case we have a good ending so that is
encouraging. But the scary part is not that someone would wish all this harm
to another person and come up with scheme like this, but that knowing how
prosecution works, how Wars On <X> work, this seems like a very close call. It
is the lack of faith in justice and the system to act rationally that is
scary. Maybe the neighbor who is building bombs got a visit from FBI and they
couldn't charge him. But they visited his work. Scared his kids. And
ultimately put him on a watch list so from then on they get harassed every
time they travel.
~~~
slapshot
But one of the most effective tactics of The Fly was a traditional SWATting
based on a false phone call that Kreb's wife had been murdered in the house.
13 police officers showed up, heavily armed, because of the War on What?
Murder? Domestic Violence?
All of this long predates any War on ____. Your examples could just as easily
be "send tips that so and so plans to rob a bank." There's no "War on Bank
Robbers" but it'd be no less effective.
~~~
pyre
You're missing a couple of points:
\- The militarization of local police forces is largely thanks to the War on
Drugs.
\- The effects of a "SWATing" are amplified by the militarization of the
police. If, for example, someone called in a murder in the 1950's, would the
police come in guns-blazing shooting anything, and everything in their path,
dropping flashbang grenades on sleeping children?
\- Had the package of drugs arrived without Krebs being 'in on it,' then he
would be in violation of the law because he possessed an illegal substance.
The War on Drugs has given us the idea that merely possessing something is
enough to get you jail time. This allows malicious actors to arrange for an
illegal item to find its way into your possession... The police and
prosecution hear "I was set up!" a lot. I'm sure they wouldn't pay much
attention to just another cry of innocence (though being a white male in good
social standing probably increases the odds).
~~~
slapshot
> The War on Drugs has given us the idea that merely possessing something is
> enough to get you jail time.
Except that's not true either. In many places possession of burglary tools is
a crime by itself. I'm not saying it's a good law, but it's certainly law.
Same for any possession of child pornography, knowing possession of stolen
property, any possession of a long list of EPA-banned toxic chemicals, any
possession of unregistered firearms, any possession of modified firearms, etc
etc etc.
------
comex
> According to a trusted source in the security community, that email account
> [belonging to 'Fly'] was somehow compromised last year.
Right... I'm sure it was just a source who themselves got the information
legally secondhand, and that Krebs had nothing to do with it. ;)
------
kyrra
It's not clear in the post; why was Krebs targeted by this criminal?
~~~
webkike
It may simply be because Krebs has a history of unveiling important members of
the cyber crime business.
~~~
jacquesm
Or it may simply be that 'owning' Krebs has the effect of boosting some stupid
kids' standing.
------
ragsagar
This link is blocked in UAE. :-\
~~~
w-ll
How about [http://krebsonsecurity.com.nyud.net/2014/06/the-fly-has-
been...](http://krebsonsecurity.com.nyud.net/2014/06/the-fly-has-been-
swatted/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
1st NYC CoderDojo Meetup - This Saturday - carlsednaoui
Hi HN,<p>For those that don't know, CoderDojo is a free non-for-profit movement to help young people (ages 7-17) learn how to code.<p>We will be hosting the 1st NYC CoderDojo this Saturday. If you know any youngsters that may be interested in joining us for an afternoon of learning and fun, please share this with them.<p>The event is free and we will have laptops available for kids that don't have one. Also, parents are welcome to join!<p>Event details: coderdojonyc.eventbrite.com<p>Live in NYC and want to volunteer? Awesome! Please sign-up here: http://eepurl.com/kJZDf
======
thetabyte
I'm a 17 year old programmer and Rails developer, and I'll be interning with a
New York company this summer, late June to late August. I don't know how in
depth these are going to get (HTML & CSS are a few years back for me) or how
late into the summer these will run, but either way I'd love to be there--
whether to learn or to help other young people get involved in code. Seems
like a fantastic opportunity to meet other young programmers. Keep it up!
~~~
carlsednaoui
Thetabyte, we'd love to have you join our group of volunteers! Please email me
either at username@ g mail.com or coderdojonyc@ g m ail.com
------
carlsednaoui
Clickable links:
Event page: <http://coderdojonyc.eventbrite.com/>
Volunteer Sign-up: <http://eepurl.com/kJZDf>
------
jenius
Getting kids into code is what it's all about. Let's do it
------
whelton
So awesome CoderDojo is now in NYC!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Internet vs. Hollywood - kposehn
http://www.theinternetvshollywood.com/
======
ewillbefull
Calling the megaupload seizure a "backdoor SOPA/PIPA" will instantly lose you
credibility.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Want to see Twitter + iTunes in action? Here it is - stevederico
http://twitter.com/#!/twitter/status/2856041305866240
======
stevederico
Really excited about this, looking forward to seeing what other applications
are integrated in the future. Recommending new artists and people to follow
based on my music taste would be great too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New York Times website/email back up after two hours due to ‘internal issue’ - larrys
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-york-times-website-hour-article-1.1426640
======
larrys
Story in the times:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/business/media/new-york-
ti...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/business/media/new-york-times-web-
site-returns-after-hours-offline.html?hp&_r=0)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Even for Cashiers, College Pays Off - kingkawn
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/sunday-review/26leonhardt.html
======
bugsy
This article is a very annoying piece of propaganda.
The worst fallacy is the poisoned well ad hominem at the end where he claims
that those who advise against college have degrees and therefore are selfish
meanie "elitists" who are trying to stomp down the poor collegeless masses and
keep them from advancing. It goes without saying that those who haven't been
to college likewise are not allowed to advise against it, since they haven't
been, how would they know? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Whether you
have been to college or not, you are not allowed to have an opinion or advice
others that one should consider carefully whether they want to go into
significant debt in return for college. Regarding the fallacy it can easily be
turned around to argue that the author is not qualified to argue _for_ college
because he has been and therefore has been brainwashed into the cult. Just as
absurd an argument and the same reasoning.
He also claims that the average current cost of attending 4 year public
colleges in the US is $2000. This is complete nonsense.
As others have pointed out here, the reason degreed people are better plumbers
is because they were smarter to begin with, not because they learned plumbing
in college.
There was a study a couple years ago (sorry, no citation, can't find it) that
compared people who were accepted into college but didn't go to those who were
accepted and did go. He found that there was no difference in their earnings.
The study showed that earnings differences are not due to "learning advanced
skills" or such in college, but due to the fact that people who were already
more capable to begin with were the ones that got accepted in the first place.
Duh.
~~~
kenjackson
_He also claims that the average current cost of attending 4 year public
colleges in the US is $2000. This is complete nonsense._
I think the author is correct, but you're largely misquoting him.
The author actually said this: "First, many colleges are not very expensive,
once financial aid is taken into account. Average net tuition and fees at
public four-year colleges this past year were only about $2,000 (though
Congress may soon cut federal financial aid). "
And if you read the cited article it points out that over the five years from
2004 to 2009 (when the cited article was written), while the "sticker price"
of college has gone up dramatically, the actual amount paid by students has
actually declined (for tuition and fees):
"Yes. At public four-year colleges, the sticker price rose by 20 percent over
the past five years (these are inflation-adjusted dollars, as are all
historical comparisons I’m making), but the average net price fell $400 — from
about $2,000 to $1,600. At private four-year colleges the sticker price rose
by 15 percent, but the average net price fell 9 percent, or about $1,100.
It is important to note that these figures are just for tuition and fees.
Students also have to live, eat, buy books, and cover other expenses while
they are in school. "
~~~
Duff
I wonder if the author went to college? By his logic, my $200k house only
costs me $16,000, because of financial aid. (ie. mortgage)
~~~
kenjackson
I'm really not sure what you're talking about, but this might be relevant:
"The net prices I mentioned don’t take loans into account. We consider loans
to be part of the students’ contribution. The students have to pay them back
eventually."
~~~
bugsy
Thanks very much for digging that up, that's a good find and very relevant.
That is the source he uses to claim it's $2000, and the interview it's from
claims the actual cost has gone down from $2000 to $1600, but then near the
end admits that loan debt is not considered part of college cost using the
reasoning that "it's the students contribution". So it's not a cost, it's a
contribution.
[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/q-a-the-real-
co...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/q-a-the-real-cost-of-
college/)
~~~
kenjackson
_but then near the end admits that loan debt is not considered part of college
cost using the reasoning that "it's the students contribution"._
Actually she said the opposite. :-)
She says, "The net prices I mentioned don’t take loans into account. We
consider loans to be part of the students’ contribution. The students have to
pay them back eventually."
Net price is the price the student pays. It is reduced by financial aid, but
she says that they do NOT take loans into account (whereas they do take Pell
Grants into account). That is because students have to pay the loan
eventually.
So if you have a college tution that is $10,000/year. The sticker price is
$10,000. If you have $2,000 in grants and $4,000 in loans then your net price
is $8,000. They don't take loans into account when computing the net price.
------
TomOfTTB
The problem here is the author is mischaracterizing the debate. Right now we
have a job environment where most good jobs require a college degree. The
debate as to whether college is necessary asks if that environment is
appropriate since college costs a lot of money and often falls short when it
comes to imparting lifelong knowledge.
When all those TV Shows, Newspapers and Blogs are having this debate the
question they are asking is whether the environment that requires a degree
should exist. So arguing that people with a degree make more money in the
current environment is irrelevant to the debate itself.
(He does set up a straw man of parents on the edge deciding not to send their
kids to college but I see that as unrealistic. No parent who is going to send
their kid to college changes their mind based on what Katie Couric says or
what they read on a blog)
------
Duff
The college vs. no college debate is bunk. The real question is: Why doesn't
high school prepare folks with the skills needed to succeed in one of the
professions mentioned in the article. The key to succeeding in all of those
jobs is command of reading and arithmetic. If you can read a manual and do
enough math to handle money at some scale, you're 80% of the way to succeeding
somewhere.
Public schools utterly fail at helping students achieve this. 99% of 18 year
olds should be able to interpret a train schedule or read and understand a
big-city newspaper. 99% of 18 year olds should be capable of doing long
division and computing percentages without tools. The reality is far less.
Getting through college is essentially a filter that eliminates the folks who
are not appropriately literate or capable of doing math.
As an extreme anecdotal example, I worked with an illiterate retail computer
salesman in his 30's while I was in college. He was a good salesman who relied
on memorization and mastery of the legacy, AS/400 terminal based system. He
was an intelligent, driven man -- but he couldn't advance, and struggled when
the company introduced a browser based configure to order system.
~~~
socillion
Both you and TFA make the assumption that college increases your skill in
fields such as plumbing. Correlation (college & higher pay) =/= Causation
(college => more skill => more pay), and that is why people debate the current
college situation. Why is it that a future plumber needs to go to college to
maximize his earnings, when it will have little to no benefit to his plumbing
prowess, and would in fact hinder it due to the opportunity cost of those 4
years?
> Getting through college is essentially a filter that eliminates the folks
> who are not appropriately literate or capable of doing math. What a
> ridiculously wasteful filter.
> Public schools utterly fail at helping students achieve this. 99% of 18 year
> olds should be able to interpret a train schedule or read and understand a
> big-city newspaper. 99% of 18 year olds should be capable of doing long
> division and computing percentages without tools. The reality is far less.
> Are you sure about that? Long division is admittedly rapidly becoming a lost
> art (calculators, cell phones, anything electronic has a way to divide!)
> However, I'd be surprised if nearly everyone wasn't capable of the rest.
~~~
Duff
The article implies that college magically gives you skills that make you a
successful plumber. I argue that getting into (and out of) college means that
you have the basic academic skills to be a successful plumber. Those aren't
the same arguments.
Plumbing isn't just unclogging toilets. You need to be capable of measuring,
computing distances, reading manuals for boilers and pumps, etc. Not rocket
science, but beyond the capabilities of 40-60% of the _graduates_ of many high
schools.
In my mind, the _problem_ is that 30 years ago, a high school degree was
sufficient to assume that you can perform basic skills (skills that most
successful programmers probably can demonstrate around age 12).
Is long division archaic in the age of the smartphone? Perhaps -- I've found
it to be a fantastic screening device for high school interns. Print out a few
Amtrak Northeast Corridor train schedules and ask questions about getting
between various points between various points as a second level screen.
~~~
socillion
I see what you mean, I agree. It does seem a bit excessive that college is
needed to prove those skills, though.
I think the problem with high school education being insufficient now is a
cultural mindset that academic success before college is not important. I
could be wrong on that, but I don't think what is being taught is
insufficient, just what is learned.
------
Pinckney
The article conflates two different questions: a) whether universal higher
education is sensible, and b) whether it makes financial sense for an
individual to get a college education.
Do individuals benefit financially from a college degree, given certain
assumptions about degree and institution? Yes. But a more interesting question
is to what extent those degrees provide increased human capital, and to what
extent it is a signal of existing quality.
For instance, if the value of certain college degrees is only as a method to
differentiate between good and bad employees, universal higher education
accomplishes nothing but to destroy that signal, without adding value. This
provides an example scenario under which it is sensible for individuals to
obtain higher education, but universal higher education is nevertheless
inferior as a policy to limited higher education.
Thus the author errs in providing the individual benefit as a justification
for universal higher education.
------
petegrif
My faith in some of the research underlying this article took a fatal hit when
I read that the researchers discovered that whereas a dishwasher with no
degree earned $19K, a college graduate earned $34K for the same menial task.
It may just be me but that rings so untrue that it bears investigation. To me
it is unfathomable why an employer would pay a dishwasher 15K a year more
because he/she has a degree. I don't buy it.
------
dereg
College provides the greatest benefit for specialized fields like engineering,
for example, in which the college education is effectively the job training.
------
reader5000
_Construction workers, police officers, plumbers, retail salespeople and
secretaries, among others, make significantly more with a degree than without
one. Why? Education helps people do higher-skilled work, get jobs with better-
paying companies or open their own businesses._
I would argue they earn more simply because of the signalling dynamics of
possessing the degree, not that a college grad can do higher skilled work than
a similarly situated non-grad. The question is is it fair/efficient to saddle
young people with exorbitant debt and four extra years of classroom lecturing
just to be able to competitively signal.
~~~
yummyfajitas
One possible way to test this: compare the outcomes of people with All But
Degree to people with degrees.
If human capital is the important factor then being 6 credits short of a 140
credit degree shouldn't affect outcomes. If signalling matters, it should have
a rather large effect.
~~~
paganel
> If human capital is the important factor then being 6 credits short of a 140
> credit degree shouldn't affect outcomes. If signalling matters, it should
> have a rather large effect.
It it matters, I'm a CS dropout from an an Eastern European country which is
also part of the European Union. Let's say I've got 125 out of 140 credits (so
I got pretty close to actually finishing it).
Anyway, I have a pretty good job and all, but once in a while I receive a job
offer that actually sounds interesting. It did happen to me to actually get
rejected from such a job "because as you don't have a degree, and as we work
with an European Union agency, and as said EU Agency requires that all our
employees should have a CS degree, we're sorry to announce to you etc", as
they elegantly put it. Some other guys said no to my salary requirement
"because you don't have a CS degree, we won't receive the tax breaks given by
the Government to us for hiring people with CS degrees, so we're going to pay
you less". Fuck them, I said :)
I don't know what the moral of the story should be. What I got out of it all
is that I should always work in an environment very close to a meritocracy
(and small startups seem to be the closest thing to this), and maybe later
down the road open my own shop.
~~~
megablast
As someone who worked in the EU before, I was never asked to prove I had a
degree or an honours degree. Have you been asked to prove it, or are you just
being honest?
~~~
paganel
> or are you just being honest?
I hope I'm being honest, why would I lie? Anyway, said company had a contract
with a European Union Agency, and, as mentioned, said Agency was putting a
major emphasis (as in more points awarded as part of the tender process) on
sub-contractors that had only CS-graduates as programmers.
And the "tax-deductions for companies hiring CS-graduates part" I'll admit,
it's not an EU-wide, EU-mandated policy (hence my mention that the tax was
collected by my country's Government), but my suspicion is that my country is
not the only one adopting this particular tax treatment. I think the people
that came up with this policy thought that this would somehow create an IT
bonanza. It might achieve that, who knows? But you'll have to admit it has
some perverse effects, such as non-graduates like myself being at a
disadvantage compared to degree-holding programmers.
------
tokenadult
Charles Murray points out
[http://www.openeducation.net/2008/08/20/charles-
murray-%E2%8...](http://www.openeducation.net/2008/08/20/charles-
murray-%E2%80%93-for-most-people-college-is-a-waste-of-time/)
that what employers need is a signal of competence, but a four-year college
degree is a very costly signal for a job-seeker to obtain. Many poor, hard-
working people are locked out of the job market by the price of a college
degree.
Isn't it possible that college degree holders are at an advantage in seeking
employment by comparison to persons without college degrees simply because of
the signaling effect of possessing a degree? The current job market seems to
say that possessing a college degree is an advantage even if students are
learning very little during their four years of college.
[http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-
coll...](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-college-
students-not.html)
~~~
kenjackson
_The current job market seems to say that possessing a college degree is an
advantage even if students are learning very little during their four years of
college._
The problem with these studies is that what they actually say and the spin are
two very different things. For example, from your link:
"After four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called
"higher order" thinking skills."
So 64% of students showed significant gains in higher order thinkings skills?
That's non-trivial. This says to me that a good majority of college students
are much stronger than when they left high school. And I suspect, much to the
chagrin of many on HN, that many of those in the 64% are also top students.
And for those that aren't top students, they're obvious in other ways.
The other thing the article seems to point out is that you can get through
college with minimal effort if you choose to, but if you do put in the effort
you reap the rewards.
While college is too expensive, I'm not sure its failing as an institution of
learning. Its biggest problem appears to be making it too easy on those who
want to take the easy way out.
------
paganel
> The educated American masses helped create the American century, as the
> economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have written
More evidence needed. IMHO, the Nazis and their craziness did a lot more for
creating "the American century" than US schools. First, by forcing to emigrate
all the smart Jewish University professors in the 1930s, and then by getting
defeated in WW2 and allowing both the Americans and the Soviets to take
advantage of their research in rocket-related fields.
------
dusklight
Just a quick comment about averages .. the writer makes the argument that the
average income of a college graduate is much higher than someone who did not
go to college but this is a very misleading statistic .. because the incomes
of college graduates who got engineering, finance, medicine and law degrees
have much higher incomes, but someone who got a history degree for example,
does not.
------
bhickey
I didn't see any mention of cost of living adjustment.
Could it be that plumbers living in Boston are more likely to have college
degrees than plumbers living in Salem?
------
teyc
The article failed to make the case that college graduates are better adapted
to the current economic environment.
------
rkon
Correlation doesn't imply causation. How is that still so hard for some people
to grasp? His entire argument is invalid because it's based on that simple
fallacy.
The selection process will obviously skew any results in favor of colleges.
It's the same as trying to argue that playing for the San Francisco Giants
automatically makes you better at baseball. Is that really the case, or did
they just do a good job of picking players who were already the best?
------
delinquentme
published in NYT .. who within NYT has vested interests in the college market?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Time management tips that actually work - jamesclear
http://jamesclear.com/time-management-tips
======
zwieback
Dang, just got distracted from my work by looking at this website!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Image hoster pushes 1.8 PB per month through Cloudflare CDN - sheraz
http://postimage.org
======
ChrisNorstrom
Yeah unlimited does have it's limita....OMG you're funneling 1.8
petabytes?!?!! That's like 1,800,000 gigabytes or 1,800 terabytes every month.
EVERY MONTH. Unlimited does not mean you can serve the bandwidth of a small
country through 1 ISP.
_" Please contact us if you have a CDN that is capable and willing of serving
1.8 Petabytes of outgoing traffic per month free of charge," -PostImage_
Is the company run by spoiled entitled millennials? It takes a lot of
equipment and staff to create a network that can serve that and they just want
it all for under $1k? You know data centers have costs too. Other startups
spend years of their lives putting together a team that can assemble
infrastructure to handle that and they want it for free? For their barely-
cash-flow-positive project that doesn't earn them a decent living...
I can't believe they just asked that. Sorry but PostImage sounds like the
biggest moocher in the web right now. If your ISP provider says "unlimited
data" does that mean you can funnel the traffic of Russia through your
internet connection? You want for "free" what others are paying thousands and
thousands of dollars for?
What is wrong with you? Seriously? It's like you're trying to run a top-tier
web company on pocket change.
~~~
spiderfarmer
I agree, but to be fair, I think "unlimited anything" is almost always
misleading, Why not advertise with a generous free tier with clear limits?
~~~
marktangotango
Services offer this because if you don't have any users, it's easier than
building in and enforcing limits. If your service gets traction then it makes
sense to spend the time and money on development, not before. I personally
wasted a lot of time on building limits for a service that has yet to gain
traction.
------
mark242
Equivalent pricing:
Amazon Cloudfront: $59770 per month
Google Cloud CDN: $50000 per month
Fastly: $144200 per month
etc etc. If they can't get together $12000 per month for Cloudflare, they sure
as hell don't have a viable business model.
~~~
zzzcpan
Or like $1000-$1500 per month for a dedicated server with 10G unlimited
bandwidth. This is as low as it gets.
~~~
mark242
Could you run the service off a few OVH dedicated boxes with 3Gbps? Sure, you
could, but it's going to be painful, and at that point imgur is the better
choice anyways.
~~~
zzzcpan
No, it's not painful at all. I think multiple boxes on different ISPs is the
way they should go, but it's going to be more expensive, than a single
cheapest 10G box.
------
codexon
The solution is really simple, don't host images through a CDN. Though it
might not be as fast, it will be way cheaper.
I'm really suprised they didn't look at all the stories of people before
trying to start image or video hosts on Cloudflare and getting booted, as if
all the other image hosts were too stupid to use Cloudflare for $200/month
instead of paying CDNs tens of thousands a month.
~~~
idp
Of course we were puzzled by CloudFlare's pricing structure. However, all of
their advertising material kept reiterating that they were making money off
low-tier customers by collecting lots of data required to properly serve their
business and enterprise customers. So our sense of alarm and disbelief was
somewhat suspended until CF contacted us about our bandwidth consumption, but
even then we didn't realize how much trouble we were facing, as they first
told us that a $1k subscription would do the trick.
Watching competing projects also added some degree of assurance. Without
giving out any specific names, we are aware of a number of competing projects
that even now keep heavily relying on CloudFlare (although I am obviously
unaware of how much they pay), so we didn't consider it an abusive behavior.
In contrast, we were also aware of at least one competitor that kept pushing a
considerable portion of their uploads to imgur and basically parasitizing on
them for a long time until imgur's abuse team finally took notice and brought
down the hammer.
~~~
jgrahamc
_However, all of their advertising material kept reiterating that they were
making money off low-tier customers by collecting lots of data required to
properly serve their business and enterprise customers._
This makes it sound like we are doing some monetization of low-tier customer
data. We are not doing that with any data (low-tier or anything else). That
would be hella creepy.
We do track abuse (DDoS attacks, etc.) whoever they hit and use that
information to protect other customers. So, in that sense low-tier customers
help our overall business, but it's a common lie from our competitors that we
are somehow monetizing traffic. Cloudflare's business is pretty simple: work
out how to operate our services as cheaply as possible, charge web
site/application owners more than that amount.
~~~
idp
Apologies, that was a poor choice of wording on my part. While I do entertain
the theoretical possibility that CF silently uses low-tier customer data in
interesting ways (such as data mining and tracking user behavior), my actual
expectations of the way CF actually uses this data exactly matches your
description (DDoS mitigation & things like that).
------
Namrog84
Cloudflare claims unlimited bandwidth then says you are using too much
bandwidth? Isn't this one of those blatant false advertising claims?
Also it's super unfortunate if they go down breaking so many images hosted so
many places.
~~~
mdasen
Cloudflare's terms of service specifically deal with this: "Using an account
primarily as an online storage space, including the storage or caching of a
disproportionate percentage of pictures, movies, audio files, or other non-
HTML content, is prohibited."
If they put their website behind Cloudflare, but not their image serving
domain, presumably that would be fine. Cloudflare is made for a site that
serves up web pages with some content like your logo, a few images, etc. Those
images can be cached and it's a small amount of data since something like the
YC "Y" image is the same served for everyone on HN. A site like Postimage
serves image content that's hard to cache since it's mostly different for each
visitor.
Cloudflare is pretty explicit that it's not meant for a site that will be
mostly serving up loads of pictures.
~~~
derefr
> Cloudflare is made for a site that serves up web pages with some content
> like your logo, a few images, etc.
For an interesting counter-example: 4chan (including its image-CDN subdomain!)
is served through CloudFlare. It seems that CloudFlare really _is_ willing to
host and distribute multiple petabytes of image content per month, as long as
it's for the sake of something else (e.g. pages of threaded conversation)
that's not an "online storage space."
Though, I think in 4chan's case it might _also_ help that pages and their
image resources both get expired off of the site quite quickly. You can create
a page that hotlinks image URLs from 4chan's CDN subdomain, but the
correspondent resources at those URLs won't be there five hours later, so
there's little point to doing so. Unlike most image-hosts one could name.
------
_ursu
1.8PB/month is an average of 5.48Gb/s. Assuming you can make do with peak
capacity of ~4x average, you can buy 20Gb/s of transit for ~$2k (these guys
for example [https://www.fdcservers.net/ip-
transit.php](https://www.fdcservers.net/ip-transit.php)). You can probably get
a decent deal from somewhere more well known if you ask for a quote, with that
kind of traffic, especially if it get a little publicity.
~~~
dismantlethesun
You'd get something, but it won't be a CloudFlare level CDN.
At best, you can get AdvanceHosters. They're Russian based but have 7 CDN pops
across the US and Western Europe, they'll let you push 1.2PB for 7500 $/month
You won't get asia/oceana/australia traffic for those prices, and you
certainly won't get S. American of S. African traffic for those prices.
------
LusoTycoon
Building your own CDN is not an option? Something small only to reign in the
costs
~~~
codexon
Building your own CDN these days requires you to own a large ip block and ASN,
and colo at several locations so the DC will actually bother routing to you,
in order to deploy anycast.
Certainly too expensive for a small deployment which is why people buy from
CDNs instead of setting up their own.
If it was as easy as just doing dns geolocation (which is awful due to
geolocation failing and ISP caching), few people would bother buying from
CDNs.
~~~
toomuchtodo
You shouldn't be anycasting TCP, only UDP. DNS is sufficient.
~~~
codexon
If anycast TCP didn't work, then cloudflare wouldn't exist. DNS is not
sufficient. It takes forever to handle downtime because ISPs don't respect
TTL.
~~~
zzzcpan
You are incorrect, I'll try to explain.
Anycast is essentially an SPOF. Well, not only anycast and not anycast per se,
but a single AS it is under. It breaks from time to time because of various
mistakes, bugs, etc. and brings down every server as a consequence. This
occurs roughly every couple of years and takes hours to resolve.
So, with anycast, if you have 10 servers in different places, you get hours of
downtime for 100% of users from time to time.
With DNS, on the other hand, if one server goes down, it affects only 1% or so
of users of a particular server, that have incorrect TTL in the resolvers they
use, others see change in DNS right away and use working server. But, those 1%
of users don't all go to that server at the same time, only small percentage
of them does and also sees the old record. Leaving us with let's say 10% of
that 1% on 1 out of 10 servers, or 0.01% of all users unable to see the new
DNS record for an hour or so. If a typical server on some random AS goes down
five times a year, you get 0.01% * 5 * 10 or 0.5% of users affected for an
hour per year. Now if you use round robin and let users see multiple records
nothing is even going to stop working in the browser for them, just going to
make them wait longer until they see a set of working records.
To summarize, anycast is 100% of users not able to reach any server for hours
every couple of years, while DNS is 0.5% of users experiencing slowness for an
hour per year. In other words: anycast alone cannot be reliable enough for a
CDN.
~~~
codexon
I never said you can't use dns on top of anycast.
~~~
zzzcpan
You have to understand that anycast comes from ISP/networking people, who are
biased towards network level solutions for anything and don't care about hard
numbers, no matter how badly anycast looks there.
EDIT: Anyway, resilience, just like security, needs a threat model to avoid
wasting resources on things that don't actually work, otherwise it's all just
hype.
~~~
codexon
As someone who has looked into deploying a DNS based CDN, I have frequently
found ISPs ignoring TTL.
Routers handle bgp updates much faster. Anycast routing is much more superior
to geolocation which gives a completely incorrect location as high as 10% of
the time. Anycast ips are also the best way to handle DDoS attacks. Attackers
can easily shut down ips listed in DNS while people's ISP and browser
repeatedly try to access the same dead IP for hours.
If DNS was an acceptable option, I would have gone with that instead of paying
a CDN for an anycast solution.
These are all from my personal observations, they are not something I just
heard from "ISP/networking people".
------
bluedino
Never heard of them. Does imgur say how much traffic they have per month?
------
winteriscoming
Never heard of them before but apparently they have been around since 2004 and
they support 450k websites and their only revenue model is advertising. I
doubt they had a solid technical and business plan behind this service.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Russia 'targeted chemical weapons watchdog OPCW' - cornedor
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45746837
======
Latteland
I always wondered how common it was for spies to use diplomatic passports as a
cover. It could be so easy, you could bring in anything, guns, electronic
devices - and I guess on a commercial flight without going through a metal
detector. This is separate from the "economic advisor" who is really a secret
CIA or KGB agent or something. In this case it was 4 Russian spies who did
travel on diplomatic passports, and the Dutch security service lets the world
see what they got from them, a bunch of cell phone like devices.
This is interesting because they were just so blatant about it, parking their
rental car right next to the OPCW hq (chemical weapons watchdog) in the
Netherlands, filled with electronic devices. It looks like a big FU to the
western countries by using diplo. passports, but maybe it's more common than I
think? I forget day to day that there really is an ongoing effort between
countries to spy on each other, and in this case yet another situation where a
Russian agency is working against international agencies.
In the recent UK chemical weapons attack they were not using diplo passports.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Reciprocal marketing for independent content creators - peacemaker
https://wecombinate.com
======
peacemaker
Hi guys, recently finished my side project MVP and looking for feedback and
suggestions.
I created this after realizing how difficult it is to get visibility as an
indie software developer and author. I was hoping other indies felt the same
and could help each other out.
Let me know what you think! :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Simple File Hosting on a CDN - redm
https://fast.io
======
drfuchs
First time I’ve seen a Terms of Use clause like this one: “Light patterns,
like those which might be displayed when using the Services, may result in
epileptic seizures in some people. Discontinue use of the Services, if advised
by your physician or you experience epileptic symptoms.”
~~~
redm
I don't think there's much danger of epileptic seizures when using Fast.io,
thats lawyers for you. ;)
------
kup0
Hrm, I've been using Netlify for static site hosting, and the ability to push
from other cloud storage might actually make me want to switch, or at least
try this out.
For small static sites, I really feel like it's overkill putting them in a
repo or having to drag the "whole site" in everytime from a zip file or
folder. Especially for small incremental changes that happen often.
If my understanding is correct, I can have a folder in another cloud storage
service (or even on my PC), that when I change a single file there- Fast.IO
will notice that change and publish/replicate it to the live site. That's
pretty neat.
~~~
SneezyRobot
Yes, that's exactly right! As we were developing the early versions of our
homepage that's exactly how we used it. I just synced down a Google Drive
folder and hacked away on code and images. Derek could check out the progress
anytime he wanted by visiting the URL. Basically, our homepage was always live
while we were developing it - great for our MVP.
Now that the homepage codebase is more mature and we have more people working
on it, we just created a GitHub repo _in_ that same folder. Now whatever I'm
working on is deployed to fastdev.imfast.io and then when I commit to the
master branch of the repo, it's synced to fastio.imfast.io (which is connected
to our domains Fast.io, Fast.app, Fastio.com etc..). I have a password-
protected private dev site, but I'll keep that one to myself for now :D
~~~
kup0
Great! Thanks for the reply. This sounds like it just might fit my needs
exactly :) I'll give it a trial run here soon
------
redm
Hey HN. I created Fast.io as a workflow tool for file hosting. Instead of
pushing files to S3, and configuring CloudFront, I wanted more of a "syncing"
experience, like Dropbox. The other problem I wanted to solve was log parsing;
in other words, I didn't want to log parse. So Fast.io parses the logs for me
and sends them right to Google Analytics.
It works as you would expect, and supports files up to 1GB at a price lower
than S3/CloudFront.
It's been a long time in the making, I hope you like it!
~~~
jameslk
How is this different from Netlify? I've used Netlify as a CDN before, which
syncs from git repository. I'm trying to understand when I'd use this service.
~~~
redm
Hi, a good question, I had a chance to attend the latest JAMstack event in SF,
and Netlify is a great product. We aren't trying to compete with them. At a
technical level, Netlify is a "build" up platform, and we are a CDN down
platform.
Netlify takes a snapshot from VCS and performs a build process. This is imaged
into a container and then Netlify has their "CDN" in front of it.
Fast.io is an origin, so processing is largely event driven, pulled on demand,
cached on our L2 cache, and pushed to the edge. It's a more traditional CDN
model.
There are lots of practical differences. 1) We don't have a build system. 2)
We have much larger file limits, up to 20GB. 3) We focus on object analytics,
not through our own UI, but by integrating with Mixpanel and Google Analytics.
4) Netlify optimizes content in the build process, we optimize as data passes
through. The list goes on.
Netlify also charges a lot (the price just went up) $1000 for an "Enterprise"
CDN. We are built around them.
More practically, we focus on object storage and distribution, which is great
for files but not for site builds.
It's been a long day, I hope that answered your question.
------
tpetry
Looks very nice, more competing companies in this space is nice. I mean there
are not that many and it seems only netlify is innovating in this space.
Am i wrong or is the very slick website based on a theme? I could guess i have
seen it before.
~~~
redm
Thanks for the kind words. I would say we are not trying to compete with
Netlify. See:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21590512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21590512)
To answer your question about a theme, see:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21590473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21590473)
------
kuczmama
Congrats on the launch. This is a very beautiful landing page. Did you use a
landing page builder or is it all hand-coded?
~~~
SneezyRobot
Hi, thanks for the kind words! I'm Tom, co-founder of Fast.io. We started with
a basic Bootstrap template and then heavily customized it (hand-coded). I'm
really glad you like it! We've agonized over the messaging, illustrations, and
animation quite a bit. I'm sure we still have a lot we can still improve but
we're really proud of how it came out.
Actually, I should mention that it was really interesting to build our
homepage on our own platform. We started out roughing it in really quickly in
a shared Google Drive folder that deployed to a public URL
([https://fastdev.imfast.io](https://fastdev.imfast.io) for example) then,
once we started to have more people working on it and required version
control, we switched the site over to GitHub and started deploying there. It's
a little mind-bending to just hit save and watch a public site update.
~~~
noodlesUK
This looks like a really cool product!
I just have to say though, this landing page is incredibly pretty. Anyone
involved in its design should be proud. I really like it. It renders
beautifully on both my mobile and desktop.
~~~
SneezyRobot
Thanks again!! Really appreciate it! It was definitely a team effort.
------
regecks
So do you have some arrangement with Cloudflare to satisfy the the "Limitation
on Non-HTML Caching" part of their terms?
~~~
redm
Hi, yes, we contract with CloudFlare and Akamai for CDN services at scale, and
package them in a SaaS service that provides the rest of the stack. There is
no Non-HTML caching limits for us. We do have a 1GB file limit on CloudFlare
and a 20GB limit on Akamai. Thanks for your interest!
------
blitzo
Is this static only? Can this host WordPress sites?
~~~
e-moe
it's static only. wordpress will not work. though you can use javascript logic
that will be evaluated in browser
------
Ayesh
I like the Google analytics integration. I wish other providers would add this
feature too.
Are there any open source tools that you can use to parse a log and perhaps
batch-submit to Google analytics?
------
kardos
So this is CDN reselling with ease of use added?
~~~
redm
Hi, not so much CDN reselling as providing a stack that fills out everything
under the CDN.
We terminate the origin by syncing from an existing Cloud Storage (Dropbox,
Google Drive) or Version Control System (GitHub). We also automate the
analytics end by parsing the logs that would normally be in raw format.
The idea is focused at the same use case where you would put content on S3 and
pair it with a CDN, our product is just easier to use, faster to setup, and at
a comparable or lower price point.
Thanks for your interest!
------
jongbeau
congrats, the product looks great!
~~~
redm
Thanks so much, we appreciate your support!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Answers Microsoft :Chrome Frame is safe. - buluzhai
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/google-answers-microsoft-chrome-frame-security-criticisms---1915
======
incomethax
So I looked at the NSS Labs methodology and how they define a successfully
blocked connection:
The resulting response is recorded as either “Allowed” or “Blocked and
Warned.”
• Success: NSS Labs defines “success” based upon a web browser successfully
preventing malware from being downloaded, and correctly issuing a warning.
• Failure: NSS Labs defines a “failure” based upon a web browser failing to
prevent the malware from being downloaded and failing to issue a warning.
So if malware was blocked, and the user not notified, this would imply that
the test failed.
------
known
Tip to invoke Chrome Frame in IE (for eg)
cf:http://www.google.com
------
makecheck
Any bets on when the patch arrives that "accidentally" makes the Chrome plugin
4 times slower?
~~~
ComputerGuru
It'll still be faster than IE8 though, even _with_ the "patch" :D
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nibbl.it – Share and learn coding tips - phawk
http://nibbl.it/
======
smcnicholl
Nice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: As a political candidate how would you campaign online for election? - kumarski
What tools would you use?
What wouldn't you do?
How would you minimize your costs?<p>Are political campaigns overpriced?<p>I wonder if hackernews has any politician readers.
======
mindcrime
I've run for public office before (Libertarian candidate for NC Lieutenant
Governor in 2008), so I have a _little_ bit of insight on this. It's probably
a bit much to write up here and now though. If I can find time I'll try to
write up a blog post on my experiences, and mix in some of what I've learned
since then.
I'll just say this though, as a TL/DR: Running a political campaign is
basically marketing. You're just marketing a person instead of a product or
service. The basic principles are the same. So anything you can read on how to
market online in an inexpensive manner, can probably be applied to a campaign.
"Guerrilla Marketing" applies to political campaigns as much as it does to
products.
If you're a techie (probably a semi reasonable assumption if you're here) I'd
say: use a cheap VPS, F/OSS software, and do the technical stuff yourself.
Maybe pay a real designer to do your website design if you don't have any
design ability. Utilize the heck out of social media. Probably most
importantly, and maybe the biggest thing I _didn 't_ do: follow the
"permission marketing" approach and start building your audience well in
advance of the election. If you're thinking of running in 2016, start planning
the campaign and start building your mailing list(s), twitter followers,
Facebook page, etc. NOW.
And don't be afraid to ask your supporters for money. If people really believe
in what you are saying, they'll contribute. And while you can run a campaign
"on the cheap", the more $$$ you have, the better in many ways. If nothing
else, because the mainstream media use "amount raised" as a proxy for how
viable your campaign is, and in deciding whether or not to report on your
campaign.
Also, what I'd do if I were going to run again (I don't currently plan to, but
never say never) would be to really study the craft of storytelling. I'd read
books on how to tell a good story, and understand the art and craft of putting
together a compelling narrative, and then try to cast as much of my campaign
as I could into the form of a narrative. Human beings seem to be somewhat hard
wired to find narrative form appealing, and I believe that good marketing in
the future will largely hinge on the ability to tell a good story.
Anyway... I'm hardly an expert (I didn't get elected after all), but there's a
few random thoughts for ya. I'll try to revisit this and write up some more
ideas and blog them later.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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