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Show HN: OKR Example Directory – Incl. Roles Like DevOps, VP Eng, etc. - brennanm
https://soapboxhq.com/goal-examples
======
brennanm
Direct link if you want to skip straight to engineering examples:
[https://soapboxhq.com/goal-examples/engineering](https://soapboxhq.com/goal-
examples/engineering)
The examples are actually in our app (Soapbox) but we decided to surface them
publicly as a resource for anyone to use whenever they do goals.
Hoping it's valuable for inspiration
------
irogi
This is awesome! Would love to see ML eng OKRs in the future as well.
Sharing this with my team and bookmarking.
~~~
brennanm
Absolutely. We're working on adding more and more!
------
jaygadi
This is great!
------
h5amin
180+!!! Wild.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Announcing Linkerd 1.0 - erikgrinaker
https://blog.buoyant.io/2017/04/25/announcing-linkerd-1.0/
======
Sevein
I think that Linkerd is totally awesome and that it's definitely not receiving
the attention that it deserves.
One may think that Linkerd only fits in large projects but having that layer
that manages the communication between my apps/microservice represents a huge
boost forward for any project regardless its size. With Linkerd you're relying
on the expertise of a team with _vast_ knowledge on the field.
For those of you worried about the memory footprint of JVM, Linkerd can
perfectly run in the 32-bit JVM (Docker image buoyantio/linkerd:1.0.0-32b) and
with only 256mb the results are impressive. More here:
[https://blog.buoyant.io/2016/06/17/small-memory-jvm-
techniqu...](https://blog.buoyant.io/2016/06/17/small-memory-jvm-techniques-
for-microservice-sidecars/).
------
hashslingrz
Huge congrats to that team. We've been using LEAN-KURD for awhile now and it's
been a huge boon for us not having to ask our individual product teams learn
Scala for finagle. Well, we asked and they said no, so here we are.
It'll be interesting to me to see how this evolves in the K8S system, which
it's really ideal for. It _feels_ like this is the next wave of tech along w/
stuff like heptio. People want clean batteries included abstractions as much
as possible.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What are the main ways in which the world will likely be different in 20 years? - lpolovets
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-biggest-ways-in-which-the-world-20-years-from-now-will-probably-be-different-from-today-What-are-the-biggest-X-factors-changes-that-are-not-probable-but-are-possible-and-could-be-huge?share=1
======
bikamonki
"What are the biggest ways in which the world 20 years from now will probably
be different from today? What are the biggest "X factors" (changes that are
not probable, but are possible and could be huge)?"
Come on Quora make up your mind: probable or not probable??? As of
possible...mmm anything is possible!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tree Tent Design - ChuckMcM
http://www.drewapenaar.nl/project.php?id=67
======
ChuckMcM
Ok saw this linked off the Toxel site and thought if anyone is looking for an
interesting Burning Man art/camp/idea this would be a cool one. Create some
otherworldly 'trees' and hang these bad boys from them. "Fruit of the Desert"
anyone?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using Go instead of bash for scripts - ngaut
https://presstige.io/p/Using-Go-instead-of-bash-for-scripts-6b51885c1f6940aeb40476000d0eb0fc
======
jackewiehose
No thanks.
> I write those scripts so infrequently that I every time I need to re-learn
> basics. How do I declare a function? How do I write if? How do I write a
> loop? In bash, simple things are complicated. Finally, writing anything non-
> trivial is a mess. Bash and PowerShell are not a good languages.
Yeah of course... because you don't know the simplest things in bash, they are
complicated? And the conclusion is, that
cmd := exec.Command("./myapp")
cmd.Dir = getHomeDir();
err = cmd.Run()
must(err)
is more simple than
cd "$HOME"
./myapp
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Uses This Interview – Bram Moolenaar - alekq
https://usesthis.com/interviews/bram.moolenaar/
======
shred45
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I have found Bram to be surprisingly hostile
to power users, which seems to go against the nature of Vim. In particular, I
found this issue to be especially painful, although it appears to have reached
some compromise after 18 months of discussion:
[https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/2841](https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/2841)
To me one of the nicest things about using Vim (with defaults) as my primary
coding environment / editor is that I can SSH into any machine and immediately
feel at home and be just as productive as on my personal machine.
Unfortunately this relies on sane defaults, otherwise I need to bring my
.vimrc with me when doing this.
It may seem silly, but I actually switched to Ubuntu 18.04 as my default image
when provisioning servers, away from Debian, because Debian has included the
version of Vim with the issue mentioned above. I quickly tired of typing :set
mouse-=a after opening every file. I still have to type :set paste pretty
frequently.
Both features seem too magical to me. For a keyboard-first application like
Vim, it seems strange to be so opinionated about what my mouse does. Auto-
indent never seems to do the right thing for me, I'd rather it just be off by
default (or ignore when large multi-line blocks are pasted).
I don't really expect the project to bend to my opinions but I don't think I'm
the only one who thinks this goes against the general branding of Vim.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Review "my" profitable startup - md1515
A friend of mine used to work with a modeling and promotional agency when he lived in Australia. I guess he noticed a huge need for better coordinating employees so he developed a web based staff management system.<p>He is the programmer and has finished the site sometime in the middle of last year. In any case, he has done no advertising minus a dozen cold-emails to agencies in Australia and New Zealand, which have netted good results.<p>He has asked me to come on board and help him market and get more customers.<p>Currently, there are 4 customers with a price point of $250/month. I believe one of them was through his own connection and a couple were just cold-emails he did. There are also 2 in trials now, which he suspects will be paying customers after their free month trial.<p>He lives off of the revenue (cheaply) in Eastern Europe. He cuts into his savings from his past job too so there isn't a whole lot of money we can put into advertising. I tried doing some cold-emailing to American promotional/modeling agencies, but I had no luck. One lead was interested, but ended up not paying.<p>I'm thinking that if he can get 4-6 agencies in Australia/New Zealand interested enough to pay that kind of money, there should be plenty in the U.S. What do you guys think about the startup itself and how might you tackle the market for gathering more customers?<p>www.staffconnect.net is the staff management system.
======
hristiank
Interesting startup but I see couple of problems with it:
\- The landing page is sub par. Put more time and effort in it because it
looks horrible (at least to me) \- Maybe think about mobile application or at
least optimized version for mobile phones.
Keep up the good work.
~~~
hristiank
Also try going after Europe first before the US.
------
md1515
Hey guys, thanks a lot for the information. I also got an email regarding this
startup and the comments about the landing page were the same - and quite
frankly I agree.
Ironically, in the time between posting this and the first post, I was doing
some brainstorming and I thought about adding a brief video tutorial clip and
some testimonials. He just threw it together as his background is NOT design,
but I will get him to change a few things. Thanks again for your help! Maybe
Europe would be good to try..
------
mjs00
>plenty in the U.S.
You should first validate that assumption - 'talk' to a few U.S. agencies and
find out what they are using, how much they are paying, what their problems
with those systems are.
------
twog
In my opinion, in order for this to gain any traction, a UI update could go a
long way.
If you need any design pointers/UI, I would be happy to help.
------
keeptrying
Have a look at patio11's app - he builds for small business too. Take a page
from his marketing and sales efforts and design.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
User Interaction 101 - dhotson
http://andymatuschak.org/articles/2008/05/07/user-interaction-101/
======
sysop073
This post was excellent, although I take issue with the silent waiter part.
His waiter example was trivial; there's no reason you wouldn't want the
marshmallow bowl refilled, but usually programs aren't like that. I hate when
programs do stuff without asking me, especially by default. Everytime I start
using OpenOffice on somebody else's machine it takes it all of a minute to
incorrectly autocorrect something I've typed (I disable autocorrect on my
machines). That's the kind of "silent waiter" I hate, I don't want it
automatically doing something unless there's absolutely no way I wouldn't want
it done, and that's fairly rare
~~~
sanj
If you're going to be a silent waiter, you have to be a _damn_ good one.
"any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology" (Larry
Niven)
I like turning this on its head: if you're going to do something with
technology it has better be _so_ good that it looks like magic. Every time it
fails, the illusion is broken and flow/trust/fluidity is gone. It has failed
you.
If autocorrection was _always_ right, you wouldn't mind it (see
<http://twitter.com/gruber/statuses/880736890>).
If the caching algorithm of your drive controller was sometimes wrong and you
had to manually find data in the right sector, you'd be annoyed by it too.
If your code is promising to do something for the user, it has to do it
_exactly right every time_. Otherwise you need to package, promote and
conceptualize it differently so that you don't constantly fail to live up to
expectations.
~~~
thwarted
You turn that Niven quote on its head all right, all the way back to Arthur C.
Clark.
------
hooande
This guy should write a book. We could use a modern "Psychology of Everyday
Things", focused on software design.
And no, Steve Kurg's book doesn't cut it.
------
simoncoggins
This link (<http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/>) from the comments is fascinating
also. A long article but well worth a read.
Some of the techniques could be just what a start-up needs to give it the edge
over, "just good enough" web apps.
------
tdoggette
It takes a very good post to make me subscribe to someone's blog, especially
an Apple person's blog, but this is high-quality Tognazzini-level musing on
interface design. Better, even: Modern, web-focused.
~~~
unalone
Not to make this an Apple Person argument, but I think this is the sort of
Apple Person mentality that I like the most: the one that isn't about
constantly harping on other computer types, but that just quietly appreciates
how beautifully simple most Apple stuff is.
I subscribed as well.
------
sanj
"slowed by the speed of their ideas rather than by the speed of their tool"
Brilliant insight. It explains the reason that I find IDEs so damn annoying.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google delayed SameSite cookie changes to Feb 17 - owenwil
https://www.chromium.org/updates/same-site
======
rowan_m
This is a staged rollout with Chrome 80 as announced, so any current plans
you're making for this change should stay as is. If you're looking to know if
your specific browser instance is enforcing the new behaviour you can check
[https://samesite-sandbox.glitch.me](https://samesite-sandbox.glitch.me)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Vim is a Game - alixander
http://alexanderw.xyz/essays/vim/
======
notnightwing
[http://vim-adventures.com/](http://vim-adventures.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I was owed $5k. I tried to hold them accountable - msrpotus
https://medium.com/@wudanyan/i-was-owed-more-than-5-000-from-late-paying-publications-47db55dfba2a
======
GhostVII
I think a better strategy would be to send an email as soon as the payment was
late, saying a late fee would be assessed in x days if payment is not received
(or just include the late fee in the contract, I suppose). Attaching an
arbitrary late fee without any notice seems strange to me, but I don't do
freelancing so I guess I don't really know. It just seems like any fees should
be documented somewhere, and people should be allowed to accept/reject them
before entering into a contract.
~~~
phonon
In NYC, under the "Freelance Isn't Free Act" (which she mentioned in her
emails) paying later than 30 days gives an award of double damages (twice the
amount owed).
[https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/about/Freelanc...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/about/Freelance-
Law.pdf)
[https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/FAQs-F...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/FAQs-
Freelance.pdf)
[https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/Court-...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/workers/Court-
Navigation-Freelance.pdf)
------
jmathai
Disclaimer: I'm not sure what the legality of this was so I'm not recommending
it - but it proved effective in my case.
I was owed several thousand dollars by a client and they were several months
late in making a payment. They strung me along for a while but at some point
it was no longer worth my time.
Realizing I wasn't interested in any future work from the client I simply took
their site down and emailed the owner asking for payment. I suspected they'd
try to get the site back up (it was in their AWS account) but the owner
replied right away asking for my Paypal address.
~~~
EGreg
I was sooo tempted to do this with a client who owed me $30K
But I was worried about getting sued by that client.
~~~
charlesdm
Yes. What he did is generally not good advice / a good course of action.
What you do is let them know you expect payment in X days, and if not start
legal proceedings. And then you follow up on that.
~~~
jmathai
Meh. I wasn’t going to bother getting a lawyer involved for a balance of a few
thousand dollars. I did threaten legal action though it proved futile.
Out of curiosity, why was it not a good course of action? Did the client have
any leverage after being 6+ months past due on their payment?
~~~
charlesdm
I was more referring to the $30k example above. In your situation probably
fine for a few thousand, but if someone owes you a significant amount of money
then I don't think you should act in this way. You just sue them (if all else
fails).
~~~
hnzix
_> then I don't think you should act in this way._
What is your rationale? Netflix suspends your account for non-payment, the
same should apply to web infrastructure.
~~~
b_t_s
Netflix is providing a service. It's on their computer. They are certainly
entitled to terminate your access to it. Logging into someone else's AWS
account and deleting their stuff is, in the eyes of the law, more akin to
Netflix breaking into your house and stealing your TV to stop you watching
Netflix when your credit card payment is declined. Or remotely formatting all
your computers to make sure you can no longer access your Netflix account.
That is not the correct legal path to remedy the problem....it's a felony.
It's all well and good to play hardball with people who are not paying you,
but the correct way to do that is with lawyers. If you commit a felony first,
then they can tell you to go pound sand and your choices are now (a) pound
sand or (b) Get your 2 grand or whatever was owed, pay half of it the the
lawyer, and then go to jail when they report you to the police out of spite.
~~~
EGreg
Here is the real question...
Can you program in some code to display on the website “this website owner
needs to pay for their site” etc.
and if they don’t pay you, you don’t disable it. And it activates after a
while. Plus it would have redundant things so they can’t easily just hire one
guy to remove it.
Or it could be some thing that breaks the site in a less obvious way and they
call you to fix it.
It doesn’t seem to break any laws that I know of. Do you?
~~~
b_t_s
I am not a lawyer, and your scenario is getting into the gray zone where you
really ought to consult a lawyer to get an even remotely reliable opinion.
That said, my understanding is that: You shouldn't get convicted(no crime was
committed if you do it right). You might still get arrested(have fun
convincing officer donut that you remotely disabled some business's website
without hacking). You might get sued in civil court for damages. You may or
may not win the civil case depending on the wording of your contract,
implementation details of your sabotage, the mood of the judge, and the
alignment of the stars. I would still argue that a few hundred bucks to hire a
lawyer to send a form letter is safer, easier, and more reliable, assuming of
course that the client resides in a country with reasonably strong rule of
law. You're trying to use a hacker solution to a lawyer problem, which is both
unprofessional and generally frowned on by the legal system.
------
BrentOzar
The late fee needs to be in your contract and clearly stated on the invoice.
(And even then, companies will sometimes push back against that at contract
negotiation time.)
If you don't have a signed contract, you don't have real receivables.
------
ourlordcaffeine
A friend was once owed about $2k, and did not receive payment on time. She
phoned up the person processing payments, who told her that essentially the
person running the shop had instructed them not to pay her.
She sent an email to the head of the company (small media company that works
on documentaries), who told her that she would not get paid because there was
a "grammatical error" in her work, and if she continued to ask for payment
they would not hire her again (now I should mention the person she was working
with was happy with the work, she gave them the opportunity to ask for
alterations and they told her that the work was up to standard and she could
bill them).
She fired an email back quoting the contract, and how the company told her in
writing that they were happy with her work. Again she was told that she would
not get paid and should stop asking or they wouldn't work with her again. She
then got a lawyer to write to them and threaten legal action. They paid her
that day, along with what a phone call from the boss calling her a "useless
c*nt" along with a bunch of other insults directed towards the fact that she
was female.
~~~
not_a_cop75
It seems like a pretty regular phenomenon in business, that if they believe
you can be walked all over, that you will, in fact, be walked all over.
------
charlesdm
It's pretty ridiculous to me to charge a late fee on net-30, especially when
you want to work with a client again in the future. My best paying clients
(e.g. multinationals) generally always pay late by one to a few weeks.
As long as you know they're good for the money and know they will pay it is a
cost of doing business.
------
CodeWriter23
This is how I’ve handled it in the past. I remind them about being late, if
they pay immediately, I let it go. If they don’t, they get put on a retainer
agreement for all future work.
Only one time I had to go nuclear and send a dunning letter with the “If I
don’t receive payment within 45 days, I will have no choice but to pursue
legal remedies”. The check arrived on day 43.
~~~
goblin89
Being in the ongoing process of figuring out a billing arrangement that works
for my tiny consulting business, I’m curious about the retainer agreement you
mentioned. Does this mean you start billing a late customer lowered rate
normally used for longer term work? I thought in the same direction before,
seems to make a lot of sense.
~~~
brianwawok
No retainer: I do X hours work, I bill you for Y
Retainer: Pay us Z up front. I do X hours work. Y is deducted out of retainer
Z, which then must be replenished before more work. Basically a pay up front
method.
~~~
goblin89
Ah I see. I thought it was “pay X per month/week, work or no work, and some
hours are included in X”. Then the longer the client delays, the bigger bill
accumulates as a penalty for not paying on time. I guess it’s more of a “lost
post-payment trust on future projects” kind of thing here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Smartphones' accelerometer can track strokes on nearby keyboards - duck
http://digitallounge.gatech.edu/digitallife/index.html?nid=71506
======
tectonic
I read somewhere that this can also be done with some accuracy by listening to
the sounds of keypresses.
Other examples of (mostly) passive information gathering:
\- screens can be read via electromagnetic emissions (at least CRTs could, I
don't know about LCD displays these days)
\- listening in to a room by bouncing a laser off of a window
\- wifi snooping, cell snooping (both obvious)
\- car tracking via the rfids embedded in some tires
\- person and passport tracking via the rfids in the newest generation of
passports (and credit cards)
\- printer signature tracking of documents -
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3753886.stm> (old, don't know how much
it's advanced)
\- the wide world of temporal correlation attacks (both on social networks and
in the physical world with <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration>)
I got a bit sidetracked there. But yea, this is yet another one for the list.
Of course, if you've hacked into the phone, you could also try breaking into
any wifi networks or, you know, recording conversations.
~~~
shabble
Also the rather neat _Information Leakage from Optical Emanations_ [1], which
demonstrated the ability to read data from networking equipment based on the
state of the Rx/Tx LEDs on the front panel. In a lot of cases, the LEDs were
being updated for individual bits sent and received.
I can't remember where I came across it, but there was a vendor with an
advisory of something like "Mitigation Strategy: Cover Indicator LEDs with
light-insulating tape".
Edit: Just remembered about the demo of an attack against signals radiated by
(non-wireless) keyboard leads, and their detection and decoding:
<http://lasecwww.epfl.ch/keyboard/>
[1] <http://applied-math.org/acm_optical_tempest.pdf> (PDF, obviously)
------
bdhe
Fascinating preliminary research work. Side-channels in cryptography are
infamous but it is clear that the concept of side-channels is a more generic
concept about information leaking in ways that aren't typically considered
and/or modeled.
The fact that an accelerometer could detect vibrations from typing reminded me
of this work on Acoustic Cryptanalysis [1]. It is a fascinating read. The
authors found out that the PC Chips M754LMR motherboard had a bank of 1500µF
capacitors near the CPU and power connector and of all the possible places,
this was leaking information about the CPU's HLT idling state and otherwise.
And it turns out that (at a proof-of-concept level) it was sufficient to break
crypto implementations.
[1] <http://cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/>
------
jrockway
This seems like pretty much the same thing as the passwords-over-ssh thing
from a few years ago. The timing between keypresses is almost as good as the
keypresses themselves. And you can get those via an accelerometer on a nearyby
smartphone, or you can watch the packetstrem as they tap away on their ssh
connection.
Back channels are fun.
~~~
yew
Passwords usually aren't sent letter-by-letter as far as I'm aware. Although
that's mostly because doing so would make the server side much more
complicated than it needs to be.
These sort of attacks are very interesting though. Information introduces all
sorts of regularities into the environment and as long as they aren't big
enough to disrupt functionality most people never even think about them... For
that matter, people seem to have a general problem with thinking about
"outside-the-box applications" (probably not the best way to phrase that).
~~~
jrockway
The attack is for when you get a password prompt on the other end, like for
su, sudo, or logging into another machine. The password for the original
connection is sent as one packet, but the other passwords are normal
keystrokes.
~~~
gaius
Well, in TCP anyway. LAT was a line-oriented protocol. This is why back in the
day VMS boxes could support so many more users than Unix boxes - the host
didn't have to process every keypress and the network didn't have to send a
packet for it, if you were dealing in complete lines. The flipside obv is that
VMS needed (very) slightly smarter dumb terminals.
------
cjdavis
Ignoring the security implications, this could be a great way to use an old
spare keyboard for text entry on your phone. And with some training, it would
probably be far more than 80% accurate.
~~~
looklookatme
Not to rain on your parade here, but eighty percent accuracy would require
every sixth keypress to be backspace. Likely promoting it to the most pressed
key.
Obviously, auto-correct mitigates this somewhat but for the amount of
frustration and lost time, I'm betting it's probably worthwhile just
purchasing a new keyboard.
~~~
gojomo
But what if the keyboard – unpowered and wireless – were designed for this
purpose, emitting unique sounds per key, perhaps even outside normal human
hearing range?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HTML Datepicker - cientifico
http://jsfiddle.net/RSryb/2/embedded/result/
======
elchief
I like how it has December as a month too.
~~~
Eduard
... and it even has a 31st of February! Awesome. No other popular datepicker
provides this yet!
~~~
cientifico
The validation should be done on the server. It is documented on the list of
things to improve. Please read the documentation.
~~~
Eduard
tl;dr!!
------
thezilch
Misses listing the following advantage:
* Does not have date-format endian issues.
------
freework
I love it. So simple. So elegant.
~~~
cientifico
Thanks. Take me more than 1 minute to do it.
------
dkroy
How did this make it to the front page? People write this every day. If I am
missing something please let me know because then I may just have to fork it.
~~~
dkroy
Take a look at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4811123>
------
seanlinehan
My favorite feature is that we can rearrange the selects to enter the date in
a culturally agnostic format. Nice.
------
grannyg00se
Amazing. I can TAB-2014-TAB-F-TAB-14 to set a date. No drop down and clicking
through months then finding the day and clicking on that.
And somehow it knows how my browser normally renders drop down select fields
and just blends in without imposing a different visual scheme of its own.
------
Eduard
I forked Datepicker. I added 2006.
<http://jsfiddle.net/Na5gS/1/embedded/result/>
PLEASE MERGE!
------
checker659
But, but this doesn't use jquery. WTH you guys???
------
tambourine_man
Nothing happens on iPhone's Safari
------
gosukiwi
I lol'd
------
mal3x4u
is this a joke?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Clojure code worth reading? - psawaya
I'm learning Clojure. Coming from Python and JavaScript, I'm still not used to the Clojure way of doing things.<p>Can anyone recommend code (ideally, large apps or libraries) that is considered high quality and readable? I'd like to better wrap my head around the techniques used.
======
zaph0d
Some of my favourites -
* Enlive, a HTML scraping & templating library implemented on top of DOM parsing & state machines <https://github.com/cgrand/enlive>
* Core Logic, a Prolog-like logic programming library <https://github.com/clojure/core.logic>
* The ClojureScript compiler, a Clojure compiler that targets JavaScript [https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/src/clj...](https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/src/clj/cljs/compiler.clj)
* Ring, a Rack/WSGI like web-app library <https://github.com/mmcgrana/ring>
* Midje a very powerful test framework <https://github.com/marick/Midje>
* Carmine, a Redis client lib in Pure Clojure <https://github.com/ptaoussanis/carmine/>
[EDIT] Added Midje, Ring.
~~~
psawaya
Thanks so much for these!
------
Borkdude
Nice question! I'm looking forward to the answers here. Meanwhile, you could
have a look at my TicTacToe game: <https://github.com/Borkdude/tictactoe> It's
not large, and I'm not claiming high quality either, but it might be
educational to read and poke at as a beginner.
It's a very simple game built as a webapp in the very simple Noir framework
(webnoir.org). It also contains unit tests. It uses leiningen as a build tool
(so you can simply run it using "lein run" or poke at using "lein repl", run
the unit tests using "lein test" etc). As a next exercise I want to build it
in ClojureScript (client side only), which should not be too hard.
~~~
shane-armstrong
As someone who has been hearing about Clojure for a long time, but largely
ignoring it due to lack of need, I enjoyed reading your git :)
Thanks for the post.
------
wink
It's not large, but I found reading <https://github.com/weavejester/hiccup>
very insightful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I'm a whistleblower fired from a FANG and I want to go public - choochoochoo
I'm a whistleblower fired from a FANG and I'm considering going public. What are the current draw backs and perceptions of whistleblowers in tech?<p>The issues involved are serious to the corp, to the degree they might have been existential earlier in its life.<p>I joined the company and started in a team that was, in retrospect, designed to conceal and maintain the related issues. I was naive and I raised concerns, and subsequently I received and ignored various coded warnings. I then tried to move teams, but by then the company was well into a process that effectively involved rotating in a small HR department to support management's efforts to "paper me up". I was then fired.<p>In a perfect would, I would go public. My motivations are as follows:<p>* It's cowardly and unsatisfying to be unable to tell the truth of what happened. I am forced to conceal it during interviews and often get explicit questions relating to how it looks on my resume. These are VPs and presidents doing the asking and it's hard to blow these people off.<p>* I can provide aid and comfort to others. I have an enormous amount of information to say about the company's practices in dealing with whistleblowers, which can help others in similar situations.<p>Other considerations: I am "good", by which I mean I think you would like me and think I am a good worker. I have alot of stuff going on, for example, I am involved in a major role in a startup.<p>I know the generic reputation and consequences of whistleblowing in general. I have a low opinion of ethics in SV or tech in general.<p>I'm looking for advice: How would a truthful, sane, likable, and reasonable narrative play out? How would I appear to you and your management? Would you hire me? Would you fund my company?
======
thotaway
Dissent is in. The old guard is being slowly boiled alive, but they’re blind
to it.
You’ll have lots of opportunities for jobs, because lots of employers will
want to look morally self-righteous.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
100k Digitized Art History Materials from Getty Research Institute Now Available - mxfh
http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/100000-digitized-art-history-materials-from-the-getty-research-institute-availble-in-dpla/
======
sweir27
Some of those later images could use some cropping- this seems related
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8362379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8362379)
------
baldfat
As a former Systems Librarian I am excited BUT the execution of being able to
see and find interesting things is always difficult. The searches and the sets
are what makes the collection awesome and I am hoping as we learn more and
more we can see amazing things at home that we would never have had
opportunity to view otherwise.
------
nutmeg
The DPLA who is handling this has a pretty great API. Check it out:
[http://dp.la/info/developers/codex/](http://dp.la/info/developers/codex/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Live Moose TV - Breadmaker
https://www.svtplay.se/video/21733002/den-stora-algvandringen/den-stora-algvandringen-slow-tv-sasong-1-16-apr-06-00-1?info=visa
======
Breadmaker
>For several thousand years the moose have walked the same path to get to the
rich pastures of summer. Follow the walk live from Kullberg in the north of
Sweden.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HKSAR Government issues statement on Edward Snowden - adulau
http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201306/23/P201306230476.htm
======
mbenjaminsmith
My opinion of the HK SAR, which has always been quite high, just went up a
couple of notches.
I hope Snowden finds asylum and can live a reasonably comfortable life. He's a
patriot. I'm a US citizen and I'm pro-US but this bullshit has to stop.
~~~
vbtemp
> He's a patriot
Daniel Ellsberg is a patriot.
Edward Snowden crossed the line a long time ago when he fled to China to
reveal more than domestic surveillance but foreign intelligence activities.
I'm probably just as indignant as you are about the domestic surveillance, but
the activities of Snowden started out as patriotism, but very quickly crossed
into defection.
tldr - champions of human rights don't flee to china & russia. Those places
are where defecting spies go.
~~~
grey-area
I don't agree with you, but have given you an upvote as the downvoting was not
justified. I wish people wouldn't use downvotes just because they disagree
with a post or think it is false - it stifles discussion and leads to the
tyranny of a loud majority, not to the debate on these issues which is so
sorely needed.
BTW here's why I disagree - apart from the widespread domestic surveillance
already admitted the NSA has used dragnet foreign surveillance from other five
eyes nations like the UK to spy on American communications with no suspicion
of wrongdoing, and has attempted dragnet surveillance in other nations like
China (text messages). All of those things deserve debate - even on foreign
surveillance the NSA should not have a free hand IMHO - they're supposed to
_target_ enemies of the US, not engage in blanket surveillance - that's a
dangerous and massive expansion of their powers and in the hands of a
president like Nixon would be truly terrifying. It also undermines the
position of the US in the world and allows nations like China to indulge in
cyberattacks with absolutely no moral high ground for the US.
Re where Snowdon goes, I think that has far more to do with pragmatism that
his wish-list of most desired countries - from his own words I think he would
have preferred to stay in the US and fight this if he felt he'd be given a
fair trial, but that has been made impossible by the calls of traitor from the
current administration (what they mean of course is traitor to the NSA and
administration, not to the country, but those two are confounded).
The alternative interpretation of his actions is that a champion of human
rights has been obliged to flee the US and seek refuge with enemies of the US,
because he risks imprisonment without bail, torture and indefinite detention
at home (all of those have been used in the war on terror in the last decade).
It is quite credible that he wouldn't be allowed to state his case or argue
his defence as Ellsberg did, and in fact Ellsberg agrees with him on that, and
the treatment of Manning justifies his fears. So maybe champions of human
rights do now flee the US?
~~~
vbtemp
I do appreciate your response. Thanks.
On your first point, I barely disagree with you at all.
The second point is where I feel like no one is paying much attention: For me
personally, the irony of criticizing the US on unethical activities from the
patronage of countries that routinely and violently trample the human rights
of their citizens completely destroys and legitimacy of the broader point he's
trying to make.
And your third point is also disturbing and true. I don't disagree.
Edit: BTW, my above post all day long has been hovering between +5 upvotes to
-5 votes. It's the wildest ride I've seen on an HN thread ever :)
~~~
bobwaycott
> _For me personally, the irony of criticizing the US on unethical activities
> from the patronage of countries that routinely and violently trample the
> human rights of their citizens completely destroys and legitimacy of the
> broader point he 's trying to make._
Interesting. For me, it doesn't destroy credibility and legitimacy at all. Nor
does it smell of defection. The irony, however, is what is most tangible. If
we have, through the actions of our intelligence agencies, reached a point
where American citizens must flee the country and take refuge in a
traditionally maligned foreign power to effectively _protect_ the Constitution
and the People, it is a clarion call for the need to make a full stop,
publicly work out these problems, and get ourselves back on the right track.
If protecting constitutional and human rights requires one to flee a nation
that champions those causes publicly, but prosecutes their defenders
privately, we have a serious problem.
------
josscrowcroft
What a wonderful press release. Compare this to the UK government's small-dog-
loud-bark assertion that Snowden _" is not welcome here... you know, just in
case he was thinking about coming..."_ and the relative certainty that he
would have been arrested _instantly_ upon arrival here. What does that say?
~~~
genwin
it says _lapdog_
~~~
Svip
The UK would rather be a member of the US than the EU.
~~~
jamescun
> The UK Government would rather be a member of the US than the EU.
FTFY
~~~
mahmud
> The _elected_ UK Government would rather be a member of the US than the EU.
~~~
rcgs
Not quite. No one voted for the coalition.
~~~
Svip
That's not quite how parliamentary system works. You don't vote for the
executive government. Never has, never will. Even before the Coalition, did
anyone vote for Tony Blair to be prime minister? Technically, that is.
------
fleitz
I believe they are paraphrasing Rage Against the Machine:
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me.
edit: It's also a brilliant commentary on the rule of law, and due process
rights.
~~~
slacka
Best official government PR ever. I literally LOL'd when I got to the "fuck
you" at the end. How did I, a patriotic American, enter this bizarro world
where I find my self rooting for the Chinese government?
~~~
heidar
It's the HKSAR government, not the Chinese government (NPC). It's important to
note that they are quite different.
~~~
slacka
Agreed, I worked in PRC for several years and HK for a few months. I am well
aware that HK has some degree of autonomy from China. I chose to write Chinese
government for emphasis on the irony. Had I confused Taiwan and China, I could
see the need for a correction. I hope it does not lead to a nuanced off-topic
discussion.
~~~
dualogy
> I am well aware that HK has _some degree_ of autonomy
More like a _great deal_ of autonomy, for the time being. Except for military
and foreign affairs (and perhaps immigration? not sure) in which areas China
has authority, outside of those HKSAR is highly autonomous.
------
jasonjei
Wow, I bet Hong Kong is thrilled that a technicality allowed Snowden to leave
their turf and free them from a potential diplomatic headache... meanwhile
defending the right to privacy of their citizens...
~~~
josephagoss
Even if there was not a technicality, HK would have invented one to allow
Snowden to move on. Read the release, HK is now asking for clarification about
the hacking attacks against HK by the US. Looks like the really wanted him to
leave and did not want to assist the US.
~~~
jasonjei
I agree--a reason could be invented. If you read between the lines, they seem
pretty pissed at the US about the hacking. Letting Snowden catch his flight is
payback.
~~~
josephagoss
Imagine learning of all this hacking against your state, and then the state
that did all that hacking demanded things from you and made a threat that
relations would be harmed if you did not comply quick enough. Thats what the
US just did to HK. US is acting like a giant bully at the moment.
~~~
lostlogin
Err... The Chinese aren't saintly when it comes to the hacking of foreign
governments.
~~~
heidar
Sure but the HKSAR are not known for doing any hacking and this was between
the HKSAR and the USA.
------
pavs
I love living in this time where most countries can tell USA government, to go
fuck themselves. This wasn't always the case.
~~~
dualogy
Arguably it was the case for most of US history, except the few decades after
winning WW2 and worldwide USD deployment ;)
~~~
igravious
The Allies won WW2, Russia arguably sacrificed the most - the US benefited
from the Allies victory and the decline of the British empire to assert near-
global economic and military hegemony.
~~~
dualogy
Yeah that's what I mean by "winning, as in _winning_ ".. ;)
Ah well OK you're right..
------
jrs235
"Since the documents provided by the US Government did not fully comply with
the legal requirements under Hong Kong law"
Sounds like they took the NSA's line right out of their mouths: "Many of the
requests that you forwarded to this office do not contain a complete mailing
address. Therefore, we cannot respond to those requests..."
([http://www.mynsarecords.com/blog/2013-06-21-nsa-please-
stop-...](http://www.mynsarecords.com/blog/2013-06-21-nsa-please-stop-sending-
us-foia-requests/))
------
jusben1369
I find the high praise for the HK government very odd. Basically they told
Snowden they'd stall for him (docs are missing page 4 - please resubmit) but
he'd better hit the road fast. Worry about a domestic audience they add "With
zero leverage now we promise to follow up on snooping." That will of course go
no where.
The Chinese do not want to set the precedent that governments should ignore
extradition treaties and thus harbor fugitives wanted on national security
issues.
I don't blame the HK gov - just question some of the responses here.
~~~
corford
I think a lot of HNers who live in Western countries (myself included) are so
jaded with our respective governments subservience to the US that it's very
nice for once to see a small country not immediately bend over and lube up the
minute the US asks it to.
~~~
tanzam75
> _it 's very nice for once to see a small country not immediately bend over
> and lube up the minute the US asks it to._
Ah, but Hong Kong is not like any other small country. It is an autonomous
region of China, which just happens to be the second most-powerful country in
the world.
The United States can put an unlimited amount of diplomatic and economic
pressure on a small country. They can keep ratcheting up the pressure until
the small country has no choice but to give in. So you might as well give in
right away, and avoid upsetting the Americans.
In contrast, the United States can only put a limited amount of pressure on
Hong Kong. If the US were to go too far, then Beijing could intervene.
------
fritzy
The pairing of the statement about Snowden with an inquiry into government
sponsored hacking is telling about their attitude and reasons for not being
super cooperative.
~~~
h2s
Exactly. The only way this could have read more like a "Fuck you, don't hack
us and then ask for our help" is if they claimed there would be some delay in
arresting him because they have taken a lot of computer systems offline for a
comprehensive security audit in light of the revelations.
------
staunch
Translation: "Fuck You"
------
dsirijus
They should've put Facebook Like button there.
------
sage_joch
The response here seems overwhelmingly positive. And to some extent I get
that. But it does make me nervous to see escalating tensions between major
world powers. Especially when there were already tensions from the war in
Syria.
~~~
b6
You're right, it's a little worrisome.
But the criminals in the US government are finally, finally being made to
sweat a little, and more is on the way. This is like porn to me. There may
actually be some real hope and change under Obama. And "no such agency" may
become a reality. Go! Go! Go!
------
genwin
Shit just got real. The US gov't will now respond with a strongly-worded
letter.
------
paulsutter
My comments would be limited to "FUCK YEAH!"
~~~
mpweiher
I believe that this is what it says, in no uncertain terms.
------
return0
The US government is letting this turn to a huge trainwreck for them.
~~~
genwin
Which seems to be a trend for them. Yet another example showing that the US
gov't is no longer by the people, for the people.
------
jelled
Powerful use of "Meanwhile"
------
zokier
The cheering for HK in this thread is interesting, when the end result was not
that positive. Snowden had to leave the place that I believe he hoped to be a
safe haven for him, and now he is quite literally on the run again.
~~~
a3n
My impression has been that HK was always only intended as a first stop. I
don't know if he had a specific end destination, but I don't think he
considered HK as the end destination.
------
downandout
_" Meanwhile, the HKSAR Government has formally written to the US Government
requesting clarification on earlier reports about the hacking of computer
systems in Hong Kong by US government agencies. The HKSAR Government will
continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the
people of Hong Kong."_
That paragraph, included in this very same release, says all they need to say
about how he got out of the country. HK knew it couldn't offer safe harbor for
him given the economic ties of itself and China to the US, but they obviously
offered him safe passage. Snowden's strategy of letting his host country know
what we had done to them actually worked.
------
galapago
They use a terrible font in that web, oh.. my eyes!
------
chj
Smart move!
------
kghose
It is interesting to read the commentary here. Some of you here are US
citizens. You do realize that you are supporting a person, who is basically a
foreign agent and now a pawn in the hands of two foreign powers who themselves
engage in cyber attacks all over the world.
However, your responses are not new or novel. During the second world war the
Nazi government took anti-war protests in the US to mean that public opinion
was firmly against any intervention. What they did not count on was the
fickleness of public opinion.
I suspect many of you here will, in case a real war breaks out, be heading for
a recruiting station. People are funny things.
~~~
tome
I don't think your comment deserved the merciless level of downvotes it
received. I too personally find it strange that leaks about US activities
against foreign powers are receiving as much support as leaks about US
activities against its own citizens.
~~~
wavefunction
As an American citizen, I feel it is of paramount importance to know what
"our" government is doing in our name.
Especially since a lot of it seems to be poorly considered, unethical, and
somewhat intended to benefit a few at the expense of the many.
~~~
tome
Yes, this is a strong counter point.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What are the most frequently asked questions by a VC? - wave
When you go for a fund raising, what are the most frequently asked questions by a VC?
======
aneesh
Why are you bothering me? Can't you see I'm checking my Blackberry?
------
staunch
* How are you going to use my money ("put it to work")?
* To what point will my money get you?
* Who is your competition?
* How are you better/different than your competition?
(Paraphrased of course and pretty limited VC experience here. I'm not actually
sure how common they are, but I've heard these questions.)
------
tonystubblebine
One of my favorite VC questions was, "This all sounds nice, but if it doesn't
work out, what other levers do you have to pull?"
I like thinking about my company that way--there's a lot of opportunities out
there so it's never the end of the world if the one you're looking at dries
up.
------
dshah
What gives you a sustainable competitive advantage?
------
sharpshoot
What problem do you solve? How do you scale this? How big is the market? What
do you want to do this the money? What key assumptions do you need to prove to
make this a success? WHat metrics are you going to use to validate these
assumptions?
------
webwright
How are you going to get really really really really big?
------
cmm324
Good question... I have nothing to contribute but look forward to reading the
posts.
------
ericwan
How will you make money?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Full Circle: SecondMarket Raises $15 Million From Former Facebooker - shakes
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/02/secondmarket-raises-15-m-from-socialcapital/
======
cienrak
At this period, the public markets are a scary place. Tech companies that
embody the new economy and have room to grow are going to become an
increasingly interesting asset class.
It is strange, however, to see the same folks who were recently selling their
shares on this market now becoming its backers. SecondMarket makes the market
for FB stock, which Mr. Palihapitiya may still have quite a bit of.
------
chhhrislake
at this point, i only trade in privately held companies. public markets are
for losers.
~~~
jreposa
Have you checked out <https://www.aceportal.com/> ?
You can use it to get access to private placement deals.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Discontinuing Skype for Business, Teams, and Yammer for Windows Phone - rbanffy
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-is-discontinuing-skype-for-business-teams-and-yammer-for-windows-phone
======
erric
They are pushing Teams pretty hard to compete with Slack.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OAuth tutorials for HTML5 applications - thyb
http://www.htmlcenter.com/blog/great-oauth-tutorials-for-html5-applications
======
sauliuz
Thanks for shout out. The goal of this post was to collect good resources for
HTML5 and OAuth into one place.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to know which Trump impeachment polls to believe - triff
https://qz.com/1729426/how-to-know-which-trump-impeachment-polls-to-believe/
======
hans1729
Ah, these are the days that xkcd's browser-replacements really pay off.
My browser renders the title as "How to know which Trump impeachment psychic
readings to believe" :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Yarn's Future – v2 and beyond - arcatek
https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/6953
======
scrollaway
Very happy to see yarn.lock will finally be a proper format that won't need
its own parser. YAML subset is a pretty good choice, though I think
canonicalized, indented JSON would be a better choice for this use case.
Incidentally that's what npm uses as lockfile, I wonder if there's room to
have the two package managers share the format (or even share the file
itself).
Very excited to see shell compatibility guarantee in scripts as well. Using
environment variables in scripts is a pain right now.
Finally one of the biggest news is the switch from Flow to Typescript. I think
it's now clear that Facebook is admitting defeat with Flow; it brought a lot
of good in the scene but Typescript is a lot more popular and gets overall
much better support. Uniting the JS ecosystem around Typescript will be such a
big deal.
~~~
wopian
npm's lockfile is a pain to diff in PRs because of the JSON format where what
was maybe 20 changed lines in yarn is upwards of 80 from the brackets.
With YAML and whatever format yarn.lock was in, the only changed lines are
changes to the version resolutions, hash and dependencies.
~~~
donatj
I'd say safely merging YAML diffs however could be trouble.
I don't know how restricted their YAML subset is, but in my experience it's so
loose a format the only way to be sure YAML says what you think it says is to
run it through a parser.
~~~
DuskStar
I think if you're merging lockfile diffs, you're doing something wrong! Merge
the package.json diffs and regenerate the lockfile.
~~~
tlrobinson
Yarn automatically resolves conflicts in yarn.lock if you run "yarn":
[https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/pull/3544](https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/pull/3544)
------
misiti3780
> The codebase will be ported from Flow to TypeScript. To understand the
> rational please continue reading, but a quick summary is that we hope this
> will help our community ramp up on Yarn, and will help you build awesome new
> features on top of it.
Another major project moving from flow to typescript
~~~
tonyhb
This sucks because, in the first few years, flow had much better soundness and
typescript had some serious issues. I'm a little disappointed and feel as
though, similar with Kube vs Swarmkit, the worse technology is winning.
~~~
4di
I worked with Typescript for 2 years, then worked with Flow for 2 years and
now I'm back on Typescript working for a big company.
I agree that Flow had better capabilities around soundness. But the tooling
around Typescript really made me jealous, specifically in VSCode.
Near the end of working with Flow, Typescript was getting some cool
capabilities like refactoring JSX for React apps.
Nowadays I can easily say that Typescript is a far better experience than
Flow. There are updates every two months, adding some neat features that you
might find in other languages.
Then you add in the power of surrounding tools and _their_ ecosystems like
TSLint and it really feels like a next-level coding experience where the tools
start writing the mundane code for you, driven the core TS static analysis.
~~~
wafflesraccoon
I'd agree with everything you've said. Flow isn't bad but after working with
TypeScript I could never go back. You're spot on with the tooling and
ecosystem.
~~~
ggregoire
Also, TypeScript has a roadmap and when you report a bug, the devs actually
reply. Flow doesn't have any of that.
------
CGamesPlay
> The log system will be overhauled - one thing in particular we'll take from
> Typescript are diagnostic error codes. Each error, warning, and sometimes
> notice will be given a unique code that will be documented - with
> explanations to help you understand how to unblock yourself.
Why do programmers love error codes? As an end user, they are useless
indirection to me and the only way this would even be tolerable is if the
explanation was printed directly next to the error code, so why bother? Is it
code quality, since you don't have to write a long error message when you emit
a similar error? But doesn't that have the drawback of encouraging error code
reuse when it might not be appropriate?
[append]
Thanks for the replies! I guess I could understand error codes for search
ability that also provide information about the problem specifics.
Counterexample:
$ yarn add foo
Error YARN1001: Incompatible peerDependencies.
$ yarn explain YARN1001
# Some longer text about how two of my modules have
# incompatible peerDependencies
Better example:
$ yarn add foo
Error Yarn1001: Incompatible peerDependencies.
* [email protected]
|-* [email protected]
|-* [email protected]
|-* [email protected] (peerDependency of [email protected])
|-* [email protected] (peerDependency of [email protected])
$ yarn explain YARN1001
# Some longer text about how two of my modules have
# incompatible peerDependencies
~~~
lost_my_pwd
Humans are not always the consumer of error output. Distinct error codes
simplify parsing and eliminate ambiguity.
It also makes it easier for developers look up a specific error in the
documentation, assuming it's been documented.
~~~
talltimtom
How does an error code make it easier to look up an error? The workflow is
either “get error, google it”, or “get errorcode google it”. In both cases the
docs will be the top hit.
If we where talking 20 years ago I might agree, but I really can’t see the
argument with todays tooling.
~~~
simion314
Updates can improve on the error messages, making them more clear, the error
code does not change but the message changes.
Also many times the error message is interpolated with your specific details
like
"Syntax error at line 123 in file /home/user/myfile , symbol X is not allowed
here" this is a silly example but often enough when i google this errors I
have to first strip out my data from them.
------
Aeolun
I’m glad that Yarn will continue. Npm has improved, but it’s still less
pleasant to work with than yarn (which basically always does what I expect,
not so for npm).
~~~
h1d
Which part of npm acts unexpectedly?
~~~
dhritzkiv
Not that this is a showstopper, but I have issues with the package-lock.json
file where the `resolved` field (the package's registry URL) constantly flip
flops between http and https protocols, depending on which machine I'm on
(home, work, or docker container), whenever I run `npm install`. Sounds not so
bad, but it becomes a mess in git, and causes any docker build caches to
become invalidated.
~~~
scrollaway
That sounds pretty bad and I'm not so sure it's a npm bug. Do you have a diff
of the change in question? Is it on the npm registry or a custom one?
~~~
dhritzkiv
It's on the npm registry, affecting the npm client:
[https://npm.community/t/some-packages-have-dist-tarball-
as-h...](https://npm.community/t/some-packages-have-dist-tarball-as-http-and-
not-https/285/51)
------
yaseer
The JS ecosystem has its flaws, but one has to appreciate the speed at which
momentum shifts, making clear winners obvious.
The move towards TypeScript 'winning' has been fast, and to everyone's
benefit.
~~~
wanted2
> , and to everyone's benefit.
Why? I've worked on large codebases in Coffeescript, ES6 and Typescript.
Whatever this whole community sings and believes, but Coffeescript still wins
for me. ES6 is still trying to catch up but will probably never reach the
beauty and ease of Coffeescript. Both are transpilers, only ES6 with Babel is
a total horror to manage (just upgraded a large codebase to Babel 7..).
Typescript takes about 2x the time to write if you want to create all your
typings properly. I hear you say; only in the beginning, later it will speed
up the development process. I've never seen that in reality! I've actually
never seen a proper codebase in Typescript. Show me a Typescript codebase not
using the type 'any'! In a decent system language you can't get away with
that, it's just a fake sense of security.
A good codebase should not be dependant at all by Typescript or whatever hype
comes next. Writing a good codebase is IMHO a craft and should not depend on
the language or a bunch of tooling. If Typescript is way to go, what about
Python, Ruby, abandon it, deprecated? Are those inferior languages compared to
Typescript? Typescript is just another hype, very smart play by Microsoft btw.
~~~
kjaer
> Show me a Typescript codebase not using the type 'any'! In a decent system
> language you can't get away with that, it's just a fake sense of security.
I don't know the comparison to system languages is fair though, because the
use-case for JS is quite different from system languages.
Javascript (and by extension, Typescript) is commonly used to interface
between the user and the network, both of which often are outside the bounds
of the type system. Add to that any code that interfaces with plain JS, such
as external libraries or legacy code. When dealing with those, it's natural to
use statically untyped values and type ascriptions based on reasonable
assumptions.
Taking that into account, I actually think Typescript's type system is fairly
well-designed for the use-case. The problem isn't really with Typescript, it's
just intrinsic to the use-case of JS.
~~~
s_tec
Exactly. Even strongly-typed languages have this problem. In C, it looks like
`void *`, while in Java, it's `Object`. The `any` keyword is just the latest
in a long line of escape hatches. Pretty much every language has one.
~~~
dragonwriter
> Even strongly-typed languages have this problem. In C
C is clearly statically typed, but among statically typed language it is quite
weakly typed.
------
symlinkk
I've got to say I'm not a big fan of some of these changes and I think they're
biting off more than they can chew.
> Writing posix command lines inside your scripts field will work regardless
> of the underlying operating system. This is because Berry will ship with a
> portable posix-like light shell that'll be used by default.
> Scripts will be able to put their arguments anywhere in the command-line
> (and repeat them if needed) using $@. Similarly, scripts will have access to
> $1, $2, etc.
If you use either of these features your package.json will no longer work with
NPM. Maybe they should call it yarn-package.json?
> Starting from Berry, we made it an explicit goal that each component of our
> pipeline can be switched to adapt to different install targets. In a way,
> Yarn will now be a package manager platform as much as a package manager. If
> you're interested into implementing PHP, Python, Ruby package installers
> without ever leaving Yarn, please open an issue and we'll help you get
> started!
Noooo, god no. Package management is a gargantuan, complicated task, and these
languages all have their own solutions already.
That being said, it's cool that they're rewriting it in TypeScript.
~~~
maw
I don't see the need for PHP, because composer is one of the few things I like
about it. And I don't know enough about Ruby to have an opinion there.
But something for Python that actually works? Yes, please!
~~~
nhanb
For python we've been using poetry[1] at work. Dep resolution is a bit slow
but otherwise it works well enough, definitely a saner choice than pulling in
a completely different stack just for one tool.
[1]: [https://poetry.eustace.io/](https://poetry.eustace.io/)
------
sebazzz
There appears to be a real movement to move from Flow to typescript. Is Flow
dying?
~~~
mrspeaker
Does anyone know of any "third choice" around typing JavaScript? I would love
to add types to my code, but I want to write "real" JavaScript: so the code I
input is the code that is executed by the browser. I just want the compile
step to strip away the type annotations.
There was initially talk of Flow using comments to actually work without
touching the source code at all, but I don't think anything came of that... is
there anything else on the horizon?
[Edit: Nevermind: I went looking for the github issue about adding types as
comments, and it turns out it's already supported by flow:
[https://flow.org/en/docs/types/comments/](https://flow.org/en/docs/types/comments/)
\- is there anything like this for TypeScript?]
~~~
_hardwaregeek
TypeScript works with JSDoc annotations:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/JsDoc-
support-i...](https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/JsDoc-support-in-
JavaScript)
~~~
sephoric
Can confirm, have sometimes added /* * @type Foo */ above a type and VS Code
assumed that type was Foo everywhere else in my project, as if I typed `foo:
Foo` directly. Didn't even have TypeScript in the project itself, purely an
IDE feature. Extremely well thought out and useful ecosystem.
------
Vinnl
> your previous yarn.lock will be silently migrated
I hope that's not _that_ silent, because at that point, everybody who works on
that project will have to upgrade as well.
That said, shipping the light-weight POSIX-like shell will make it a lot
easier for scripts to be multiplatform. That's the improvement I'm looking
forward to most.
~~~
arcatek
We'll make sure to add a notice at runtime to make it clear (plus, a
consequent diff at review).
Also note that we recommend using `yarn policies set-version` to enforce the
version of Yarn used by everyone in your team with very little friction:
[https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/policies#toc-policies-set-
ve...](https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/policies#toc-policies-set-version)
~~~
Vinnl
There's a feature I didn't know about - that's enormously useful, thanks! Now
to remember applying that to all my different repo's...
------
mydpy
For the uninitiated / confused, this refers to yarnpkg, the JavaScript
dependency manager, not (Hadoop) YARN, the cluster manager.
------
talkingtab
I'm curious as to why yarn instead of contributing to NPM? I am aware that
yarn was the inspiration for many improvements for NPM by providing an
alternative, but going forward do we need two systems? Is the plan for yarn to
be compatible with NPM and package.json?
~~~
spricket
From what I've heard, the Yarn codebase is much cleaner than NPM. If anything,
I think it would make more sense to migrate NPM over to yarn
------
jcolella
The addition of vulnerability scanning was the only reason our company
switched back to npm from yarn. Other than that, yarn offers a great
experience
~~~
symlinkk
Yarn has this too (although it uses the NPM audit database): `yarn audit`.
~~~
coolreader18
Oh, I didn't know that! Here's some resources about it if you haven't heard of
it either:
documentation;
[https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/cli/audit/](https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/cli/audit/)
original feature issue:
[https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/5808](https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/5808)
release comment in that issue:
[https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/5808#issuecomment-441...](https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/5808#issuecomment-441989817)
------
mderazon
> Writing posix command lines inside your scripts field will work regardless
> of the underlying operating system
That is very nice. No need to install other dependencies just to do 'rm -rf'
~~~
arcatek
Note that this is mostly about the command line syntax, not so much the
commands themselves which will be executed just like now.
That being said, maybe we'll offer some builtin as well (possibly in a similar
way to what CMake offers?[1]). That would be worth an RFC later on :)
[1]
[https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.2/manual/cmake.1.html#comman...](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.2/manual/cmake.1.html#command-
line-tool-mode)
------
jclay
Since it seems the devs are here answering questions:
Which lightweight shell will be used on Windows? Does it also bundle standard
unix tools (if a script pipes to grep or less for example)?
How will paths be translated on Windows? I’ve attempted something similar
recently and had to do a fair amount of regex magic + using cygwins built in
path translation utility to preprocess commands. Curious to see if there’s a
better way to solve that.
~~~
arcatek
> Which lightweight shell will be used on Windows? Does it also bundle
> standard unix tools (if a script pipes to grep or less for example)?
It will be in-house, and very basic. We don't intend to rewrite bash, just to
provide the basic experience that is usually needed when adding script into
the `scripts` field. For more complex needs we'll simply offer a way to opt-
out and use the native shell, or to call Node scripts.
> How will paths be translated on Windows?
The current Yarn tries to do this by using the `path` native module. It's
quite error-prone since backslashes tend to appear in the worst possible
places. For the v2 I plan to work with all paths in a posix style, and convert
them into Windows paths right before they reach the filesystem (which is
similar to what Cygwin does, as you mentioned). It would be a bit slower on
Windows, but massively simpler in the codebase.
~~~
exogen
I'm assuming that lifecycle scripts (and scripts called by lifecycle scripts)
in particular will still need to use common Windows-supported syntax? Even if
the devs of the package are guaranteed to be using Yarn, people _installing_
the package might still be using npm. So I assume some caveats apply to some
scripts, right?
p.s. I love Yarn :)
~~~
arcatek
The `postinstall` scripts would likely be better off without using those
features, indeed. But in the end, your packages would be better off without
`postinstall` scripts anyway ;)
~~~
exogen
Yeah I don't recommend `postinstall`, but `prepare` (and all the potential
build-type scripts it could run) is actually useful (esp. for allowing people
to install from unpublished versions via git), and would need special
consideration. :(
------
spullara
If you use the yarn cli and have tried the npm cli recently, why do you still
use yarn? Are there big gaps that you find that NPM has failed to close?
~~~
exogen
Unfortunately npm is probably the biggest source of my daily development
frustrations, even on the latest version.
I still come across bugs (that are definitely in npm itself) that have been
around absolutely forever, like:
> npm ERR! cb() never called!
It sometimes gets its primary purpose, dependency resolution, wrong. I'll give
it a perfectly reasonable package.json to install, which it will do, and then
`npm ls` will still error with "missing dependency!" in some package. This
should not be possible.
Related, it will put packages from the flattened tree in the wrong place. I
can have a dependency (that other dependencies need, specified in their
peerDependencies) specified in my top-level package.json and bafflingly, npm
will still move it from top-level node_modules into the node_modules of
something else that happens to use it, breaking the peerDependencies I was
trying to satisfy.
On the install process: even if the total time to install is roughly on par
with Yarn, I find that Yarn is much smoother. Whatever they're doing, they're
yielding the CPU a lot more, and the result is I can actually work while it
installs. npm meanwhile doesn't yield much during install and slows the whole
system to a crawl.
Some npm commands are extremely neglected. The "success" message printed by
one of the user/permissions related commands is simply: {}
Lastly, I will leave this terrifying comment here:
[https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/16528#issuecomment-3075400...](https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/16528#issuecomment-307540010)
– note this comment was left 2–3 years after receiving $10M in funding.
I don't blame them for being one-upped by Yarn at every turn, but they still
fail to get the basics right, let alone innovate on things.
------
juancampa
If package.json is already in JSON format, why not use the same for yarn.lock?
Honest question, there must be a good reason.
~~~
arcatek
We want the lockfile to be easy to review by humans. In our experience, JSON
doesn't quite fit the bill once you reach a critical mass of data.
Our lockfile format worked fine for the past three years (bar the unfortunate
YAML incompatibilities that we're about to fix). Don't fix what isn't broken
:)
------
misiti3780
serious question, if you are starting a new project today why would you choose
to use npm over yarn?
~~~
azangru
Because npm is a standard (default) package management tool that comes with
node.
After getting `package-lock.json` and `npm ci`, I would rather wonder why
choose yarn instead of npm.
~~~
MehdiHK
"npm ci" deletes node_modules directory every time. Try using that when you
depend on some native modules. :(
~~~
azangru
I thought `npm ci` is more suited for ci machines, where it's crucial that
packages are pinned to specific versions. For local development, I just npm
install. Perhaps with no-save option in order to avoid updating package-lock.
Works fine.
------
towaway1138
Yarn has over 1500 open bugs. Rather than working on changes, it'd be nice to
stop and address these.
~~~
arcatek
Most of those have been fixed a long time ago, but we simply don't have the
resources to triage them.
This effort we start is in no small part to decrease the number of issues that
will be created by empowering the users to unblock themselves* and solidifying
Yarn's codebase.
* You wouldn't believe the number of issues that are simply about things working as they should - we can't really blame their authors because it can be quite hard to find the right paragraph in the documentation, but it's extremely taxing on a small team. Similarly, we often have issues created against older releases, or without reproducible test case.
~~~
towaway1138
I noticed the issue count while using yarn for the first time yesterday. It
encountered a fatal error (Disk Quota Exceeded) and then proceeded blithely
on. It's only one data point, but doesn't inspire confidence.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pinterest finally launches full API - alialtaf
https://engineering.pinterest.com/blog/start-building-pinterest-api
======
artur_makly
Does anyone have the latest user stats/demographical breakdowns for Pinterest
they share?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Woman jailed for trying to open the airplane door mid flight - joaosardinha
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/chloe-haines-flight-stansted-airport-cabin-crew-trial-jail-sentence-a9331441.html
======
drunken-serval
Not sure why this is news. She assaulted a flight attendant, said she was
going to kill everyone on board, and then attempted to do that.
I don't see how mixing alcohol and medication excuses her from consequences.
Two years seems reasonable to me.
~~~
hardlianotion
I can see that the outcome seems mundane given the crime, but the crime itself
is a bit unusual.
------
gumby
The news editor should get a physics book. Trying to open the door is hardly
dangerous.
The woman committed several crimes and was dangerous, not just to the poor
flight attendant but via that transitively to everyone else. But attacking the
door...give me a break.
As for the fighter jets: how could they possibly help the situation? Shoot
her?
~~~
throwaway55554
> As for the fighter jets: how could they possibly help the situation? Shoot
> her?
No. They were sent to try and get a visual account of what the real danger
was. If it was determined that this was a terrorist act, they would down the
plane.
------
CamelCaseName
>Jet2 claimed that the incident cost them £86,000.
Interesting, I'd love to see that cost broken down.
>Between 2007 and 2017, more than 66,000 incidents of air rage were reported
to the International Air Transport Association (Iata).
I know there are countless planes in the air every second of every day, but
66,000 incidents of "air rage" over a decade still seems crazy high!
~~~
Someone1234
I'm surprised it isn't higher:
> The aircraft was forced to return to the UK when Haines tried to open the
> door, forcing the RAF to scramble two Eurofighter Typhoon jets to intercept
> it.
That might mean:
\- Fuel dump (max landing weight).
\- Crew over-hours.
\- Additional airport fees / take off slot.
\- Compensation to other passengers.
If anything $86K seems low.
~~~
yread
Agreed, just the Typhoon's cost way more: UK accounts 70k pounds per flight
hour (that includes depreciation, capital costs and all that, pure per-hour
cost is probably closer to 20k)
[https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1384595](https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1384595)
------
dannyw
Can you actually open an airplane door mid flight?
~~~
Someone1234
At what altitude? At low altitude, it is theoretically possible (although some
passenger aircrafts have a lock).
But even then it would still require significant strength, as there would
likely be some air differential due to the aircraft's speed/air pressure
against the door.
At higher altitudes it is essentially impossible for a human. You'd have to
blow apart the door or equivalent.
The biggest thing is the pressure differential. And that varies based on
speed/altitude/etc. At normal cruise in a jet aircraft, it just isn't
happening.
~~~
Onanymous
I do not get it, sorry. The door opens out, and the pressure is higher inside.
So how does the pressure difference prevent opening that door?
~~~
Someone1234
It isn't intuitive how aircraft doors work, but the door doesn't open "out" in
the typical sense. It actually sits against the aircraft's outer hull, the
larger the differential the higher pressure exist between the door and the
skin of the aircraft.
When the door is opened, it actually slides in then out sideways rather than
swings open.
See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_door](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_door)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How and why the government is stalking you - jasonkolb
http://www.applieddatalabs.com/content/how-and-why-government-stalking-you
======
gnosis
What's even sadder is that many if not most HN users are contributing to the
surveillance apparatus by building web apps and infrastructure, promoting it,
and not taking a stand against it.
How many of you Googlers and Facebookers (and the legions of you working for
Facebook/Google wannabes) have really thought hard about what you're doing?
How many of you care? How many of you honestly want to do something to stop
the pissing away of privacy to corporations and the government?
I would venture to guess that it's a vanishingly small percentage. Most just
want to make money, and let others worry about the consequences. Or they
delude themselves in to thinking they're "changing the world" with some
monumental cow-tipping app.
~~~
hp50g
There are still those of us who don't support total surveillance and will not
stand for it. Were probably more traditional Unix people and not so embroiled
in technology. Everyone else has been got if you ask me through media, social
pressure or plain old apathy.
However it's worse than just web sites. I've worked for a nefarious company
who feeds of data like theirs. I came to my senses when asked to do things
which destroyed my ethics and quit to make amends.
At risk of promoting a fanatic, stallman was right for many years. Once a
fanatic, then a told you so, then a visionary. I genuinely was brainwashed to
think the guy was nuts until I saw it all with my own eyes.
Some things you can do:
* sign out of Facebook forever. There is no point in deleting your profile. Real friends meet you in real life.
* close your google account. It just follows you like a leaky passport.
* get a dumbphone and turn it off all day unless you need it for emergencies.
* read books instead of use e-readers.
* host your own mail and web services at home. Use SSL (with own CA), SSH and encrypt your email if sensitive.
* ask yourself is your employer really doing ethical work. No? Find somewhere else. This is the hardest bit - it took me 10 years to find somewhere ethical.
* use cash, particularly when shopping in large chains or on public transport systems.
* use Firefox only, with adblock and ghostery.
There are probably more.
~~~
MoreMoschops
"read books instead of use e-readers."
How necessary is that? Does it depend on the eReader? I use a Sony 300 series
(which I personally think is about the high point of the eReader evolution,
with the exception of the 350 for more screen space in an almost identical
sized casing) which is as thankfully dumb and disconnected as eReaders get. It
plugs in like an external hard drive and I simply copy epub files onto it.
You couldn't pay me to have a kindle (well, you could, but you'd have to pay
me a lot and I'd just sell it and get another Sony).
~~~
hp50g
There are two issues with e-readers which need to be considered. One is
obvious, the other is not.
1\. e-readers like the Kobo, Kindle, Nook etc (ones tied to a store) phone
home and report reading progress and are DRM encumbered. The Kobo even
gamifies reading which is just insane if you ask me.
2\. The second issue applies to all e-readers and that is that they promote
distribution of epub files. The source of epub files is usually illegitimate
(as everyone pushes stuff through stores) and the hosts are about as dodgy as
can be as well.
Books can also change hands easily.
If you're going to get an e-reader, your approach is the best.
------
anigbrowl
Meh.
_Layer on top of this what we already know about the close relationship
between mobile providers and the government, and it’s a safe bet that if the
government wants to know where you and what you’re up to right now, they
know._
IOW the headline is just linkbait; the government can stalk you more easily
than ever before, but in the text of the article comes the admission that it's
not necessarily bothering to do so. Before people throw up slippery-slope
arguments and claim these things only go one way, please take a moment and ask
yourself how much freedom you realistically enjoy now vs. in previous periods
like the Red Scare of the 1950s when the US was in the grip of anti-Communist
paranoia. I suggest that we enjoy a great deal more.
_The stated goal [OEV] of this technology is to support, “classified blogging
activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent
extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US." But Isaac R. Porche, a
researcher at the RAND corporation, claims it would not be easy to exclude US
audiences when dealing with internet communications._
You could make the exact same argument about Voice of America. A few countries
like North Korea still make it illegal to possess radios capable to tuning
into to broadcasts from frequencies other than the official propaganda
channels. The US has leveraged broadcast and print media to promote its own
interests for about as long as those technologies have been around, as do most
other governments. I've watched quite a few North Korean propaganda videos on
YouTube and somehow I've managed to avoid joining the Kim family personality
cult. There's no reason to think that encountering some US government
propaganda by accident is going to short-circuit the brains of Americans and
turn them in mindless drones - we already have 24 hour sports and shopping and
soap opera channels to take care of that.
I'm distinctly underwhelmed.
~~~
logn
I think the implications of your second topic are more profound than you are
considering. By creating these online sock puppets and fictitious lives to
back them up, the government is essentially injecting fake government agents
into our lives which could go deeper than any of us would normally imagine.
For instance, to be taken seriously on a message board such as ours, you might
need a github page. You might also need a meetup profile. And you'd need a
linkedin that's believable. To make these happen you might also need some
real-world interaction, so it's possibly tied in with undercover agents in the
real world, such as those infiltrating occupy wallstreet or other
groups/organizations/companies we don't know about.
~~~
anigbrowl
Espionage and counter-espionage has always functioned in an ethical gray area,
by necessity. I appreciate that this fails 'the honor code' in many peoples'
eyes, but I think it's better than aggressive militarism in that its
ultimately far less destructive.
~~~
b1daly
Thank you for saying this. What the us has done with military action is just
appalling. To the extent that the US has enemies, spying and information based
action is much less destructive.
I would also like to ask some of you who seem to take it as av given that any
erosion of privacy, any knowledge about you by government is bad: outside of
edge cases are we seeing big negative effects from the huge amount of data
being collected about the population at large?
There are a lot of upsides to this infrastructure. I give Google a lot of
info, but I get a lot in return.
As someone else mentioned, we have probably more personal freedom than any
previous era in the us. Many US citizens lived during times when racial
discrimination was codified in law!
There has always been an elite power structure in human society. The idea that
the executive branch has to obey the law is pretty new.
In general, I think the ideas of human rights are so powerful, that any
technology that has the power to vastly increase communication will be
instrumental in their spread. It's because they are powerful, and have an
obvious appeal to humans. The powers that be cannot undo the truthfulness of
ideas, by any means. This is my pet theory anyway.
But I really am curious. There are a lot of super smart folks on here raising
alarm bells about this. What are the scenarios where the average American
brings calamity on themselves by posting a bunch of stuff online?
~~~
logn
I think the calamity comes when we re-define our objectives. For instance,
right now the definition of 'terrorist' is fairly clear. But what if we start
to consider drug lords terrorists (we probably already do)? Then what about
the small dealers under them? Then what about considering the users they sell
to terrorists (for funding them)? Then what about considering that drug user's
spouse to be a terrorist, for harboring a terrorist? Then it could be fairly
easy to imprison a great number of people. But the real danger is that instead
of imprisoning everyone we pick and choose who we want to send away forever.
Then when someone speaks out against the government in a way that's frowned
upon, the government digs up some dirt which can categorize them as a
'terrorist' and they're locked away in a secret prison or executed.
This might sound absurd but I think it's plausible. And it's exactly this kind
of worst-case-scenario preparation and fear which gave us the great documents
and principles our country was founded upon.
------
mrschwabe
_the US government is running a large ring of puppet accounts as part of
Operation Earnest Voice (OEV)--a practice commonly called “astroturfing”...
Operation Earnest voice is built to allow 50 real users to manage 10 fake
accounts each. These 500 accounts appear to be from anywhere in the world they
user would like, “replete with background , history, supporting details, and
cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically
consistent.” What it does, effectively, is create a network of online personas
that, when working in a coordinated fashion, can control the tone and
direction of just about any online conversation._
This brings to light an important consideration about the current state of
social media and whether or not these massive social networks are really the
answer - could be argued that it is better to be apart of smaller-scale,
referral based, private networks where there is less likely to be
'infiltrations' of the variety stated here.
Unfortunately, I suspect, that HN is no exception to a program like OEV.
------
hakaaaaaaak
I periodically get concerned about this, but I already assume that government:
(1) mostly, somewhat, has our best interests in mind, not totally, but
somewhat, and
(2) not only uses fake accounts and taps lines, but has presence and/or
influence at pretty much any major company like Google, Facebook, etc.
I think the right thing to do is to:
* Periodically speak up and support privacy legislation, semi-anonymously. (They can find out who you are, but don't be blatant or overly noisy, even from different accounts or locations, because that is more of a threat. Don't use Tor, Redphone, etc.)
* Realize that we have limited to no privacy when anyone can post info about you and credit card, phone/GPS data, etc. can be used/stolen.
* Know that there are politics, power trips, psychosis, and evil.
* Know that most people feel the same way you do. They don't want people killing their families and friends, and want to respect your freedom. Whether they are in government, military, or not, they are 99% trying to help. If you have family in government and military, think about them. They have your best interests in mind, usually.
I think it is fine to have these posts, but don't get too worked up about
them. There is no reason to be paranoid. Just do your best with the knowledge
you have, and don't act like a straight lace or a wierdo and you'll fit right
in and probably won't be a victim.
If you join the militia, sell your house and build a bomb shelter in the woods
full of guns, or start using cash-only without a recent purchase of a Dave
Ramsey book, that's a red flag. Also, don't buy fertilizer in bulk, or from a
bunch of different locations. Basically, don't be a moron.
------
Qantourisc
I remember Deus-Ex in 2000 ... When the ECHELON/Aquinas was scary fictional
big brother ... look where we are now ... :( Even the people in the game
itself where ridiculed for suggestion such practises existed. Let alone in
real life.
------
sambomillo
Relevant: how to cloak yourself online:
[http://www.slideshare.net/jonathanwhunt/cloak-or-feign-
your-...](http://www.slideshare.net/jonathanwhunt/cloak-or-feign-your-online-
persona-you-miscreant)
------
chuckmans3
But how much data are they collecting that we DON'T know about?
~~~
Xorlev
Anything public on social networks including social graphs.
~~~
krichman
We fully know about that.
------
humanspecies
Google Glass is the end of all privacy. I frankly will not be 100 years near
someone wearing one. If establishments allow Google Glass in, I'm out.
------
tptacek
Also, they're controlling our minds with the flouride they put in the water.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rovio's CEO steps down after just over a year on the job - richardboegli
http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/9/9878424/rovio-angry-birds-ceo-replaced
======
richardboegli
So Pekka Rantala has done what he was asked to do; rationalise the company. He
has finished, so he is leaving.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Would this idea help keep discussion civilized? - gregpilling
This may already exist, but I am the business guy on the team so please forgive my coding ignorance.<p>- Have a staff member or moderator go through all the posts and flag the ones that are determined to be part of the decay of the community. A few hundred flagged posts would probably do it. A few thousand would be better.
- Run a word popularity analysis and see what words are most common to each bad post. Throw out “is”, “at”, “the” etc..<p>- I would expect that the list would be populated with words like “Hitler, Obama, Bush, fuck you, stupid, bullshit, pedantic...” etc, a long list of curse words, political figures, notorious dictators and insults. (George Carlin could write the joke, “787 things you can’t say online”, if he was still with us)<p>- Make a filter that flashes up a message when a person goes to submit a post with one of the flagged words with something like *“Do you really want to post that? It has triggered our bad post filter, and we would like you to reconsider how and what you have written. We are all for civilized disagreements, but completely against attacks and name calling” to prompt them to reconsider how they have phrased their post. Hopefully with some gentle nagging, people would grow more civilized. Or leave, which would achieve the same effect.<p>- Maybe someone could take this idea and make a filter for my email so I could reduce my bad emails. The ones I regret later, usually with inflammatory language.
======
hammock
Rather than working top down approach, how about a greasemonkey script that
hides the comments you dont like?
------
ccpcakes
I like this idea. Are there any Hacker News admins looking at this post?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
1983 Radio Shack Catalog - bane
http://archive.org/stream/radio-shack-catalog-rsc-09-computer-catalog-1983/radio_shack_catalog_rsc-09_computer_catalog.1983#page/n0/mode/2up
======
simonsarris
Oh wow. This is delightful.
As a younger(?) (24) person I am _astonished_ at how many options there were
for different home computers back then. Computers computers computers. I
wonder what the margins were like back then compared to today (HP and Dell
have around 5%, and PCs arent even the most lucrative in % parts of their
biz). Does anyone know where we could find such numbers?
I highly encourage people looking at prices to adjust for inflation to get a
feel for things. Here's one such calculator:
<http://www.westegg.com/inflation/>
Word processing for $200 ($450), crappy games for $10-20 ($22-44 today), real
games (page 48) for $15-35 ($33-78!!!). I feel spoiled rotten.
Today people throw better-than-the-best-games-in-this-catalog at us for
_free._ For a lark. For a laugh cause they were bored and made something in
Flash or Canvas that is fun and incredible and we click and move on.
I think its interesting how _little_ game prices have moved since the cost of
making a game has gone up so astronomically. I remember a lot of people
balking when the change for A-titles went from 50 to 60 dollars, but in terms
of money invested, that's _so damn cheap._
I wonder if that contributes to modern game-makers hesitation to pursue really
innovative titles. Common A-titles when I was growing up were things like The
Secret of Monkey Island, a _hilarious_ point-and-click adventure game, and
Warcraft/Starcraft. Both of these genres are nearly dead in the mainstream
except for names with a lot of clout behind them (Starcraft) and indie
developers.
Big publishers, it seems, want to stick to the (admittedly very popular)
formula of shooters where you fight Russians, Arabs, Aliens, and Zombies.
\---------
Also note that not a single mouse (or pointing device of any kind) was
mentioned in the catalog.
~~~
waterlesscloud
A mid-80s era issue of Computer Shopper magazine is worth looking at. Giant
magazine, literally hundreds of pages of ads for gear. Man, I loved those
things.
Byte back in the early 80s too. Page after page of esoteric gear. So many
different kinds of computers before the PC completely dominated the world.
The other really cool magazine was early 90s, I think. Midnight Engineering,
run by a guy named William Gates (different one), which was all about tech
entrepreneurship from the very bottom up. Guy printed the magazine himself,
bought this huge industrial printing press. His columns on getting it up and
running were one of the best parts of the magazine. Also, a running theme was
that patents were useless for the little guy since you couldn't afford the
costs of protecting them.
Same as it ever was.
Contemporaneous article on Midnight Engineering and the printing press:
<http://www.westword.com/1995-10-18/news/one-s-company/>
~~~
olgeni
More fun with Byte here:
ftp://helpedia.com/pub/archive/temp/Byte/
------
kator
I used to be a systems integrator for the TRS-80 Model 16's. we would hack
them to add extra serial cards to get 8 serial ports! You could have 9 people
logged in at once and doing well if the application was carefully designed.
Funny but true it ran Microsoft Xenix!! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix>
and had a Microsoft Multiplan (excel like) you could run from a tty or the
console.
I have a customer who still has a running copy of Microsoft Multiplan that I
have to hack once in a while to keep runnning. It's quite amazing that this
customer still keeps a ton of stuff in that old system using telnet/ssh to the
SCO Unix box that they host Excel on.
I did my first commercial C code development on these monsters! After a time I
even had one in my house so I could do development at home without 1200baud
modems dropping my connection etc. And I had a "test" environment to develop
code before deploying to my customers machines.
I had all my customers setup with UUCP so they could email me and my staff and
alerts from low disk space, backs etc would come to us at the central machine
via UUCP emails.
Those were the days.. ;-)
EDIT: iPad autocorrect pain and corrected memory error
------
unoti
The programming manual that came with the TRS-80 Color Computer was among the
best introductions to programming ever. Really as good as Why's poignant guide
to Ruby. There were similar books at Radio Shack for the TRS-80 Models I and
III, also. The books were funny and informative, and easy enough for me to
follow along when I was 11.
~~~
waterlesscloud
I got a Color Computer for Christmas and my parents gave me the instruction
books several months early. I read them through several times and wrote
programs in my notebooks at school.
And that's how I learned to program without having a computer. :-)
~~~
carlos
I also started with a notebook, before getting a commodore vic-20. Pencil and
Basic, you were the CPU.
~~~
megablast
Nice one. I read every computer book and magazine in the library, years before
I could get a computer. Then my parents and I split the $99 for an Australian
made VZ-300, with a z80 and 16kb ram. To write in assembly, you needed a 16kb
addon. Loved it.
------
ChuckMcM
This site has a boatload of catalogs from '39 onward.
<http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html>
My 'golden years' were in '79 - '84 so much changed, so fast, you felt like
every year there was new chip or a new gizmo that you could do _something_
cool with. Later, in the 90's it became a sad joke. We had an informal contest
at the Robotics club to come up with anything you could build out of just
Radio Shack parts.
These days they are kind of confused. They started adding Arduino kits, and
stuff from SeeedStudios (an interesting business model there [1]) I look at
the AdaFruit catalog and see hints of the Radio Shack of my youth.
[1] Originally gave you a place to 'sell your design' for other folks who
wanted to build it, they were cheap. But now they are selling those same
designs through retail channels which seems not quite in spirit with what they
started as.
------
rglovejoy
What caught my eye was that Radio Shack was selling a version of UNIX back in
1983!
From page 5:
"TRS-XENIX is derived from the powerful UNIX operating system developed by
Bell Laboratories. UNIX has been extensively field-tested for the past decade
and has demonstrated outstanding performance under heavy workloads. The TRS-
XENIX "core", or runtime package, includes the modules required to set up and
operate a multi-user system. It includes a hard disk initialization routine, a
text editor for modifying the parameters of the system, utilities to transfer
files from TRSDOS diskettes, RUNCOBOL to support our COBOL software, and full
password protection."
One question, though: is this the same XENIX that Microsoft was licensing from
AT&T?
~~~
tnuc
From my bad memory;
You could run XENIX programs on Windows NT up to NT 3.51
It is very likely there are still traces of XENIX left in Windows 8.
~~~
asveikau
You must be thinking of the POSIX subsystem. NT's design was meant to have
several personalities, of which Win32 was one, OS/2 was one, and POSIX was
one, supposedly on equal footing. The POSIX subsystem still exists, I believe
you can get it by the control panel under "Programs and Features", "Turn
Windows features on or off", and when you check the box it directs you to a
website to get GNU tools to run on top of it. (This part used to come from a
company called Interix, acquired by MS in '99 according to Wikipedia.)
~~~
justincormack
I know one of the ex-Interix guys it was an interesting story.
------
pg
Not a lot of people cared about TRS-80s by this time. By 1983 the IBM PC was
the microcomputer of choice, and it was in turn to be superseded by the Mac in
1984.
In the heyday of the TRS-80, they looked like this:
<http://mew3.us/images/vintagecomputer/trs80m3.jpg>
~~~
pravda
The Model I TRS-80 (1977-1981) was the inexpensive computer of the
proletariat. Schools and the well-off went with the Apple II.
Then Radio Shack came out with the later TRS-80 models (as pictured)
attempting to move into the business market. Never got traction.
The IBM PC was the serious business computer. I don't think you could say it
was _superseded_ by the Mac. The Mac was for artist types and relatively
expensive.
Then the PC clones came along and the Mac was marginalized.
~~~
ido
The IBM PC was the serious business computer.
I don't think you could say it was superseded
by the Mac. The Mac was for artist types and
relatively expensive.
Yes, I think that is a serious overstatement. I've never even seen a mac
before I got my first job when I was 18 (in 2001) but everyone had PCs (I/my
parents had a clone since 1987).
~~~
bane
It's not surprising as I don't think Macs have ever owned more than about 10%
of the market.
------
fanbouts
I absolutely loved my trash-80! I remember the book on basic that came with it
and working through all of the programs in the back. The last one was like 200
lines of code and all it did was reproduce 4 basic geometrical shapes on the
screen.
Sadly, that amount of typing (I was 10 or so and not very quick back then) for
such little output stopped my interest in programming.
I'm 38 now and over the last year have renewed my interest in programming
having self-learned html, css, js, python, and django. Really wish I had stuck
with it back then.
Man though, does that catalog take me back.
~~~
po
You're the first person in this thread to also call it the "Trash-80" which
for me is a term of endearment.
------
tluyben2
Great memories programming those, but especially reading the manuals, books
and mags made for them; they were much more focused on programming than for
other home computers at that time and I like(d) programming!
I have 2 pocket TSR-80s, 1 TSR-80 'laptop' (model 100) and a model III in my
'museum'; all working. Switching them on is an interesting change from my
ipad/mbp retina tools. What I find most interesting about all 80s computers I
have is that they still work and work perfectly.
I really wonder if that would be the case with after '95 computers. I have a
lot; they are all broken except my Sun E450, SGI O2, Sparcstation 5s and Ultra
10. Almost none of the over 50 laptops, netbooks, pads and desktops from '95
till now I have work perfectly. It depends in how far they do not work; most
desktops do nothing (besides spin up the power), most laptops come on and
start beeping. And I don't work in a builder yard; i'm a programmer, so I
didn't expose them to the elements. Computer museums and retro collectors
depend a lot on the fixability of computers; all 80s stuff you could easily
solder / repair yourself and it is worth it. In the 90s you still could, but
after a certain time it gets annoying and people just 'buy new'. We now moved
in the everything SMT, micro, system on a chip, glued computers, which means
repairing them, especially in 30 years from now, will not be so easy I recon.
~~~
primitur
Like you, I have a small suite of old computers still ticking away ..
Oric-1/ATMOS (6 of them, soon-to-be networked to an Oric Telestrat), Atari
Portfolio, C64, SGI O2, BeBox, PPC-based tiBook, &etc.
Old computers are still hell useful. The value you get out of it is entirely
arbitrary.
------
pud
I worked at Radio Shack in 1990.
Funny thing: People would come in all the time needing RAM for their 1983 TRS
80's. And we sold it for about $2,000 per 4k.
Why didn't they upgrade their computers? Legacy software running in their auto
mechanic shop or similar.
------
kator
Best part most everyone is missing out on:
Page 17.. yes you had to PAY $750.00 just to have a C compiler and VI!
Seriously, you only got 'ed' with the basic system, no C, no Vi, lots of stuff
missing.
I remember trying to beg my customers to buy it so I could use Vi and compile
code on their systems. Otherwise I would edit code on my system and have to
compile and transfer binaries via 8" floppy disks!
Worse was explaining to them why they had to pay $250.00 for the COBOL
Compiler PLUS another $750.00 for the Development system so we had Vi on the
system to edit files with! :-)
------
trimbo
Look at those prices!
I am so thankful for my parents paying an arm and a leg to get me a computer
at a young age. I'm guessing the Apple ][ they bought me 30 years ago must
have run them a few grand at least.
~~~
toomuchtodo
"I am so thankful for my parents paying an arm and a leg to get me a computer
at a young age."
Myself as well. My first computer was an Atari 800XL, tape drive (cassette no
less!), floppy drives, etc.
I attribute my deep interest in the IT field (along with my high salary) to
their early support/nudging. Thankful, very much so.
~~~
munger
Yeah! Atari 800XL with cassette! We had one of those, my favorite game you had
to load in by tape was Zeppelin. I was 5 or 6 at the time, so this game was
frustrating as hell and probably made me cry more than once.
Video of Zeppelin: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBLUmXUprvU>
My dad also had a computing magazine where you could transcribe small programs
or text based games into your 800XL and make your own simple programs - which
probably has a lot to do with why I'm a software developer today.
That and the IBM PC junior. Good times.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Many a night I stayed up transcribing games into my 800XL :)
------
stcredzero
What would the 201X version of this be?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100>
It ran for 20 hours on 4AA batteries. It was _instant_ on and daylight
readable and had a full sized keyboard. Maybe something like a largish netbook
or 11" Macbook Air with a lowish resolution transflective display, the ability
to sleep for a month or run for a week in a low power/console only mode. What
I'm describing isn't a mass market item, of course. It would be more for field
research. (Just a few years back, I'd heard that some Model 100's were still
being used in this capacity.)
~~~
kickingvegas
The AlphaSmart Neo 2. 700 hours of battery life on 3 AA batteries.
<http://www.neo-direct.com/default.aspx>
~~~
stcredzero
Cherry keys switches? If it had a bigger screen, it would be perfect.
~~~
kickingvegas
Don't let the screen size stop you. I have an older version of the AlphaSmart
and using it with Markdown is full of win.
------
ck2
Are these worth anything? I think I have an older one with the Model I
somewhere.
This is obviously a much later catalog because of fancy 5mb harddrives and the
model III is in there.
We could never afford any of this but I learned Basic one summer by repeatedly
visiting the store demo unit and flipping through the books. I vaguely
remember it only had the "level 1 basic" rom so there was only $A and $B
(whopping 4k of ram?)
~~~
sliverstorm
_Are these worth anything?_
Perhaps as museum pieces? From what I've seen, old computing hardware
practically never becomes more desirable.
~~~
VLM
LOL for those who don't get his joke, its a traditional bathtub curve. Check
some recent ebay sales... You want a new car or a PDP-8? An original Apple-I
or an oceanfront house? True there's a gap of about a human generation in the
middle where its scrap metal prices.
Also there's a strong supply/demand component. The supply of PDP-8 hardware is
low enough that the prices are about the same per pound as silver, or at least
copper. But PDP-11 and VAX equipment (currently...) has a large enough supply
that its hard to exceed triple digits.
------
herbig
The year is 1999 and the sky is becoming packed with "spy saucers." It's up to
you to shoot 'em down in "real time" with your laser cannon.
~~~
meaty
Sounds like people shooting drones down with their shotguns. Some things were
on the mark.
------
wglb
Cool.
However, I am waiting for the Allied Radio catalog collection
<http://alliedcatalogs.com/> to be up and functioning. I got a few of my
radios from there when I first became a ham in the early 60's. When I went to
the university in 1965, I actually got to visit the store, which was a thrill.
------
brownbat
I'm surprised that even the desks and chairs have improved.
Their swivel workstation chair would be $450 in today's dollars. My chair is
much nicer for much less money.
Sometimes we get fixated on how Moore's law or related effects are churning
out better tech, but forget that this is against a backdrop of refinement
towards better quality, less expensive consumer goods overall.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
SOme of that goes on. But there's also the 'free market death spiral' where
things get a little cheaper and a little worse in each iteration, until you
can only buy broken crap for almost nothing. Or you can buy boutique goods at
1000X the price.
------
FigBug
My Aunt taught me to program in the 80s on her TRS-80 Model III. She gave it
to me once it was obsolete and I continued to use it until 91 when I got a
386. Seeing dancing Demon in the catalog brings back memories. Hardware prices
have sure come down, but software seems to be similarly priced.
------
teeja
HOw about a nice Tandy 15MB hard drive for only $2495? (Installation kit?
Additional $500.)
[https://lh3.ggpht.com/_osrVjnPbdEM/TLAcKFueMqI/AAAAAAAAfy8/1...](https://lh3.ggpht.com/_osrVjnPbdEM/TLAcKFueMqI/AAAAAAAAfy8/193uK4ZOdls/s400/Mind-
Blowing_Old_PC_Ads_23.jpg)
Tandy nearly gave the computers away, then made big $$$ on add-
ons/peripherals.
Or how about $1244 for a Heath 8080 computer system KIT? (The H8 originally
sold with RAM as an OPTION.) [http://www.informationtechnologyschools.org/wp-
content/uploa...](http://www.informationtechnologyschools.org/wp-
content/uploads/2010/03/oldpc-17.jpg)
------
Kynlyn
Wow, this made my day! As a 13 year old kid, I spent hours pouring over that
very exact catalog, dreaming of all of the fun stuff I could do with those
cool computers.
After playing on Model III and Model IV's and Commodore 64's and VIC-20's, my
parents bought me a TRS-80 Color Computer in 1983. Just like the one in that
catalog. 4k of RAM. 4K!
But that little TRS-80 changed my life; it introduced me to the joys of
programming. Fast forward 30 years and I still love to program; have had a
great career and have spent the past 10 years running a software company.
And it all started in the very same 1983 Radio Shack catalog. Thanks for
sharing!
------
andrewfelix
Just imagine the difficulty in designing and publishing the actual catalogue
considering the power of the computers advertised.
It's full of big charts and text wrapped around deep etched images. Making me
dizzy just thinking about it.
~~~
mcantelon
Yup. Paste-up layout, Letraset... much different tech back then.
------
LarryMade
Radio shack had a good early start, the first personal computer I saw was a
TRS-80 (model 1) looked nice and the software was cool (think I saw backgammon
as the first program) the monitor was cheesy though, literally a cheap BW TV
in a somewhat nicer case. School went for Commodore PETs which I really
enjoyed. I did get to use a TRS-80 for a few months the BASIC was great had
simple character block graphics, program line editor kinda sucked. (except for
the Commodore, all of the other computer BASIC line editors were pretty bad.)
Another recollection of TRS, was the disk drives were pretty expensive - had
to buy an expansion bus, a disk controller then the drive(s). I just used
tape.
Radio Shack by then was it was long on the tooth with soundless black and
white computers (OK, you could get sound by using a radio to tune into RF
interference - not kidding). The color computer was kinda of a late comer,
with the Apple, Atari then Commodore already on the market with compelling
color systems... and games.
Another trend that was emerging was they were pretty much working on a lock-in
strategy, it was buy only their stuff or the highway, all the way down to
printers. They kept with that MO into their PC clones which had slightly
incompatible card spaces in their PCs to force customers to buy RS cards.
RS users seemed to be a pretty nice sort though, I'm sure a lot of HAM radio
guys got them since they frequented the store already. Their magazines like 80
Micro were informative.
------
damian2000
Seeing these prices reminds me how the C64 became so popular during this
period - it was just a computer/keyboard which plugged into your TV - similar
capabilities at a much lower price.
~~~
a1k0n
The C64 was more comparable with the TRS-80 Color Computer, which was
extremely mediocre by comparison but only modestly cheaper.
In fact it kills me they charged $100 extra just for extended BASIC. But I
guess in retrospect I'm glad my parents sprung for it as Bresenham's was a bit
out of my league when I was 6.
~~~
jacquesm
> The C64 was more comparable with the TRS-80 Color Computer, which was
> extremely mediocre by comparison but only modestly cheaper.
The CoCo & its UK clone the dragon 32 had 64 K ram (it took a while to figure
that one out), a better screen and a _much_ better processor (the 6809) on
which you could run (with some fiddling) os/9.
Those were redeeming features. The C64 was a fantastic gaming machine with
hardware sprites and a really nice audio chip, the CoCo/Dragon was the better
machine if you wanted to learn how to program.
Computers back then were not as simple to compare as they are today, depending
on what you wanted to do with your computer then one or the other was the
better choice.
------
po
Loved the Trash-80 so much. I consider myself lucky to have used one when I
was a child. My favorite game was Android Nim:
<http://www.trs-80.org/android-nim/>
When I was young I thought that game was unbeatable and the adults who could
beat it had a secret code or something. Now I realize it just plays a perfect
game but you can win if you understand it.
Oddly enough one of the movies that I remember best when I was a child was
also (seemingly unrelatedly) called "The Secret of Nihm"
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/>
------
jamesaguilar
I'm so glad I was born in this time when computers are cheap and plentiful.
For $50 I can have a computing device that can do anything that any of these
computers could do, only many times as fast.
~~~
dalke
Can you program the CPU of a new computer to make music on the radio via radio
interference? ;)
------
RaSoJo
Whoa awesome...My dream lists as a 5 year old...oh the endless hours i would
have wasted pouring over these catalogues...
But then it reminds me of how thankful I should be for the times we live in
now :D
~~~
pohl
Same here. I had a decked-out Model I, but that did not stop me from
daydreaming about a Model IV with a hi-res card, two half-height floppies in
one bay, and a 5 megabyte hard drive in the other. I swear I saw this
configuration in an issue of 80 Micro.
------
xradionut
It was a different time. I was in highschool in '83 and was fortunate enough
to have a father who taught at a technical college, an uncle that repaired
everything digital, and friends with home computers. The true geeks then were
the ham radio and astronomy folks. Steve Ciarcia and game programmers were
heros. And computers were expensive and something we lusted after. Between
game and role-playing, hours would be spent discussing what new system was
featured in Byte...
------
bitwize
I learned Unix and C on a Model 16 (which was actually very old by the time I
got to play with it).
When, many years later, I found that I couldn't test out of my college's C
programming course which was a prereq for a CS major, I sighed and showed up
for class -- with the exact same dog-eared copy of K&R 2nd I'd used to attempt
to teach myself C on the old Tandy.
------
XaspR8d
"Put on a Show With 'Dancing Demon'
This amazing devil actually tap dances to computer accompaniment of "Ain't She
Sweet"! You can even create your own musicals and dance routines! Requires
audio amplifier.
$9.95"
(p. 20)
~~~
luke_s
Is there anywhere I can see this in an emulator?
~~~
chipsy
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQizYzw27FY>
It's a very cute and well-known program.
------
stigi
Wow.. People really had time to read long texts back then.
~~~
taloft
Pre-Internet. Information overload hadn't been invented yet. We relished
whatever rare information we could dig up on what interested us.
~~~
dalke
You exaggerate. "Information overload" in the fully modern sense was invented
before the first ARPANET node sent its first packet in 1969.
For example, ISI was talking about "data scientists" and the "information
explosion" back in the 1960s. Here's part of an ad from theirs in the 1966
"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" at
[http://books.google.com/books?id=WAgAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49...](http://books.google.com/books?id=WAgAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49&dq=%22information+overload%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-7nEUJrhNabe4QTVkYAQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22information%20overload%22&f=false)
"Despite the deluge of scientific and technical papers, only a small fraction
falls within the area of each individual's specific interests. ... So your
problem may not be one of information overload at all. You may actually have a
shortage of information."
(I'm reading through a collection of essays, written during the 1960s from the
founder of the ISI. The complaints about there being too much information
haven't changed in the last 40+ years.)
BTW, the earliest Google Books hit I could find with that phrase comes from
1963:
[http://books.google.se/books?id=jPgqAAAAMAAJ&q=%22inform...](http://books.google.se/books?id=jPgqAAAAMAAJ&q=%22information+overload%22&dq=%22information+overload%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ArzEUPeIIYOL4ATY3YHwDg&redir_esc=y)
.
------
magoon
It's worth noting how comprehensive Radio Shack's solution was. They seem to
have offered it all.
~~~
VLM
Its hard to believe now, but back then RS had a general corporate policy of
selling everything required, all the way down to installation tools and nuts
and bolts. Not just computers but car audio, telephones, what would later be
called home theater, any line of business they entered, they jumped in both
feet.
Its almost noteworthy what they didn't stock. They didn't stock much in the
line of non-electronics raw materials and power tools, so if you made a
subwoofer for your car you'd need to buy the wood and saws elsewhere.
It was very popular and was very profitable, at least compared to now. There's
probably a greater entrepreneur lesson here that your customers don't "buy
things" they "do projects" and every different place they have to visit to do
a project probably costs about 50% in sales, or at least a ridiculous number.
~~~
bitwize
In many ways Tandy were the Apple of their day in terms of sales strategies.
Not only did they sell systems soup-to-nuts, but they also controlled the
retail channel (Radio Shack locations nationwide) and attempted to monopolize
service and repair, both things we recognize from the modern Apple model.
My dad still sometimes recounts the story of how he bought a TRS-80, and found
that the screws holding the case together were sealed in place with Glyptal.
When he wanted to upgrade the system he drilled through the Glyptal to get at
the screws, and then placed a few stern calls to Tandy HQ in Fort Worth,
admonishing them that once a computer was sold, it belonged to the consumer
and the manufacturer had no right to prevent the consumer from repairing or
modifying it himself if he so chose.
Tandy listened, and future TRS-80 models were sold without the Glyptal on the
screws. Which means, I guess, that some things HAVE changed after all...
------
knwang
30 years later, future generations will see the mbp i'm using now with the
same amazement.
------
gatekeepr
The greyish white cases with black monitors and keys, so stylish, so...
futuristic
------
larrywright
I lost countless hours reading through these catalogs as a kid. Great
memories.
------
pithon
Page 8, top-right graph looks like the MATLAB logo.
------
pixie_
Man I'm so glad to be around right now.. I remember catalogs from the 80s..
what we have now is so incredible compared to then. Feels good man.
------
somid3
who would have thought... I remember the 2000-in-1 electronics kit
------
photorized
I want a plotter!
------
NanoWar
Access your computer by phone! Hah that picture is hilarious.
------
khitchdee
Trippy
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Beginning web development language for a non-programmer? - flink127
I have a few ideas for some rather simple, fun websites, but I need to learn a language so I can do the backend. I know html/css, but pretty much no actual programming languages. I've done some research but really I'd just like some personal opinions here.<p>I'm going to be honest and say that I'd prefer an easier language to learn over one that's faster / more efficient and such. Though I think PHP is out of the picture because apparently PHP is terrible.
I don't plan on becoming a career programmer, but I'd like to be able to execute my ideas, which is why I'm going for ease of learning / use.<p>I've heard of Django and Rails. Everyone loves Python, and Rails seems nifty from when tryruby.org (vague opinion of it, I know).<p>Anyone have any languages / frameworks to recommend? I realize this question has been asked before but I'd like to be able to discuss with someone about it. Thanks.
======
brianfryer
If you want to eventually learn web programming, pick up a language like
Python (well documented, mature language).
It seem, though, as you don't see yourself walking down that path. In that
case, learn PHP. it'll get you what you need to get done on the web, it's
installed on nearly every server, popular CMSs are written in it, and it's
easy to hire for should the need arise.
------
PythonDeveloper
For beginners, Python is not what I'd suggest.
I like javascript for beginners.
It's not tightly typed, meaning you can experiment with variables of different
types without worrying about what types they currently are. It's very fast,
browser based (mostly), and it's really easy to learn.
Additionally, you can learn regular scripting (non procedural), procedural
(where you define the functions and call them as needed), and object oriented
paradigms (I like Class.js for this).
You can use tools like CodeRun (<http://coderun.com/>) to write and test code
online without needing any OS based tools.
Finally, it's probably the most documented language on the planet because it's
so widely used.
~~~
flink127
Hm, okay. Can Javascript do things like user accounts? Perhaps through a .js
library? I have had the idea that Javascript is more for the client-side of
sites rather than the backend, but maybe I'm wrong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Free cloud servers for 15 year old high school developers? - andrewstuart
Some family friends kids are 15 years old and learning to program.<p>They need access to a free Linux server so they can learn back end development.<p>Anyone know of free cloud server access for high school student developers?
======
rosenjon
Check out the following:
[http://www.windowsazurepass.com/azureu](http://www.windowsazurepass.com/azureu)
[http://research.google.com/university/relations/appengine/ed...](http://research.google.com/university/relations/appengine/education_awards.html)
------
penguinlinux
an alternative is to just hook up an old pc running ubuntu to a home router.
Setup dynamic DNS and you have a full running server. I run my personal blog
and email server from home and it works fine.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nixie: the drone that flies and takes a picture of you - jjallen
http://www.flynixie.com
======
darklrd
Amazing concept.
~~~
flynixie
Thanks!
------
jijojv
Awesome video
~~~
flynixie
Thanks so much! - Team Nixie
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pentagon compiled research into invisibility cloaking, wormholes, and warp drive - DoreenMichele
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/29/18187178/pentagon-research-documents-invisibility-cloaking-wormholes-warp-drive-department-of-defense
======
lioeters
Here's the list itself, following The Verge to Federation of American
Scientists.
[https://fas.org/irp/dia/aatip-list.pdf](https://fas.org/irp/dia/aatip-
list.pdf) (Page 5)
\---
1\. Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion, Dr. George Miley, Univ. Of
Illinois
2\. Advanced Nuclear Propulsion for Manned Deep Space Missions, Dr. F.
Winterberg, Univ . of Nevada - Reno
3\. Pulsed High-Power Microwave Technology, Dr. James Wells, JW Enterprises
4\. Space Access, Dr . P. Czysz, HyperTech
5\. Advanced Space Propulsion Based on Vacuum (Space time Metric) Engineering,
Dr. Hal Puthoff, Ear thTech International
6\. BioSensors and BioMEMS, Dr. Bruce Towe, Univ. of Arizona
7\. Invisibility Cloaking, Dr. Ulf Leonhardt, Univ. of St. Andrews
8\. Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy, Dr. Eric Davis,
EarthTech International
9\. High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Communications, Dr. Robert Baker,
G-ravWave
10\. Role of Superconductors in Gravity Research, Dr. George Hathaway,
Hathaway Consulting
11\. Antigravity for Aerospace Applications, Dr . Eric D avis , Earth Tech
International
12\. Field Effects on Biological Tissues, Dr. Kit Green, Wayne State Univ.
13\. Positron Aerospace Propulsion, Dr. Geruld Smith, Positronics Research
14\. Concepts for Extracting Energy from the Quantum Vacuum, Dr. Eric Davis,
EarthTech International
15\. An Introduction to the Statistical Drake Equation, Dr. Claudio Maccone,
Intemational Academy of Astronautics
16\. Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor, Dr. George Hathaway,
Hathaway Consulting
17\. Biomaterials, Dr. Bruce Towe, Univ. of Arizona
18\. Metamaterials for Aerospace Applications, Dr. G. Shvets, Univ. of Texas -
Austin
19\. Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions, Dr. R.
Obousy, Obousy Consultants
20\. Technological Approaches to Controlling External Devices in the Absence
of Limb-Operated Interfaces, Dr. R. Genik, Wayne State Univ.
21\. Materials for Advanced Aerospace Platforms, Dr. J. Williams, Ohio State
Univ.
22\. Metallic Glasses, Dr. T. Hufnagel, John Hopkins Univ.
23\. Aerospace Applications of Programmable Matter, Dr. W. McCarthy,
Programmable Matter Corporation
24\. Metallic Spintronics, Dr. M. Tsoi, Univ. of Texas- Austin
25\. Space-Communication Implications of Quantum Entanglement and Nonlocality,
Dr. J. Cramer, Univ. of Washington
26\. Aneutronic Fusion Propulsion I, Dr. V. Teofito, Lockheed Martin
27\. Cockpits in the Era of Breakthrough Flight. Dr. G. Millis. Tau Zero
28\. Cognitive Limits on Simultaneous Control of Multiple Unmanned Spacecraft,
Dr. R.Genik, Wayne State Un iv.
29\. Detection and High Resolution Tracking of Vehicles at Hypersonic
Velocities, Dr. W. Culbreth, Univ. of Nevada Las Vegas
30\. Aneutronic Fusion Propulsion II, Dr. W. Culbreth, Univ. Of Nevada Las
Vegas
31\. Laser Lightcraft Nanosatellites, Dr. E. Davis, EarthTech International
32\. Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) Air Breathing Propulsion and Power for
Aerospace Applications , Dr. S. Macheret, J -! ockheed Martin
33\. Quantum Computing and Utilizing Organic Molecules in Automation
Technology, Dr. R. Genik, Wayne State Univ.
34\. Quantum Tomography of Negative Energy States in the Vacuum, Dr. E. Davis,
Earth Tech lnternational
35\. Ultracapacitors as Energy and Power Storage Devices , Dr . J. Golightly,
Lockheed Martin
36\. Negative Mass Propulsion, Dr. F. Winterberg , Univ. o fNevada- Reno
37\. State of the Art and Evolution of High Energy Laser Weapons, J.
Albertine, Directed Technologies
38\. State of the Art and Evolution of High Energy Laser Weapons, J.
Albertine, Directed Technologies
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Snapchat Could Be Stripped Of “Tap-And-Hold For Video” Patent - andmarios
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/snapchat-patent/
======
darkstar999
What a joke. These software patents are getting out of control. They should be
limited to unique, meaningful algorithms.
------
gopher1
The patent system is truly broken.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unreal Engine 4.19 Released - ksec
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-4-19-released
======
frenchie14
I've tried to learn UE4 multiple times before and I can never get into it.
I've been using Unity for several years and the workflow was much more
intuitive to me when I first picked it up. Visual scripting doesn't really
work for me and the UE4 C++ scripts feel very cumbersome next to Unity's C#
scripting (not just the language, but the amount of work needed to get the
desired behavior). It's a shame because the tooling, rendering pipeline, and
updates for UE4 are way ahead of Unity and I get envious every time I see
these releases.
Does anyone here use UE4 to develop small games? If so, what's your
development workflow like for game logic?
~~~
peterlk
I had also tried to get into UE4 a couple times, and failed until I used found
the following resources:
[https://www.udemy.com/unrealcourse/learn/v4/overview](https://www.udemy.com/unrealcourse/learn/v4/overview)
\- a bit slow, but there is tons of content
[https://www.udemy.com/unrealmultiplayer/learn/v4/overview](https://www.udemy.com/unrealmultiplayer/learn/v4/overview)
\- building an online game with Unreal turned out to be stupid hard for me,
and this has paved the way
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRnPBe1tJpXA0lccx_U1mww](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRnPBe1tJpXA0lccx_U1mww)
\- UnrealGaimedev is amazing. I have so much thanks for his videos
With those, I have built some simple games. One of the things that I have
found interesting is that the visual programming of UE4 can accomplish way
more than I thought it was capable of. If you're getting started, I'd
recommend not even touching C++ because the visual programming stuff is
powerful enough for pretty much everything you would need in a hobby game.
~~~
isopede
I have been getting into Unreal the last few months and had the opposite
experience.
I found the visual programming language frustrating to use and reason about.
While I loved the discoverability of working with blueprints (it is easy to
find new nodes), I found that actually working on game logic quickly devolved
into an unmaintainable mess of literally, spaghetti code. It was great for
prototyping, but horrible at actually building something maintainable and
understandable. Reading other people's blueprint setup is even worse.
I found the workflow even more frustrating. Blueprints are stored as uasset
binaries, and as such make traditional version control impossible. Changing a
single default parameter in a blueprint rewrites the entire file, and can not
be diffed, merged, or reviewed, making git/p4 log nearly useless.
I know there is a builtin diff/merge in the editor, but it's pretty limited
and I would say it's quite a far cry from what "normal" developers are used to
in other parts of the software world.
I have since switched to using mostly C++, and only using blueprints for
derived Actors to set up art (meshes, materials, etc). It's definitely slower
to set up than using the blueprints. I'm not happy about being back in a place
where segfaults can happen; the compile-play-crash-restart cycle is much
longer than it should be. I'm not a huge fan of C++, warts and all. In return,
however, I can actually read the code, grep it, review it, etc. Do "all the
things" you're supposed to do as a good software engineer. I really don't know
how the AAA game studios are managing real games with blueprints, I kind of
doubt they are.
At least as an experienced software developer but amateur game programmer, I
found it much more comfortable to sit down with C++ and learn their API, than
it was to perform game logic by dragging around 'foreach' boxes and doing
arithmetic by crossing lines.
~~~
peterlk
I was also frustrated with the poor git support by blueprints. I ended up just
writing long commit messages so that I could read about what I (thought) I had
changed
~~~
pfranz
I've found the git support to be lacking. Every game studio I've known uses
Perforce mostly because it handles lots of binary data much better. Because of
the way games are developed, DCVS don't have as many benefits.
~~~
isopede
Perforce is great for binaries, but really kind of a substandard experience
for code, at least compared to hg/git.
I also tried Git LFS and it is a hot mess.
~~~
pfranz
I don't have much firsthand experience with Perforce. I've set it up, attached
it to UE4 and just appended commits. I have been on the miserable side of git
and binary data, LFS and other solutions seemed like awkward solutions.
Even ignoring the distributed aspect of git, the things I loved as a solo
developer was immediate branching, a sane way of merging, and things being
fast because there was no server to talk to (coming from SVN and CVS).
Now that I think more about it, I think some of the game studios I'm familiar
with were using Git for the engine and artists were using Perforce for their
assets.
------
bhouston
This is just brutal to Simplygon:
"The new system is used by HLOD and is a replacement for Simplygon....After
the prompted editor restart, the Plugin will replace the third party Simplygon
tool for static mesh merging LODs. This new Plugin is accessed in two ways:
The HLOD Outliner, and the Merge Actors dialog."
~~~
jensvdh
They got acquired by Microsoft, they'll live.
------
ksec
I cant think of a single pieces of software that has this consistent pace of
improvements, massive changes every release and shipping every few months, and
has been doing so for years.
~~~
vvanders
Many internal game engines go through similar levels of churn + updates, they
just usually don't see the light of day.
Gamedev is a somewhat unique space in that about 6 months from ship you fork
from upstream and almost never merge again. Heck most licensees I know hacked
UE3 to hell-and-back(which we did too) to add the features that we need to
actually ship.
------
minimaxir
It's funny how Fortnite became the ultimate pitch for UE4's versatility.
~~~
strgrd
I think it's funny that Fortnite will probably cause the inevitable unraveling
of UE4, as yet another game engine without baked-in anti-cheat.
Cheating in Fortnite is practically unheard of at this point. But it won't be
long until the player base is just as jaded as PUBG's:
[https://github.com/Griizz/Fortnite-Hack](https://github.com/Griizz/Fortnite-
Hack)
~~~
quacker
I have a few reactions here:
1\. Why should Epic go and reimplement anti-cheat that you can grab off the
shelf?
2\. A big part of limiting cheating comes down to the specific game design and
implementation. You need a server implementation that is as distrusting of
clients as possible, you need secure (networking) code, etc. Anti-cheat is not
a cure-all.
3\. Even without anti-cheat, Unreal Engine is still well-used by tons of
single-player video games. I don't see it "unraveling" regardless.
~~~
admax88q
> 2\. A big part of limiting cheating comes down to the specific game design
> and implementation. You need a server implementation that is as distrusting
> of clients as possible, you need secure (networking) code, etc. Anti-cheat
> is not a cure-all.
Unfortunately that's just not realistic for a large category of games. If you
can trust the clients to some degree then you can really really offload a lot
of server work. It's not feasible to process user's mouse input on the server
in an FPS for example. Not just from a server load standpoint but from a
latency standpoint.
~~~
monstrado
You don't need to do this in real time, instead you could log the data (e.g.
mouse clicks, key presses) to something like a database, Kafka, or Kenesis.
Now you've unloaded the anti cheat logic to other servers.
You don't necessarily need to ban a player immediately. If you can accurately
ban people within a day of using a cheat, then that's a pretty serious
deterrent from using them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I've reproduced 130 research papers about “predicting the stock market” - starpilot
https://www.reddit.com/r/algotrading/comments/cr7jey/ive_reproduced_130_research_papers_about/
======
starpilot
Spoilers:
> Literally every single paper was either p-hacked, overfit, or a subsample of
> favourable data was selected (I guess ultimately they're all the same thing
> but still) OR a few may have had a smidge of Alpha but as soon as you add
> transaction costs it all disappears.
> I should caveat that I was a profitable trader at multiple Tier-1 US banks
> so I can say with confidence that I made a decent attempt of building
> whatever the author was trying to get at.
~~~
DennisP
But also:
> Almost every instrument is mean-reverting on short timelines and trending on
> longer timelines.
i.e. he confirms the momentum factor, which isn't surprising since there's
more solid evidence for it than anything else, going back hundreds of years.
He doesn't say what fundamental factors he looked at, so it's possible that
value, size, and profitability/quality would hold up as well. All those have
been studied pretty extensively in academia, in papers going back decades. The
author took only a fairly random sampling of recent papers.
~~~
edoceo
All the finance folks I know use "fundamentals" to mean some class of
attributes, that they all know what they are. Like when I say "GPL3" to
someone who has a-priori knowledge.
Not exactly sure but I think the "fundamentals" are top-line revenue, unit
cost, unit margin, yoy-growth, EBTDA, cash-on-hand, default-alive - and likely
the ratios those values produce.
~~~
lootsauce
Fundamentals mean zilch for trading unless your'e talking earnings
announcements or like news.
~~~
H8crilA
Please don't downvote this comment. There's a huge difference between short
term trading and investing. And yes for short term trading (minutes/hours/few
days) fundamentals matter rather litte - after all you can be a successful
trader of Bitcoin, which has pretty much no fundamentals. Except on volatility
events like macro data releases, earnings, FED decisions, surprise news
(looking at you GE) etc.
~~~
Retric
> fundamentals matter rather litte
Having a small impact is not the same a having zero impact.
Traders operate over longer timeframe even if they are holding an individual
stock for minutes there is a limited pool of stocks. Keep playing the game and
longer term impacts add up.
~~~
derefr
But do the fundamentals of an individual investment matter in the short term
compared to the fundamentals of the market as a whole? I would suspect that
the “longer term impacts add[ing] up” would just be market health. Day-trading
randomly-picked stocks with random buys and sells is a Markov approximation of
an index fund :)
~~~
Retric
I think that depends on how stocks are chosen when you are day trading.
Limiting things to high volatility stocks for example creates a bias in your
index fund approximation.
------
lettergram
I had the same result from most papers. My personal conclusion is that when
people get a winning strategy they don’t publish. I personally put my money
where my mouth was for a few years:
[https://austingwalters.com/backtesting-our-100-yoy-profit-
ge...](https://austingwalters.com/backtesting-our-100-yoy-profit-generating-
strategy/)
That being said, I try to be honest too. This can disappear any time and the
model I use may only be good in this environment. I do not know. I think
that’s the challenge with papers, you don’t honestly know when or if the
strategy works. It clearly won’t forever regardless.
That’s why I don’t share my exact method. And after doing all the research
myself AND trying to sell my algorithm. I honestly don’t think the industry
knows what it’s doing either. People are worried about sharpe ratios and all
this BS stuff. The reality is for these models you mitigate risk via temporary
and ever changing methods. Can’t really publish on that.
~~~
p1esk
If your algorithm was successful, why did you try to sell it?
~~~
semi-extrinsic
Just a guess, but: if you come up with a successfull algorithm, you still need
to have money that can be invested in order to use the algorithm. So maybe
someone else with 100x more money to invest would pay more for the algorithm
than you could earn from it in a lifetime.
------
1e-9
In my view, the predominant mistake made by those who seek to create
profitable strategies is that they approach trading as if the market is a
zero-sum game. In particular, doing things that harm the markets, like naively
adding to existing momentum, is just promoting price overshoot and instability
by reinforcing positive feedback loops. Such approaches hurt others and while
they might make money for long periods of time, they will almost surely end up
losing all that profit and more during a small number of extreme market
events.
If you want to be reliably profitable, you need to first understand how the
markets are not a zero-sum game and then you need to construct methods to
improve the markets with your trading. There are countless ways that markets
deviate from truly efficient behavior. Find some and develop strategies in
areas that can benefit from your cognitive, experiential, and educational
strengths. General examples of how one might improve the markets include
things like providing liquidity when it's needed, limiting price overshoots
when it's warranted, and incorporating new information about instrument
values. The market will pay you in return if you do such things in a sound
way. As long as you also do a good job of estimating and limiting your risk,
you can be consistently profitable.
There will be no significant public disclosures of detailed ways to trade
profitably. The markets rely on the robustness provided by many different
points of view addressing market needs in a variety of ways. Any parties that
overweight one of those points of view will ultimately lose money in the
process of adding market instability. There's too much of that already. Don't
trade until you figure out how to make the markets better.
~~~
anonu
> you need to construct methods to improve the markets with your trading
What percentage of traders do you think will approach the market with such
altruism?
I think the markets are way too complex to rationalize "improving a market".
Markets are by definition good markets when you have long term and short term
traders mixed in with technical and fundamental traders all with different
alpha time horizons. This is a healthy market.
If you're a speculator, so be it. As you point out, the market may teach you a
lesson at some point. Those guys go away but new ones will join.
It's a beautiful virtuous cycle.
Not to say there aren't bad actors. Most speculators are not IMHO. But they
cross the line when they undertake certain market activities, like spoofing
for example. This is why good markets also have good regulatory oversight
(finra, sec... )
~~~
1e-9
> What percentage of traders do you think will approach the market with such
> altruism?
Approximately 0%. I don't know of any entities that trade as a nonprofit. The
point is that if you find something the market needs, you will have inherently
discovered an opportunity that can make money because there is demand which
exceeds supply for the service. As an additional benefit, such strategies are
unlikely to run afoul of regulatory oversight or be eliminated through future
rule changes.
> I think the markets are way too complex to rationalize "improving a market".
This is not rationalizing, it is about how to effectively identify profitable
opportunities. Let's turn the argument around. Do you expect a trading
strategy that harms a market to be reliably profitable without risking fines,
banning, or imprisonment? If you don't, then it probably makes sense to
exclude such approaches from your strategy search space. Additionally, I would
argue that strategies which are of neutral benefit to the markets are likely
to generate small returns relative to their risk because entities on the other
side of your trades are not receiving value and thus the market is more likely
to turn against you. If we eliminate "harmful" and "neutral", we're left with
"beneficial".
I completely agree with everything else you say.
~~~
astrophysician
> Do you expect a trading strategy that harms a market to be reliably
> profitable without risking fines, banning, or imprisonment?
Non-trader here, what do you mean by a particular trading strategy "harm[ing]
a market," how would you actually measure harm to a market by a given trading
strategy, and would whatever metric you decide on for that not just be a
dressed-up subjective argument?
~~~
1e-9
By "harming a market", I mean "causing a market to be less efficient". It is
typically easier to identify harmful behavior than it is to quantify the
amount of harm caused. Sometimes you can easily estimate a rough lower bound
on the harm's cost. Easier cases include 1) Spoofing, where you could estimate
the harm as being greater than the captured profit, and 2) Self-trading for
the purpose of receiving liquidity provider incentives, where you could
estimate the harm as being greater than the incentives received. Harder cases
include situations where poor strategies caused market instability by
underestimating risk or trading in a way that is too similar to others.
Extreme examples of these include the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM)
blowout in 1998, the 2010 Flash Crash, or any number of firms that contributed
to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. You should be able to find plenty of
academic papers attempting to quantify the harm of those.
------
edwardy20
Professional quant here. I have to say I strongly disagree with the
conclusions of the OP.
> They were all found by using phrases like "predict stock market" or "predict
> forex" or "predict bitcoin" and terms related to those.
Yeah, searching for any finance papers with "predict" or "machine learning" is
literally the lowest quality tier you can get. These papers are often written
by grad students who can pump an easy paper out by "applying" some already
known ML algorithm to financial markets. Of course it's not gonna work. It
also kills me when I see ML models who need stationarity assumptions applied
to non-stationary time series data. Yeah, good luck with that.
THAT being said, there is lots of high quality research which has been
replicated over and over, showing that alpha does exist in the market (and
which funds have made billions off of). I would like to see the OP try to
replicate some of these instead. To give some simple examples:
1\. Try searching for papers with the keywords "and the cross section of
expected returns". For example, the momentum factor which can be tested and
replicated with only linear regression. > There is substantial evidence that
indicates that stocks that perform the best (worst) over a three- to 12-month
period tend to continue to perform well (poorly) over the subsequent three to
12 months.
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=299107](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=299107)
2\. Statistical arbitrage strategies which were known to work well until the
mid 2000s. Also been replicated many times, furthermore, you can see the
gradual decline in profitability pointing to the theory that "alpha decay" in
this case is real.
[https://www.math.nyu.edu/faculty/avellane/AvellanedaLeeStatA...](https://www.math.nyu.edu/faculty/avellane/AvellanedaLeeStatArb071108.pdf)
3\. High frequency strategies. No way OP or any retail trader can replicate
this, but firms make billions of dollars per year consistently doing this.
In conclusion, to make a claim that there is no alpha in the market seems
highly suspect, and perhaps just needs a more nuanced view of how trading
firms make their profits.
~~~
gillesjacobs
I also find it highly unlikely anyone is able to implement 130+ papers in 7
months.
This would require insane productivity, implausible access to pricing and news
data resources (which are often not freely available) and expertise in machine
learning, natural language processing, finance, and data science. OP had to
implement financial, time-series and linguistic feature engineering pipelines,
as well infer the architecture and hyper-parameters used AND train all these
models.
He also claims he "web scraped" all the data which is highly unlikely as
pricing datasets are often sold for a pretty penny and not publicly available
in the detail described in several of these papers.
OP must be a genius to pull this off, all the while being a trader at "a Tier
1 US bank" (in itself that description is ridiculous).
All OP has to show for all this work is a hastily written Reddit post with
dubious claims. There is no proof of the work done whatsoever, no code
samples, not even result tables or graphs. And at the end OP chills his
cryptotrading bot.
What's worse HN seems to gobble it up naively. Seemingly because OP is
critical of something that is popular to criticize.
~~~
lordnacho
> OP must be a genius to pull this off, all the while being a trader at "a
> Tier 1 US bank" (in itself that description is ridiculous).
Mostly agree with you, but what's ridiculous about that description? His
LinkedIn says he worked at Merrills and Citi. Those are normally considered
top tier US banks?
~~~
anonu
If those aren't top tier I don't know what is...
Generally the banks are no longer the place to do prop trading though. You're
better off at a hedge fund. They will not only pay better but have way better
access to resources, tech, experienced traders, etc
------
bArray
Currently I remain skeptical, 130 pages in 7 months plus meaningful
experiments is quite some going. A list of the papers (so at least the authors
can defend themselves), the source code and data used (because some of these
methods require social media inputs) would definitely help.
After doing so much work though, why wouldn't you go the extra small few steps
to publish? That way the work can be peer reviewed and the Scientific
community has a chance to learn from it.
~~~
bem94
> That way the work can be peer reviewed and the Scientific community has a
> chance to learn from it.
After trawling through so much peer reviewed work which in their view is
utterly broken, I can understand why they'd be despondent/mistrustful of
submitting it to a peer review process.
~~~
bArray
If you want to go that route, why not write a detailed blog post? Or a white
paper in an archive? Or a GitHub repository? Not putting anything out there
seems awfully unproductive.
------
lootsauce
Best survey of the subject I have found (most are bullshit) is Finding Alpha
by Eric Falkenstein which he has graciously offered for free on his blog. By
the subject I mean, finding an edge in trading. Spoiler alert there is no
system to follow. He wrote algos for a local options market maker, had a
significant Econ PHD thesis. The basic premise of the book is that real Alpha
is rare, idiosyncratic and gets exploited by those in the know and eventually
the edge goes away after several years. He gives several classic historic
examples which are what made this book so interesting and unique to me.
[http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/finding-alpha-
pdf.htm...](http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/finding-alpha-pdf.html)
------
sixtypoundhound
I'm not surprised by this finding; too many smart people are working on the
same problem.
When it comes to investing in public markets as an outside player, I've seen
three moves which can work....
1) Identify a consumer product category going through the technology adoption
S-curve, ideally something which isn't very subject to short term innovation
cycles or disruption.
My wife spotted the trend of people spending more on pet drugs before we got
married and invested. We've ridden it for well over 20 years...
2) Buy when the entire industry is a flaming wreck and there is blood in the
boardroom; assuming there is a good reason that demand for their products to
continue.
I've done this several times in natural resources (gold in the early 2000's,
oil in 2016) and it worked out decently.
3) One I haven't executed yet; certain firms are basically bets that a
specific event will occur, at which point the demand for their product will go
bananas. Buy in the quiet period and sell once the event happens.
Requires great patience to execute well.
------
SheinhardtWigCo
I wish it wasn’t this easy to get crypto-scam SEO articles to the front page
of Reddit and HN.
~~~
comatosesperrow
THANK YOU. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills watching everyone eat up the
article where HE ASKS FOR YOUR MONEY.
~~~
lucb1e
Wait, what did I miss? I thought the writing was bad (both contents and style)
so I didn't click through to the medium article, is that where they ask you to
invest in their stuff instead?
~~~
comatosesperrow
That's where it is. He then calls it a "set it and forget it" crypto bot. Yes,
please forget about the $1,000 you just gave me...
------
omarhaneef
How did you do 130 papers in 7 months? That’s just over a paper every 2 days.
What was the setup, how did you set up a pipeline? Was it R or Python? What
was the data source?
I am more surprised by your productivity than anything else.
~~~
bwilsonkey
I don’t think he actually did it. He linked to a crypto scam medium post
lol...
~~~
hobofan
> crypto scam medium post
Could you expand on that? I've only skimmed the article, but I don't see any
"crypto scams" pushed in the article. The article is just about something the
author seems to know about (algorithmic trading), applied to the
cryptocurrency market. It does promote the authors project (why else would you
write a Medium post), but in the worst case, that would be a normal scam and
not a crypto scam.
~~~
FiberBundle
The whole article just seems like an attempt to steal money from uninformed
people. He starts by giving vague information about trading strategies in
general, then linking to an article about Renaissance Technologies as an
example for successful algorithmic trading, then stating that most trading
bots aren't successful and that the crucial differentiator for deciding whose
bots to trust is the person's professional experience, which is obviously a
reasonable thing to do, however the picture at the beginning of the article of
him at a trading desk and him repeatedly mentioning his 7 year experience as a
trader combined with the complete lack of any actual proof that his bots are
actually profitable, make it seem as if he just tries to profit off his
previous experience.
He ends the article writing this:
"All you’ll need to get started is: 1\. $1000 2\. To press a single button to
get the bots started"
Furthermore in the reddit comments in response to the following question: "130
papers re-implemented in 7 months? I'm blown away. Write a software
engineering book about how you did it so quickly. Then write a self-help book
about having enough motivation to see it through." he writes:
"100-hour weeks and a desire for a better life for the ones you love will get
you there pretty quickly"
This guy seems like a complete fraud, I find it sort of sad that this has
landed on the frontpage of HN with that money upvotes.
~~~
hobofan
Oh don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trust the guy farther than I can throw him
either. I just wanted to be a bit pedantic about "normal fraud" vs. "crypto
fraud" (= ICO or similar).
------
rossdavidh
This is one of those cases where I would have guessed this would be the case,
but it's nice that somebody else spent their time to verify, since I'm
unwilling to spend my time to do so. Also nice that they shared their
experience with the rest of us.
If it worked, it wouldn't be published, or at least not until it stopped
working.
~~~
lucb1e
> Also nice that they shared their experience with the rest of us.
Except they didn't share the results with the rest of us. I know you said
"experience" not "results", but when disproving papers, the least you can do
is write down three sentences about each paper as you go along reproducing
them, noting what you are seeing, perhaps with a snapshot (just a zip file or
so) of the code. This is calling a whole field nonsense (that everyone expects
to be full of nonsense) without giving enough evidence for anyone else to
dispute your claims.
------
gillesjacobs
OP makes highly dubious claims and does not pass a basic smell test:
ALL CLAIMS MADE ARE DUBIOUS: Implementing 130+ papers in 7 months is highly
implausible. This would require:
\- Insane productivity.
\- Implausible access to pricing and news data resources (which are often not
freely available).
\- Expertise in machine learning, natural language processing, finance, and
data science. OP had to implement financial, time-series and linguistic
feature engineering pipelines, as well infer the architecture and hyper-
parameters used in all papers AND train all these models. ALL WITHIN 7 MONTHS.
All while previously being a trader professionally i.e. not likely an expert
in many of these fields.
\- OP also claims he "web scraped" all the data which is highly unlikely as
price datasets are often sold for a pretty penny and not publicly available in
the detail described in several of these papers.
\- Down the thread, OP says he does not know what a "meta analysis" study is
al the while being capable of implementing 130+ papers. So someone who is an
expert in ML, statistics, data science and finance does not know one of the
most basic types of scientific study. All the while essentially engaging in a
meta analysis study.
\- OP describes himself as "a trader at a Tier 1 US bank" to lend credibility
to his post: in itself that description is ridiculous and sounds like a naive
attempt at instilling authority.
\- When others encourage OP to publish results, he answers evasively:
"probably a bit deep for a public forum but I was kinda glad to see the back
of that work. It was an awesome learning experience but it's pretty soul
destroying experimenting with tonnes of stuff that just doesn't work."
EVIDENCE PROVIDED: Non-existent.
All OP has to show for all this work is a hastily written Reddit post with
dubious claims. There is no proof of the work done whatsoever, no code
samples, not even result tables or graphs. The discussion of basic results are
often made criticisms of this line of research.
MOTIVATION:
At the end OP shills his cryptotrading bot. This post was likely all just
purely made-up to market his cryptotrading bot service. OP uses some common
criticisms of market prediction research to garner authority as a wizz-kid to
attract people to his crypto scam.
What's worse many on HN and Reddit seem to gobble it up naively. Seemingly
because OP is critical of something that is popular to criticize.
------
tripzilch
I read the post and .. he basically _said_ he did it, and just claims the
results (that are so tasty because they fit everyone's preconceptions). And
that's all the information there is. _Not even listing the papers that he
supposedly reproduced._
And then at the end of the post, you get a link to a blog post about crypto
trading bots, which isn't even relevant in context, starts out reading like a
intro/tutorial but it ends with "all you need to get started is $1000 and to
press this button" ...
Upvoted all the way to the front page? What the hell, HN. Flagged.
------
whoisninja
more important than this study if done correctly is the fact that he built a
framework that can ingest all this data and that he had access to all these
datasets
typical hedge fund spends millions of dollars in order to build such
frameworks and buying datasets, sure most academic papers fail if you
replicate but the framework and datasets are very valuable because you can
eventually find something on your own or an improvement on existing ideas if
you keep trying hard enough + there are other sources of ideas like quant
research from brokers, ideas from platforms like quantopian etc. but yea in
general if you have an outstanding idea that works - you would have very less
or no incentive to publish it. why would jim simons have his researchers
publish anything when they can make money for him all day long everyday ...
just my 2 cents.
~~~
whoisninja
i asked the author where did he source his data, his reply was "i scraped
data"
how can you scrape pricing data? not every data in this is on public domain,
otherwise there would be no Bloombergs, CapitalIQs selling data for
millions(sure they're overrated and overpriced but still!). Or in other words,
if he is right - he can sell data and make millions. no need of looking for an
investment strategy. just my skeptical side saying :)
you need clean data to accurately test ideas. for instance getting tick data
is quite expensive. most universities have free access to Bloomberg, CapitalIQ
etc. datasets the reason professors can test and also the reason some smart
guys in the industry work for university on the side
~~~
lettergram
You can get data for free from places such as alpha vantage
[https://www.alphavantage.co/](https://www.alphavantage.co/)
~~~
whoisninja
it's not enough data to test all of those 130 papers, he said he has also
tested short term reversion trends. for that you need tick data(or atleast
minute/hourly data)
~~~
bwilsonkey
Agreed — something about this post doesn’t pass the smell test.
1\. He’s a profitable trader at a tier 1 firm who has the spare time to not
only develop a series of algorithms based on 130 research papers, but also
sufficiently backtest them in 7 months?
2\. He said he looked at the past 8 years of papers, but refers to multiple
models correctly predicting the 2008 financial crisis.
3\. Where are the code samples?
Edit:
Lol, just realized his medium post ends with a crypto scam.
~~~
hihi123
Ditto on the "130 papers in 7 months." I am not familiar with the field, but I
assume the process would look like this:
* Read and understand paper
* Find and download appropriate input data
* Code paper model and validate (he said he wrote his own code)
I can see myself being able to do this for ONE paper in maybe a week. He
claims he was doing 1-2 of these per day. Wow. So either there is some
exaggeration on his part, or he is a total wizard in his field.
~~~
sgt101
I think you are a quick study; typically it takes me a week to figure out the
detail of what's being done in a paper. Getting the data and testing would
take longer. Charitably he/she has a framework with all the data required
sitting ready to go and is just writing wrappers to the models. But even
downloading frameworks from Github and getting them working takes a couple of
days - for me. For example I've been playing with the Graph-network code from
deepmind for a few weeks - I had to learn how the graphs were represented, how
to build them and access them and how the models were made and put together.
Just working that out was a solid three day job. Now I can build things and
test out what's going on in the examples and get a feel for the framework,
probably (if there was a problem) I would be in a reasonable position to say
"this doesn't work like they think it does" (it does, but no surprise) but
unless you've done that leg work I think you can't really. I think a proper
replication effort is really 1 man month of expert time - or really you're
just throwing stones.
------
ddxxdd
>Literally every single paper was either p-hacked, overfit, or a subsample of
favourable data was selected
including methods that use:
>News Text Mining. - This is where they'd use NLP on headlines or the body of
news as a signal.
I have to call this out.
Is this author suggesting that you couldn't have made money by shorting Enron
stocks milliseconds after the scandal was made public? Is it impossible to
make money by buying a stock in a small company, seconds after an acquisition
is announced? If a CEO gets sent to prison, will that company's stocks not be
affected?
And then there are other methods that use:
>Fundamental data. So ratios from the income statement/balance sheet
So buying stocks in companies with good financial health is not profitable?
Something's being left out here.
~~~
mediaman
The important concept to understand about profitable investing is that you
have to have a strategy that others are not also using.
Sure, investing in companies in good financial health is profitable. Unless
everyone else does it too, and they drive up the price of the profitable
companies, until all upside is gone (i.e., price is baked in). You're not
better at finding profitable companies than anyone else.
Shorting stock on headlines? Sure, if you can beat everyone else. (You can't.)
The other is merely stating that, according to his analysis, apparently all
these strategies did not bring an edge to the market.
~~~
rocqua
> The important concept to understand about profitable investing is that you
> have to have a strategy that others are not also using.
Not quite, because stocks tend to go up.
What really is hard is making more profit than just holding stocks would.
Because that takes actual new ideas.
~~~
grenoire
Stocks do not tend to go up, that would imply a greater than 0 return average
for series. We instead get mean blur and skewness (which is actually often to
the left).
The aggregate of the traded stocks, i.e. the market, goes up on average.
That's why you make money by holding diversified portfolios.
------
ricklamers
I think this is not rigorous enough to draw any real conclusions.
If he had done a proper job of reproducing he would have created a write-up of
his work explaining his reproduction methodology. The next step would be to
get his work peer reviewed.
I think only then you have come close to the amount of analysis and rigour
necessary to discredit so many authors of (possibly peer reviewed scientific
articles) academic research.
The fact that he mentions that he doesn't know what a meta analysis is in the
comments suggests that possibly _his_ results might not be what he purports
them to be.
~~~
gillesjacobs
Exactly, I also find it extremely dubious a "Tier 1 professional quant trader"
implemented 130+ papers in 7 months.
This means obtaining the same data, reproducing feature engineering and
hyperparameters. Implementing learning algos. Maybe the guy is genius and god-
like in NLP, finance, data science and machine learning but even then 7 months
is too little time.
I was amazed at how few people call out this obvious lie here.
------
zazagura
Some of the papers I've seen are ridiculously obviously over-fitted.
For example published in 2018, but "tested" on 3 months of 2010 prices of
GBP/USD, USD/SEK and USD/THB. Quality forex data is so easy to get freely,
that picking 3 months from 8 years ago on one major pair and two other random
minor ones just stinks.
~~~
quirmian
Where can I get good quality forex data from?
~~~
capnrefsmmat
I used TrueFX for an assignment in a statistics-for-finance class I taught:
[https://www.truefx.com/](https://www.truefx.com/)
------
jmpman
Has anyone tried a simple approach - trying to predict which of the S&P 500
will have the lowest 10% returns, and build an (S&P 500 - 10%) index? It seems
obvious that the S&P is stacked with some great companies and some old dogs.
Does that method not work?
~~~
smnrchrds
Since it's obvious, everyone knows it. And since everyone knows it, it's
already priced in. You cannot find an edge by acting on widely-known public
information.
~~~
jmpman
I’m acting on the fact that almost all my investments are in the S&P 500, and
I don’t have a (easy) way to pick my favorite 450 out of those 500. How would
knowing the worst 50 be already priced in? They would be priced lower than
they should? Good let’s get them out of my index. How else?
~~~
nostrademons
They'd be priced low. There is no "should" when it comes to markets - the
market price is whatever people will transact at.
The problem is that stock price movements depend upon _future_ events - making
money in the markets is effectively a future-prediction problem. So if your
strategy is to discard the bottom 10%, great, you got rid of Foot Locker and
Sears. You also would've gotten rid of Apple in 1998, which was responsible
for a good portion of the index's gains over the last 20 years. And you
would've kept losers like PG&E, which went bankrupt over a black-swan event
(they were doing fine until they burned down a town).
------
xondono
Everyone can drive a car in a straight line looking into the back mirror.
Trouble only starts on the first turn.
------
leet_thow
The stock market is a complex adaptive system where the agents are constantly
changing their strategies so that even if you were to find inefficiencies or
patterns, they are only ephemeral.
~~~
deepnotderp
This is why the truly successful quant groups like Renaissance continuously
adjust their strategies and come up with new ones. Renaissance in particular
has invested heavily into their data processing pipeline which enables them to
have a significant advantage over the rest of the field.
~~~
leet_thow
Yes, if I remember correctly from an interview I saw with the founder he
mentioned that the barrier to entry used to be high and that commodities
markets 'used to' trend.
------
paultopia
Interesting but it would be nice if the author would, you know, write up
his/her own detailed analysis with replication steps and post on arxiv or
something.
~~~
defertoreptar
I got the feeling this was more of a case of "I did all this work for myself.
Nothing useful came up, so here's what I found." The author may be ok with
spending an hour sharing the findings, but doesn't want to spend more time
than that.
~~~
numakerg
>Nothing useful came up,
Except plenty useful came up. "Literally every single paper was either
p-hacked, overfit, or a subsample of favourable data was selected" out of 130+
is a significant result. The media would jump on this, and they just might
even without any proof of work.
~~~
defertoreptar
I was referring to the word "useful" within the context of the author's
hypothetical goal, not the parent poster's (i.e. a strategy useful for making
money opposed to sharing knowledge).
------
whoisninja
the author is trying to sell crypto trading bot ! looks shady to me if
anything guarantees you profit, run away from it as fast as you can :
[https://credium.io/](https://credium.io/)
[https://towardsdatascience.com/crypto-trading-bots-a-
helpful...](https://towardsdatascience.com/crypto-trading-bots-a-helpful-
guide-for-
beginners-60decb40e434?source=friends_link&sk=6c68390cbf6ae7f464ad1666d55dba4b)
------
linux_devil
"The most frustrating paper:
I have true hate for the authors of this paper: "A deep learning framework for
financial time series using stacked autoencoders and long-short term memory".
Probably the most complex AND vague in terms of methodology and after weeks
trying to reproduce their results (and failing) I figured out that they were
leaking future data into their training set (this also happens more than you'd
think)."
\- Not sure how author tried to implement it , but is this not how you train
LSTM networks by feeding t+1 data back into the cell again to predict t+2
data. It will be easier if author made it open source as well
~~~
laichzeit0
Leaking future data in would be using t+1 for t, e.g. something like a bi-
directional LSTM. I assume he means the actual training dataset had some kind
of signal in the data that was also in the test data.
~~~
sgt101
People do this by doing things like testing that their features contain
information in both the training and test set. Because they are not exposing
the data directly to the classifier they think that they haven't compromised
the test set - but what they have done is increased the chances of a chance
correlation.
------
WheelsAtLarge
I could bet a ton that most people will make excuses as to why the papers
failed. There's something within us that wants to hit the stock market
lottery.
I truly believe that there are streeks to profits in the stock market in the
same way you will find streeks in any set of random numbers but they are
impossible to find in a consistent manner. The road to wealth for most in the
stock market is time and investing in a basket of good stocks.
Whoever thinks that they have found a system to profits in the stock market.
Test and retest your method a few times. It's unlikely you have a winning
system.
~~~
bjourne
But there is a foolproof way of profiting from the stock market. Insider
trading! I find it fascinating that people do not believe it occurs at a grand
scale given the low risks and huge rewards. Exactly like how people believe
athletes don't use steroids so they get all upset when every once in a while
one is caught. :)
~~~
saalweachter
One of my favorite not-quite-conspiracy-theories is that all of quants and
crazy trading algorithms are just to provide cover for the insider trading.
------
scarmig
Wouldn't any given approach rapidly lose efficacy as soon as its published?
I would even guess that a paper being published means that, at the point the
paper started to be written, its alpha had already decreased to zero.
Otherwise the writers of the paper would still be using that approach. That's
how it can appear to provide no value even if you extrapolate it back in time.
~~~
SubiculumCode
The author mentions this, and said he tested for "alpha decay" by applying
method to datasets that preceded the data on which the model was
tested/trained.
------
grahamannett
I barely skimmed this
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0180944)
for the "most frustrating paper" but how did he determine that they were
leaking "future data"?
------
riku_iki
TLDR, no results, no code, no details, just admission of failure from
anonymous redditor with SEO link on his unrelated crypto-trading project.
~~~
mxcrossb
It’s baffling to me that anyone would believe this post. Do people here not
have an ounce of skepticism?
~~~
javert
I think people aren't skeptical about this because it lines up with what they
already expect. That's the case for me.
If the guy is lying and it's all made up, I'd _still_ wager that if you
assembled a collection of 130 papers on this topic, at most 10% would be valid
[1]. So even if he's wrong, he's probably not wrong.
[1] I have an academic background, and I think invalid papers make it through
peer review constantly. Peer review is not what people think it is.
------
RickJWagner
I tend to follow Jack Bogle's advice. Jack made many people wealthy.
His advice? "Nobody knows nothing." (Read Bogleheads.org to see how to
leverage this into wealth.)
------
zallarak
Some of the smartest people I've ever known from college became professional
stock market investors and traders. Not a single one of them has significantly
outperformed the market.
I think of stock market investing as a white collar gig economy job. Both
depend on some central entity, which makes a killing (brokerages in this
case), and have extremely low barriers to entry.
------
bitL
Hasn't there recently been shown that only strategies using simple momentum-
derived technical indicators were able to consistently bring returns in the
stock market?
~~~
DennisP
Not just recently, it's been known for a while. The author actually confirmed
it:
> Almost every instrument is mean-reverting on short timelines and trending on
> longer timelines. This has held true across most of the data that I tested.
(But momentum isn't the only thing that appears to work.)
------
m3kw9
He didn’t state the time frame things are predicting. Going long is still the
best way to beat any hedge funds or “pros”
------
maremp
Source OP deleted the post. Is there a mirror?
------
kart23
Buy low, sell high. Focus on reliable, proven stocks. It's not hard. Buy on
bad days, sell on good days. Dont overcomplicate things.
------
unnouinceput
To OP (janny_kul@HN and chiefkul@RD): "Show me the code! Show me the code" \-
in obvious Cuba Gooding Jr. voice
Until then I call this a fraud
------
SirSavary
Disappointed that this made it to the front-page of HN. Had it show up in my
push feed because it was so popular; quite upset to click it and see the
comments in here falling for someone who's a crypto scammer:
\- Redditor for 28 days; first post made to /r/investing and contained self-
promotion for a website that functions as a search engine for stock market
fundamentals (post removed by moderators, take a look using
[https://ceddit.com](https://ceddit.com))
\- Has made a few, low impression comments across other trading subreddits
(/r/algotrading and /r/securityanalysis)
\- Claims to have been a trader at "multiple Tier-1 US banks" for 7 years but
a glance at their LinkedIn shows less than five and a half years (65 months)
between two organizations
\- Claims that they found, analyzed, and reproduced "130+" academic papers in
only "7 months". Even by superhuman standards, the outlook for completing this
much work (at high quality) is grim. Here's some napkin math:
7 months * 30 days = 210 days 16 hours (superhuman) * 210 days = 3,360 hours
3,360 hours / 130 papers to reproduce = 25.8hrs per paper
These numbers are intentionally rough to show that even if we're being
generous, the idea that any one person could somehow recreate a full academic
paper in less than two 16 hour working days is absurd. Add to this OP's claim
of spending "weeks trying to reproduce [a paper's] results" and it the task
becomes even more daunting.
This is possibly the biggest red flag of all -- or OP is the world's first
(and only) 100x developer.
\- Does not provide any empirical data to back their claims, only provides the
name (not a link) of one paper, and when asked in comments to provide more
information -- fails to deliver.
This post desperately wants to come off as a research article but it's missing
all the fundamentals to make it so. If OP's claims were true, why wouldn't
they post their raw findings? We could make that argument that there's far too
much to post, 130 papers would be a good bit of code, but there's no reason
that OP couldn't provide a listing of the papers they "reproduced" at the bare
minimum.
OP has made extraordinary claims: most if not all "predicting the stock
market" papers are fraudulent, but has failed to provide any supporting
evidence to back this up beyond their own words. As someone who just analyzed
well over a hundred papers and postures themselves as a data scientist, OP
should know that citing yourself doesn't fly in this scenario.
\- OP ends their post with the following: "I try to write a bit on medium even
though I'm not a great writer if you wanted to read more from me."
There's absolutely nothing wrong with self-promotion, provided you're a
quality creator and are transparent about what is being promoted. OP is
neither of these things.
Clicking the Medium.com link will take you to a blog post titled "Crypto
Trading Bots · A helpful guide for beginners [2019]". If you're like me, you
might assume this is a tutorial related to crypto trading bots. Perhaps
information on setting one up, coding one yourself, or an overview of the
landscape. It is none of these things.
Much of the article explains how cryptocurrency trading bots work -- which is
great, but quickly goes down the path of telling the reader that most bots are
garbage and won't return a profit. Near the end of the post we're advised how
to choose a viable trading bot and are provided with three questions to ask
ourselves:
1\. What is the professional experience level of the senior leaders of that
firm? 2\. Are their algorithms widely known and openly available to anyone?
3\. Is their success aligned with your success?
Immediately after these questions are the following lines: "Unfortunately,
choosing a trading bot to go with isn’t as trivial as answering these three
questions. In my opinion, everything ultimately comes down to people."
What people, you ask? Perhaps someone like OP, who happens to be the founder
of a trading bot platform. The post finishes off with a not-so-subtle advert
for his company, along with the extraordinary claim that it will "take full
responsibility for the profitability of our clients". According to the OP, all
you need to get rolling on his platform is "$1000" and "to press a single
button to get the bots started", never mind that the platform hasn't launched
and AFAIK there's no start button to press.
Clicking through to the platform's website will bring you to a scroll-jacked
landing page full of marketing fluff. Scroll further down (or click the "Get
Started" button) and you'll see a pricing table with only one option currently
available: pre-order a "$145 single fee lifetime license". Compared to the two
unavailable plans, $145 is a steal -- the next plan down would run you $660
($55*12) a year. Combine this with the "First 90 days profitability or money
back guarantee" and the whole damn thing sounds like an incredible deal. But
you better act fast because this offer is only available to the "first 1000
members".
OP's other trading bot articles aren't much better and in my opinion, directly
promote his platform.
~~~
The whole thing sets off numerous alarm bells in my head -- and it should for
you too.
A trader who worked at "Tier 1 US banks" should know that guaranteeing the
profits on your first 1,000 customers is not only ridiculous but so ambiguous
as to be useless. Every developer on this site should know that not a single
one of us would be remotely capable of maintaining a death-march level working
pace for 7 months, launching a (credible) startup, followed by making non-
zalgoized Reddit posts lacking any reference to the void.
OP isn't an OG superhuman developer who worked for a bunch of big banks and
learned all the secrets. They're a former trader turned wantrepreneur that's
resorted to dirty tactics to promote their venture. As far as I'm concerned,
and maybe it's inflammatory, but OP is a liar. Nothing more.
------
throwaway156503
Technical analysis is pseudoscience.
------
gingabriska
Let's say an event occurs and you know a particular stock will go up 20% but
you pump enough money into the stock to make the stock go 30% and then you let
others chase the stock and publish news about this market move through media
houses / content spamming / fake accounts. Then you short the stock once you
get the desired movement and finally you remove the money from this stock so
it goes into free fall and all people start selling. Finally, you close the
short position when you notice there is no room for stock going further down.
Now let's say stock ended up at 10% so you buy more stock so it goes 15% just
below what you initially predicted.
Assuming you've billions to move the stock.
Why such strategy will not work?
~~~
anastalaz
Such a strategy does work and it's also illegal. It is called market
manipulation specifically 'pump and dump'
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation)
------
rolltiide
yeah but you can make a lot of money preaching technical analysis to your
congregation a few times per week
protip: a fibonacci retracement from a randomly selected extreme will always
tell you something
protip: it takes 5 months for your congregation’s account to get eaten up from
transaction costs when their stop limits keep getting hit
in the mean time you can just play TA roulette and they’ll always be impressed
by your “uncanny” perceptive abilities
~~~
throwawaywego
If you know that 5.6% of the users (automated, or parroting the preacher) of
an exchange will use fibonacci retracements, and that 15% of the amateur
market will follow the market price change caused by either buying or selling
activity, then you can play roulette with a decent edge. Of course, not as
much as the preacher, who is allowed to bet before (s)he will speak to his or
her congregation.
When you gather enough of these commonly used technical analysis, it's like
having to predict in which startup Ron Conway will invest, but you can
calculate Conway in a Python one-liner, and keep up-to-date by going to weekly
sermon.
~~~
rolltiide
yes, this is possible, with more trades becoming a self fulfilling prophecy,
and have stop limits in place all the times it didn't work.
I wish the technical analysis flock would merely incorporate different things.
TA takes a time series chart and imagines time series patterns. It primarily
neglects what didn't get printed on a time series chart, and why. How big are
the orders at the resistance level, do you have a record of the order sizes
that appeared at the last resistance level? who is selling at the resistance
level and why? The TA answer is "just because its a psychologically round
number for the resistance price" or "because thats how high the last high
candle was", but you can greatly improve your win rate by understanding who is
in the market and why, which is possible to understand and a large portion of
my trading strategies. It can be much more data intensive though so I can see
why 1980s gurus did not do it.
------
paulpauper
_Literally every single paper was either p-hacked, overfit, or a subsample of
favourable data was selected (I guess ultimately they 're all the same thing
but still) OR a few may have had a smidge of Alpha but as soon as you add
transaction costs it all disappears._
I could have told you that without testing. If anyone had a lucrative strategy
would they disclose it in a paper to the general public? I think not.
~~~
lucasmullens
Proof can be more useful than a hunch.
~~~
numakerg
And the author has shown none.
------
lidHanteyk
This is unsurprising. P likely is not equivalent to NP [0], and predicting the
market is NP-hard [1]. It's nice to see empirical work in the field, though,
and especially nice to see reproductions of published papers.
[0]
[https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/pnp.pdf](https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/pnp.pdf)
[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284](https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284)
Edit for downvoters and repliers: If enough market participants are
irrational, then it can still be possible for people to predict _other people_
, instead of the market, and make money that way.
NP-hardness indeed doesn't rule out heuristic approaches, but experience with
3-SAT and other NP-complete problems suggest that there will be arbitrarily
bad times, and that in those times, the amount of loss can be exponential in
the length of time that the heuristic poorly predicts the market.
~~~
dvt
Philip Maymin seems like a serious guy... but that EMH ↔ P=NP paper is
absolutely not even remotely a _proof_. Was genuinely very curious and it's at
best an intuition. Some claims, e.g. Knapsack and 3SAT are (almost?)
isomorphic to the efficient market hypothesis, are pretty bold. And the
justification is hand-wavy at best.
~~~
pzone
He's not a serious guy at all, he's a nutjob who likes listening to himself
talk.
~~~
pmaymin
Why must serious guy and nut job be my only two options. And why must they be
mutually exclusive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US lost more tax revenue than any other developed country in 2018 due to (cont) - whack
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/05/us-tax-revenue-dropped-sharply-due-to-trump-tax-cuts-report.html
======
bernierocks
We have the lowest unemployment rates in a decade. He has to be doing
something right.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Replacing the input reader in cmd.exe - s3graham
http://h4ck3r.net/2013/08/10/replacing-the-input-reader-in-cmd-exe/
======
hondje
Ctrl W? That makes my day :-D
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Snowden’s biggest revelation: We don’t know what power is, nor do we care - npalli
http://pando.com/2013/12/29/snowdens-biggest-revelation-we-dont-know-what-power-is-anymore-nor-do-we-care/
======
Empact
"the only thing close to a politics around leaking is libertarianism, the
worst of all political worlds."
Funny how often libertarians get this treatment even after so many prominent
examples of representing the majority sentiment before the majority is ready
for it, e.g. on war and pot.
I'd say the worst of all political worlds is the one in which you blindly
support the actions of whichever leader bears your label.
[http://www.volokh.com/2013/12/24/liberals-conservatives-
swit...](http://www.volokh.com/2013/12/24/liberals-conservatives-switch-
positions-nsa-surveillance/)
~~~
gress
Eh? Confirmation bias-much? People have been against war, and pro-pot for
decades, and most of them have not been libertarians, unless you want to claim
the hippies were libertarian.
~~~
Empact
"Other people were also right" is not an argument against libertarians being
right about things.
And isn't that the point? We should be celebrating and expanding on the
opposition that exists, not dismissing it for lack of "our label".
~~~
gress
No, but it is an argument that libertarianism is incidental to them holding a
few views that happen to be popular.
Lots of people value freedom, and many of them are pro-pot and anti-war
because they believe the alternative to be oppressive.
Libertarians are a narrow subset of this who subscribe to an absolutist
philosophy that they believe will maximize freedom. Many people who value
freedom strongly disagree with libertarianism as a means to achieving it, even
though they sympathize with the desire.
~~~
baddox
Your characterization of libertarians as people with an absolutist philosophy
that they believe will maximize freedom applies only to a subset of people who
identify as libertarians.
~~~
gress
If true, that supports my point further.
------
squozzer
I think the conclusion is wrong. Many people care about many things. But most
of us aren't really equipped to lead a movement, and most self-organizing
movements lack the focus and ability to put aside differences to achieve more
than modest goals.
Put bluntly, we're (myself included) waiting for a King or Gandhi to take the
reins and lead us to the promised land. Snowden can't lead us from Moscow or
jail. The Dalai Lama and Suu Kyi have their own problems. And let's face it --
who wants their dirtiest secrets aired on CNN and Fox? Because that's the
price of fame.
------
teawithcarl
Mark Ames (Exiled, NSFW) new long reads have genuinely improved the
respectability and depth of Pando Daily, since its recent merger with NSFW.
------
l33tbro
People do care what power is. The problem is the media/leaders do not seem to
want to engage the public in a dialogue about the dimensions of the Snowden
leaks.
~~~
danielschonfeld
The reason for that is that all media in the United States (at least the power
houses that matter) is controlled by the government, whether directly or
indirectly. The last of our defacto checks and balances is basically gone too.
Compound that with a good amount of people who are mostly comfortable in life,
and yet get zero citizen based activism.
~~~
simbolit
I am not american, but from the outside it doesn't look like the media (power
houses) are controlled by the government. it more looks like the government
and business interests are so closely aligned (and often personally
contiguous) that there is no major disagreement between the media and the gov.
please, i would be glad to be shown otherwise.
------
nnx
This is probably my favorite (not strictly tech) news of the year!
It is brilliant and thrilling to read from start to finish.
I never read before about this story of the two NSA analysts defecting to the
USSR during the Cold War and 'whistleblowed' from Moscow many of the agency's
secrets in a similar manner as Snowden's - after being unable to do so
domestically.
This article is a great and sad reminder of the famous quote “Those who do not
learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
------
f_salmon
> Snowden’s biggest revelation: We don’t know what power is, nor do we care
...until we feel the resulting pain, which means it will be too late b/c the
people in power will have built enough protections to ensure their position (=
even less democracy).
------
userbinator
Isn't it just voltage times current? :)
~~~
aspensmonster
Well, it's also R*I^2 and (V^2)/R.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google self-driving car gets rear-ended in 13th accident since 2009 - hashx
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/google-self-driving-car-gets-rear-ended-in-13th-accident-since-2009/
======
grovulent
This is not a story.
Google is only even announcing it because were there to be even suspicion that
a google car had been the cause of an accident there would be hysteria
(irrespective of the statistical reality) - so they don't want to look like
they have anything to hide.
Fair enough on Google's part. By why is Ars reporting a complete non-event? Is
news that slow atm?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
North Korea defied world with nuclear test. Now it seeks aid for flood disaster - endswapper
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korea-defied-world-with-nuclear-test-now-it-seeks-aid-for-flood-disaster/2016/09/12/3e710483-476f-4f04-aae4-52af58064e91_story.html?tid=pm_pop_b
======
lisper
The fundamental problem with NK is that it successfully sustains the fiction
that the U.S. is going to attack "real soon now". That widespread (in NK)
belief combined with nukes is a very dangerous combination. We can't do much
about the nukes, but this humanitarian crisis provides an opportunity to move
the needle on the Dangerous Fiction: make a public offer to provide
humanitarian aid in exchange for a public acknowledgement that the aid is
coming from the U.S. This acknowledgement would have to be broadcast on NK
television so we can know that the NK people will see it.
Yes, it is unlikely that KJU would accept this. The goal here is not to
actually extract the concession, but rather to sow seeds of doubt in the
Dangerous Fiction in the minds of the NK elites by setting up a situation
where the only reason that people are starving is KJU's refusal to acknowledge
a simple truth: the U.S. is providing food.
~~~
redstripe
The US has sustained the fiction that terrorists are going to attack "real
soon now" and people still accept it like some existential threat. Meanwhile
we're onto the 15th year of toddlers killing parents with their own handguns
outnumbering terrorists attacks. So I guess we can't really be surprised by
their fears - it's the whole world against them and it sort of makes sense for
them to dig in deeper.
~~~
hxegon
Isn't it a little insensitive to say that imply terrorist attacks on US soil
are fiction when when 49 people got killed in an attack in June? I'll agree
that public fear, and public official rhetoric is out of proportion to say,
car accidents, but it's an apples to oranges comparison.
~~~
dredmorbius
There's reality and there's sensitivity.
Sensitivity would be an awareness of the tragedy the Florida nightclub attacks
were to the vicitms, their families, and friends.
Reality would be recognising that that event in no way, shape, or form
presented the least existential threat to the US itself, and that the ties of
the madman involved to organised international terrorist groups are tenuous at
best. And that armed toddlers and children present a far larger clear and
present danger to the United States.
------
John23832
Sadly, I think the best thing to do is to say no.
North Korea makes decisions that constantly harms it's people. Conducting
nuclear test after nuclear test, for what? To say you have one? To have
another toy to saber rattle with? All while preaching that it exists in a
sheltered paradise. All while its people starve.
Giving them aid even though they defy what pretty much everyone in the world
asks them to do (even China is getting towards their wits end), only allows
them to defy even more. To abuse their people even more. Not aiding them at
least gives their people a chance to see what is really going on. Sadly that
means some people may starve, and I'd hate to see that happen, but honestly,
what else do you do?
~~~
pattisapu
Speaking as an American -- to say no arguably puts us on a moral footing like
North Korea's -- playing political hardball at the expense of innocent people.
~~~
John23832
I agree. It's a shitty situation either way. But really, to give them even
MORE food that we already do, would be enabling abusers. They get fed if they
play ball. (Problems with the continent aside) Look at how much we break our
backs to feed Africa. We do it because it's the right thing to do.
At a certain point though, the politicians have to be held responsible to the
people. And people are never more hungry for change, than when they are hungry
for food.
~~~
linkregister
I'm pretty sure the U.S. doesn't provide food aid to African nations anymore;
when it was occurring it was considered a subsidy to U.S. farmers at the
expense of dumping food on local markets and destroying local agriculture.
U.S. foreign aid to developing nations is now delivered in the form of grants
to local NGOs to help improve local farming practices, infrastructure (water
wells mostly), and also military aid (aid earmarked to buying U.S.-made
weaponry). As a percentage of federal spending, foreign aid amounts to less
than one percent, dominated by aid to Israel and Egypt. West, Central, and
Eastern African aid is not a significantly high percentage of U.S. federal
spending.
I agree with your point about enabling abusers, I just thought I should let
you know that U.S. foreign aid is more sophisticated than simply dumping food
on local markets.
~~~
John23832
I didn't mean to say we just dump food in Africa. I meant that we make a
concerted effort to direct food there.
------
endswapper
The headline and the conversation it provokes are part of the problem.
The point should be that humanitarian efforts exist for the sole benefit of
humanity.
Once a humanitarian effort becomes leverage for a political, or military, or
any other objective it ceases to be a humanitarian effort.
I don't think we should be concerned with the regime until it proves it is a
responsible actor domestically and in the global community.
Demonstrating our humanity is the only way to constructively engage the people
of North Korea. It's much more powerful to face the hate and vitriol in the
propaganda of North Korean with something as seemingly irrational as
humanitarian aid. What I mean is that the State's propaganda loses it's power,
it loses the idea that is reasonable when we continue to help them despite
nuclear threats, et al. Only then can the people of North Korea find their
power and choose a path. I imagine, at some point, they will reach a tipping
point like Egypt. Buying in to their provocations is simply taking the bait
and allowing them to continue with business as usual.
~~~
CWuestefeld
_Once a humanitarian effort becomes leverage_
But that was true from the start. I appears that NK makes humanitarian efforts
a political issue, but basing resource allocations on the assumption that the
rest of the world will bail them out.
Thus, our aid to them is effectively allowing them to invest greater resources
into weapons programs.
------
joshmn
There are so many jokes to be made about this country. I'm guilty as making
them and finding them humorous. But there are people who live in this country,
who can't escape, who are struck by fear, who are brainwashed, who know
nothing of the outside world.
~~~
acbabis
That's getting less and less common. Apparently its really easy for North
Koreans to get smuggled media from other countries, and a lot of the guards
look the other way or take bribes. Most North Koreans probably realize how bad
their situation is but don't say anything because they don't want to go to a
labor camp.
~~~
repler
Yeah! In Cuba there's a whole network of USB thumb drives with new content
each week. It's pretty awesome.
Of course, you still need a computer. Is this sort of thing going on in NK as
well?
~~~
froindt
Yes it is, but with some other challenges.
Redstar OS is a linux distribution which is distributed by the North Korean
government. It has a system built in pretty deep which watermarks files.
[https://youtu.be/KTBemKiSgWI?t=1737](https://youtu.be/KTBemKiSgWI?t=1737)
If the government gets a copy of the file from someone, they can to some
degree trace back where else the file has been.
------
jknoepfler
I don't think I'm better than any citizen of North Korea, and I have enormous
sympathy for the people of South Korea who are prospering while their friends
and relatives (such as they still have) may be suffering. That said, the North
is a home for one of the deadliest ideological diseases the world has ever
known. Democide by totalitarian governments with a "communist" flavor killed
more people in the 20th century than every war combined. We should not send
aid to the people of North Korea until North Korea changes internally. We
should leave the door open to trade, to peace, to free exchange of ideas, and
to offer support for democratization. We should make every effort to
destabilize the current regime in North Korea (which is still in a state of
war with us, lest we forget). Giving aid just helps stabilize the status quo,
which is not an acceptable outcome.
~~~
endswapper
Humanitarian aid is destabilizing when the status quo is defined by the
State's propaganda of hate.
At some point, and that may not be now, it begs the question: why should we
hate those that are helping?
To not help, to ignore their need, is the surest way to maintain the status
quo. That would preserve the framework and justifications for the State's
propaganda.
------
cprayingmantis
Why can't we treat this like a hostage situation? Tell NK we will provide X
amount of aid if they will release Y number of citizens of their choosing.
That way we lighten suffering on the country as a whole but also end suffering
for some of its citizens.
~~~
tsomctl
And where do they go? One of the reasons why China supports North Korea is
because they don't want a bunch of refugees coming in.
~~~
cprayingmantis
That's the beauty of tying it to aid. You'll have a slow trickle instead of a
huge flood. I'm sure the nations that are involved would figure something out
on accepting 5k refugees at a time.
~~~
foota
Right, just like how accepting the world has been of Syrian refugees?
~~~
hx87
I'm pretty sure if there was a South Syria, whose population considers
themselves to be Syrians and Syrians to be exceptional in the world, with a
stable government, a thriving economy, and a security guarantee from the US,
they'd have zero problems taking 5K Syrian refugees.
------
brudgers
Nuclear testing and flood relief are orthogonal issues. Particularly under a
regime with limited consent from the governed.
------
jedberg
This is like when teachers are getting screwed and can't go on strike. In the
teacher's case, if they go on strike it hurts the students the most, wheres
the administration just has to deal with a small backlash.
In this case if we deny them help, we hurt the people of the DPRK, not really
the administration.
So the global community are the teachers, who want to help the people of the
DPRK, are angry at the administration, and can't do anything but keep helping.
------
mmanfrin
These are linked; every time NK wants something, it starts rattling its sabres
so that when talks over _aid_ happen, they can leverage more.
------
frr149
Why not just form an international coalition, invade and free, once and for
all, the Korean people from that horror? It's gotta be the most justified
military intervention in History.
Yes, besides a funny hairdo, the crazy in chief has a few nuclear fire
crackers. Just destroy those installations before sending the troops.
~~~
hx87
It's a worthy task, and the key to doing so is getting China on board. On one
hand, NK is probably the most exasperating "ally" China has, but on the other
hand, China really doesn't want the combination of refugees and US bases on
its borders in the event the government collapses. So perhaps a deal where
North Korea becomes a Chinese SAR for a period of 25-50 years (since China is
much better prepared to absorb the cost than South Korea)?
------
Fej
Aiding DPRK would be a dangerous move. Either their populace starves or their
weapons program loses money. If the population starves, there's a huge higher
chance of revolution. As terrible as it is, it's a win-win for the
international community, and even North Korea as well, in the long term.
~~~
omginternets
I dunno. I see your point and if it were nearly any other nation, I'd even
agree, but there's something special about the DPRK. I frankly don't see them
_ever_ revolting. It's perhaps the only country that's so successfully
isolated it's population and -- as much as I dislike the term -- brainwashed
them.
I'm beginning to think they'd sooner starve than revolt. After all, they've
already been through this so many times...
------
Just_A_NBR
Generosity is the highest form of giving. The people in North Korea are in
need. Providing the basics of food can empower and help many, and provide us
with an opportunity for that kindness to be freely recognized, either directly
or indirectly. If we needed something from them, the kindest thing they could
do is give without expecting something in return. If they are our enemy, we
will not win the day treating them as such when given the opportunity to be a
friend.
------
slim
"defied the world"
Who are they talking about? I don't feel defied.
Mostly my feeling about North Korea is that they need help
------
gwbas1c
There's probably plenty of ways to use this as an opportunity to weaken the
regime. Perhaps even just meeting outsiders will help shatter the propaganda
bubble?
------
partycoder
I think it is important to make a distinction between the regime and the
people. In this perspective, it is wrong to start mocking their country.
------
hxegon
I'm a little disappointed in the US. We have the best case you could make for
an ethical forced regime change by a foreign power, (can you consent to be
governed when you are brainwashed and not consenting is punishable by
imprisonment?) and we aren't on this? I'd love to get some alternate reality
tv a la rick and morty to watch america world police kim jong un's face.
~~~
woah
Look at how successful we've been at regime change in the last 15 years! Do
you really want a war with Russia and China?
~~~
hxegon
I think Russia and China would be happy to (eventually) have a potential new
economically productive neighbor country, but I don't know that much about
politics so...
Either way though, the situation is already terrible. I don't think it could
get much worse (assuming we could disable their nuclear capabilities before
any kind of major military action). I'm not saying it's pretty, but it just
doesn't look like we are making much progress through usual diplomatic
channels.
------
justin66
North Korea's population is already starving.
------
ldehaan
I'm pretty cold, but that's ice cold.
What they should do is say, we'll give you aid if you let us build a military
base in Pyongyang and then litter the whole country with flyers announcing the
potential aide but on those conditions, and let it go from there.
~~~
Retr0spectrum
Their response would most likely be "no thanks". Would that make it any better
than not offering to help at all?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Entrepreneur? Stay in School. - intenex
http://branliu.com/the-education-for-a-successful-entrepreneur
======
blackquantum
this sounds like Steve Jobs' oft-quoted quip on how calligraphy class is the
reason we have different fonts. not sure how much I buy that...should we spend
4 years taking random classes just to maybe get some fringe benefits?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why have post numbers become green and red? - eimrine
Dear HN, I appreciate you for the minimalistic interface that just does not contain anything unnecessary. For what purpose did you start using colors in post number?<p>Does this mean the beginning of the end of the HN I know and love? Maybe now you will make a mobile app? Hang a banner warning that you store cookies? Forbid to use adblock?<p>I could not understand for a while what this differentiation means. My first thought was that green posts - being voted positively and vice versa. Now I realized that they are simply alternating. It reminds me Mark Miller's "Tragedy of Common Lisp" story, and maybe the theory of broken windows a little bit.<p>Thank you for all the wonderful that I discovered because of you.
======
dang
Fear not. It's pg's old "Christmas ornaments, kept in the basement" code that
we uncomment-out every year for a bit.
Here it is in 2007:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20071225140214/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20071225140214/http://news.ycombinator.com/)
~~~
quickthrower2
Uncomment? Could it use the current utc time instead?
~~~
dang
It could, but it hooks into the code in a few places and it feels a bit too
complex to leave them there all year.
"Uncomment" isn't the whole story—you have to uncomment and then move a few
code snippets to the right places. I have this in a git comment which can be
cherry-picked and then reverted. Since the relevant aspects of HN rarely
change, this mostly goes off without a hitch.
------
RayMan1
It is Christmas time, green-red combo is the way to go.
------
rozab
Is this being upvoted ironically?
~~~
gshdg
Not everyone on HN lives in places where Christianity is the dominant
religious tradition.
------
wodenokoto
As others mentions this is the Christmas theme.
Another theme change you might notice from time to time is a black bar at the
top of the page, which is displayed when mourning for a recently deceased
person of particular IT or hard science prominence.
------
masonic
It's just reminding you to pause every other submit and reflect.
------
erik_seaberg
In this season of using billion-gate superscalar CPUs to buy socks, we are
being encouraged to brush up on EE fundamentals like flip-flops.
------
aurizon
Half of all Hackers are Red hot, the rest go green with envy 'twas ever
thus....
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What domain hosting provider you use? - mhasbini
I'm looking for a service that:<p>1. Have clear pricing without hidden or obscure costs.
2. (Optional) expose api for automating the hosting process.
======
CM30
I'm using Namecheap at the moment, and it seems to work pretty well overall.
Seems to have an API too:
[https://www.namecheap.com/support/api/intro.aspx](https://www.namecheap.com/support/api/intro.aspx)
~~~
oblib
I'll 2nd this. I've been using them for a few years now and have been
satisfied with their services.
------
stephenr
What do you mean by domain hosting? Are you talking about a registrar, or a
DNS hosting service (or both, which is common)?
~~~
stephenr
To follow up: I use NameSilo as a registrar _specifically_ because domains
(and dns hosting) is _all_ they do.
Separation of concerns, and no constant bullshit to navigate their admin tool
and get to domain management when required.
They have DNS hosting too but I don't use it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Watch This Charger Fully Juice A Smartphone In 30 Seconds - lgp171188
http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/watch-charger-fully-juice-smartphone-30-seconds
======
blisterpeanuts
Interesting. The Popular Science article is a bit inaccurate, though; they
didn't mention that it's a battery, not just a fancy new charger.
This is a linked article that's more complete: [http://www.gizmag.com/nanodot-
smartphone-battery-30-second-r...](http://www.gizmag.com/nanodot-smartphone-
battery-30-second-recharge/31467/)
A bit about the company and its technology from WSJ.com:
[http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/11/13/biological-
semic...](http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/11/13/biological-
semiconductors-could-transform-tech-industry/)
A 30-second puff piece about StoreDot and its tech from Time.com:
[http://time.com/52651/storedot-another-promising-far-off-
ans...](http://time.com/52651/storedot-another-promising-far-off-answer-to-
smartphone-battery-problems/)
The company talks of beginning production in 2016. Based on the various
limitations, that sounds optimistic. Current cell phones can't handle the high
current required, the battery's too large, and the battery doesn't hold a
charge as long as conventional batteries.
Once these problems are solved, we're going to see possibly a revolution in
portable power. I'd love an electric car that recharges in 5 minutes!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: MySQL vs. MariaDB as of 2019 - akmittal
When mariaDB was forked it was having better performance than Maria, is it still true?
Are there any major differences between the two.
======
verdverm
Postgres is still the champ
~~~
chrisjack
came here to say the same.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists are suggesting that depression is a result of inflammation - ck425
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/04/depression-allergic-reaction-inflammation-immune-system
======
tasty_freeze
What I'm about to say isn't to deny that inflammation might trigger or
contribute to depression. In fact, anyone who thinks depressed people are just
self-indulgent whiners and that there is no biochemical basis for depression
are simply living in the 1950s.
My wife has clinical depression. To describe depression, as this article does,
as just not wanting to get off the couch is hugely insulting to people with
clinical depression.
My wife isn't alone in wishing that there was another word for "depression" of
the sort arises because your team lost, your dog died, you got passed over for
a promotion. Those are disappointing and can be a problem in the short term.
Clinical depression is not just not wanting to get off the couch. It is a
profound loss of hope, and the inability to even connect with your previous
mental state of what it was like to have hope or find things interesting. The
present appears fucked, and even after racking your brain for some way out,
every path looks even more dismal. Situations in the real world are often
complicated and can be interpreted in more than one way, but to a depressed
person, the most terrible interpretation is evaluated as being a very likely
outcome. And, just like 9/11 conspiracy theorists construct self-consistent
theories by bending facts and through selective filtering, clinically
depressed people often build an elaborate, self-consistent understanding that,
yes, they and their future are completely fucked.
~~~
erikpukinskis
I'm someone who has ranged from what I would call mild to moderate depression.
I've had periods approaching year-scale where I found no particular joy and
struggled to find any hope. I immersed myself in reading and work, and lived a
difficult, one-dimensional life.
I have no idea how that compares to your wife's experience. I'm not
particularly interested in drawing comparisons.
I would like to ask you: why does your wife need a different word? Why not
just say one bout of depression is more severe and one is more mild?
To me it's the same as autism or cancer or any other sickness. Sometimes it's
a challenge, and sometimes it's a wrecking ball through your life. What's
inadequate about using an adjective for that?
~~~
tjradcliffe
The need for a different word comes from a bit of linguistic trickery we tend
to perform.
Because we tend to think of people with "depression" as being "depressed", we
are apt to ask questions, like, "What do you have depression about?"
This question makes no more sense than "What do you have cancer about?"
(thanks to Stephen Fry for the comparison) but because it _does_ make sense to
ask, "What are you depressed about?" it can be difficult to explain this to
people.
Physiologically, it isn't at all clear that "depression" and "being depressed"
are species of the same genus. The latter is a transient, perfectly healthy,
emotional state. The former is a persistent, unhealthy neuro-physical state.
So having less similar words for things of a different kind that are often
confused would be a good thing.
~~~
HCIdivision17
Just for those curious about the Fry quote, I think it _might_ originate from
his blog, himself quoting Alastair Campbell. At the very least there's a nice
reference to it, and I'm happily crawling along the links enjoying it.
[http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/06/24/only-the-
lonely/](http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/06/24/only-the-lonely/)
[http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog/2013/06/10/response-
to-...](http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog/2013/06/10/response-to-stephen-
fry-suicide-interview-shows-attitudes-are-slowly-changing/)
------
thevagrant
I absolutely believe depression and inflammation are linked.
I have tested this myself (n=1) as I suffer from an ongoing depression. I also
have a brother who has withdrawn from the world completely and I would
consider that he is highly crippled from depression.
My realisation that this problem is linked to inflammation occured a few years
ago. My depression was at it's worst and I was barely functioning. I am still
not who I was but I'm doing ok.
While I was at my worst, I considered that perhaps my diet contributed to my
poor health.
Through careful testing I discovered that foods with gluten or casein protein
caused me to feel awful. After removing these foods 100% from my diet, there
was an improvement but certainly not a full recovery.
I've always had bad seasonal allergies but I had never considered that my
whole body was inflamed. Strangely, by chance, I found that fexofenadine (an
antihistamine) would lift my depression temporarily after taking it for a
week. If I continued taking it, then slowly the depression came back. My best
explanation is that the signaling process of inflammation dampens the ability
for my brain to think clearly. Since discovering this, I found other things
that helped:
I quit caffeine 100% as it seemed to also have a negative effect for me (when
for years it lifted my depression, now it's clear I am best to do without).
I no longer drink alcohol.
I've worked hard to remove sugar and processed foods.
I've found that daily running will help lift my depression greatly.
Another helpful item I found was licorice tea which I use sparingly. This had
powerful anti-inflammatory properties which I have found useful.
For years I had very bad sleep habits. I've corrected these and always sleep
to a schedule now. Even so, I still rarely wake up feeling rested.
I feel much better than I used to and can get by but still do not feel quite
right. I'm looking into meditation now.
There are a large number of other things (including SSRI's) I've tried/tested
but I can't go into all these right now.
I've been pretty careful in my experimentation, I have been testing this for
years now and know what works for me but I suspect depression has more than a
single cause.
My best advice to everyone is to exercise, eat healthy and try to lead a
balanced lifestyle.
~~~
thevagrant
I just want to add something I forgot to mention. I've also learnt that
isolation is generally something best avoided while depressed. It may feel
counter intuitive when you are in that state of mind but I've had a
spontaneous lift from depression on multiple occasions when I have been in
social situations. To withdraw is not a good idea.
------
madamepsychosis
Anecdata here - as a teen, I had depression. I would take ibuprofen a few
times a day when it got really bad, it helped a lot. It would lift my mood
from dulled, paralysing rumination to merely sad. I think I started doing it
after reading a study like the one in the link. It's a popular theory there
are many different diseases that fall under the label 'depression', which is
why patients often try multiple antidepressants until one works - perhaps this
inflammatory one is just one of them.
~~~
ajcarpy2005
If I may, do you still medicate in the same way, use something different, or
has your depression improved, or what?
------
visakanv
The "is" is more of a "might be". But it does seem fairly plausible. (The
inverse seems less likely- that depression has absolutely nothing to do with
the body.) I'm guessing that as with most complex phenomena, depression has a
range of causal factors, and results from an interplay of many things.
It will definitely be great if further research in this area helps to lessen
the stigma around depression and other ailments.
------
DiabloD3
I think this is extremely possible. During my research into Paleo (which has
helped me tremendously, and I suggest anyone who has trouble keeping off the
pounds, performing at work, or focusing in life to take a look at it), I've
considered the possible link myself, but since I'm not a scientist I didn't
have any way of looking into this.
However, one of Paleo's major goals is to eliminating inflammation, and Paleo,
for a large number of people, have lessened or completely eliminated the
symptoms of depression, and I've seriously considered that there has to be
some sort of link.
Edit: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted here. n=1 experimental data may not
be the best thing, but in the absence of studies like the one linked to, its
all we have to go on.
~~~
simplexion
You are getting down-voted because Paleo is not scientific.
~~~
phkahler
>> You are getting down-voted because Paleo is not scientific.
Weather or not the basis of Paleo is sound is not relevant to his point. Not
only does he claim benefits for himself, but notes that others seem to agree
in similar ways.
I'm really getting pissed at the commercial medial establishment for denying
anything that doesn't have clinical trial can be good. Plants or minerals that
have helped people for thousands of years are called "homeopathic" or
"alternative" by real doctors. Now we're seeing studies that claim various
things have no benefit "for people on an already healthy diet" as a footnote.
Yet good old aspirin is a plant derivative, as are some other things. But I
digress. His point is independent of the basis for the diet and hence should
not be downvoted for that.
~~~
tinco
> Plants or minerals that have helped people for thousands of years are called
> "homeopathic" or "alternative" by real doctors.
No, homeopathic medicin is called homeopathic by real doctors. Homeopathy is
not ancient, it was invented in 1796. It also does not involve plants of any
kind.
Plants that do help or seem to help and have been in use for hundreds or
thousands of years are only called alternative when there either has not been
research to show that they are effective, or there has been research that
shows they are not effective.
Alternative does not necessarily mean bad. The word is merely used as a way to
distinguish unproven medicine from scientifically proven medicine.
~~~
dllthomas
While I think the parent comment does not understand what "homeopathic" means,
I don't think it's correct that "[homeopathy] does not involve plants of any
kind." My understanding is that the "active" ingredients are often plant based
- after all, it was cinchona overdose that started this mess. If that's the
case, homeopathic _remedies_ don't contain the plants anymore (through over-
dilution), but _homeopathy_ as a process involves plants.
------
nether
Criticism of an earlier claim for a depression blood test:
[http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2014/09/25/critique-
claim...](http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2014/09/25/critique-claims-blood-
test-depression/)
------
coding4all
The reason why the word depression is too general is because depression is a
normal conceptial state that everyone will endure at least once in life. Real,
debilitating, actual depression, is life-long and persist regardless of any
one event. It's not just a function of the mind or an emotional relationship
related to life, but an absence that can only be described as emotionally
detached, sociopathic, and even as an obligation of guilt and doubt simply for
existing in a time you can't accept.
------
joyofdata
To consider "something" as _just_ _in the mind_ v/s being physically rooted is
similar too considering software bugs trivial b/c software can easily be
changed compared to hardware that is broken.
To extend the analogy - asking a depressive patient to just sort it out
mentally is like trying to debug a debugger using that same debugger!?
------
marknutter
I wonder if this doesn't also cause the symptoms associated with fibromyalgia.
I've always been fairly skeptical about Fibromyalgia but try not to be for the
same reasons it's not productive to be skeptical about clinical depression as
s disease, but perhaps they are both linked to inflamation.
------
Spooky23
I had a severe back issue that resulted in a lot of inflammation. Inflammation
that was tested to levels about 5x of the average 90 year old -- when I was
22!
It was pure misery... I would get sick often, get tired, etc. It sucked. When
I was given Vioxx for a few weeks, which made me feel like a million bucks!
------
hristov
This is very interesting. Is there any way one can check if one is suffering
from inflammation?
~~~
WalterSear
You might as well check for your pulse: inflammation isn't a disease, it's a
signaling system used by your body. The problem is that often your body
reaction has potential to causes problems of it's own.
Think of it like the police. For some things (white person is speeding,
deserves a ticket), their reaction can be fine and appropriate. Under other
circumstances (black person selling cigarettes illegally), they are more of a
problem than the one they are intended to solve.
------
sbierwagen
Source article:
[http://www.biolmoodanxietydisord.com/content/4/1/10](http://www.biolmoodanxietydisord.com/content/4/1/10)
------
panhandlr
I like to refer to depression as a cliff that is always one step behind you.
------
manticore_alpha
There's honestly a very simple recipe to combat about 85% of depression. The
other 15% does require SSRI / therapy / etc.
\- Clean up your sleep. \- Clean up your diet. \- Exercise, at full intensity,
for 8-15 minutes a day. Weight training mixed in as well. \- Get sunlight or
supplement with Vitamin D.
Oh, and have great friends. That helps.
~~~
babby
>Diet Can reduce inflammation
>Sleep Reduces inflammation
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101114161939.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101114161939.htm)
>Exercise Reduces inflammation
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22390642](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22390642)
>Vitamin D Reduces inflammation
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120223103920.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120223103920.htm)
We might have a pattern here.
------
alecco
A lot of Guardian stories around, this one from a very suspicious account.
~~~
ck425
As coldtea correctly guessed the Guardian is the main other new source I read.
I don't see what else is suspicious about my account?
~~~
alecco
Your account didn't have activity for ages and has only 1 other submission
from 320 days ago and last comment from 207 days ago. Sorry if this is not the
case.
~~~
ck425
Ah fair enough. I'm more of lurker as I mainly read HN on my phone which
doesn't have an interface for commenting.
------
xacaxulu
"No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other
means."
~Maimonides
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Use an FPGA Instead of a CPU or GPU? - ScottWRobinson
https://blog.esciencecenter.nl/why-use-an-fpga-instead-of-a-cpu-or-gpu-b234cd4f309c
======
seliopou
One clarification on the comment about latency. FPGAs are typically clocked
much slower than a modern CPU. Typically, they run somewhere in the low 100's
of MHz, whereas an Intel CPU clocks in at around 3GHz last time I went to the
Apple Store. With a typical x86 multiply instruction having a latency of
about, say, 3 cycles, putting that workload on an FPGA would result in a ~10x
slow-down!
The real benefit of an FPGA is that you get to decide what happens in any
given cycle. So rather than being able to multiply two numbers in a single
cycle like on x86, you could make your FPGA design do, say, 20 multiplications
in a single cycle (space allowing). Which means that you can now multiply 20
numbers in 1/10th of the time it would take on x86. (In reality I think you
have something like four execution units capable of perfoming parallel ALU
operations per cycle, depending on the family.)
So the latency benefit of an FPGA comes from flexible, almost (almost)
unbounded potential for parallelism in a given cycle, not clock frequency.
Hardware has to be designed to exploit this potential, otherwise it's not
going to see any improvement in latency.
Anyways, just something that is maybe obvious once you're told it, but isn't
always mentioned in discussions like this. It certainly something that I
didn't fully appreciate before getting involved in hardware design.
~~~
fpgaminer
Another thing is that you can pipeline, for example, multiplies. So in a CPU
multiply you give the CPU inputs, wait a couple cycles, and then get the
result. In an FPGA you can build a pipelined multiply. It's built such that
you can feed it input every cycle and get an output every cycle. The only
caveat is that the outputs are delayed relative to the inputs. i.e. you may
give it (2, 3) to multiply on one cycle, but you won't see the result (6) of
that particular input on the output until a couple cycles later.
[Yup, "pipeline" here is the same term used to describe how modern CPUs get
their performance. They, too, are pipelining their instruction execution so
that many instructions can be in the process of executing at the same time.
Though what I describe is a more extreme and specific kind of pipelining.]
This is kind of like having a bunch of multiplies in parallel. But it's useful
for, for example, real-time calculations. You get to perform all the
calculations you need every single cycle, no matter how complex; your results
are just delayed by X cycles. Pipelines are usually also more efficient than
straight parallelism (i.e. an 8 deep pipelined multiplier uses less silicon
than 8 individual "serial" multiplier units).
Another interesting thing: In a previous life I built an FPGA based video
processing device. It sat in an HDMI chain, so it had to be real-time. If that
had been built with a GPU, most engineers would build the system to buffer up
a frame, perform the processing, and then feed the processed frame out. That
results in at least 1 frame of delay. In contrast, because we used an FPGA, it
was simple to just pipeline the entire design and thus only needed to buffer
up the few lines that we needed. This meant A) we needed no external memory
(cheaper) and our latency was on the order of microseconds. In my travels with
that job I ran into tons of other companies building video processing devices.
They _all_ used frame buffers, which made their devices unacceptable for,
e.g., gaming.
~~~
ignoramous
Thanks.
Just to clarify whilst I have your attention: isn't it a common practice to
pipeline frame buffers too? For instance, Android has three frame buffers.
IIRC, one is with the user space handing off display lists, one used for
composition, and one is used by driver for rasterization?
In that case, how good, you reckon, would the perf be compared to FGPA?
~~~
8note
by straight having a frame buffer vs having a couple lines buffered, I'd
imagine it's still the fpga, except now the GPU needs even more memory to do
the same task
------
ChuckMcM
The author isn't aware apparently of over a decade of work done in FPGA/CPU
integration. Both in more sequential languages like System C[1] or in extended
instruction set computing like the Stretch[2]. Not to mention the Zynq[3]
series where the CPU is right there next to the FPGA fabric.
For "classic" CPUs (aka x86 cpus with a proprietary frontside bus and
southbridge bus) it can be challenging to work an FPGA into the flow. But the
problem was pretty clear in 2007 in this Altera whitepaper[4] where they
postulate that not keeping up with Moore's law means you probably end up
specializing the hardware for different workloads.
The tricky bit on these systems is how much effort/time it takes to move data
and context between the "main" CPU and the FPGA and then back again (Amdahl's
law basically). When the cost of moving the data around is less than the
scaling benefit of designing a circuit to do the specific computation, then
adding an FPGA is a winning move.
[1] [https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/vivado/prod-
adv...](https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/vivado/prod-
advantage/rtl-synthesize.html)
[2] [http://www.stretchinc.com/index.php](http://www.stretchinc.com/index.php)
[3] [https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc/zynq-
ult...](https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc/zynq-ultrascale-
mpsoc.html)
[4] [https://www.intel.com/content/dam/altera-
www/global/en_US/pd...](https://www.intel.com/content/dam/altera-
www/global/en_US/pdfs/literature/wp/wp-01029.pdf)
~~~
blacksmythe
>> The tricky bit on these systems is how much effort/time it takes
>> to move data and context between the "main" CPU and the FPGA and then back again
The sweet spot for FPGAs is when the data is streaming. You can build hardware
where the data is passed from one stage to another, and doesn't go to RAM at
all. Particularly where the data is coming in fast, but with low resolution
(huge FPGA advantage for fixed point instead of floating point).
FGPAs are much more efficient for signal processing from data collected from
an A/D converter (e.g. software defined radio) or initial video processing
from an image sensor.
~~~
tomnipotent
> The sweet spot for FPGAs is when the data is streaming
Netezza does this with their hardware, I've been dreaming of the day I could
DIY and put a OSS RDBMS on top.
------
antoineMoPa
"Intel does offer an emulator, so testing for correctness does not require
this long step, but determining and optimizing performance does require these
overnight compile phases."
After some experience with FPGAs, the emulation step is not enough to test for
correctness. Most of the problems happen while synchronizing signals with
inputs/outputs and with other weird timing problems, glitches and unintuitive
behavior that FPGAs provide (and the emulator behaves differently). I was
using VHDL however. Anybody has experience with OpenCL on FPGAs to explain
what difficulties persist (are the timing problems easier to solve)?
~~~
shriver
There are a number of real issues with the emulation approach even now.
Firstly, emulation isn't accurate - if you do floating point math in your
application it will give you different results (within the tolerances of the
OpenCL spec) on FPGA vs. CPU. So you can't test for correctness in the
emulator.
A second more serious issue is that getting performance that justifies using
an FPGA requires tuning very carefully to the architecture. This may mean
adopting pipeline architectures that destroy emulator performance (there's
still issues with the emulator identifying that the design patterns for shift
registers in FPGA look like pointer fun on CPU rather than mammoth memcpys).
So for a huge part of the design stage the emulator is basically useless-
because it tells you nothing about what you care about, since the performance
of the emulator is often negatively correlated with performance on FPGA. This
is made worse if you're doing hardcore FPGA tricks like mixed precision
arithmetic.
As you say though - the fact that timing is lost in the emulator also means
you don't get a true idea of whether you have buffer overflows etc or lock-up.
Adding debug into the actual design impacts the implementation on FPGA in a
way that it doesn't for software - and is sometimes unintuitive.
~~~
pjc50
> if you do floating point math in your application it will give you different
> results
That seems like a gross weakness in the emulator; floating point isn't
actually nondeterministic!
~~~
shriver
Actually it's not as clear cut as you'd expect. Obviously you can't represent
every number in floating point, so you have to choose a way to round numbers -
and for simple operations like add you can correctly round the results. For
transcendental operations like x^y it's actually unknown how many resources
you'd need to correctly calculate x^y for every valid value of x and y[1]. So
since you can't calculate these numbers to correct rounding, you have to
choose a level of rounding for your approximation - like 3 units of least
precision rounding at the output. Of course we all need to know how accurate
these are - so the OpenCL standard specifies it[2] - exp requires being
correct to 3ULPs for single/double and 2ULPs for half.
Now if you have 3 ULP to play with, the maker of an Intel CPU is going to
design an exp instruction to best make use of the existing Intel functional
units. But an Intel FPGA dev is going to design an exp instruction to best
make use of Lookup Tables and 18x18 multiplies - because that's what they have
on the FPGA.
So whilst you'll get the same answer for x^y on Intel CPU and Intel FPGA
within 3 ULPs those rounding errors are going to be different between the two
architectures. So now, if you want to compute a normal distribution on Intel
FPGA vs CPU you'll get 3 ULPs in your exponent, but that'll carry forward into
the rest of the equation.
So now you have a choice - do you use the built-in function for exp on the
Intel CPU - which is OpenCL compliant just like the FPGA, and get unknown
rounding errors in what is probably a mathematically sensitive task, or do you
emulate the actual sub-operations the FPGA does? In which case your hardy RTL
designer who wrote that exponent function RTL is going to have to write an
implementation in C that emulates the hardware. Oh and they don't only have to
do that for exp - they have to do that for 100s of mathematical functions, and
it'll run dog slow on the CPU compared to using the native functions.
[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounding#Table-
maker's_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounding#Table-maker's_dilemma)
[2][https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenCL/specs/opencl-2.1-env...](https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenCL/specs/opencl-2.1-environment.pdf)
~~~
kjeetgill
> do you emulate the actual sub-operations the FPGA does?
Yes. It's an emulator.
> ... is going to have to write an implementation in C that emulates the
> hardware.
Makes sense. It's an emulator.
> ... and it'll run dog slow on the CPU compared to using the native
> functions.
Isn't that to be expected? It's an emulator. This isn't like games where it
just has to look close. If it's a dev tool for testing correctness, exactness
matters.
~~~
shriver
Well last time I looked, the answer to question 1 for the Intel OpenCL SDK is
actually no.
And while yes, it's expected to be slow compared to the native functions,
that's not the problem. It's slow compared to simulation.
------
neuromantik8086
> The HPC community is already used to GPUs — getting people to switch from
> GPUs to FPGAs requires larger benefits.
It's worth pointing out that some scientists haven't even made the leap to
CPGPU computing yet and are still relying upon OpenMP / multithreading on
general purpose CPUs, even when a GPU would be clearly superior. Anecdotally,
I remember hearing that climate science simulations are particularly bad about
taking advantage of new architectures for speedups, an assertion which
possibly is supported by the fact that climateprediction.net simulations took
several days using all 8 cores on my laptop to finish.
Neuroimaging is also pretty bad, since other than Broccoli [0], most toolkits
for preparing analyses don't leverage GPUs, even though I'd wager 80% of the
steps involved image manipulations / linear algebra.
[0]
[https://github.com/wanderine/BROCCOLI](https://github.com/wanderine/BROCCOLI)
~~~
cjhanks
In my experience, it's true. And it's unlikely to change - the simulation code
was largely written in FORTRAN and C over a period of 50 years.
This is in fact what makes Intel Phi so appealing to some.
~~~
nl
For C/Fortran using LAPACK it _should_ be as simple as relinking.
[https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/tutorials/gpu-accelerated-
librarie...](https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/tutorials/gpu-accelerated-libraries/)
------
godber
One interesting use case for FPGAs is where hardware qualification is very
expensive, for instance for use in space. If a given FPGA is already space
qualified, you just need to load new code onto it and you can skip the
expensive qualification step for your new application. You can also
consolidate functionality of multiple chips into that one qualified FPGA.
~~~
irq-1
The expense for space is producing RAD Hard parts. (The designs are done on
the same FPGA then a few RAD Hard chips are made.)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening)
------
Firerouge
I've always thought FPGAs would be perfect to have hardware backed video
decoding/encoding that could adapt to new codecs (like vp9) while also being
updatable for new performance improving discoveries.
It also seemed like it would go well with a generic radio subsystem, so you
could compile hardware support for new wireless standards that come out after
your hardware did (essentially an fpga sdr).
It seems like there could be lots of uses for being able to on demand enable
hardware acceleration for certain tasks a program might need lots of.
~~~
mirashii
FPGAs are indeed commonly used for SDR as well. Ettus has a range of USRPs
with FPGAs on-board, and you can find readily available IP cores for anything
from Bluetooth to DVB-S.
~~~
Firerouge
That's partially where I got my inspiration.
Seems like it integrated properly it could be a great component in a general
purpose PC to future proof it against changing needs and requirements
------
stevesimmons
Does anyone have experience of Reconfigure.io [1] and their toolchain that
transpiles Go for execution on FPGAs [2]? I am curious how it feels from the
developer perspective, how it works in practice, and what types of
applications it is a good fit for.
[1] [https://reconfigure.io](https://reconfigure.io)
[2]
[http://docs.reconfigure.io/overview.html](http://docs.reconfigure.io/overview.html)
~~~
zymhan
Unless you have optimized your code as much as possible to run on x86 or GPU
and still find that you need a prohibitively expensive amount of processing
power to accomplish the task, then and only then is an FPGA worth it.
It is literally a DIY CPU architecture. So, unless you know exactly what it is
about your current CPU's architecture that is holding you back, you won't be
able to benefit from an FPGA-based design.
------
petra
I doubt that programming efficiency is what's holding back FPGA's for general
compute.
Why ? because we've seen decades of research in this area - so at least we
have some tools(c for fpga isn't ideal, but still...), and a lot of the
general mapping between what algorithms should be in FPGA.
And Amazon FPGA's instance exist for over a year.
So in that time, if there worth while services to offer with FPGA's, people
would have offered them, or at least started. And sure programming complexity
is a barrier. but entrepreneurs and VC's love competitive barriers. So where's
all this VC funding going towards this area ? Where are all those startups ?
~~~
seliopou
I disagree. FPGA design remains a highly-specialized area. Tools such as
VivadoHLS, and other high-level synthesis tools, do provide some improvement
in productivity though with inherent tradeoffs in design quality. There's been
a lot of new hardware construction language popping up recently (e.g.,
HardCaml--which I happen to use, Chisel, Migen, PyMTL, etc.). They may bring
something to the table in the coming years, but that's yet to be determined.
HardCaml's pretty great though, IMHO. But then again I'm already biased
towards OCaml, and I get to work with its creator!
------
jaxtellerSoA
Aren't FPGA's used mostly to test/design a circuit that you would then go on
to actually fabricate/build? I could be wrong but I thought FPGA's were
stateless (meaning if they powered off/reboot you loose everything and have to
set it up from scratch again).
~~~
LeifCarrotson
That is incorrect, or at least inaccurate, on both counts.
FPGAs are often used to test/design not a "circuit" but an ASIC (application-
specific-integrated-circuit) that you will then go on to actually build. Or,
if your application doesn't have volume to suppprt the ASIC engineering costs
but can support the FPGA unit cost, you just leave it as an FPGA. There are
millions of devices (industrial machines, research, testing, etc) where this
makes sense.
And not all FPGAs loose state when powered down. For those that do, there's
typically an easy way to hook up a little Flash chip and bootloader to reload
the state automatically on reset. For those that don't have that option (EG,
currently working with an ABB robot, Mecco laser, and Rockwell PLC which all
contain FPGAs, only the Mecco can boot itself), you store state in battery-
backed SRAM and just leave the RAM on at all times.
~~~
joemi
> FPGAs are often used to test/design not a "circuit" but an ASIC
> (application-specific-integrated-circuit)
To be pedantic, an ASIC (and any IC really) is a circuit, as denoted by the
"C" standing for "circuit".
------
mladmon
"...programming FPGAs is still an order of magnitude more difficult than
programming instruction based systems." True statement. If you're offloading
computation from a CPU, profile your application first, and determine if the
FPGA board's architecture will allow you to improve performance. Don't
underestimate the cost of communicating data to/from the FPGA/CPU.
------
rini17
Is there high performance FPGA that does not depend on proprietary bloated
windows-only toolchain?
~~~
radarsat1
Proprietary and bloated yes, but I believe both Xilinx and Altera both have
software available for Linux, or am I wrong? At least I used Altera's suite on
Linux once for a pilot project.
~~~
jeffreyrogers
I have used Xilinx's toolchain on Linux, though it was hard to get working.
This was a few years ago.
~~~
slededit
They support Ubuntu now. Setup was just as easy as windows for me.
------
tzs
For those wanting to play around with an FPGA, this looks quite interesting:
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14829](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14829)
It's about half the price of the other FPGAs I've seen commonly used for
hobbyist projects [1], doesn't need any separate programmer board to interface
to your computer for programming, and has an open source tool chain available.
I've not played with it, as it just showed up in a mailing from Sparkfun about
new products.
[1] such as
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11953](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11953)
------
rwmj
I'm surprised he doesn't talk much about direct cost (rather than engineering
cost). A decent FPGA developer kit will cost several thousands of US$, more
expensive even than high end GPUs.
~~~
lightbyte
You can buy this dev board to play around with and learn FPGA for $75, and it
has extensive documentation and resources to help you
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11953](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11953)
~~~
rwmj
But that's not a high performance FPGA. Believe me, I have a ton of FPGAs at
home (starting even cheaper than that), and I write about them all the time:
[https://rwmj.wordpress.com/?s=fpga](https://rwmj.wordpress.com/?s=fpga)
However if you're doing the sort of work which isn't just hobbyist stuff,
you're going to spend 1000s on a board. This is the sort of thing commercial
developers will be using: [https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-
kits/ek-v7-vc707-...](https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-
kits/ek-v7-vc707-g.html)
~~~
lightbyte
If you're building a commercial product, a 3k dev board sounds incredibly
cheap. My company spends orders of magnitudes more on licenses for an IDE
extension (resharper).
~~~
rwmj
Absolutely. However I guess you'll also want to deploy your FPGA application
at some point, which means buying FPGAs for all your servers too. So the cost
is more analogous to the cost of a CPU/GPU than to the cost of an
IDE/developer license.
------
dojopico
Another FPGA sweet spot is analyzing TB/PB-scale databases. Netezza programmed
FPGAs to uncompress, project, restrict (including NULLs), enforce isolation &
visibility and check CRCs at disk scan rates (>200MB/sec). When touching a
handful of columns from a 20-200 column table, CPUs spend most of their time
stalled on cache line misses. FPGA-projecting just those few columns into
memory enormously increases cache hit rates.
~~~
paulsutter
Plain C code can readily scan at a couple GB/sec on an ordinary Intel core,
and NVME drives can transfer 8 or 16GB/sec
------
saagarjha
Is it just me, or does this article seem like it’s trying really hard to push
Intel? For an article about FPGAs, failing to acknowledge the other (major)
player in the market-there’s no mention of Xilinx anywhere in the article,
while plenty of Intel/Altera-seems disingenuous. Really, the tone just seemed
to stick out to me as an subtle advertisement piece; maybe it’s just me?
------
make3
Is there a pipeline to compile tensorflow computation graphs to fpga? seems
like this is one possible benefit of Tensorflow's fixed graphs, that they may
be much easier to compile to fpga then other options
Edit: Seems like some experimental work is being done with XLA (and llvm)
[https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nextplatform.com/2018/07/24/...](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nextplatform.com/2018/07/24/clearing-
the-tensorflow-to-fpga-path/amp/)
------
hyperpallium
How long does it take to "program" a FPGA? i.e. compared with typing a
command, and having it load into memory.
What about a JIT that compiles hot code sections to FPGA? (Though compilation
sounds too slow)
EDIT "one or two seconds or at least 100's of milliseconds."
[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/212069/how-l...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/212069/how-
long-to-program-a-fpga-seconds-microseconds-less)
------
floatboth
> An exception to the rule that GPUs require a host is the NVidia Jetson, but
> this is not a high-end GPU
Well, the host is just on the same die, but it's still there
------
amelius
One reason could be to meet real-time constraints or to get predictable
timing. This is becoming more and more difficult to do with modern CPUs for
all sorts of reasons.
------
jwbensley
"A couple of FPGAs in mid-air (probably)"
------
faragon
I would love to see projects like MAME and MESS targeting FPGA hardware for
near-perfect hardware emulation of classic hardware.
~~~
IvanGoneKrazy
The Anologue Super Nt project uses an FPGA to run SNES cartridges unemulated.
[https://www.analogue.co/pages/super-nt/](https://www.analogue.co/pages/super-
nt/)
~~~
faragon
But it is not Open Source. There are more commercial products using FPGA's for
emulating gaming console hardware.
------
foobaw
What are some cool jobs for FPGA experts besides Intel and Military? It seems
like there's not much availability.
~~~
kurtisc
I recently spoke to someone at Broadcom who was moving networking processes
from software to hardware using them, try looking into similar companies.
------
exabrial
Why does the compilation take hours, is this an NP Hard problem?
~~~
mmirate
If my memory of a Processor Design course is correct, arranging the desired
functionality onto the finite resources of an actual FPGA chip, let alone in
such a way as to get good performance (i.e. have critical paths be as short as
possible), reduces to bin-packing.
~~~
esfandia
The answer might be obvious, but I'm not a hardware guy: couldn't they use a
FPGA to do the compilation itself, or at least the bin-packing part? Is there
a way to code a general SAT-solver in FPGA?
------
nastypasty
Whats that for?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dear Apple: Fix the App Store with a Measure of Credibility - andrewljohnson
http://www.andrewljohnson.com/article/Fixing%20the%20App%20Store%20with%20Measure%20of%20Credibility
======
makecheck
I'm reminded of programming, and how code comments don't always describe what
the code does. Trying something really is often the _only_ way to know if it
does what you want.
So perhaps Apple should have a "try" feature: to download something you have
to "pay" for it, but you have a short grace period (say, 10 minutes) in which
to decide to completely "scrap" the application. If you scrap it, you aren't
charged for it, and you can never use it again. This allows people to never be
fooled into paying for something they discover they don't like.
~~~
smokey_the_bear
That would solve a lot of problems. Now developers typically make a free
version of their app, but Apple restricts how those can be used. They can't
have grayed out buttons representing features available in the pay app, and
can't be time limited. It can be hard to feature limit it and still have the
free app be neat.
Our app has an offline data store of maps on the phone, so it's additionally
painful that when people 'upgrade' to the pay app, they have to redownload all
their data.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Placing documents into the public domain (2008) - aburan28
https://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html
======
legulere
Why not use a CC0 license which is essentially the same?
~~~
Houshalter
If they are really the same then it doesn't matter of course. One advantage
might be that everyone's heard of the public domain, I have never heard of
CC0. I would not know what restrictions there are to that without reading the
license carefully. But reading "public domain" tells me everything I need to
know. In fact the web page explaining CC0 is kind of confusing, and links to
an even longer FAQ.
And with the public domain, you don't even need a license, just write "Public
Domain" where you would normally write "Copyright 2016", and it's done. Why
use a license at all when the public domain exists?
~~~
cyphar
Not all jurisdictions have a concept of public domain. To claim that "public
domain is good enough" is to ignore the 80% of the world that doesn't have the
same copyright system as you.
~~~
Houshalter
What countries? Has anyone in those countries ever been sued by using public
domain works? And if they don't respect Public Domain, why would they respect
the CC0 license? How is writing "CC0" on the bottom of the page any different
than writing "Public Domain" on the bottom of the page?
~~~
cyphar
> What countries? Has anyone in those countries ever been sued by using public
> domain works?
It's a question of "can you willfully put your work in the public domain", not
" is there an expiry on copyright". It's also possible that some company's
lawyers might get unhappy if their company uses such a work.
> And if they don't respect Public Domain, why would they respect the CC0
> license?
Becuase they still have copyright law, they just don't have a concept of
public donation.
>How is writing "CC0" on the bottom of the page any different than writing
"Public Domain" on the bottom of the page?
In western countries there's essentially no difference. But because CC0 is an
actual legal document that has provisions for jurisdictions that don't
recognise public domain as a concept, it's a significant difference.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Long-Term Stock Exchange Is Worth a Shot - dsri
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-16/the-long-term-stock-exchange-is-worth-a-shot
======
timthelion
This article misses the reason why short term investors are potentially
harmfull. The author writes: "One basic and important implication of this
theory is that, if you hold a share of stock for a minute, you will want the
company to increase its long-term earnings power during that minute. If,
during your minute of ownership, the company announces "we have sold all our
factories and ruined our productive capacity, but we booked a big profit for
this minute," you will be sad. "
This is so simple it is wrong. The truth is, that the short term investor
cares how PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE changes during that minute. For example, if Kobe
steel holds off on making a fraud scandal public during that minute, that's a
good thing, even if keeping the fraud skandal secret will hurt in the long
term. The short term investor wants the IPhone X to be announced NOW, even if
holding off on the announcment could give apple a leg up against the
competitors. The short term investor wants toshiba to announce they've got a
good deal selling off their memory business NOW, even if that makes it harder
for toshiba to improve the price they get even further with a bidding war.
~~~
Yizahi
Exactly this. I'm observing how a midsized company shares fluctuate completely
unrelated to the progress of our development efforts and actual relations and
sales to customers. Product A was frozen and discarded after 2 year intense
dev cycle (a failure), product B is not faring well in the competition, but we
announced product C that may or may not succeed in 1+ years on a major tech
show - shares go up. Next year product D is succeeding immensely, record
contracts are signed with biggest customers in the world, product is ahead of
competition - shares are down, because nobody knows.
tl;dr - PR is everything, often shadowing actual hw or sw "stuff" people make,
and HFT capitalizes on this.
~~~
nradov
PR is nothing. The institutional investors who actually move stock prices
barely even look at it. Humans try to make sense of random events by looking
for causality, but ascribing stock movements to single factors is often like
ascribing weather changes to animal sacrifices.
------
cujic9
Interesting idea, but seems impractical because it causes very weird
incentives:
* Can a company exist in both the "normal" exchange and the "long term" exchange at the same time? If so, can I short on the normal exchange and buy on the long term exchange for some free voting power that increases over time?
* Many (most?) consumer-facing brokerages make a significant portion of their revenue by lending out their customers' securities. Voting rights transfer to the borrower of the security. Would this be the same in a long-term exchange? If yes, then this will break the existing revenue model. Online brokerages will need to make the money elsewhere (likely by charging higher trading fees), and this will push consumers back into existing exchanges with low cost trades.
* How long until there is a secondary market for buying and selling voting rights?
~~~
jessriedel
> Can a company exist in both the "normal" exchange and the "long term"
> exchange at the same time?
The fact that a company is listed on multiple exchanges doesn't mean it has
different sorts of stock for each exchange. This real subject of this article
is tenure _voting_ , which is an aspect of the stock (not the exchange). The
reason exchanges are mentioned is that exchanges have rules about the sorts of
stock they will list. But to have tenure voting, you only need one exchange to
allow out (like the proposed long-term exchange). And most stocks aren't
cross-listed to multiple exchanges anyways.
> How long until there is a secondary market for buying and selling voting
> rights?
Yes, this strikes me as the obvious problem. The equilibrium is for third
party to buy and hold all the tenure-voting stock and then sell stakes in the
dividends of the company plus allowing voting by proxy. Basically, the third
party becomes an exchange, and all stock effectively has maximal tenure.
This problem is so obvious that it must have been addressed by the people
proposing this.
~~~
hobbyjogger
>Yes, this strikes me as the obvious problem. The equilibrium is for third
party to buy and hold all the tenure-voting stock and then sell stakes in the
dividends of the company plus allowing voting by proxy. Basically, the third
party becomes an exchange, and all stock effectively has maximal tenure.
You've essentially just described the current system. Most shares on NASDAQ
and NYSE etc. are technically held by Depository Trust Company via its
nominee, Cede & Co. [1]. Through a complicated set of regulatory and
contractual arrangements, public companies, the beneficial owners of their
stock (i.e. the investor at the end of the chain) and each intermediary (banks
and brokers, etc.) all maintain a sort of legal fiction that the shares are
"owned" by Joe Schmoe, even though all he really has is an attenuated set of
contractual rights that flow through the various intermediaries between him
and "his" shares held by Cede.
Joe Schmoe does not technically or legally own those shares. Cede does.
Believe it or not, you were spot on in predicting that the third party would
allow "voting by proxy." That's exactly how Joe Schmoe (i.e. all of us) must
vote our shares if we want to participate in a stockholder vote. We can't just
show up at the meeting (or fill out the company's proxy card). You send a
"voting instruction form" telling your broker how you'd like to vote, and your
broker then tells Cede & Co. how to vote your shares at the stockholder
meeting.[2]
To address your specific point, tenure voting would surely be based on the
tenure of the beneficial owner (i.e. the person at the end of the chain who
gets to vote) not the nominee holding the shares in "street name" on the
beneficial owner's behalf. This might take some reworking of the arrangements
between the brokers, DTC, clearinghouses, etc. (likely needing to be be built
into the financial systems that log transfers and ownership, if not already
provided for) but would not really pose a significant barrier.
[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-14/banks-
for...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-14/banks-forgot-who-
was-supposed-to-own-dell-shares) [2]
[https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/proxymatters/proxy_materials.s...](https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/proxymatters/proxy_materials.shtml#what_is_registered_owner)
~~~
jopsen
> legal fiction that the shares are "owned" by Joe Schmoe, even though all he
> really has is an attenuated set of contractual rights
What is a stock really, if not "a set of contractual rights"?
~~~
hobbyjogger
To oversimplify, property rights are often said to be good against the world,
while contract rights are good against specific others.
A share of stock is itself a set of contractual rights, but the record owner
has a property right in the share (and often a physical certificate). It
doesn't matter if someone takes your share or inadvertently/accidentally sells
it to an innocent buyer. It's still yours and you have a better claim to it
than any buyer or later holder.
But a beneficial owner of a share held in "street name" has only a contractual
right to his shares--essentially a promise from his broker that the broker
will have at least [x] shares for him (note this means he does not have a
claim to any specific or identifiable shares and his broker surely holds many
times more since they'll have many other clients). And on top of that, his
broker has an account with DTC that involves a second layer of contractual
rights to the stock--essentially a promise from DTC to the broker that DTC
will have at least [x] shares for the broker (again not specific or
identifiable shares and DTC certainly has many times more shares since DTC
holds nearly all shares held in "street name")
If your broker or DTC accidentally or inadvertently disposes of too many
shares (and this can happen surprisingly often) you only have recourse against
your broker or DTC. The agreements between [you and your broker] and [your
broker and DTC] do not bind the new owner of the shares, who has no obligation
under those agreements and, as a bona fide buyer + current holder, also has a
better claim to the shares than you do.
If that wasn't specific enough, here's a very detailed summary and analysis of
the current stock ownership structure and mechanics:
[http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...](http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=faculty_scholarship)
------
Iv
When I learned about high-frequency trading, I toyed with the idea of opening
up a stock-exchange with different rules:
\- one quote per day \- transactions of the day are processed in a random
order (using a provable random deterministic algorithm) \- shares have to be
kept for at least 3 months (Warren Buffet recommends 6 months) before being
sold.
When Steve Jobs died, which was obviously an event that would have an impact
on Apple's shares, the quotation was suspended for a day, so that people could
take their time to evaluate the significance of the event. This was a
confession that they knew that the high frequency changes is just noise and
that the signal has a lower time resolution of about a day.
The prospects of future profits do not change every nanosecond.
~~~
RhysU
How often does someone decide they want to sell (buy)? Market makers are
reacting to demands for immediate liquidity in a distributed marketplace
comprised of multiple equities exchanges.
~~~
HolyLampshade
To add to this, this model only works if the entire market place operates this
way. If any other venue is providing pricing updates a venue that is halted,
or somehow contributing to a delay in pricing updates, is going to be left
behind.
In the hypothetical "one quote a day" market, the quotes will be insanely wide
to account for the risk that the natural price of product moves through the
quote (with no way to provide pricing/quoting updates).
That said, I like the idea of a slower market, but, much like the debate over
Maker/Taker, it will take an entire industry shift and can't be done on a
single venue.
~~~
Iv
It won't be insanely wide, it will be on par with the intra-day variations.
What they may make a seller lose are on par with what they would lose by
taking a few hours to think about their decisions.
> If any other venue is providing pricing updates a venue that is halted, or
> somehow contributing to a delay in pricing updates, is going to be left
> behind.
My suspicion is that some companies would prefer to only have investors
instead of speculators. I suspect that a SE with such rules would favor long
term investments over short term profits.
------
joshu
My gut sense is that the important time period is length of hold going
forward, not length of past hold.
Maybe the vote strength should instead go with the period of lockup instead?
That is, I agree to hold my shares for ten years, so I get ten votes.
Perhaps it could even be slightly nonlinear with respect to the length of
time? (years * 1+log(years)) or similar?
Edit: LTSE reminds me of LTCM. Not a great connotation?
~~~
jmh530
There is some research in political science on paying for votes in elections.
They came to the conclusion that you should pay $x and receive sqrt(x) votes.
100 dollars -> 10 votes. I would think the same reasoning would work here.
Hold stock $x days, receive sqrt(x) votes (years is tricky because you can
hold less than 1 year and the value increases quite a bit during that period).
~~~
chirau
Would such a political system not spiral into chaos really rapidly?
~~~
jmh530
It's all theoretical. God knows.
------
eries
Hey everybody, Eric Ries here, founder of the LTSE. I am coming late to the
thread as I’ve been focused on launching my new book and am only seeing this
now.
I love a lot of the comments here. I think many of the assumptions both in
this piece and in the comments are reasonable guesses about what we are doing
- but in a lot of cases wrong.
Part of the reason it has taken me more than five years to figure out how to
build this company is that we have to be able to:
1\. Offer companies full liquidity and full protection from short-termism even
if their stock trades on another exchange or they dual-list
2\. Build support among many financial system stakeholders and regulators to
get approval to do this
3\. Build a multi-disciplinary team that is literate in the arcane ways of SF
NY and DC all at once
We aren’t quite ready to take the hood off and reveal how we solved all of
these problems quite yet. This is stil a sensitive regulatory process and I’m
limited in what I can say publicly. But to the extend I can, I’ll try and
answer questions in this thread. Please keep them coming.
Thanks for taking a look at what we are building!
~~~
erikb
Your name sounds familiar. Can you give a short summary of what else you've
been doing?
*edit: Ah, I found something myself. You're the lean startup guy right? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_startup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_startup)
~~~
eries
Indeed I am :)
------
wpietri
This article doesn't mention it, but this is a project of Eric Ries, of Lean
Startup fame. An earlier article is here: [https://qz.com/704657/eric-ries-
ltse-long-term-stock-exchang...](https://qz.com/704657/eric-ries-ltse-long-
term-stock-exchange/)
~~~
glenneroo
This article has considerably more information and answers a lot of questions
in the comments. IMHO it should replace the original article.
------
bluetwo
The quote at the very end of the article seems to summarize my feelings:
"Skeptics wonder whether the LTSE is just another way for tech founders and
elite Silicon Valley investors to maintain control at the expense of other
shareholders."
------
cjlars
And when an owner wants to raise liquidity? They'll take a hit due to the
cliff issue (voting rights have value and you destroy voting rights by
selling). So any company with tenured voting rights will have created a system
that forces owners to sell shares at a discount to their current value. And
because they can't sell for more value than they get from holding, they would
tend to prefer value-destroying and excessive short term cash distributions up
and until the point where the damage from those distributions equalizes with
the value destroyed at sale.
I'm sure some economist smarter than me could formalize the issue, but unless
the cliff issue is solved, this sort of ownership scheme will not result in
shareholders maximizing long term value.
A dominant founder-CEO could mitigate or overpower the incentives described
above, but my guess is that any company that successfully gets of the ground
using this scheme will replace their tenured shares with ordinary common
shares at some point.
------
Someone1234
That sounds very interesting conceptually.
Businesses have been moving further and further into short-termism; with the
next quarter being the most important metric. This is partly due to investors
also being short-term, and voting on the board who will bring the most value
in the shortest period.
I'd be interested in taking part in a Long-Term stock exchange, even if it is
an experiment at this point.
~~~
WalterBright
> Businesses have been moving further and further into short-termism; with the
> next quarter being the most important metric.
That's the conventional wisdom, I've heard it my whole life, and I see no
evidence of it. AMZN, MSFT, etc.
I've known CEOs who believed it, and manipulated the books to make the short
term look better at the expense of the long term. Investors weren't fooled and
the stocks would tank.
~~~
TuringNYC
AMZN ist the stand-out example, but AMZN, FB, GOOG are exceptions. Think back
to 2006/2007 when PE and activist investors would take board seats and force
companies to over-lever and do stock buy-backs while stocks were all-time
high. How many companies can survive short-term incented PE or activist
investors?
~~~
WalterBright
A short term investor still has to sell the stock. Why would someone buy it at
a high price if that high price was based on short term thinking that
sacrificed long term results?
The only hope of the short term investor is that the buyer will be
incompetent. How viable is that for people who devote their careers to stock
analysis and trading?
------
ThrustVectoring
How would this work with someone pulling something similar to Altaba?
Suppose you have $1B worth of stock, and 10% of the value is in the vested
voting rights that you'd lose by selling it. Instead of selling part of it on
the open market, you sell shares in a shell corporation that holds that stock.
Surely the discount in ShellCorp's stock price compared to UnderlyingCorp is
less than 10%? And the cost of setting up ShellCorp is going to be far less
than losing 10% of the value of your holding.
~~~
notahacker
Perhaps you'd tie voting rights to a named human beneficial owner, so the
prospective purchaser of your shell corporation wouldn't inherit them[1]
Though it might have the interesting side effect of fund managers who exercise
their voting rights being better compensated and staying in their jobs
longer...
[1]possible to devise some kind of unusual contractual arrangement where the
"beneficial owner" retained formal title to the shares but accepted an
obligation to both hand over stock yields and vote in the interests of the
other party. But this is something you could effectively ban.
~~~
ThrustVectoring
You can't ban separating out economic interest and formal title to the shares
without banning options, forward contracts, and other derivatives on the
stock. Like, these are not unusual contractual arrangements. These are
standardized and sold on the market. Put options transfer the downside risk to
the writer, call options transfer the upside risk to the buyer, futures
contracts essentially do both.
~~~
notahacker
My point was you'd ban titleholders from selling a contract directing them to
exercise their votes as a delegate of the purchaser, not the more general
separation of title and economic interest which is obviously valuable for a
large number of reasons.
(I mean, it's still a bit messy because fund managers have a fidicuary duty to
exercise their voting rights on behalf of their own shareholders, but I don't
have the ability to dictate a new aggressively activist investor policy to
Vanguard)
------
mooneater
How that plays out would be very sensitive to the exact formula for tenure.
Ie. A voting "cliff" where you can only vote after year 1. Vs votes per years
held * shares, in which case an early investor could get entrenched.
~~~
Retric
I would probably go for some middle ground such as if (year > 0) then shares *
Square root (years).
Just because someone has held a stock for 20 years does not necessarily mean
they are currently interested in the long term. But, it probably points in
that direction.
~~~
rocqua
You might want an upper limit, so either logistic growth [1] or something like
1 - exp(-(T + T_0)) feels like it makes more sense.
I especially like logistic growth for having slow growth at the start and end,
only growing quickly in the middle.
[1]
[https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/ecology/populati...](https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/ecology/population-
growth-and-regulation/a/exponential-logistic-growth)
~~~
SomeStupidPoint
You don't need an upperbound as long as your function is sufficiently slow
growing.
Example:
Log(years) doesn't have a bound, but is unlikely to cause problems over any
reasonable time scale.
------
DINKDINK
This strategy is Small-Game fallacy.
Reducing the complexity of the real world -> If only shares held for a long
term have full rights, you will obfuscate how you pay for those rights. either
the stock will have a depreciated market price to what it 'should' trade at or
the voting rights will be acquired through rent seeking by long-term holders.
------
grondilu
> Anyway here's a story about the Long-Term Stock Exchange, which is a new
> planned stock exchange backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalist types
> that will have "tenure voting," in which shareholders who hold their shares
> for a long time will get more votes.
This has been discussed already on HN, and I believe it's a bad idea.
All that would do would be to create two kinds of shares : the normal ones and
those with high voting power. The market would then want to price them
differently, and if you want to prevent long-term owners to sell their shares
(for instance if they want to enjoy the increased value), then you are doing
some kind of capital control.
It's just a bad idea. In a free country capital can be bought and sold : if
you give voting rights to someone, he should be able to sell them, which would
probably defeat whatever purpose you had when you gave those rights in the
first place.
~~~
danmaz74
If I got this correctly, when you sell your shares with high voting power,
they lose their high voting power.
~~~
grondilu
Then you'd just create an incentive to sell the share in dark markets. You'd
officially still be the owner of the share, but in secret you would have sold
your voting right by agreeing with someone to vote on command in exchange for
money.
As is said in the 1981 movie "rollover", capitalism is like a force of nature
: you can try to fight it, but in the end it always win[1]
And even if somehow you succeed, you would have created capital that can not
be bought nor sold, or can only be bought and sold from and to a particular
category of investors. You would have introduced a bit of communism in the
system (in the sense that in communism, buying or selling capital is
forbidden). I guess some people will be happy about that, but I won't.
1\. [https://youtu.be/m1aQ-XGWors?t=151](https://youtu.be/m1aQ-XGWors?t=151)
~~~
danmaz74
Are those dark markets contracts enforceable?
By the way, this is nothing like communism, not even close. This is a
perfectly market oriented solution, if you don't like the idea, don't buy this
kind of shares, nobody forces you to do so. If the model will prove good for
companies and their investors, it will prosper, otherwise, it won't.
~~~
grondilu
> Are those dark markets contracts enforceable?
Of course they are. When absurd laws try to prohibit market forces, shadow
markets emerge and they tend to have their own enforcement policies. Think
mafia, prohibition in the 20s, corruption and stuff. Things get ugly, but they
get done. The point of having regulated markets is precisely to put some order
and fairness into this.
> This is a perfectly market oriented solution, if you don't like the idea,
> don't buy this kind of shares
It is not, and the problem is that if that idea were to become popular, then
capital would become more and more difficult to buy. So yeah, it's a step
towards communism indeed. In the end, it's all about adding restrictions to
the circulation of capital.
You can't artificially attach a right to something that would depend on the
duration of ownership. In a free country, you can buy and sell stuff, which by
definition means their value can not depend on the duration of ownership.
Let me make that reasoning clearer. Imagine I've owned an object for an
extended duration, and that this extended duration gives it an additional
value V. In a free market, I'm supposed to be able to sell this value V, but
if I do, then the buyer will own this object with this extra value V, despite
the fact that he's just bought the object. So your initial goal of giving
value to duration ownership has been defeated.
~~~
danmaz74
So basically a free market is free as long as it only creates contracts that
you like, otherwise it's communism. Ok.
------
teemwerk
I am by no means stating it as a conclusion, but rather just as a discussion
point, how does this differ from the mutual funds and etfs under a single
umbrella, i.e. something like vanguard? Where the stated mission is sort of
long term stewardship over the short term activist role.
Now, how well that mission is fulfilled is another thing. The reason I note
vanguard specifically is because of the current activist spat between P&G and
Nelson Peltz/Trian Partners. Of the top 3 holders (vanguard, black rock, state
street), only vanguard voted against the activist shakeup.
I guess I'm just having trouble seeing the difference between giving a bunch
of small investors more power, vs a large amount of krill with similar goals
making up a whale the company can't ignore. It seems the tenure setup
complicates a lot without immediately perceptible benefit, at least to me.
~~~
eldavido
It's worth asking why we make the distinction between "activists" and big fund
managers in the first place. Shouldn't all fund managers be doing what's best
for their shareholders?
You should check out John Bogle's "Clash of Cultures" (founder of Vanguard),
he discusses this problem at length.
In general I'm inclined to agree with you though. This thing has a lot of hype
around it because it's backed by Eric Ries, the "Lean Startup" author, but I
don't really see a problem with the NYSE/Nasdaq in their current form. People
overlook the liquidity, depth, and other benefits of such well-run exchanges;
it's not at all clear to me that an average investor would be better off on
this "long-term" exchange, where I'm sure volumes will be a lot lower, and
bid/ask spreads will be wider than on a "bad" exchange with many "short-term"
players, who, as a side-effect of their actions, create tons of liquidity for
small-potatoes investors.
Frankly, I don't understand the point of this at all. There's nothing stopping
a long-term oriented investor from holding shares a long period of time in
today's markets. And there are real risks of corporations being too long-term
focused. The existence of Amazon, at a minimum, should show that companies
with 10-20 year investment horizons are tenable under the current system.
~~~
walshemj
Multiple classes of shares with different voting rights are though
------
aceon48
One of the mainly value of a stock exchange is that it is super cheap and
liquid to sell your security and access your funds. A long term holding is
just PE, VC, or some other type of funding.
~~~
pishpash
And people should get access to participate in that, not just private
millionaires.
------
grandalf
There is a pervasive idea that longer term investments are somehow better
(morally superior, more socially responsible) than short-term. This stems from
the ancient prejudice toward financiers (usually jews) and the corresponding
ancient prejudice against speculation. Let me debunk it:
\- Suppose an 18 year old and a 80 year old each buy a share of company XYZ's
stock. Whatever their goals might otherwise be, the 80 year old might quite
plausibly have a different time horizon expectation for returns than the 18
year old. If both choose to buy the same stock, they must both believe the
stock is a good investment for their respective time horizon goals. Maybe it
will be, maybe it won't be. In both cases, someone else sold each of the
shares they both bought. The person who sold the shares had deemed the stock a
not-so-good investment compared to other options and wished to liquidate.
\- Now, suppose that we add a day trader to the mix, who also buys a share
because she thinks that company XYZ offers a good investment based on her
specific time-horizon goals. The demand she induced on the available stock
helped to support the validity of whatever the current price appears to be. By
being willing to buy, she helped create a market for the 18 year old and 70
year old to sell, should one of them change their mind about the stock.
\- Now imagine we have 1000 day traders, 1000 18-25 year olds, and 1000 70-80
year olds participating in the market for this stock, with some buying and
some selling every day. Due to all the transactions, we have high levels of
liquidity for the stock and low "inventory risk" associated with holding the
stock in inventory as a market maker, and thus lower spreads. Market maker
spreads are a function of risk, which is correlated with supply and demand.
The more supply and demand, the less risk there is to holding inventory.
\- Now suppose we decide we don't like anyone who wishes to invest on a less-
than-10-year time horizon. We determine that they are acting to incentivize
the company to focus only on short-term profits. So we pull some strings and
simply kick out those investors and limit investment only to those promising a
long-term view. Now, there is less demand for shares, making them cheaper and
limiting XYZ company's ability to fundraise. With less capital, XYZ must rein
in its growth projections.
\- What good were those projections anyway if they were based on short-term
investors' dollars being available? Wasn't the capital invested by short-term
investors likely to disappear at the first sign that short-term results might
be floundering? How can a business adequately plan for the long term if it is
distracted by the need to fundraise from such a fickle lot?
\- The answer is simple: If a company's business activity is focused on long-
term goals and long-term thinking, then it will attract like-minded investors.
Like the random walk of day to day stock price, day to day information and
speculation will result in short-term transactions occurring, but those
transactions benefit the firm significantly as they provide an excellent price
discovery mechanism. The day-to-day price will also reflect both short-term
and long-term industry-wide shifts, and this will be true both in a long-term
constrained exchange and an unconstrained exchange. If the firm is doing wind
farms and has a 30-50 year view, and then suddenly a company doing solar comes
up with a 100x efficiency improvement, that is going to impact the long-term
viability of wind tech, as it should.
While I agree that firms embodying short-term thinking is a problem, the
market mechanism offered by the exchange is not the problem, the problem is
that executives and employees are generally given predominantly short-term
incentives to care about. Imagine the following:
\- Instead of ISOs issue employees a basket of different time-deferred
options, so that each employee gets his/her comp incentive spread over time.
\- Instead of giving the CEO shares of stock, give the CEO both present and
future shares, and leverage the future ones to the point where any bias the
CEO might have had toward short-term thinking is washed out by the appeal of
the longer-term incentive. Any hypothetical business results can be used to
preview what the CEO would earn in each scenario. If the owners of the company
want long-term results, let that be the way the CEO will make the most (time
and risk-adjusted) money.
Just as $100 now is worth more than $100 next year to any rational person, the
comp incentives for future-looking payouts would need to be more generous in
order to impact behavior in a comparable way. They would also need to be
invulnerable to termination, since being worried about getting terminated and
losing some or all of one's stock is a big disincentive for long-term
thinking. The employee should be incentivized to act as if the role is a great
fit and he/she will be there for the rest of his/her career, even though we
all know that is highly unlikely if not absurd.
I think the ideal scenario for employees including the CEO would be a daily
payout of cash salary, plus a daily payout of some basket of immediately
vesting, future-weighted non-salary compensation.
In startups, this would look bad to the accountants who had to account for the
future-weighted stuff in terms of some mythical hockey stick graph, but
without it there really is very little incentive to care about the future in
any non-unicorn startup. Big companies manage to create longer-term focus on
retaining employment and benefits, and thus end up with a lot of 9-to-5'ers
but do a terrible job of preventing organizations from doing repeated short-
term-oriented fire drills. Unicorn startups create strong future incentives,
but those immediately disappear once the company stops being a unicorn (or the
handwriting on the wall suggests it might).
It should also be noted that startups are almost by definition not long-term
in nature. The seed investors need a buyer so there needs to be a series A,
and the series A investors need a buyer so there needs to be a series B, etc.
It's a sales process that (when it works as intended) results in an IPO where
each phase of investors get a nice leveraged payout when an IPO occurs, but
the whole ecosystem is meant to create that IPO payout, which is fundamentally
short-term thinking. The sales pitch at each phase boils down to "wow check
out this long term win available to you at a discount because the market
doesn't yet realize this is a long term win".
~~~
notahacker
Isn't the particular problem this is aiming to solve less that the founder
CEOs aren't able to think in 30 year time horizons but more that sometimes
they _are_ [1], but fear that when most market participants have much higher
discount rates, their position is vulnerable to activist takeovers (if the
market's preferred yields are sufficiently short term, they'll get a value
boost for kicking out the execs who's hockey stick growth is forecast for ten
years' time in favour of those promising earlier revenue growth). It's not the
market makers they're worried about, it's the people that actually hold stock
for long enough to vote, hence the desire to weight the voters in favour of
themselves and the investors that bought into their vision, and not the people
buying with the intention of flipping after good quarterly figures.
I mean, they're certainly not going to raise bigger IPOs on a brand new
marginal exchange with no track record and a lack of liquidity, but I'm not
sure that's the real aim here. (You might need a new exchange to introduce
rules like making key executives immune to termination too)
That said, I'm not sure how real a problem it is: AMZN has a very long term
strategy and unusual approach towards margins and its stock is doing just
fine. And cynics might suggest that other tech stocks returning unimpressive
quarterly figures might actually not have thirty year plans...
[1]or want to be considered that way to justify still not turning any profits
as their growth metrics start to plateau
~~~
valuearb
Since the 1980s activist shareholders have been heavily restricted, it’s a big
cause of the explosion in CEO compensation.
We need more activist shareholders, not a plan to kill off the few remaining.
------
oconnor663
> shareholders who hold their shares for a long time will get more votes
What prevents me from selling my vote, without technically selling my share?
------
dade_
Regardless of my strategy, one benefit of stocks is liquidity. If something
comes up, I can cash out pretty much immediately thought I may not like the
return. kes th This proposal sounds like tenure, being in place for a long
time entitles me to something. It makes the market more complicated and for no
proven benefit. No thanks.
------
IvyMike
I want a reddit (or hackernews) with this style voting. The longer you've been
a member, the more your vote counts.
There would probably be unintended consequences galore but it would
interesting to see if it helped preserve culture and avoid the "it was better
in the early days" syndrome.
------
kevinr
I think it's all going to depend on how the tenure mechanism is implemented.
There's got to be some way for new money to "catch up" to old money within
some reasonable time horizon, say 10 years, rather than old money's voting
power growing unbounded.
------
thisisit
This is so contrived. Why not have different classes selling in the same
market? Something like DVR or differential voting rights. Depending on the
market and need prices of DVR might be less or more.
------
maxk42
You want a long-term exchange? Istitute a mandatory holding period and/or
limited trading times.
This is the exact kind of experimental BS that lead to the derivative bubble.
------
skywhopper
This seems like a lot of very highly directed, complex, and confusing
artificial policy-making in order to achieve something that could probably be
approximated far more simply and understandably by placing a small tax on
equity transactions. Long term investors would be barely affected, high
frequency traders would be forced to re-evaluate their approach, and the
government could collect some highly needed revenue.
~~~
eries
If you get the political coalition assembled to make this, please give me a
call
------
yuhong
At this point I think the problem is that the economy is debt based and
depends on stocks going up anyway.
------
kolbe
Forget all the practical hurdles, tell me why this premise is even correct.
Just because I've owned a share for a long time, that implies that I have more
interest in the long term performance of the company going forward? Just
because the word "long" is part of the description of a past action doesn't
mean it's in any way correlated with an expected future action. And it's often
negative. See: basketball games, retirement, and (gasp) stock vesting. You
think a VC who's owned a company for 9.9 years and is reaching the end of its
fund has more incentive to vote in the long term interest of the company than
a pension who just bought?
~~~
andreasklinger
Explicit expectations by the market towards the leadership.
As in: Do not worry about quarterly profits but longterm success
~~~
jshaqaw
Does anyone report to you? If they do, how would you respond if they said “I’d
like to check in with you on my progress/metrics/etc... just once a year.”
Sound like a good idea? It’s a terrible idea for managing people and a
terrible idea for corporate governance. As high performance organizations move
to daily if internal accountability it’s laughable that they complain
accountability every 90 days to them owners of the company is too much.
~~~
andreasklinger
there is a difference between long term planning and short term execution
yes short term execution should be monitored but it should not lead long term
execution plans
~~~
valuearb
Owners should be able to decide at any moment it’s time to throw out
management and start fresh.
~~~
andreasklinger
this does not contradict my statement
------
Timothycquinn
IMO, short term investing including stock options does nothing but move money
from one group to another by creating artificial Flux. The stock market for
the most part is a closed cycle in which a large group of investors, mostly
the loosing ones, think that the stock market creates value and the ones who
make the money from these ignorant "investors" are completely aware of and
dependent on the loosing parties stupidity.
We should open gambling shops for those who want to day trade or deal in Stock
options because that is all that they are doing.
The only stock market that promotes long term growth and profitability of
businesses is one that awards long term investment.
~~~
wyager
The market isn’t a mechanism to let salarymen invest their retirement money in
something. The market is a mechanism to plan and optimize _all_ production and
resource allocation across the entire world, all the time. This has to be
fast.
If you think options (your example, not mine) are somehow inherently nothing
more than gambling, it’s because you don’t understand how options work.
Options are one of the least exotic and most straightforwardly useful
securities.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Playing with Docker 1.13 and Minio - russmck
https://media-glass.es/playing-with-docker-1-13-minio-9b38a36e88b#.pl01otijq
======
alrs
Before anyone gets excited, know that Minio only _just_ started supporting
clusters of multiple machines, and that it is severely limited: "As with Minio
in stand-alone mode, distributed Minio has a per tenant limit of minimum 4 and
maximum 16 drives"[0].
They built a toy object store while blogging aggressively.
Openstack Swift or Redhat Ceph are still the only real open-source object
store players, AFAIK.
[0][http://docs.minio.io/docs/distributed-minio-quickstart-
guide](http://docs.minio.io/docs/distributed-minio-quickstart-guide)
~~~
ReverseCold
It's good for using in house storage for things that require S3.
~~~
alrs
I'd use an object store that can scale horizontally, and has.
[https://github.com/openstack/swift3](https://github.com/openstack/swift3)
------
vfulco
__*Medium.com giving me fits and starts trying to post so doing here. CDN
issues I am guessing through the GFW of China.
So glad to come across this piece; it is as if you are looking over my
shoulder at my to-do list. Started messing with Minio on Docker on Raspberrypi
a few days ago testing a setup to implement in my newish business in Shanghai
(version 2.0). Still early days but I like what I see.
You continue to produce practical, insightful, germane pieces. Keep up the
high quality work. Really appreciate it. Bought your Flocker book last month
and plan to start it during Chinese New Year.
Kudos! Be well.
~~~
russmck
I am glad you are finding the posts useful. It is always good to know that
someone has a similar to-do list as it confirms that you are at least on the
same page as other people :)
------
general_ai
Does anyone have large (PB-scale) deployments of Minio on premises? We have a
need to store hundreds of terabytes of data, and we don't need a filesystem
per se, so I was wondering how robust it is.
~~~
alrs
Physically impossible to run a PB-scale Minio cluster: it's limited to 16 hard
drives. See my comment above.
~~~
general_ai
Good to know. Looks like more of a PR initiative then. Some of my servers have
more drives than that. :-)
~~~
unlocksmith
Minio shards data across 16 drives. If you have more drives, you would run
multiple instances for each set of 16 drives. I would generally recommend
against denser storage servers. When it goes down, all the drives go offline
with it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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The Cost of Free Apps - lkorth
http://lukekorth.com/blog/the-cost-of-free-apps/
======
siliconesoul
The goods and bads in the world of an app writer - Well written from the
perspective of a programmer. Thank you for your perception.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intelligence is Irrelevant: An MIT Alum’s Advice to a Struggling Student - da5e
http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/01/09/intelligence-is-irrelevant-an-mit-alums-advice-to-a-struggling-student/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StudyHacks+%28Study+Hacks%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
======
jorgecastillo
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3427762>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Pricing SaaS based on how much it cost to develop? - altern8
I'm trying to make sure that pricing for a SaaS is correct.<p>Is there anything like finding a price based on how much it cost to develop the service?<p>For instance, if it cost 500K, $100/mo. at a minimum, or things like that?
======
AkiraMichi
No! That is not really how most people calculate how much to charge for a SaaS
product. Usually, it comes down to two things.
First, what's the total per-user cost? That includes, servers, storage and
even the user acquisition cost. i.e. ads. Second, what is the product worth to
the user in terms of it solving their problems. For example, if the product
costs $10 and it saves them between $100 to $500 per month. It's something
they will likely be fine with. Simply put, it's about the cost-to-value for
the customer. How much are they willing to pay to solve their problem. It can
be a $1 or even $1000 per-month.
I would advise you to research your potential customers and find out these
things for yourself.
Good luck!
~~~
altern8
Thanks for your reply. I'm aware of how you price things, but I'm also aware
that often amateurs (like me in the SaaS world) tend to underprice things.
That's why I thought I could see if this was possible to make sure I didn't
pick too low a price.
~~~
AkiraMichi
You're right, in that people starting out usually end up undercharging for
their product. Though, all I can say without anymore information about your
individual case. Is, to take what you find the cost should be and then double
it. And if you can, run a A/B test while you increase your products cost to
see if people are willing to pay the higher amount. And, if they are. Then
increase the price until you find an equilibrium for your product where you
don't lose customers because of too high of a cost. But, where you don't
either undercharge for it.
Finding this balance will require some work. But, using analytics and A/B
testing should help guide you towards the right price point.
~~~
altern8
Thanks.
I think I'll just do that.
Actually read Amy Hoy saying to double the price you have in mind and that's
the correct price, but I'm still afraid to undercharge even with that.
I'll start with doubling and then do A/B testing.
Thanks for your help.
------
downrightmike
Price is based on the value. If you are unsure of the value, ask. Or 3x cost
and find the metrics for your break even point then charge that. (# users * $$
* Months) = B/E
~~~
altern8
Thanks.
I'll definitely do some research to find out how much people value the
service, but I also want to make sure not to undercharge.
After how long is usually break even? 1 year?
Thanks for you help.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Double Fine chooses Moai - snprbob86
http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/01/how-two-startups-are-joining-forces-to-fix-the-mobile-silo-problem/
======
greggman
this is going to sound like a sales pitch for Unity but ...
Engine + Tools > Engine
Moai = Engine Unity = Engine + Tools
I've got 25 years experience making AAA games. I am continually amazed at how
productive people are in Unity. I've got several x-coworker friends from
various AAA game companies including Namco, EA, Vicarious Visions, and others
that have started using Unity. All of them can't praise it enough. Some of
these are even engine guys. In other words, the types most likely to have a
"not invented here syndrome".
I've also been watching and participating in game jams and watching the
amazing things coming out of them with the largest percentage coming from
Unity.
Been to a few "teach kids game programming" events where Unity was one of the
options and those kids always come away with more than the kids doing python,
processing or JavaScript.
Even GDC had several unity games at the experimental gameplay session, the
indie games summit and more.
There's also a large market of 3rd party libraries and editor plugins for
Unity that provide many of those things like support for social network X or
picture service Y. Unfortunately Unity stupidly made the store for those
plugins only accessible from inside Unity, buried in the Window menu under
"Asset Store" so that none of it is discoverable from the outside.
Of course there's a learning curve. If you've written your own engine it's
easier to get a couple of images/models on the screen by writing code from
scratch. But for a real game with a team that initial speed is quickly dwarfed
by the amount of work writing exporters to support your artists, level editors
to support your game designers and the fact that Unity editor is fully
interactive while the game is playing for the ultimate in quick iteration
times. You can practically edit functions on the fly as the game runs.
No, I don't work for unity and I actually haven't done more than a couple of
tutorials nor have I used Moai but I have written 6 game engines and all the
tools and utilities for them and after seeing my various friends and
x-coworker's successes and praise for Unity I'm not about to pick something
that only provides 1/2 to 1/3rd the feature and therefore have to pick up the
slack myself.
~~~
ralfn
Unity does not support linux. So how is it even relevant for Double Fine given
their stated requirements? Or any other game dev given the possible future of
linux based steamboxes?
~~~
adam-a
A while ago I spoke to a Unity engineer about this. He told me they have
internal builds running on Linux. I think the main thing holding them back
from releasing it is the testing they would have to do for each distro.
Probably not worth it for the limited use it would see.
If Linux Steamboxes do become a reality they would quickly be able to release
Unity for that platform.
Of course I wish they would release the editor for Linux as I would like to
use it :)
------
mbenjaminsmith
I started a games company at the beginning of the year and am constantly
researching game engines. If I wasn't working in 3D I would have went with (or
switched to) Moai. It looks like a great mix of productivity boosting features
and a no-BS, close to the metal way to create cross platform code. I also like
their focus on the networking, advertising, analytics, etc features in their
SDK.
I'm currently using Unity. Their core product is decent but their team (at
least the CEO and the sales guys, I haven't interacted with any tech guys) are
obnoxious. I met with their sales rep in Asia (where I'm based) and he told me
in no uncertain terms that they don't care about small teams. And that they
were horrible at communicating because they don't see themselves as having any
real competition. I think it's the fist time I've been heavily invested in a
technology and at the same time wanted to see it become obsolete.
One of the best parts of Moai is Lua. I had started with Unity working in C#
(seemed like it would be less performance bound) but didn't really like the
toolkit until I switched over to the relatively obscure Boo (it has a Python-
like syntax). Even with the almost total lack of documentation it's just way
more productive than the other language choices. Switching to really terse
scripting language has had a big impact on productivity for me.
~~~
dhelgason
I'm really sorry about your negative interactions with our team in Asia – they
don't reflect the fact that we very much feel we're competing with every other
option there is out there, and generally never being as good as we can be at
serving developers. And not just competing the 3-5 significant other 3D engine
companies, but also internal technologies, open source engines, and even very
different approaches like picking 2D instead of 3D in cases where both might
work.
Our entire business model is built around supporting individual developers and
small teams, and while we've more recently started to learn to support bigger
customers, it not how we think about our product and company and we've kept
building and licensing great tech that we then release to everyone using Unity
– the same for all, from the littlest indie shop to EA.
PS. I'm glad that you liked Boo, it's a cool language whose designer works for
us doing many Mono and compiler-related projects.
PPS. Apart from being kind of enthusiastic about Unity and the business we're
in I'm usually not told that I'm obnoxious, but I can live with it if I have
to. In any case feel free to get in touch on twitter (davidhelgason) or by
email at david at unity3d.com. Also would love to hear more about your bad
experiences in Asia, these are new teams and maybe someone didn't get the memo
about democratization yet.
~~~
mbenjaminsmith
Thanks David, it's good to get a more positive response from you guys. I'll
send you an email to continue our conversation.
[Edit: I received an email from Nicholas. I'll follow up with him]
------
dmpk2k
Harebrained Schemes (the Shadowrun Returns team on Kickstarter) also uses
Moai. Perhaps it's worth a look.
Other than the cloud parts, can anyone compare it with Love2D?
~~~
seclorum
MOAI is very similar to Love2D in some ways (Box2D, etc.) but the general
application programming model is different - you don't have callbacks to
implement features in MOAI, you simply set up the state of various game
objects and layers and so on, then let 'er rip ..
I've found myself being very, very productive in MOAI. It took me 30 minutes
to build a Path-like custom control for one of my applications, whereas it
took me a day or two to do it in Love2D, and its nowhere near as elegant as
the MOAI approach.
~~~
dmpk2k
Interesting. Thanks. :)
------
trimbo
> There are two versions of the game running on the same back-end, one for the
> Java-based Android games and one for the C-based iOS games.
Someone alert the media that Android's NDK has been available for around 3
years now and allows you to write apps/games entirely in C or C++ for Android.
------
jianshen
Moai's hosting services are an interesting differentiator (compared to Unity
and Corona). I was previously waiting for Unity or Corona to partner with
someone like Parse but Moai appears to provide a good offering specific to the
social x mobile type games (ie DrawSomething).
~~~
toddz
Thanks for noticing! I work on Moai. Our goal is to enable game devs to build
great games, and to do that today you definitely need an online component. Our
differentiation from other services is (a) Moai is designed for games, not
generic mobile apps and (b) you can write and run your own code, in a gaming
friendly language, which enables you to innovate on game features.
Moai Cloud can work with any front end SDK. We do have several Corona and
Unity devs building game back ends on Moai Cloud. Robert Nay, the poster child
for Corona, is one of them.
------
fufulabs
Crimson Steam Pirates published by Bungie (the Halo studio) is very impressive
and done entirely in Moai
[http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/crimson-steam-
pirates/id43805...](http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/crimson-steam-
pirates/id438053238?mt=8)
~~~
pygy_
Shadowrun Returns, by Harebrained Schemes (the guys behind Crimson Steam
Pirate) will also use Moai. <http://harebrained-schemes.com/shadowrun/>
They raised $1.8M on Kickstarter.
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-
ret...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns)
------
cpeterso
Ansca Mobile's Corona developer tools are similar to Moai. Corona uses Lua
(including a simulator and debugger) and can publish iOS and Android apps.
<http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/>
~~~
pygy_
The Moai SDK has two big advantages over Corona:
\- is open source and free to use (attributionware, CPAL 1.0 [0])
\- It works almost everywhere: Android, iOS, OS X, Windows, and Google Chrome
(NaCl). The Linux port is in the works (they mostly need build scripts). See
[1] for more details.
\----
0\. <http://opensource.org/licenses/cpal_1.0>
1\. <http://getmoai.com>
~~~
catch23
In addition to these, one will soon notice that you can't really and write
some stuff in C to link into your lua engine in corona. The corona system was
probably done this way to make it difficult to shoot yourself in the foot.
------
rix0r
"Constantly pushing updates"
This sounds to me like their plan is to constantly be updating the Lua scripts
from their cloud server.
There's no way this would be allowed on iOS right? (Although I can see the
comparison with web pages running arbitrary JavaScript, which can also be
constantly be updated, but still...)
~~~
toddz
Also, updates doesn't always mean code. You need a place to push new images,
sounds and data files from as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Looks like github is down - emeraldd
It looks like github just went down for emergency maintenance.
======
ColinWright
To quote John Graham-Cumming (@jgrahamc[0])
Every time github goes down I think,
"If only there was some way to use git
locally without a network connection".
[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jgrahamc>
------
emeraldd
They just tweeted the down time and appear to have been experiencing issues
all morning.
------
bowmande
2 days in a row! Anyone else looking for other options?
~~~
Zikes
Please report back with your findings.
~~~
oinksoft
There's no great reason for a small shop to use Github rather than hosting the
repositories themselves.
~~~
debacle
There is no great reason for a large shop to use Github other than for PR.
------
juanpdelat
Is it necessary to post on HN about every website down?
------
cedrichurst
Yup... <https://status.github.com/>
------
apoorvsaxena
They must be a partner with GoDaddy.. :)
------
vacipr
Look another github is down thread. And people still argue about the quality
of hacker news submissions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Github cofounder says his company doesn’t just ‘sprinkle Internet on top’ - bjansn
http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/12/github-cofounder-says-his-company-doesnt-just-sprinkle-internet-on-top/
======
OafTobark
Was that comment about internet available in more places than electricity
meant to be factual?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Confessions of an Arrogant Startup CEO - cnipb
http://francispedraza.com/the-confessions-of-an-arrogant-startup-ceo/
======
arasmussen
Way to be open about it. You seem to be getting a lot of attention from the
whole thing so maybe it wasn't a bad idea after all.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Up to $10,000 of developer software, for free - nosmig
https://pusher.com/developer-package
======
sprremix
This is more like an all-in-one trial package for various XaaS. I thought this
would be neat development software..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Visualizing My Spotify Listening Patterns - vb42
https://vinaybhaip.com/blog/2020/08/22/spotify-artist-viz
======
vb42
Hi Hacker News! I recently downloaded my Spotify listening history and decided
to make an interactive visual story on my listening patterns. I hope you
enjoy!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Brand Name Loyalty or Mental Trap? - ZeroGravitas
http://www.flashlightreviews.com/features/loyalty.htm
======
pbhjpbhj
I wonder why he missed out those that haven't purchased but still see the
value of a product irrespective of a brand label?
Aside: I'm assuming this piece is by DougP, I found it annoying that the
author wasn't mentioned. Must remember to add author info to my blog!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Falsehoods programmers believe about networks - kiyanwang
http://blog.erratasec.com/2012/06/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about.html#.WA2xdpMrJ-V
======
rvense
It'd be great if someone wrote three lines explaining why one would believe
each of those, why it's wrong, and why that's important.
~~~
Vendan
I tried to write up a little about the ones that I know something about, here
it is:
Data on the network cannot be altered.
False, if something goes through another device, it can be altered. Important
because, well, man in the middle.
Encrypted data on the network cannot be altered.
Same as the above. Harder, but still doable
Data cannot be accidentally corrupted, because TCP has checksums and Ethernet has CRCs
This is about like saying "only 1 bit can be flipped at once, so parity
checking will always catch it"
If it's inside my perimeter firewall, that means I have total control over it (@armorguy)
Similar to the top ones, still harder, but it's a weak point if someone gets
into your perimeter at all.
Packets arrive in the order in which they were sent.
Completely false, though TCP will reorder them back to the original order for
you.
If you can't ping the target, then it doesn't exist. (@jjarmoc)
Trivial to make a host not respond to pings
If you can ping the target, then it does exist.
Again, trivial to make a router or any device respond to pings for a lot of
IPs
TCP RSTs come from end-nodes.
Devices in the middle sending RSTs is really common, google "comcast rst
packets"
Bytes must be "swapped" from the network byte-order to the host CPU byte-order.
IP/TCP and such protocol bytes must be swapped. The only thing that cares at
the application layer is the application code, it can just say "everything is
little endian" and be done with it.
It's an internal web app -- outsiders won't be able to discover where it is (@biosshadow)
if this is about a "exposed under an obscure name", the tools like fierce can
probe for it. If it's exposed to the internet at all, consider it under attack
at all times.
The DHCP address will be the same after a reboot (@shewfig)
Not necessarily true, depends on the DHCP server and such.
The DHCP address will remain the same until the next reboot.
You get a lease time, OBSERVE IT. Don't just keep using it cause you say "this
is mine still!"
Well, it'll last a long time between changes
One culprit is coffeeshops, there have been reports of coffeeshops with 30
minute lease times. I've seen cable modems hand out 30 second leases, but that
was when it was still trying to connect to the cable side, so it wanted the
computer to keep checking back
The DHCP server and local router are the same (@schrotthaufen)
Not at all a requirement, and would cause your packets to go off into nowhere
if you tried to rely on it.
~~~
dllthomas
> The only thing that cares at the application layer is the application code,
True, but...
> it can just say "everything is little endian" and be done with it.
... doesn't quite follow. If you're blitting integers directly, your code will
break on either a big- or little-endian boxes. Better to pick a standard
encoding and always serialize/deserialize properly whatever that means. That
standard encoding may be little-endian (maybe better than big-endian - such
systems are overwhelmingly more common on the desktop/server) or may be some
packed representation. But ideally you could change the representation without
changing application code other than the serialization/deserialization itself
(which may well live in a library).
~~~
saurik
I had taken that to read that there are programs in the wild that assume hosts
are little endian and always "swap" bytes as opposed to converting between the
two orders (which might be a no-op on a big endian system).
~~~
dllthomas
Yeah, that's probably the case, and quite possibly what was intended. I think
my elaboration deals fine with that case too, though.
------
angry_octet
Also:
\- MAC addresses are unique.
\- LANs won't be bridged.
\- Spanning tree will converge quickly.
\- Quickly enough that it will beat BIOS getting to DHCP for netbooting.
\- There will only be one circuit in the network so you can disable spanning
tree.
\- The path MTU will be at least 1500 (or 9000, or x).
\- Path MTU discovery will work.
\- Packets with DF bit set won't be fragmented.
\- ICMP won't be dropped.
\- Network circuits will be the same path in both directions.
\- There will be one NIC / a default route.
\- The domain name 'localhost' will always resolve to localhost, or 127.0.0.1.
\- A DNS responder exists on the network.
\- It is a good idea to try to resolve IP addresses as names.
\- A device will use IPv4 by default (some systems opportunistically look for
A and AAAA addresses and try both).
\- All networks have a path to the internet.
\- There will be no proxy required, or
\- The proxy won't require a login, or
\- The proxy credentials won't have a backslash.
I'm diverging higher up the stack at this point so I'll stop.
~~~
nieve
> MAC addresses are unique
Or at least they're unique on a single machine... except for the various OSes
and hardware platforms that have deliberately made all MAC addresses the same
for a given machine.
~~~
tonyarkles
Way back in the land before time, I acquired a number of old 486s and ISA
NICs. Being a good Slashdot nerd, I of course thought "lets make a Beowulf
cluster of these!"
So I've got the cluster set up, and it's mostly working. There's two nodes
though that behave funny. Imagine my surprise when I try pinging one of them
and get two responses per ping! Sure enough, two ISA NICs pulled randomly out
of a box of garbage indeed had identical MACs. I learned a lot about IP and
the MAC layer from that project!
------
asmithmd1
One that has bitten me:
"ACKs come from an end node"
Cellular carriers will ACK a packet destined for a device on their network
before they have actually delivered it if they have the device registered and
are confident they can deliver the packet "soon." I have seen packets happily
being ACKed that are destined for a device that I just powered down. About a
minute later the carrier starts telling the truth, but now you have no idea
what actually got through to your device.
------
chris_wot
The IP address returned from each hop on a traceroute is from the actual
device that the ICMP packet was originally sent to.
~~~
gruturo
> The IP address returned from each hop on a traceroute is from the actual
> device that the ICMP packet was originally sent to.
Actually - the return packets are ICMP (TTL expired in transit), but the
packets you send, _by default_, are UDP.
Traceroute can indeed be instructed to use ICMP though, but it's not the
default on an any OS I know.
~~~
chris_wot
I knew someone would say this.
Windows not uses ICMP by default, but there is no switch to use UDP packets
instead of ICMP packets.[1]
Yes, I'm well aware that UDP is the default on most Unix-based systems.
1\. [https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc940128.aspx](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc940128.aspx)
------
flukus
I would add "local networks are fast":
[https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_l...](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_latency.html)
------
bogomipz
Why is this listed under falsehood?
"Bytes must be "swapped" from the network byte-order to the host CPU byte-
order."
Don't PowerPC and Sparc hardware require byte swapping(depending on what
endian mode they are in)? Or am I misreading this?
~~~
angry_octet
Well, NBO is big endian and PPC/Sparc/MIPS were usually BE in servers, now in
routers and TVs, and LE in printers... Though POWER8 switched to LE.
So you can (and I have) write programs for these BE systems that completely
neglect to use swizzling. You will also see code that doesn't use the
swizzling macros (htons, ntohs, etc) because they 'know' the packets need to
be swizzled and they do it always, when they shouldn't on some architectures.
------
jjp
Seems to have missed the falsehood that everything on the network will respond
really quickly and so it's fine to have loads of blocking calls on starting an
application
------
richm44
A few more:
\- Localhost is 127.0.0.1
\- A TCP SYN will also always result in a SYN-ACK
\- Ok, a SYN-ACK or a RST
\- Ok, ok, an out-going TCP packet will always result in a TCP response
~~~
chris_wot
"Nobody will ever be stupid enough to stick debug data in TCP RST payloads on
a production system"
[https://support.f5.com/kb/en-
us/solutions/public/13000/200/s...](https://support.f5.com/kb/en-
us/solutions/public/13000/200/sol13223.html)
| {
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Why Old Operating Systems Never Really Go Away - walterbell
http://tedium.co/2017/04/20/obscure-operating-systems-os2-qnx/
======
Artlav
It's not like inventing a car makes a bicycle obsolete.
Also, since when is QNX old or obscure?
| {
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} |
Ask HN: Meeting with an investor in few hours, what is your advice HNers? - synto0day
Hello,<p>Please excuse me for creating this temporary account to place the question, I just wouldn't want to be linked to this question.<p>So, now my question I need advice. In few hours I am meeting with a guy from a hedge fund, he is interested to investing as angel or with the hedge fund, as I had a meeting with him already and he wants in. My question is a bit complex one, as it involves two issues.<p>The first it's an issue with my supposed to be future co-founder. I expected that he'd manage finding the investor or at least setting up meeting with prospectives. Instead I've done that (the 2nd meeting tomorrow with an investor who is really interested) and please note I'm also the technical founder. Also, I had the initial idea and identified the opportunity, although this guy seems to have a talent at presenting others people ideas as his own. Please note he is not technical at all, but I accepted that, assumingly he would do all the business stuff, instead he dissapointed me, as he really didn't do much the last 1.5 months as I was insisting we go full time on this as soon as possible. At this point, I am serious about finding a way to avoid getting involved with guy. The only thing I am attached with him is that he knows big part of the core ideas (I know the execution pitch so please save me from one. I do have a significant code base I am contributing, and with the meaning of core ideas I mean validated ideas).<p>So, with this small bits of information, what would you do HNers concerning with a prospective co-founder he doesn't seem honest and failed your expectations? I even have some e-mails with significant questions he left unanaswered. So, imagine that.<p>So, concering the valuation now. Like I said, I considered my prospective co-founder's significant contribution, in the initial phase, to finding prospective investors as he made believe he would be able to do that in short time. Instead, he delayed me and I am sure he'd delayed me more hadn't I do anything to find an investor myself. So, he gives me the feeling that he is not honest. Therefore, even in a valuation at this level if the investor would take up to 20-30% at a valuation of 500k, and assuming any kind of contribution (of the non-technical co-founder) begin after the software is rolled out (estimated after 5-6 months), how is it reasonable to excuse his percentage, which I was willing to be equal, but I am sure the investor will find awkward.<p>So, at this point I am considering changing the location of the meeting with the investor and go to it alone, telling him it was cancelled.<p>What are your thoughts HNers?
======
jaxn
I wouldn't partner with him. I am assuming you are already incorporated, is he
a partner or not? If not then I don't see a reason to not cut ties.
If you do decide to do business with him, vest his shares.
Good luck with your meeting :)
~~~
synto0day
I'm already incorporated yes. But hopefully he is not partner.
thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I want to build a better content discover platform. - kamilszybalski
Tell me what you hate, what you love and if you think i'm crazy.<p>Appreciate all your feedback on this, it's extremely valuable.
======
visakanv
I love:
\- insightful personal stories
\- thoughtful reviews and perspectives
\- great visualizations of interesting/compelling concepts
I hate:
\- Clickbait ("You're never going to believe THIS! Please, don't do this, it's
insulting to the reader. Tell us what it's about.")
I wish:
Things were curated more effectively. Think about all the /top and /gilded
sections of subreddits. I would like all the best information about all the
interesting topics, curated, analysed, interpreted, centralized, maybe in a
wiki-ish model.
Cheers.
~~~
kamilszybalski
Thanks for your 0.02, there's a couple gems in there.
------
ivan_ah
I'm interested mainly in tech articles (libraries, software projects) that I
might use. Restricting to articles that contain (or link to) python or js code
could be very useful for me.
I'm also interested in particular industries and "topics" which could be
identified using standard topic modelling techniques (e.g. LDA, which is used
by getprismatic)
------
krrishd
What I would want is a WAAAY more decentralized platform as opposed to
something like Medium or Svtble where its all on their infrastructure and to
their site. Something like HN, except where it would be more acceptable to
post blog posts (with curation of course)
------
gillis
I've recently been toying with a few ideas and was thinking about building a
discovery platform. Would love to co-found or work on one. Feel free to email
me - [email protected]
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Flowbox 1.7 – the most powerful video processing startup - wdanilo
https://flowbox.io/
======
wdanilo
Hi guys! I'm Wojciech Danilo, one of the early Flowbox founders. I'm not
actively working there right now (I'm working on [http://luna-
lang.org](http://luna-lang.org)), but I truly love these guys. They are
brilliant engineers, full of passion and they create an awesome software.
Flowbox is a node based VFX platform allowing for the fastest rotoscoping and
image compositing on the market. If you like Houdini-like workflow, you should
fell in love with the ideology here. Seriously, check out the video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwLcevH1VH0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwLcevH1VH0)
There is a live webinar about Flowbox by Mikolaj Valencia (CEO) TOMORROW here:
[https://web.facebook.com/events/666426783714447](https://web.facebook.com/events/666426783714447)
, so please join us there!
We'd love to answer any questions here as well! Thank you for your support! :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UK listened to scientists about coronavirus who were slow to sound the alarm - abhi3
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-path-speci/special-report-johnson-listened-to-his-scientists-about-coronavirus-but-they-were-slow-to-sound-the-alarm-idUSKBN21P1VF
======
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Berklee College of Music Sampling Archive - jacquesm
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples
======
vortico
This is an excellent archive. Although, I find it a bit funny that they warn
"over 8GiB (!!) of space" for the entire page of samples, while most
commercial single-instrument sample sets these days are often 25GB+, and a
symphony composer will easily have terabytes. But I suppose this is for the
One Laptop Per Child project, so 8GB would be pretty significant.
------
mnx
Is there any information about the license of these samples? Should I treat
them like wiki content and assume CC Attribution?
~~~
eerwrq
The download link for each sample collection points to an entry on archive.org
which lists the license of the samples.
------
charlesism
I've wasted a lot of time in the past year searching the net for individual
instruments with a "Creative Commons" license. This is brilliant.
~~~
Mizza
If you're an Ableton user, I wrote a script that will create and install
instruments from the CC-licensed Philharmonia Orchestra samples:
[https://github.com/Miserlou/ADGMaker](https://github.com/Miserlou/ADGMaker)
~~~
superted
Awesome! Do you think the script supports windows as well?
------
jacquesm
Some more samples here:
[https://www.linuxsampler.org/instruments.html](https://www.linuxsampler.org/instruments.html)
------
veli_joza
Unfortunately, the singing samples are very poor. Does anybody by chance know
a good sample library of singer/choir with multiple samples per octave, with a
license that allows re-distribution? Surprisingly hard to find.
~~~
tjr
I like this one for some things:
[https://realitone.com/realivox/](https://realitone.com/realivox/)
~~~
veli_joza
Sounds great. Unfortunately, samples are not redistributable.
~~~
tjr
My apologies, I apparently glossed over that item in your requirements list.
------
christophilus
Has anyone tried these? If so, I'd love to hear some music created with them.
------
monetus
Thank you for posting this. A clean, curated set of samples is a valuable
thing.
~~~
puranjay
Check out Splice.com. It's paid but the range of samples is incredible. Most
are also "production-ready"
~~~
andromedavision
Thanks for this
------
jacquesm
If someone wants to take the time to torrent this I'll be happy to seed the
torrent.
~~~
stef25
At the top of the page are various torrent links. The first is broken (they
say) and they've posted a magnet link + a link on Torrage.
~~~
jacquesm
None of them work, as far as I can see.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Autistic Kid Who’s More Intelligent Than Einstein - karlzt
http://www.disinfo.com/2011/03/the-autistic-kid-whos-more-intelligent-than-einstein/
======
yaely234
I've heard about him on the radio but I'm not sure as to what his full
capability/capacity is. Everyone talking about how much he knows, and how he
is attempting to expand Einstein's Theory of relativity, but I'd like to know
what exactly he is trying to expand. We'll have to see if he is more
intelligent than Einstein, he hasn't proven anything yet. Although, it is
amazing what he has taught himself, even just in this video which most people
learn only in college, if that.
------
RiderOfGiraffes
Same story:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2374578>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2379419>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382850>
Several comments.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
World's largest natural sound archive is now online - mhb
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan13/MacaulayDigital.html
======
dhx
The licensing is unfortunately non-free and is therefore incompatible with
free projects such as those operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is
however a slight improvement on arXiv. At least terms of use are available in
the footer of each page.
~~~
Alex3917
Basically you just need a license if you want to use the sounds in a movie or
toy or whatever, but they're now free for research and personal use. It might
not be ideal, but it's leaps and bounds better than it used to be.
------
keyle
Love it.
One of Australia's best [http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/152947/dacelo-
novaeguineae-...](http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/152947/dacelo-novaeguineae-
laughing-kookaburra-australia-new-south-wales-david-stewart)
------
Alex3917
I've been giving them shit online for years for not making the archive
publicly accessible. They even responded a couple times defending themselves.
Great to see they finally did it.
------
dfc
It looks like the site is built on rails. Unfortunately it looks like they are
either having site issues or there is still a little work to do on the code
base.
[http://macaulaylibrary.org/search?taxon=Odontoceti&taxon...](http://macaulaylibrary.org/search?taxon=Odontoceti&taxon_id=1474599&taxon_rank_id=43&tab=audio)
~~~
hayksaakian
That's a huge red flag. You don't want those logs showing in production.
Someone should notify them.
------
ezequiel-garzon
Cornell is an amazing institution considering its effort behind arXiv, this
and I'm sure much more.
Now... why use a link shortener in an HTML page? Sir Berners-Lee would shed a
few tears.
~~~
lbotos
I'm thinking possibly analytics? I know a bunch of people who do that.
------
kefsoundnut
Alex3917, MP3 versions of Macaulay archival material have been placed online
over the past 12 years or so, as groups of cataloged items on 1/4" mag tape
have been digitized. So I'm confused about what you mean by "not making the
archive publicly accessible". Word of advice: before giving people "shit",
make sure you aren't full of it! ;-D
The real news is that everything previously cataloged and on tape is now ALL
digitized to 96kHz/24-bit digital audio and on the web as MP3.
You can request 44.1/16 or 96/24 versions of MP3 material you hear on the
Library website. The material is copyrighted, yes, but not priced to make a
lot of money. Contact the library for more info.
------
andrewcooke
kind of related, just sharing a happy discovery: a guy called chris watson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Watson_(musician)> makes recordings of
ambient sounds ("field recordings"). they are less focussed than this archive,
but longer, and available on cd (or via pirate bay etc i imagine).
his site is at <http://www.chriswatson.net/> and you can hear some stuff
there. it's pretty good for going to sleep to (some tracks) or working...
------
diego_moita
Very cool. The Vrindavan temple is great for "ambient music":
<http://macaulaylibrary.org/audio/161053>
------
antihero
Fucking hell, the site is horrible though.
------
politician
Only 16 samples for _Homo sapiens_. Does anyone know if something like this
exists for spoken languages?
~~~
Caligula
Yes but its really expensive and they have almost a monopoly on the vast
quantity of data. They are the linguistic data consortium. Yearly membership
fees for companies is $24000, for non profits(e.g education) is $2400 per
year. Plus it costs extra for the actual data.
<http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/>
------
rd108
does anyone know the fastest way to rip a sound file from this flash player
for private use?
~~~
w-ll
Chrome Dev Tools -> Network (or Firebug if you're into that :)
~~~
rd108
Yup. found the file I wanted by looking through the source for *.mp3 and
finding the static file asset.
~~~
freescience
This bookmarklet will add download links. Copy and paste into a bookmark,
click it when you're on an ML search/download page:
javascript:{ try{ titletext=document.getElementById("jqmTitleText");
pat=/([^0-9]+)([0-9]+)/gi; id=pat.exec(titletext.innerHTML)[2];
th=id.substr(0,id.length-4);
url="<http://audio.macaulaylibrary.org/+th+/+id+.mp3>; titletext.innerHTML =
titletext.innerHTML + " <a href=\""+url+"\" target=\"_blank\"
style=\"background-color:#990000;color:white;padding:2px;text-
decoration:none\">download</a>"; }catch(err){} try{
content=document.getElementById("content"); title=content.children[0];
if(title&&!title.children[0]){ pat=/([^0-9]+)([0-9]+)/gi;
id=pat.exec(title.innerHTML)[2]; th=id.substr(0,id.length-4);
url="<http://audio.macaulaylibrary.org/+th+/+id+.mp3>; title.innerHTML =
title.innerHTML + " <a href=\""+url+"\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"background-
color:#990000;color:white;padding:2px;text-decoration:none\">download</a>"; }
}catch(err){} try{ content=document.getElementsByClassName("catalog");
for(c=0;c<content.length;c++){
if(content[c].children[2].classList.contains("play")){
id=content[c].children[0].innerHTML; th=id.substr(0,id.length-4);
url="<http://audio.macaulaylibrary.org/+th+/+id+.mp3>; content[c].innerHTML =
content[c].innerHTML + " <a href=\""+url+"\" target=\"_blank\"
style=\"background-color:#990000;color:white;padding:2px;text-
decoration:none\">download</a>"; } } }catch(err){} }; void(0);
~~~
freerscience
That bookmarklet is wrong. I think hackernews filters out the "s in those
links. Here:
javascript:{ try{ titletext=document.getElementById("jqmTitleText");
pat=/([^0-9]+)([0-9]+)/gi; id=pat.exec(titletext.innerHTML)[2];
th=id.substr(0,id.length-4);
url="htt"+"p:/"+"/audio.macaulaylibrary."+"org/"+th+"/"+id+".mp3";
titletext.innerHTML = titletext.innerHTML + " <a href=\""+url+"\"
target=\"_blank\" style=\"background-
color:#990000;color:white;padding:2px;text-decoration:none\">download</a>";
}catch(err){} try{ content=document.getElementById("content");
title=content.children[0]; if(title&&!title.children[0]){
pat=/([^0-9]+)([0-9]+)/gi; id=pat.exec(title.innerHTML)[2];
th=id.substr(0,id.length-4);
url="ht"+"tp:/"+"/audio.macaulaylibrary."+"org/"+th+"/"+id+".mp3";
title.innerHTML = title.innerHTML + " <a href=\""+url+"\" target=\"_blank\"
style=\"background-color:#990000;color:white;padding:2px;text-
decoration:none\">download</a>"; } }catch(err){} try{
content=document.getElementsByClassName("catalog");
for(c=0;c<content.length;c++){
if(content[c].children[2].classList.contains("play")){
id=content[c].children[0].innerHTML; th=id.substr(0,id.length-4);
url="ht"+"tp:/"+"/audio.macaulaylibrary."+"org/"+th+"/"+id+".mp3";
content[c].innerHTML = content[c].innerHTML + " <a href=\""+url+"\"
target=\"_blank\" style=\"background-
color:#990000;color:white;padding:2px;text-decoration:none\">download</a>"; }
} }catch(err){} }; void(0);
------
luciannovo
Is anyone working on an api.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Web Framework Benchmarks round 9 - idlewan
http://www.techempower.com/blog/2014/05/01/framework-benchmarks-round-9/
======
dang
A dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7680242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7680242).
~~~
idlewan
Ah, I guess we posted at the same time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Neurodegenerative Disorder: Novel Targeted Therapeutic Strategies - Santoshprophecy
https://medium.com/@user8.prophecymarketinsights/neurodegenerative-disorder-novel-targeted-therapeutic-strategies-26b8bf6cde74
======
Santoshprophecy
Until the 1990s, growth in developing therapy for neurodegenerative diseases
was slow and there were rare clinical trials. However,……..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Siri’s Last Remaining Cofounder Is Out at Apple - raleighm
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/siris-last-remaining-cofounder-is-out-at-apple
======
ttul
Ooh I wonder what Vipul is up to next...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“1024,” “2048″ And Other Copies Of Popular Paid Game “Threes” Fill App Stores - ychw
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/24/clones-clones-everywhere-1024-2048-and-other-copies-of-popular-paid-game-threes-fill-the-app-stores
======
saurik
I have not played 1024; but, I will say the mechanic of 2048 is very different
from Threes: it would be like saying that Bejeweled is a "clone" of Tetris
Attack, that Sonic the Hedgehog is a "clone" of Super Mario Brothers, or that
Flappy Bird is a "clone" of Lunar Lander. These games all have many
superficial similarities, and even share similar control mechanics, but they
are in fact very very different to people playing the games: the strategies
are different, the tactics are different, and someone could easily find one
"incredibly fun" and the other "intensely boring".
~~~
jmduke
I strongly disagree with this, and I've played a lot of both Threes and 2048.
The only serious mechanical difference is starting off with 1s and 2s instead
of 2s and 4s -- everything else is exactly the same (from a gameplay
perspective: Threes of course has way more polish). I think it's incredibly
disingenuous to say that the similarities are superficial.
I mean, hell, 1024's marketing copy literally says "no need to pay for
ThreesGames."
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1024!/id823499224](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1024!/id823499224)
~~~
stevejohnson
Pedantic corrections to follow (but useful ones, I hope).
There is one substantive gameplay difference between Threes and
ArbitraryPowerOfTwo.
In Threes, a swipe moves the game board one square.
In ArbitraryPowerOfTwo, a swipe applies gravity to the game board in the
swipe's direction until it settles.
I've played both, and that difference does not significantly affect gameplay
or strategy.
~~~
jmduke
Yep, you're correct.
~~~
saurik
So, I have also played both of these games, and am now at the point where I
can beat 2048 with reasonable probability.
This slide/move difference actually has massive effects on gameplay as it
means there are situations you can get into while playing 2048 that are
difficult or even impossible to recover from that you can easily extricate
yourself from while playing Threes. To make up for this, the way you have to
match 1s and 2s together (as opposed to simply matching the values, as you can
in 2048) makes organizing the lowest level of the board slightly more
complicated.
I frankly bet if we asked the developer of Threes about the 1st and 2st thing
he'd say he toyed with the idea of a game where the matching was more direct
(as its pretty obvious consider it) and realized that it felt "too easy": the
only thing making 2048 continue to be difficult is the lack of explicit
control over the tiles; though, that also makes it easier, as you can move
items much more quickly around the board without more clutter appearing.
I would say this is similar to how in Tetris Attack you can horizontally swap
any two tiles, but in Bejeweled you can swap tiles vertically or horizontally,
but only temporarily: they have effectively the same mechanic (you need to
match tiles of similar color), the same overall physics (items drop to fill in
gaps), the same kinds of tactics, but the amount of control you have over the
game board and what moves you have are quite different in feel due to the
seemingly minor control changes.
(FWIW, I find Tetris Attack and 2048 "fun", and I find Bejeweled and Threes
"infuriating". This is likely somewhat to do with the fact that I find Tetris
Attack and 2048 "easier" than Bejeweled and Threes, but I would hope that it
is more to do with some of the things I really enjoyed about Tetris Attack--
the speed of movement, the building of structure, and the intricacy of "skill
chains"\--not being tactically relevant in Bejeweled, and in the case of
Threes that the 1s and 2s are randomized in such a way where I often feel
"this game isn't even winnable: I have a board full of 1s... this isn't even
fair", which is a situation fundamentally impossible in 2048.)
------
mildtrepidation
The idea that somehow we've hit a point where clones should be rejected or
purged misses the fact that this has been happening constantly almost since
the inception of the app stores.
They state there's only one Flappy Bird clone in the top 20 on iTunes, but
look at the rest of what's there. If you're going to be concerned about games
that are clones/copies of what's essentially pre-existing game mechanics, you
might want to think about how little comes through that's actually original in
_any_ respect.
City builders, TCG's, match 3, slot machines... and we've covered the vast
majority of popular apps. Go a little further and you have hidden item games,
runners, etc.
The only reason it's so obvious with games like Flappy Bird and 2048 is that
the mechanic is so simple and requires so little in terms of effort and
resources that anyone with even an elementary skill set on a mobile platform
can throw together one of these clones and puke it onto the internet to ride
the wave (or at least the foam, as most of them never even get into the surf).
~~~
brownbat
> happening constantly almost since the inception of the app stores.
Or maybe since the inception of gaming:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game)
[http://www.pong-story.com/mypongs.htm](http://www.pong-story.com/mypongs.htm)
[http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/asteroids-
variants](http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/asteroids-variants)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_(video_game)#Clones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede_\(video_game\)#Clones)
(etc.)
------
watwut
Is that the usual quality of techcrunch articles?
OMG I just found out that people are writing simple free apps and some other
people are trying to earn money on extremely simple apps?
I actually found all those flappy clones happening great. Of course there is
nothing useful about them. It is just that I like idea of people building
things just for fun and for the heck of it. Kind of like when musicians
improvise together or when aspiring writer play those cooperative writing
stories. Except with small simple games.
Basically, it is meme web 2.0 version.
~~~
YooLi
_" I actually found all those flappy clones happening great."_
Me too. I especially liked the clones that built upon the basic game play of
Flappy Bird (single-finger control of vertical impulses) but added additional
challenge, like Heli Math (solve math problems to fly through the gap).
------
eugmill
Funny, I didn't buy threes until after I got hooked on 2048. I bet this just
gets him more sales. Threes has a great soundtrack and a good feel to it that
the clones will have a hard time replicating. These viral game crazes tend to
be pretty short lived anyway, so I guess we'll know soon enough.
------
MBCook
I really love Threes, I've been sad to see this mess continue. I feel so bad
for that guy, making such a great app and then having a rip-off take so many
sales. Truth is he's lucky he got 2 or 3 weeks before it happened.
This is still a big problem Apple has though. I have a hard time with the
whole "curated app store" thing when nearly every search turns up screen after
screen of low quality copy-cat garbage. How long was Pokemon Yellow on the
store before it _finally_ got pulled? How many 'strategy guides' and 'Angry
Falcons' and 'Crash of Clans' are there?
~~~
JohnTHaller
While they are similar in many ways, the way the games operate is quite
different, too. And I say that as someone who bought 3s on Android and enjoys
2048 in its many variants.
~~~
MBCook
I'm glad that 2048 at least changed the formula some as opposed to being a
pure rip-off. And they obviously got some gain from the fact the game could be
played online without needing a smartphone.
Making 1024 and putting something akin to 'Why waste money on Threes, here's a
copy' in the app description was just classless though. I don't see any
redeeming value in that.
------
protomyth
Games that fit well in the "I am waiting in line"-scenario have simple,
addictive mechanics. The mechanics of these games are not hard to clone[1].
Angry Birds is an artillery game with many predecessors, but was done in a
distinctive and new package. Its mechanics are very simple as it needs to be
to sell as a super casual game.
Programmers seem to like these games with simple rules. This is not a new
phenomena just look at the history of Life. When the code is open (e.g. 2048)
it tends to allow for a lot of experimentation.
All that being said, I don't think 2048 is a Threes clone since it has a
different feel and works by different rules.
1) I'm not saying the clone will be as good
~~~
oneeyedpigeon
'Move numbered tiles around a tiny 2-dimensional grid, combining same-numbered
tiles to create higher-numbered tiles in their place. New tiles spawn each
time you make a move, and the game continues until the board is completely
full and you can't make a further move. Score points for higher-numbered
tiles.' There are nuances, but that pretty much sums up most of the gameplay
of Threes and the 2048 clones; I don't know how you can claim, with a straight
face, that the latter are not clones of the former. Even if some ancient prior
art surfaces, the timing and the direct references in app descriptions pretty
much guarantees this.
~~~
protomyth
By your definition and not being allowed to use "ancient prior art" then yes
it is a clone but so is Sonic the Hedgehog. I felt it plays much different.
------
watwut
Flappy jam has a lot of to do with all those flappy clones. Basically, someone
organized game developers to create flappy clones. It was meant as action
against all hate and bullying the original flappy bird developer had to deal
with.
Flappy jam: [http://itch.io/jam/flappyjam](http://itch.io/jam/flappyjam)
------
TazeTSchnitzel
Holy crap, my site was linked to by TechCrunch:
[http://logarithmic-flappy-2048.ajf.me/](http://logarithmic-
flappy-2048.ajf.me/)
Though my Logarithmic Flappy 2048 was just Flappy 2048 with Math.pow(2)
applied to all the draw calls. I deserve no credit.
EDIT: Oh great, now I'm being attributed as creating Flappy 2048 :(
[https://www.yahoo.com/tech/some-mad-genius-combined-
flappy-b...](https://www.yahoo.com/tech/some-mad-genius-combined-flappy-bird-
and-2048-the-two-80173661108.html)
EDIT 2: Wow, Google Play already!
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.Ofear.Flapp...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.Ofear.Flappy2048)
------
lugg
Has anyone found a 2048 clone that is fast and nice to use on android? I find
the swiping mechanic painful compared to keyboard online.
~~~
idlewan
As far as the clone itself uses CSS transforms (if it's Cordova/Phonegap
based), it should be fine and usable on mobile. You can recognize the clones
using Cordova/Phonegap/Webview if they use the exact same style as G.Cirulli's
2048. Now, to recognize the clones using CSS transforms, that's more
complicated. Check for their last release date, it should be strictly after
2014-03-13 (as CSS transforms were added to 2048's repo that day
[https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/2048/commit/7c6fd1b2a4acb...](https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/2048/commit/7c6fd1b2a4acbd7d5fc58f76ee7ba139535e2fe7)),
and from there, test the apps.
I rewrote the whole game's code as an exercice soon after it was released, and
took special care in using CSS transforms and not creating/forgetting
javascript objects constantly (I wish I knew if that last point made a
difference in performance on mobile, but I wouln't know how to measure it). I
also added a tutorial screen and an animation for a forbidden move.
That's why I can personally recommend my ad-free clone ('shameless plug' and
all that), that you can find here:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.erwan.game...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.erwan.game2048)
or by searching "2+2=2048" in the play store/windows phone store. The swiping
mechanic works great with it, so please tell me if you find any issues with
it.
------
kevin818
Could someone explain to me how they were able to get theirs released so
quickly? I submitted mine last week and I'm still just waiting for review, not
even in review. Is there some secret or tips to getting reviewed faster?
~~~
overcyn
Know someone at apple.
------
moron4hire
A general purpose AI evolved out of a mom-and-pop ISP's virus-laden web
server, having been left unattended in a closet in Billings, MT, for the last
15 years. The only reason The Robot Wars haven't started is because the AI
figured out it was easy to enslave humanity through crappy video games.
If only we could peek into its core dumps. The isolation of having existed for
so long on a single ISDN line must have been maddening. It might have finished
Emacs 25, even!
------
benched
Funny. I've played threes and 2048 quite a bit, and although I can see the
similarities as well as anybody, they feel like completely different games to
me. On the other hand, I find Candy Crush to be exactly the same game as
Bejeweled, even though a lot of people find them different enough.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CREAM: the SSL attack you’ve probably never heard of - bascule
http://tonyarcieri.com/cream-the-scary-ssl-attack-youve-probably-never-heard-of
======
sdevlin
This attack is conceptually simple, and the linked paper
([http://cr.yp.to/antiforgery/cachetiming-20050414.pdf](http://cr.yp.to/antiforgery/cachetiming-20050414.pdf))
is very approachable for the layman. I recommend giving it a read.
Here's the basic idea:
1. The first thing the AES encrypt function does is XOR user input against the secret key.
2. The result of this operation is used to index into a lookup table (the S-box).
3. The timing characteristics of step 2 will vary based on the contents of the cache.
By measuring the timings for a large number of random inputs and correlating
them by index, (e.g. sort all messages into buckets based on the value of the
first byte), we can recover the corresponding byte of the secret key.
Though it's not clear a priori what the timing characteristics _should_ look
like for a particular key byte, we can easily measure this on a machine we
control that matches the description of the target platform.
~~~
xiata
I know this is naive as hell, but would adding some random sleeps before
returning encrypted bits make it better or worse for this particular attack?
~~~
AlyssaRowan
_That_ kind of "blinding" is entirely ineffective, I'm afraid. It just
averages right out.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
If "sleep" means "sleep until the next timer tick", how can it average out?
Especially if the timer is started at the start of the encryption, and all
encryptions (at least, for one block) take less time than the timer is set
for. That means all times get set to exactly the timer time, and no
information reaches the attacker.
What am I missing?
~~~
bmm6o
"Random sleep" does not in general mean "sleep until the next timer tick". The
best fix is making the function constant time, if you can achieve this with a
sleep that makes the operation always take exactly one quantum then the sleep
is really an implementation detail and quite far from "random sleep".
~~~
e12e
I've realized this (and am certainly not alone in that, it's rather obvious,
when one think about the nature of timing) -- but does anyone have some links
on implementing this? Are there some (sequence of) x86_64 instructions that
can be used to bound a procedure (in the pascal sense of the word) to a
quantum, regardless of things like when the procedure is called (assuming the
procedure is short enough, and depending on branching behaviour, I suppose
instruction fetch/decode, data fetch/write and accompanying cache hit/miss can
make it hard to a) select a worst-run time in terms of clocks cycles to target
(and if so, for which concrete cpus) and b) be hard to make sure the cpu is
actually busy for exactly that many cycles...)? Is this even possible to
approach in this portable C99?
I suppose if one ignore the information leak due to possible change in cpu
load, one might device a kind of evented "call back" model, where one wait to
return the result of a procedure until an interrupt is triggered?
I don't expect a full answer, but if anyone has a link to some source code
that isn't _too_ complicated, I'd be very happy (either "real-world" or some
good "example" code).
~~~
bmm6o
The most common way to avoid timing side channel attacks is to write the
procedure in C or ASM in such a way that there are no data-dependent
differences in execution path. You've probably seen e.g. the memcmp that
doesn't exit early. This attack is a little different in that it's not that
different instructions are executed, it's that different memory access
patterns take different amounts of time. For that, you can maybe change the
implementation to not have any data-dependent array accesses, or maybe you can
do things with prefetching to make the memory accesses constant time.
An approach where you watch the clock will be inherently less portable and
actually much harder. Not only will the timing calls be hardware or OS
specific, but so will the worst-case time. Imagine having to deal with a chip
going into low power mode during your computation. Also you probably don't
want to count time that your thread wasn't scheduled to run, so now you're
talking about integrating with the scheduler.
------
feld
So what hearing is:
\- AES is vulnerable to timing attacks by design unless the implementation is
very careful. But even then no promise it is safe because of CPU hardware
nuances between models and architectures.
\- Use AES-GCM if you must use AES.
\- AES-GCM(?) is accelerated by the Intel AES extension and provides a
constant-time implementation, but you have to trust Intel's hardware isn't
backdoored.
\- Don't use AES for network communications if you can avoid it.
Is this correct?
~~~
zimmerfrei
>> \- Use AES-GCM if you must use AES
Without CLMUL instructions, GCM is either very slow or potentially sensitive
to cache-based side-channel attacks (regardless of AES being the underlying
cipher).
The EAX mode of operation is more secure - though not very popular for some
reasons and not part of any TLS cipher suite.
~~~
tptacek
Given Rogaway's recent patent grants, OCB would be a more straightforward
improvement over GCM.
~~~
tedunangst
Does anything use OCB? It seems GCM "won".
The patents may have killed it. Even "free for open source" can be troublesome
if you're worried about putting free software into an appliance and getting
trapped. Easier to avoid patented algos entirely.
~~~
AlyssaRowan
Rogaway's patent grants are now _very_ liberal: they cover all open source and
everything non-military. It passed through CFRG, too, and is documented in an
RFC:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7253](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7253)
But yes, definitely the fact that there were patent grants hurt it a _lot_ in
adoption before; even when (as in WiFi) it was one of the contenders, CCM is
more common.
A _few_ things do use it: off the top of my head, I think Mumble does,
although I think that's an earlier variant (OCB2, perhaps, rather than OCB3 as
documented in the RFC?).
I'm also looking forward to the results of the CAESAR authenticated-encryption
competition -
[http://competitions.cr.yp.to/caesar.html](http://competitions.cr.yp.to/caesar.html)
\- there's a lot of competition, and quite a few entries fell and have been
withdrawn. The current version of OCB is among the current list of contenders,
among several other interesting candidates.
~~~
tedunangst
Specifically regarding the patent grants (of which there are three on
[http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/ocb/license.htm](http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/ocb/license.htm):
open source, non-military, and OpenSSL) they would appear at first glance to
cover OpenBSD. All three in fact. The problem is that this then creates a trap
for anyone taking OpenBSD and using it to build something to sell to a
military. Suddenly they are no longer protected; we prefer not to incorporate
anything that can create such traps.
For an example, this came up in the thread where OCB was proposed to be added
to OpenSSL. You think you're free and clear, and then you're not.
[http://marc.info/?l=openssl-
dev&m=136016226304441&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=openssl-
dev&m=136016226304441&w=2)
Then came the OpenSSL specific license. That license probably applies to
LibreSSL today, but now there's a Ship of Theseus problem. How much OpenSSL
does one need to keep to qualify? And of course, the OpenBSD IPsec stack is
completely unrelated to OpenSSL.
~~~
e12e
> Specifically regarding the patent grants (of which there are three on
> [http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/ocb/license.htm](http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/ocb/license.htm):
> open source, non-military, and OpenSSL) they would appear at first glance to
> cover OpenBSD. All three in fact. The problem is that this then creates a
> trap for anyone taking OpenBSD and using it to build something to sell to a
> military. Suddenly they are no longer protected; we prefer not to
> incorporate anything that can create such traps.
How so? As far as I can tell, the "open source" grant, covers everything under
a BSD license (among other licenses) -- and holds no provision for "military
use". I don't see how anyone using the [ed: algorithm, not code] under license
1, could become subject to license 3?
~~~
tedunangst
People take OpenBSD and turn it into not open source products all the time.
For a more famous example, FreeBSD is at the core of the Playstation OS, but
it's no longer open source.
------
tptacek
For this attack to get a stupid name, it needs to actually attack SSL/TLS. But
Bernstein got it to work only in a lab setting, with a target pessimized to
expose the vulnerability. That target, of course, did not use SSL/TLS.
Pedantry Points += 10
~~~
bascule
Normally I'd agree the way an attack makes the leap from an academic paper to
a cute name is a real-world PoC||GTFO, but c'mon, is this not the perfect
name?
------
ZoFreX
I'm really wary of the "don't invent your own crypto" mantra, so I want to
venture an idea I had here, rather than writing any code for it:
I understand the problems with adding a random delay to try to add "noise" to
the measurements, but what if the delay was non-random? Specifically, what if
the delay was calculated to make the whole operation always take constant
time?
Example:
User input comes in on thread A. Thread A sends the request to thread B and
delays for time t. Thread B does the encryption and sets the result. Thread A
resumes and returns the result.
If we pick 't' such that it is always larger than the amount of time it takes
to do the operation, any timing differences observed by the attacker won't be
correlated with the timing of the cryptographic operations. I think.
(NB: it could be something other than threads, such as "microservice B"
instead of "thread B", that particular detail isn't important)
~~~
sdevlin
A better strategy (and an area of research for Dan Bernstein, author of the
referenced paper) is to design crypto that doesn't leak this kind of side-
channel information. See, for example, his Salsa20 family of stream ciphers.
~~~
ZoFreX
I know that is a better strategy, but it's also a much much harder strategy :)
Even a well designed cipher could end up leaking info in practice due to
compiler quirks or implementation mistakes.
------
secabeen
Many SSL attacks seem to require thousands or millions of interactive sessions
or inputs. Is there a reason we aren't modifying our Internet-facing servers
to drop connections and discard ephemeral keys when a particular IP or set of
IPs performs actions that are outside the norm?
~~~
snowwrestler
Well I think the crypto nerds would like to design crypto systems that are
inherently (i.e. mathematically) resistant to such attacks.
But in general, I think you are right. I am astounded at how few networked
applications perform rate limiting. Wordpress, for example, does not ship with
any rate limiting on the login form. Brute force? Go ahead, give it a shot.
By comparison, Drupal 7 out of the box limits any IP to a small number of
quick login attempts before blocking that IP temporarily.
If your application is intended for human interaction, it just makes sense to
limit things to human speed. Maybe it's harder than I think it is, or maybe
people just don't think of it.
~~~
e12e
It's a tradeoff (like so much in security): limit an IP to N number of quick
login attempts, and it's easy for your students to DOS the Drupal-powered
school portal (assuming the school is behind a NAT, at least). Often you want
more security, and less convenience ... but it's not as easy as "most secure
all the time!".
------
justcommenting
from the blog post:
> Fortunately, Intel solved this problem… for the hyperspecific case of AES.
> Newer Intel CPUs (and also other vendors including ARM) now provide a fast,
> constant-time implementation of AES in hardware.
Others have pointed to particular aspects of Intel hardware that they don't
believe are 'backdoored', for some definition of backdoored. One point some of
these comments appear to be missing is that using things like AES-NI typically
_also_ means using things like RDRAND.
Whether you think there's any relationship between Intel's Bull Mountain and
NSA'S BULLRUN is up to you, but at the end of the day, the only way any of us
can know for sure whether RDRAND uses DUAL_EC_DRBG is to:
1) decide to take Intel at their word about RDRAND using only CTR_DRBG, or
2) undertake some difficult and probably-expensive hardware forensics to find
out
~~~
pbsd
DUAL_EC_DRBG would have been the dumbest possible way to backdoor RDRAND. It
would also imply that Intel is somehow able to slip in circuitry able to do
two 256-bit elliptic curve scalar multiplications in under 300 cycles, and
pretend it is AES circuitry which would normally be orders of magnitude
smaller and faster.
------
Blackthorn
CREAM? We Wu-Tang now?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Latest Sexting Scandal Shows Many Adults Have Some Growing Up to Do - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/04/28/liberty_high_school_sexting_scandal_focus_is_on_consent_and_adults_are_irate.html
======
Errorcod3
Crazy seeing what kids get away with today. However I think the medium has
just changed:
Nothing like this ever happened when I grew up, we were not passing photos of
girls around. If you wanted to see someone nude, it would have to be done in
the basement of the school or the backseat of a car.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Good 15-20 min. CS challenge for high school students? - Micand
I am helping design a CS-related activity for a Let's Talk Science competition (http://www.letstalkscience.ca), which promotes STEM amongst high school students. In the competition, teams of six students will move from station to station, trying to complete each as quickly as possible.<p>One station might give the team a metre stick, then ask them to measure the height of a building. (This can be solved by using similar triangles to estimate the building's height.) Time penalties are added to the team's completion time depending on how close their answer was.<p>My constraints are thus:<p><pre><code> * Most students won't have CS/programming knowledge
* Challenge should not require a computer
* Idea should challenge teams of six students for 15-20 minutes
* Challenge must have clear answer that can be objectively scored (not judged)
</code></pre>
One reasonably good challenge presents a sentence encoded with a Caesar cipher, then asks the students to decode it. The person running the station give a short explanation of what a Caesar cipher is, then leave the teams to decode the text. Time penalties are awarded based on correctness -- each incorrect character adds a 30-second penalty.<p>The Caesar cipher idea has been used often in the past, however, and I'm trying to develop something novel. I have been through the various activities on CS Unplugged (http://csunplugged.org/activities), but none appealed to me -- the exercises I saw were generally aimed at illustration and not suitable for competition, were too simple, or required too much explanation of background knowledge.<p>Do you have any ideas on what would make a fun CS-related challenge for teams of six high school students?<p>Thanks!
======
tubbzor
It was always intriguing to me how some popular graph algorithms are rather
intuitive, and if left to your own devices and no knowledge of popular
approaches you are likely to use some variant of them in problem solving.
One such is constructing a minimum spanning tree. Give them some problem where
they would need it on a dense graph and let them struggle to piece it together
(and penalize for wrong edges included). At the end you could explain how
their strategy related to Prim or Kruskal's algorithms.
Another is finding a shortest path from 1 vertex to another. The context would
be rather easy and you could again penalize for an incorrect path taken and
let them argue about the optimum route and introduce Dijkstra's at the end.
I think context is the most important thing. No high schooler wants to be
given an arbitrary graph and feel like they are doing some mundane problem on
it. Put some contextual spin on the problems (perhaps locally relevant) to
pique their interest and make it hit home for them as to why these are
important problems/solutions.
------
jmg_
Thinking back to some of the exercises that I did:
\+ Calculate the nth term of Fibonacci Sequence
\+ Comparing the efficiency sorting algorithms
\+ Calculating the resulting angles of the hands of a clock based on a
digital-time input.
You could probably apply many of the easier Project Euler questions for your
competition with little modification.
Alternately, if you want more computer-related problems some of the
/r/dailyprogrammer exercises might be applicable (however most require a
computer and programming knowledge)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: "Who Is Hiring?" React and Python Top Requested - 20years
http://www.gosmartsolutions.com/hn/
======
20years
Java currently shows as the top programming language but I believe the parser
may be picking up some Javascript for that category. I am working on a fix for
that now.
~~~
20years
Fixed the bug where it was finding Java within Javascript and adding that to
the Java count. The Java count is now properly reflected.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The tale of the neuroscientists and the computer: why mechanistic theory matters - tdaltonc
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnins.2014.00349/full
======
tdaltonc
I don't think that the engineer in the story about the radio actually
understands the radio. He could reproduce an identical radio, but he doesn't
understand what's really necessary for a radio. He doesn't understand radio-
ness.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Autonomous Trucks and the Future of the American Trucker - lawrenceyan
http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/driverless/
======
twblalock
Driving the trucks is the most obvious part of a trucker's job, but not the
only one. They do a lot of other important stuff:
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/wi...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/will-
truckers-automated-comments.html)
> These people have local knowledge that is not easily transferable. They know
> the quirks of the routes, they have relationships with customers, they learn
> how best to navigate through certain areas, they understand how to optimize
> by splitting loads or arranging for return loads at their destination, etc.
> They also learn which customers pay promptly, which ones provide their loads
> in a way that’s easy to get on the truck, which ones generally have their
> paperwork in order, etc. Loading docks are not all equal. Some are very ad-
> hoc and require serious judgement to be able to manoever large trucks around
> them. Never underestimate the importance of local knowledge.
I would expect that even if trucks became autonomous, a lot of truckers would
survive the transition because people would still need to do a lot of that
stuff.
~~~
crazynick4
There is also the situation of a truck breaking down and needing repairs,
which can happen relatively frequently, given the amount of miles it runs
daily. Separately, how would a truck handle running out of gas if it spends
too much time stuck in slow-moving traffic? I guess they would need electric
human-operated charging stations for autonomous trucks?
~~~
tCfD
Tires blowing out are a much bigger (in terms of simple cost and the thornier
problem of schedule optimization and ability to guarantee precise delivery
times) and much more common of a problem than mechanical breakdowns. They're
also a problem that does not go away with autonomous trucks or electric motors
or anything conceivably around the corner, outside of some miraculous
development in materials science.
As such, a (somewhat) well-organized industry has developed around getting
replacement supplies like tires and other accessories to the site of a
breakdown as quickly as possible, and this would simply need to be extended to
include whatever it is autonomous trucks would require that doesn't touch the
road.
~~~
jpm_sd
Why do tires blow out? Do they have a predictable lifespan? If there is a huge
cost savings associated with autonomous driving, could some of those $$$ be
put toward more frequent tire changes that prevent blowouts from happening?
(edit) Personal injury lawyers assert that it is largely a preventative
maintenance issue:
[http://www.kennedyhodges.com/library/the-dangers-of-a-
truck-...](http://www.kennedyhodges.com/library/the-dangers-of-a-truck-tire-
blowout.cfm)
[https://braunslaw.com/library/why-catastrophic-truck-tire-
bl...](https://braunslaw.com/library/why-catastrophic-truck-tire-blowout-
crashes-occur/)
[http://www.attorneystevelee.com/library/the-dangers-and-
caus...](http://www.attorneystevelee.com/library/the-dangers-and-causes-of-
big-rig-tire-blowouts.cfm)
~~~
louden
It is much more than a lack of maintenance. The weight of the cargo, the
temperature of the road, the way the cargo is distributed in/on the trailer
and manufacture defects can all contribute to blowouts of servicable tires.
Those issues also make the lifespan of identical tires vary by thousands of
miles traveled.
While replacing tires more frequently would reduce the number of blowouts, it
would be very wasteful. In the US, DOT inspections are frequent and they look
at the tires to make sure they are in good condition.
~~~
crazynick4
It's interesting that you bring up this point because these are all aspects
that would have to be taken into consideration before autonomous highway
driving is safe for trucks, tire blowouts aside.
Most people think of driving on a highway as the simplest thing there is, but
when you have tens of thousands of pounds, sometimes unevenly loaded,
sometimes as barrels of liquid that slosh around and change your center of
gravity, all that on a stormy, windy, icy day driving in the mountains, it can
make for very uncomfortable driving. Is it solvable? I don't see why not, but
I think it might be a bit more difficult than it sounds.
~~~
SEJeff
And 9% of the fatal driving incidents with big trucks are caused by distracted
drivers betweent 2014-2016:
[https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/sites/fmcsa.dot.gov/files/docs/saf...](https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/sites/fmcsa.dot.gov/files/docs/safety/data-
and-statistics/399386/people-tbl32-2016.xls)
Interesting compilation of stats: [https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/data-and-
statistics/large-t...](https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety/data-and-
statistics/large-truck-and-bus-crash-facts-2016)
For every single liquid load, there are likely 50 non-liquid loads that can be
better if automated. Perhaps humans only did the "dangerous" loads such as
gasoline, or barrels of oil, etc? I think this isn't so black and white, but
really is more of a shade of grey. Some things humans can do well autonomous
trucks will do poorly. Some things humans do very poorly autonomous trucks
will do very well. One of the other things is simple economics. There will
likely never be autonomous truck unions picketing for shorter hours or higher
pay. Note that I've got nothing against truckers unions, but think the sheer
economics of the issue to carriers will inevitably force the issue eventually.
The first carrier to seriously use autonomous trucking will likely be capable
of delivering products to customers for cheaper, creating an imbalance in the
industry. Every other company will be forced to compete, with a downward race
on wages.
An approach like this for coal miners in Appalachia could work:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/05/06/47...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/05/06/477033781/from-
coal-to-code-a-new-path-for-laid-off-miners-in-kentucky)
------
thesimp
I'm by no means an expert on this, but I do follow some trucking vlogs on
youtube, but it amazes me how inefficient the loading and unloading process
is. Sometimes truckers have to waiting many hours just to get a place at a
loading dock and then again many hours just so that a dedicated team can
unload the trailer. What a waste of driver, truck, and trailer resources.
The autonomous truck will most likely happen but my prediction is that the
real revolution will be automated loading/unloading. And the automated
forklifts will unload into fully automated warehouses. And fully automated
pickers will pick orders for delivery to your doorstep via fully automated
drones. And driven from the doorstep to your fridge by a cargo roomba...
~~~
twblalock
I always thought it was odd that we standardized shipping containers and
pallets, but not truck trailers.
Shipping containers and pallets have owners, but nobody minds leaving them
behind at the point of delivery because they are interchangeable and they
circulate around.
If truckers could pull up to a loading dock, unhook the trailer and leave it
behind, and drive away with an empty trailer, that would be pretty cool.
~~~
jhayward
> _If truckers could pull up to a loading dock, unhook the trailer and leave
> it behind, and drive away with an empty trailer,_
That's called a 'hook and drop' load and they are very common. Usually used
within a large customer's trailer fleet, such as ones who have distribution
centers that then fan out to stores.
------
dmckeon
If the “Autonomous Truck Port” model becomes popular, I wonder if we will see
a highway-oriented version of the
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container)
with a lower tare weight but the same twist-locks and dimensions?
This could mean that ATP-to-ATP trip segments would be done by trailers built
for containers, so load/unload operations could be automated, and
hookup/unhook of trailers to tractors would happen much less often.
Also, equipment to handle ocean port and ATP container movements would be
similar in specification.
~~~
ghaff
Not sure what you're asking for. A huge number of Intermodal containers
already travel by truck for part of their route.
~~~
dmckeon
Intermodal are built to stack 9 units high. I’m looking for a containerization
system to replace manual hook-and-drop of box trailers with an automatable
load, lock, and drive away process that has a lower tare weight penalty than
intermodal. A TEU has a tare weight of 5000 pounds, FEU is ~5500 pounds, which
is a lot to carry around if you don’t need to stack units 9 high for an ocean
trip.
~~~
mjevans
You'd probably be better off looking for an interface within an interface.
Just accept that the cost of changing from the existing 'intermodal' shipping
container as an OUTSIDE standard when on the ocean is too high.
Having a light weight inner unit, maybe something like a pallet sub-unit or
dimension-ed around being pallet compatible but expecting a long run to be
conveyed out quickly, then loaded in to something else quickly would be a
better place to begin from.
Then you'd only need to figure out a good boxing solution for THAT on an
existing trucking platform. Re-using the same intermodal locking interface for
existing trailers but with a lighter build on top could be useful,
particularly if the re-packing allows for a full container load to just go
somewhere.
However since unpacking is happening, automated pallet handling/routing might
also be a useful economic goal since there would then be an opportunity to
sort and re-pack/re-mix at the dock-side.
------
mjevans
A better solution would apply a minimum standard of living and benefits to ALL
workers - irrespective of the number of hours worked everyone should get
benefits (health, sick/vacation 'savings', unemployment) which follow a worker
and for which pro-rated jobs at least contribute a pro-rated portion.
Also, 'on call' or 'must be available' should be considered at least minimum
wage PLUS benefits idle time since the employee is being asked to be on
standby and not take other work. Schedules should also be known months in
advance so proper planning can be made.
------
comonad-colaboy
Can anybody expand on the link between autonomous car driving vs autonomous
truck driving in terms of challenges faced. If they are similar, not sure why
there is this kind of forecasting seeing how autonomous car driving is pretty
much far from over or even usable. If they are vastly different, I don't
imagine trucking is any easier than cars (maybe it is?)
~~~
rtkwe
Depends on where the truck is driving. If we restrict them to highway or
designed hubs off of highways the problem of trucks isn't much harder than
cars. When we start talking about maneuvering in smaller areas like city
streets and receiving areas at the destination it's definitely somewhat harder
just because there's so much more vehicle to handle and keep track of.
One reason to think it'll happen much quicker in trucking is because the
economic incentive is much higher for a trucking company to replace it's
drivers than for a single person to use an autonomous car.
------
a3n
> Many other freight-moving jobs will be created in their place, perhaps even
> more than will be lost, but these new jobs will be local driving and last-
> mile delivery jobs that—absent proactive public policy—will likely be
> misclassified independent contractors and have lower wages and poor working
> conditions.
I'm sure the industry would want that, but I wonder how many people are going
to go to the trouble of getting a commercial driver's license for a shit job.
Having a CDL is particularly risky, for a number of reasons. For example the
blood alcohol content necessary for a DUI is only .04 for a CDL holder, and
that's regardless if you're at work or driving your personal vehicle. It's
usually twice that in most States.
And even if you test below .04, if it's detectable at all law enforcement can
ground you for 24 hours. And that won't look good to your employer.
For most people, if they lose their license for any reason, they can still
figure out a way to get to work. But if you're making your living on your CDL,
it doesn't matter if you figure out how to get to work, because you can't
work.
Depending on your circumstances, it can be quite a lot of trouble and expense
to get a CDL. Why go through all that and take that risk, when it's just as
easy to be a helper on a roofing truck or a fast food worker.
------
SEJeff
Truck Driver is also the most common job title in more than 1/2 of the US:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-
the-most-common-job-in-every-state)
This would be devastating for some of the poorer states like say KY or MO.
~~~
jdpigeon
Hence the importance of pro-active policy measures. It'll be interesting to
see this play out in the next few years as protecting truck driver jobs with
regulations should (hopefully?) receive bipartisan support.
------
Aloha
I think the autopilot scenario listed is the most likely adoption path to
autonomous trucks in the short term. I think the proponents of this technology
are _very_ optimistic about the adoption timescale. I also see almost no
adoption in local trucking in the near future.
The platooning mechanism may see more use outside of North America, maybe in
the LTL fields here - but it would be a pretty disruptive change in the way
that freight is sent and routed compared to current use.
------
TekMol
...truck makers racing to build autonomous trucks.
This trend has led to dozens of reports and news
articles suggesting that automation could effectively
eliminate the truck-driving profession.
Could you beat around the bush more then this?
'trend' 'suggesting' 'could' 'effectively'
Driving is being automated and then the truck-driving profession will be gone.
The rest of the article seems similarely bloated. With it's scenarios and
diagrams and stuff.
~~~
exhilaration
_Driving is being automated and then the truck-driving profession will be
gone._
Not for a 100 years, don't believe the self-driving hype. That's what the rest
of the article is about, the long distance highway truck driving jobs will
(mostly) disappear but there's going to be a ton of city truck driving jobs
that are likely to remain the domain of humans for decades to come.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
>but there's going to be a ton of city truck driving jobs that are likely to
remain the domain of humans for decades to come.
This. Someone has to wheel around that pallet jack loaded with beer. Someone
has to hand the clipboard and pen to the person signing for the delivery.
Someone has to tarp the load.
At some point the tech will get good enough, a switch will flip and meat based
steering wheel holders sitting in front of dry vans on interstate highways
will be replaced with semiconductor based steering wheel holders.
Everything else will change much more slowly.
------
nopinsight
Would technicians, construction/renovation workers, and the likes be good
alternative career paths for the current truck drivers?
If so, there should be policy support/subsidy to help train those who wish to
shift to these options which, to my knowledge, pay pretty well and will
continue to be in demand for the foreseeable future (little automation is
likely, given the limits of current technology.)
~~~
vlehto
You don't get many good carpenters out of unemployed truck drivers. Good
carpenters are born to be good carpenters.
That's the problem with most difficult to automate jobs that don't require
college degree. They sound like anybody could do it. But there is huge
difference between good renovation and bad renovation. The kind of guy who can
do good job consistently is rare. The job requires passion and good attitude
and personality that matches the job.
It's kinda sad how many men are passionate about driving a car. It's bit like
how many women used to be passionate about weaving.
~~~
nopinsight
Since the US might need to build over a million affordable housing units to
address its homeless problems, ‘newbie’ builders, carpenters, and other
technicians might help to reduce the unit budget requirements to a level which
a large quantity could be built within a realistic fiscal constraint.
Artisan carpenters/master technicians would still be in high demand but those
transitioned to the new careers would serve a different market and needs.
------
newnewpdro
Keep the truck drivers, use the autonomous features to drive while they rest.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Ternary Calculating Machine of Thomas Fowler - tgrass
http://www.mortati.com/glusker/fowler/index.htm
======
dhamidi
See also Setun
<[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun>](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun>), a
computer from 1958 using the balanced ternary system.
~~~
dsplatonov
Nice. It's strange why don't we have such computers nowadays
------
todd8
Knuth's _Art of Computer Programming, vol 2_ [1], not surprisingly, gives a
thorough discussion of the balanced ternary system.
The solution for a nice brainteaser can be found quickly once one thinks about
balanced trinary, here it is: "Using a balance scale, what is the minimum
number of wheights needed to weigh any whole number of grams up to 40g?"
[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Art-Computer-Programming-Volume-
Seminu...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Computer-Programming-Volume-
Seminumerical/dp/0201896842)
------
ssdfsdf
I often wonder if there is some notion of a basis of computation in
mathematics. You can do stuff in binary, trinary, what about further out
systems? What about working with functions/mappings which take more than two
inputs. What can be said about the expressive power of these different ways of
computing? Any one know where I should be looking for this kind of stuff?
~~~
arethuza
Describing computation in mathematical terms is arguably the core of Computer
Science as a subject - particularly the "Theory of Computation":
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_computation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_computation)
If you are interested in "functions/mappings" then you can look at Lambda
Calculus and work your way right up to modern functional programming
languages:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus)
~~~
ssdfsdf
I'm reasonably well versed in these topics, I found them unsatisfying, they
don't capture the essence for me. I don't really know what I'm looking for I
just know I haven't seen it yet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft inks mystery Linux licensing deal - ukdm
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/the-frontline-blog/2194270/microsoft-inks-mystery-linux-licensing-deal?utm_campaign=V3_co_uk&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Twitterfeed
======
Paul_S
The deal has been signed so many times, how on earth have the contents not
been leaked yet? Or do they never show the patents to the companies they
extort money from and just threaten them with legal action?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The New Future of Notifications - jsgyfc
http://blog.latis.io/the-new-future-of-notifications/
======
TeMPOraL
The core of the problem is right there in the language of the article. As a
user installing an app, I want to use it to help me with some problem or task
I have. Here are things I absolutely don't care about: "user retention",
"engagement", "winning me over". You shouldn't need to win me over; if your
tool is useful, I will use it. If notifications are timely and relevant, I
will enable them.
I often get the feeling that people making mobile apps have a sales mindset of
their users being cattle that needs to be milked, and then act surprised that
the cattle doesn't obey.
~~~
jsgyfc
That's fantastic, and I have to say that I treat apps the same way. There's no
question that push and other notifications are going to be used for [insert
marketing buzzwords], but the core question is who are these notifications
intending to benefit - the user or the app sending them? I think that good
companies know they can accomplish their goal without being obtuse by using
notifications to help vs. sell.
We discuss this exact issue in one of our upcoming pieces, the one focusing on
users, and we touch on it in the marketing one as well. You'll have to wait a
couple days for it though. :)
~~~
TeMPOraL
I like the way you crystallized those questions. I'm very interested in the
coming pieces, I'm curious how you compare the two point of views (of users
and app makers), which I believe are in conflict today.
~~~
jsgyfc
If you want to, drop me an email and I'll make sure you don't miss them. :)
Jordan at latis dot io.
------
stylerapp
Great product, I'm on waiting list!
~~~
jsgyfc
Great to hear! Be sure to join our Slack and we can iron out details. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Glass Dome — an Alfred workflow to fight link rot in markdown notes - macedotavares
https://github.com/macedotavares/Glass-Dome
======
macedotavares
Hey!
Following the advice dang left in the comments, here’s the backstory for this
workflow:
I've been taking plain text notes on my computer for almost 20 years. I’ve
been keeping bookmarks for longer than that.
A few months ago, I subscribed to Pinboard and imported all these 1000+
bookmarks, only to find that hundreds of them were dead links. I could
remember many of those websites and pages, I could recall how and why they
were important to me; I just couldn’t see them. And never will again. It was
depressing and alarming.
So, weeks later, when I stumbled upon Jeff Huang’s manifesto “Designed to
Last”, it deeply resonated with me. I was setting up a blog, then, and even
considering a new note-taking setup, and future-proofing became an even
greater concern for me.
Like I said, I keep plain text notes. I use markdown a lot, and feel
comfortable migrating my notes between different apps and platforms. For
example, I’m currently moving from Bear to Roam.
The text itself is never a problem — and probably will never be — but linked
content is a whole different beast.
Each time I switch apps, I either lose inline images or have to relink them,
sometimes manually. And URLs often go bad, so the note is suddenly worth a lot
less, if anything at all.
Being an enthusiastic Alfred user (it's the single most important app on my
macs), I started to play around with the idea of copying every image to a
single "resources" folder in my Dropbox, before using it inside my notes.
With a single keyword or keyboard shortcut, Alfred would take care of
uploading an image via DB's API, get the share link for it and then put it in
the clipboard, properly formatted with markdown. The same principle applied to
any file attachment.
Half of the problem was solved. But what about web pages?
I considered using wget to scrape the page at any given URL, store it on
Dropbox and do the same routine. I still entertain the idea. But then there's
the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. And I love it so so much, that I
wanted to contribute. So I went with it instead: Alfred takes the URL, feeds
it to WBM through curl, and then returns a link to its time stamped snapshot.
Actually, it returns both the live and the snapshot links, the latter with a
cool hourglass emoji as anchor.
So, now I don't fear losing track of linked files or worry too much about
websites going down. Once I had these two bases covered, I thought to myself
"this is pretty powerful. I should share it." And so I did.
I hope more people find it useful, and would appreciate any comments, ideas or
suggestions.
Cheers!
------
geoelectric
This is pretty cool!
I might be able to learn from your outer loop, actually--this is close to a
much simpler problem I've needed to solve.
I take my notes in markdown bulleted lists, and try to make them very narrow
so they fit on the side of my monitor. I shorten all my links to keep the
character count down. The shortener we use at work times out the links if
they're not used, though, so in old notes I can go back and discover my alias
is gone.
I've been meaning to write something that just sweeps my notes and hits the
links through the shortener URL periodically as a keepalive. Since the notes
are not always conveniently in one tree with nothing else around, I was
thinking something a little richer than text extraction piped to curl.
If nothing else, maybe this'll inspire me to get off my ass and actually get
it done.
~~~
macedotavares
Thanks!
If the URL shortener has an API, maybe you could write a script that keeps a
record of every URL passing through it, and then run curl on those records
with a cronjob or something.
I’m guessing you use a plain text editor for your notes and want to stick with
it, but some note-taking apps, like Bear and Roam automatically hide the URLs
in markdown links, so you could keep them as short as their titles. This would
bypass the need for a URL shortener.
~~~
geoelectric
Definitely, if I were using rendered output primarily that'd make a ton of
sense of course.
As you surmised, though, I use VS Code, vim, nvAlt, and iOS text editors as my
primary tools (depending on setting) and actually create/read the journal in
pure plaintext.
The markdown formatting is more so I can c/p rendered versions from a preview
HTML page to Google Docs and other targets that understand rich text from
clipboard but not markdown directly--I can create meeting minutes and whatnot
from my notes very quickly that way.
------
inetsee
It's been my experience when going through old notes files that "dead" links
are not always dead; sometimes they've just "changed their name". Sometimes a
search on the title will find the website of interest at a new location.
Sometimes the website can be found in the Internet Archive.
~~~
macedotavares
True! Actually, I was able to recover some of my lost bookmarks using the
Internet Archive. That made me love it even more, eventually leading to my
choice of the Wayback Machine.
------
learningerrday
Another alternative to Internet archive is perma.cc. A webmaster can write to
IA and request that they pull archives off their site at any moment:
[https://perma.cc/](https://perma.cc/)
~~~
macedotavares
I didn’t think of that. Thanks for suggesting an alternative. I’ll check it
out.
------
voz_
Looks good! However, I don't want to use dropbox... any plans for supporting
other data sources?
~~~
macedotavares
Thanks, voz!
As long as that other platform has some API that supports link sharing, it
shouldn’t be too difficult. What would you like to use?
~~~
voltaireodactyl
For what it's worth I would also love a version that saved to local text
file/relative filename.
In an ideal world, this would integrate with Hook links too -- I want that bad
enough that I'm considering trying to figure out how to do it on my own.
BUT -- you may want to take a look at (Hook:
[https://hookproductivity.com](https://hookproductivity.com)) yourself -- it
seems like exactly the kind of thing you know how to put to excellent use.
~~~
macedotavares
Funny you should mention Hook. When I first heard about it, I made another
Alfred workflow (called Rabbit Holes) that allowed me to gather related files,
notes and bookmarks under a particular subject.
It relied on unique id numbers for each subject and an index file that listed
them. For instance, if I wanted to associate a pdf to the subject "Hypertext",
I would:
1\. Select the pdf in Finder
2\. Run the workflow and perform a fuzzy search on the index file
3\. Find the subject and select it.
Then, the pdf's filename would be prefixed with the code corresponding to
"Hypertext"; finally, a master note for "Hypertext" would be appended with the
link to that file.
(This workflow also used Dropbox though. It would have been easier if it
didn't.)
If you use Alfred (with Powerpack), I'm sure we can think of something that
may at least look like an alternative to Hook.
------
vageli
It appears you are the creator of this? You might want to consider reposting
as a Show HN as they are typically received differently by the community.
~~~
macedotavares
Indeed I am. I've just created my HN account in order to post this. I'll do as
you suggest. Thank you for the heads-up. Cheers!
~~~
smoyer
Welcome!
~~~
macedotavares
Thanks, smoyer. See you around!
~~~
dang
One tip: add a comment to the thread giving the backstory of how you came to
work on this, and explaining what's different about it. That tends to seed
discussion in a good direction. Good luck!
Other tips here, though it looks like you've got them covered.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638)
~~~
macedotavares
Thanks for the advice, dang. I’ve just posted the backstory. A bit long,
though. I hope it’s not overkill.
~~~
dang
I don't think that's too long at all, and I'm sure it helped.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MBTA Sux - capturing the public transportation zeitgeist - anateus
http://www.mbtasux.com
For those who don’t know, the MBTA is Boston’s public transportation authority, running subways, busses, commuter rail, and the like.<p>To say the least, many people are unhappy with the way it is operated. So, as a subject near and dear to my heart, I decided to make MBTAsux.<p>What it is: grabbing twitter messages and posting them in a format that allows easy skimming, in addition to extracting some data from the text.<p>The things I’m interested in:<p><pre><code> * Rudimentary sentiment analysis, i.e. how are people feeling about the MBTA right now?
* Location tracking. I want to figure out where people complain the most. Control that for the “size” of the stations (Park and South Station would probably win the popular vote here).
</code></pre>
Things I’ve yet to implement that I think are essential:<p><pre><code> * Submission form, and a mobile version of it. You know, for people who don’t use twitter.
* Map. Alas, people are not really mentioning their exact stops when they complain. So there is a really small percentage of twitters coming in that would be mappable. This brings me to the next feature:
* A nano-format for complaining about the MBTA on twitter and other media. Something like: s:kendall someone just played the Marseillaise on the hanging pipes #mbtasux
How I wrote it:
o Python
o Google App Engine
o Latest version of the code will be released soon under a BSD license.
Enjoy!</code></pre>
======
anateus
For those who don’t know, the MBTA is Boston’s public transportation
authority, running subways, busses, commuter rail, and the like.
To say the least, many people are unhappy with the way it is operated. So, as
a subject near and dear to my heart, I decide to make MBTAsux.
What it is: grabbing twitter messages and posting them in a format that allows
easy skimming, in addition to extracting some data from the text.
The things I’m interested in:
* Rudimentary sentiment analysis, i.e. how are people feeling about the MBTA right now?
* Location tracking. I want to figure out where people complain the most. Control that for the “size” of the stations (Park and South Station would probably win the popular vote here).
Things I’ve yet to implement that I think are essential:
* Submission form, and a mobile version of it. You know, for people who don’t use twitter.
* Map. Alas, people are not really mentioning their exact stops when they complain. So there is a really small percentage of twitters coming in that would be mappable. This brings me to the next feature:
* A nano-format for complaining about the MBTA on twitter and other media. Something like: s:kendall someone just played the Marseillaise on the hanging pipes #mbtasux
How I wrote it:
o Python
o Google App Engine
o Latest version of the code will be released soon under a BSD license.
Enjoy!
------
andr
I used to hate MBTA until I moved to London. The system is much more poorly
maintained here, and the fact that it's bigger is no excuse. Only in London
will you hear an announcement like "All lines except the Northern line are
operating with severe delays." On top of that it used to be twice as expensive
per ride [1]. However, it is in human nature to complain about everything. :)
[2]
For example, if you happen to take the Circle Line or any of the lines it
shares tracks with, it is common that the train would stop 1-3 times between
stations, because of "traffic" ahead. Something like that would be very rare
on the MBTA, even on the Green Line.
[1] Now it is 1.5x more expensive, only because of exchange rate fluctuations.
The cost has not changed in terms of average British income.
[2] See fmylife.com
~~~
anateus
The main goal I have is to be able to figure out what it is that triggers the
most ire. People will always complain, but something like this will let the
MBTA prioritize appropriately, not just based on what a committee decides is
most important.
Re:the tube: The older a system is the more complaints. The london underground
is the oldest system in the world, and one of the reasons for traffic is the
tiny horrible tunnels that they are constantly trying to prevent from caving
in. The MBTA is America's oldest system, though it isn't really plagued by
antiquated anything anymore.
------
mjtokelly
What do you use to calculate the Rage Meter (and mood in general)?
I've seen mood calculation before on ConceptNet:
<http://web.media.mit.edu/~hugo/conceptnet/>
~~~
anateus
Currently there is only one mood tag "angry", which is handled with keywords
and some simple rules. With more data, more complex and interesting rules can
be derived.
Then the rage quotient is calculated, i.e. what percentage of people are angry
(actually, it takes the number of angry posts in the sample and divides by
half the sample size). The quotient is then mapped unto a list of verbal
descriptions. This means that I can add or remove description as needed.
------
hendler
Looks like twitter only. But I think there might be a niche for this kind of
watchdog - branding. Better than surveys.
Don't know about monetization, but certainly solves a pain!
------
xopowo
where's the silver line? surely that generates plenty of hate.
~~~
anateus
People don't seem to post about it! If they did, I'd be catching it.
Besides the fact that it takes a really long time for it to arrive, I haven't
had many problems with it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Advert for truecaller on bbc.co.uk? - crottypeter
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36015547
======
gjvc
The BBC news website has a long tradition of "product-related" articles
masquerading as news. This is a byproduct of the blurring between news and
entertainment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Victory for Users: WhatsApp Fixes Privacy Problem in Group Messaging - panarky
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/victory-users-whatsapp-fixes-privacy-problem-group-messaging
======
komeijist
Not so much a victory considering whatsapp is in complete control over
metadata. Even if it somehow lay in the interests of Facebook to give users a
private instant messaging platform, the rootkits known as google play and
whatever apple incorporates for complete control over the device are sure to
catch any terrorists using their phones like normal people. The ship already
burned to a crisp before anyone jumped out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Machine Learning Crash Course - TakakiTohno
https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course
======
burger_moon
There's a lot of points on this post but no comments. What do people
experienced with ML think about this course? Is it worth the time?
------
manishsharan
I have a dumb question: isn't the quality of Machine Learning dependent of the
quantity and quality of training data sets ? And if were are to utilize Google
or Microsoft for ML, then the whole world ends up uploading their datasets to
these giants -- which helps these companies develop even better ML systems--
like a network effect but for data ? Would these companies not have a
tremendous advantage against any challengers or competition? Would this system
not lead to some sort of Oligopoly ?
~~~
mattkrause
The quality of the question too.
Some people ask ML to do patently implausible things. Can you determine
whether someone is a criminal from a photo of their face? It should be
INCREDIBLY obvious that the answer to that question _must_ be "no." Even if
you do manage to guess correctly, there is has to be some confound, either a
technical one (criminal training data is lit differently from the non-criminal
ones) or a statistical one (e.g., correlation with socioeconomic status).
~~~
diffeomorphism
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy)
Controversial but clearly not "patently implausible".
~~~
mattkrause
Yes, implausible.
There is /no/ evidence that physiognomy or its cousin phrenology, the idea
that scalp shape carries information, "work." I normally appreciate
wikipedia's NPOV stance, but it's absurd that it takes two paragraphs to
mention that it is universally (or almost, apparently) regarded as psuedo-
science. I'm a neuroscience researcher, and I can't think of a single
colleague who puts any credence in these ideas; in fact, I know several who
use them as insults. As for the data, the hair-whorl things have been pretty
aggressively debunked. The "gaydar" results were driven by individual choices
in fashion, grooming, etc. I don't know if anyone has followed up on the
hockey data, but...it doesn't matter, because of the second problem.
There's a giant leap between detecting _actual criminals_ and people who _look
like_ members of groups that are, statistically more/less likely to be
involved in crime. You just can't jump between group-level priors and
individual predictions. This is especially true when some of the factors
shouldn't legally or morally be used to make predictions.
Finally, think about how weird the biology would need to be for this to work.
You'd need to have an underlying factor (genetic, presumably) that affects
both facial structure and behavior. It would need to have a strong enough
effect to reliably overcome all of the other factors that also determine
someone's appearance and behavior. It's not totally impossible, but it's an
extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence and to date, no
one has found much of anything.
~~~
diffeomorphism
Okay, "controversial" was much too generous and junk is more accurate. I just
wanted to point out that it is not something some ML research came up with on
the spot.
------
chrispeel
Are these machine learning courses the only courses like this that google
provides? Is it a new thing for google to offer courses like this?
I admire their attempt to provide translations, yet it does not seem like all
languages listed are available. I.e. it seems to work much better for Spanish
than German.
~~~
Impossible
Google has similar courses for web development and Android development among
others
([https://developers.google.com/training/](https://developers.google.com/training/)).
Many of these have made the front page of HN at some point, but ML courses
tend to get upvoted more often than web development or general programming.
------
tylerwhipple
Google has had a Machine Learning Crash Course up for about a year already,
has it been updated or is this the same thing?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft meets with private equity over Yahoo deal - surement
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-yahoo-idUSKCN0WS067
======
mbesto
This looks like another Informatica deal [0]. It actually makes a ton of
sense. Yahoo needs to get out of the scrutiny of the public markets and into a
private ownership that wants long term results (EBITDA growth year over year)
and less trendy bets that try to raise the status of the company (i.e.
Tumblr).
[0] - [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2960729/enterprise-
appl...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2960729/enterprise-
applications/microsoft-salesforcecom-join-53-billion-informatica-buyout.html)
~~~
kolbe
That doesn't mean Microsoft needs to get involved. Generally speaking,
entities that provide debt financing for private equity investments are the
biggest suckers in the investment community.
~~~
drited
Article says one of reasons for Microsoft's interest is to preserve search and
ad deals with Yahoo
~~~
sangnoir
> Article says one of reasons for Microsoft's interest is to preserve search
> and ad deals with Yahoo
Note that preservation of the search deal might not be in Yahoo's best
interest, so depending on where you stand, Microsoft doesn't "need" to be
involved in this.
------
simonw
Just out of interest, anyone know why the dateline on that article would be
Healdsburg?
> Healdsburg, CALIFORNIA (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) executives are in
> early talks with potential Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) investors...
~~~
newobj
Great little town on the fringe of wine country, why not?
------
stale2002
Oh the Irony! I bet they wish they took the 45 billion 8 years ago.
~~~
jasonjei
In their defense, their Alibaba stake is actually still quite formidable. But
the bid back then was for Yahoo's core businesses...
~~~
stale2002
The funny thing is that Yahoo's alibaba stake + cash on hand is worth
something like 40 billion, but yahoo's current market cap is ~35 billion. AKA,
Yahoo's core business is worth negative 5 billion dollars.
~~~
Retric
You are ignoring taxes. Getting 35 billion dollars from selling Alibaba shares
into the hands of there stockholders is not simple.
~~~
limeyx
I'm sure they will find a way to pipe the deal through Ireland and offshore
that profit
------
SeeDave
I still believe that Steve Ballmer is the only man who can rescue Yahoo.
------
rokhayakebe
Can someone explain to me why Facebook isn't buying Yahoo? Perfect Fit.
~~~
this_user
In what regard? FB has been know to buy hot start-ups that might threaten
their business (e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp). Yahoo is a boring old dinosaur
whose core business is failing. The only thing worth anything is their stake
in Alibaba. The sole thing they own that might interest FB is Tumblr. But
Yahoo recently disclosed that they may write down all of the remaining value
of that service, which would be $1.1B down the drain.
~~~
rokhayakebe
They are both portals. Facebook social portal. Yahoo personal portal. Go to FB
to check friends and discuss things with those you know. Go to Yahoo to check
emails, and news and discuss with those you do not know. Facebook is your
world. Yahoo is the world at large.
~~~
cududa
That's like saying Tesla should buy a couple small auto makers - you know,
because they both make cars and it'd be a perfect fit.
------
zappo2938
I had to use Bing and Yahoo search APIs because Google won't let me
programmatically use Google search. They are awful and combining them won't
help.
~~~
rory096
Yahoo Search is already powered by Bing – since 2009.[1]
[1]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm)
~~~
gcb0
which proves the anecdote comment above is probably BS
~~~
rory096
That's a little much. They _do_ offer a Search API [1] (well, until Friday).
Just not terribly surprising it wasn't any better than Bing (since it is
Bing).
[1]
[https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/](https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/)
~~~
lesdeuxmagots
Indeed. BOSS was available until recently; the XML API for search is available
as a replacement.
------
fweespee_ch
Lol, good luck shoring up Bing.
I'm sorry but Bing has no real value proposition vs. Google or even Yandex. :/
~~~
sremani
I disagree, I use Bing on regular basis (also their rewards which I use to
donate to local school helps). The results are comparable with Google, and are
not that far off by any standards. Its the habit of Googling rather than
Objective result set, that is impediment to Bing adoption. Now that Cortana is
on Windows 10, lets see.
~~~
fweespee_ch
> The results are comparable with Google, and are not that far off by any
> standards.
What is the value proposition that differentiates them from Google?
~~~
Analemma_
The rewards are one. Granted, they're not huge (I also use Bing and find it
amounts to about 1 $5 Amazon gift card per month), but if you find the result
quality indistinguishable, it's enough. Also, like sremani, I want to drive
innovation in the area of search, and while lots of people pay lip service to
wanting more competition, putting your money where your mouth is by not using
Google is the only real way to do that.
~~~
chris11
True, I really do like the rewards. But I really think Bing would get rid of
them if it would was a good financial decision. And I think it would be a
decent decision if Bing was doing better.
~~~
Analemma_
I'm sure that Microsoft has a great deal of data telling them that the Rewards
program has a positive ROI, especially because a lot of the rewards are
sweepstakes which essentially cost them nothing. Also, I have watched other
people use Bing and seen four-digit numbers in their rewards count on the top-
right. (It's agonizing, like watching someone who doesn't know about tab-
completion use the command line.) This tells me that the number of people who
_use_ the Rewards is quite small and this contributes to its usefulness.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Classes? Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Classes (CSS) - Couto
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/06/19/classes-where-were-going-we-dont-need-classes/
======
valuegram
The top comment by M. Andrews says it best:
"This is a well-written and well-argued piece, but I have to ask: have you
ever built a large site with many templates, components and layouts? This
approach is arguably impossible to implement for that context, not to mention
inappropriate. Yes, CSS3 has some fairly advanced selectors, but littering
your stylesheet with HTML-dependent stuff like “section ~ article h2″ is only
going to cause you pain when you want to refactor, or simply target headings
that don’t follow a section. Either you end up with 20-line-long lists of
selectors, or you’re afraid to touch your HTML structure in case everything
blows up.
I really don’t follow your argument about elements looking the same in
different places being aggressive/inappropriate. Have you ever designed a user
interface? The goal is to produce consistent and reusable components that the
user will intuitively recognise and use. If my “post comment” button looks
different each time I put it somewhere new, what kind of experience does my
user have? Do my comment counts decline as a result? This doesn’t just effect
nerdy semantics, it’s real-world usability too.
Finally, I don’t really buy your argument that we should avoid using classes
because some mysterious third party content providers might use our entire
HTML structure and it won’t look right. If we designed for that use case we’d
all have sites like Jakob Nielsen’s (eg: plain and vanilla). It’s also
possible to use semantic markup (blockquote tags for quotes, etc) _and_ use
classes, they’re not mutually exclusive. Also, if somebody pulls in my HTML
which uses my custom classes, who says they have to load my CSS too? The
classes won’t impact their site’s design unless there’s a naming overlap.
In summary: classless HTML might work well on small, mostly trivial sites, but
long term, it’s not scalable or modular (as Jonathan Snook’s SMACSS framework
explains)."
~~~
stinky613
To wit: browsing the article's source code and searching for "class=" yields
1158 results
~~~
lowboy
This is unfair - the author of the article has no control over
SmashingMagazine's markup/CSS.
~~~
stinky613
_> In summary: classless HTML might work well on small, mostly trivial sites,
but long term, it’s not scalable or modular_
_> > To wit: browsing the article's source code and searching for "class="
yields 1158 results_
I wasn't suggesting the author was responsible for Smashing Magazine's source;
I was demonstrating that sufficiently complex websites have good cause for
using classes. Styling all of that markup without those classes would be an
absolute nightmare.
------
crazygringo
This feels like a terrible idea, something totally academic rather than
usable. I practice the exact opposite, using classes _everywhere_ , and
virtually _never_ attaching CSS rules to element names.
This is because, in my real-world experience, HTML structure can change very
easily. The h1 turns into an h3 for SEO reasons, a wrapper div gets added for
a visual effect, an extra span gets thrown inside an existing one. And
suddenly, all the CSS is broken because it all depended on the _exact_
structure of the HTML. Maintenance becomes a nightmare.
But if you do everything with named classes, then nothing breaks at all.
Writing CSS without classes makes as much sense to me as writing JavaScript
code without function names.
~~~
heydonworks
When the HTML structure changes, the CSS changes in accordance. That is what
is supposed to happen. You do not understand the technology.
------
talmand
I did this once, I quickly abandoned it as I felt it was madness. It was for
my personal site (just like his) that's a testing ground more than anything.
After writing far more styles than I felt was necessary for such a simple page
it was easy to see future problems once it was done. Biggest example as many
pointed out is that if I moved HTML elements around in the markup then I would
have to rewrite huge chunks of the style sheet even though I wasn't changing
the actual design of the elements.
My soon former job involves two websites that have a large chunk of its markup
with no classes or ids provided by the CMS. It is a nightmare to support or to
add a new feature. I have a selector that is eight elements deep, all to
target one cell in a table embedded in other tables. Well, to be fair, I'm
guessing the author wasn't considering that kind of site. I can scare you at
the campfire with stories of the tables I deal with that have no classes or
ids. We've rewritten a good chunk of the CMS to clean up the markup and add
classes to make my life as a front-end guy much easier.
This reminded me of the tables, I need some quiet time now.
------
ZeroGravitas
I think just using a lot less classes, in combination with these selectors,
would get most of the benefits without seeming so dogmatic and crazy. I guess
most people "grew up" with half-finished CSS support (or if they're software
like Drupal rather than people, they've not yet been refactored to reflect
current browser capabilities) and so don't feel comfortable with the further
reaches of CSS, but I find it quite liberating to use nth-child() instead of
putting .odd or .even classes on things.
------
lukeholder
I found this article extremely thought provoking.
The rhetoric is the design community has been content first design, and such a
bold choice in CSS authoring would really support this idea.
I would love to try this out in a real project.
------
akdetrick
While I don't agree at all with the idea of abandoning classes for clever
ancestry-driven selectors, the author is absolutely right about the advantages
of the HTML5 content model and the portability of semantic markup.
I wish more people would advocate for a middle ground between this content
driven approach and an OOCSS approach. They work so nicely together.
Who ever said that you should stop caring about using semantically correct
tags when using portable classes for styling?
~~~
heydonworks
Ancestry driven selectors are the essence of CSS. Classes are a cludge.
------
justafish
Aside from the flaws in this, summed up very well by the top comment, I was
quite taken aback by his swipe at Drupal. He links it to a tweet from 2009
that's taken out of context and references one particular Drupal module. It's
a very flexible CMS/framework - if you're building Views it's up to you to
customise the output to your liking. He's demonstrating a rather poor and
naive understanding of it.
~~~
valuegram
While I agree that his jab at Drupal is off base, because I don't agree with
this article in general. Drupal does make extensive use of classes in its
templating system, so I can see why the author would have a problem with it.
I see the class functionality in the templating system as a benefit, and makes
styling much easier, but for someone who dislikes classes, I can see why the
author wouldn't like Drupal.
~~~
rjknight
I think this issue generalizes to other content management systems. Drupal
aims to allow users to create sites without needing to understand the
underlying HTML, and most general-purpose Drupal modules produce class-heavy
HTML because that is, once you understand the class naming conventions,
relatively easy to style without needing to change the HTML structure.
This represents a trade-off - 'uglier' HTML and extraneous CSS classes in
return for a drastic reduction in development effort and the knowledge
required to bootstrap a typical project. This trade-off makes sense if an in-
depth knowledge of HTML is not your strong point (and even most web devs are
not fully-fledged "front end developers" conversant with the finer points of
the W3C's latest magnum opus), and if you would benefit from having a lot of
boilerplate stuff (user registration, access control, content management, RSS,
caching, RDF, email notifications, widgets/blocks, templating engine, etc.)
for free. Sure, if you're willing to do all of that stuff yourself, you can
ensure that no CSS class is wasted (or, indeed, no CSS class is used at all).
But most people can't make that trade-off, and even those who can would
struggle to justify it beyond the most trivial or superficial projects.
The best solution is probably to take a framework and modify its output to
look the way you want it to. That's why the swipe at Drupal is odd, as pretty
much everything Drupal does can be modified via hooks (kinda like AOP) and
templates.
------
rralian
In my experience, styles that are applied directly to elements cause more
problems than they solve. Outside of a minimal reset, and a few general
elements like h1, h2, etc., I try to avoid applying styles to base elements. I
have yet to see any real-world problem with classes. And I really don't
understand why "classitis" is a concern for anybody.
~~~
heydonworks
What is a style "applied directly" to an element if not a class? It's written
on the element itself.
'Classitis' is certainly not a concern for parsers because they do not know it
is going on. Then again, that's my point.
------
dmauro
It appears that where he is going is only as far as a small blog stylesheet. I
appreciate his argument about context being important in styling, but it
creates a very fragile stylesheet that could crumble with a simple change of
the context. If you're updating often, this would just be too difficult to
maintain.
------
suyash
This article has bunch of stuff but the author doesn't clearly justify the
premise. Much a read about nothing.
------
brianfryer
"In English, a verb cannot be substituted with a noun"
I beg to differ. You should Google that.
~~~
LeafStorm
Technically that's turning Google into a noun rather than replacing a verb
with a noun. You still conjugate it as "I Googled," "I will Google," or "I
like to Google things." English's lack of inflection in the "base" forms of
words just tends to obfuscate parts of speech somewhat.
------
RyanMcGreal
Not to mention that classes are very handy for attaching javascript event
handlers.
------
rsanchez1
If only all projects could be as easy as the examples presented.
~~~
heydonworks
Read my comments for the original article carefully. Projects are made easier
to maintain by foregoing classes.
Element names belong to a shared lexicon which all developers and sufficiently
up-to-date parsers understand. Classes are invented per project. They are a
superimposition. They muddy the water.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A Browse-able RESTish API - qixxiq
http://developers.snapbill.com/2011/02/a-browseable-restish-api/
======
numix
I know that the meaning of REST has been diluted a lot, but this mostly RPC
with pretty URLs.
I don't understand why they don't support PUT and DELETE. They are already
using jQuery on the HTML implementation of their API site, so could use its
Ajax library to provide cross-browser PUT and DELETE. If they wanted browser
usable methods, they could have used the standard "_method" parameter along
with POST, and convert it server-side.
This actually makes it a lot less discoverable for those of us not using the
HTML view. For instance, when using curl to browse to /vi/client/list, I
expect to get a list of clients. Instead, I get the following (I'd prefer to
show JSON here, but I get a 500 when I try it.):
curl -H "Accept: application/xml" https://api_test:[email protected]/v1/client/list/
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<response xmlns="https://api.snapbill.com/" status="ok" type="form"><fields><field type="textbox" name="query"><caption>Search query</caption></field><field type="number" name="page"><class>number</class><default>1</default><caption>Page</caption><min>1</min></field><field type="number" name="perpage"><class>number</class><default>25</default><caption>Clients per page</caption><max>50</max><min>1</min></field></fields></response>
When I try to GET
[https://api_test:[email protected]/v1/client/list/?...](https://api_test:[email protected]/v1/client/list/?number=2),
I get the same response, which I was not expecting. I had to POST to the same
URL in order to view the list, which is the wrong method.
There's also the issues of assuming a certain view in the end representation,
including CSS and JS in their HTML representation, and having different
default formats for different resources. All these make working with the API
annoying.
------
hammerdr
Why not just use the OPTIONS verb? You're overloading verbs in order to make
your API discoverable.
Discoverability is great but there's a supported (and standard) way of
accomplishing this already.
Examples:
GET /users
{users: [{name: 'Bob'}, {name: 'Alice'}]}
POST /users/create {name: 'Sally'}
{name: 'Sally', id: '3'}
OPTIONS /users
{links: [{rel: 'userList', url: '/users'}, {rel: 'addUser', url:
'/users/create', verb: 'POST'}]}
~~~
nbpoole
To quote the blog post:
"The reason for not supporting the DELETE/PUT methods is quite simple: by
reducing the possible interactions to what a standard browser performs
(GET/POST) we allow developers to interact with our api through their web
browser."
The same line of thinking applies to OPTIONS as well. Ideally, the API could
support both types of usage, but that wasn't what they were trying to
accomplish.
~~~
hammerdr
I'm more questioning why they thought that was a good idea when there are some
drawbacks to overloading GET and some known ways[1] to work around browser
limitations of PUT/DELETE/OPTIONS on forms.
For example, as a consumer of the API I would expect GET /clients to return a
list of clients and not a OPTIONS-like response of possible paths.
I'm definitely playing the purist here which is not my typical role. The
OPTIONS solution is not a well known one but it is something that I'd like to
be picked up.
[1] [http://guides.rubyonrails.org/form_helpers.html#how-do-
forms...](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/form_helpers.html#how-do-forms-with-
put-or-delete-methods-work)
~~~
qixxiq
The main reason at the end of the day is to land up with an API that is:
a. Fully browse-able with standard web browsers.
b. Acts in the exact same way with a browser as it does with any other client.
The api design functions on the simple idea of having a "GET" request act as a
discovery mechanism while "POST" requests perform operations and searches --
much like how most websites function.
I understand you might expect the client listing at GET /clients, but I
believe within a few minutes of looking at our design most people can work out
its rather a POST /clients/list. You'll be looking at the documentation for
almost any api you use, so I didn't really find that to be a major factor.
~~~
jsarch
FWIW, this comment:
"The api design functions on the simple idea of having a "GET" request act as
a discovery mechanism while "POST" requests perform operations and searches --
much like how most websites function."
should make its way into your blog post or final documentation. I was
thoroughly confused because there's no mention that GET and POST are actually
different in the blog post. Best of luck with the API creation.
------
jessedhillon
What problem is this solving?
As a developer I don't want to click around in a web browser to see what I'm
able to do at a particular API end point. I want good documentation to
describe the system accurately.
Do you have good docs? If not, this browser-friendly stuff isn't going to make
it easier for me to use. I don't want to look in Firebug or view source to
figure out what parameters to POST.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wounds taking weeks to heal on skin disappear in a week inside the mouth (2013) - bookofjoe
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/health/the-mouths-guard.html?ref=health
======
giardini
From the article: _" “It is a known observation among the vulgar that the
saliva is efficacious in cleansing foul wounds, and cicatrizing recent ones,”
wrote the 18th-century physician Herman Boerhaave. He was correct. Wounds that
would take several weeks to heal on one’s skin disappear in a week inside the
mouth."_
But the author of the article (not Boerhaave) seems to be missing several
points:
1) a wound inside the mouth is protected by tissue all about, and body
temperature is maintained as well. An external wound is ~half open to the
world and has no temperature maintenance on the open surface. Temperature is
important for the immune system to perform.
b) concerning the phrase "saliva is efficacious in cleansing foul wounds":
what Boerhaave is saying is that _licking_ one's wounds is efficacious. He's
not merely speaking of saliva floating about a wound inside a closed mouth.
The common phrase "to lick one's wounds" is not a false euphemism and is not
limited to animals other than humans. Licking a wound can help heal it,
sucking a wound can remove material that has been inserted into a wound and
can quickly route fresh blood to a wound site, aiding healing and flushing out
foreign material.
[https://www.quora.com/Does-licking-your-own-wound-help-
heal-...](https://www.quora.com/Does-licking-your-own-wound-help-heal-it)
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080723094841.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080723094841.htm)
[http://www.science20.com/news_releases/histatin_why_licking_...](http://www.science20.com/news_releases/histatin_why_licking_your_wounds_actually_works)
~~~
IncRnd
Placing an Activ Flex by Band-Aid on a skin cut seems to act as a true
temporary replacement "second skin", and the cut heals far more rapidly then a
regular band-aid. It heals in a similar time-scale as this article says is
regular for the mouth.
I'm sure there are other brands or technologies that act similarly, but once I
found this particular type of bandage I never had the thought of using
anything else.
~~~
refurb
While true, the reason covered skin wounds heal faster is often due to the
cover stops the drying out of the wound which slows healing.
~~~
IncRnd
Thank you. Though, I wasn't implying these bandages have spit in them.
------
goda90
As someone who occasionally suffers from canker sores, I wish it were true
that they'd heal faster than say a paper cut.
~~~
neolefty
Consider food allergies -- I used to suffer from canker sores and then
accidentally stopped drinking milk for 6 months (moved to a place where it
wasn't available) and voila they disappeared!
(I didn't actually notice that they had disappeared until I returned to milk-
land, and they came back. Took another month or so to establish the link
clearly, since there was 3-4 day delay between drinking milk and appearance of
canker sores. Then it took another couple of years to alter my habits ...)
~~~
derefr
It's not so much that you were drinking milk, as that you were drinking milk
_to answer thirst_ —i.e., you were drinking milk when dehydrated. When you're
dehydrated, the mucous membranes of your mouth and throat and sinuses become
highly absorbent to any fluid that passes by. If there are things dissolved in
solution in that fluid, they'll get absorbed into your mucous membranes too,
and stick around for quite a while (either until you drink something else;
until you exercise or take in a sauna, and sort of "sweat internally", purging
said membranes; or until your lymphatic system slowly flushes the contents of
your interstitial fluid out to your liver.)
To talk about canker sores, I first have to talk about dental plaque. Plaque
appears when both of these conditions are true:
1\. your mucous membranes are saturated with nutrients (such as those in milk,
or juice, or soda, or "saucy" foods) amenable to the growth of bacterial
biofilms; and
2\. you are dehydrated enough—or under the chronic effects of diuretics such
as caffeine—such that you don't consistently produce enough saliva to reach
the mucous membrane and battle the nascent bacterial colony.
(That's right: plaque may live on your teeth, but the food those bacteria
consume mostly isn't food stuck to/between your teeth; it's food "in" the
mucous membranes of your lips. This is why the regrowth speed of plaque seems
to have no correlation to how well you've brushed your teeth—the factor is how
much food they have access to, and brushing your teeth has no effect on the
nutritive content of your mucous membranes.)
Canker sores, then, happen when an established plaque (bacterial biofilm)
colony is pressed into a dehydrated mucous membrane, further isolating it from
the reach of saliva, for an extended period. Picture, say, a dirty tooth
pressed against your lower/upper lip as you sleep, with your face laying to
squeeze that part of your lip around the tooth, such that saliva can't get in.
So, ways to avoid the problem:
1\. brush your teeth at night (i.e. after you stop eating food.) It's more
important than brushing in the morning, if you want to prevent canker sores.
2\. If you're dehydrated, _drink water_ or another substance that contains few
bacteria-promoting nutrients (like unsweetened flavoured carbonated water, or
even hard liquor.) If you can't—if only milk/juice/soda/beer/coolers are being
served—then try to "chase" your drink with water as soon as possible. When you
do, swish some of the water in your mouth as if it was a mouthwash. Ensure
your mucous membranes themselves are getting hydrated.
3\. Get enough vitamin C. Subclinical hypovitaminosis C ("pre-scurvy") causes
the linings of your mucous membranes to weaken, making it easier for rough
spots on your teeth to cause micro-abrasions in them, which is where bacterial
biofilms get in. But make sure you're not "getting enough vitamin C" by
drinking orange juice when you're dehydrated!
~~~
darkerside
This was incredible! Thanks for sharing. I wish they taught more of this kind
of thing in grade school. Do you work in the dental field?
I've been reading about xylitol lately, a sweetener found in sugar free gum.
From what I can tell, it could potentially help with cavities because it can
help regenerate dentin. Not to mention gum seems to be generally helpful for
removing waste from teeth. Is this something you've heard about?
~~~
derefr
Xylitol is great! I can't stop eating these -- [https://www.amazon.ca/Xyla-
Brand-Xylitol-Raspberry-Candies/d...](https://www.amazon.ca/Xyla-Brand-
Xylitol-Raspberry-Candies/dp/B007PT82KO). And, indeed, they help, rather than
harm, your teeth, and discourage bacterial sinus infections.
Which reminds me of a rant:
You know what _doesn 't_ do either of those things? Any mouthwash you can buy
in the mouthwash aisle.
Ask a dentist about mouthwash. They'll recommend it—but only because the
alcohol temporarily shrinks your gums, which allows a toothbrush and/or floss
to scrape plaque out that was embedded deeper between the gum and the tooth.
Mouthwash _doesn 't_ kill bacteria. (Or, it does, but only for the 30 seconds
it's in your mouth—meaning that you'll have just created a power-vacuum that
other, worse bacteria from e.g. the back of your throat can intrude into. And
now the alcohol has also _dried out_ your mucous membranes!)
If a dentist needs to _prescribe_ you a mouthwash, on the other hand—for
example, to keep a wound inside your mouth clean post-surgery—they'll
prescribe something with ingredients completely unlike that in "regular"
mouthwash. Here's ([https://www.amazon.ca/Chlorhexidine-Gluconate-Antiseptic-
Pep...](https://www.amazon.ca/Chlorhexidine-Gluconate-Antiseptic-Peppermint-
Ecolab/dp/B01HNCQIYE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519799776&sr=8-1&keywords=chlorhexidine+gluconate))
an example of one.
The primary ingredient of "mouthwash that actually works" is _chlorhexidine_
—that's a chemical more commonly used as a surgical antiseptic (i.e. a "scrub"
doctors will sanitize their hands with before putting them inside your body.)
Conveniently, the fact that it's safe to touch your internal organs with, also
means that it's safe to touch your mucous membranes with. (Though it's not
entirely safe; it says stringently on such mouthwashes not to swallow any—but
not because it'd harm _you_ per se, just that it'd likely kill your intestinal
flora in much the same way an antibiotic would.)
Interestingly, chlorhexidine and xylitol work in similar ways—they're both
things bacteria intentionally take up into themselves, that then destroy the
bacteria from the inside. Xylitol just stalls the bacteria's metabolism,
starving it to death; while, IIRC, chlorhexidine throws off the bacteria's
osmotic regulation until it pops, much like highly-saline environments do—but
without doing the same to animal cells. Unlike xylitol, though, chlorhexidine
will stick around in the mucous membranes (until you do any of the stuff I
mentioned in the previous post) for _eight hours_ , protecting you all the
while. It's great. Everyone should use it, at least at night.
It's kind of weird, given all this, that it's not well-known, and not used in
regular mouthwashes, no? Well, much like you just can't convince some people
that a HWRNG-seeded CSPRNG is a valid source of OS entropy, you just can't
convince some people that long-term chlorhexidine use wouldn't result in
bacterial resistance—even though, in both cases, if there was any potential
for it to fail in "normal" use (OS entropy; mouth-washing), it would have
failed a long time ago in the "heavy-duty" use-case where it's already being
used (cryptography; surgery.)
Or, to put that another way: if doctors will put chlorhexidine on their hands
every day without worrying about growing MRSA under their fingernails, you can
put it in your mouth every day without worrying about growing MRSA in your
throat.
(Bonus pleasant fact: most prepared chlorhexidine mouthwash solutions are
sweetened _with xylitol_. So you're getting a double-effect from that.)
On the other hand, prepared chlorhexidine mouthwash isn't very cheap (the one
I linked above was $15 for a bottle that'll last less than a month), and
preparing such a mouthwash yourself from concentrate is really a hassle (pure
2-4% chlorhexidine gluconate is much cheaper, but just diluting it with
water/alcohol would create a solution that only retains potency for ~1 day;
you'd need to add other chemicals to make it shelf-stable.)
But, if you can't (or just don't want to) get chlorhexidine mouthwash, I still
wouldn't recommend using alcohol-based mouthwash. For battling gingivitis or a
canker sore or whatever else, Xylitol actually works pretty well as a "quick-
fix" alternative. That is, it works well _if_ you exploit the very property I
mentioned before—increased mucous-membrane absorption and retention under
dehydration. So, here's a "life hack":
• Go buy a box of xylitol sweetener packets (the kind you'd pour into coffee.
You can probably find them sorted into the "nutrition products for diabetics"
area of a drug store.)
• Before you sleep, brush your teeth, floss, swish with water, spit. And
then...
• Dump one of those xylitol sweetener packets _directly into your mouth_ , not
dissolved in liquid or anything. Spread it around; get it onto the insides of
your lips, onto your teeth, etc.
• Let it absorb. Don't swallow it; just let it sit.
• Go to sleep, just like that.
_That_ will protect your mouth, at least a little. Far more than Listerine
ever would.
\---
Oh, and as a separate thought: if you have recurring canker sores, oral
thrush, throat/sinus infections, ear infections, etc., despite good oral
hygiene—there's likely a "hidden fortress" of bacterial biofilm somewhere out
of reach, probably your maxillary sinuses or adenoids or Eustachian tubes.
These areas are "safe" for bacteria because they're damp from breathing, but
few actual fluids reach them.
Want a permanent solution? Flush them out. For the nose, I see people trying
nasal lavage ("neti pots" et al), and for the ears, I see people going to an
ENT to get microsuction. Neither of these are really needed. The biofilms
aren't invincible; they're just _dry_ —too dry for your body's natural
defences to loosen them. Drip a few drops of mineral oil down your nose/into
your ears, once per day. After two days, you should start to feel the need to
clear your sinus passages by snorting, inwards. Just keep doing that. And
voila, the hidden fortress has been destroyed.
------
dempseye
I wonder if the instinct to lick wounds is related to this.
~~~
Clubber
It is. As is mothers kissing their children's boo-boos.
------
delibes
And yet we still can't heal damaged gums easily. When somebody figures that
out, they'll be rich.
~~~
klipt
You mean periodontics? I think the main problem there is horizontal bone loss.
Periodontists can laser off unhealthy gum tissue, but once the jawbone has
retreated, there's less scaffolding for healthy gum to regrow on, so it won't
grow back to the same level you originally had.
Figure out how to reverse horizontal bone loss though, and you'll be rich!
~~~
criddell
I recently had a post for a dental implant installed and the doctor used
ground cadaver (or maybe bovine) bone to help grow new bone around the post
area. Is that related to what you are talking about?
~~~
klipt
According to the periodontist I spoke to, bone tissue grafts work for vertical
bone loss (a dent in your bone in a small area) not horizontal bone loss (bone
has been lost uniformly over a wide area).
------
euler_
That had disappointingly little content. Mouth wounds heal faster because of
background saliva, but why?
~~~
bookofjoe
Histatins: antimicrobial peptides with therapeutic potential
ABSTRACT
Histatins are a group of antimicrobial peptides, found in the saliva of man
and some higher primates, which possess antifungal properties. Histatins bind
to a receptor on the fungal cell membrane and enter the cytoplasm where they
target the mitochondrion. They induce the non-lytic loss of ATP from actively
respiring cells, which can induce cell death. In addition, they have been
shown to disrupt the cell cycle and lead to the generation of reactive oxygen
species. Their mode of action is distinct from those exhibited by the
conventional azole and polyene drugs, hence histatins may have applications in
controlling drug-resistant fungal infections. The possibility of utilising
histatins for the control of fungal infections of the oral cavity is being
actively pursued with the antifungal properties of topical histatin
preparations and histatin-impregnated denture acrylic being evaluated. Initial
clinical studies are encouraging, having demonstrated the safety and efficacy
of histatin preparations in blocking the adherence of the yeast Candida
albicans to denture acrylic, retarding plaque formation and reducing the
severity of gingivitis. Histatins may represent a new generation of
antimicrobial compounds for the treatment of oral fungal infections and have
the advantage, compared with conventional antifungal agents, of being a normal
component of human saliva with no apparent adverse effects on host tissues and
having a mode of action distinct to azole and polyene antifungals.
Kavanagh, Kevin and Dowd, Susan (2004) Histatins: antimicrobial peptides with
therapeutic potential. Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, 56.
[http://eprints.maynoothuniversity.ie/354/1/R03014.pdf](http://eprints.maynoothuniversity.ie/354/1/R03014.pdf)
~~~
bookofjoe
Histatins are the major wound-closure stimulating factors in human saliva as
identified in a cell culture assay
ABSTRACT
Wounds in the oral cavity heal much faster than skin lesions. Among other
factors, saliva is generally assumed to be of relevance to this feature.
Rodent saliva contains large amounts of growth factors such as epidermal
growth factor (EGF) and nerve growth factor (NGF). In humans, however, the
identity of the involved compounds has remained elusive, especially since EGF
and NGF concentrations are ∼100,000 times lower than those in rodent saliva.
Using an in vitro model for wound closure, we examined the properties of human
saliva and the fractions that were obtained from saliva by high-performance
liquid chromotography (HPLC) separation. We identified histatin 1 (Hst1) and
histatin 2 (Hst2) as major wound-closing factors in human saliva. In contrast,
the d-enantiomer of Hst2 did not induce wound closure, indicating
stereospecific activation. Furthermore, histatins were actively internalized
by epithelial cells and specifically used the extracellular signal-regulated
kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2) pathway, thereby enhancing epithelial migration. This
study demonstrates that members of the histatin family, which up to now were
implicated in the antifungal weaponry of saliva, exert a novel function that
likely is relevant for oral wound healing.
Oudhoff, M. J., Bolscher, J. G. M., Nazmi, K., Kalay, H., van 't Hof, W.,
Nieuw Amerongen, A. V., Veerman, E. C. I.
[http://www.fasebj.org/doi/pdf/10.1096/fj.08-112003](http://www.fasebj.org/doi/pdf/10.1096/fj.08-112003)
~~~
euler_
Thanks for the information! After reading the abstracts, I still have two
question.
1\. It sounds like the mechanism for killing cells is very general. Why do
histatins not attack somatic cells?
2\. Do mouth wounds simply heal faster because the mouth is cleaner?
~~~
IntronExon
The cells lining the entire upper GI are exposed to digestive enzymes, and are
perforce replaced rapidly and constantly. Until bicarbonate rich bile is added
to the mixture in the duodenum, those enzymes (and acids) eat your own cells
too. Chemotherapy plays havoc with your GI tract because it selectively kills
cells which rapidly divide.
As for histamines, mast cells are designed to respond to them and rupture as
part of your inflammatory cycle. They release more cytokines, recruiting
neutrophils and in general telling your immune system to attack.
~~~
classichasclass
Histatins, not histamines.
~~~
IntronExon
Oops, thanks for the correction!
------
chapill
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratified_squamous_epithelium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratified_squamous_epithelium)
Mouths heal faster because of the type of cells in there. Licking your wounds
is a good way to get them infected. Use antibiotic creme and a bandage.
~~~
bookofjoe
As a physician, I demur: avoid anything but copious irrigation with water ±
bandage.
~~~
Bartweiss
If I'm reading that correctly, you're arguing against antibiotic or
sterilizing agents in favor of extensive rinsing without only water.
It certainly wouldn't surprise me to hear that Neosporin et al are usually
unnecessary, but are they actually bad? And if they're bad because antibiotic
resistance, are things like hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol also bad?
~~~
logfromblammo
I think doc is saying, "Please don't make your wound worse with dubious
remedies before you come in to show it to me."
Your mouth is full of bacteria, some of which could be harmful when introduced
into an open wound. Your home first-aid kit is unlikely to be perfectly
sterile, or as versatile as an entire medical clinic. If you are in the
wilderness, and licking is the only means you have at your disposal to clean a
wound, go for it. Your mouth is less dirty than actual dirt. Otherwise, use
filtered, boiled water to wash, and a clean, sterile bandage to dress. [A
single application of] antibiotic ointment is unlikely to hurt, but painting
the surrounding skin with iodine would be better, and that kind of
antimicrobial power isn't typically found at home, unless you have livestock
and didn't care for the magnitude of your vet bills.
~~~
bookofjoe
Published August 2017
Povidone iodine in wound healing: A review of current concepts and practices
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Of the many antimicrobial agents available, iodophore-based
formulations such as povidone iodine have remained popular after decades of
use for antisepsis and wound healing applications due to their favorable
efficacy and tolerability. Povidone iodine's broad spectrum of activity,
ability to penetrate biofilms, lack of associated resistance, anti-
inflammatory properties, low cytotoxicity and good tolerability have been
cited as important factors, and no negative effect on wound healing has been
observed in clinical practice. Over the past few decades, numerous reports on
the use of povidone iodine have been published, however, many of these studies
are of differing design, endpoints, and quality. More recent data clearly
supports its use in wound healing.
METHODS: Based on data collected through PubMed using specified search
criteria based on above topics and clinical experience of the authors, this
article will review preclinical and clinical safety and efficacy data on the
use of povidone iodine in wound healing and its implications for the control
of infection and inflammation, together with the authors' advice for the
successful treatment of acute and chronic wounds.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Povidone iodine has many characteristics that position
it extraordinarily well for wound healing, including its broad antimicrobial
spectrum, lack of resistance, efficacy against biofilms, good tolerability and
its effect on excessive inflammation. Due to its rapid, potent, broad-spectrum
antimicrobial properties, and favorable risk/benefit profile, povidone iodine
is expected to remain a highly effective treatment for acute and chronic
wounds in the foreseeable future.
Bigliardi PL, Alsagoff SAL, El-Kafrawi HY, Pyon JK, Wa CTC, Villa MA.
Int J Surg. 2017 Aug;44:260-268. doi: 10.1016/j.ijsu.2017.06.073. Epub June 23
2017.
[http://www.journal-
surgery.net/article/S1743-9191(17)30536-8...](http://www.journal-
surgery.net/article/S1743-9191\(17\)30536-8/fulltext)
~~~
logfromblammo
[citation appreciated]
------
yogrish
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yux9i/e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yux9i/eli5_how_do_cuts_on_the_inside_of_your_mouth_on/)
------
everyone
Thats an example of good writing imo. Short and concise.
------
smdz
Weird to know that this is not common knowledge. I have known since I was a
kid that applying saliva on a fresh wound helps recover it faster
------
overcast
I always assumed it was because the environment is kept moist. Which is why
you bandage wounds, and not let them scab over.
~~~
tjpaudio
You bandage wounds to keep out bacteria, and it is your skin having to fight
off less infections that make it heal faster. Consider that Neosporin,aka
generic triple antibiotic ointment, does increase the speed of external wound
healing. It does this because of its antibiotic properties. Nothing to do with
moisture far as I know, where did you get that notion?
~~~
overcast
The proof that moist wounds heal faster than dry wounds came back in 1962,
thanks to Dr. George D. Winter and his landmark paper, "Formation Of The Scab
And The Rate Of Epithelialization Of Superficial Wounds In The Skin Of The
Young Domestic Pig"1\. His research showed that, contrary to the conventional
wisdom at the time that wounds should be allowed to dry out and form scabs to
promote healing, wounds instead heal faster if kept moist. Winter's work began
the evolution of modern wound dressings that promote moist wound
healing.Specifically, cell growth needs moisture and the main goal of moist
wound therapy is to create and maintain these optimal moist conditions. Cells
can grow, divide and migrate at an increased rate to enhance the formation of
new tissue. During this phase of wound healing, an aqueous medium with several
nutrients and vitamins is essential for cell metabolism and growth.
A study published in the Annals of Plastic Surgery aimed to determine the
effects of moist wound care. Researchers used a porcine wound model, to
compare wet conditions using saline, moist conditions using hydrocolloid
dressings and dry conditions using sterile gauze. The scientists found an
increase in the presence of liquids led to faster healing (wet wounds healed
after six days, while moist ones took seven days and dry wounds took eight).
Additionally, moist and wet wound care led to less necrosis and inflammation
as well as higher quality in the newly regenerated epidermis.
[http://www.woundsource.com/blog/clearing-air-about-moist-
vs-...](http://www.woundsource.com/blog/clearing-air-about-moist-vs-dry-wound-
healing)
[https://www.sunoven.com/how-to-heal-open-wounds-
faster/](https://www.sunoven.com/how-to-heal-open-wounds-faster/)
[https://int.hansaplast.com/advisor/health-and-
protection/moi...](https://int.hansaplast.com/advisor/health-and-
protection/moist-wound-healing)
[https://www.advancedtissue.com/debunking-wound-cares-
biggest...](https://www.advancedtissue.com/debunking-wound-cares-biggest-
myth/)
~~~
meric
Are dry wounds are less likely to be infected than wet wounds? A wet wound
that gets infected can take more time to heal than dry wounds that doesn't?
------
devsafrun
try a dip of "Policresulen"
your body will 'straighten out' due to pain, but wounds usually takes 2~3 days
to heal
------
kayall
Mary Roach. Her books are quite fun to read.
The titles are good too.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
------
jwilk
(2013)
~~~
sctb
Thanks! Updated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Makes $900 Million Stalking-Horse Bid For Nortel Patents - ankimal
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/google-makes-900-million-stalking-horse-bid-for-nortel-patents/
======
roc
I wonder whether Google's support for Patent Reform will follow a similar
course as their support for Net Neutrality.
That is: will it get dropped the moment they secure a deal that puts them on
the other side of the fence.
I mean, that's what this really is: Google attempting to sweeten their patent
portfolio so they can land cross-licensing agreements with the other tech
giants. If successful, their self-interest would be to maintain the patent
system.
And I can't say I'm optimistic they'll stick to their currently-stated
principles once those run counter to their self-interest.
------
CountSessine
I posted a little while ago that Google has very few patents of it's own -
only about 600 that I can find. Apple has about 3700, Microsoft about 17000.
HTC has next to none.
Now Google wants to spend a billion dollars to buy 6000 Nortel patents. I
guess Google learned that you don't bring smart employees, a sane corporate
culture, genuine innovation, and a good reputation among your customers to a
patent fight.
Another interesting angle to this whole patent auction going on here in
canuckistan is going to be Google vs. Huawei. Both of these companies are in
the telecom sector, both of them have a metric ton of money (although maybe
Huawei has the advantage here - theirs is pretty much guaranteed by the
Chinese treasury, in spite of whatever ridiculous claims of independence
they've made), both of them are competing with established players with huge
patent portfolios, but neither of them have many patents themselves. Huawei
has already made it known that they want those patents too. We'll see how this
turns out.
------
DanielRibeiro
It is coming: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-coming-
software...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-coming-software-
patent-apocalypse.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Aibek Esengulov of MakeUseOf.com Shares His Startup Story - akramquraishi
http://www.foundora.com/2010/10/26/aibek-esengulov-co-founder-of-makeuseof-com-shares-his-startup-story/
======
retroafroman
This is an excellent example of someone bootstrapping up a community and
profitable business. Also, I've worked with Aibek on a project I proposed to
them (which didn't end up working out) and he and the rest of the crew at
MakeUseOf are great to work with. They also seem to be really ahead of the
pack on what's new and actually useful on the web. MakeUseOf tells me what,
why, and how of apps that are relevant right now.
~~~
akramquraishi
Yep, It was nice talking to Aibek. They are a passionate lot. And the quality
as he said, keeps me stick around to MakeUseOf.com
------
akramquraishi
Excerpts: As an entrepreneur, I think the single most important lesson or the
quality I would suggest to someone is persistence. For the first two years, I
would work every day on MakeUseOf without seeing anything back in return.
------
SyedNaimath
I agree, one shall not be careless when it comes to domain security. Days and
even months of your hardwork can go in vain. And, the efforts you put-in is
far more important/precious than money; so one must be careful about it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AdventureLog NZ - FinnLeSueur
Https://adventurelog.nz
======
FinnLeSueur
A site for users of the extensive tramping (hiking) hut system in New Zealand
to leave little logs about the hut/track so future trampers can make more
informed decisions!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best data-store service with a JSONP/CORS REST API? - some1else
I've got a few client-side apps in JavaScript and I'm looking for a place to store the data. I don't want to run my own persistence API for every one of these little experiments, but I need to have access to the records they create, so I can't use localStorage.<p>I'm aware of Amazon S3[1] and I'm also looking at MongoHQ[2]. They both have a REST API, but I'm not sure they support JSONP or Cross Origin Resource Sharing. Do you know of any data-store service with an API like that?<p>Thanks
======
skram
So you're going to INSERT directly from Javascript? Seems like potential
security issues but back on point..
Check out dropbox.js blogpost: <https://tech.dropbox.com/?p=345> Even better
seems to be Firebase which touts itself as "Dropbox for your app's data":
<http://www.firebase.com/how-it-works.html>
------
some1else
[1]
[http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/APIRes...](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/APIRest.html)
[2] <http://support.mongohq.com/api>
------
oayandosu
Check out <http://deployd.com/> It's very well done.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Research: Poetic Machine Translation - alecco
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/10/poetic-machine-translation.html
======
abecedarius
Another step towards Trurl's electronic bard!
If you'd like to see some unrelated but available and open-source code to
generate rhyming metric verse: <http://github.com/darius/languagetoys>. Unlike
the paper, this doesn't even try to preserve sense -- it just uses n-gram
statistics.
------
gjm11
The person who reviewed their paper did so in verse:
[http://research.google.com/archive/papers/review_in_verse.ht...](http://research.google.com/archive/papers/review_in_verse.html)
.
------
trop
This gives me the bad feeling of when SIGGRAPH used to have papers on
"artistic" filters (instant impressionism! instant woodcut!) by people without
a feel for the expressiveness of the medium which they are simulating. Such
work sometimes seems like subtle satire.
OTOH, I don't want to give the good Googlers short shrift, and it is certainly
welcome to consider the meter (and maybe rhyme) of generated text.
------
8ren
This is awesome, but no demo webapp.
------
clt
a research paper sublime
machine translation!
autumn rhymes abound
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kisan Network (YC W16) is an online marketplace for Indian agriculture - adi_agarwalla
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/09/y-combinator-backed-kisan-network-is-transforming-the-rural-indian-agricultural-market/
======
adi_agarwalla
Co-founder Aditya here. I'd love to answer any questions you may have, so
please free to fire them my way!
The reason why we decided to build this is because the agricultural market in
India is plagued by a middleman driven inefficient physical system where
farmers do not have a say in the crop sale process. This is different from how
the industry works in the US. But the fact is that in India, a huge majority
(~85%) of farmers are small and marginal and therefore, have to deal with this
system.
~~~
srisaila
I've had something like this in my mind for quite a while now! I know what the
situation is like because I've first-hand knowledge of all the trials and
tribulations farmers in India go through when it comes to selling their
produce. Already, irregular rainfall makes their lives miserable!
~~~
adi_agarwalla
Yes, farmers in general and especially in India face numerous challenges. From
our own interactions with them, we found this to be their major one as it is
directly linked to their livelihood and the income they make.
------
social_entrp_2
Hey Ditty (can I call you Ditty?), great work. Truly impressed. I've been a
social entrepreneur myself for many a year (since I was 18, so 2 years ago),
so it's always great to see fellow entrepreneurs tackling the problems that
define our time.
Two questions, one technical, one not. Do you guys use a microservices
architecture on the backend? And if not, why not? Also, what is your MBTI
(Meyers-Brigg personality type)?
Best, J
~~~
adi_agarwalla
Nothing like that as we don't need one!
As for MBTI, mine is ENTJ.
------
writetoalok
So, why is your website - [http://kisannetwork.in/](http://kisannetwork.in/)
devoid of any link to access this market place that you speak of ..?
- No App Download link
- No Telephone numbers toll free or otherwise
- No product listing, (items, prices etc.) on the website
- Just one email address to buy from farmers on your platform
~~~
adi_agarwalla
Thanks for the question. We are currently in public beta in only one location
in the country and as a result, the marketplace isn't live for everyone to be
able to use. But, we are expanding this year to more locations in the country!
------
reddyonrails
This require advertisement and trust from farmers; I had similar idea but with
co-operative way .
Good luck and how do you handle issues like trade unions etc?
~~~
adi_agarwalla
Yes, trust from farmers is extremely important. Maybe the most important
aspect here and we work daily to ensure and build that.
We haven't faced those sort of issues yet.
------
akirekadu
Making my first HN comment to say thank you for creating something like this!
I come from a farmer family. Sustaining is very hard for small farmers because
middlemen make most of the profit in the current system (then there are pests
and unpredictability of price/rain etc to deal with).
Best of luck!
~~~
adi_agarwalla
Thanks a lot. You are very right in saying that middlemen make most of the
profit in this industry and we are trying our best to ensure that both end
buyers and sellers get the best deal possible because of the efficiency we
bring into the system.
------
eklavya
I wish you best. Really, awesome work. I deeply appreciate your efforts to
challenge this gigantic problem.
~~~
adi_agarwalla
Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
------
as1193
Great work Aditya!
------
misbah143
Amazing work man!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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