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HealthyReads.com - a Reddit for your health - cl42 http://beta.healthyreads.com/ ====== cl42 A friend of mine recently launched <http://www.healthyreads.com> and they're getting a good user base. The idea: share and discuss stories related to health -- your health, public health, etc. They're well meaning and are looking for people to help with technical work. If you're interested, message here or contact them. Feedback on site design, features, etc. also welcome!
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Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy - chrisaycock http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/admissions/ugrad/Computer_Science_and_Philosophy ====== mayank Caveat: this is an anecdote, and your mileage may vary, but I think it illustrates a point of contention in the "two cultures". As a computer science major in the US, I once took a "philosophy of mind" course out of a genuine multi-faceted interest in AI. I was working on undergraduate machine learning research at the time, so I used to pore over the green Norvig/Stewart AI book like a religious text. Unfortunately, the philosophy course seemed deeply rooted in classical theories like dualism (which I think of as a rationalization for religious dogma), ignoring any and all modern advances in neuroscience. The final straw was the lecture unit on "artificial minds". There was a lot of uninformed speculation about AI, which really disappointed me. The professor (and textbooks) completely ignored beautiful advances like Godel's theorem, which would make a great foundation for philosophizing about axiomatic "minds". I tried to speak up about what AI really is, even tried bringing Russell/Norvig into class, but I don't know if it was the professor or the students who were more resistant to facts clogging up the debate. Anyway, I have nothing against philosophers, and I believe that they are an important part of the intellectual framework of academia. However, in inter- disciplinary cases like this, I really hope that they get people that can successfully straddle both sides of the divide. Stephen Hawking's quote in his new book comes to mind. I don't remember the exact words, but it was along the lines that a lot (not all, naturally) of philosophers have closed themselves off to science and thus denied themselves access to the greatest intellectual developments of the 20th century. ~~~ scott_s If physics was taught the same way philosophy is, we'd learn about the four elements before getting to Newtonian mechanics. ~~~ sp332 Every high school chemistry textbook I've seen actually works this way! It's horrible. The chapter starts with Dalton, works up through Rutherford and Bohr, and the last two or three I've seen ended there. Each section is presented as fact, and the kids are quizzed to make sure they know the material, before tearing it all down and teaching them a new bogus theory in the next section. Ugh. ~~~ kanak Am I the only one who enjoyed this approach? I was taught atomic theory chronologically starting with the plum pudding model, then rutherford's model, then Bohr's model and finally the quantum models. At each stage, the focus was on: * What observations led the scientists in question to propose the model? e.g. in Rutherford's case, there was an extensive discussion on the gold-foil experiment, the observations he saw, and the conclusions he drew from it (e.g. that a lot of mass must be packed into a tiny space). * What properties follow from adopting them model? e.g. with Rutherford's model, the notion of an accelerating charged particle (electron) would mean that the electron would continuously lose energy until it crashes into the nucleus. obviously this isn't happening. * Repeat the cycle: how did bohr's model attempt to overcome these problems. We did the same with the theories on acids and bases: how Arrhenius' concept required the notion of liquid to be present, how Bronsted and Lowry formulated it more generally as proton donation and acceptance, and how Lewis formulated it in terms of electrons. I like that at each step, we learned WHY these models were proposed and how they explained the phenomena seen until then. We learned WHAT the consequences of making a physical model are, and we learned WHAT new observations could not be accounted for. Then we learned about how concepts are generalized to account for more information. In contrast, if I had just been shown a beautiful but complex model at the beginning, I'm not sure I would have learned as much or held as much interest. The difference is like seeing a very elegant proof to a problem vs seeing the different half-correct approaches culminating into a final solution. I feel that if the goal is to teach people how to think like scientists, show them the process not the final result. ~~~ eavc I last took chemistry in 10th grade, and I too was exposed to the progressive chronology of atomic theory. While today I would appreciate it for what you point out, at the time, those lessons were lost on me, and I was a thoughtful kid. I think if the pedagogy were more oriented around the progess of the scientific method, it would have been fantastic. It seemed misguided, though, in the context of a chemistry chapter on the nature of atoms. Let's also not fail to acknowledge that a gifted teacher can make all the difference in how a given approach might be, and I imagine that the more complex, contextual picture that respects that our understanding is still evolving would be superior in the hands of a gifted teacher. ------ DanielBMarkham These two fields have been begging to merge for several years now. Great to see it happening. I'd like to see extended to a post-grad program. You could choose either business coding or academic coding. Both are rich areas for combining these two disciplines. Philosophy gives CS a broader, more conceptual view of how things fit together, and CS gives philosophy something useful to do -- it provides a hard edge from which to judge whether one philosophical stance is more or less useful in a given situation. ~~~ _delirium You can manage to do something like that as a CS PhD if you have the right advisor, though it's harder to pull off than it used to be as CS has gotten much more obsessed about being a rigorous science. It especially used to be the case in AI, and in some corners still is, that a good thesis makes conceptual and philosophical advances in analyzing problems and domains (or proposing new problems), which are "validated" not only via mathematical theorems, user studies, or benchmarks, but by arguing for your conclusions, the way a philosophy thesis would (though of course technical results can be used to bolster the argument where appropriate). The PhD theses Douglas Hofstadter supervises are an example. ~~~ Poleris I would deeply appreciate advice from you or anyone who has thoughts. I did a double major in CS and Business during my undergrad at CMU ('09) and focused very much on practical learning (read: programming/web apps) and corporate/startup endeavors. However, I was always drawn towards studying the relationship between minds and machines on my own time. Mostly triggered from Godel's theorem, reading GEB/AI books, and some obsessive impulse to learn about my own mind. Now that I'm working my first job, this impulse is stronger than ever. I find myself reading papers/books on philosophy, anthropic mechanism, AI, etc. during what free time I have. I suspect that I should study a PhD in this subject, given this impulse doesn't seem to be going away. However, I have absolutely no research experience and had little contact with professors during my undergrad. Would you advise I seriously pursue this intellectual interest as a PhD (versus during my free time)? If so, do you have any thoughts on how I should go about applying? Given that most applications require research recommendations, I was thinking of contacting professors of papers I admired, but am not sure how well that approach would work. Thank you for reading! My email is in my profile if that works better. ~~~ poet A PhD is a formal license to do research and it marks the start (not the end) of a lifetime of research. You need such a license if you plan to work at a company with a rigid corporate ladder or in academia. The only additional reason to get a PhD besides the license is an increased probability of being in contact with peers who you can collaborate with. People often undervalue this but empirically it's pretty clear what the benefits of having at least one research collaborator are. If you actually do decide to go for a PhD, you're going to need at least one strong recommendation that speaks to your research ability if you want to get into a top program. Your undergrad institution and GPA put you in the running to be sure, but admissions committees are looking for evidence that you can perform research. Recommendations that say "this kid got an A in my class and is a good student" don't really have an impact on your application either way. ------ zoomzoom As an undergrad philosopher who became self-taught hacker after graduation, I can say with confidence that this is a great synthesis. While contemporary academic philosophy is little more than a circular passing of jargon, there is no doubt that the practice of philosophy has inspired great science. Kant, for example, wrote books about anatomy and other empirical topics prior to this metaphysical work, and made prescient suggestions about the existence of other galaxies and the theory of evolution. Perhaps an infusion of CS will help win Philosophy back from the ivory tower. ~~~ rpbertp13 As another undergrad philosopher turned self-taught hacker I wouldn't see why you'd want Philosophy to come down from the ivory tower. It's hard to imagine what would be of Philosophy today if Kant had spent all his life writing about science and hadn't given us the Critique of Pure Reason. ~~~ zoomzoom The point is that the CPR was only possible because of his earlier work in the "hard" sciences, at least in IMHO. ------ boredguy8 How does an American get in to a program like this? Especially if, say hypothetically, they dropped out of school to work. ~~~ rm445 The teaching at Oxford (and Cambridge) is stellar and more Americans should consider it as an option. Getting onto an undergraduate programme is competitive but egalitarian: you need to show you are a top performer academically and then impress at an interview. Your competition at the application stage is (very roughly speaking) the smartest kid from every British school. Very few of them will get in; every course has many more applicants than places. The Oxford University Entrance requirements, [http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/courses...](http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/courses/courses_and_entrance_requirements/) , state the following: "US qualifications: Successful candidates would typically have SAT Reasoning Test scores of at least 700 in Critical Reading, Mathematics and the Writing Paper, or ACT with a score of at least 32 out of 36. We would also expect Grade 5 in three or more Advanced Placement tests in appropriate subjects or SAT Subject Tests in three appropriate subjects at 700 or better." \- I have no idea what that all means, but for comparison, every single Brit applying will have straight A-grades in their A-levels, and selection is almost entirely based on the interview (and in some cases, extra advanced examinations). So take these entrance requirements with a pinch of salt; they're necessary but not sufficient. All that said, the colleges have extremely wide lee-way in how they make their offers, so exceptional candidates with a slightly offbeat scholastic record might have a chance. Some cynics also note that foreign students may have an advantage because they bring in far more money. But all in all the academic requirements are quite high. To sum up, it's very hard to get in, but not because of prejudice or snobbery, just intense competition. ~~~ corin_ Overall a good answer, however there is something to add. For British students, once you turn twenty-one you no longer have the same strict entry requirements, instead it's more a case of proving that you're the kind of person they want than showing what exams you've passed. (Though they're likely to ask you to do some studying before applying, to demonstrate that you're willing/able to learn.) Most likely the same for international 'mature students' as well. ~~~ user24 Yeah, I applied as a mature student to an MSc program and was accepted. At the time I had a first class IT and Philosophy BA, 4-ish years commercial programming experience, and an E grade at AS level Psychology. ------ rdouble I did a math and philosophy double major. The danger of a degree like this is that the stark reality of a programming job will seem unbearably boring in comparison to what you studied in school. ~~~ etherealG I would say you have the wrong type of programming job then. Some can be massively creative and require "philosophical" thought. Areas that come to mind are the ones in computer science which bleed over naturally into philosophy, e.g. AI. ~~~ nervechannel Yes, and graduates with an interdisciplinary background and strong reasoning skills are more likely to get the interesting jobs than pure software engineers who know JUnit inside-out. (Generalizing from myself with a sample size of one) ------ user24 I completed my MSc in Computer Science at Oxford in 2009. My undergrad degree was a joint honours IT and Philosophical Studies BA (UoW Lampeter). From my (limited) knowledge of how comlab/Oxford works, it looks like students will be splitting their time between the philosophy department and comlab. I can't quite see how they're marrying the two together. I know from my first degree that it's a great combination - there's more crossover than you'd initially think. But it does rather seem as though you'd just be splitting your time between two very different departments, rather than literally studying the two subjects in harmony. Interesting development though. (PS: happy to answer your questions about Oxford/CS/applying/etc) ------ niels Peter Naur (Turing award winner) wrote an Antiphilosophical Dictionary. <http://www.naur.com/Antiphil.html>. ------ ezyang I'm a computer scientist currently taking the History and Philosophy of Science course at Cambridge (an interesting combination that is one of the perks of being an exchange student) and wholeheartedly endorse this. Logic, with its philosophical roots, has had an enormous impact on Computer Science, and I believe Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Mathematics have a lot to say about Computer Science. (AI is a kind of special child: I think you need some neuroscience added in as well.) ------ jasamer I'm studying Computer Science+Philosophy in Munich, although, technically, Philosophy is a part of my CS studies (one can choose a subject different from CS to do some credits in, many choose Math/Physics, I chose Philosophy). The fun thing is that when I wrote my motivational letter about why I wanted to do Philosophy, my reasoning why I'd want to do it was almost the same as in this article. ------ pauldoerwald I recently completed my M.Sc in Software Engineering at the University of Oxford (Soft Eng is closely affiliated with ComLab, but is a slightly separate department) and I can only speak well of the program, its lecturers, and its resources. This looks like a great program; if I were 18 again I might consider going to Oxford for this undergrad degree. ~~~ chrisaycock There are several Oxonians on HN from the looks of it. I read for my DPhil in Computing, as did @cperciva. ~~~ swombat There certainly are. The Oxbridge mafia is everywhere _shifty eyes_. I'm pretty sure there's at least a few dozen moderately active HN users from Oxford (I'm one). ~~~ jedc And there are a number of Cambridge grads here, too. (And quite a few that are YC founders!) ------ simonsarris My college (RPI) had been pushing something very similar for a while now, which is why I have a degree in Computer Science and Philosophy. They strongly encouraged CS majors to dual-major in CS/Philosophy or CS/Psychology. It was called the "Minds and Machines" program and was a precursor to their full-on undergraduate Cognitive Science program, Which didn't exist when I started in 2006 but does today. I went in as Computer Science and picked up the CS/Philosophy dual-major in my first semester after talking at length to my advisor (who was head of Minds and Machines and is now head of Cognitive Science). People ask me about it a lot when they find out, but to me it always seemed like an impeccably good match. ~~~ gwern > My college (RPI) had been pushing something very similar for a while now, > which is why I have a degree in Computer Science and Philosophy. That almost happened to me. I started with CS at RIT, but since they didn't have a philosophy major, I left as a sophomore. Apparently, the year after I left, they got a major. I was told by a professor that I was one of the examples used in the lobbying for the major. This didn't make me feel much better. ------ bobds I was reminded of the following excerpt in Howard Marks' book "Mr. Nice", who wanted to study Philosophy of Science in Oxford University many decades ago: "There was a problem with respect to how my diploma course would be financed. In those days there were two main grant-giving bodies funding postgraduate study: the Department of Education and the Science Research Council. The former limited its grants to graduates in non-scientific subjects while the latter would only fund students undertaking research degrees in the pure sciences. These regulations precluded my Philosophy of Science studies being funded by either body." ------ michaelleland Strongly reminiscent of John Galt's (and his friends') degrees in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand--they studied physics and philosophy together. Then then changed the world. ------ joshrule I actually majored in both computer science and philosophy at a school with a top 5 CS program and a top 50 philosophy program. I found the combination useful, but eventually grew frustrated with much of the philosophy. My classes often spent more time splitting hairs than trying to say useful things. The philosophy that actually proved most useful were my logic courses, and one or two papers from philosophy of mind. That said, philosophy is incredibly important. But, as PG has noted, we tend to do a poor job of it (<http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html>). We need to spend more time focused on saying useful, testable things. In short, the best scientific results merge with philosophy. So, everyone should be a philosopher, but should do the majority of their philosophy as science. Again, both philosophy and computer science are important, but after studying both pretty intensely for 3.5 years (I graduated with over 180 credit hours), you have to pick and choose the philosophy. It's mostly useful for setting the initial biases on which the rest of your science will depend and for continuing to think about things science can't speak to, yet. ------ igravious Hey, get this ... Maybe Comp. Sci. is too important to be in the "Sciences". What about all those in the humanities that would benefit from knowing how to code and having the basics of knowledge about data structures and algorithms? I know many numbers of people with history degrees, philosophy degrees (myself included), you name it - who taught themselves how to code because it was impossible for them to take comp sci course as part of humanities. There is this new field of electronic poetry where poets use the power of computers and the internet to create a new kind of poetry. These people generally come from a background in literature and they are very creative types but they have to enlist the help of graphics designers and programmers to do computer side of things as opposed to the poetic side of things. It is like literacy. Before the twentieth century pervasive literacy was not the norm. I would argue that computers are nearly too ubiquitous and will only become more and more so that computer literacy is a real hindrance. The option should be there to those that want it. Computer science, mathematics and logic should inhabit a third academic space in academia I would argue. Science/Engineering, Comp Sci/Math/Logic, Humanities ... Any takers? :) ~~~ jokermatt999 I'd say basic coding should be taught in the typical "typing and MS Office" classes, if possible. I don't mean higher level concepts, but a simple footing in it can help a lot. ------ quinndupont How many people on Hacker News have actually studied philosophy? Judging by the top-ranked comments it seems like a) few have studied philosophy seriously, and b) few seem to think there is much value in philosophy. (And by "seriously", I mean beyond a passing understanding of philosophy of mind. If you haven't read the better part of the canon, including boring folk such as Kant or Descartes, that isn't being serious) ~~~ epochwolf I took a few classes and probably could have written exactly what PG wrote[1] on it. [1]: <http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html> ------ RobotGrrl This looks extremely exciting for the realm of social robotics, as the two disciplines will feed off of each other. It will be interesting to see the depth of the behaviour algorithms created while learning more about philosophy. Perhaps we will be more concerned with other factors in the behaviour, rather than just how it "appears" to the human (or whatever is interacting with it). Hopefully they won't rely too much on SAT marks for the admission process, and will look at our portfolios. It would be a shame to miss out on a potential star for this program because of low standard test grades. This is a super opportunity! ------ jph00 I majored in philosophy at university. My business partner has a PhD in computer science. When we started working together, we discovered that we had studied many of the same things - Godel's theorem, the halting problem, boolean logic, etc. Much of his overlapping stuff came from a subject called "Theory of Computation", whereas mine came from "Formal Logic" and "Metamathematics". I think the idea of combining the fields is really brilliant. Nowadays I do a lot of programming (I founded a couple of businesses that are software- focussed), and would love to have had just this kind of educational background. ------ keiferski Many of you are confusing "analytic" philosophy with all of philosophy. There are numerous distinct schools, with distinct thinkers and lines of thought. Assuming that a single quality applies to a uniform field of "philosophy" is completely misguided. There is no such thing as a uniform field of philosophy. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy> ------ derrida This is only reasonable, after all, philosophers at the beginning of the 20th century are responsible for theories about languages and logic that directly lead to the computer. If only those wanking on about "the semantic web" cared to look at some of the philosophy done since the 70s by folks such as Saul Kripke, they might discover that the idea of semantically competent computers is as likely as conscious computers. ------ onan_barbarian Hah. Did this combo as a undergrad. Loved CS. Loved Philosophy. Hated their intersection, which I thought I was going to base my career around, when I was 17. Oops. Still a fun degree though. ------ nivertech I hated worked with people who did philosophy degrees. The biggest problem with them, that they dare to reason about things, which they never learnt or have no hands-on experience. They will substitute benchmarks and experiments by their theoretical logical conclusions. Same thing happens with people, who have PhD in one field and try to reason about things in different distant domain. ------ binarymax I tried to sort of create a program like this for myself 15 years ago. I ended up with a B.S. in comp sci and math - with one credit short of a philosophy minor. Unfortunately there were no professors asking the fusion questions, but I did some reading when I could. ~~~ igravious That's a real shame. I hope you still keep up to date with philosophical thought. You might think that philosophy moves very slowly but a few disciplines that have emerged are bio-ethics, deep-ecology, connections between aesthetics and justice and all ground is gone over all the time. I got a degree in phil. and math. I taught myself how to program and read theoretical comp sci books on data structures and algorithms, operating systems and compiler theory, type theory and symbolic calculus and the church / turing thesis and so on to flesh out the other side but I would dearly love to have been formally taught the comp sci stuff because in truth I went through it all for the love of it and have rarely applied that knowledge :) I feel like I'm split down the middle, I am delighted that there now exists a course like this. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. ------ fogus I double-majored in CS and Philosophy during undergrad, but didn't want to stay an extra semester to complete the requirements for the latter. It's something that I hope to complete one day so maybe several months in Oxford is an option for the future. ------ cgopalan Its almost eerie (in a positive way) that I see this post right when I was thinking about something along the lines of how an effective engineering course should be structured. Only recently I developed an interest in the classics (greek and roman) and also started reading Milton's "Paradise lost", and Seneca's "On the shortness of life". Two things stood out in a lot of these works - 1) the richness of content - meaning how inevitably it makes you think hard while reading, and 2) the usage of language in a way that makes you see the language in a whole new light (especially in Milton's classic - English never looked so beautiful!!). During the process of reading these classics, I was convinced that a 3-4 year study of an engineering (or science) discipline would only be vastly improved if the subject matter had its share of philosophy and literature (call it "lit-phil"). I would go so far as to say that it should be a 50-50 split. There There will always be a debate as to what works should be included, but the amount of quality work is so vast that being selective would not matter. We can argue that to incorporate this into the same 3-4 years of study, we could eliminate some of the engineering course material to make way. Do we really need all those engineering subjects in that much detail? So then should be an arts degree at all? I would say yes, and thats only for people who just feel overwhelmed by science or engineering (who I come across aplenty) and prefer to study only the arts. If there should be an arts-only degree, why would I propose that engineering be always accompanied by study of lit-phil? Simply because I believe that a mind that needs to grasp engineering has to be somewhat prepared by philosophy and literature and whetted constantly by it during the study. Now, the only kicker is that at the age of doing a bachelors (which is between 17-19 and 21-23 for the majority), the average engineering bachelor student would not be mature enough to appreciate a healthy dosage of lit-phil. They would inevitably ask why they are being subjected to something totally unrelated - whereas they do not understand that the subject matter is slowly working on their brain in the background (if they care to put an effort into it). Hope this does not come across as a rant against engineering. I studied electrical engineering and have utmost regard for the field (much more so than "software engineering" - and I am not talking about computer science and engineering here). But I believe its crucial to pay attention to how we inculcate that engineering knowledge into minds in general. And develop engineers that are not afraid to think and contemplate. ------ quanticle How is this different from majoring in computer science and minoring in philosophy? ~~~ Swannie This is approximately a "double major". For those in the UK unaware, "X and Y" suggests an approximate 50:50 split. "X with Y" suggests a heavy emphasis on X, more of a 75:25 split. And as others have pointed out, in the UK, apart from in some specific degrees (Cambridge Science Tripos springs to mind), the idea of completing a degree out of mainly self-selected units is a bit crazy. ------ jonallanharper Rand's theory of concepts is the explicit cognitive framework of induction and abstraction - both vital to comp sci endeavors. To overlook her work is a tremendous oversight, a detriment to this congruency. ------ tlrobinson This sounds great. My favorite semester during college (majored in comp sci / engineering) was when I took a philosophy course along with my regular CS and math courses. ------ liuhenry When is this being implemented? It wasn't an option for the 2011 application cycle, and unfortunately it's a real hassle to change courses from the one you applied to. ------ akeefer I did my BA in philosophy (focusing mainly on ethics and political philosophy) and my MS in computer science, and I personally found the mix to work incredibly well, though not in the obvious way many people expect (which tends to be around epistemology and logic on the philosophy side and AI on the computer science side). The point of a philosophy education is not to teach you anything in particular; there's no body of knowledge to absorb in the same way that there is for math or any scientific or engineering discipline. At most, you can treat a philosophy education as a history course focusing on the history of human thought (which is why, in response to some other posters, it's important in philosophy to study the past, even if no one believes such things anymore: it's more like history than physics). The really valuable thing for me, however, was learning the process itself: how to make assumptions and pre-conditions clear and separate them from the rest of your thinking, how to make arguments clearly and fairly, how to break complex questions or topics down into smaller pieces and the put them back together, how to not take it personally when someone disagrees with you. A philosophy course of study will also make you a better, clearer writer and communicator. (And yes, sure, there's plenty of room for BSing and incomprehensibility in there, but if you take that away from a philosophy course you're missing out.) All those skills translate and complement computer science very well. At its core, the process of software engineering (as opposed to just programming) is the art of taking something really complex and breaking it down into the right set of components: ones that are large enough to be useful, but small enough to be correct, and with the right relationships between them. Taking a large program or problem and breaking it down like that is basically exactly the same set of skills that you develop when you study (and do) analytic philosophy. Being able to clearly separate assumptions, facts, conjecture, predictions, and arguments is also a key skill in a domain like CS where thinking outside the box, as it were, is always important, and where the rules and possibilities change so rapidly. And of course, it never hurts to become a better writer: I've worked with and known some brilliant engineers who were far less productive than they should have been simply because they couldn't present their ideas clearly enough to other people, and there's simply no way to get a team to all work in the same direction if they don't all share the same vision. A brilliant idea that no one else understands because it's been poorly communicated is usually fairly worthless. As an aside: I know PG doesn't seem to think he got much value out of his philosophy classes, but I wonder if his essays would be as clearly thought out and put together as they are without it. I certainly know my own writing would be far less clear (and far less rigorous) if I hadn't done my BA in philosophy and if I'd just focused on CS. ~~~ _sh I also did my BA in philosophy (epistemology and Heidegger) and my MS in computer science. I sell my philosophy experience as an ability to quickly understand and manipulate abstract concepts. I used to be pretty confident with this position, but these days I am less so. I think the greatest benefit of my undergrad years haunting the philosophy department is that if I'm going to argue a point, I'm damn sure I'll have satisfied myself with my position, and have ready refutations for all counter- arguments I can think of. I don't comment much on web sites because the rigour of this far exceeds the two cents my opinion is worth. My advice for anyone contemplating philosophy is this: learn to be good with analogies. Explaining abstract concepts is difficult and a good analogy (and here I mean a genuinely fitting one) goes a long, long way. If you spend a lot of time just thinking about stuff anyway, studying philosophy really gives you a lot of quite interesting stuff to think about: what is truth? Can we know something without expressing knowledge of it? If so, how can I know that you know something without your expressing it? A heady trapdoor indeed. ------ KevinMS So take a degree, CS, which is almost irrelevant to most working developers, and mix in something that is irrelevant to almost everybody alive. I'm already seeing job adds for sysadmins, php programmers and front end developers requiring a CS degree. In the future they'll be philosophers too? ------ scotty79 Philosophy is what you do when you don't know something and don't know how to actually discover anything about it but you are not wise enough to let it go and find something you could actually discover something about. ~~~ sid0 _Philosophy is what you do when you don't know something and don't know how to actually discover anything about it but you are not wise enough to let it go and find something you could actually discover something about._ That sounds like a lot of research in maths and CS. ~~~ scotty79 Math and cs can be researched because hypothesis in math and cs can be shown to be wrong. Can you point one theory that was ruled out to be wrong thanks to philosophy? If you can't then how can you find philosophy and (any) research similar? ------ scotty79 Great. Next joint course: Operating Heavy Machinery and Scrapbooking.
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Ask HN: Can you help out a blind guy by describing the look of an application? - jscholes Screenshot below.<p>I didn&#x27;t write this application, but I do use it every single day and it was developed pretty much exclusively for screen reader users. However I&#x27;ll be giving a presentation involving some screenshots from it on Friday so some descriptions would be great! How does it look to you? What&#x27;s the layout and do you think it works? (I&#x27;m not expecting it to look that great.)<p>Many thanks if you can help out!<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;okt34fulaoxg3b7&#x2F;Screenshot%202016-06-08%2021.18.18.png?dl=1 ====== buttershakes The QRead application window is maximized taking up the whole screenshot. On the upper left there are the main menus, Document, Navigation, Speech, Window, and Help. Directly below that are three tabs each containing a document. Pattern-Oriented architecture, A system of patterns: Volume 1 (Wiley Software Patterns series) The Architecture of Open Source Applications (which is the currently active tab) Surveillance (A Chris Bruen Novel Book 3) On the same line flush right are small left/right arrow controls that presumably cycle the tabs. Directly below the tabs is the text of the selected tab, in this case its a chapter listing. There are 4 carriage returns between each of the Chapter listings. At the bottom of the window is a Document Position slider, that presumably can be moved to scroll quickly through the text. \------ Seems fairly functional to me, there is also a right scroll bar on the text field that I think serves a similiar purpose to the Document position control although less explicitly. ------ Twenty44 The layout is a pretty typical Windows application layout. Toolbar on the top, below that there is a scrollable text area with navigational tabs across the top of it, probably for working with multiple documents, and finally, at the bottom, there is a horizontal slider labelled "document position". I imagine the slider progresses forward as the text-to-speech progresses, thus showing how far in the document the text-to-speech is, and how much of the document remains. It looks like a pretty typical Windows application. A bit simple, but there is nothing wrong with that. It looks like something a Computer Science student might build in Visual Basic for a University project. I think it looks a bit dated, like it's running on a Windows 98 computer. I wouldn't call it pretty, but definitely functional. I feel like I could use this application without needing to be instructed on how to use it. The purpose of every GUI element seems obvious, which is a good thing. I hope I helped! Best of luck in your presentation! ~~~ jscholes You definitely helped. There will probably be one or two other visually impaired people in the audience on Friday so being able to give a detailed description of what everybody else is seeing will be a huge bonus for them also. Thanks a lot! ------ rawland _Description:_ A lot like notepad with tabs for several documents, which are also opened in the screenshot. At the bottom, one can see a slider with the title "Document position" for easy navigation. Most importantly the Menu consists of the entries: Document, Navigation, Speech, Window and Help. _How does it look to me:_ It looks simple and functional. Seems to be optimized for screen reading as there is not a single icon or graphic. _What 's the layout and do you think it works:_ It's an older Windows layout with the menubar at the top, followed by the tab bar. Under that one, and covering something like 90% of the screen, is a notepad-like textarea and finally at the bottom is the slider. Assuming the menu has submenus and it is not too difficult to navigate around there, I assume it works pretty well as it is as simple as it can get. Maybe the slider handling is difficult because I can not imagine how a blind person can ever click on the tiny position indicator. However, it probably has some keyboard shortcuts. But I can only imagine at this point. ~~~ jscholes I just tab to the slider and adjust it with the arrow keys, page up/down, etc. Same goes for many of the controls inside most apps. I don't have enough usable vision to use a mouse even a little bit. Thanks for your answers, I've got some really great responses to this posting so far. ------ jkimmel There is single large window displaying text, with lots of space between the lines. At the top, there are tabs with the names of different books. It looks like you can scroll in the large window displaying text to read a book. Also at the top, there are dropdown menus with what I assume are different application options. At the bottom, there is a sliding position indicator labeled "Document position". It looks the way I would expect an older e-book reader application to look. It seems totally usable and intuitive. I know exactly where to click and what I might expect to happen. There could definitely be some aesthetic improvements, but as far as "UI functionality" is concerned, this is great. ------ LarryMade2 Its a very plain layout, mostly a big document area where there is text. At the top of the window below the window title are the menu items: Document, Navigation, Speech, Window and Help Below those are open document tabs going horizontally - they can be very verbose like the entire title of the book with author below that is the big document area there is also a vertical scrollbar to the right of the document. Below the document is a vertical slider control spanning the width with the name "Document position" And below that there is apparently a status-bar (like on web browsers, going across horizontally,) and seems to be divided in half for messages either on the left or right. currently blank. ------ DKnoll Hey there, I'll do my best. QRead looks like a minimal ebook reader application. There is a tab bar at the top to select an open book/document and the book/document is displayed in a large text field in the centre, looking not unlike notepad. At the bottom of the window there is a slider control to navigate the document. ------ anonfunction It looks very old, kind of like from windows 95 or something. Everyone else described the actual content but that is what stood out to me. Edit: Clickable link that doesn't download: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/okt34fulaoxg3b7/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/okt34fulaoxg3b7/Screenshot%202016-06-08%2021.18.18.png) ------ johnwheeler You're getting a lot of good help here, so this is just a comment. My name is John. Contact me at [email protected] if you have an idea for an Amazon Echo application to help blind people.
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The unusual politics of Silicon Valley, explained - radmuzom http://www.vox.com/2015/9/29/9411117/silicon-valley-politics-charts ====== PaulHoule The unusual politics of the Republicans have a lot to do with why they get rejected by Silicon Valley founders. Look at the stupidity of shutting down the government and maybe defaulting on the national debt to shut down Planned Parenthood. I can understand how somebody would have the position they have on that issue, but how they could cause a train wreck like that over it is beyond me. The real missing thing in this article is local politics, particularly the housing crisis in the bay area. I am in Palo Alto walking around today and I must say that it is the strangest post-urban environment I have ever seen and the only city I've visited where I regret not getting a car at the airport. (That's coming from somebody who thinks it is a _lot_ of fun to walk in L.A. and who sees enough of the country to know Silvercar is a joke because SFO has the worst car rental center.) Walk in any direction in Palo Alto and you end up in an endless grid of insanely expensive single family houses -- in any normal city with that demand, they'd tear down 1/8 of the houses and build 8 story apartment buildings on something and you'd get a pretty pleasant neighborhood, like the good parts of Sao Paulo. You've got to go to local politics, not national politics, to see the pathology of the democrats. Back in my 'hood on the east coast, you get see a NYC councilwomen who looks like Oprah Winfrey argue that we need to subsidize Off Track Betting to save jobs... Now that is whack.
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Doxa: incentivized social media devoted to the highest quality - enodios https://doxa.network ====== felixgassner Your website is beautiful, in near of perfection! I have one question: how does one get paid exactly? Is it with ethereum itself? ~~~ enodios Yes, with ether itself. Contributors will have the option of either being paid directly in ether, or being paid in "community tokens" which can be immediately or later exchanged for ether according to a bancor-style exchange protocol. And thanks! Glad you like it. ------ enodios Hey everyone, I'm Travis Hairfield, founder of Doxa. I'll be here to answer any questions you have, or just to take feedback. Thanks for your time! ------ pwaivers I really like the vision. When do you plan to have Doxa itself up an running? ~~~ enodios The alpha is in development and should be ready in Q4 2018 ------ jihoon796 Yet another social media platform on Ethereum...how many of these do we need? Read your blog, but I fail to see how you'd be able to attract enough of a following to make this worth the effort for users. ~~~ enodios Honestly, a lot more, at least until we get them right. I think we are going to see a cambrian explosion of crypto social media platforms as people experiment with different incentive structures, and learn what kind of content is created by particular structures. And building the initial momentum is definitely going to be a big challenge, but one that will be mitigated by the reward system of a community-owned platform. The value of a social media platform is not in the software, but in the social network. With cryptocurrrency-based networks, it will be easier than ever for users to share in the fruits of creating that network.
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Large Collection of Free Data about Cities - jonmc12 http://www.city-data.com/ ====== jws Their terms of use are pretty explicit that this data is not free. You can look at the web pages though.
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Beware grannies on Facebook - wheels http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11052935&fsrc=RSS ====== brlewis Facebook, from my limited use of it, seems vastly inferior to a mailing list + wiki for the purpose dscribed in this article. Or did the small investors want to find photos where others in the group had been tagged? What am I missing?
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Ask HN: What should you focus on in the first 2 weeks at a new company? - howtonavcomp Hi,<p>I am starting my position as a software engineer at a big company next week and would like to know what to focus on for the first two weeks at a big company.<p>Previously, I worked at a small dev shop for 3 years and have never experienced working at a large corporation before.<p>What advice would you give for navigating bureaucracy, getting promoted, networking in company, etc. ====== greenyoda Listen carefully to what the people in the company are telling you: how things work, who are the people who can get things done, etc. (For some of the political stuff, you may have to read between the lines.) Don't try to stick your two cents in to impress them with how much you know - just listen to what they have to say. Also, people like it when you actually listen to what they have to say, so you might end up making some friends this way. To get promoted, you'll need to have a good relationship with your direct manager, since you're not likely to get promoted unless he or she says good things about you. ------ exceptione Make sure your are friendly to your colleagues. They know how to navigate through the company. They are also the ones who will give your manager feedback about how you are doing, as it is not unreasonable your manager is not able to assess that by him/her self. Ask someone higher up to be your mentor.
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Ask HN: The most conflict situation you faced at work? - vakulaego ====== accrual A conflict I'm experiencing is planned obsolescence before I even get started. I'm supposed to develop a novel system to accomplish X with the knowledge that X will be replaced by vendor Y. While I'm excited to work on the project and I'll learn a lot, it's not so fun knowing it's just a placeholder.
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Simple.com closed my $52k bank account without warning - pmarreck They claim I violated their &quot;personal use only&quot; policy, which I presumably did by paying contractors to work on my house (this is only a guess, they have not been clear on exactly why). But that doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s excusable to leave me in limbo for almost a week without access to my money (and quite a bit of it) while I need to pay people I&#x27;m employing. I&#x27;ve done absolutely nothing wrong nor illegal. Their customer support has been useless.<p>I don&#x27;t know what recourse I have anymore short of waging social media war. Please retweet if you sympathize, thanks in advance: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;pmarreck&#x2F;status&#x2F;739994477339758592 ====== ksherlock File a complaint with your state attorney general (and/or whatever state they are in). That takes a few months to get a result but a AG staffer will forward it to them (but on scary AG letterhead). Also [http://www.consumerfinance.gov](http://www.consumerfinance.gov) ------ greenleafjacob Contact the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. ------ codeonfire This is why paper checks are still useful. I had problems with Citibank who in the 2008 crisis kept doing things like resetting my pin, mailing my card to the wrong address, assigning the pin to the wrong account, etc. Then they told me I had to visit a branch in another state, four hundred miles away to withdraw. I just wrote a check for cash and deposited it in another bank. ------ tedmiston Have you tried emailing the CEO directly? ------ bbcbasic Sounds like PayPal ------ cloudjacker JUST USE B- oh he already is using bitcoin
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Couchfuse - FUSE filesystem exposes Couchdb databases as filesystem folder - adulau http://narkisr.github.com/couch-fuse/ ====== seiji <threadjack> I made one for redis in January: <https://github.com/mattsta/redisfuse> It's been very useful for bootstrapping a redis-only backed site until I write web interfaces to all the stored data. </threadjack> ------ tommi Excellent idea and execution, congrats! The audio on video though was not understandable due to low quality and accent. ------ narkisr Hey, I'm the author of couchfuse, I didn't have couchapps in mind but I am developing snippetapp which is one. Right now the mounted documents don't include the design docs so it won't do for couchapps, I am planning to add support for this later on, Sorry for the accent ;) ------ daleharvey I have wanted something like this for a while, thanks it looks promising, going to try it out tonight did you have couchapps in mind when you built this?
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Rsync.net extends a previous offer made on HN for the month of May - J_Darnley http://www.rsync.net/products/10c.html ====== J_Darnley The previous offer was made here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640700> 10 cents (USD) per GB, per month, for life. Their only caveats are a minimum of 50 GB and that you must pay annually, meaning you pay $60 once a year. Payment by credit card or Paypal.
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Ask HN: What key question would you ask a software engineering hiring manager? - white_eskimo I have a software development offer from a late-stage start up for what could be my first job out of college.<p>I'm trying to assess the engineering organization to see if I really am a good fit. I got to ask questions during the interview process, but want to follow up to better understand how they develop product.<p>I'm concerned that I may end up working to pay back technical debt and won't get a chance to work on new feature development. I see myself excelling at sales and business development in the long run, and want to build up the product-oriented skills needed to accomplish my long term goals. What questions will allow me to best gauge my potential for success at this company?<p>Questions asked thus far: 1. Code unit test/review/check in policy 2. Development methodologies &#38; software shipping schedule 3. Ability for face time with customers ====== jpluscplusm 2 suggestions: 1) Why not ask the question you asked here? "How much of this role will be new feature development?" 2) Don't assume that the /manager/ really has the low-level information that will dictate how your time will be spent. Ask to meet the coders you'll be working with (not a bad idea in any interview process!) and pop the questions: "What state do you feel the codebase is in? How does new feature development tend to get divvied out across the team? Which part of the product are you most proud of? ... and least proud of?" HTH ~~~ jey > 2) Don't assume that the /manager/ really has the low-level information If the manager isn't a "real programmer", even if (s)he doesn't actively code anymore, I'd be nervous about working there. ~~~ jacquesm That would make you nervous about 99% or so of all the IT jobs. ~~~ jey Yes. ~~~ jacquesm I haven't had a whole pile of bosses in my 'early career' but I do recall that the only boss that was a serious headache was one that had been a programmer earlier in life.
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A 500M-year survey of Earth's climate reveals dire warning for humanity - pseudolus https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/500-million-year-survey-earths-climate-reveals-dire-warning-humanity ====== unstatusthequo This might be / likely is trollbait (that I will not engrave in discourse on), but it looks like we are in the bottom 15% of what’s been figured as the range in the last 500 million years. Is it too aggressive to suggest humans have _more_ impact that zero plants or routine catastrophic volcano eruptions? Get over ourselves a bit? I mean, earth ruined its own atmosphere enough times, and certainly can ruin us without too much effort really. Eventually it will. Maybe we speed it up by N years or whatever, but the eventuality is earth kills us or the sun immolates us or Andromeda collides with us. Either way we are fucked. Let’s ride it out as long as we can, but this is not a permanent home, and I doubt the human race is resilient enough to be considered permanent by any stretch. Maybe go party this weekend? ------ throwaway857384 Looking at the chart on that page, it seems like the 'low' temperatures we have now are an anomaly rather than the norm. ~~~ andai True, but on a shorter time scale, we're at a peak, and due for another ice age: [https://opentextbc.ca/geology/wp- content/uploads/sites/110/2...](https://opentextbc.ca/geology/wp- content/uploads/sites/110/2015/07/Glacials-and-Interglacials-.png) ~~~ acqq That chart you give is especially misleading to understand what is going on now: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg) Note where the year 2100 temperature is going to be (that is, _if we do something to limit the emissions_ , otherwise it even higher) and when the last time it was that high. Also note how fast it changes in the last 100 years and the scale of possible changes we can produce. Also note the changes of the orders of magnitude in time in different sections of the graph. The rate of change we are experiencing now is unbelievably fast compared to what is known about the previous times.
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Deleted iMessages are accessible through iOS search - ozzzy We noticed if you use the search functionality on an iOS device you can still access old deleted iMessages.<p>In order to reproduce, delete an iMessage. Then go to the search screen by tapping home button twice (you should make the search from the general search screen, not using the search section in the Messages app). Search a word in that deleted iMessage. You will see the message in the search results. ====== niteshade Yeah, pretty old news tbh. This happens because Spotlight's index has indexed those texts from when they came. To clear the index, go to Settings > General and uncheck Messages.
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Apple acquired German augmented reality company Metaio - wildpeaks http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/28/8682505/apple-acquires-metaio-augmented-reality-startup ====== JacobKyle This was a long time coming. It definitely shakes up the AR space. They were one of the only real independent players in the industry. It's a good play by apple too. It almost brings them up to speed with the other major players. MS has the Hololens team, google's got Tango, Oculus has been snapping up computer vision companies left and right. Metaio had a strong computer vision patent portfolio too [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CGGGaveUgAAKFje.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CGGGaveUgAAKFje.jpg:large)
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We called a secret MI6 phone number (2013) - CrazedGeek https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/features/report/4903/we-called-a-secret-mi6-phone-number/ ====== pedrocr Running a numbers station out of a phone number seems odd. With radio it's hard to detect who is listening. With a telephone number it should be much easier to figure out who is calling the number. ~~~ eemil True. I'm guessing there's some unknown circumstance that makes the ease-of- access benefit outweigh any security risks. It wouldn't surprise me if the number was leaked on purpose. To get people calling the station, to obfuscate the message's actual recipients. ~~~ pedrocr I also assumed the intentional leak at first. But the update says the number was then discontinued. Having lots of people calling from other places than the one your spy is in doesn't help.
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Ask HN: Thinking on creating a blog and need help (platform) - ncage Hi everyone, i&#x27;m thinking on creating a blog and need some advice. It will be a programming based blog. I don&#x27;t know if it matters but i&#x27;m primarily a .net developer. First, my main question, is about which blog platform to choose. Here are some of my requirements: 1. Really low maintenance - I already have enough to do. I don&#x27;t want to add to the trying to maintenance on software&#x2F;hardware a blog system unless its a no brainer.<p>2. Custom Domain Name<p>3. Ability to customize look&#x2F;feel as much as i want including custom CSS<p>4. I don&#x27;t know how possible it is but i would like the ability to migrate from one platform to another if i so choose. So if i choose blog platform x i can switch to blog platform Y if i like.<p>5. Ability to put whatever scripts i choose like google analystics.<p>6 Different Comment Engines - I don&#x27;t much about it but i do want users to be able to leave comments so maybe Disqus?<p>Of course since i&#x27;m just starting i don&#x27;t know what else i should be looking for.<p>I&#x27;ve looked at a variety of them (its hard to choose with so many) like wordpress, squarespace, silvrback, Ghost, Roon, Ect... One of them i looked at is &quot;Postach&quot; was pretty cool in that the publishing platform for your blog was evernote (which i&#x27;m a big advocate of) just don&#x27;t how great it is.<p>I don&#x27;t mind paying for a platform as long as its worth it. ($5-$6 a month).<p>On an aside when creating a blog do you recommend just using your main site such as &quot;mysite.com&#x2F;blog&quot; or do you recommend creating a domain specific to a topic? For example i plan to do some post about Angular. So would it be better to create a domain like &quot;angularisgreat.com&quot;. That kind of limits you when you want to talk about something else though :P.<p>Anyways, any help&#x2F;advice would be greatly appreciated..... ====== lhorie I'm using Blogger for my personal blog ( [http://lhorie.blogspot.ca](http://lhorie.blogspot.ca) ). It doesn't provide a whole lot customization options, but it's more of a linkblog than a programming blog and the defaults are good enough for that purpose. It doesn't do markdown and I don't think you can export, so I don't recommend it for your purpose. On my Mithril blog ( [http://lhorie.github.io/mithril- blog](http://lhorie.github.io/mithril-blog) ), I'm using a custom build script based on grunt+marked and Disqus (you can check the github project page if it interests you). Some of the publishing steps are still a little manual though, so it's probably not what you're looking for, but I've stuff like syntax highlighting setup there if you want to steal the code for a starting boilerplate. Recently someone from the Mithril community showed me a simple Jekyll+Mithril blog platform that sounds closer to what you're looking for: ( [https://github.com/eiriksm/kyll-thrill](https://github.com/eiriksm/kyll- thrill) ). It's pretty lean, you can write posts in markdown, create a HTML template, and use Disqus for comments (it does RSS too). I'm planning on trying it out myself. Re: portability, I think having the articles in markdown files is the way to go if you want to be able to move the content to other micro-blogging tools. As far as domains go, I use my personal blog for writing about more random (but still programming-related) things, e.g. Angular or Velocity.js or whatever, and I keep application-development-focused content on the Mithril blog. You can always do a mysite.com/blog that is primarily focused on Angular, but occasionally talk about other things. As a reader, this type of blog feels more human, and I personally like the occasional insights that come out of deviations from the core topic. ------ gjmulhol Most complete is Medium -- basically minimal customizability, but you get an in-built audience and it looks great. It is free and might be a good place to get started. I really like Squarespace -- slightly expensive though, and very complete, hard to customize. Wordpress is hard to beat -- very stable and solid, highly customizable, but that can become dangerous/a distraction Ghost ([https://ghost.org](https://ghost.org)) -- is newer and has been on here a few times. I'm sure some other HN readers might have thoughts. I would use a personal domain, but only if you can post regularly enough to make it worth it. My old blog got stale, so now I am working on some posts on Medium where that is mitigate by the fact that I am not the only one on the channel.
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Edward Snowden: Contact Tracing is "The Architecture of Oppression" - giardini https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5OAjnveyJo&list=PLdQ3f4qejD1j37Zjll6GiDJW-ljfCvh7f ====== giardini In this video interview Edward Snowden says contract tracing is useless for this pandemic but good for surveillance. ------ btilly This discussion appears related to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041146). ------ pezo1919 Contact tracing is used successfully in SK. Just sayin.
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Algebra and the Lambda Calculus (1993) - espeed https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/lambda.txt ====== rbonvall I took the liberty of converting this to LaTeX: [https://www.overleaf.com/read/vbnkshcwhcyk](https://www.overleaf.com/read/vbnkshcwhcyk) ~~~ headsupftw Thanks for doing this. There's an error on page 2 though: 0 = 1^2 + g - g@ It should be 0 = 1 + g^2 - g@ ~~~ rbonvall Good catch. Fixed. ------ emmanueloga_ I was looking at the references at the bottom and saw `6`, I thought "Hygienic Macro Expansion? M.Fellinson? He probably must be referring to Matthias Felleisen...". Effectively: [1] Doesn't mean I understood the rest of the paper... sigh :-p 1: [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=319859](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=319859) ------ joe_the_user I like the article's discussion of algebraic operations and computer representation as well as how to implement the lambda operation. That's all abstract algebra and its extensions. What I'm still mystified by when confronted by these discussions is the way the lambda calculus is considered equivalent to a Turing machine. Is it essentially that you have these complex variable substitution schemes which can "encode" a Turing machines' tape and transitions or is there something more straightforward? ~~~ s_m_t I guess the tape is just a linked list of bits? What confuses me about lambda calculus, and a lot of math in general, I guess, as opposed to something like the turing machine, is that, how do I put this... To actually implement Lisp or lambda calculus in real life you need "cons", right(?), and some way to increment your equivalent to an "instruction pointer". Or else you don't have any memory or information to operate on and you don't have any way to move on to the next step. If you are doing it on paper I guess the act of moving your pen to an empty space is your cons and moving your eyes across the page is like incrementing your instruction pointer... In the idea of the turing machine this is all explicitly explained but every time I try and read about lambda calculus it seems like they just expect you to know it right away. This might seem really trivial to other people but its how I tend to think. ~~~ empath75 Lambda calculus is simple, mechanical symbol substitution. There’s no information or memory needed outside of the initial ‘program’ other than the substitution rules. Read about church encodings to see how numbers, pairs, conditionals, etc are encoded. ~~~ kazinator I doubt it; substitution will blow up on self-referential tricks like the Y combinator, where a function receives itself as an argument: any attempt to substitute the raw lambda text for this argument leads to infinite regress ( _à la_ Droste effect). ~~~ empath75 It’s still just an infinite series of substitutions. ~~~ kazinator That's a failure to reduce, showing that the reduction by substitution is an incomplete evaluation strategy at best. The Y combinator works under call-by- value and other strategies; you can stick it in production code, if you're so inclined. ------ mesarvagya I have found paper by Raúl Rojas, which is also a good start to learn λ-calculus. Here it is [http://www.inf.fu- berlin.de/lehre/WS03/alpi/lambda.pdf](http://www.inf.fu- berlin.de/lehre/WS03/alpi/lambda.pdf) ~~~ espeed The significance of this paper is not about learning the λ-calculus. Rather, to me the significance of this paper is that it presents a novel way of "implementing the lambda calculus in an algebraic system" and provides a correspondence between the λ-calculus and the matrix model of computation: Vector and matrix valued functions can be represented by vectors and matrices some of whose entries are lambda expressions. I have been looking for a lingua franca for programming languages, a way to unify the langs and make use of the decades of wisdom encoded into our langs' Great Libs. Maybe the matrix model and linear algebra is the lingua franca I seek. ~~~ carapace Paul Halmos' work on Algebraic Logic may be relevant. (And see also Conal Elliott's "Compiling to Categories" [http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to- categories/](http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to-categories/) ) ------ ssijak I don`t know how to call this effect, but often I look to learn about something specific and later that day the same topic pops up on the front page of HN. Earlier today I googled about "algebra and lambda calculus" and variations of that and lo and behold this peice on the front page few hours later. Is this some kind of advanced geek ad tracking or what? :D ~~~ Zalastax It's the frequency illusion (also known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon). [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion) ~~~ aaachilless also known coloquially as 'blue car syndrome'. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blue%20Car%2...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blue%20Car%20Syndrome) ------ emmanueloga_ I wonder if this correspondence could be used for program transformations/optimizations? code -tx-> polynomial -tx-> simplification -tx-> [possibly more efficient] code ~~~ espeed My burgeoning conjecture (as hinted at in a previous comment) is that all can be unified, transformed, and optimized for modern hardware under the matrix model of computation -- type theory, the lambda calculus, the actor model, neural nets, graph computing -- I'm starting to see a path to where all models are aligned across vectors of unity. Here are some the correspondences I've been looking at... * Graph algos in the lang of linear algebra now realized and encoded into GraphBLAS [1] * The three normed division algebras are unified under a complex Hilbert space [2] * Ascent sequences and the bijections discovered between four classes of combinatorial objects [3] * Dependent Types and Homotopy Type Theory [4] * Bruhat–Tits buildings, symmetry, and spatial decomposition [5] * Distributed lattices, topological encodings, and succinct representations [6] * Zonotopes and Matroids and Minkowski Sums [7] * Holographic associative memory and entanglement renormalization [8] [1] Graph Algorithms in the Language of Linear Algebra (Jeremy Kepner) [http://www.mit.edu/~kepner/](http://www.mit.edu/~kepner/) Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099520) [2] Division Algebras and Quantum Theory (John Baez) [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rch.pdf](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rch.pdf) [3] (2 + 2)-free posets, ascent sequences and pattern avoiding permutations [pdf] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009731650...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0097316509001885/pdf) [4] Cartesian Cubical Computational Type Theory: Constructive Reasoning with Paths and Equalities [pdf] [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/papers/cartesian/paper.pdf](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/papers/cartesian/paper.pdf) [5] Bruhat–Tits buildings and p-adic Lie groups [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_(mathematics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_\(mathematics\)) [6] Distributive lattices and Stone-space dualities [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributive_lattice#Represent...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributive_lattice#Representation_theory) [7] Solving Low-Dimensional Optimization Problems via Zonotope Vertex Enumeration [video] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH_CpMYe3tw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH_CpMYe3tw) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zonohedron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zonohedron) [8] Entanglement Renormalization (G Vidal) [https://authors.library.caltech.edu/9242/1/VIDprl07.pdf?hovn...](https://authors.library.caltech.edu/9242/1/VIDprl07.pdf?hovno=/) Holography [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_associative_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_associative_memory) Google Scholar: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=related:Yi- GtarGxh0J:sc...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=related:Yi- GtarGxh0J:scholar.google.com/&scioq=entanglement+renormalization+and+holography&hl=en&as_sdt=0,44&as_vis=1) ~~~ Zalastax Can you expand on what you mean? What is "the matrix model of computation" and "vectors of unity"? Which actor model are you talking about? The variants are very different and Hewitt's original paper is mainly referenced for coming up with the name rather and kicking off the field than inventing a usable model. Type theory is even vaster. Are we talking homotopy type theory? Calculus of constructions? System F?
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Google Announces Third Quarter 2010 Financial Results - btilly http://investor.google.com/earnings/2010/Q3_google_earnings.html ====== smakz I'm rooting for all the big technology companies to do really well: Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Ebay, Apple. Higher market caps means more flexibility in acquisitions, and these are the companies which aren't afraid to take risks. ------ mlinsey Was this much different from expectations? We don't usually see quarterly results on HN, but if these results are a big surprise, they would certainly be newsworthy. I guess I'm missing the context here. ~~~ btilly It was a lot better than expectations. The stock is moving up substantially on this news. Also Google is a pretty good indicator of what is happening with the Internet as a whole. If Google's gross revenue jumps 23%, that bodes well for many smaller companies. _Edit_ Removed wildly incorrect estimate of the size of the jump. I clearly didn't sanity check the miscalculation I did... ~~~ chollida1 > It was a lot better than expectations. The stock looks like it will jump > about 30% or so on this n What makes you think the stock will jump 30%? Why not 20% or 40%? Is there some sort of technical analysis behind this, or is this a hunch? ~~~ btilly That was a serious miscalculation on my part off of a couple of numbers I saw in a news article. :-( ------ jsm386 Interesting stuff in there via [http://www.businessinsider.com/display- advertising-is-a-25-b...](http://www.businessinsider.com/display-advertising- is-a-25-billion-business-for-google-2010-10) "Mobile is on a run rate of more than $1 billion. That is, people accessing Google services through mobile devices--not just Android--are adding $1 billion per year to Google's revenue." "YouTube is monetizing over 2 billion views per week. That's an increase of 50% year over year." ------ Andrew_Quentin They would be welcomed at any point to increase the share of revenue given to the publishers. ~~~ korch To see that we will need some healthy competition in the ad and search space. I actually hope Bing does well just for serving this purpose. Google's search page was nearly the same for 5 years, Bing comes out and adds a few more dynamic ways to search and Google had to re-vamp their entire home page over the course of 2 years. It is ironic to be in a situation where Microsoft's relentless and battle-hardened strategy of copy-cat is the most powerful thing keeping Google from doing evil. ------ melling It's going to be interesting when Google's market cap passes Microsoft's. Could happen in 2011. Microsoft still gets incredible revenue from Windows and Office but these aren't growth markets because they already dominate. Microsoft has almost become IBM. ~~~ andrewljohnson They would love to be IBM. IBM totally reinvented itself, and surged past its old roots... very Apple-esque resurgence. Look at the chart over IBM's existence: <http://www.google.com/finance?q=IBM> ------ tocomment It said google made money from android. How do they make money from android? ~~~ cryptoz Every time a user types a web search on an Android phone, they see Google ads and may click on them. I would guess that's the only way they make money from Android, but they probably make a ton that way. ~~~ tocomment That happens on iPhones too though. ~~~ cryptoz Google pays Apple a fortune for that privilege. I remember hearing the deal was around $300,000,000 / year (but I could be wrong). With Android, Google makes total profit.
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A new wave of videogames offers lessons in powerlessness, scarcity and failure - cindyceleste http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/welcome-to-the-scarcity-games/? ====== germinalphrase Another attractive element of these games is the moral questions that sometimes arise. I know this is particularly true in "This War of Mine" (e.g. - choosing to take in a starving child that comes knocking on your door, but who also becomes a resource burden on your small tribe). Questioning and reflecting on decision making, moral choice, and consequences of (in)action are a central focus of literature study, so I would love to know about additional games in this vein that I could potentially bring into my classroom as 'game-texts'. Suggestions? ~~~ Zikes "Moral" choices seem to be a trend lately, especially with BioWare RPGs and their ilk (Dragon Age, Mass Effect). Unfortunately, most of the consequences are fairly minor, mostly only revolving around the opinions of your in-game acquaintances. The events unfold a little differently sometimes, but the end result is almost always the same. The worst of it is that they always main-line you into one moral extreme or the other. It's always obvious which choice is "good" and which is "bad", and once you've made that choice for the first time you'll always make the same choice later on, else you'll miss out on the in-game benefits of having a "pure" moral stance. Mass Effect and Infamous especially do this. ~~~ germinalphrase This has been my experience as well. I am attracted to bringing games into the learning environment because they can offer unique opportunities for action/reaction/reflection (in addition to other benefits) - but I am indeed more interested in complicated decision making rather than simply choosing Red Team v. Blue Team. For instance, I would love to see a game like "Papers Please" with a stronger element of consequences. Rather than simply being told you allowed a terrorist through the gates (with a brief cut-away) the consequences of this action (deaths, social destabilization, etc.) would impact the future game play. Perhaps, you decide to actively aid and abet these terrorists (by communicating to them that you will allow them and their compatriots to pass through) - but then you put yourself and your loved ones at risk, as well as increase social instability. This is already a wonderful game, but I would like to see the premise taken even farther. Games could be a wonderful place to consider and critique decision making and moral choices that are analogous to those we face in real life (even if filtered through clearly fictitious events/circumstances). ~~~ Zikes To the opposite extreme, there's also The Stanley Parable. On the surface it's a humorous narrative seemingly about being a cubicle drone, but it's ultimately about the futility of choice. ~~~ pavel_lishin One could argue that Bioshock Infinite is about the same thing. ~~~ Zikes I liked that, but none of the player's choices purported to be very important, either. ~~~ skuhn Bioshock Infinite doesn't purport to give the player more than the standard illusion of choice, but I think it's more interesting how choice is handled in the narrative. The characters think that they're making big, important decisions that reshape their world. It turns out that they weren't really. ------ rcthompson I think another influence that the article doesn't touch on much are games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Horror games in which you have no weapons and can't fight back against the monsters; your only defense is being terrified and running away and hiding, and the resources you do have (in Amnesia, light sources) are very limited. ------ Terr_ > These games subvert the usual arc of heroic triumph by providing a basis for > interesting, beautiful defeat. I was half-expecting a nod to Dwarf Fortress. ~~~ Retra Embark. Mass confusion. Eaten by gators. There's nothing anybody could have done... Poor dwarves. ------ on_and_off Good. I am so bored of the whole power trip trope which is pervading most video games. At this point, ennemies would have to trip on my sword in order to make some games easier. Arcade games tend to be 'artificially unfair' in order to make sure that the player will die and have to pay to continue. Many modern mainstream games take the opposite approach and make sure that the average game will feel like a demigod. It is not without merits, especially with a hero battling against oversized ennemies. For example, it is very gratifying to fight enemies 10 times as big as the protagonist of Darksiders. I feel like it is reaching a dead end though. Parkour / scaling in Assassin Creed is a one button affair. You just look at your hero do these feats. Platforming is equally easy in that game series, you just have to find the designed path thought up by the developers and press the right button, which is even conveniently displayed on the screen. Ezio is able to take on dozen of guards and I usually flee only because I am bored of the easy kills. Skyrim goes out of its way to make you feel like 'yet another chosen one', and judging from the game quest, you are litteraly the only person able to get anything done in that world. Not to mention that very soon you become a walking demigod able to kill anything from liches to dragons. I can't shake the feeling that these games are very condescending to the player. They avoid giving the player a real challenge in order to make sure that everybody can feel powerful with minimal effort. I don't think that games have to be as brutal as Dark Souls or even unfair like Banished. Avoiding the 'suddenly all powerful chosen one' trope would be a good start. Please let me play a random schmuck that is not going to defeat all the demons of Hell and save the world all by himself. ------ Sir_Substance The author is making a big point of banished being a game of inevitable demise, but that's not how I found it. To me, it's a game of hope and industriousness. Where he sees starving workers staving off inevitable death, I see villagers keen to make their new settlement work. I think there's a lot of room for interpretation both ways, which is great for the games, but it means this article is quite shallow and offers no real insight, because it's trying to build on a foundation that is viewed differently depending on who you are. ------ brudgers This reminded me of Avalon Hill's _Outdoor Survival_. It was recommended for use as an outdoor "dungeon" in the old boxed D & D. Adventuring outdoors was kinda dull for us as kids, compared to indoor slaughter but we did play the actual board game fairly often. Dying of thirst was not uncommon. ------ gcb0 is taboola now posting to hackernews? ------ mkramlich A long time ago (though admittedly in this galaxy) I made a computer game with moral choices a key element in the gameplay. I named it Legacy. It was a Java GUI app. Though a small game in terms of feature set and code size I always remember noticing how it was one of the more fun (to me) games I ever made. Had to do with mating, family and inheritances. It ended up influencing my more recent designs as well. ~~~ germinalphrase Is it available to play? ~~~ mkramlich the code exists on one of my disks somewhere. If you email me your email address I could notify you when I find it and get it usable for you. my email in my profile.
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Microsoft Restores Deleted Technet and MSDN Blogs - userbinator https://borncity.com/win/2019/04/21/microsoft-restores-deleted-technet-and-msdn-blogs/ ====== jiggawatts Now if they could just clean up the widespread "duplicate comments" issue so I won't get Deja Vu every time I read one of their blogs, that would be great. Now if they could just clean up the widespread "duplicate comments" issue so I won't get Deja Vu every time I read one of their blogs, that would be great. ------ nikanj 80% of the time something really gnarly is discussed on Stack Overflow, someone links a bug from Microsoft Connect. Alas, all of those links are now broken. There should be a law against ”We are rebranding the customer experience, and conveniently throwing away most user-generated content” ~~~ BrentOzar They took down Connect because they didn’t want to spend the effort to make it GDPR compliant. Proof from when I blogged about it, but they reworded it as soon as it started getting press: [https://www.brentozar.com/go/gdpr](https://www.brentozar.com/go/gdpr) ~~~ kthejoker2 A wild Brent Ozar sighting ...! ~~~ BrentOzar > A wild Brent Ozar sighting ...! That's what they call me, the Wild Brent Ozar. ------ userbinator Things like this are why any mention of "cleaning" or "removing clutter" always gives me a hugely uneasy feeling. Storage is cheap and getting cheaper; and even if some content is only of historical value, that in itself is plenty enough reason to ensure its continued existence. ~~~ SquareWheel It's not necessarily just about storage. If old articles and comments are on a different content management system, that requires hosting and maintaining as well. They may even run on different languages or operating systems. ~~~ DiabloD3 No it doesn't. You make a static copy of all of the HTML, archive the systems that generated them as VM images, and then put a "this is archived static data" at the top of every page. You also fire every executive who considers deleting documentation for technical products. ~~~ SquareWheel I suppose caching just the output is feasible. It's not zero maintenance, but it's easier than maintaining two separate systems. ------ yebyen It's really not cool to delete vast archives of knowledge, ahem... [http://web.archive.org/web/20171104080019/https://deis.com/](http://web.archive.org/web/20171104080019/https://deis.com/) I wish that archive.org had captured more of deis.com/blog, there were 232 fantastic articles there, and while I still have them, it seems like it will have to take a great deal more effort to republish them all, than it would have taken to just leave them all online. This is on-topic because it was some legal process in Microsoft corporation which decided to delete this, too. Not as popular though, so not restored. Check deis.com today, it just redirects to the (admittedly very nice) Azure Kubernetes cloud services home-page. It would have been great if even someone was given notice and permission to tell web.archive.org it was time to crawl this blog, first, so those articles could be referenced in historical context. ~~~ rahuldottech If you send them to me, I'll upload all the Deis blog material to archive.org. See my profile for my email address. ~~~ yebyen I appreciate that! Thank you. It is a jekyll blog, and there are many authors, which is really what makes the copyright situation hard. I am working on contacting everyone to clarify their intention, as it was within MS rights to shut the site down, and it's within any author's rights to ask that their work not be republished, and to my knowledge nobody collected copyright releases at any point, so there is no person who can simply authorize it for everyone. All of the few Deis team members that I've contacted so far, though, have been very receptive to having their work re-published and excited to hear about Team Hephy, which was created to continue some of the work that had to be left behind by Deis, so that they could better follow the demand. I want to do it in a way that is thoughtful and fair. It's also hard to justify reposting everything when I don't have a plan to balance it with an equal amount of good quality, new content as well. Maybe I need to bite the bullet and take my SEO points, it will almost certainly drive more traffic to our site. Do you have an "in" at Archive.org, or would you re-host them somewhere else? I'm more worried that when I repost them, they are still not going to be easy to find, and if they weren't in the history of deis.com, that sure won't make it any easier. I realized I was definitely going to miss the content when I found this post[1] that was just what I was looking for, about the options for schedulers and what it means to have a monolithic scheduler, back when they were considering whether to rewrite Deis on Kubernetes (they did, it became known as Workflow). It came from the original Deis blog. I don't know if it looks out of place on the new blog, or if it will make sense to grow this one post at a time, I think I don't like this blog, it was just thrown together one day when I said "we need a place to put a release announcement." I like the material style better than anything I myself could come up with alone, but honestly that's hardly a shining endorsement. Could be much better. > I put my commas after closing quotation marks, because that's what > programmers do. Your blog is really nice, I went through and found the webcam thing[2] and just wanted to call that out! [1]: [https://blog.teamhephy.info/posts/schedulers-pt1-basic- monol...](https://blog.teamhephy.info/posts/schedulers-pt1-basic- monolithic.html) [2]: [https://rahul.webcam/](https://rahul.webcam/) ------ vmurthy The first thought that came to my mind was if Raymond Chen's blogs on MSDN got deleted. Now , _that_ would have been a tragedy! The blog is still up fyi. Tons of technology trivia and snippets there. Growing up, JoelOnSoftware[1] and Raymond Chen's blog[2] were two great companions for me while surfing the net. Knowing HN, I am pretty sure a lot of you would have grown up with these blogs :-) [1][https://www.joelonsoftware.com/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/) [2][https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/) Old MSDN link : [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing) ~~~ kanox I wish they could restore Raymond Chen's old CSS. ~~~ iggldiggl I did this ([https://userstyles.org/styles/121616/the-old-new-thing- class...](https://userstyles.org/styles/121616/the-old-new-thing-classic- style)) after the first blog redesign, but so far haven't found any time to see if something similar would still work with the current blog, too. ------ fencepost Holy smokes that's a huge amount of institutional memory to just trash, particularly without even allowing archiving. ~~~ mehrdadn I have no evidence for this but my gut is very, very confident it was done to get people off older versions of Windows. ~~~ nikbackm Don't see how, only technical users would care about these blogs and they are too few to matter, even assuming these blogs somehow kept them stuck on older Windows versions. ------ dao- Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19454469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19454469)
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Naveen is Leaving Foursquare - uptown http://naveenium.com/stream/next ====== gms Irrespective of Naveen's departure, Foursquare seems like one of those companies that had its time, but it's clear now it won't have a place in the future. ~~~ asanwal Two of the firm's investors are buying more shares in the company, and the valuation is rumored to be $700 million. How is it clear that it won't have a place in the future when those two data points suggest something very different? I'm not a user of FourSquare, but the comment struck me as far from a fact. ~~~ kmfrk I think it's just one of those companies whose worth is not obvious. I suck at figuring out how services monetize their data, but as I understand, their API is nothing to scoff at. Maybe it's more of a data service than a social service now? ------ ahelwer Three years. Every time you see a post like this it's three years. What changes at that time? ~~~ suking Maybe 3 year vesting - although 4 year is more common. But 75% vested of a big company is fine. ~~~ staunch Third option is that he was credited 1 year for work done prior to the investment. That happens sometimes. ------ sneak The question I'm left with after reading this: Why? The comments suggest it's because he got paid. Why not stay on and work on cool stuff, if the company is actually valuable? ------ robk Presumably he took quite a bit of money off the table in the secondary that went down last week. Good for him. ------ mycodebreaks I think these location based applications are like a wave.. People ride it,enjoy it and then get onto another wave... <https://twitter.com/#!/vkhosla/status/59390622209015808> ------ robk Traffic growth remains strong, particularly ex-US [http://trends.google.com/websites?q=foursquare.com&sa=N](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=foursquare.com&sa=N) ------ benackles What's up with the lack of capitalization? p { text-transform: lowercase; } ~~~ johnx123-up No, he didn't capitalize in his original post itself. Check the source of HTML. I think, it's because he's from Madurai, India (my classmate knows him well). ------ matthiasb I am getting: " Error establishing a database connection " ------ veyron Content: three years ago this week, when dennis and i were putting the finishing touches on the vision for this company, we had a hundred or so beta testers who helped us reach the finish line. we went down to sxsw to tell the world about foursquare. it’s hard to believe that now, three years later, instead of one hundred beta testers, the company has over a hundred incredibly talented employees helping us realize that vision. and they’re building amazing things. in that time, i’ve worn a ton of hats: from product to engineering, from funding rounds to roadshows, from recruiting to evangelizing. but, after three years, i feel i’ve done all i can do and i’m moving on. dennis and i have been discussing timing for a while, and we decided that now, on this anniversary, it feels right to begin the transition. so this will be my last month working at foursquare. over the course of the next few weeks, i’m going to be taking a step back as my final projects near their release. i’ve always been here for the company and i always will be. i look quietly around the office every once in a while as the team works (not. creepy. at. all.) and i can’t tell you how proud i am of everyone. we’ve brought together an incredibly special group – one that’s going to go down in history – and they’re going to keep making us all proud. going forward, i’m going to continue to be connected to the company: i’m on the board, i’ll still be advising, and i’m obviously going to be the single most vocal user. but the spring is time for things that are new, and i realize that i have a desire to do something new as well. i’m not sure about my exact next steps, but i’ll probably get back to what i love most – being an entrepreneur, learning and building new things. three years ago, we took an idea and threw it into the world. i’m going to miss the crazy intensity that is foursquare, but am excited to see where it all goes from here.
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Marissa Mayer Wants To Give Every Yahoo Employee An iPhone - rkudeshi http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-wants-to-give-every-yahoo-employee-an-iphone-2012-8 ====== signalsignal Considering her background was Google, it is interesting that she is going with Apple's products. Maybe it is a slap in the face to her former employer going to their main rival.
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DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps - doener https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-apple-mapkit-js-update/ ====== burlesona This is cool to see, and I think should be a virtuous cycle. As I understand it, maps is the kind of thing where more usage really helps make the map better, and while DDG doesn’t bring the scale of being the iphone’s default map, it should be adding a non-trivial amount of traffic. I’ve used Apple Maps as my primary map since it came out, and I’ve only gotten a wrong location one time in literally thousands of searches, and that was years ago. It wasn’t really ready when it launched, but it has gotten consistently better over time. The UX is great, in many cases the satellite imagery is more up-to-date compared to Google, and it doesn’t maul my battery to use. Not saying it’s clearly better than Google, because it isn’t, but for my usage it’s more than “good enough,” and I love to see Apple’s privacy respecting products compete effectively with big G. ~~~ JumpCrisscross > _Not saying it’s clearly better than Google_ If privacy is worth something to you, it’s clearly better than Google. I, too, use Apple as my primary map. In many cases, Apple Maps is better Google. The ones in which it’s behind are more than made up for by Apple’s values. ~~~ inferiorhuman _If privacy is worth something to you, it’s clearly better than Google._ Is it? Has everyone forgotten the Yelp tracking beacon? Good thing Apple relies on Yelp for business info and has pretty deep Yelp integration with the mobile app. ~~~ jeromegv Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation. ~~~ metildaa Apple has taken good stances on most privacy issues, but Apple Maps is poorly run. The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. Apple instead hires a ton of contractors in Austin (and now India) to manually trace roads and guess business hours based on anonymized GPS traces. Apple lacks the scale of Google's army of unpaid Google Scouts (though they could easily fix this) and is wasting time on minutia rather than task their staff/contractors with sourcing & importing higher quality data regularly. One example would be importing county shapefiles, Apple could easily vault ahead of Google Maps if they diffed their map against each of the thousands of county maps in the USA, and they would be the only one regularly doing this (OSM does this occasionally, but not often). They could also scrape business data from each state and use that to produce more accurate & detailed business listings than Google, among many other low hanging fruit. ~~~ dangus This is not 100% true, if you go to an existing business listing and scroll to the bottom there's a "report an issue" option. Apple has fixed my reported issues within a few days in the past. In another sense I'm not sure why it should matter to the end user how many interns Apple hires to do things behind the scenes. I'm imagining that Apple is well aware of these shortcomings. Not only that I wonder if operational information observations like this quickly become outdated. i.e. it's all manual and terrible until somebody gets around to automating it. ~~~ metildaa These user reports take weeks to months to get triaged, making many rather useless. ~~~ Spooky23 They all have that problem. My son's school is in a kafka-ish situation with Google where their listing is wrong and cannot be changed. People cannot write reviews, and data doesn't get updated. 98/100 times, updates to Apple or Google mapping products are done in hours or days. The 2/100, forget it. ~~~ metildaa Apple Maps has a deep queue for reports about map inaccuracies, your minimum wait time is a few days 98 times out of 100. This is fixable, but it requires even more staffing than Apple already has working on Apple Maps (which is most of the people they employ in Austin and India). ------ cletus I think of Apple Maps the same way I think of North Korea's missile program: I know it exists and it has continent-level accuracy. ~~~ rootusrootus I use it all the time. In Portland it is as good as GMaps is at navigating fastest route during heavy traffic. Which is to say, not perfect, but adequate. It has yet to take me to the wrong location. ~~~ inferiorhuman Apple Maps is pretty awful in the Bay Area. My favorite recently was it's insistence that I make a left turn off of Van Ness. Left turns have largely been banned from Van Ness starting with the huge construction project, but the left turn Apple Maps was also demanding was also across a double yellow line where a left turn would've been illegal regardless of construction. Yesterday I was trying to remember if this deli was on Howard or Folsom (and I forgot the exact name). The search results for 'deli' were basically everywhere on North America except for where I was (including across town). Searching for businesses with Apple Maps is nearly impossible, and the insistence upon installing the Yelp app to get more info is just infuriating. Edit: Oh yeah and it can't find Grainger in Millbrae to save its life. Shit happens and business info is one of the hardest parts about mapping. Unfortunately Apple makes it damn near impossible to report problems to a real human. Edit edit: My all time favorite though was asking Siri for directions to some club that I usually take BART to. I kept getting directions to a not that nearby and not that similarly named bail bondsman. ~~~ chipotle_coyote What is "Grainger in Millbrae?" Do you mean Grainger Industrial Supply in Burlingame? Because if you do, that's why it can't find them in Millbrae. :) This is all anecdotal, which is kind of the issue, isn't it? I'm in the Bay Area, too, and I very rarely have any problems with Apple Maps. It isn't perfect, but it's absolutely not "pretty awful." I have no significant problems finding businesses with Apple Maps; I literally just typed "deli" and the first search suggestion that came up was "Delis - search nearby," and it, well, found delis nearby. Problems due to long-term construction seem to be a weakness for it, but I've run into those issues with Google and Waze, too. ~~~ inferiorhuman Sorry, yes, Burlingame. All the teeny peninsula towns tend to blend together to me, and Grainger shuttered its SF outpost. Apple Maps happily took me to the street behind the store where there is/was no entrance. Even when I know the name I often have problems finding something in Apple Maps. Up in Marin, searching for "Apple Store" pulled up listings for the Apple Stores in the East Bay (the one in Corte Madera was significantly lower). Or, if I'm looking for the specific address for the junk yard... for a while it would sort the results in seemingly random order. Right now it seems to at least be sorting by distance, but I think it default to heavily weighting towards what you were last looking at, which almost makes sense (but this seems to persist even if you move someplace else lending an utterly unpredictable feel to the results). This wouldn't be a huge problem but the distance is only shown for the top two results, and the city name is often truncated so chains will often be hard to distinguish from one another. Even better if I scroll up too far it backs out of the search itself and clears the search bar. Edit: Oh yeah, and the deli was actually called a market (but I had also searched for market and only gotten results for Market Street). ------ bad_user I live in Romania. It depends on the country, but for search what really matters are the points of interest and Apple Maps in my country doesn't have any, whereas OSM and Google Maps are competing head to head. Even for driving, the OSM apps available, while lower quality, are more reliable when I travel to Bulgaria for example. The penetration of Google Maps in Eastern Europe isn't great and Apple Maps isn't worth bothering with. Anyway, I wonder why DuckDuckGo is choosing Apple Maps. It makes no sense IMO from a user experience perspective. Remember that if you're in California or New York, those are the primary markets targeted by all tech companies, so your experience with Apple Maps is not representative of the rest of the world. In my travels OSM fares quite well in terms of its POS database and is the only one that can compete with Google Maps in that regard. ~~~ raxxorrax In Germany I use OSM exclusively for navigating and it is very good. Maybe not quite on the level of Google maps concerning things like live traffic, but certainly good enough to reach your goal and then some. Love the project and would have liked to have DuckDuckGo support it instead of using proprietary data. Google Maps has shown what can happen if you use it for anything business critical. edit: Sadly OSM doesn't yet have services like forward adress search (might be too expensive to provide). It would enable many businesses to use it for adress comparison to clean up their own data for example. I think that could put OSM on the map so to speak. ~~~ kreetx Any tips to switching, as in which app etc? ~~~ maskros Currently my favorite OSM-based map and navigation app on Android is this one: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.axe...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.axet.maps) Fantastic non-cluttered UI and offline maps that don't eat up my mobile data. ------ baddox > For example, try a query such as "coffee shops" and zoom in on the map to > refine your search. There is exactly one result for "coffee shops" in San Francisco. The tech and privacy initiatives sound good, but unfortunately the data needs work to pass basic sanity checks. [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=coffee+shops&ia=web&iaxm=maps&stri...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=coffee+shops&ia=web&iaxm=maps&strict_bbox=1&bbox=37.891217720838085%2C-122.61477652810956%2C37.54794931917816%2C-122.22476187967206) _Edit:_ Searching for "coffee shop" (singular) shows many more results. Perhaps the blog post should use that as its example. [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=coffee+shop&ia=web&iaxm=maps&stric...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=coffee+shop&ia=web&iaxm=maps&strict_bbox=0&bbox=37.891217720838085%2C-122.61477652810956%2C37.54794931917816%2C-122.22476187967206) ~~~ banach "coffee shop" on the other hand yields 20 results. I agree that some support for fuzzy search is needed, but there is a reasonable amount of data there. ~~~ asdff I hate when searches parse like that. Ideally coffee shop, coffee shops, coffee, cafe, espresso, etc. should all give me the same exact results: 100% of the stores in the area that sell coffee. I don't think there's a single piece of mapping software that doesn't suck hard in some way. It's pretty annoying how google maps shows you x number of results zoomed out, y zoomed in, and z with the map frame moved half a block to the left. Just show me everything. Search the entire city. Flood my map. Let me do the vetting, that's what I came to maps to do anyway. ~~~ bhandziuk where the sets of y and z might not even overlap ------ kabacha I'm still so perplexed why they didn't go with OpenStreetMaps which are not only floss but also infinitely better. Apple maps are absolutely useless in my region, while osm has always been at least toretable experience wherever I went in the world. Actually OSM is often better than google maps - the only thing it really lacks is better user review ecosystem. ~~~ kkarakk OSM doesn't have great APIs, you end up having to have GIS experts on your team in order to use it in your product. source:someone who tried to use OSM stuff in a IoT fleet tracking system. Even Bing maps is better than OSM ------ WillyF One thing thing that I love about Apple Maps is that they have the name of every river, stream, creek, and ditch if you zoom in far enough. I can't find this information in Google Maps (maybe there's a way to find it, but zooming in doesn't do it). This was exceptionally helpful on my recent trip to Corsica, where I was searching for a specific stream with a genetically significant population of native trout. Apple Maps made finding it a breeze, and even had the name of all the tributaries that flow into it, which were essentially just trickles. I subscribe to OnX Maps for most of my fishing and hunting research in the United States, but Apple Maps is a pretty great free option. ~~~ dsd I noticed that too. I like osmand (openstreetmap) for the same reason. It's like google maps decided to practice more minimalism than apple did. ------ olah_1 Very recently Qwant launched their Maps beta that is based on OpenStreetMaps. Discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304720) Sidenote: I use duckduckgo for Safari search. I saw an ad on twitter for something that I searched in a private window of Safari. Not sure whose fault that is, but it really disturbed me. ~~~ scrooched_moose Interesting, but certainly not usable yet. My "shorthand" address missed my house by about 5 miles, and the precise mailing address (like I'd use on an envelope) brought up a steakhouse about 8 miles away. My company name dropped me in Saudi Arabia, and the exact address dropped me in New York (I'm in Minnesota). It's the same issue I have with Open Street Maps, if you're not in SF/NYC/Chi they're damn near useless. OSM at least gets me to the correct block, although it's still off by about 500 feet. Edit: Oh boy, this is like Cuil again. Grand Canyon brings up a mall in Israel, Burj Khalifa is somehow underwater, Eifel Tower brings up Las Vegas, Roman Colosseum some residential street in Houston. Statue of Liberty and Taj Mahal are the only two landmarks I tried it got correct. I get it's a "beta", but ouch. If you can't get addresses or major landmarks correct this shouldn't even be public facing yet. ~~~ Doctor_Fegg > It's the same issue I have with Open Street Maps, if you're not in > SF/NYC/Chi they're damn near useless OSM long-time mapper here. SF and NYC are not our strong points. Europe is our strong point. ~~~ lucb1e I think for the Americans, contributing data feels too much like work which would violate their idea of letting the free market do its thing. Where would the world go if people just did things for free? Same as with self check-outs, you ain't gonna do that work yourself if you're not getting a discount! ~~~ olah_1 To be fair, contributing to OSM _is_ more work in America. You have to drive every where and you technically aren't allowed to use other maps as a source (I don't know if that's ever followed though) ------ solarkraft Why support proprietary Apple Maps instead of Open Street Map? Is the data a lot more precise? Is the viewer smoother? Is it just another step towards aligning with Apple for an eventual buyout/search engine standard? That said: If privacy is the only concern Apple seems to be a pretty good ally, as the only major player with a significant interest in it. ~~~ Freak_NL > Is the data a lot more precise? Perhaps in Apple's own backyard. In the Netherlands it's laughably bad. Cycle tracks? Mostly missing (in a country that has a huge cycling infrastructure). The map doesn't even have building outlines. Google Maps is slightly better, but mostly because of the more extensive mapping of points-of-interest; because business owners add their own information with an almost religious zeal. Bing interestingly enough uses OpenStreetMap (and properly attributes its usage) to gain access to the municipally contributed building outlines OpenStreetMap can use due to its permissive licence. The roads are their own though, and they are quite inaccurate at the lower end of the road hierarchy. OpenStreetMap is probably the most complete map here in the Netherlands (disclaimer: I contribute to OpenStreetMap). DuckDuckGo using Apple Maps instead of OpenStreetMap is a really weird choice for many countries, but perhaps it works better in the US? ~~~ danieldk _Perhaps in Apple 's own backyard. In the Netherlands it's laughably bad. Cycle tracks? Mostly missing (in a country that has a huge cycling infrastructure). The map doesn't even have building outlines._ Apple uses Tom Tom data. We never had serious problems with car navigation in Germany where we lived before and in The Netherlands. Bike navigation is indeed bad, but it is also bad with Google Maps once you cycle in nature (outside cities). Then nothing beats a good Garmin GPS with paid maps (e.g. Topo Germany Pro and Topo Benelux), which do not only contain smaller cycling roads, unpaved roads, etc. but typically also contain paths recommended by national cycling associations (ActiveRouting). Unfortunately, it seems they are not updating maps frequently anymore, I guess it's a small market. I hope that OpenStreetMap continues to pick up the slack. ~~~ inferiorhuman _Apple uses Tom Tom data. We never had serious problems with car navigation in Germany where we lived before and in The Netherlands._ The car navigation in Germany was fine with Apple Maps for me (although I only used it for one trip), but the public transit info was mostly missing. ------ jakecopp It's a shame they didn't invest in OpenStreetMap. Their values would align significantly, and OpenStreetMap has excellent road and path coverage in my experience (though struggles with Points of Interest). ~~~ Maxious They do invest in improving the project [https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/](https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/) ------ oldgun Not sure if it's a lot to ask, but I'll consider it a killer app if DDG can let user opt which map source to choose from? e.g. Some may prefer Google, and some may prefer openstreetmap? Just a thought. ~~~ bilbo0s Pretty sure you can forget about DDG supporting Google. The whole point of DDG is privacy. Not sure how they could use Google and still keep your location information private? ~~~ scrooched_moose They do have the !g option in their search though. If you aren't happy with the results, append your string with !g and it will send you to google results. You do lose the privacy layer though. From a purely privacy standpoint this isn't much different. There are a ton of other bang options here: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)? ~~~ Erik816 I was under the impression that a !g search was somehow anonymized. Was that just wishful thinking? ~~~ buzzerbetrayed It surprises me how many people think this. I'm not sure where it comes from. All it does is redirect you to Google. So `!g hello world` just redirects to `[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hello%20world`](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hello%20world`) I'm can't see how that could possibly be more anonymized then just going to google.com yourself. ~~~ lucb1e > I'm not sure where it comes from I guess because it makes zero sense the way it is. What's the point? Might as well have gone to Google directly. And what DDG user would ever want to be redirected to Google? They're using DDG for a reason (and for 99%, it isn't the search engine quality). It just makes no sense. > I'm [sic] can't see how that could possibly be more anonymized then [sic] > just going to google.com yourself. DDG could proxy the traffic the way startpage does. ~~~ danskeren > I guess because it makes zero sense the way it is. What's the point? There are over 10.000 different bang shortcuts. They’re very valuable for several reasons, especially if you make DDG your default search engine. “Denmark !w” will take you to Denmark’s Wikipedia page, saving you the time and bandwidth it would take to click on the link through the DDG/Google result. Similarly, you can search “hello !gtda”; and sure, for short translation queries then you could also just type “hello danish” in Google, but try doing that with an entire paragraph. You could also search “duckduckgo !gandi” to see available duckduckgo domains on Gandi (or whichever domain registrar you prefer). > And what DDG user would ever want to be redirected to Google? They're using > DDG for a reason (and for 99%, it isn't the search engine quality). It just > makes no sense. DDG users aren’t (or at least they shouldn’t) append !g to all their searches.. it should only be used as a last resort (and even then they should still be using !s instead of !g). DDG’s primary selling point is privacy, but even if they were just as evil as Google (and there were no other privacy- friendly alternative available) then I’d still be using DDG as my default search engine thanks to the bang shortcuts. > DDG could proxy the traffic the way startpage does. That would defeat the purpose of the bang shortcuts, which is to take you to the search results on other sites. Besides, they already offer this through !s. ------ pwinnski I was a big defender of Apple Maps, largely because I almost never saw any problems with the data. Then I moved into an apartment complex in which Apple had the driveway in the wrong place. I've moved since, so I'll spell it out: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5940+Arapaho+Rd%2C+75248&t=osx&ia=...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=5940+Arapaho+Rd%2C+75248&t=osx&ia=maps&iaxm=maps) Apple Maps believes that the driveways are to the south and east, but in fact the front driveway--the main entrance--is to the north, and there is no direct passage from the east. So every set of directions to or from those apartments begins or ends incorrectly. When leaving, I just have to guess whether I should turn east on Arapaho to catch up to where Maps thinks I should have ended up on Preston to start out, or whether it will send me west on Arapaho once it realizes I'm already most of a block in that direction from Preston. It added a minute or two to every trip, and delivery people would fail to find my apartment unless I specifically said "don't use Apple Maps." So I started saying that to everyone, all the time. Apple's commitment to privacy means that they deliberately don't track the beginning or ending of any trip, but that's precisely the bits they needed to track to see that their routing was completely and totally wrong. So the problem will apparently never be fixed, at least until an Apple employee happens to want to visit a friend who lives in the Enclave at Prestonwood and realizes they can't get there. So I've switched to Google Maps, and I _loathe_ the lack of privacy, but I love the sharing option, so I guess I'm staying, even though I live elsewhere now. ~~~ saagarjha > So the problem will apparently never be fixed, at least until an Apple > employee happens to want to visit a friend who lives in the Enclave at > Prestonwood and realizes they can't get there. Or you can report the issue yourself in-app? ~~~ pwinnski I haven't figured out how, but since I've gone to the trouble to complain in public, I should dig in and see if I can. ------ soneca Tangentially, I noticed that when I start typing a word in my Chrome URL input field, it started to privilege Google searches instead of websites I normally visit. It is very annoying to type _" n <enter>"_ and it goes on to search any query starting with _" n"_ that I happened to have searched in the past instead of going to HN as it was the case for the last several years. It is happening now with all my usual "shortcuts". Chrome now is less a browser and more a Google widget. I wonder if I change the default search engine to DuckDuckGo it would still be the case. ~~~ baobrain This is a chrome flag you can toggle: omnibox-drive-suggestions Alternatively, use Firefox. ~~~ skizm Firefox (at least for me) does the same thing and pushes search results before websites. I have to arrow or tab down 4-5 selections before I get to the first website result in the url/search bar. ~~~ tryptophan Options->Search->untick "Show search suggestions ahead of browsing history in address bar results" ------ larrysalibra I thought people complaining in the comments were just being critical, but I clicked the “coffee shops” example search in the post - I’m in Hong Kong - and it showed me only 2 results: One coffee shop in Hong Kong and one on the other side of the Pearl River Delta in Macau. That’s pretty bad. Screenshot here: [https://twitter.com/larrysalibra/status/1151182624108318720?...](https://twitter.com/larrysalibra/status/1151182624108318720?s=21) ~~~ dmix That looks more like it has to do with query detection than the lack of results. It clearly didn’t understand the Hong Kong part, which is the main issue. ~~~ PunchTornado are people using apple maps completely different than google maps? 90% of the time I use map for searching places, shops etc. If apple maps is not excelling at that, why do people use it? ~~~ Austin_Conlon I use it for transit times to a handful of places in the Bay Area I regularly visit, and it works well for that. One glaring search problem I have though is for a contact, it will only show the result for the first two letters of the name and then when I continue typing it shows anything that’s not the contact’s address. This is even despite getting directions to the contact several times. ------ jcampbell1 Google maps recently made nice improvements when search history is turned off. It used to nag constantly to turn search history on and now it no longer does that and saves searches on my device with a clear setting to turn it off. The ability to limit the duration of search history is another nice feature. I feel less inclined to use Apple maps these days. ------ m8rl In my region (Germany) Apple Maps are not very helpful, compared to Openstreetmap they are incomplete and/or years back. I absoluty can't see why they chose to use them. ~~~ xenospn Probably comes down to API access and/or pricing. Privacy focused mapping services are quite rare. I'd do the same in their place. ~~~ m8rl I see this as an ill-informed decision, from a viewpoint of someone living in a big western city. Results are so error-prone, it's basically useless in 99% of the locations in the world. Even Google has so much wrong information gathered from out-of-date websites and public registers. Even in central Berlin. ~~~ xenospn How do the results compare to openstreetmaps? ------ SanchoPanda For those interested in the differences between the maps providers, Justin OBeirne has a set of absolutely wonderful blog posts on them. I look forward to the next one. [https://www.justinobeirne.com/](https://www.justinobeirne.com/) ------ JansjoFromIkea About a year ago Apple maps helped me find the entrance to an airport when Google maps was absolutely insisting the only entrance was something extremely wrong. Outside of waving someone down on a motorway to get directions (yes I was really dumb and walked alongside a major road to an airport, had a lot of free time...) or paying an absolute ton to get a taxi to find me and take me to the correct entrance I was probably going to miss my flight home if I didn't think to try Apple maps. Anyways, it was a really good lesson in the value of checking multiple sources of truth, which gets harder and harder to remember as Google penetrate further into our lives. ------ garysahota93 I love Google Maps a lot but it's becoming very bloated. I would love to use Apple Maps, but I just don't trust it to be reliable and comprehensive enough on the basic features I need. ------ eric_khun Talking about maps, is anyone has a "Direction API" cheaper than Google maps? Google maps is excessively expensive ( 5USD per 1000 queries [1] ) for my side project. I'm trying to get an estimate time (driving and public transport) between 2 places in large city. Any suggestions welcome! [1] [https://developers.google.com/maps/billing/understanding- cos...](https://developers.google.com/maps/billing/understanding-cost-of- use#directions) ------ philshem Does anyone else see Apple buying DDG in the near future? ~~~ burlesona Probably not. Apple is cautious about acquisitions and doesn’t generally buy things that have a consumer brand, they don’t really do advertising supported products, and they’re also mindful of anti-trust. My guess is that in the search space they see DDG as a useful partner, much like they see Yelp, but they’re not trying to expand into that business so an acquisition wouldn’t do much for them. ------ gen3 I'm glad they are expanding usage of Apple maps. I hope that people will start using it more. In its older state it was a pain to search for things. I wonder if they will expand to using the routing so you don't need to leave for directions. ------ vkaku What I'd want is Apple Maps and Here Maps to enter into a technology/business collaboration agreement. Here Maps have excellent tech and offline packaging and Apple has the reach. Put all this together with DDG, we have a winner. ~~~ manuelmagic I absolutely agree! I'm kinda disappointed that nobody else talked about Here Maps in the comments. Nobody use it? ------ arendtio It would be so cool if they would add an option to select the preferred map provider. Obviously, preferences differ and for other features (e.g. directions source) they already have such options. ------ ancorevard I love Apple Maps' Dark Mode. ~~~ ducktypegoose I think the true hero of the story is whoever made dark mode for maps a thing. ------ sirn IMHO, one of the best thing in Apple Maps is that they localized the street names to those one familiar to locals. I live in Bangkok, and Google Maps always say something like “Road No. 3” (which was not wrong, but nobody here calls it that) whereas Apple Maps correctly identify them as “Sukhumvit Road”. ------ goda90 It seems to still have the dropdown to select which mapping service, but it doesn't change when you use it, and Apple maps isn't on the list. But the map it shows me does have the Apple logo in the corner. ~~~ gruez Are you talking about the drop down right under the "directions" button? I believe that's for navigation only. ie. if you choose "google", and click the directions button, it opens google maps in a new tab, and if you change it to bing, it opens bing maps in a new tab. ------ DevKoala My experience with Apple Maps in California has been great. They had my home address wrong for a bit, so I submitted a correction and the map updated in two days from my request. That was the only issue I ever had. ------ paul7986 Great..adamant DDG user! One thing I look forward to is the ability to get the distance from X to Y in DDG. I’m not sure if this something many do as well but personally it’s probably one of my top ten things I Routinely search(Weekly) for. ------ carusooneliner Took DDG Enhanced Maps for a test drive: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EnmdbzdOWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EnmdbzdOWI) ------ LUmBULtERA I would use Apple Maps significantly more if it allowed me to download maps for offline navigation, like I can with Google Maps. ------ SanchoPanda Why does neither maps.duckduckgo.com or duckduckgo.com/maps take me to the maps interface? Thats the number one way I access google maps. ~~~ mperham Likewise. Note ddg.co works too, saves lots of typing. ~~~ SanchoPanda My brain doesn't do .co. No matter how I try. Duck.com works for me though. ~~~ mkl I hadn't caught up with that. Duck.com is a relatively recent development: [https://edgy.app/duckduckgo-search-engine-duck- com](https://edgy.app/duckduckgo-search-engine-duck-com) None of the articles I found explain how DuckDuckGo managed to convince Google to give it to them. ------ known Unlike Apple Maps, Google Maps are "powered" by Android devices ------ konart Unfortunatelly Apple Maps are irrelevant outside the US though. ------ josefresco What service did DDG use before Apple Maps? ~~~ Doctor_Fegg Mapbox. ------ Mindwipe DuckDuckGo making itself less useful then.
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Ask HN: Where do you live? - csswizardry I’m interested to know where fellow HN users live. I get the feeling that there’s a large US presence here, but I would love to learn a little more about where in the world folks are.<p>- - -<p>Rules:<p>1. Do a Find (Ctrl&#x2F;Cmd+F) for the three letter code of the airport nearest to where you live (e.g. <i>LBA</i>).<p>1.a. If you find your airport, upvote it.<p>1.b. If not, add it (e.g. <i>LBA: Leeds Bradford, UK</i>).<p>2. Just for fun, comment on your location with some interesting and&#x2F;or fun facts about the place. We can use this as an excuse to learn some things!<p>3. I’m guessing that the higher upvoted the airport, the most users we have in that location.<p>4. Upvote this thread for reach.<p>- - -<p>Why airport? I guess there’d be a lot of ambiguity and contention if people were to list their own cities (someone might live <i>near</i> San Francisco, but might not actually identify as being from there). Plus it will give us a cleaner and smaller data set than if people were to just list anywhere and everywhere. ====== protomyth DVL: Devils Lake, ND // technically K8J7 is closer ------ 4e1a SGF: Springfield, Missouri, USA ------ kodikodytis GVA: Geneva, Switzerland ------ pablosanta ASU: Asuncion, Paraguay. ------ csswizardry LBA: Leeds Bradford, UK ~~~ csswizardry The UK’s second biggest district by population[1], Leeds is also home to the world’s first ever moving image[2]! 1\. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment- arts-33198686](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33198686) 2\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_by...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_districts_by_population#More_than_500.2C000_inhabitants) ------ RightMillennial ORD: Chicago, IL, US ------ Artlav SVO: Moscow, Russia ~~~ Artlav Big ass city on seven hills, one of the top 10 most expensive cities by housing costs, got an excellent public transit system and horrible traffic (it's rare to get somewhere faster by car than by subway unless it's sunday). The other three airports are DME, VKO and BKA. ------ petercooper HUY: Humberside, UK ------ cpr PIT ------ Safety1stClyde NRT
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Stone Age hunter-gatherers lived beside farmers, didn't interbreed - rfugger http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/stone-age-hunter-gatherers-lived-beside-farmers-didn-t-interbreed-1.1991430 ====== crazygringo If it's anything like Africa has been over the past 100 years, agricultural tribes and hunter-gatherer tribes simply don't mix. Agricultural tribes find the hunter-gatherer tribes to be dirty, lazy, uncivilized -- not a lot of sexual attraction going on. And the hunter- gatherer tribes think the agricultural people work way too hard for nothing, with their priorities all wrong, and don't want anything to do with the lifestyle. At least that's how it was all explained to me during time I spent in Kenya and Tanzania, where I spent a couple weeks with a hunter-gatherer tribe. ~~~ VLM "And the hunter-gatherer tribes think the agricultural people" The teeth, the teeth! Look at meat eater teeth compared to stone ground grain eaters teeth. Also this is a very old story which makes it unusual that they carefully avoided relative health issues such that grain eaters shrink in height and strength compared to the H-G eaters. So you've got Ms Hunter looking at a short little troll of a grain eater with rotting teeth vs studly McMeat eater... And in the other direction the ladies have little patience with the HGs because their diet gets a little sparse in the winter and they don't want to watch (more of) their kids starve. HGs: Less of them per sq mile, taller, stronger, healthier, other than in winter when the die off, great teeth. Farmers: More of them per sq mile, shorter, weaker, less healthy, starve less often, awful rotting teeth. It must have been an interesting dating/social dynamic. ~~~ ExpiredLink Farmers were chronically underfed to modern times. They never had enough to eat for thousands of years. ~~~ Sharlin Yes; it's indeed important to note that the shift to agriculture was a quantity/quality tradeoff. Farming could sustain more people than hunting and gathering, so by pure math, it won over in the end, but the average quality of life decreased for thousands of years, until the industrial revolution. ~~~ jchrisa There's a lot of interesting history around this topic. Anyone have recommendations? ~~~ evincarofautumn _Ishmael_ by Daniel Quinn is a good soft introduction to the topic, told in parable form. You probably want a proper history book covering the Neolithic Revolution. ------ tjaerv Obligatory link to Jared Diamond's classic essay "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race": [http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html](http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html) ------ qwerta There are several holes in this article. >The tribe in Central Europe ate almost exclusively freshwater fish until around 3000 B.C 3000 BC was still stone (copper) age in Central Europe. Agriculture is very hard with stone tools. Also climate could be much cooler for long period. At that time I would choose fish anytime. > Typically, he said, the arrival of farming led to widespread deforestation > and the disappearance of wildlife Several places in Central Europe were deforested as late as 12th century. Early European agriculture relied on burning part of forest, using it until ground was fertile and than moving to other place. Intensive agriculture (which leads to widespread deforestation) was not used until middle-ages. > Despite the fact that they were neighbours, there was little, if any, > interbreeding between the two cultural groups, according to the results of a > DNA analysis > Nehlich acknowledged that lack of interbreeding may have been due to > cultural reasons, but said that is pure speculation in the absence of > evidence. They probably lived in different periods, possibly separated by hundreds of years. Culture has nothing to do with it, even neanderthals were interbreeding with early modern humans. It was common to kidnap and marry woman from different tribes. ------ ealloc This result is right in line with the observations of people studying the evolution of lactose tolerance [1]. Lactose-tolerant middle-easterners (who had long been eating lactose-free fermented milk, until they developed lactose tolerance) moved in to Europe and took over, and rarely mixed with the native hunter gatherers. Instead, they simply outcompeted them and largely wiped them out. It is estimated that lactose tolerance gave them "up to 19% more fertile offspring" than the indigenous hunter-gatherers. That makes me muse: Maybe the two groups didn't mix because the hunter- gatherers couldn't survive on the high-milk (and high starch?) diet of the agricultural people. Lactose intolerance can be quite violent! [1] [http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk- revolution-1...](http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk- revolution-1.13471) ------ armenarmen I wonder it comparing the bones side by side can give us any insights into the legitimacy of the claims that the paleo diet crew likes to make? ~~~ Sharlin The diet of a hunter-gatherer is certainly almost always healthier than that of a subsistence farmer, but people in modern industrialized societies are hardly subsistence farmers. ------ karlkatzke Huh. An ancient tribe of Crossfit-ers. Who woulda thunk? ------ rhizome There's a reality TV series here somewhere.
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Ask HN: Tips for marketing a *good* app? - sarreph Hi there,<p>I&#x27;m a student, and an iOS app developer; I&#x27;ve published a couple of apps in the past that have been mildly successful. However, nothing I&#x27;ve published has come close enough to making enough revenue to live off for when I leave college.<p>After improving my skills a lot over the last year or so, and teaming up with a designer, I think I may have an (in development) that could achieve some sort of success. However, I am aware that marketing and PR are key in the &#x27;app game&#x27;, and so I was wondering if anyone has any tips for marketing an app? (I&#x27;m not experienced in app marketing practice at all)<p>Thanks! ====== dogfoodheaven Here are a few tips that I have found worked well Bloggers: Reach out to bloggers who have reviewed similar apps and offer them a sneak peek before launch, if the app is solid they will write about it. Ratings: Ask users if they are enjoying the app after 3 uses, if they say yes ask them to rate, if no ask them for feedback. This will capture bad feedback and push positive reviews Cost: If it is a paid app consider making it a lower price for launch so it has a greater chance of trending App screenshots: Show images of actual people using it, this spells out the use cases ------ postblogism Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. Don't listen to the haters. Nothing even comes close to the level of marketing Facebook can give you to your target audience...and it's cheap! Enough said
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Why I think you should try dvorak - mtoledo http://marcostoledo.com/why-i-think-you-should-try-dvorak/ ====== tome I had a painful (in two senses) transition to Dvorak about eight years ago. The first pain was RSI that I got through typing a lot. I decided to try Dvorak to see if it helped. The second pain was touch typing incredibly slowly for a few weeks whilst I learned the layout. It was a great experience, typing is a lot more comfortable, and I've never looked back. Regarding the negatives: _You need to switch back when using other peoples’ computers_ Kind of. If you type on their computer for 5 minutes, just hunt-and-peck. If you type on their computer for an hour, go to the control panel and switch their layout into Dvorak! _Nearly no availability of keyboards with dvorak layout_ It doesn't matter at all. If you're using Dvorak for a sensible reason then you're touch-typing. If you're touch-typing you're not looking at the keys. _Having to relearn all your hotkeys_ I can understand why Vim's hjkl would cause an annoying transition, but location independent hotkeys will cause you no problem. ~~~ ecyrb I learned vi after switching to Dvorak - so I don't have any vi-Qwerty muscle memory. That makes for a painful 5 minutes at someone else's desk, but they pick up vim commands better if I tell them what to do. I echo the RSI sentiments though. Dvorak is more comfortable for myself. I'm somewhat tempted to try Programmer's Dvorak for the brackets/braces/parens at some point, but I do like having my (Dvorak) TypeMatrix 2030 keyboard reflect my actual keymap. ~~~ mtoledo I tried the programmer dvorak and, though it has some more accessible keys, the number keys as 753190246 and the fact you needed to type it holding shift (or pressing caps) eventually seemed worse than normal way, point being I type a lot more numbers in a row than symbols in a row, so holding shift or pressing caps for numbers got very frequent ------ ljlolel I'm surprised nobody mentioned Colemak. The Colemak keyboard layout is easier to learn and potentially faster than Dvorak (<http://colemak.com/>). It is easier to learn because it changes many fewer keys, especially the less frequent ones which are harder to learn because you rarely use them. I found I could never remember where z and v were on Dvorak. Also, many hotkeys stay in place (ctrl+c, ctrl+v, etc). I learned Colemak (from 0 to 70wpm, now like 90) in 10 days (I had learned and switched back from Dvorak before, though, so I was used to learning new keyboards). It is potentially faster since it was designed after modern computers were invented and depends more on "finger rolls" to type common substrings quickly. With Dvorak, I often used the same finger to type adjacent letters. I also used my pinky _a lot_. That was painful. Finally, Colemak keeps punctuation in the same sane place, so it's better for programmers. Colemak is the 3rd most popular layout. I use it and find it available or trivial to install on all modern OSs. I can easily use other people's computers by either switching the keyboard layout, or just by glancing down which causes my mind to switch to qwerty mode. ~~~ mtoledo Vote up for people trying Colemak. I'm all for people exploring with their typing layouts and seeing what works better, even if I haven't tried it myself. ------ ComputerGuru I use Dvorak just because with it I don't suffer from typing-related wrist and arm pain. The (IMHO) improved typing speed is just a secondary effect. ------ gnosis Here's some research in to alternative keyboard layouts which are (arguably) even more efficient than Dvorak and Colemak. [Also included is an application for optimizing your own keyboard layout based on criteria that are important to you (such as minimizing the use of the little fingers, weighting one hand more than another, etc..)]: <http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx> The most efficient keyboard layouts are described here: <http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization> ------ Ixiaus After resigning from my job at an IP firm, I decided to undertake the learning and use of Dvorak over QWERTY. I got rather proficient at it and like it a lot. Programmer’s Dvorak is particularly awesome – my most often used keys were readily available and my typing speeds were much higher. Something suffered though. My emacs environment used a Dvorak command remapping mode that played nice with some of my other major modes but broke the majority of my most often used commands in some very important modes. I chose to forgo Dvorak and switch back to QWERTY because I didn’t want to maintain multiple different remapping packages for my Emacs environment, BIG pain in the ass. I did, however, become a much better QWERTY typer because of it and greatly wish to become ambi. Maybe my next go will be a project in itself to better support Dvorak with my Emacs environment! ------ Loic I was skeptical about Dvorak, I read a lot about it, here and in other places, then in a day of "madness" I went ahead and bought a Typematrix 2030 USB with Dvorak layout. It took me 2 months to go back to speed and I was not that good at typing, looking regularly at the keyboard with my Qwerty. But now, I don't know if this comes more from the Typematrix or Dvorak, but anyway, the combination is so great, it is the first time in my entire life that I am fully touch typing, with the feeling that all the keys are naturally falling below my fingers. I will never go back. Note, I am a solo entrepreneur working from my home office, so I do not have the problem with the switch between home and work keyboard. I started in March last year if not wrong, so my experience is a bit more than "just a test". ~~~ ecyrb I switched to Dvorak with a regular keyboard and noticed a reduction in wrist / forearm pain. It was only years later that I picked up a couple of TypeMatrix keyboards as a luxury. ------ Xichekolas Why is dvorak really better than qwerty? It's more fun. Everyone tries to justify it as more comfortable or faster, but really it boils down to it being fun. (I use dvorak.) Sure, you spend more time on the home row, and certain key chords are much more natural, but everything has its drawbacks. One thing no one tells you is that dvorak is brutal on your right pinky... especially if you use *nix and type things like 'ls' a lot. After a while your pinky gets stronger and you no longer notice, but everything has its advantages and drawbacks. So really, lots stop spending all this effort justifying and evangelizing our keyboard layouts. If you enjoy a non-qwerty layout, then by all means share it with the world, but stop making it something bigger than it is. ~~~ mtoledo I'm sorry if I'm making it bigger than it is. I really just mean to make it as big as I think it is. The more comfortable claims seem to be echoed by a lot of other dvorak typers here as well. Also, the pinky strain is echoed a lot, even if I haven't really suffered that (perhaps for playing the piano and guitar??), so I think that's something to watch for too. ------ JeremyChase I used Dvorak for a couple months and loved it. However, at the time, I was using other people's computers so frequently that I couldn't make the switch at that time. Lately that isn't the case so maybe I should try it again... ------ aubergene What about Colemak, see this letter frequency diagram <http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?pid=596#p596> ------ jlouis I used Dvorak for about 7 years but I am now back to QWERTY. I learned to type with 10 fingers back in 1994 or so when in school. The reason I am back to Qwerty are: Many programs choose their shortcuts based on QWERTY. Espcially editors like vim or emacs. I don't type particularly faster on Dvorak. I can't really feel a difference between the two schemes which makes one a killer over the other. In other words: Both schemes are about equally decent. ~~~ loup-vaillant Then change the short-cuts of your editor. Especially one like vim or emacs. <http://xahlee.org/emacs/ergonomic_emacs_keybinding.html> ~~~ mtoledo That's a pretty nice link! I use my emacs with most default key bindings in dvorak and haven't noticed it any better/worse than qwerty. Like I said on the article, ymmv ------ briancooley Does anyone have suggestions for good online training for Dvorak? One of the big hindrances to learning Dvorak seems to be the lack of available learning tools. ~~~ tome I learned by printing out the keyboard layout, sticking it about my keyboard and just typing stuff that I'd have to type anyway. (Granted this is a slow method of learning so may not work for those who are pressed for time). ------ wglb So we see the typing speed before, but we are left to wonder what the post- switch typing speed is. ~~~ mtoledo Yea good point. I tried going to typeracer and got some ~80wpm scores, but that's fairly anedoctal since I don't have any proper history of my typing speed. ------ briansmith2010 You probably shouldn't, really. ~~~ tome Care to justify that statement? It's not a very Hackernewsish comment as it stands. ~~~ rewind Off topic, but sometimes when you see a really moronic comment like that, check the user's profile. You can see he/she created the account just to post a dumb comment. Just downvote and ignore. ~~~ tome Normally I do do that, but the comment was already at +3 when I downmodded it, so that threw me a bit.
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PEG.js - parser generator for JavaScript - dmajda http://pegjs.majda.cz/ ====== grayrest There are a couple other parser generators for JS: * <http://zaa.ch/2k> \- Jison * <http://inimino.org/~inimino/blog/peg_first_release> \- another Packrat (has an es5 parser as an example) Plus a few more that work but produce generated code that's too slow to be useful. ~~~ mnemonik Worth noting that, last I heard, CoffeeScript is using Zaach's Jison: <http://zaa.ch/2o> ------ scott_s I had to do some digging for myself to verify that, yes, PEGs are a recent concept distinct from the kind of grammars I'm already familiar with. See Bryan Ford's paper, _Parsing Expression Grammars: A Recognition-Based Syntactic Foundation_ from PoPL 2004: <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=964001.964011> ~~~ barrkel Memoization to get linear performance out of backtracking, which is exponential without it, is certainly a nice sleight of hand, but I wouldn't be under any illusions that the constant factor is competitive with say an LALR recognizer. Also, with a scheme that maps so closely to recursive descent, it's easy to miss what amount to grammar ambiguities, where nested productions preferentially eat tokens that may be in the follow set (i.e. the if/else problem). ~~~ cynicalkane PEGs don't have grammar ambiguities. Every PEG is deterministic. Grammar ambiguities are resolved by ordered choice. If there are two ways to parse something, the first way will be tried first. If it succeeds, the ordered choice short-circuits and the second way is ignored. So you can resolve, say, the classic dangling else problem by ordering your choices correctly. ~~~ barrkel I know all of that. My point is that the if/else problem really is an ambiguity (i.e. it is a language bug, not just a problem you have to get around in parsing), and problems similar to it crop up when your tool doesn't alert you to first/follow conflicts, in LL(1) parlance. That PEGs encode the implementation strategy inside the declarative grammar is a flaw, in my opinion, not a benefit. ~~~ cynicalkane In programming, ambiguity is _bad_! Explicitly encoding disambiguation rules in the grammar is a good thing, just like it's a good thing in functional pattern matching, in Prolog... I'd be interested to hear any reason why you would want to not disambiguate a grammar in any language designed to be computer-recognizable. ~~~ barrkel Here, read this: <http://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/05-09-114> In particular: "Yes, this is "the" problem with PEG's. / implies ordering of the search (parsing) space. You need to order your / operators so that special cases (e.g. longer matches), so that they appear first. Unfortunately, if you don't do this, nothing will tell you you have a problem with your grammar, it will simply not parse some inputs. To me this implies that if one wants to use a PEG to parse some input, then one must exhaustively test the parser." Hopefully the thread therein will describe my issue better than I have thus far. ~~~ scott_s Indeed it does, and Chris Clark very nicely summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of PEG vs other parsers. Nice find. ------ patrickg I love LPEG for Lua. It usually takes me some time to write a decent grammar, but once it works it is rather straightforward to read it. (<http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/lpeg/lpeg.html>) Now seeing this for javascript makes me think if I should actually do more work with js. ~~~ richard_lyman Amen on the easy to read part. I'm the author of clj-peg ( <http://www.lithinos.com/clj-peg/> ), and the main reason I wanted to write it was to have grammars that were human readable. ~~~ allyt I'm really interested in human-readable grammars. Thanks for your work. ------ cousin_it A parser generator? Why oh why? It sounds so 80s. JavaScript is strong enough to express parser combinators, e.g. see Chris Double's implementation (also based on the PEG formalism): [http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/10/javascript-parser- combi...](http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/10/javascript-parser- combinators.html) I did the same thing in ActionScript. It's easy and fun. ~~~ dmajda I believe that the classical generated parser has generally better performance potential - there is less function calling, less string passing (but this may be avoided easily in combinators too) and more opportunity for optimalization if you have the whole grammar AST in hand. ------ raganwald Are there PEGs available for languages like Javascript? Given recent discussion of Perl being undecidable, I assume there isn't one for Perl. Has anyone tackled such a thing for Ruby? Update: Thanks for the links! That being said, I didn't mean parsers written _in_ Javascript or Ruby, I mean PEGs or CFGs that parse Javascript and/or Ruby programs :-) ~~~ ErrantX <http://treetop.rubyforge.org/> Im writing a programming language in Ruby at the moment - and after playing with that for a few days I've gone back to "hand coded lexer plus Racc for grammar". It's probably personal preference but I find that a little more tunable. ~~~ dmajda What exactly you didn't like? ~~~ ErrantX Just personal preference: I prefer the grammar structure for parsers like Racc ------ euroclydon I'm confused about the grammar example. How does: multiplicative : primary "* " multiplicative { return $1 * $3; } return the product of two integers? ~~~ mbrubeck HN formatting messed up your asterisks. The whole rule is: multiplicative : primary "*" multiplicative { return $1 * $3; } / primary "primary" refers to another rule in the grammar, which is defined as integer or a parenthesized expression. This snippet defines "multiplicative", which is either a primary, or a primary followed by an asterisk followed by another multiplicative. (This recursively expands to allow any number of primaries, separated by asterisks.) The value of the multiplicative expression is the value of the first term times the value of the third term. (The second term is just the literal string "*".) ~~~ barrkel On the face of it, however, the grammar is problematic. There's a reason it uses "additive", "multiplicative" and "primary" rather than a more traditional expression, term and factor: by using commutative operators like + and multiply, and leaving out - and / it disguises the fact that the grammar is actually evaluating the expression from right to left, rather than the expected order of left to right. ~~~ dmajda I knew somebody would raise this point :-) You are right that the evaluation order would be wrong for "-" and "/". I will probably implement support for left recursion in PEG.js - it is possible (see e.g. <http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2007002_packrat.pdf>). After that, the grammar could be rewritten to evaluate in the correct order. (Another alternative - which works right now - is to change the parsing expressions to something like "additive ([+-] additive)*" and deal with the whole chain of operations with the same priority at once. I didn't use this in the example as I wanted it to be as simple as possible.) ~~~ cynicalkane Don't use that paper! I tried to use the parsing technique in that paper while working on a parser for use at the CME, and it caused me weeks of headaches. First, you'll note the algorithm is extremely complicated--nothing like the simple top-down algorithm that makes PEGs so attractive. Not only is it complicated, it misses basic refactoring issues--some logic is duplicated across functions, and the functions interact in ugly ways. Second, it doesn't even handle left recursion correctly. Throw a ruleset like this at their parser A -> B "a" B -> C "b" C -> B / A / "c" and it will explode into a million little pieces, because the authors did not account for any recursive rule having multiple recursion points. Don't even try something like S -> A / B A -> A "a" / B / a B -> B "b" / A / "b" ~~~ dmajda Interesting, thanks for the warning. I only skimmed through the paper today and noted that the algoritm seems complex, but I didn't attempt to understand it in detail. What was your final result? Did you implement the left recursion in the way the paper describes, invented/found some other way or abandoned the whole idea? ~~~ cynicalkane The approach I'm working on uses the same "growing the seed" idea, but in a different way. It involves the memo entries being able to remember which left-recursive results they are dependent on. This way, when a left-recursive rule produces a result that is dependent on itself, it knows that this match can possibly be "grown" through repeated iterations. That's a basic sketch of the idea. Performance properties remain the same in the case of left-recursive rules that are not interdependent. I don't really know what they are like for large numbers of interdependent left-recursive rules--but if you have a language like that, better to use an Earley or GLR parser. I'm still working on it. It passes a battery of test cases, two of which I posted above, but I'm not 100% confident in it just yet. Also, as posted above, I'm trying to get permission from the higher-ups to release the code into the wild.
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In a social networking world, what's the future of TV? - bootload http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-jenkins/in-a-social-networking-wo_b_292014.html ====== kierank TV emphasising its difference and its production value compared to social networking. The things people do on social network sites are either worthless or have a value close to zero. Compare this to TV which is made by skilled professionals and has a high production value. If TV lowers itself down to the social networking space it will just fall into the noise of the web and lose its value amongst all the twittering and poking. ------ gdp TV will always have a place as something people can twitter about in real time.
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SVG can do that? - funspectre http://slides.com/sdrasner/svg-can-do-that#/ ====== mikekchar One of funnest projects I worked on at Corel was called "Smart Graphics Studio" (I'm guessing most of the people who worked on it also read HN, so "Hi!"). It was an absolutely _stupid_ idea: Some insane PGM read that XSLT could transform any XML into any other XML. Then they read that SVG was XML. They put 2 and 2 together and got a billion: You could draw a picture in SVG and then modify it intelligently (through XSLT) using some XML data set. Of course the opposite is actually a brilliant idea (at least at a time when XML was still popular): Take an XML dataset and visualise it in SVG using XSLT transformations (well... yeah... doing it all in XSLT is still insane, but you get the idea). Anyway, we built a very high performance SVG viewer (for the time, anyway) from scratch. We built an SVG/Javascript widget library. We built an incredibly impressive data manipulation library in XSLT (ok... yeah... insane). Fun times. And all nearly 20 years ago. It really was ahead of its time. Of course the end finally had to come. The PGMs sold this thing to a certain aviation company with the promise that it would automatically build circuit diagrams from their XML chipset database (because.... XSLT!) When Vector took over Corel, they very rightly dropped our division like a hot potato (we had something like 3 PGMs per developer). It was quite unfortunate because the developers and QA people I worked with there were some of the best I've every had the pleasure of working with. I've always waited for something to come of SVG and really wish we had been able to release something that wasn't crazy so that people could see what the potential was. Edit: In my old age I'm losing track of time. It seems that Vector acquired Corel in 2003, so that's only 15 years ago :-) ~~~ eponeponepon It's such a shame that XSLT has such a poor image - v1.0 was troublesome for sure, but the modern language is remarkably flexible, expressive and elegant, as long as you leave your procedural baggage at the door. It's not without its wobbly bits, but show me a language that isn't. ~~~ tangue SOAP, RDF and the semantic web clique, and other monstruosities of the 2000s gave XML a bad name but XSLT is nice. Indeed it would have been a nicer solution than responsive css to tackle the challenges of mobile devices. ~~~ gavinpc Amen. And while we're at it, let's throw some of the credit to XPath. Wouldn't you like concise, declarative traversal for your data structures? (Yeah, I'm sure somebody's already built it.) I don't think I agree about responsive css, but that's another discussion. ~~~ err4nt I experiment with using XPath selectors to apply styling :D Can reach many things CSS selectors arent designed to reach! ------ starmole This showcases what's wrong with SVG: It does way too much! To be useful as a vector image format, there should be strict rules (and less cruft). Why is there no libsvg like libjpeg or libpng? Why have interaction as part of an image format? SVG lives in an uncanny valley between jpeg and flash/js. I think there is still a big need for a real vector interchange and display format. Right now people pick a "good" subset of SVG. Or even fallback to fonts. My dream vector format: \- Pixel perfect across implementations at 50%,100%,200% renderings. At least grid aligned lines. \- Lossless roundtrip across apps. Start in Illustrator, edit parts in Inkscape, other parts in Animate, untouched things stay exactly the same. \- Standard zero dependency C reference implementation: Stream in, bitmap out. ~~~ tempodox > It does way too much! And even so, it still has no hairline. All line widths are finite and change when zooming. ~~~ aidos It does, well, if following SVG 1.2 Tiny it does, at least. As far as I know it's implemented in Opera, FF, Chrome and Safari. Not sure about IE. It's implemented as vector-effect: _vector-effect= "non-scaling-stroke"_ There's an example here [https://gist.github.com/lightjs/5372867](https://gist.github.com/lightjs/5372867) ------ vturner It's always been a curiosity of mine why SVG didn't get more attention from browsers through the years to solve the performance issues. It's open source, cross platform, "dynamic" in a sense AKA no compiling needed, light weight, supports shapes and text, offers immediate responsiveness, etc. Why the lack of love while we pour ever increasing energy into mangling HTML and CSS and every six months a new JS framework/module/whatever to try to make it work? ~~~ sAbakumoff >>offers immediate responsiveness does it? Any examples of responsive grid system on SVG? What would be interesting. ~~~ k_sh I think GP was referring to the fact that you don't need to generate SVG assets at multiple sizes for size/picture clarity balance, as you do with popular raster formats. ~~~ sAbakumoff But GP was asking : "Why the lack of love while we pour ever increasing energy into mangling HTML and CSS" SVG can't be, shouldn't be and never will be the replacement for HTML/CSS/JS. ~~~ kitd But GP's point is the opposite, that HTML/CSS/JS is being used too often for tasks that could be much more simply solved by SVG. I can think of a couple just in my current project. ~~~ sAbakumoff Cool, could you please explain what are they? To me, personally, SVG is the last resort. ~~~ kitd In brief, our product includes a web-based process flow component, typical nodes-and-edges kind of thing. Much better done with SVG IMHO, with first- class support for box & line modelling and styling. But the powers-that-be decreed we'd do it all in HTML & CSS. ~~~ sAbakumoff nodes-and-edges thing is the classic problem that is perfectly solved by SVG. Other than that it's quite useless though IMHO. ~~~ kitd Well, I'll happily agree that SVG is a perfect fit for data-driven graphics, but that represents are reasonably large set of solutions, so I'd not say "useless" at all. ------ polymeris SVG works so fantastically well with React -- it's just part of the DOM, after all. Unless there are performance concerns, that reason alone would make me choose it over Canvas every time. Shameless plug, one of my first experiments with SVG+react (+cljs): [https://polymeris.github.io/carlos/](https://polymeris.github.io/carlos/) Done in one day, without knowing the tech. ~~~ marcus_holmes When I started learning React, I realised a dream of mine could finally come true: a proper Celtic Knotwork generator. Uses SVG and React together in harmony. [http://celtic-knotwork.online](http://celtic-knotwork.online) ~~~ vog Pardon my ignorance, but aren't these patterns just composed of certain tiles in rows and columns? This is something you can do equally well with raster graphics, so what's the gain of using SVG here? ~~~ marcus_holmes I tried that on an earlier version, but there's complications ;) The "double corded" style paints one side of a cord red and the other blue. The problem comes when the pattern changes what side is which. You can play around with it to see - put in some breakpoints and you'll see the "sides" switch on some cells. This can't be done with tiles. The tile manipulation is actually no simpler than drawing SVG, because the hard bit is calculating the entry and exit points for each tertiary cell. And SVG produces better results :) I also plan on doing some more stuff with it someday - like deforming the grid by moving the corners. This is pretty simple with SVG but would be really hard with tiles. ------ jankovicsandras Shameless plug: ImageTracer is a simple raster image tracer and vectorizer that outputs SVG, 100% free, Public Domain. Available in JavaScript (works both in the browser and with Node.js), "desktop" Java and "Android" Java: [https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjs](https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjs) [https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjava](https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjava) [https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerandroid](https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerandroid) ~~~ anilgulecha Wow, this is cool. It looks like an API capable of things that Vector Magic[1] can do, but FOSS. Vector Magic has been excellent for some occasions where you have a rasterized clipart, but need it as a vector. [1][https://vectormagic.com/](https://vectormagic.com/) ~~~ Tajnymag Inkscape does have such a feature too. While importing a bitmap image, you can specifically "convert" it to vector graphic. Works fairly well. ~~~ anilgulecha I love and use Inkscape exclusively for any SVG editing, but this particular feature in Inkscape is woefully under anything I've seen vector magic provides. ~~~ jansho The trick is to make sure the raster image is as clean as possible. But yeah I agree, this is not its best feature. ------ byron_fast It's nice that we've got the most valuable part of Flash: a vector rendering engine. I do miss Flash's editor for these types of content, though. ~~~ yosito I just spent all day trying to manually wrangle SVG in the browser. I'd be happy with a good static SVG editor to be honest. ~~~ Tagbert Inkscape is OK, but a little rough. Take a look at Affinity Designer. It is very polished and has a feature set approaching Adobe illustrator at a very reasonable price. It's also well supported by the publisher. ~~~ seanwilson I've been using both recently. Affinity Designer has a much, much better interface but I keep finding features and options missing that make it frustrating for coding projects. You can't easily open an SVG file, edit it and quickly save to the same SVG file without going through several clicks and setting options to export ("save" will save in a proprietary format). There isn't a command line interface for exporting either. I can't see a way to edit the SVG XML either (you can do that in Inkscape) which is important when you're wanting to script it later. For previous projects, I've had workflows where images were extracted from one place, added into existing SVG files and Inkscape was scripted to slice up and export sections into PNG files. I can't see a way to do anything similar with Affinity Designer. ------ jordache SVG has the opposite performance profile of Canvas. SVG hits a performance ceiling as number of elements increases. Canvas, since it's rasterized image can handle a rasterized representation of millions of SVG elements. However as Canvas dimension increase, it will hit a performance ceiling. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel In my experience, canvas 2D also has a number-of-elements performance ceiling if you're drawing things rather than using images, which feels like it defeats the purpose. For example, try drawing hundreds of coloured rectangles per frame. Easy, right? If you're using WebGL, or any sensible graphics API, yes. If you're using canvas, the web-browser will parse and re-parse your colour expression CSS n times per frame. Enjoy your 100% CPU usage. ~~~ jordache > has a number-of-elements performance ceiling if you're drawing things rather > than using images, which feels like it defeats the purpose. Well you can generate your imagery programmatically and then render it to canvas as a raster image. Canvas is not purely for implementing a web based drawing app. ~~~ icebraining But you can also embed a raster image in SVG. ~~~ jordache The context of the discussion is to leverage SVG's DOM based approach to render on screen elements ------ Jack000 coming soon, full SVG websites featuring: \- loading bar until website is fully loaded \- animated buttons that bounce and flash \- full screen 2 second transitions from page to page \- all in one page, no urls! feels like 2010 again : ] ------ kevinb7 While SVG can do a lot, there are certain things that it isn't optimized for. In particular animating lots of shapes simultaneously. The animation of the globe exploding into a bunch of triangles from the slides is a good (bad?) example of this. Also, there can also be inconsistencies is in the rendering of SVGs between browsers. ~~~ abritinthebay That’s not really SVG that’s being bad there - it’s that browsers haven’t optimized for it. They will if more people use it. SVG in Chrome can be particularly painful due to their mediocre support of some things (sometimes outright contradicting the spec). That’s a vendor issue tho, nothing intrinsic to the format. ~~~ ygra Ironically we found that IE had the best SVG performance for quite a while (by now the others have mostly caught up). And then they broke a lot of things behaviour-wise in Edge again for quite some time. Performance was still great, but if your image doesn't look like it should it doesn't help. ~~~ abritinthebay True, though I’ve often found you have to be doing some rather obscure or strange things to screw up basic display Or advanced CSS. ------ noonespecial I use svg all the time to make tiny web interfaces for embedded systems. When the entire web app has to fit in 350k, you don't have space for gif's or jpg's. ~~~ IshKebab If your embedded system only has 350 kB of space for your app how on earth do you fit a browser in there? Or do you only use the 'static' features of SVG? ~~~ jononor Usually this is done in a 'Bring Your Own Device' scenario, where the user has a standard mobile/tablet that the UI is shown on. Using a webapp served by the embedded device allows a zero-install workflow, and zero-config (assuming network connectivity is taken care of). ~~~ IshKebab Ah I see. I was imagining something with its own display, like a meeting room screen. ------ pier25 SVG is good as long as it's not abused. All the kb saving are meaningless with performance issues caused by lots of nodes, gradients, etc. It's great for responsive icons, but for a full interactive UI with illustrations bitmaps are the better choice IMO unless you _really_ need dynamic scaling. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. ~~~ etatoby Beware of using it for responsive icons. Popular browsers render SVG icons orders of magnitude slower than fonts, with the same vector content and scalability. I recently had to convert an entire UI from SVG icons to fonts + bitmaps because the performance had gone down the drain, with just a few dozen different icons. ------ khanhkid It's awesome. last time, I using SVG to import image to pdf files (using TCPDF). The quality is clearly & beautiful. Now, Thank you for your introduction about another things SVG can do on the website. ------ esaym Her talk on the topic at vueconf was pretty good too [https://youtu.be/gJDyhmL9O_E](https://youtu.be/gJDyhmL9O_E) ------ Robotbeat I've used SVG to design custom PCBs using traces as magnetic coils, something that, surprisingly, doesn't have a good industrial software package for. Everything in PCB design software is geared toward routing wires conveniently between components, but if you try to actually use the wires as actual components, it's almost impossible to freely design. And even regular PCB design software feels almost unchanged since the 1980s or 1990s. Incredibly clunky. Here's a good Hackaday article on converting SVG to PCB file formats: [http://hackaday.com/2016/01/28/beautiful-and-bizarre- boards/](http://hackaday.com/2016/01/28/beautiful-and-bizarre-boards/) PCBModE is one package I tried for a while: [http://pcbmode.com/](http://pcbmode.com/) Boldport uses this toolchain to make beautiful PCBs relying heavily on SVG: [https://www.boldport.com/](https://www.boldport.com/) I had a hard time with all these packages, however, and ended up just hacking it together by hand with python code and outputting in KiCAD format. I wasn't even able to get KiCAD to read/render it properly (too many weird elements), but since OSH Park (where I got my PCBs from) takes KiCAD format directly and gives you a preview, that all worked fine, and when I ordered my PCBs, they arrived in working condition just fine the first time. [https://oshpark.com/](https://oshpark.com/) So yeah, SVG can do a lot, including make funky PCBs. ~~~ stephen_g Altium can do that sort of thing fairly easily. We use it for boards with waveguide filters, couplers, etc. (usually the geometry is designed and simulated in a field solver first, and then imported in, but you can do it straight in the software if you want). The easiest way is to design the coil as a part, but you can use traces and arcs and stuff like normal in that. ~~~ Robotbeat That works well if your coil component is small and is just acting as a microwave RF component or something, but in my case I had a pretty complicated coil design (although simple conceptually) that spanned the entire PCB and interwove with other coils and wasn't arranged in a simple rectilinear manner. My original plan was to design the whole thing in Solidworks, which I did (and it was pretty easy to do), but there was simply no easy way to convert that into an actual PCB for manufacture (there is a Circuitworks module, but it's designed only for importing circuits to design around in Solidworks, not the other direction). Sitting there and manually making arcs and such in the PCB design software was just a non-starter. There are no parametric modeling features to speak of, and it's actually way easier to do what I did. I think I used OpenSCAD to export to SVG. ------ baybal2 It has been almost 12 years, and we still don't have working word wrap with svg ~~~ tannhaeuser You can embed HTML within SVG via SVG's foreignObject, and use HTML/CSS text flow layout within embedded HTML. But it works only on rectangular shapes, and not on IE. ~~~ jancsika You can also just absolutely position an HTML element on top of the SVG. ------ oelmekki I wonder if we should encourage print designers to switch to svg (that is, if they don't already... it's not a world I know much). I have in mind all those concerts or various events' png/jpeg files that are dropped on the web here and there. If they were svg files, it would be made easier for search engines to index their content. Even without that, svg totally rocks. About a decade ago, I played with SVGWeb and made a showcase carousel presenting screenshots of projets with automated reflection on them (like it was common back then, a reverse image on bottom of actual image with a gradient from transparency to white to make an effect like if the ground was a mirror). I just had to upload a plain screenshot and everything was automated, I was mind blown, and surprised we seemed to go the canvas way instead (not so much, in retrospect). Nowadays, I often make my icons as svg react components. It makes it so much easier to change their color or saturation on hover, this is very cool. We probably still have a long way to go to exploit all of svg potential. ~~~ firmgently If they're designing in Illustrator as most are they're usually working with vectors and have to use export to create their PNG/JPEG; SVG is right there as an export option. In my experience there's heavy inertia in the world of print though. ------ vladdanilov The SVGO-GUI has not been updated since 2015. I added out-of-the-box SVG optimization to my Optimage [1]. Fun fact: Node.js binary can be _just_ 3MB compressed. ImageOptim [2] handles SVGs as well if Node.js is installed. The transparent JPEG-in-SVG files can also be made with nothing but ImageMagick and Bash [3]. [1] [http://getoptimage.com](http://getoptimage.com) [2] [https://imageoptim.com/mac](https://imageoptim.com/mac) [3] [https://github.com/vmdanilov/svgize](https://github.com/vmdanilov/svgize) ------ 11235813213455 I'm trying to rewrite the good plugins of svgo into [https://github.com/caub/svgz](https://github.com/caub/svgz), something more flexible based on jsdom ------ giancarlostoro Have not seen anyone mention it, but does it make sense to do Web Game development using SVG's with JavaScript? Has anyone tried this? Is it as fun as these slides make it seem or are there downsides to that approach? ~~~ firmgently I think you'd want to combine it with canvas to replicate Flash's cacheAsBitmap. As others have mentioned here though the decisions on where to use it (raster vs vector) and where not to use it need to be made carefully as your map of bits uses memory [(width x height x 3 or 4 for RGB/RGBA) bytes - soon adds up but maybe browser renderers optimise this somehow] in exchange for what you save on drawing calculations. cacheAsBitmap brought a major performance boost to Flash when used wisely though. Maybe some libraries can handle this for you nowadays? ------ kayamon By "SVG can do that?", it appears they actually just meant "JavaScript can do that?", as all the cool animations and stuff are all just JS-driven. Unless I misread it? ~~~ logicuce This. Had a lengthy discussion exactly on this point in context of this very article couple of days back in office :) Totally agree with you! ------ inthewoods We attempted to do a complex animation in SVG and the primary complaint was that it killed the browser in terms of CPU and memory usage. Are we doing something wrong? ~~~ lioeters I had the same experience using SVG to render music notation. We hit a performance issue - high CPU usage, skips/stutters - with several hundred to a thousand nodes, some animated. Switching to canvas increased that limit, in that we were able to keep smooth rendering with larger documents. ~~~ jononor Did you render a whole document as one SVG, or do tricks like one SVG per line or sheet? ~~~ lioeters The whole score was rendered as one SVG element, until we hit the performance limit. Now we're rendering each row of measures (a stack of staves) as a canvas element, and it performs much better for our purposes. ------ nimish I pray for screen readers. ~~~ debaserab2 What image format do you recommend that would work better on a screen reader? ~~~ wscott The article is proposing SVG for rendering responsive text for articles. So the screen reader comment is valid. ~~~ prezjordan It is not, <text> is picked up by screen-readers without any issue. ~~~ dredmorbius In what order? Have you ever looked at a text dump of a PDF? Assuming it's a text-PDF in the first place, there's no guarantee that it's in _any_ sensible order. Of course, most Web writing is pastiche anyway. ------ DylanBohlender This talk was one of the highlights of Develop Denver 2017 for me. Glad to see it getting some more traction. ~~~ mkl Thanks for the conference name. Were the talks videoed? If so, did they say when they'll be uploaded? ------ flamedoge Very cool. SVGs can be very sensible choice for certain applications that canvas doesn't cover well. ------ banhfun Ok great now that we know SVG is awesome, where do we begin learning how to use it like a pro? ~~~ gschier She also wrote a book: [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920045335.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920045335.do) ------ sr3d This is a very inspirational presentation. I'm blown away. SVG can be the solution our next wave of interaction now that Flash has almost completely died. ------ mamcx So, how crazy to use SVG for a cross-platform UI? ~~~ jancsika I did that. It works ok. Some gotchas: 1\. SVG has all these seemingly useful features that have non-obvious gotchas. Example: you can give rendering hints for svg or any child shape nodes, like "crispEdges" so that straight lines are aligned to the pixel grid (plus it might turn off anti-aliasing, but that's another matter). Great-- I've got boxes with 1-pixel borders that should always be pixel aligned to look sharp, so I choose that. Then I notice that when I drag one of my "crispEdges" boxes to the right with the mouse, I get this weird flickering due to the "crisping" algorithm aliasing the sides of the box to the pixel grid in a way that changes the width of the visible box. (I.e., if I move the box 1 pixel to the right, the left side might align to the grid that is greater than xpos, while the right side might choose the grid that is floor(xpos).) As a result it looks like the box is "crawling" across the screen, or up the screen if you drag it vertically. So I went back to manually aligning those boxes to the pixel grid to guarantee consistent box size. 2\. The "paint server" concept is an over-engineered mess. It's incompatible with CSS gradient spec which makes it a pain to figure out how to make CSS and future of SVG play well. Sane frameworks like Snap.svg abstract away that and anything else you'd likely find inside <defs> tags. (Also, someone here on HN mentioned that <defs> junk depends on the id to reference content, which easily creates nameclashes if you use multiple inline svgs.) 3\. There's some churn in the DOM interface for SVG-related utils. For example, at some point I wanted to get access to normalized path instructions for a given SVG path. But Chrome recently deprecated the old way of doing that and is in the midst of replacing it with a new geometry interface. 4\. The syntax for specifying an arc inside an SVG path is weird. Like, so weird that code in an SVG library I read obviously just went straight through the instructions listed in F.6.4/F.6.5 of the SVG spec (using the exact same variable names) to simply hand off the values to Cairo, and the library _still_ had a bug somewhere. That one isn't really a big deal-- I'm just fascinated by how the spec writers favored endpoint parameterization consistency over the user's ability to draw a pie chart without having to ask questions on StackOverflow. 5\. The complexity of the spec and its interaction with the other HTML5 specs is obviously a pain point for browser devs. Sometimes I use devTools to make a quick-and-dirty realtime codepen inside about:blank which just parses a contentEditable div and injects it as innerHTML of an SVG. It's nice because you can prototype things with patterns and gradients quite easily this way. Except you can't reference gradients/patterns/etc. in Firefox this way because of god-knows-what-conflict between about:blank's baseURL and SVG's funcIRI. (Although you can base64-encode the data and inject it as the src of an img under Firefox.) You see things like that all over. For example, the burgeoning web animations API looks really nice and works with SVG. But it works on CSS properties and not SVG attributes. ~~~ mamcx Exist a SVG rendered that is not web browser? ie: truly independent? maybe portable? ------ mtea Welp, time to learn SVG! So much more functionality than CSS. Gorgeous examples. I wonder if it's much slower to load though? ------ Brian_K_White Wow, svg sits there and does mostly nothing on my phone. Just like Flash! Can't pinch to zoom to read the text that was too small, just like Flash! Half the supposedly neat interactive gewgaws like "turn this gear" didn't react to any presses or gestures at all. Just like Flash! ~~~ tedunangst Are you clicking on the animated gif of the demo or did you follow the link to the demo? ------ intellix Cool, but they're still not really supported by Safari ------ vbuwivbiu Shame Flexbox can't be used with SVG ------ b0rsuk Flash has the "advantage" that it's used almost exclusively for advertisments. Mostly pretentious people (artists, photographers etc) have websites made of flash. So, by turning off Flash, you block the bulk of annoying ads. And you lose little by disabling Flash. Would the same be true for SVG ? Would it be used mostly for ads, too ? Or even, can you selectively block only the SVG used for advertisments ? ~~~ dredmorbius Unfortunately, that seems to be one of the bigger hazards for SVG. It really _is_ an amazing graphical tool. David Dailey has been posting some amazing stuff on Ello: [https://ello.co/ddailey](https://ello.co/ddailey) (Which also uses SVG for most of its icons and buttons.) But ... the potential for advertising/marketing abuse (or just sheer bad design / misuse) is so high. Unless there's a way to quash it.... Sigh. This is why we can't have nice things.
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The Toughest Companies for Job Interviews - cwan http://www.fins.com/Finance/Articles/SB130826852769924133/The-Toughest-Companies-for-Job-Interviews?Type=0 ====== flyt No-Hiring somebody after they get one wrong answer is ridiculous. A wrong answer during an interview and how it's followed up on is one of the most telling parts of the whole process. If you want to hire people that are good at taking tests then by all means require every answer to be correct. If you want people that understand themselves enough to recover and think critically about their own mistakes then treat a wrong answer as what it is: being a human being in a stressful situation. edit: also any company that still asks "brain teaser" questions in 2011 should not be one that you consider working for. ~~~ lsb I did a study of Wikipedia, and 75% of contributions from registered users came from someone who got a contribution reverted at least once. [http://slightlynew.blogspot.com/2011/05/vandalism-second- cha...](http://slightlynew.blogspot.com/2011/05/vandalism-second-chances-and- bots.html) ~~~ gnosis A reversion on Wikipedia doesn't necessarily indicate that the reverted edit was wrong. Wikipedia is a highly politicized and point-of-view pushing place, so it's quite common for edits get reverted by others who simply have a different opinion or a contrary agenda. ------ nostrademons Some of this list is pretty much expected (McKinsey, Bain, Jane St, Palantir, Bridgewater), but some of it seems pretty ridiculous. BP? Really? My sister interned there (and was in charge of on-campus recruiting for oil companies at her grad school), and thought they were a bunch of idiots, something apparently confirmed by Deepwater Horizon. Amazon and eBay ahead of Google and Apple? I think anyone in Silicon Valley would think that a bit off. And the only hedge funds were Jane St and Bridgewater - where's D.E. Shaw, or Renntech, or Citadel? ~~~ curtis For what it's worth, my Amazon interview was probably the hardest one I ever did -- much harder than my Google interview. At Amazon, every single one of the 7 or 8 people I interviewed with asked me a coding question, including the guy that had done the phone screen, and he'd asked me a coding question in the phone screen too. I also got a coding "homework" problem in the phone screen. I don't have any problem with coding questions in interviews, but it seemed like total overkill. ~~~ spaghetti Were the coding questions themselves extraordinarily difficult? It just doesn't seem unusual to be consistently asked coding questions during interviews for a software engineering position (assuming that's what you were going for). ~~~ curtis No, it's not unusual for all your interviewers to ask you coding questions. It is, however, a lot more work to have 7 or 8 people do that rather than 4 or 5, which is the point I was getting at. That was just a really long and tiring interview. ------ student818 I don't see how you can compare interviews at companies that do different things against each other in terms of difficulty. In fact I don't even know what this means for interviews _within_ the company. For instance, Amazon: is it a difficult interview for a programmer, any technical person, or even for a marketer? If it's for a software engineer, is it as difficult for new grad entry positions as it is for higher positions? Which is being evaluated? This comes to mind mostly because I'm surprised at who ended up on the list in terms of tech. Palantir, for instance, is indeed one of the hardest interviews out there, if only because the variety of programming questions they ask you is so large. Salesforce on the other hand, while not a cakewalk, is definitely not on the level of difficulty of a Google or Facebook technical interview, at least for their university hires. Lastly, I'm glad to see Teach for America up there. It's become a pretty competitive program to get into and this just further proves it, and I hope it gets expanded so more people can be out there doing good. ------ msort Coding questions are often not the toughest interview questions. Tough questions could be some "soft" non-coding questions like: design questions (how to design a class hierarchy for a blog), behaviour questions (if your boss is wrong, what to do?), experience questions (why did you use tool X in your previous project Y? I think tool Z is better.) Those questions are tough because your performance on those questions are very subjective. It depends highly on if the interviewer likes you or not. Coding questions can be tough, but they are much more objective. Google's engineering interview mostly asks coding questions. Questions can be difficult, but at least, if you write great code, you will pass the interview. In this sense, Google is not a very tough company for job interview. In general, the degree of interview toughness depends on the job supply/demand ratio. When many people apply for positions at company X, the company has to apply a high-rejection rate, based on whatever (sometime very random) criteria. ------ hugh3 I'm surprised not to see D. E. Shaw here. Unlike, say, Bain, which actually needs to hire people, D. E. Shaw seems to hire about three people a year but actively collect thousands of CVs just so they can brag about how many people they reject. ------ floppydisk Having interviewed with Amazon before, they ask lots of optimization type questions and if you can make it faster. For instance, take some algorithm and can you make it linear? They do the same thing with their coding questions, they'll have you solve a problem and then ask you to make it faster. I wouldn't say it was the hardest interview I've seen, but it was definitely more challenging than most others I've done. ~~~ busted My favorite interview questions are the ones where they have you figure out an algorithm for something and then say, "Ok, but you can do it better (faster or with less memory)." It's slipped into how I do my work. I write something that I want to be optimized and say "Ok, but I can do it better", regardless of whether I know it can actually be done better or not. Very fun. ------ jchonphoenix As someone who has recently interviewed at most of those software related companies and got offers from most of them, I can confirm that some of these ranking seem really arbitrary. Amazon was definitely one of the easier interviews I had. Microsoft had one of the harder ones (but this might have just been a case by case thing). Jane Street and Palantir, however, I can say for sure had two of hardest and most intense interviews I've ever done. I've now learned, after being trained to conduct interviews, that these interviews aren't meant to be fair. Companies are afraid of getting any single person that isn't competent because people tend to hire others like them. A single bad person is a cancer. Thus, the hardest interviews are meant to reject 99% (or even more) of the qualified candidates so their false positive rates are ridiculously low. This is how scared these companies are of false positives. ------ purplefruit I did 2 rounds of interviews, 9 interviews in total if I recall before starting at McKinsey. Though I have to say, the whole case interview thing is a hack that can be taught to anyone. I knew a lot of not very brilliant people who got in because an alumni pretty much showed them exactly how to do it. Like any test, you can study the fuck out of it and get in. ------ larryfreeman I interviewed at Amazon once. They gave me three phone screens but I didn't get invited for the 1:1. I greatly respected the interview and it was my first wake up call that I had lost some of my technical edge as a manager. At Google, at the same time, I almost got a job offer. I got all the way through the interview (phone-screen, all-day in-person interview) and then they said they didn't know what to do with me could I come back in 6 month and make a presentation on a business idea. I took them up on it 6 months later but they passed on my business idea (2004, a rich text wiki). ------ blumentopf What I don't understand is that this report seems to contradict other reports of software engineers being in high-demand, which presumably should lead to _lower_ interview barriers?! ~~~ prodigal_erik It's a market for lemons. When devs are in demand, that brings in applicants who are only in the industry because the wages went up, while the good ones are more likely to be taken. These each lead to a greater proportion of incompetents to filter out, and the cost and risk of accidentally hiring one have not improved. ~~~ wnight What risk though? Instead of these days-long interviews with multiple people (and the inevitable meetings after to discuss their results) why not just hire people provisionally and see how they do? Especially if you pair-program, code review, or anything that will expose them to evaluation. I'd advertise with something like "Job coding X at a company that does Y. Finish the Ruby Metakoans and be prepared to discuss your answer. You will be asked to code in Ruby and C during the interview." These huge processes just seem like HR trying to justify their existence. ~~~ prodigal_erik After a phone screen, we spend maybe five hours of developers' time on each candidate and reject 80–90% of them. If we provisionally hired all of them expecting useful work, we would invest far more time ramping them up on our system, risk outages from their early mistakes, disclose trade secrets to a bunch of devs who end up unhappy with us, and lose out on all the employed candidates up front (who aren't going to quit just for an extended interview). Then there's the moral hazard of paying anyone who can get into our filter, rather than just the ones who can get all the way through it. It's the same reason we can't expect candidates to compensate us for the cost of interviewing them—it's better if a bad match is lose/lose than if anyone could reliably expect to be rewarded for wasting everyone else's time. ~~~ wnight I wasn't suggesting you hire everyone who walks through the door, but I bet my hour-long test is within 80% as accurate as those crazy all-day stress tests, and much cheaper. Asking for code (even a few lines) in the application itself would further reduce the number of applicants. Your system/circumstances seem like they'd make trusting and benefiting from new hires quite a hassle. Ideally you'd have some public and open-source app to have new hires hack at, but there should be tests to be written, etc, which shouldn't leak trade secrets. (If you don't have docs for which files/components implement your trade secrets, and therefore which ones do not, I don't see how you have any hope of keeping anything straight.) If their early mistakes cause an outage I think it says more about your build processes than them. As for people not quitting for what's in essence an extended interview, that's what they are doing for you and others already. You fully intend to dump them if they don't prove to be good, but you don't have a quick process to determine this so you aren't as up-front about it. But yes, not every place has it as easy as Github, for instance. They have a ton of publicly available code an applicant could work on, and in doing so they'd show they could use the company's products and tools. I don't know, but would bet they have a comparatively easy interview process. ------ known I think the toughest companies are where _interview == quiz_ ------ tomjen3 The interesting thing is that almost all of those companies are companies where I wouldn't want to work - with the possible exception of Jane Street (though that depends on whether or not that company pays is programmers 10% of what it pays its traders) and Amazon (assuming that the stories Steve Yeggy tells are exaggerated and they have brought actual desks for their programmers, instead of the doors they used to have). ------ maeon3 I interviewed at Salesforce.com in mid January 2011. It was at 300 Market Street San Francisco, bright and early 8:30AM. Linda Ellis, Raja Bhamidapati, Allison Nishioka, Kei Tang, Ranjani Salur, Rhoita Misra, Sagar Wanaselja, Sam shoute. I didn't get the job. I was put through the ringer. I completely agree with this (difficult interviewers) report. Here are some notes: I met with 10 people during the interview. A complete battery of psychological analysis. In that group was every kind of co worker I've ever dealt with. I could tell some were acting the part to try to throw me off base and test me for any sociopathic or personality problems. Some were insulting me in my face, some were super charismatic, some people with impossibly hard questions. Some questions were strangely easy. The whole gambit, it gave my personality side a workout (Programmers usually don't work hard on dealing with the 50 personality types). They planned the sit down coding test an hour after lunch, to test if you know how to deal with the 'afternoon dip' in energy. The coding test I did well on, it was to create functionality to replace the "String" class with char * in java. And more importantly is to unit test. Do this in one hour. On the plus side, they paid my entire way. and got me into the "Omni hotel" one of the best hotels I've ever stayed in. Paid for the Car. It was by far one of the most exciting experiences of my life. They analyzed my personal life as well and ask questions about what I'm doing when I'm here, what I like to do, what kind of person I am. The majority of the questions they asked me were a subset of the questions in the book "Cracking the coding interview" by Gaylle Laakman. They were tough questions, but if you are prepared you can give them canned responses. After that Interview, I felt like I've never been so probed in my life. From stem to stern. Every part of me, everything that makes me a human was analyzed. I left feeling like I've just been scanned by the Borg. I didn't get the job. but I made it to the 'short list' of 13 candidates up for consideration. I left my heart in San Fran California.
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FindHotel Is Hiring a Senior Back End Engineer in Amsterdam - FindHotel http://careers.findhotel.net/o/senior-backend-engineer ====== verdverm HN is not a job board. Please see the FAQ w.r.t. job postings
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What Kate saw in Silicon Valley - albertcardona http://paulgraham.com/kate.html ====== edw519 _9\. What a solitary task startups are._ This is the hardest thing for me to explain to others. And still one of the hardest for me to get used to myself. It takes a lot of time working alone to get anything done. It may also be one of the many reasons Hacker News is so popular. I don't know about you guys, but if I didn't have this place to break up the loneliness, I'd probably go nuts. ~~~ kyro I am in no way trying to be disrespectful here, but if you rely on an online forum to keep you from going crazy, you might want to consider restructuring your priorities and workflow to give you a little more time to breathe and enjoy life. An online community is great and all, but there are millions of other, more tangible and real world, things that can be as, if not and most likely more, rewarding than participating on HN. ~~~ randallsquared _there are millions of other, more tangible and real world, things that can be as, if not and most likely more, rewarding than participating on HN._ Well, that depends strongly on the person, doesn't it? :) ~~~ kyro The point of that comment was to what? Refute that there aren't other things more rewarding than HN and dependent on the type of person, having HN be the only thing keeping you from insanity is perfectly fine and healthy? Apologies for sounding trollish, but I'm somewhat shocked at the reactions here. We have someone telling us that they work themselves into such a lonely place that the only thing keeping them sane is HN, and yet no one is suggesting he reorder his life and find a better balance so that he can find more enjoyment. ~~~ randallsquared Well, I don't actually think that edw519 is, in actual fact, in danger of going insane due to loneliness, since I assumed, as I would guess most did, that he was using "go nuts" casually, in the way that people say things like, "Wow, if the Cubs don't win the Series after _that_ streak, I'll just die" without meaning that they will actually cease living should their team fail. I don't think you're sounding trollish, but I do think you may not be treating this forum as a casual social setting in which people sometimes make statements to convey a feeling, rather than because they are literally true. Edit: I forgot to say: I also think that for a lot of people who hang out here, and to a lesser extent on proggit, etc, this online community really is one of the most fun, engaging things they have available to do. Conversation online with those who are interested in similar topics could easily trump conversation in person with those whose interests bore you. Even if we grant that being in the real world is an important attribute of "fun things to do", it's unlikely to be the most important. ~~~ kyro I get the casual context, but that's not to say there could still be an imbalance. I do agree with the rest of your comment and will try and not take things a little too literally. ------ netsp _By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the "normal" world._ I suspect that this observation has something to do with the last PG essay to hit HN about putting yourself in the centre. If you take any list of characteristics that you apply to a group, it will tend to contrast them with the 'norm.' Invert it and you get their perspective on the rest of the world, especially if the list is self authored. Imagine a group of Uzbeki expats in Rotterdam commenting on themselves. They'll come up with a list of traits that make them stand out from the crowd. Invert it and you have their perspective on the Dutch. The problem/advantage of this trick is that you might end up with a list of fairly marginal (in the eyes of a non-Uzbeki) or unremarkable traits. ------ apsurd I don't always understand why everyone is _so extremely_ hung up on PG. I respect the guy, but he's human after all. Anyway, this might have something to do with it: _"By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the "normal" world. It's populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy."_ That made me smile for about 30 mins. Awesome. ~~~ sp332 It's not _everyone_ , its just that PG fanatics are... more concentrated here. ------ apu pg/jl/tlb/rtm: as you're primarily advisors and investors now, do you feel like you've started adopting any habits of VCs (either positive or negative)? ~~~ pg Interesting question. Not all investors are VCs. There are also angel investors, and we are much more like angels, both in our backgrounds and the part of the startup world we occupy. Angels don't have a lot of habits, either good or bad. They're mostly just individuals who got rich from their own startups; their personalities are not much affected by being investors. The one thing that makes us different from angels is that we invest on such a large scale. We have a brand name and an office and a web site and all that. Would that engender any habits, though? I can't think of any. I definitely don't think we have any of the habits of VCs that are mentioned in this list. The fact that VCs dress up and try to project an aura of power comes from being finance guys, not VCs per se; investment bankers are the same (and in fact are indistinguishable to me). And we don't have the luxury of being sheep, because we have to decide whether or not to invest in a company the same day we meet them. ~~~ ivankirigin Has managing your own fund affected how you think about the upside of startups? ~~~ pg You mean the money we raised this spring? No, that hasn't changed anything. We still operate as if we were investing our own money-- which is what I'd want if I were an LP, actually. ~~~ netsp Is it different money or is it just mixed in with YC's personal investments? ~~~ pg It's different money. We raised a fund, just a very small one; structurally that's the only way to do it. ------ dgabriel I've always thought of "scrappy," as more like an indomitable underdog, not someone belligerent (which has negative connotations) or necessarily undignified. ~~~ jwecker It comes from old-school boxing. "Inclined to fight" was the original meaning. Bellicose is closer than belligerent. Certainly undignified, traditionally at least. In the last few decades it has been used for underdogs, as in "he's small but scrappy-" giving it that positive implication you mention- small but always ready to fight. Think scrappy-doo ------ nuweborder Great insight. Launch fast and iterate. Learn from mistakes, edit, and continue to build something that people want. The "Founder" next door is like "The Millionaire Nextdoor".Keeping it simple, frugal, and staying cash-flow positive wins the game. This is why your millionaire next door and your founder next door are probably one in the same. Similar philosophies. ------ ivankirigin I'm not sure most people could tolerate the risk of failure. I think the change for the future is that large organizations will be collections of small groups run like startups, but without the large update and downside. ~~~ billswift I doubt that could successfully be done more than rare occasions, for some of the problems see Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" [http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary- Busin...](http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business- Essentials/dp/0060521996/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251752578&sr=8-1) ------ yannis >Kate Courteau is the architect who designed Y Combinator's office. Recently we managed to recruit her to help us run YC when she's not busy with architectural projects. I was scratching my head on this one - thinking why a person with architectural skills would be chosen to help run YC - and then it struck me that originality and creativity is perhaps the hallmarks of YC or am I missing something? ~~~ maxklein YC is a business of friends. The companies are made of friends, they try to get startups who come as friends, they try to make startups become friends. ~~~ yannis Great reply maxklein, thank you. ------ dschobel _2\. How much startups' ideas change. As usual, by Demo Day about half the startups were doing something significantly different than they started with._ If this is really true (and I fully believe that it is), why not just interview individuals like a job interview rather than have them pitch ideas? If you know the resulting product is almost certainly not going to look anything like what they're proposing, I would just try to swing some on-campus interviews at Stanford and UC Berkeley, hire the kids based on smarts & personality and then put them in a room and only then start talking about ideas. Why bother reviewing their initial ideas at all (other than as an indicator of the aforementioned smarts & personality)? ~~~ apsurd Ah you see, your premise is wrong. To go looking for someone is the polar opposite of how to find capable founders, very simply because it implies they need to be found. Don't take this the wrong way, but I think your ideas are too academic. You don't just "go to a college and find entrepreneurs". There certainly is value in the _effort_ one engages in when self-developing, self-formulating, self-revising, self-actualizing, self-motivating, self- preserving and finally self-sticking-your-neck-out, which is what the YC process is sort of about. In Summary: Being a doer aint easy. ~~~ dschobel I was thinking of something along the lines of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton but for computer scientists & entrepreneurs. In short: Interesting things happen when you put smart people in a room without any constraint and a little bit of funding. Although I freely admit the IAS is fairly controversial and some people hate the model. ------ hristov And the perfect start-up founder is .... [http://croutonboy.typepad.com/photos/people_i_hate/scrappy.j...](http://croutonboy.typepad.com/photos/people_i_hate/scrappy.jpg) ------ yef Good observations, but the last two paragraphs fail to convince me. "Normal people" span the gamut of solitary, advice-seeking, etc. I also wouldn't describe the past as "slow and harmonious". ------ stumm "I always worry the speakers will put us in an embarrassing position by contradicting what we tell the startups, but it happens surprisingly rarely." Why would someone with a different opinion be embarrassing? ~~~ pg Because it would imply that we'd given people the wrong advice. The speakers are generally pretty eminent. We'd look bad if we told people to do x and some famous startup founder then told them not to. ~~~ blasdel I think that any public exposition / debate following such a disagreement would be _far_ more valuable to all present than anything either party could convey as intentional advice. ------ tjmc Made me smile, but I don't agree that "dignity is merely a sort of plaque". That may be right if you're just talking about presentation/grooming, but "dignity" (to me) includes self assurance, courage and perhaps a bit of defiance. All good things to see in a founder I'd say. ------ ujjwalg On a side note, can someone from YC post pictures of YC office? Just curious. :) ~~~ jl Our frontpage has some good photos. ~~~ ujjwalg I am not a big fan of flash slide shows. They literally suck. edit: One cannot control it. Move the slide show faster, slower, go back, stop, etc., which makes it time consuming and inefficient. ~~~ stevoski A vacuum cleaner literally sucks. I'm not sure how a flash slide show literally sucks. ~~~ kirubakaran This is how: <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literally> [see "Usage note"] ~~~ smokinn Seems to me that "Usage note" can be summed up as: Often people use it wrong. This doesn't irritate most, but some people prefer the English language be used correctly. ~~~ mmt Language is usage is language. Although I believe there to be no "correctly," I do believe that this is a deplorable case of a word losing meaning, without a suitable replacement. ~~~ minsight (I am so tempted to respond to this with a randomly generated list of words) ------ indiejade _4\. How scrappy founders are. That was her actual word. I agree with her, but till she mentioned this it never occurred to me how little this quality is appreciated in most of the rest of the world. It wouldn't be a compliment in most organizations to call someone scrappy._ Scrappy is getting by on the most minimal of necessities, does not ever involve a company doing one's laundry, and from everything I've been able to gather, requires actual bean counting. ~~~ LogicHoleFlaw Huh, I always thought of "scrappy" as a willingness to get into a fight, despite the odds being against you. ~~~ gojomo I think that's the traditional definition -- but its meaning is drifting, because the word also makes people think of 'scrounging' or 'getting by on scraps'. So it's not just a fighter, but one who fights on in a resourceful/thrifty way. Though PG cites the 'belligerent' meaning, I suspect Kate and others are likely to mean/hear the 'thrifty/tenacious' connotations. ------ tsestrich Very interesting to get a "third-party" perspective on things, having never gotten to work out in that environment myself. ------ wwkeyboard About point #1, does anyone have data on how many startups really fail? I have found answers from 70-90% on google, but those numbers come from blog posts and not from 100 times the number of failed businesses divided by the number of successful businesses formed in some reasonable grouping of time and space. ~~~ replicatorblog Along those lines I'm curious how many of the YC companies make it to a next round of funding? Or make it to profitability and don't seek funding vs. those that formally wind down. I went to a TechStars meetup and something like 10 of 16 from the inaugural class got funded, 4 didn't because they were profitable, acquired, or otherwise all set, and 2 formally closed. Is that kind of data available for YC? ~~~ pg From the winter cycle of 16 startups, there are 3 that have neither raised money nor are ramen profitable. Of those 3, 1 is already dead, because of disputes between the founders. Another hasn't started trying to raise money yet, because there's stuff they want to get built first. So only 1 of the 16 is currently trying to raise money. ~~~ systemtrigger Apart from the usual seed money do you ever invest more in a startup, either as YC or as an angel? ~~~ pg YC doesn't, but I occasionally participate individually in angel rounds. ------ messel Surprised Kate didn't mention that founders were not only scrappy, but a little crazy. The combination of willpower, imagination, confidence, and the ability to listen to users/customers is like dancing with a Tasmanian devil. It always sets my neurons spinning when I try and grok an entrepreneurs rationale. ------ sielskr Paul Graham: I'd like to encourage you to write up any insight you may have had not about startups. Your essay about high school (the one that compares the assiduousness of high school students to Navy Seals) was one the most helpful and insight-dense things I have ever read. ------ tyn Number 4 was a surprise to me. And I'm not sure I really get the meaning of "If you're not threatening, you're probably not doing anything new, and dignity is merely a sort of plaque". ------ ngs 'Scrappy' is a great description. I also like the imagery 'Scrappy smart' brings to mind. ------ DanielBMarkham _By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the "normal" world. It's populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy._ Don't stop there, Paul. This "inversion" idea still has a lot more mileage in it. Just off the top of my head I'd add that the "normal" world is also full of large teams, scheduled meetings, integrated hierarchical social environments, and teams that never die. ------ albertcardona I was thunderstruck by the following: "By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the 'normal' world. It's populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy." And: "Interestingly, while Kate said that she could never pick out successful founders, she could recognize VCs, both by the way they dressed and the way they carried themselves." ~~~ replicatorblog I wonder if the issue of carriage has more to do with the Avg. age of founders being ~25yrs. vs. VC's ~45yrs. Beyond the obvious appearance issues you tend to develop more confidence, present better, etc. as you age. That said a fundamental difference in the Funder vs. Founder personality makes sense as well. ~~~ Gibbon The average age of founders is not 25.. I suggest you revisit your assumptions. ~~~ replicatorblog Yes it is.. I suggest you check your facts. From PG: <http://ycombinator.com/faq.html> What's the average age of people you fund? About 25. A lot of people think it's younger because the press especially like to write about young founders. ~~~ ryanwaggoner YCs founders are hardly representative of founders as a whole...not many people over the age of 30 are willing or able to put themselves in a position where they can start a company with $20k. <http://www.kauffman.org/Details.aspx?id=1784> ~~~ replicatorblog Of course, but this thread is in relation to the founders at YC and the VC's who speak to them. There are a great many founders of all ages, but they aren't the focus on this article. ------ torpor WTF, is it normal practice for tech startups to hire their /architects/ to help run the company? I mean, is this really such a great thing?
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Motorola's Messy Ice Cream Sandwich Speaks Volumes On Android - DaveMebs http://www.informationweek.com/news/development/mobility/232600995 ====== teovall "I think smartphone owners need to simply get used to the idea of owning outdated software." Or... they could buy iPhones. ~~~ orangecat Or Nexuses.
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Building an LTE Access Point with a Raspberry Pi - kingsomething https://snikt.net/blog/2019/06/22/building-an-lte-access-point-with-a-raspberry-pi/ ====== tjohns Not mentioned in the article, but I'd also recommend force-setting DHCP Option 43 to "ANDROID_METERED" to let Android clients know you're on a metered connection (hotspot) instead of a normal landline-based WiFi network. [1] This inhibits some things like automatic updates. I don't know of an equivalent for other OSes, unfortunately. [1]: [https://www.lorier.net/docs/android- metered.html](https://www.lorier.net/docs/android-metered.html) ~~~ voltagex_ [https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/199163/how-does- io...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/199163/how-does-ios-and-os-x- detect-when-a-wi-fi-network-is-a-personal-hotspot) seems to think it's in the wifi beacon itself for OS X. No detection method appears to be present in Windows 10, it's all geared towards LTE modems integrated in the machine. I really wish this had been standardised. ~~~ p_l Windows 10 appears to support one of the newer standards for announcing su h details in beacon ~~~ voltagex_ "Microsoft has defined a vendor extension to the 802.11 protocol." [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/drivers/mo...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/drivers/mobilebroadband/network-cost-information-element) ~~~ p_l It also supports at the very least WiFi Alliance's Passpoint, based on 802.11u. ------ Spivak I don't with to diminish the author's work but there's nothing all that special about the LTE portion. From the perspective of the Pi it's just another interface/network. This is more akin to building a basic consumer all-in-one router -- which I think actually sounds cooler. So the pieces that this article puts together: * Bridging the Pi's ethernet and wireless interface and setting up DHCP pointing to a forwarding DNS server on the bridge with dnsmasq. * Setting up Linux IP forwarding and the iptables rules needed to perform NAT over the WAN. * Setting up a wireless access point on the Pi with hostapd. It really is super cool that for $35 and an hour you can have a functioning, albeit not super fast, router that's basically ready to be plugged into a modem and work. ~~~ KirinDave Yeah, I did this myself not long ago as part of a mobile office rig and ... I didn't write about it or share about it becuase it was mostly just putting USB male connectors into USB female connectors and sourcing the right kind of batteries to charge things. Oh, and learning ethernet cables are a monstrous power draw and you're much better off using wifi for everything. I mean, yeah it's cool to have. But I can't help but feel like it's a bit trivial. ~~~ voltagex_ Can you comment on Ethernet being more power hungry than Wifi? That's the first time I've heard that. ~~~ eigenloss Ethernet usually requires isolation magnetics and transformers, while WiFi is basically just a wire sticking out of an RFIC. ~~~ pjc50 It's not so much that the transformers consume more power than just radiating it into the air, but that Ethernet is not designed with power efficiency as a goal. Ethernet devices that need more power usually get it from PoE instead. Without doing any analysis at all, I suspect the idle behaviour is a big difference; Wifi goes silent if there's no traffic, apart from AP beacons, but Ethernet continuously transmits "fast link pulses" every 16 miliseconds to maintain autonegotiation and detect connection lost. ~~~ KirinDave Honestly I dunno why it was the case for me. What I know is that I thought I'd save power pushing pulses over copper rather than using a radio. I didn't. In fact it was consistently about 40% worse than wifi. That might be unique to the RPi hardware I used. It might not. Maybe I should have written that article. :) ~~~ londons_explore The Pi does Ethernet with a seperate and pretty power hungry chip. If the ethernet cable is disconnected, that chip mostly powers down. I think it's a Pi related thing rather than being inherent to Ethernet. In fact, if I were to guess, the energy per bit per meter of ethernet is probably far far lower than WiFi. ------ penumbra_3 Title is missleading, i was hoping for [https://bellard.org/lte/](https://bellard.org/lte/) :( ~~~ keithnz yeah, likewise, I suddenly noticed it was just an access point, which seems a bit trivial to be hitting the #1 spot on HN. But I might be bias, I'd really ike a CAT-M1 and NB-IOT base station ------ josho I had hoped this was a howto for building an LTE booster. I know the spectrum isn’t licensed for us, but wouldn’t it be great if someone figures out how to build a booster for those of us with a weak signal. ~~~ tsomctl [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wilson+lte+booster&atb=v173-2_j&ia...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wilson+lte+booster&atb=v173-2_j&ia=web) ------ dehrmann I did something similar with OpenWRT and a MikroTik box. It works fine. The interesting bits were getting OpenWRT to work on a then-unsupported device (it was very similar to other devices, though), picking a modem with good support for multiple US carriers, depending on the modem, disabling USB3 by taping over those pins, flashing carrier-specific firmware, and getting the modem to connect. Then I went overboard and set up routing so bulk traffic (OS updates, backups) go over a slower DSL connection, while other traffic goes over LTE. And if LTE goes down, it switches to the DSL connection. ~~~ tau255 Your comment motivated me to check if I could make my home router fallback to my second connection (I flashed it with OpenWRT). After fiddling with using usb wifi dongle as second wan entry and looking over if any nearby electronic shop has usb lan adapters in stock, I discovered that my router has vlans and I can "rob" one switch port for second wan. So I set up mwan3 and have more and more respect for what one can do with Openwrt and off-the-shelf router. ------ mschuster91 As for the Huawei stick, most of them support being switched to modem mode using usb-modeswitch. But I'd prefer the "virtual network interface" mode if I had the choice, usb-modeswitch and modem stuff isn't exactly the best documented thing on this planet. ~~~ lucb1e What's the difference? From the sound of it, the VNI would be a USB device identifying itself as an ethernet adapter and usb-modeswitch does... mode switching, like the 'alternative protocol' thingy that USB3 can do? ~~~ mschuster91 The difference is that in VNI mode the stick runs its own OS including a router and other crap while in modem mode it directly passes through the modem to the host device, leading to better performance, working "server" connectivity (assuming you can get a publically routed IPv4 address from your provider, though) and less security issues as there is one stack less to worry about. ~~~ lucb1e Ah, now I understand, thanks! ------ ryanmarsh Read it hoping to find use of an SDR or direct use of LTE modem instead it’s basically what any Linux user would have to do to get a USB modem working. For some reason doing anything a normal Linux user would do but on a raspberry pi is instant clickbait. ------ surge I have a iNet Slate, its effectively the same thing but a bit more purpose built and has a switch on the outside (which can be configured to do different things) that can turn on VPN so all connections are VPN'ed. It supports USB tethering and a USB modem. For the money, after you're done buying a case, you'd still need more ethernet ports, it probably doesn't work when borrowing local wifi. [https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar750s/](https://www.gl- inet.com/products/gl-ar750s/) ------ ars So how does it work? I assume the LTE USB modem operates on T-Mobile frequencies, so does that mean it accepts all T-Mobile customers? How's authentication done? How does T-Mobile permit you to use their frequencies? ~~~ q3k This is not about hosting an LTE 'access point'. It's about creating a access point which uses an LTE uplink. I agree, the title is somewhat misleading. ~~~ kevml Correct. If you were to create an actual “access point” you will have the FCC and other agencies knocking on your door within minutes. ~~~ mindslight I don't think their response time would be nearly that quick. All the stories about Stingrays would imply that this actually isn't very well policed (FCC enforcement is reactionary. The carriers could be proactive, but then would discover the Stingrays. And if carriers were complicit with Stingrays, then Stingrays themselves wouldn't be necessary). I would also think the widespread deployment of legit femtocells would provide a decent cover. But yes, it is generally illegal. (Though this hasn't stopped OpenBTS from being developed) ~~~ kevml Yes, we had the FCC (via FBI) knocking on our door within 30 minutes. This was about 10 years ago when we were doing research with an access point. ~~~ mindslight Sheesh! Do you care to share any more details? How dense of an area? How was it detected? If by "access point" you mean 2.4GHz, what was the actual problem? ~~~ kevml It was a GSM antenna that registered with I think AT&Ts network in Philadelphia. It was part of a legitimate research project, so no charges or fines were placed on us. ~~~ mindslight Your description just makes me more curious! What do you mean by "GSM antenna" ?! Should I really read that as you had a legitimate cell radio device, and just attached an unauthorized antenna? Or was the radio itself experimental/unapproved? ------ pcl The author mentions power consumption issues in the post. I've seen the same when running RPi access points. Definitely use a decent power brick if you're going this route. ------ the_mitsuhiko I would be more interested if someone managed to build a GRE tunnel bonding solution with open source tools. Multiplexing a data stream over multiple LTE uplinks would be nice. ~~~ tiernano Holy grail stuff there. Would love that too. ------ pbhjpbhj Nice clear instructions and presentation style, well done. ~~~ m_rn I'm with you, it is a nice presentation and will follow it. Yanno' if you could get the ARM version of pfSense on the pi this would eliminate the Huawei modem, Maybe. ------ loose11 You should checkout EspressoBin, which should be more suitable for this task. Hardware-Switch, WAN-Port and so on ~~~ dvfjsdhgfv It has horrible reviews (booting by itself etc.). Any better alternative? ~~~ dehrmann I've had decent luck with this: [https://mikrotik.com/product/RBwAPR-2nD](https://mikrotik.com/product/RBwAPR-2nD) ~~~ alexeldeib +1 for Microtik. They have their weird problems but are cheap and generally fairly reliable for what you get. Have a bunch of their hardware around, all served me pretty well. ------ sdrothrock Is there no need to do additional handling for hung modems/connections and safe reboots, or is all of that left as an exercise for the reader? ~~~ KirinDave Usually you can just do this from the command line. With the right tuning Pi's boot quite fast, so I just used a Pi reboot and a 4g gateway with no battery to solve these issues. ~~~ sdrothrock To me, the resilience in having that stuff automated is the difference between "an access point" and "a computer that just happens to bridge connections." ~~~ KirinDave True. I just didn't find that stuff very difficult. It almost never came up.
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In Defense of Chrome OS - hornokplease http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/14/chrome-os-future/ ====== tygorius So the "defense" as I read it boiled down to: 1) Just because it isn't ready yet doesn't mean it won't be someday, 2) It has a better chance of being improved because it's closer than other Google projects to their company's core competency, and 3) The market may not be ready for it yet. Even if I grant the first two, that last point is problematic. While there are plenty of people who like keeping their data in the cloud, I get the impression the Chrome OS use case is for people who only want their data in the cloud. I wonder how many machines that will equal, given that we've just had a couple of decades of laptop usage and having more than one computer is popular. Tangentially, at the risk of sounding like a 2nd cousin to rms, I find I'm still a trifle irked that Android and Chrome are being referred to as operating systems when in fact they're new user interfaces stuck on top of Linux. ------ wccrawford Why do people feel the need to 'defend' products that aren't their own? Either those products will stand by themselves, or they aren't worth it. ~~~ Pewpewarrows Why do people feel the need to 'attack' products? Either those products will fail by themselves, or they're worth it. ------ yanw I don't think a pre-beta product needs any defense further than the fact that it is pre-beta. Besides most of the 'reviews' were positive about the OS and critical about the hardware which is merely the conduit for the OS at this point. ~~~ tygorius Back in the dark ages, we used to break pre-production into three stages: alpha (distribution inside the organization for comment, subject to possible radical change after feedback), beta (distribution to key customers for feedback), and gamma (more wide-spread release after feature-freeze). I don't know how you can call something "pre-beta" if you're giving it a release outside the organization. It's not as if Google didn't know people would be commenting on it. What does that term mean? ~~~ corin_ It's just a way of saying that the beta is released earlier than it normally might be, on account of caring more about getting user feedback early and less about that feedback being taken as negative reviews.
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Cross-Platform In-App Subscription Management Service - jschell215 I&#x27;ve been trying to find a service that allows a business, such as one that I work for, manage in app purchases (mainly for subscriptions). It would be great if this was done cross-platform and not just on the web. Most services like Recurly or Chargebee only seem to be tailored for the web or if you want to purchase physical goods or services outside the context of an app (like Uber).<p>How do magazine, gaming, or any other company types that leverage or rely on in-app purchases or subscriptions manage this data (Especially if they are building cross-platform products)? ====== benologist A friend of mine has mentioned using [https://xsolla.com](https://xsolla.com) in cross-platform games. ~~~ jschell215 Thanks, benologist. I'm specifically looking for tracking users who pay for virtual goods using something like Apple's StoreKit API. Basically, I know that Apple and Google take a cut of in-app purchases including subscriptions for/to virtual goods/services.
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Ask HN: How to leave my country? - speeder I am from Brazil.<p>For many years I&#x27;ve been wanting to leave, now I think I finally can, because I finished last month paying all my student debt.<p>I have no assets, no money, no job, no friends here or abroad, I want to start a life somewhere safer than here and somewhere with easier upward mobility, so anyone can help me? How I leave my country? ====== kshatrea I recently moved to Denmark for a job and I have met a lot of people here who came from their nations in order to get into Scandinavia. If you can put up some money, you should get a Green Card which allows you to look for jobs. Beware though that the job market in Scandinavia is quite competitive because of the high wages. Australia and Canada are giving out visas as well for many workers. Look those up too. ------ davidw Do you have any European relatives like grandparents? I know a lot of Brasilians get into Italy that way.
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ASK HN: 300k engineers How do you get there? - codesternews ====== quickthrower2 They got a job at FAANG and stuck around. ~~~ muzani Yeah I think part of the prerequisite is that they either contribute more than 300k of wealth or are plausibly a threat that can statistically do more than 300k in damage. ~~~ julienreszka The threat is more likely. "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer" ------ MattLeBlanc001 I was just reading the below when you posted this. [https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/middle-class- budget-S...](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/middle-class-budget-San- Francisco-300-000-13741570.php) Sounds insane ~~~ seattle_spring I can't even fathom being out of touch enough to spend $6k per year on clothing and then go on telling someone I live paycheck to paycheck. Edit: Not to mention owning a $60k luxury SUV and still being dumb enough to take the standard deduction when you clearly have enough expenses to itemize. ~~~ geddy Yeah, that whole expenditure sheet is absolutely insane. $2K mortgage/$1.9K interest? You've gotta be shitting me. I'm sorry but, if you're paying that much for a house (and everything else) that $300K is "paycheck to paycheck" then it's time to re-evaluate where you live. All of those costs could be cut completely in half, at the very least. Budgets are funny, as every single person is different and yet thinks they have it figured out. I also recognize the irony in my previous statement. ------ GaryNumanVevo My total comp is hovering around 300-310k 1.5 years out of a B.A. from a State School. I taught myself machine learning and focused on providing performance from bare metal to algorithms ~~~ codesternews That's cool and looks like you are more into music. Are you making the transition or are you doing both in parallel? May I ask how you get ML work. ~~~ GaryNumanVevo I went to school for Computer Engineering, I'm just tangentially into music. I got into ML by doing a few hackathons throwing stuff together, then I got a undergrad research position doing static analysis. That helped get me the job I have now. ------ codingslave Get competing offers from a few big tech cos at the same time. You will clear 300k. So basically, master leetcode ------ randomacct3847 Truth is its a very typical salary + equity package for established cos and competitive late stage startups in Bay Area. With CoL it’s comparable to making $150k in almost every other major market outside maybe NY. ------ bsvalley You get there by giving back 40-50% to California. The more you give away, the more you earn :) Joke aside, 5 years of experience get you $300k total compensation per year at a hot company in SF Bay Area. ------ cyrilbenson47 How about fully remote? Anyone? ------ sandwhichmole Z ------ ryandetzel Luck.
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Inside the gPhone: What to expect from Google Android - bfioca http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202805720&pgno=1 ====== stillmotion This article makes out that there will be a gPhone. They denounced it, the machine doesn't exist, nor will it in the near future. Google is an application company, they develop for platforms. ------ dkokelley Has anyone downloaded and played with their SDK? Any projects to report? ~~~ davidw I'm porting Hecl (hecl.org) to it, and went to meet some of the Google guys in Munich last week: [http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2008/01/29/munich- androi...](http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2008/01/29/munich-android- mobile-meeting-report) There are definitely some open questions, but I'm fairly sold on the idea. ~~~ Tichy You were there? So was I - too bad, it would have been nice to meet somebody from news.yc... ~~~ davidw Yeah... I asked Dan a question in the first group of the 'internals' session after the introduction, if you happened to be in that group. I stuck around pretty much until the end. Would have been fun to meet up indeed.
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37 Signal's moment of remorse or slap in the face? - mattreport http://mattreport.com/2011/05/37-signals-selling-sortfolio/ ====== wccrawford This reminds me of the Groupon lesson: Just because a company offers a service is no reason to believe that service is right for you. In this case, people paid $99/mo without seeing results... Probably before they even tried the free version. The article assumes that people were complaining about lack of results. I also assume that people were asking for their money back. Those people got what they paid for. What they didn't get was what they assumed: Results. Marketing isn't magic, despite how it looks. You can't just throw money at it and get results. It has to be tailored to your business and/or product. ~~~ mattreport Indeed. Thanks for your response!
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NodeUp:Ten - A Node.js Podcast - cjm http://nodeup.com/ten ====== dshaw7 NodeUp:Ten with @substack @mikeal @dshaw and @voodootikigod.
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First marketplace for mobile application templates is rising - olivetty http://stockapps.net/ ====== tair Looks awesome. Keep going!
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Ask HN: How do you automate developer onboarding? - pageandrew What tools do you use to automate the on boarding of new developers, and the setup of new machines?<p>We have a bunch of dependencies that need to be installed, scripts that need to be injected into their bash profile, configuration files to update, etc.<p>Right now, we have a messy collection of Bash &amp; Ruby scripts that the developer has to run (and continuously run as updates are made). Wondering if theres anything better out there? ====== PaulKeeble You could also dockerise the development environment. Rather than having people run these things on their Linux install you can just run a docker environment with it already setup. Then upgrades become easy pulls and running them. I recently moved to using docker for the common development tools and it has made changes a lot easier. I also read somewhere about using DISPLAY for X programs with docker and so now even the IDE can run in one as well. It takes a while to set it up but it doesn't have the overhead of VM solutions like vagrant and with docker-compose it ends up really easy to just have in a git repository making setup just a git clone and docker install and then docker- compose up. ------ Terretta Examples of brittle but approachable approaches we’ve used: \- Literate bash: [https://github.com/bashup/mdsh](https://github.com/bashup/mdsh) \- Ansible: [https://github.com/bmacauley/ansible-playbook-mac- dev/blob/m...](https://github.com/bmacauley/ansible-playbook-mac- dev/blob/master/install) \- Kubernetes: [https://abhishek-tiwari.com/local-development-environment- fo...](https://abhishek-tiwari.com/local-development-environment-for- kubernetes-using-minikube/) Example of solid and shareable at scale approach, takes a bit of rocket surgery: -Nix: [https://dzone.com/articles/isolated-development-environment-...](https://dzone.com/articles/isolated-development-environment-using-nix) To be clear, we had a Nix committer to help work through kinks. But once all of your team members, local and remote, have lockstep dev environments versioned with the code commits, several other classes of hair pulling go away. ------ meesterdude My advice, fwiw: make things more boring and less special. Reduce cleverness and surprises where possible. (I realize this isn't always possible) Automating on-boarding is possible, but it is usually better to have good docs that breakout into different systems like OSX, windows, Debian/fedora and just have good copy-paste from there. That allows for tweaks to be made more easily when things go wrong, and to update for future devs. If you really need to automate, write your own installers to do the work inserting code, installing dependencies, etc and expand to support different systems where necessary. This can be as simple as a github repo that you pulldown and run an installer for, that automatically hooks in to the shell and provides an easy path for updates. ------ jorisd If managing shell scripts becomes too unwieldy, you could use Puppet or Ansible to provision your local machine, just like you would when you'd use these tools to provision a new server instance elsewhere. This works great when you combine it with a Virtual Machine managed through Vagrant. The guest OS is then managed completely via Vagrant and Ansible/Puppet, and the only host OS software you then need is a working Vagrant environment, which can often be installed completely through the OS's package management system. ------ twunde For laptop setup at a company you should be using some sort of MDM software. It's essentially configuration management, but with the understanding that this is for users who will want to change things. If you're an all Mac shop, take a look at Jamf or at Fleetsmith. If you've got a mix, there are some products like Airwatch that support Windows and Mac. These tools allow you to set up applications and configurations. I generally run a white-listed "app" store where users can download apps, scripts and new configurations. Or alternatively you can force install anything you really need. I'll also second using Docker or virtual machines if possible. It makes the setup and continued support _much_ easier. ------ corporateslaver Just write a bash script ------ stephenr Vagrant mostly. We build a custom vagrant box with dependencies pre-installed, and then run setup on top of that. Admittedly we don’t have many “tools” like you mentioned - just a couple of shell scripts in the git repo itself. If you need to install host OS level software I’d just write some shell scripts to automate the steps. ------ nannooo You could create an image with everything preinstalled. Just install it and you have a lot of stuff ready right away. For things they have todo / resources they should look through, you could use ChiefOnboarding.com (Full Disclosure: I have built this) ------ arnvald Have you tried Boxen?[1] It allows you to automate installing libraries and running scripts by writing Puppet manifests. [1] [https://github.com/boxen/our-boxen](https://github.com/boxen/our-boxen) ------ simon_acca Have you considered writing packages for whatever package manager your OS uses?
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Ask HN: got a proposal to relocate from Europe to SF - yannski I'm currently living in Strasbourg, east of France, near the german border. I've started Novelys, a small Ruby/Rails shop, nearly 6 years ago.<p>I've just got a proposal to get hired and relocated to SF. The proposal is valid for me and my team (we're 5).<p>Difficult choice : be an entrepreneur in Strasbourg or a software engineer in SF.<p>Have you ever encounter a similar choice ? What did you choose ? Any advices ? ====== henrikschroder If anyone ever offers you to come live and work in another country for a while, the answer should always be yes. Going to a different country will teach you things both about the place you move to, and about your home. It will give you new perspectives and experiences that you can't get any other way. You will be a better person for it. And if it doesn't work out, you can always move back. ~~~ edge17 the 'no two ways about it'-ness of your comment struck a chord with me. I was wondering if you had a story? This is something I've thought about a lot, partially because I feel fortunate in the opportunities in my life presently, so when there's a chance to up and go some place I'm forced to weigh opportunity cost. Correct me if I'm wrong, but to me it sounds like you're saying that the opportunity to work in another country is almost always a greater opportunity? ~~~ henrikschroder Only anecdotal, but of all my friends and acquaintances that have worked abroad, either for a limited time, or permanently, none of them regretted it, even those that went to weirder places like Armenia or Mocambique. Of course there is an opportunity cost, and if you have family and kids it might be too high, but if I was in that situation, I'd try to take my family with me. I have other friends and acquaintances that lived elsewhere for a few years as a kid, and all of them only had positive stories to tell of it. The cornerstone of intellectualism is the ability to imagine the world from different perspectives, to realize that not everyone is the same, and nothing teaches you that like traveling or moving to a different country, and it will make you a better person. ~~~ edge17 thanks for the anecdote, could not agree more. first thing I did upon graduating college was pack a bag and buy one of those around the world tickets till i was broke. for the last several years of my life since I did it, it's been one of my cornerstone experiences. ------ tudorizer "Difficult choice : be an entrepreneur in Strasbourg or a software engineer in SF." Being an entrepeneur is not only about being the boss of your own company. I think many people get this wrong. Entrepreneurship should be in the blood. The hunger, the curiosity, the will to change the daily-job status quo. I used to run my own 2 companies with 2 partners, but I decided to change something and try another approach. Currently I have a well payed job which allows me to save money for peronal business experiments. The main reason why I decided to give up my previous 2 companies was that I did not like the enviroment. Don't get me wrong, my partners were good guys, but I felt no chemistry and no inspiration. My suggestion: go for it. Being a software engineer in SF will open new gates for you and if entrepreurship is in your blood, you can not fail. ;) ------ beseku I can't claim to know anything about your own personal life but I would say one thing - whats the worst that could happen? I moved from the UK to Japan nearly two years ago (with g/f of 7 years). Sometimes being away form home sucks, as does the frequent feeling of isolation and knowledge that if the work life sucks you have to leave the country. Sometimes its amazing - I love the country (and my work) and the people I have met. My overriding feeling is that even though I really miss a lot of my UK life, (including the company I worked for on the odd occasion) I am glad I took the leap, for no other reason than I got to experience this. YMMV ~~~ beseku I should just add to this - I took a step down career wise, (Tech Lead of a good UK agency to a developer position) so I could make the move, so my perspective may be very different to yours as we actively wanted to move abroad (and specifically to Japan) for a while. ------ ayers It really depends on if you have family/kids. That sort of move will require a lot more thought and planning if you are to move your whole family. Compared to if you are single, you only have yourself to look after and provide for. I have just immigrated to England from New Zealand with my wife without the certainty of work. Luckily we have a family friend who is housing us while we look. I would say that the chance to move over to SF with the certainty of work is something that might not come up very often. If you did decided to go I would definitely try to arrange to keep your company in France going. ------ dmathieu Stay in France. Novely is one of the rare awesome agencies here and SF already has a lot of brains. Don't put everybody in the same place. ~~~ yannski Thanks for your kind words :) ------ lolizbak Short: don't hesitate a second (though negotiate hard). Long: How many times can this happen? Honestly?? How big is the startup? How much press do they get ON A DAILY BASIS? How much equity would you get? How big is their market? You can always come back to (beautiful!) Strasbourg. You won't have many other similar opportunities. ~~~ lolizbak Also: what about leaving your comp in France, with some trustworthy guy heading it, and leaving to SF with the guys from your team that want to follow you? That way, you keep you Co and can always come back to it - if need be. ~~~ yannski Well, that's one of the many plans :) ------ nmerouze I think it depends what you want for your life in the next 3 years. It's always a good opportunity to save money and see in 3 years where you are and decide which way to go (continue to SF or come back in France). It could be a good stimulant for your entrepreneurship and intellectual skills as well. But your current position has a lot of good points too. I'm always thinking about what I want in my life, this is what is really important here. ------ mal3x france is better for your family in the future.. My opinion.. You work like 4 days and a half (if I am not wrong), free school etc.. Europe: you work to live SF: you live to work Choose what you think is best for you.. ~~~ mal3x how about the future? what do you think about free studying? I think is a big deal.. But.. maybe I am just subjective because I prefer europe over SF... ~~~ p4bl0 He also could rellocate and send his children in France for their studies, he certainly have family there who will be happy to host them :-). ------ swah Why don't you discuss this with them? If you're still single/no kids, I think you should go even if to get to know another culture. ------ AngeloAnolin Get the opinion of your whole team. Whatever all of you would agree upon (and I am sure that everyone would have the team's betterment in perspective), then you decide. ------ bambax How did this happen? What about visas? Tell us more! ~~~ yannski I think that we are pretty "visible" in the Ruby/Rails landscape in France, because of our tech and social activities (we organize several barcamps, railscamps, Agile stuff and speak at a lof of events) and we worked for some visible startups too. And a guy eventually came accross my LinkedIn profile, our company website and my personnal website. We didn't speak about visas ATM. ------ petervandijck Do it.
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Banks won't take Fort Hood shooting suspect's paychecks - pinksoda http://www.statesman.com/news/local/banks-wont-take-fort-hood-shooting-suspects-paychecks-831173.html ====== adolph "'I think it's just another example of the prejudice that he's been exposed to,' [his civilian attorney John] Galligan said. 'It's money that he's entitled to, that he has a right to.'" "But Hasan shouldn't miss a paycheck. Army regulations allow commanders to grant waivers exempting soldiers from the SURE-PAY direct deposit system. Fort Hood officials said that when a soldier has a pay problem, commanders and finance officials help the soldier fix the issue, and Galligan said he is working with Fort Hood officials on finding a solution."
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Regulating Technology - kkm https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/7/23/regulating-technology ====== timsneath The challenges for regulation are two-fold, in my opinion: 1\. It just doesn't work. Legal and regulatory solutions are too slow and poorly designed to be effective, see for example the EU browser consent decree applied to Internet Explorer. IE didn't fail because Microsoft was forced to offer a choice of browser; it stumbled because of other nimbler competitors (particularly Chrome) that were able to innovate despite Microsoft's historical success. Similarly, Windows' monopoly of the 2000s was nothing like as entrenched as a business like oil: the dominant player is always at risk from technological shifts (e.g. browser-based apps) that render old advantages (Win32) less profound. 2\. The marketplace is global. Heavy regulation of US or EU companies is a competitive disadvantage when Chinese companies operate in a very different dynamic. The US could hypothetically force the dismantling of Facebook into its constituent products or the EU could add stricter rules on how it could monetize its services, but that just plays to the advantages of Tiktok and other companies that they have even less control over. It's unclear that this is in the interests of America or Europe. [Disclosure: I work for Google, but it's Sunday and I don't speak for them; I'm just another muggle posting on the internet.] ~~~ dwaltrip > 1\. It just doesn't work. * Unleaded gasoline * Earthquake-proof building codes * Air pollution ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_of_1963#Effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_of_1963#Effects)) These are just a few that I quickly came up with off the top of my head. Obviously, not all regulation works. But it is so incredibly false to say there doesn't exist effective regulation that has made our lives much better. ~~~ lebuffon From the top of another head: Banning DDT, Removing Freon from AC systems, mandatory seat-belts and airbags in cars, Residential ground fault detection outlets, Electricity system codes, Gas line codes, Building safety codes ... ------ lifeisstillgood >>> Today it might have 100x that. So, how many compliance people will Google have in five years? Compliance goes hand in glove with regulatory reporting. Reporting to regulators _should_ be a marginal cost thing - if the data internally is same, well managed and fully auditable in an automated fashion. Doing this in finance is something the new challenger banks (ie monzo built about five years ago by ten coders and now has a million UK accounts) - this is something they can have one compliance person because all their systems are new and written with compliance in mind. Doing this for most major banks is next to impossible. It would rewriting everything (#) (#) Actuallly i would say this is a good strategic plan for most major banks. Might not be able to persuade the board but still. ~~~ anon98356 These challenger banks are also currently operating in relative niches. Yes Monzo has a million bank accounts, but in terms of their product offering, it isn't close to the breadth of your traditional "High Street" bank. As their product offering expands, their compliance requirements will become a lot more complex, and will lead to more compliance personnel being hired. They have also yet to experience a massive overhaul to the compliance requirements of their existing systems. I'm sure they are better placed to handle it than a traditional bank but it won't be easy. ------ Mindwipe I've seen this piece a few times, and it's broadly good, but I think it glosses over the fact that just because politicians want regulation or try to pass regulation does not mean it actually happens. As a good example, we're now at the 10th anniversary of the original Digital Economy Act in the UK, the legislation that was going to disconnect persistent pirates from the internet and send out warning letters. This legislation passed. There was much writing at the time about how this was the end of the open internet, and from politicians about how this was the end of the wild west internet. And yet, ten years later, not a single action has ever been undertaken under those provisions. No letters were sent. No disconnections ever happened. And that's because politicians ignored the complexity, declared something must be done and passed law that didn't actually parse into any real world actions. Primarily it was just completely barmy costs wise for rights owners to send letters, so they didn't and the regulator just quietly forgot about it after several consultations. Much of this regulation feels very similar. Laws may be passed, but the vast majority of them will never result in any changes because frankly the quality of lawmaking in most jurisdictions is extremely poor. One or two bits certainly will, but most of it will fail badly. Evans sets out the UK's Online Harms act as an example, but the Online Harms regulation is doomed for one simple reason - everyone and their dog in politics and lobbying keeps trying to project their problems on to it as something that will be solved. It's suddenly got to do a million things, while not having any resource to do so. It will inevitably collapse under it's own weight because nobody involved is brave enough to say it's scope is already too big to work. ------ indymike Right now there are three huge risks in regulating tech: 1\. Slowing innovation 2\. Creating monopolies 3\. Crippling entire segments of the tech industry The last chart is the most important: the cost of compliance affects small businesses, including startups much more than large companies. ------ lifeisstillgood Can I veer horribly into my favourite tangent - I love the presentation style, the look-and-feel. It's a blog version of what he did at A18Z - a sort of sophisticated corporate but with the look of something that could be knocked up from Markdown. I could steal the CSS, but that's is only 20% of the battle - getting graphs that match the snazz, getting everything just right, but with this off handed vibe. As I get older this stuff matters. ~~~ klelatti Interesting but I found the opposite. Font a bit small, grey on grey hard to read and no links whatsoever! (Why not if you are writing for the web?) No strong personality comes across - and I like most of what Ben does. I find it actually visually less engaging than a lot of corporate blogs. ~~~ amw-zero Are you reading on desktop or mobile? I’m asking because I’m setting up a blog myself, and the font I’m using looks a bit small. I’m curious what you think a good font size is in general. ~~~ arantius [https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/16-pixels-body- copy...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/16-pixels-body-copy- anything-less-costly-mistake/) "16px" is a very good font size. I.e. don't do anything, just let the browser use its default. ------ sixhobbits I don't understand the Tech Regulation chart [0]. What does the y-axis represent? [0] [https://images.squarespace- cdn.com/content/v1/50363cf324ac8e...](https://images.squarespace- cdn.com/content/v1/50363cf324ac8e905e7df861/1595522011184-I19EHYNRIQ555ZPMZH5V/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kNvT88LknE-K9M4pGNO0Iqd7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z5QPOohDIaIeljMHgDF5CVlOqpeNLcJ80NK65_fV7S1UbeDbaZv1s3QfpIA4TYnL5Qao8BosUKjCVjCf8TKewJIH3bqxw7fF48mhrq5Ulr0Hg/2020+Shoulders+of+Giants+1.1.088.png?format=2500w) ~~~ sradman _RegData: A numerical database on industry‐specific regulations for all United States industries and federal regulations_ [1] [1] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rego.12107](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rego.12107) ------ commandlinefan > why your fellow-citizens didn’t vote the right way. I'm a little concerned by the implication that regulating tech should focus on making sure that people vote "the right way". ~~~ aspenmayer Whoa, I don’t see this in OP post. Perhaps a political motivation was edited out to make their argument appear technically grounded when it has ideological underpinnings? ------ pvijeh Have there been many regulatory success stories? I can't think of many ~~~ arrosenberg Clean air, clean water, seatbelts, no wild economic swings from 1932 until 1986, meat packing plant sanitation, coal mine safety, nuclear power safety, OSHA, the National Park system, air traffic control, port authority - I could go on. ------ elvicherrera I don’t think it can be regulated. I believe it will develop into a black market (dark web). Most regulations in the American industry are usually for just profit or are crippling. Its hard to imagine internet regulation going well.
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How to make Firefox lightning fast on linux - ertug http://karamatli.com/pages/tips/3_Tips_For_a_Lightning_Fast_Firefox_on_Linux/ ====== kunley What to you think about vmtouch'ing the ~/.mozilla dir periodically in order to keep it in a fs cache, instead of artificially having it on a shm fs? Btw, vmtouch: <http://hoytech.com/vmtouch/> ~~~ ertug vmtouch seems like a nice tool. I will try it to see if it makes any difference. Thanks!
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The codes and codswallop surrounding Leonardo da Vinci - prismatic https://usa.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/the-codes-and-codswallop-surrounding-leonardo-da-vinci/ ====== cafard Some years ago at the Louvre, one could see quite a few visitors hurriedly walking past walls of Italian Renaissance art, any hundred square feet of which walls would be the making of a small American city's museum, to stand at ten yards from the Mona Lisa and take a picture. I suppose that some number of them, having checked that off, went on to look around and see what else the Louvre had.
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A Python script that saves Google Reader unread items to Markdown files - tslmy https://github.com/tslmy/Grum ====== phasevar How about saving starred items? ~~~ tslmy That's easy to achieve: [https://github.com/tslmy/Grum/tree/starredItems](https://github.com/tslmy/Grum/tree/starredItems)
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Musk explains why SpaceX prefers clusters of small engines - BerislavLopac https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/musks-inspiration-for-27-engines-modern-computer-clusters/ ====== mhandley There are two other reasons which SpaceX has mentioned before: \- When you're landing a rocket, you need to be able to throttle down quite low. Even a single Merlin 1-D engine, throttled down, is too much thrust to be able to hover with a nearly empty booster. It's really hard to get stable combustion at very low throttle settings. Having only one engine out of nine running for landing makes this much more manageable. \- There are economies of scale and reliability when you're building large numbers of something. Ariane 5 only launched 6 times in 2017. It uses one first stage engine, so they're only building one engine every 2 months. Falcon 9 launched 18 times in 2017, with 9 first stage engines per launch, that's roughly an engine every 2 days. More continuous construction, better economies of scale, more repeatable. ~~~ vannevar _There are economies of scale and reliability when you 're building large numbers of something._ Yes. One of the biggest predictors of reliability in aerospace systems in general is time in operation---the longer you've actually run something, the closer it approaches the upper limit of reliability for that component. Running 27 small copies gives you 27x the time in operation vs a single big- ass engine. The downside is complexity, and in particular unknown failure interactions which could bring down the entire system in a cascade. As long as many of the components are identical, though, an improvement in reliability of that component should translate directly into lower probability of failure interactions since there are fewer failures, period. ~~~ bunderbunder How does one quantify the risk of cascading failure? My initial instinct, informed by computing, is to say that it's easier to avoid cascading failures in the system that is composed of more, smaller parts. All other things being equal, in a rocket with 5 engines, if one of them fails, then each of the remaining ones needs to pick up 1/4 of the slack to compensate. In a rocket with 9 engines, not only would each of the remaining engines need to pick up only 1/8 of the slack, but the total size of the gap would be a little over half as much, too. (This is obvs ignoring the possibility that the failure in question is catastrophic.) ~~~ neltnerb To answer the first question, you use a fault tree analysis to predict potential failure starting points (like a broken component) and then describe how those failures will propagate through the system. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tree_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_tree_analysis) For an example, say I'm building a system that needs to hold a block of aluminum at 550C, 99% of the time. Okay, so you add a thermocouple and a heater to it, easy. What if the thermocouple fails? Well, if the thermocouple fails open then the temperature will read infinity and the heater will shut down and probably produce a non-catastrophic failure. If the thermocouple fails closed, the temperature will read room temp and the heater will blast full on until the aluminum melts at 660C, which is a catastrophic failure. If the relay in the temperature controller fails, the furnace probably turns off but theoretically could fail on if the relay switch gets fused. Okay, so I can see that there is an unlikely but possible chain of events that could cause a catastrophic failure. So I add a second thermocouple to act as a safety shutoff using a second redundant relay and controller if it reads a temperature above 600C. Total probability then is estimated by either using real world performance metrics or best-guesses. I'd say the odds of a thermocouple failing in 10 years of operation at 550C is nearly 100%, so this failure will nearly certainly occur. Or consider an LED array with 10 of them in parallel. If one blows open, the remaining 9 each get 10% more current so are more likely to fail. So your first branch of the tree might be that the odds are 10% that an LED will fail at design current within five years. That may well not qualify as a failure, especially since the other 9 LEDs are ~10% brighter due to the higher-than- spec current. But now your probability for the next failure is 20% within five years. So you do need to define different outcomes, usually by severity of impact and probability of outcome in event of a predicted possible failure point. ~~~ ethbro Is there a name for (or keywords to search for) weighing the tradeoffs between attempting to reduce failure effects in a component itself vs addressing them at the system level? E.g. while you _could_ mechanically debounce a button itself, it's usually easier to engineer the system in such a way that trigger bounce doesn't cause issues Wondering how the call is made on where the appropriate fix to increase reliability should be made? Or is all bespoke / gut? ~~~ neltnerb So the proper way to think about this is in terms of where you put abstractions. Much like you'd write a function or library, you can abstract physical machines by idealizing the component in a system. I don't think it's really a separate keyword to search for. This is all probabilities. The math isn't complex, the hard part is writing down a complete graph of all the connections between different components, environments, and failure scenarios. If your valve is made of five parts, and one of them has a 10% chance of failing per year, then your valve has a 10% chance of failing per year. If it has two parts that have a 10% chance of failing in a year, then assuming independent failures the total probability of failure of that component is 19% in a year. These numbers are rarely known with so much precision during initial design. Consider it akin to estimating the probability of certain kinds of predictable bugs in a library you're using. How much do you trust that github repository vs intel? The most robust thing to do is typically to design around your best guesses but then do validation testing to refine your guesses. So if I think a critical valve or seal has a high probability of failure but have low confidence in what the probability is, I'll take that valve or seal and literally set up a test case to make sure it performs as expected. Then I can collect real statistics and go from there. Data >> Guesses, but the systems are so complex that guesses are where you have to start. Then you'd basically put the system together, one part at a time, and validate with each added part that the entire system still behaves as expected. And you throw in some edge cases to ensure that controls are working properly, like perhaps in the aluminum heater case you'd simply break a thermocouple yourself to ensure that the safety system works. But you'd do that in testing, not in production. It's really very analogous to unit tests, unsurprisingly because the need is similar. I've had vendors ship me special custom thermocouples that they claimed would run for 10 years at 600C. We threw them in an oven as a trivial validation test. They caught fire. We didn't use that vendor again. But by analogy that's how the firmware blob you get from a vendor is too. They sure claim it does something, but until you've done real testing with it who knows? As you pin down the true probabilities of different failures, you just propagate them through your graph of possible failures to estimate the probability of different scenarios and focus on the high risk and high likelihood events. Sometimes the risk is as simple as "the system will be down for an hour while we replace a failed component". No biggie, maintenance is an expected cost. Sometimes the risk is a nuclear plant meltdown. EDIT: The goal of the above is to identify which _causes_ result in critical failures with high likelihood. Once you've identified them, then you focus down on addressing the root cause. It's more about identifying where problems would start if there were a bad scenario, so you know where to spend more attention in quality control. If you identify that the debouncing is a cause where if it doesn't work your machine doesn't work as needed, the actual solutions could be software or hardware. What's the relative probability that each solution will work? How costly is a failure? How much does it cost to implement? At that point you're talking cost models with reliability requirements as an input. ~~~ thisacctforreal These comments are incredibly helpful, thank you for taking your time to write them. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think is named Reliabilty Engineering / Safety Engineering? Those might be some good things to search for people interested. ------ simonh One thing not mentioned is throttle range. Larger engines can’t throttle down as low as smaller ones. That’s irrelevant for launches, but matters crucially for landing. I know the F9 engines can’t throttle down to a hover, even on a single engine with the fuel tanks mostly empty, but I’m sure they did all their landings up until the last few on a single engine that throttled down to its lowest setting for a reason. Controllability matters and while max power suicide burns are theoretically ideal in practice landing at full thrust on all engines would be highly unlikely to ever be workable. If F9 had say 3 larger engines, I doubt landing would be possible at all. Also you need to be able to build a configuration with an engine in the middle. ~~~ rocqua The recent falcon heavy launch (and some falcon 9 launches before it) actually had the boosters land using 3 engines. So going by ratio, it should still be able to land if it had 3 larger engines. This 3 engine landing failed for the centre core, which is why it was lost. Specifically, there wasn't enough 'lighter fluid' to relight all 3 engines required, only one engine was lit. Thus the booster tried a 3-engine landing on a single engine, and hit the water at 300mph IIRC. ~~~ simonh Sure, which is why I said up until the last few, but if you look at the footage of the two boosters landing closely they didn’t simply do a 3 engine landing burn. They powered up the centre engine, then lit two engines either side of it, but then turned those off a few seconds before landing and still actually landed on a single engine for the last ten seconds or so. It’s hard to be sure exactly because the telephoto footage of the booster catches the start of the burns but misses the side engines shutting down. But when it pans back on to the engines, it’s clear only one of them is still lit (with one other flaring off some unspent fuel). That’s a very precise and tuneable thrust curve you wouldn’t be able to do with one bigger engine. ~~~ rocqua Ah I see. Interesting about the final part of the landing occurring with a single engine even with a 3 engine landing. Makes me wonder why they don't do something like 9 engines for the breaking burn and then switch to a single engine for the landing part. It might just be that is their final plan but 3 is easier to test than 9. ~~~ simonh It’s possible, they might gradually start using the three engines for longer, then maybe even use more engines. I doubt the last part though, the burns aren’t for very long already and I think 3 engines probably gives plenty of kick. There’s also the issue of fuel flow dynamics to the engines, but only SpaceX will have any idea about that. ------ Robotbeat We can mark this inaugural Falcon Heavy launch as the point when people stopped laughing at BFR. The latest version of BFR is only about twice as much thrust as the final FH variant (which will launch in a few months with slight thrust upgrades) and around the same number of engines. Recovery, even with such a complicated bunch of stages, seems to work pretty well, validating SpaceX's knowledge of reentry and reuse. Launching crew within about a year from now is when people will stop laughing about SpaceX sending people to Mars. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA) ------ aurizon A large portion of the efficiency of small engines comes from the reduction of "hoop stress". This is the linear tension in the wall of a pressure vessel(rocket engine) which varies as the square of the diameter. Twice the diameter = 4 times the pressure (hoop stress) the walls must take. A rocket is a special case of a balloon - with an expansion nozzle attached to couple the impedance of the combustion chamber to the outside environment. This means that 9 smaller rocket engines will weigh less than 1 large rocket engine of the same thrust. On top of this is the small engine basic throttling capability with the overlay of cutting out engines to add greater capability. ~~~ theothermkn > This is the linear tension in the wall of a pressure vessel(rocket engine) > which varies as the square of the diameter. Twice the diameter = 4 times the > pressure (hoop stress) the walls must take. This is incorrect. Cutting the cylinder in half lengthwise and taking a unit length, we see that the cross section of the walls of the chamber (unit length x 2 x wall thickness) resists the pressure force from the contained fluid (2 x radius x unit length x pressure). Since the pressure and unit length are constant under scaling, this resulting force grows linearly with the radius. Thus, wall thickness has to grow proportionally to the radius, and there are no mass penalties from the chamber wall from either a smaller or larger engine. A similar result holds for spheres. Indeed, the particular result is independent of the geometry of the pressure vessel. The larger immediate result is that pressure vessels scale just fine with size, up or down, and there's no benefit at either end of the length scale, in relation to contained volume. What you do get for a smaller engine is more manageable combustion instabilities. Look at the 5-fold symmetry (odd, rather than even) of the injector baffles in the SSMEs. This is to stop a tangential oscillation mode, an important failure mode of larger engines. What you lose for smaller engines is that you have more of the fluid "close" to the walls. The boundary layers don't grow linearly, so you get more heat transfer at the boundary in proportion to the contained fluid. (Radiant transfer in the engines complicates the picture, but convective transfer is definitely proportionately worse for smaller engines.) ~~~ Robotbeat It's true that pressure vessels in principle don't care about scale when it concerns mass per unit volume (at a constant pressure). But a combustion chamber's thrust is (to zeroth order) proportional to cross sectional area, not volume. The combustion chamber only needs to be a certain length (L star) to achieve efficient combustion. Any longer and you're just adding mass with no benefit. But there are practical limits to shape of the combustion chamber. You can't have it too squat or it loses structural efficiency. Thus, above a certain size, you're better off from a mass efficiency standpoint with having a bunch of smaller combustion chambers than one big huge one. And this is true even more for the nozzle. You can use a much shorter, and thus lighter, nozzle if you have a smaller engine. For the same expansion ratio, therefore, clustering a bunch of smaller engines is more mass efficient than a single big engine. (But if you go REALlY small, you have minimum gauge issues and you lose thermal and combustion efficiency.) ~~~ theothermkn > You can't have it too squat or it loses structural efficiency. I'm not sure what you mean. Over "squatness," if we mean l-star to cross- sectional area, the 'structural efficiency' remains constant, in that we've contained (square) more fluid for (thickness x perimeter = square) more wall material, and done so for (square) more thrust. > You can use a much shorter, and thus lighter, nozzle if you have a smaller > engine. A nozzle, again, can be modeled as a pressure vessel. (Neglecting shear stress in the first analysis.) So, if we concede that pressure vessel mass ratios are invariant under scale, then so are exhaust nozzles. What we are really worried about is the amount of fluid that is in the boundary layer for heat transfer and shear reasons, and this gets slightly worse with engine size. The area- Mach relations govern the size of the exit bell, so the exit surface for a larger engine grows linearly with the throat area, and we're back to the pressure vessel scaling laws. > You can use a much shorter, and thus lighter, nozzle if you have a smaller > engine. The point being that, if your nozzles are 9 times smaller, they're only 9 times lighter. It's difficult to talk to everyday SpaceX enthusiasts, who seem to have most of their information second-hand. When, for example, to I bring up frozen flow vs. equilibrium flow in this discussion? When do I point out the combustion instability limitations of larger engines? When do I point out the exorbitant research costs associated with taming those instabilities? When will any of that ever dissuade a layperson from their enthusiasm for the square-cube law? ~~~ Robotbeat Pressure vessel equation means structural efficiency is invariant based on _volume_ but we're talking (to zeroth order) _area_ , thus smaller pressure vessels (nozzles, chambers, etc) are more structurally efficient (at the large size limit...). To expound: Mass ∝ Volume, Volume ∝ length^3. Thrust ∝ cross sectional area, area ∝ length^2. Thus, Mass ∝ Thrust^(3/2), or: Thrust to weight ratio ∝ sqrt(thrust) for a single engine. > The point being that, if your nozzles are 9 times smaller, they're only 9 > times lighter. This is incorrect, for the reason I shared earlier. Thrust is proportional to cross section, not volume. Thus scaling laws (at some point) favor smaller engines. (Note that this is assuming we're already big enough that we have full combustion and are not experiencing minimum gauge issues, etc.) My knowledge doesn't come from being a SpaceX enthusiast. In addition to having a physics degree, years ago I was part of a very early-stage startup (never got off the ground) at one point looking at launch vehicles, and so I read Sutton's Rocket Propulsion Elements (a very nice introductory text, I highly recommend) among others and did a bunch of scaling analysis. (SpaceX would've been a competitor.) ------ SpuriousSignals It all depends on how an engine fails. A failure to provide thrust is survivable with more engines. But a vulnerability that causes a fuel line to go boom, taking out the whole rocket, is made more likely by having more engines. ~~~ jballanc IIRC, the engines in the Falcon 9 are pretty well separated from each other, such that even a catastrophic failure of one engine is survivable by the rest. Indeed, that seems to be what happened the one time an engine did fail (albeit on a very early version of the Falcon 9 with the "square" engine layout): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvTIh96otDw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvTIh96otDw) ~~~ sebazzz It is not an explosion. From the first comment: Engine didn't explode, it detected an anomaly and shut itself down. Here's spacex's statement concerning the event- "Approximately one minute and 19 seconds into last night's launch, the Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly on one first stage engine. Initial data suggests that one of the rocket's nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued. We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it. Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines." ~~~ gizmo385 > Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to > protect the stage and other engines. Does anyone have details on this? I'm just curious how these work because it sounds fascinating. ------ Klathmon It makes sense from a reliability perspective to have more smaller semi- redundant parts, especially since it sounds like they have the whole control system down, "scaling up" from managing and controlling 3 engines probably isn't all that different from managing 9, and eventually 31. (obviously this is still rocket science, and nothing is "easy") I'm curious if there are other benefits. I'd imagine that manufacturing the smaller engines gets easier and faster and more reliable as they make more of them. Also, I wonder if this plays into their reusability? If there is a defect found in one of the 9 F9 engines, theoretically you could replace just that one and refly the rest. I have no idea if this is even possible, but it seems like it could be. ~~~ hinkley But there has been talk in the past, including from Musk if memory serves, about the limits of reliablility. We aren’t talking about hard drives here. You throw a couple more in and if one fails you just turn it off. Hard drives don’t explode and destroy the hard drive next to them or cause the enclosure to fail. More rockets is more things trying to explode in only the same direction. The other responder talked about the operational excellence that can’t be achieved if the numbers get too small. That seems more likely. ~~~ hinkley Just an addendum, while Musk in fact compares the rockets to computers, I have found that what the management takes away from conversations with engineers is often not the most important part. But typically everyone on the team has opinions about success or failure of the project and we all discount something important. Managers doubly so. They rarely credit the spotters who keep them from falling when their process has huge holes in it. ------ avmich > The Russian Soyuz rocket has five engines, each of which has six thrust > chambers. RD-107 on the four side blocks has 6 chambers, RD-108 on the central block has 8 chambers. ------ ksk >For computers, Musk said, using large numbers of small computers ends up being a more efficient, smarter, and faster approach than using a few larger, more powerful computers. I always figured, in theory, a super-super-powerful single threaded single processor would out compete the multi-threaded multi processor design on efficiency, because of the hardware and software inefficiencies in inter processor hardware connections and communication. In practice, I suppose there is always a physical limit on the total capacity of low latency addressable ram and storage you can manage to shove into an architecture. ~~~ bluedino Depends on the task - it turns out rocket thrust is quite parallelizeable ------ allthenews There's something I don't understand about space travel. We made it to the moon in 1969, on the first computer to use ICs[1]. Since then we've seen monumental advances in computer science, material science, manufacturing, rocketry, and just about any other component of space flight. Why 50 years later is it still such a relatively difficult task to launch a rocket into space? Why is it still so expensive and failure prone, when we were able to launch so many vessels with substantially less capable technology? It seems like space travel simply has not scaled with the rest of our technology, but I imagine I'm missing something. Perhaps the ratio of human life to risk tolerance has increased, such that we effectively spend more time and resources designing away failures and refuse to launch with the same level of risk that was acceptable decades ago? 1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#Desig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#Design) ~~~ adventured Apollo cost ~$120-$150 billion in today's dollar. Falcon Heavy cost $500m-$1b to get right. Given some time, Musk could probably make it so a trip to the Moon costs $300 million, maybe less. We've ( _they 've_) accomplished an extraordinary cost improvement. It's still such a monumental task, because the laws of physics have not changed. Building a huge rocket, putting people in it, and firing it at the Moon, is not the hard part per se (not killing them in the process, and bringing them back safely, is). We could have done that all over again at any time if we desired to spend the money. The next level of difficulty, is turning it into a truly routine task, and building something on the Moon. That's a dramatic leap up from only exploring the surface of the Moon. We've avoided doing that, not because we can't, but because it's a cost benefit equation, and the benefit has not been considered worth doing at the cost, even as the cost gradually declined. Now that cost benefit equation has improved dramatically enough to favor it being worth doing. Simply put, as a society we're not willing to spend $500 billion or $1 trillion to build a Moon base. But we might be willing to spend $50 or $100 billion over time to do it. We're not willing to spend $10 or $20 billion for a trip to the Moon, but we are probably willing to spend $300 million or even a billion. ~~~ simonh That’s not quite a fair comparison. The $500m to $1bn was just for the heavy variant, it doesn’t include the cost of developing the F9 itself. Musk has previously estimated the cost of just developing the landing capability by itself at about $1bn. But still, yes it’s a lot less than Saturn V. ------ craig1f TL;DR; - You get more fault-tolerance with a large number of smaller engines ~~~ nine_k Interestingly, the Soviet Н1 Moon-bound rocket [1] used a similar setup, and it was plagued be reliability problems: making many smaller parts work reliably _at the same time_ is harder for obvious reasons. Either reliability of engines went seriously up, or software control (impossible in early 1960s) made it possible to operate a bunch of less-than- ideal engines successfully. [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_\(rocket\)) ~~~ orbital-decay Actually, N1 failures had little to do with the complexity itself, and engines were reliable enough for the time. Due to the lack of funding (the soviet lunar program was given the priority well into the moon "race") they were using the old methodology of testing it in the actual flight, not doing any static fires and only doing a bare minimum of ground testing. Saturn V, on the other hand, heavily relied on the ground testing before the launch. That's why Saturn V mostly worked and N1 failed. Energia worked perfectly much later, because it was developed with the proper amount of ground testing. ~~~ Florin_Andrei The Soviets won the first round of the space race (until the mid-60s) because of multiple factors, but mainly because of the laser-focus at the highest levels to push the technology as far as it could go. It helped a lot that they had an engineering genius heading the program (Sergey Korolev), and the top politician during that time (Nikita Khrushchev) was a forward-thinking progressive (relatively speaking - please keep it in context) who was a big fan of space. Korolev (pronounce: Karalyov) died in the mid-60s, just before the Moon program had started to gear up for the big time. Khrushchev was ousted also during the mid-60s by retrograde bureaucrats. With both the political and the technical leadership in turmoil, the program fell on very hard times. The didn't get enough funds, could not get proper testing done, and pushed a lot of QA to the live launches. Predictably, the results were "spectacular" \- but in a bad way. A little before that time America finally got its resolve together ("We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...") and started pouring massive amounts of financial and engineering efforts into its space program. Again predictably, the results were spectacular - but in a good way. If your leadership is indifferent and you don't have the stuff you need, you lose. If you work hard and put all your energies into it, you win. And that applied to both sides, each in its turn. Who knew? Good book on this topic (and related): [https://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive- Ame...](https://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive- America/dp/0471327212/) \--- I wish Korolev was around these days so he could see Elon Musk's multi-engine design. I think he would like it. In a (somewhat vague) sense, I see the Falcon Heavy as late vindication for the tremendous efforts, against all odds, of the engineers who busted their asses trying to shoot the N1 into the Moon. The idea was sound, it was just not yet the right time for it. ~~~ cuspycode Korolev's contribution is even more impressive when you consider that he was imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag for many years (for political reasons), suffering under living conditions which probably shortened his life. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev) ~~~ Florin_Andrei Seriously, I can't comprehend the guy. He starts studying liquid fuel rockets in the '30s, and does some amazing work probably trailing only the top German engineers in this field. He's denounced by some envious low-lifer who wanted his job and is arrested (along with Valentin Glushko, another great rocket scientist) during the stalinist Great Purge at the end of the '30s, when a simple anonymous note was enough to get someone disappeared. They torture him, sentence him to death - but then he's commuted to hard labor in the gold mine, where the poisonous environment and poor conditions meant the average life expectancy was barely over one year. Loses all his teeth to scurvy. Meanwhile his friends back in Moscow are lobbying with Lavrenti Beria (the KGB boss) to release him - they succeed and he's placed in the "easy prison" where a bunch of intellectuals were doing essentially white collar slave labor (with pencil on paper, sure, but no choice in the nature of the work) for the Soviet government. He's released towards the end of WW2. Then Stalin figures he needs to catch up to the Germans in rocketry, so Korolev is rehabilitated, made colonel of the Red Army, and finally starts working again on his rocket engines. They copy a bunch of German designs first, use some German engineers (who were prisoners) to get them started. Then continue on their own. He develops the first Soviet ICBMs, but that was just what paid the bills. He keeps pushing for a real space program. Launches Sputnik 1 into space. Leads the Soviet space program until the mid-60s. When he died, he was working on plans for manned missions to Mars and beyond. I mean, what motivates a person to keep forging ahead against such adversity? Death sentence, hard labor in the poison mine, years of imprisonment and disgrace - and then he builds and launches the world's first ever satellite. To say nothing of the fact that, like Elon Musk, he was a man of many talents: great engineer, very effective leader, and a good politician and lobbyist. It's amazing. ------ XR0CSWV3h3kZWg > using large numbers of small computers ends up being a more efficient, > smarter, and faster approach than using a few larger, more powerful > computers Huh? Using large numbers of small computers is definitely smarter and more cost effective. I'm surprised by the claim that it's more efficient and faster. The moment what you are doing needs to hit the network you eat some real costs in terms of efficiency and latency. ------ jlebrech and soon it'll be clusters of boosters, there's space to fit another 4 in a hexagonal pattern. you could lift a mini hexagonal mars base fully assembled that way, land it and land the next one quite close. ~~~ marktangotango In the post Falcon Heavy press conference, he specifically mentioned scaling up to a Super Heavy with two additional side boosters, four in all. Sounded like they had designed for that, from the way he just threw it out there. Seems odd to me, since FH is an interim vehicle until BFR comes on line in 5-10 years. ~~~ gizmo385 > Seems odd to me, since FH is an interim vehicle until BFR comes on line in > 5-10 years. I thought they were targeting launches much sooner than 5-10 years out for the BFR? ~~~ Maybestring They are, that doesn't mean you should expect them to hit that target. Musk doesn't seem to set timelines with the expectation that they will be attained. They are always best case, but development never is. ~~~ jlebrech yep, they still need to make money. ------ RachelF Perhaps another reason is that they already have these small engines? Why not use what you have already built and debugged rather than build a bigger, expensive engine, for only marginal gains. ------ grondilu Would it then make sense to plan for even more smaller engines? Like while BFR is meant to have 31 Raptor engines, could it have 60 Merlin engines instead or something? ~~~ ygra One goal of BFR is Mars, from which you can only get back if you can produce fuel on the ground. Which kinda rules out RP-1 as propellant. Hence the need for a methane engine. Unrelated to the number of engines here, obviously; just another point to consider. And if they end up designing a new engine they could just as well apply what they have learned in the meantime. Merlin is a very conservative design, favouring simplicity and cost over thrust. If you plan for re-using your rocket a thousand times, cost of an engine isn't that much of an issue anymore and you can prioritise other aspects. ~~~ philipwhiuk > from which you can only get back if you can produce fuel on the ground Is this actually realistic? ------ pensivemood Can we have less spacex here please? Thank you. ~~~ always_good Be a big boy and click the downvote/hide buttons instead of hoping the universe adapts to you. ------ DanCarvajal Hey it worked for the N1.....wait.....
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Becoming fully reactive: an explanation of Mobservable - mweststrate https://medium.com/@mweststrate/becoming-fully-reactive-an-in-depth-explanation-of-mobservable-55995262a254#.h1ihbtorr ====== teleclimber This looks really interesting but there are a few caveats wrt Arrays:[1] "Due to limitations of native arrays in ES5 (array.observe is only available in ES7, and arrays cannot be extend),..." "Bear in mind that Array.isArray(observable([])) will yield false, so whenever you need to pass an observable array to an external library, it is a good idea to create a shallow copy before passing it... " Also, now that Object.observe has been removed from the standards track[2], does anyone know the fate of Array.observe? MDN says it's not on std track either.[3] How are we going to write any sort of observable library that includes arrays with zero support from the language? (At least Objects have getters and setters and the ability to seal etc...) [1] [http://mweststrate.github.io/mobservable/refguide/observable...](http://mweststrate.github.io/mobservable/refguide/observable.html) [2] [https://esdiscuss.org/topic/an-update-on-object- observe](https://esdiscuss.org/topic/an-update-on-object-observe) [3] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/observe) ~~~ mweststrate Object.observe was a bad idea. Even when it was available in chrome I didn't consider using it. However, the ES6 proposal for object proxies will hopefully become generally available as those can solve the same issue way more elegantly. Proxies will be able to address the current limitations of arrays in Mobservable. I wrote a short blog post about the issue: [https://medium.com/p/object- observe-is-dead-long-live-mobser...](https://medium.com/p/object-observe-is- dead-long-live-mobservable-observe-ad96930140c5). Mobservable currently relies on property getters / setters, both for arrays and objects. Probably until proxies will be generally available.
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RethinkDB re-licensed to Apache License, version 2.0 - joaojeronimo https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/commit/b0ec8bc5a874d5241d8af1166d664083edc5f750 ====== molecule Ongoing discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579544)
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The way we think about charity is dead wrong - jb1988 Apologies if you have seen this but I saw this Ted Talk on this site (http://www.getinspired365.com/21501270) last on Non for Profit's. I thought it was excellent and given Y Combinator have taken on their first 'non for profit' in Watsi (http://ycombinator.com/watsi.html) I thought the audience may find the talk interesting.<p>The talk is from the Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta, he calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend -- not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, he says: Let's change the way we think about changing the world. ====== coldtea > _he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big > accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, > he says: Let's change the way we think about changing the world._ It's true, they way we think about charities is dead wrong. But not for the reasons stated above (which is also in the "dead wrong" region). Charities are a kludge, an aspirin for cancer. It's a way for the privileged to feel good about themselves (and do some minor good) that never "changes the world" -- just perpetuates the same sad state of affairs and maybe gets them some tax cuts. You want to "change the world"? Then CHANGE the world, that is make systemic changes (changes to laws, politics, etc). Don't merely poor your excess money on problems. If a problem needs funding, then make sure it gets funding, not that some rich folks can opt to give whatever they feel like for the cause. ------ jb1988 Clicky <http://www.getinspired365.com/21501270>
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Intel declared war on general purpose computing and lost - AdmiralAsshat https://boingboing.net/2017/05/09/management-engine.html ====== astrodust It wouldn't be a Cory Doctorow headline without hyperbole. ~~~ smhenderson Well to be fair it is a huge issue AFAIC. But, yeah, Cory; he did start out as primarily a fiction writer... ~~~ astrodust I like what he's fighting for, but honestly, if he could step back and be a little more objective about these things it would help his cause. Not everything is nefarious and evil. Sometimes a feature is introduced with the best intentions, but those intentions are misguided. Corporations _do_ want to ensure the laptops are booting a legit copy of Windows, that the image hasn't been corrupted, and they do want to be able to wipe and restore machines remotely. Maybe people don't want this, I don't, but corporations buy way more computers than people do, so Intel's compelled to produce these features. They absolutely could have done a better job, they absolutely could have offered hardware without it, but to just blanket slam them in the harshest possible terms isn't productive. ------ bnolsen The media companies will let the world burn before they will give up any control.
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A better approach to determining gender from a first name - Stromgren http://genderize.io ====== AndrewDucker Please just don't. There is no point antagonising people by guessing information about them wrongly - particularly if it's something they've become sensitised to by it occurring frequently. If you need to know someone's gender (and largely, you don't), then ask them. ~~~ sambeau It also assumes two distinct genders which is a fallacy. ~~~ clarkm Sure, but that doesn't preclude it from being a useful metric for something like ad targeting. ~~~ mrottenkolber It does exactly that. Don't look for natural metrics in an artificial universe. ------ marijn > {"name":"marijn","gender":"female","probability":"1.00","count":1} Except, of course, that I am male. My name is used for both genders. The thing completely failed on a few other ambiguous names I tried. I'll second AndrewDucker's opinion—just don't. ~~~ sdoering The same goes for the following, a name used for both genders in Italy: {"name":"maria","gender":"female","probability":"1.00","count":700} ~~~ k__ failed with my name, too. { "name": "kay", "gender": "female", "probability": "0.93", "count": 57, "country_id": "US", "language_id": "en" } ~~~ jakewalker How is that a "fail"? The probability is listed as 93%. ~~~ seppo0010 100% of probability doesn't make it a certainty either. ------ brey Interesting from a machine-learning perspective - but this strikes me as a solution looking for a problem. If any service needs to know gender (and I'm having a hard time thinking of times you NEED to know gender - dating sites?) - why not just ask? surely in a situation where you're reliant on having accurate gender information, guessing from $firstname and getting it wrong is worse than asking. ~~~ vdaniuk Why not just ask? More form fields means less conversions. Using the service one can ask for the gender later during the registration process only if confidence in the sex detection is lower then a defined threshold. ~~~ tommorris You don't need to know the data for most things. The times you do (dating sites etc.), you need it to be accurate and should ask explicitly. ------ batemanesque I'm sure this is interesting from a statistical point of view, but does the tech scene really need yet more reinforcement of a binary view of gender? ~~~ tommorris You want an enlightened view of the complexity of sensitively handling transgender people, non-binary genders and other gender and sexual minorities? This is Hacker News. Such enlightened thought is frowned on by our new brogrammer overlords. Here's your beer. ~~~ quesera Wow, that's misplaced hostility. If you wanted to deride the fact that many folks here won't spent multiples of effort on special, experimental, no-right-answers-and-likely-to-be-criticized- for-it-if-you-even-try cases that affect minuscule fractions of their potential user base, well...get in line behind the IE5 advocates, I guess. Someone recommends using a free form entry for gender. No amount of normalization will fix the "ham sandwich" entries (except that we know they are nearly all male), so you'd trade the integrity of a small percentage of your data for the appearance of "making an effort" for the vanishingly small percentage. Net fail. Just to be clear, my primary feeling here is that -- in the hypothetical case where gender matters -- you're best served by keeping it simple: (female | male | other/it's complicated | prefer not to answer). This should serve all cases equally. ~~~ batemanesque ah yes, because trying to be decent & inclusive to persecuted minorities is the comparable to supporting an obsolete browser - yr analogy is a perfect illustration of the grotesque intersection between the Valley & bigotry. also, "the hypothetical case where gender matters" is a glorious illustration of straight privilege ~~~ quesera > a glorious illustration of straight privilege Gender has nothing to do with orientation. Please don't propagate such normative misunderstandings. If I may restate for clarity: in most cases of software implementation, a user's gender is not important data (obvious exceptions include medical and related fields). Generally, gender should not be requested. Where requested, it should not be required. Where required, one should have no compunction against answering randomly. That's prerogative, not privilege. ~~~ batemanesque opted for "straight privilege" as an alternative to "cisprivilege"that I thought HN people were more likely to understand. I'd have thought it was obvious I wasn't actually talking about orientation ------ Filligree The "probability" return value appears to be a straight average; it returns 1 for "Peter", which is almost guaranteed to be incorrect - all it takes is a single female Peter, anywhere on the planet. A better approach, in the absence of more complex models, would be to use Laplace's sunrise formula. ~~~ mjolk You're kidding right? Guessing gender for a "show hacker news" with a .io domain is a clear case of "done is better than perfect." ~~~ stephencanon Adding 1 to the numerator and 2 to the denominator is a trivial improvement, not pie-in-the-sky whiteboarding that prevents you from shipping. ~~~ mjolk Yes, to fix the "girls named Larry" bug. ------ kmike84 In morphologically rich languages (like Russian) the most discriminative feature for detecting gender could be the word shape of last name or middle name, not the first name. So in many languages there is no way to have meaningful gender prediction by analyzing just the first name. Relative gender frequency for the first name is an useful information, but it is just not enough for reliable gender prediction. ------ bromagosa I guess it needs a better training DB, it returns {"gender": null} for not-so- common names in languages other than English... [http://api.genderize.io/?name=eloi&language_id=ca](http://api.genderize.io/?name=eloi&language_id=ca) [http://api.genderize.io/?name=tomeu&language_id=ca](http://api.genderize.io/?name=tomeu&language_id=ca) [http://api.genderize.io/?name=rigoberta&language_id=es](http://api.genderize.io/?name=rigoberta&language_id=es) [http://api.genderize.io/?name=presentaci%C3%B3n&language_id=...](http://api.genderize.io/?name=presentaci%C3%B3n&language_id=es) Credit for distinguishing between names in languages, though! Joan returns female in English, but male in Catalan. ------ eksith This project is a fine example of the "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/) ------ gambiting Bear in mind that in some languages this problem doesn't exist. In Polish for example, all female names end with an "a". There is not a single exception from that rule, so if you see a name ending with an "a" it is always a female name. ~~~ TillE And in Iceland you can reliably determine gender from a person's second name, ending in either -son or -dottir. ~~~ zuppy Yes, but probably there are people in Iceland and Poland with foreign names. I know that you both wanted to explain that there is a rule in some language and it's nice to find out about that information, but as long as it doesn't apply to everybody, I don't consider this a solution. ~~~ gambiting In Poland you cannot give children foreign sounding names. So unless we are talking about foreigners visiting,then it does apply to everyone. Like I don't know a single person to whom that rule would not apply. ------ nefasti I thought Hackers News had more people speaking more/other languages than english. A lot of complaints, excluding the binary gender complaints, totaly forget about how languages like portuguese / french have male / female differences for nouns and other language constructs. Let´s say I have to build a phrase where I have the user profession like engineer and I don't know upfront, for portuguese male would be "engenheiro" or " engenheira" for female. It does have a lot of practical uses. And with a big enough training, the decision to use for that user is on your hands. ------ casca For Icelandic names, it's easy to identify the gender by looking at the last name. For example Bjarni Benediktsson is definitely male while Katrín Jakobsdóttir is definitely female. Another strategy is to use gender-neutral terms until you find out the gender, as asking directly might be considered rude in some cultures. ~~~ mhurron Is the first name in Iceland the family name or is there something else going on here? ~~~ jaimebuelta I'm just guessing, but.. "Benedikt-SSON is definitely male while Katrín Jakobs-DÓTIR is female" (Hey, I swear it was before taking a look [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name)) ------ Grue3 Doesn't know my name. [http://api.genderize.io/?name=timofei](http://api.genderize.io/?name=timofei) ------ anonemouscoward { "name": "петя", "gender": "female", "probability": "1.00", "count": 1 } Yeah, how about no. ------ ludicast I like this from a usability standpoint. Just as some forms auto-fill the city/state based on the zip (and might get it wrong), this enables something similar. And it might get it wrong, but if your mom gave you a girl's name* blame her. It also seems accurate: Pat = about 50/50 David = All man Jessica = All woman Also, wrt to "binary gender identity" complaints, are we all college freshmen here? * my own name (Nord) sucks and gave a gender of null. Spent my whole life being called Nerd, Nora, etc. I'm not flipping out. ~~~ masklinn > wrt to "binary gender identity" complaints, are we all college freshmen > here? We aren't, which is exactly why it's a problem. ~~~ ludicast Nobody is saying a form can't have "other", etc. as an option. Just that someone's MVP that guesses gender is allowed to do that without political- correctness police. I fail to see how this API needs to accommodate transpeople in its 0.1 release. ~~~ eksith I fail to see how this API needs to accommodate transpeople in its 0.1 release. You have failed at empathy. Speaking to the fluidity of human gender, "Other" is the majority of the spectrum and defaulting to binary is just as naïve as defaulting to ASCII as expected input in an application/API written in 2013. Restricting yourself that early in the release cycle (and I'm still dubious of the merits of this project), doesn't bode well for its future. Edit: I just read your comment history and, if I'm not mistaken, you're already biased. Or would you care to elaborate what you wrote here? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6451454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6451454) ~~~ ludicast >> Speaking to the fluidity of human gender, "Other" is the majority of the spectrum I agree 100% about the fluidity of human gender, but rather than lecture people via a form/api etc. it is probably simplest to have words that most people use like male and female and something ("other", "trans", "enlightened", whatever) for the 3rd option. >> I just read your comment history and, if I'm not mistaken, you're already biased. Or would you care to elaborate what you wrote here? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6451454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6451454) First of all that was a joke in the spirit of the Hangover 2. Might not have been that funny, but was an attempt at humor based on what it was responding to. Secondly, I believe you are "biased" :) because though it is chronologically juxtaposed to this comment that's probably a coincidence because if you go through my comment history it might be the only one touching on the subject (I think, no guarantees). edit - I did make a prison rape joke a year+ ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4148572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4148572)) but I actually heard from people that it was hysterical* because of the play on "backbone". * hysterical is a sexist word, I know. ~~~ eksith it is probably simplest to have words that most people use like male and female and something... The simplest is a text field with: "What prefix would you like us to use?" The End. There are no assumptions, no assignment of labels, not one bit of imposing your cultural norms on anyone else. The hardest part of getting over biases is acknowledging that you have them. Learn some sensitivity, please. ~~~ ludicast I'm either being trolled or bullied here. A text field adds time to type out (which can lose customers, alienate handicapped etc.), all to accommodate an exception, rather than a rule. I don't care if you have a slider, dropdown, circle, whatever, but for usability, a gender option should have poles that require 0 or 1 clicks to get to (though a text-field for further elucidation is okay). Continuing down this path, the further step is saying a shoe-size option insults amputees and lymphedema victims and should be a text-field... Edit - Another fact is that the person filling out this form might not be the person described by the form (say for a CRM tool) in which case it matters more to KISS.
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Where Did 'Jazz,' the Word, Come From? (2018) - tintinnabula https://www.wbgo.org/post/where-did-jazz-word-come-follow-trail-clues-deep-dive-lewis-porter ====== adfm Daniel Cassidy's "How The Irish Invented Slang" (CounterPunch & AK Press, 2007) has an entire chapter dedicated to the etymology of "Jazz" including reprints of articles mentioned in the OP. It includes much of what Porter writes about, but is a much deeper dive. It's well researched and worth the read, but with a grain of salt. Where Porter's parenthetical (I think “gin-i-ker” means “full of gin.”) is a shot in the dark, Cassidy's polyglot ear for slang catches the Irish "tine caor" (pron. jin-i-kær) meaning "raging fire and lightning," delivering a livelier and more nuanced read. You'll see mention of Scoop Gleeson, but find out he's holed up 40 miles north of SF in Boyes _Hot_ Springs, CA covering the Seals spring training. There may never be a definitive answer to the headline question, but as far as I know, this is likely as close as you'll get. ------ jdietrich I have to take some issue with this paragraph: _> But you can also see how Max Roach was wrong when he said they applied the term “jazz” as an insult. This was advertising! “Come see this lively, exciting, JAZZ music!” It would have made no sense if the word were perceived as negative. Did the word have a sexual connotation in some circles, as he claimed? Absolutely: any word for energy eventually has sexual connotations, it seems. But that connotation came later, and in any case it probably wasn’t the thinking of the white folks who named the music. On the other hand, did the word stand in the way of many “respectable” people, white and also religious black Americans, from accepting this new kind of music? Definitely so._ I'm somewhat surprised that a jazz scholar would overlook the possibility that the tropes used to promote black music in the early 20th century could be deeply derogatory. The popularisation of jazz came very shortly after the peak of minstrelsy. Contemporary descriptions of jazz by white authors often segue rapidly from terms like "lively" and "exciting" to "primitive" or "savage". Early jazz sheet music covers were far more likely to feature a racist caricature than the image of a black artist; the marketing of early jazz records is often barely distinguishable from the marketing of minstrel troupes in previous decades. The sexual connotations of the term and the music cannot be separated from the sexual demonisation of black men at that time. [http://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/1512237](http://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/1512237) ~~~ fenomas > I'm somewhat surprised that a jazz scholar would overlook the possibility > that the tropes used to promote black music in the early 20th century could > be deeply derogatory From the paragraph before the one you quoted, I think the author's claim there is that "jazz" wasn't (at that point) being used to refer particularly to black music, so it follows that it didn't do so derogatorily. ------ avip Mandatory quote: >If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know \- Louis Armstrong ~~~ mieseratte Reminds me of asking what punk is, only that one usually elicits a more profane response. ------ lucideer > _The word “jazz” probably derives from_ > _It should be clear by now that all of the popular stories about the origin > of the word are wrong_ Well that went from "probably" to clarity pretty quickly. (the rest of the article doesn't mention the probable claim again; the only possible reference is an OED quote about "jasm", not about "jazz"). While I'm sure the OED does make a compelling connection between "jazz" and "jasm", it seems a bit disorganised for the article not to reference this directly (presuming that's the author's source). The tone is also so odd: it's as if it was written purely as a rebuttal to some pub debate that the author had been particularly worked up about, zealous exclamation-marks throughout. ------ crazygringo > _The Oxford English Dictionary, the most reliable and complete record of the > English language, traces “jasm” back to at least 1860: J. G. Holland Miss > Gilbert 's Career xix. 350 ‘She's just like her mother... Oh! she's just as > full of jasm!’.. ‘Now tell me what “jasm” is.’.._ And "-asm" is such an unusual word ending in English, it makes me wonder how "jasm" itself came about? (If I didn't know any better, seeing the word for the first time I'd never guess it was supposed to be English.) Running a regex on the dictionary, there are only a handful of other words ending in it -- mostly "sarcasm", "orgasm", "chasm", "spasm", and various scientific terms ending in "plasm" (e.g. "nucleoplasm"). ~~~ id "enthusiasm" is another one ~~~ Sharlin Which has an interesting etymology. Also from Greek, but the original root word is _theos_ , "god", from which is derived _enthous_ , "possessed by god", and further _enthousiasmos_ , "being possessed by god", or less literally "being inspired". ------ blowski See also: [http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170224-the-mysetrious- ori...](http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170224-the-mysetrious-origins-of- jazz) ------ mfb2 The story I heard when I was in music school was that the word jazz came from the days of slavery. It was intended as a coded way to let others know that there would be prayers and music that evening (e.g. Jass Tonight) but the 'S' would be flipped around. The word stood for "Jesus Amen Save our Souls". ~~~ fenomas Evan Morris, author of "The Word Detective" column that used to run in papers and alt weeklies, used to perennially comment that acronyms in English were quite rare until roughly WW1-WW2, and as such etymologies involving them ("to insure promptness", "port out starboard home", etc.) are virtually always false. More to the point, TFA lays out various evidence why this particular theory is unlikely. ~~~ OJFord > "to insure promptness" As in tipping service? It'd be _ensure_ anyway, surely? ~~~ fenomas > As in tipping service? The same. For whatever reason false etymologies based on acronyms abound, with "tip" and "posh" being among the better-known. There's also "for unlawful carnal knowledge" for fuck, "gentlemen only ladies forbidden" for golf, "constable on patrol" for cop, etc. I've even heard people claim rap derives from "rhythm and poetry". But basically they're all bunk, apart from words of quite recent coinage. (I might add that tons of false etymologies without acronyms float around as well - "mind your Ps and Qs" being related to pints and quarts, stuff like that. Morris used to blame tour guides as being the worst culprits of keeping such things alive.)
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Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information - jlhamilton http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-further-reduces-control-over-personal-information ====== fnid2 This weekend one of my friends (IRL) asked me why I wasn't on Facebook. She was shocked, as many who know me are, when I tell them I am not on facebook. They see me as a internet guru. How can an internet guru not be on facebook? What they don't know is that most Internet Gurus I know are also not on facebook. The reason I am not on facebook is quite simple, I do not want to give facebook my private information, because I do not trust Facebook. I do not trust Mark Z. I do not believe that they have individual users' best interests at heart. What I do believe is that they are interested in getting more users, sharing more information, and making more money. None of these are in my best interest. In fact, as Facebook gets more users, the quality of facebook will continue to decline, as will their treatment of those users. It takes a lot of money to operate 10,000 servers (or however many they have at this point). It takes a lot of ad revenue. It takes a lot of people and investors. All of that means continued focus on the bottom line to ensure survival. Facebook's only value is in the information people put into it and they will do what they need to do with that information to keep powering those tens of thousands of servers. ~~~ by "What I do believe is that they are interested in getting more users, sharing more information, and making more money." I don't see why sharing more information will make more money in the long term. Keeping the users happy and engaged would seem more profitable to me. What is the logic? "In fact, as Facebook gets more users, the quality of facebook will continue to decline, as will their treatment of those users." I don't understand why treating the users badly would increase the value of the company. ~~~ fnid2 as wmeredith replied below and I'll elaborate here: Facebook has only one product, information. When companies want to grow, they have to produce more product. Facebook can produce more product in only three ways: getting more users, getting users to add more info, or sharing more of the info they've already added. There is no other way. When new user accounts plateau, when users are content with the amount of info they've added or the additional value of that data declines due to signal-to- noise, the only method they have left is to share more of the information they already have in the form of greater public visibility. Remember, Facebook's customers are not the users, they are the advertisers. If you want to establish a relationship with a company designed to make profit, profit should be the foundation of the relationship. Facebook's users do not profit. They provide labor to improve the value of facebook with no compensation in return, so the relationship is unbalanced. Even factory workers are paid, albeit not much comparatively, but someone else somewhere is making less and will migrate to the factory to fill jobs people quit. In facebook's case, turnover can't be filled. The people won't come back and there is a diminishing quantity of new users to pick from. Eventually, users will stop joining because the knowledge we are sharing here will reach them before they do and they'll have lost their naive innocence -- a requirement of any sharecropper. Why more sharing of information will make more money is because money is made through the information. Basically, advertisers can better target ads. By treating users badly, I mean in an increasingly selfish manner by doing things their users don't appreciate. Users don't want someone unilaterally deciding how much of their, what they consider, private information is shown to third parties -- millions of other parties -- like the FBI, Police, IRS, potential employers. ~~~ stanleydrew _Facebook's users do not profit. They provide labor to improve the value of facebook with no compensation in return, so the relationship is unbalanced._ I think this is demonstrably false. It's true, my brother doesn't get paid by Facebook to spend time on the site. Google doesn't pay me to use GMail either, and yet I use it every day all day. Money isn't the only way to provide value. And there's no way Facebook could have reached 400 million users without providing value to a lot of those people. ------ _delirium Wow, this is pretty lame. The various stuff I've become a "fan" of (apparently now renamed "like") was under the understanding, explicitly stated by Facebook, that it wasn't part of the public information. Seems they changed that without warning or opt-out? Is there at least an easy way to quickly remove all the hundreds of things I've become a fan of before Google starts indexing them, if I'd prefer them not to be indexed? What I'm getting from this is that you should assume that _all_ your Facebook information is publicly available, and act accordingly, because they could make it so at any time. At this rate of trustworthiness, I wouldn't be that surprised if in 2 years status updates were made retroactively public with no opt-out (and maybe without even telling you). Edit: Is this even legal? Consider the following scenario: Someone signed up for a Facebook account 3 years ago, and entered some of this information, at a time when their privacy policy explicitly promised that the information would not be shared. They have not logged in since, so cannot be said to have even implicitly agreed to a change in the privacy policy (and Facebook has not mailed out any notice of the change). Now their information is made public, in violation of the privacy policy. Not sure how easy it'd be to enforce, but at the very least it seems _sleazy_. ~~~ ElbertF > you should assume that all your Facebook information is publicly available Indeed you should, I'd say this applies to any website. ~~~ _delirium That would certainly make mint.com pretty interesting... ~~~ mjgoins mint.com is a much more absurd idea than facebook. And the fact that it has users is even more mind-boggling. ------ tcskeptic Unless I am misunderstanding this <http://bit.ly/c4NFgO> it appears that this article misrepresents the changes in a couple of important ways: 1) Facebook says this is opt-in: _Opt-in to new connections: When you next visit your profile page on Facebook, you'll see a box appear that recommends Pages based on the interests and affiliations you'd previously added to your profile. You can then either connect to all these Pages—by clicking "Link All to My Profile"—or choose specific Pages. You can opt to only connect to some of those Pages by going to "Choose Pages Individually" and checking or unchecking specific Pages. Once you make your choice, any text you'd previously had for the current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests sections of your profile will be replaced by links to these Pages. If you would still like to express yourself with free-form text, you can still use the "Bio" section of your profile. You also can also use features and applications like Notes, status updates or Photos to share more about yourself._ They reiterate this further down the page: _"If you don't want to show up on those Pages, simply disconnect from them by clicking the "Unlike" link in the bottom left column of the Page. You always decide what connections to make."_ 2) If you choose to opt-in you can control whether your friends see the connection on your profile by using the privacy settings. So, it is opt-in, there is a simple way to remove yourself if you change your mind, you can control the visibility on your own profile, and if you don't want to faff around with the connections, you can just list this stuff as text in some of the available text only fields. What is the issue? ------ char "As Facebook's privacy policy promised, 'No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings'." This is STILL true, and it's publicly known how to maintain privacy. You can keep all your information private to everyone who isn't a friend, and you get to control exactly who your friends are. If you become a "Fan" of something or post on someone's comment/Wall, you're sharing some of your information with that page. No shit it's public. Why is a misunderstanding/lack of education about Facebooks policies equivalent to that site being sneaky and/or evil? ~~~ jfager You're misunderstanding the issue. Today's change takes previously private or limited exposure profile information and uses it to create ad-hoc groups that people never explicitly acted to join. It's very similar to the Google Buzz fiasco, except with interests being exposed instead of contacts. ~~~ indigoviolet It's opt-in. ~~~ jfager Barely. The explanation of what you're opting into is terse and vague enough that most people won't really understand what's going on, and if you decide not to opt in, FB wipes out almost your entire profile. ~~~ indigoviolet How would you support the claim that most people won't understand what is going on? Edit: I guess the point I'm trying to make is that Facebook actually tests the UI and copy in experiments and in the lab before deploying it; so when you make a claim that it's not working, I'd like to see some supporting evidence. ~~~ jfager Because I have friends and family who ask me all kinds of crazy questions about how things work, and I'm guessing the experience I had on FB this morning won't be enough to let me dodge those questions. It's a personal opinion, but one I think is pretty well grounded in my own experiences. What isn't opinion is that opting out results in wiping out almost everything from your profile. That's a fairly punitive action to take against someone who doesn't want to opt in to an "opt-in" feature. And saying that "Facebook actually tests the UI" means pretty much nothing to me. Do they publish the tests and the results? How confusing can a feature be before it's scrapped? Does the importance of the business function the feature supports affect that threshold? On top of that, given FB's history of privacy screwups and subsequent rollbacks, why should I have any faith in the company at all in this area? FB has always seemed more than comfortable with the "ask forgiveness rather than permission" model.
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L0pht Website Relaunched - tsally http://www.l0pht.com/ ====== schwanksta They're apparently launching a site called Hacker News: <http://hackernews.com/> ~~~ sanswork It's actually another relaunch I think it was originally launched in the late 90s as hacker news network. Then after the @stake merger some stuff happened and it was shut down. It use to be like a slashdot specificall for computer security if I remember correctly(It's been a while). *Add link with some history from the creator. <http://www.spacerogue.net/wordpress/?p=94> ~~~ schwanksta You're right. Here's a sample: <http://www.spacerogue.net/hnn/061600.html> ------ rrival What's next, Mirsky's Worst of the Web? Maybe I should bring netstat.net back. Hmm. ------ lpgauth Anyone actually still uses l0phtcrack? I remember using it back in the days, but now with rainbow tables a "stupid" bruteforce is simply not cutting it. ~~~ ubernostrum I've used it occasionally. I had to work with one Windows box (for IE testing), to which I always forgot the password. ------ pedalpete First off, I have no idea what your site is all about. Why would I go to this site, why did you create it. From a design perspective, it is simple, but very dark and hard to read. Reversed text (darker background, lighter print) can work for headlines, but for larger bodies of text it is more difficult to read. Unfortunately, the way I see it you haven't communicated what it is and why i'd use it, and you also haven't designed it well enough from a strictly visual standpoint to make it usable. ~~~ sanswork I don't believe he launched it he appears to be just passing on the news. The L0pht was a very famous hacker think tank back in the 90s. They've presented for congress and it's members have done a lot of influential things in the security and software world. The people that will use this site and that follow them will appreciate the simple what I call developer design of the site. For reference <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L0pht> ~~~ jasonkester This would have been a good thing to put on the site itself. It explains what we're looking at. As the grandparent explains, this article has no context in the title ("[unspellable] website launched"), and no context in the target site. It's just a black hole (or rather a grey hole, given the site's look and feel). I made it back here without any idea what it was or why I had been sent there. The grandparent's assessment was completely correct and delivered constructively. It should not have been voted down. ~~~ sanswork The l0pht were such a big part of the internet world in the 90s that explaining what they were on a site with the focus such as this seems a waste of effort. Even if you were completely unaware of them the use of the word relaunch would indicate that it was an existing site and a quick search on Google would show you why explaining who they are wouldn't always be considered necessary. Complaining of not knowing who they are just screams to me of laziness. His assessment was targeted at a site where design is a concern for the site. The l0pht site has pretty much always been more about substance than style making a design critic pointless. ------ ahoyhere Wow, memories. Will Cult of the Dead Cow come back too? (Wait! They are back already! I just hadn't looked in something like a decade. Jesus christ, they have a blog now...) ~~~ dantheman They're not back,they never left :)
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Show HN: Millionshort, 3 months later - taxonomyman http://www.millionshort.com/about.php ====== taxonomyman Any feedback would be awesome. ~~~ stephengillie No HTTPS? Would that be difficult to add? ~~~ taxonomyman We'll be adding https shortly. ------ Snoddas Search field after a serach doesn't handle international characters. Try sjösäkerhet for example ------ obilgic duplicate <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3910304> ~~~ taxonomyman Not really duplicate - that was the intial post 3 months ago. The site has gone through a complete overhaul with new features/functions like News Search, Image Search, Inverse via MillionTall.com etc. etc. ~~~ obilgic You are right. difference is : UPDATE June 15, 2012: Added search term highlighting (don't know why we didn't add this from day one) UPDATE June 29, 2012: Million Short gets a facelift - a new design. UPDATE July 3, 2012: News and Image search added - two of the most requested features. UPDATE July 3, 2012: Million Short gets mobile and tablet update. UPDATE July 4, 2012: We launched Million Tall - the inverse of Million Short.
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Microsoft posts anti-iPhone Windows Phone videos - JonFish85 http://www.youtube.com/user/windowsphone/videos ====== coloneltcb these are so bad, for so many reasons. Although, it is funny to watch how Microsoft behaves as an underdog. So desperate. Companies with 4% marketshare on smartphones can talk all the shit they want because they've got nothing to lose. ------ JonFish85 ....and they yanked them. That was quick.
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Time Wastes Too Fast - mhb http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/time-wastes-too-fast/ ====== riffic "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." -- President Kennedy, welcoming forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962. ~~~ riffic But in all seriousness, if we ever perfect human cloning, we could really use about 50 clones of Jefferson to send to troublespots like China, North Korea and Iran. ~~~ kragen Wouldn't _that_ be in an interesting nature vs. nurture experiment? Imagine: Thirtytwo Jefferson and his brother Thirtyfive Jefferson pledge to carry on the legacy of Kim Jong Il. Forty Jefferson, who has become the Communist Party leader in Manchuria, warns them to tone down their rhetoric about the United States, at the same time as publishing an influential book about how democracy is a fundamentally deficient form of government. Twentytwo Jefferson writes a series of increasingly unhinged tracts about the benefits of LSD, while Twentythree devotes his research career to unearthing relics of the Etruscans in Northern Italy. Eighteen Jefferson moves to San Francisco and becomes notorious for his sexual escapades, one of which involves a group of Costa Rican nuns. ~~~ natrius I sincerely hope this novel is in the works. ------ ckinnan Great piece. Two other interesting facts: Jefferson had the largest private library in America and its books eventually reformed the Library of Congress after the capital was burned by the British in 1812. Both Jefferson and John Adams died on July 4th, 1826-- the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. ~~~ timr Also, Adams' dying words were (rumored to be) _"Jefferson still surivives"_ , not knowing that his rival Jefferson had died hours earlier on the same day. History geeks represent. ------ nopassrecover Wow I'm really surprised. I skip nytimes.com articles out of habit (sick of old-world journalist link bait). I had no idea that there were cool blog(s) hosted on the nytimes.com domain. I really wish the (domain) included subdomain. Anyway, this is awesome. I wish Jefferson were alive today. ~~~ iamwil You'd be surprised. NYtimes actually has a pretty forward looking IT dept. They've even released an API [http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/article_search_api?authChe...](http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/article_search_api?authChecked=1) ~~~ nopassrecover Awesome. I guess I've been biased by a lot of the stories I've read where the writing is of poorer quality and less relevance than blogs I read. I think the problem is that there were too many linkbait postings (i.e. what I saw as irrelevant to here, or sensationalised) from nytimes.com and so I flipped the bozo switch on that domain. ------ michael_dorfman Thank you, thank you, thank you. Best thing I've read all week. (And from the title, I thought it was going to be about the speedy decline in the fortunes of Time Magazine....) ------ debt "Determine never to be idle." That really was fantastic. Amazing illustrations. ------ projectileboy Jefferson had so many accomplishments that it's interesting to see the three that he picked as his most important: [http://www.mccullagh.org/image/13/thomas-jefferson- tombstone...](http://www.mccullagh.org/image/13/thomas-jefferson- tombstone.html) ------ johnnybgoode Impressive stuff. Unfortunately, Jefferson had faults beyond owning slaves; it's possible that he unwittingly contributed to the mixing of church and state. ~~~ secret How did he unwittingly contribute to mixing church and state? He was a big proponent of separation. From wiki: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state#Modern) ~~~ johnnybgoode No, I know he was a big proponent of separation; that's why I said "unwittingly". :) First, here's what I mean by separation of church and state: <http://bit.ly/Xy9le> (Warning: It's a bit long, but not as long as it looks.) I suggest finishing that before going to the second link: <http://bit.ly/133aMi> (Notice especially the first word in the text that starts with the letter p.) ~~~ sho _Please_ don't use URL shortening services here. Apart from that, interesting links, thanks. ------ ssn Simply beautiful. ------ weegee This is art and history combined, it's wonderful. This seems like a format worth developing more, it could make learning about history easier for kids (heck, and adults too). ~~~ kragen Perhaps see <http://www.unowen.net/tegaki/index.php> — a set of hand-drawn blogs.
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The MBA is being transformed, for better and for worse - pnr http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587780-mba-being-transformed-better-and-worse-change-management ====== bruceb The top 10-20 business schools will do fine. Those that are specialized will do fine. Very cheap ones will do ok but the middle and lower middle are going to get squeezed. The Jc Pennys of business schools are going to have some painful reorganization in a few years. But the management biz profs should know how to handle that right?
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Click Analytics- Ready-to-use analytics platform on cloud - vipulmehta13 http://www.clickanalytics.co.in ====== vipulmehta13 Feedback survey [https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/K96ZP6F](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/K96ZP6F)
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Ask HN: Why PHP over Java? - manasnutcase Hi, Why are most Webapps developed in PHP while enterprise apps use Java? I am asking this because I want to build a team for our next web app. We were recruiting PHP guys but I realize that most PHP guys have only done work on customizing OSCommerce, Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla, etc.. no hard core programming. Java people seem to be more "hard core" programmers. Can you tell me why I shouldnt use Java? Thanks ====== Rust I am both a PHP and Java dev, and have found that PHP is far faster, leaner and more maintainable for websites than Java is. The last hard-core (ie. expensive) Java dev we had working on one of our back- end projects turned in code that was so abstracted and made such heavy use of dependency injection, it was not only difficult to read through, but took over 30ms to respond to requests. Maintainability was a nightmare, mainly because by abstracting things so thoroughly he effectively (and inadvertently) made the platform so tightly coupled that changing low-level code became very difficult. Our current hard-core (ie. affordable) PHP dev spent almost exactly the same number of hours re-implementing the Java system, retained the extensibility requirements, and the framework returns responses in about 1ms. We have extendable objects for everything (models, controller, extensions, etc.), but without the 5 to 10 layers of abstraction. As an added benefit, with PHP we don't have to worry about recompiling every time a change is made (during development, at least), we aren't running any memory-hog VMs, and it's far easier to find good devs when we need them. That said, PHP takes a lot of crap because of its low barriers to entry. It's easy to learn the basics, it's very easy to learn bad habits, and it's too easy to write insecure code. A good PHP dev knows how to write fast, secure code, but it is hard to figure out who is a "good" PHP dev and who is a "copy/paste" PHP dev. ~~~ Rust It should be noted that the Java dev obviously over-designed the system, and that a different dev may have delivered something much more "keepable". However, my experience over the last 20 years has shown me that this is pretty much the way of things - expert Java devs love making things complex by layering more complexity over things in order to make them simpler. Expert PHP devs tend to remove complexity and turn in far more intelligently organized code. I've seen exceptions to both generalizations, but not very damn many. It's depressing. ------ kls That is the thing, PHP has a whole lot more projects that require a small amount of tweaking and customizing to get a small business up and running. Where Java has far more middleware and integration libraries for developers that are building custom systems. We do both at our company and I would say this, if you are doing something custom you will be much happier with Java, it will take longer to get to market but that is where Java shines, in custom business apps. If you are just doing a ecommerce site or a simple website then get Magento or Wordpress and use PHP, What we tend to do for small clients that we think will become big clients is that we back their front end technology like Wordpress with and ESB like Mule and do any custom logic in Java behind mule. This way the get the benefits of both. ------ burgerbrain I'm not sure I would describe _either_ PHP or Java as for "hard core" programmers. As far as I am concerned PHP is used by self-taught teenagers in the early 00's, while Java is as you mention popular in "enterprise". "Enterprise" you should probably be aware is generally not considered to be praise. ~~~ codenerdz .."Enterprise" you should probably be aware is generally not considered to be praise... Why? I can name a lot of products which I use daily which are developed in an "enterprise" fashion
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Tell HN: The day that lasted 25 hours - finchisko I wonder how many people using MomentJS are aware of this.<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jsfiddle.net&#x2F;mauron85&#x2F;aujyeacc&#x2F; ====== dangrossman A version for the US DST: [http://jsfiddle.net/j7tf54xn/](http://jsfiddle.net/j7tf54xn/) It's the test spec that's wrong. On the day DST ends, the hour from 1:00 to 1:59 is repeated twice, which gives you 25 hours. When DST begins, that day is only 23 hours long. MomentJS isn't doing anything strange here. ~~~ finchisko Ok. I've been already punished on stackoverflow for this question. But what about moment isDSTShifted method? Doesn't seems working. The shift was on 2:00AM. But both moment('2015-25-10 2:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm').isDSTShifted() moment('2015-25-10 3:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm').isDSTShifted() return false ~~~ dangrossman Those are both supposed to return false. isDSTShifted() tells you whether the datetime you entered was shifted by the library because it doesn't exist in daylight savings time. For example, in pseudocode, if you try to "add 1 day" to "2:30AM the day before DST begins", it'll be shifted because there is no 2:30AM on the resulting date. The clock skips from 1:59AM to 3AM that day. Here's a fiddle showing isDSTShifted() working with the US DST start (I don't know what date to use for your location): [http://jsfiddle.net/d9tz0tv1/](http://jsfiddle.net/d9tz0tv1/) I think you're looking for isDST()? ~~~ finchisko Do I have to call something like moment.tz() before isDST()? ------ finchisko Ok you're test is failing in my timezone. But it is OK, as far I understand (still not 100% sure if I do) :-). But: moment('2015-25-10 2:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm').isDST() moment('2015-25-10 3:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm').isDST() return false. That's not correct in my TZ. Confused. ~~~ dangrossman DST ends at 1:59AM. 2AM and 3AM are after DST ended, so it is correct for isDST to return false.
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Conversion Optimizer: AdWords, Done Right: MicroISV on a Shoestring - rfreytag http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/10/conversion-optimizer-adwords-done-right/ ====== patio11 Wow, a blog post of mine from late 2007. Wasn't expecting that on HN this morning. Here's the update for 2009: everything I said earlier remains true to a first approximation. AdWords is far and away the largest expense for my business and it also has the most predictable ROI of anything I do. Day in, day out, _without my intervention_ it continues making me money. I really can't bang on that enough -- in 2007 prior to Conversion Optimizer I was having to log into AdWords and adjust _daily_ , now the thing just runs on autopilot and I check back, oh, a little less than once a month? If you've got questions, fire away. ~~~ gfodor How hard was it to rig up your conversion tracking to Google? Was there any fear you had putting such a thing on auto-pilot with your wallet? Any ways you would have wanted it to be easier? Are there changes you'd make that might improve your ROI? ~~~ patio11 Conversion tracking: It is close to trivial to get a basic level of conversion tracking established -- copy/paste some Javascript into a page which probably already exists in your conversion funnel. Back in 2007 Google's conversion tracking had some accuracy issues (i.e. it was nowhere close to what my numbers were -- counting 50% of transactions whereas I expected 90% of customers to see the page I was counting at). That has since cleared up. Fear of autopilot: They have pretty comprehensive budgeting control (you set it in terms of a per-day thing, but that is basically a marketing-friendly wrapper around a per-month budget). That lets you sharply limit the risk -- I think at the start I had a daily budget of $10, which means if the process went out of control for a month I'd be out at most $300 when I got the next bill and terminated it. They've since performed well enough that I've adjusted my budget upwards several times until they were unable to spend most of it. (The default for AdWords is to adjust your bidding to spend up to your budget -- for example, if you have $500 unspent, they'll adjust your bids upwards to get you more clicks and spend that last $500. This default is in Google's interests, but not in yours, because it will result in you paying absolutely stupid per-conversion costs at the end.) For this Halloween I'd feel comfortable authorizing them to spend several thousand dollars. (Halloween is my best season and its the only one where my ads ever get budget-constrained.) Ways it could have been easier: Conversion Optimizer is about as easy as I could want it to be. AdWords, hmm... I'd like there to be a clone of me who I can get to write creatives (that is advertiser-speak for ads and landing pages) and check if they're performing well without me having to actually do it. Everything about quality score could be more transparent, particularly for newbies to the system. Changes to improve ROI: I've always got ideas for this, I just don't have nearly enough time to implement and rigorously test them all. My big project right now is turning my desktop application into a web app, which I think will result in a substantial across-the-board increase in conversions due to the elimination of the download, install, execute cycle and the possibility to collect email addresses to implement an autoresponder & etc. ~~~ gfodor thanks for the reply -- do me a favor, if you have time, I'd like to chat more offline, email me at gfodor at gmail if you're up for it!
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NYC's brand new subway is the most expensive in the world - jseliger http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new-york-second-avenue-subway-phase-2 ====== hackuser Imagine if someone asked you: Highly complex software project A costs $x/KLOC, highly complex project B costs $10x/KLOC, and therefore isn't project B wasteful? It's impossible to answer based on that information, and you probably know far more about software projects than you do about underground urban transit projects. Many of the comparisons in the article seem to be similar to that, and with projects that seem far more complex, technically and politically, than what most of us deal with. Other than the fact that all the projects mentioned are called 'trains' or 'subways', and I assume are mostly underground, I don't have enough information to say they are comparable at all. Sometimes, there is no way for the layperson to analyze the situation on their own. EDIT: Minor edits ~~~ threatofrain Sadly true, but I wonder what that means because the layman in a democracy is called upon to be knowledgeable enough to identify whether their elected politicians are mismanaging projects, or if in fact this public transit project is doing well and on the way to success. ~~~ hackuser I know the ideal is that we can decide for ourselves, but the reality is that in most things in life, we lack the expertise. I'm not a plumber, doctor, police officer, etc. Sometimes they are obviously right or wrong. Otherwise, I can try to second-guess them based on some limited or amateur knowledge here and there, but I know that when laypeople try that in regard to my profession, it very rarely helps them and can be a recipe for disaster. They don't even know what questions to ask. In the end, IMHO we have to decide which experts to trust - this plumber or that one; this subterranean urban transport engineer or the other one. Thanks to the open societies in modern democracies, plus modern communication, we have a plethora of experts and voices to choose from, but it ain't perfect. ------ JumpCrisscross Phase One of the Second Avenue line cost $4.5bn [1]. That's about as much as it cost us to build our "Stegasaurus" subway station downtown [2]. Until elected officials lose elections as a result of cost overruns it will be prudent for leaders to divert resources to efficiently-voting public unions. (MTA officials say the Second Avenue Subway cost as much as it did because of Manhattan's "complex underground infrastructure" as well as the fact that the New York City Subway runs all the time [3], the latter not being a requirement of Paris or London's systems.) [1] [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/31/here-s- why-...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/31/here-s-why-it-took- a-century-and-4-5-billion-to-add-just-three-subway-stops-in-new-york- city.html) [2] [http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/the-path- to-4-billion...](http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/the-path- to-4-billion/) [3] [http://www.amny.com/transit/second-avenue-subway-cost- concer...](http://www.amny.com/transit/second-avenue-subway-cost-concerns- transit-experts-1.12792664) ~~~ CodeWriter23 Infrastructure schminfrastructure. Dig deeper. That's what we did in Los Angeles. When you get on the Red Line, you descend down something like 60-90 feet of stairs/escalators, compared to 18-30 feet in NYC. ~~~ savoytruffle 2nd avenue subway is muuuuch deeper than most of the 100 year old stations in manhattan, for just this very reason. And also because no one would stand for cut and cover anymore. ~~~ ams6110 "Cut and cover" being what exactly? Trenching down from the surface and then filling in above the tracks? Hardly seems practical beyond a fairly shallow depth. ~~~ slededit Yet with the exception of London, that's how most of the world's pre-existing subways were built. London is a bit of an outlier as it was very highly developed even in the late 19th century and there was a great fear of damaging existing "tall" buildings. Although even there a large amount of cut and cover tunneling exists. ------ ng12 > Berlin’s U55 line cost $250 million per kilometer, Paris’ Metro Line 14 cost > $230 million per kilometer, and Copenhagen’s Circle Line cost $260 million > per kilometer. Are these useful comparisons? How can you possibly compare a train running the length of Manhattan to anything in Copenhagen? I want to know how much a new train line costs in Tokyo. ~~~ jessriedel > Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line: ¥250 billion for 8.9 km of new track. This is > $280 million per km. Tokyo Metro has claimed future lines will be $500 > million per km as a reason to not build future extensions. [https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...](https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us- rail-construction-costs/) Also note that Tokyo is _much_ less dense than Manhattan. A better comparison would be Hong Kong, except that labor and other costs there will be dramatically less. ~~~ jpatokal Incorrect: _Central_ Tokyo is denser (15,146/km² in the 23 wards) than Manhattan (10,194/km²). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo) Note that the entirety of the Fukutoshin Line was within the 23 wards. ~~~ jbm Wakoshi is in Saitama. ~~~ jessriedel Just to clarify for folks who don't know Tokyo: Wakoshi is the first stop on the new Fukutoshin line, and it is located in Saitama, which is not in the 23 wards composing Central Tokyo. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Metro_Fukutoshin_Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Metro_Fukutoshin_Line) However, it's only a single stop on the line; the other 15 stops are in Central Tokyo. ------ abrbhat As an outsider, it feels to me like the budget of any project tends to expand to the amount of capital available. When the budget is less, people tend to be more frugal. Which also means that at least some corner-cutting is done. But when the resources are vast, people insist on doing everything by the book. I see this not only in cases of public infrastructure but also in case of space programs as well(case in point, Mangalyaan). America has always been resource- rich and therefore I observe that it has a culture in which spending a lot of money is acceptable(since there is a lot of money). ------ shalmanese This is something I've been harping on for ages. The educated public is generally aware that the US spends way more for comparable healthcare services and has a general understanding of both the public policy causes and implications for this as it relates to health outcomes but there's far less that's been written about infrastructure (seriously, pretty much every article references the pedestrianobservations blog because that's the only real writing that's easily googleable that's been done). American infrastructure routinely costs between 5 - 10x that of comparable developed countries and, when you dig into why, it's like a litany of every failed project management idea from software, all rolled into one. The reasons are myriad but, at it's core, the main driving factor is that America would rather spend an extra $10 non-corruptly than $1 corruptly. The obsessive focus on stamping out corruption puts rigid rules in place that stymie cost efficiency. Until there's serious political pressure demanding serious government procurement reform, nothing will change. There's enough motivated special interests on the other side to keep America in a perpetual infrastructure deficit. But for that to happen, more smart writing and analysis needs to be focused on the problem of infrastructure procurement and how changing the way we do things could unlock huge savings and bring about the infrastructure revolution that America needs. ~~~ rtpg Is there a stat for your 5-10x number? I'm having a hard time reading between the lines here, but it feels like you're saying that allowing corruption would lower costs, but that really goes against my intuition. Several Japan infrastructure projects also cost huge amounts of money, and construction companies and gov't are very close. Japan has better infrastructure. But the way they do it is by spending huge amounts of money. The only way the bullet trains exist is because of massive government spending (during Japan Railway's privatization, about $150 billion of Shinkansen debt was taken on by the tax payer). ~~~ saosebastiao He's not saying corruption costs less, he's saying that US procurement rules compliance eliminates the competitiveness of contract bidding. There's basically two different construction industries in the US: contractors that do private construction, and contractors that do public works construction. On the private side, you have thousands of companies ranging in size from some random guy who does drywall all the way up to pipeline and oil rig construction contractors. On the private side, all the small guys have been weeded out because of absurdly high regulatory compliance costs(which have been designed to eliminate corruption), and so it's just a handful of extremely large companies. And knowing they have no competition, their bids are obscenely overpriced. ------ Ericson2314 Every infrastructure project is its own shitty snowflake in the US—many arguments within the article stem from this. If we simply committed to more, budgeting slightly less on the assumption that kinks get worked out, and threatened cost overruns highly public, I bet things could work out. The multitude of governments and jurisdictions problems is more worrisome however. That kink won't fix itself. ------ orf Here in London we are building the crossrail, which is 118km in length deep under London. It costs around £15bn, so that's £125 million per km. That's including the 40 planned stations. London is far far older than NY, it's also more congested underground and a lot harder to organise logistically. Blows my mind that the NY subway costs this much to extend. ~~~ barrkel London is built on clay and is easy to tunnel. NY is built on rock. ~~~ saosebastiao Hong Kong is mostly granite, which is significantly more difficult to tunnel than the shale-like schist bedrock of manhattan...and MTR construction reflects this fact, being more expensive per km than London, Paris, or Madrid. Even after this fact, MTR construction is still 50% cheaper than the average subway construction costs in the US. ------ Sami_Lehtinen Is every subway project going to be failure? Here's example from Helsinki & Espoo, Finland. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A4nsimetro#Cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A4nsimetro#Cost) Constant cost & schedule slips. Nobody knows when it will be actually ready. Here's the official news feed: [http://www.lansimetro.fi/en/home/news.html](http://www.lansimetro.fi/en/home/news.html) Yet that's still 13 new stations, 21 kilometers for €1.2 billion (estimated). ------ c3534l I think it's a mistake to place the blame on weak unions, not only because there's really no evidence presented for it, but also because New York City actually has very strong unions, unlike the rest of the US. ~~~ usrusr When groups that are used to struggle from a position of weakness chance into power, they rarely use it as responsibly as they should. Like the dilemma of revolutions creating even more oppressive governments, but generalized. Now in this case, we are talking about a long tradition of established power, not about a weak group suddenly rising. But I think the pattern might still apply: The rare powerful unions are not recent underdogs, but they feel a cultural oneness with the weak ones in other places. It must be very tempting to believe that you are fighting the fight of the typical weak union when you are actually expanding on the excesses of the rare powerful ones. ~~~ maverick_iceman _> revolutions creating even more oppressive governments_ Counterexample: US. ------ Animats Look at what the East Side Access is costing. Current estimate above $10bn, completion 2022. That involves building another level of railroad station underneath Grand Central without disrupting operations above. ~~~ nerfhammer Interestingly, both projects were conceived many decades ago and died during the bad times of the 70's. ------ saosebastiao If we were as efficient as Paris, Seattle's recently passed $53B ST3 package would give us 140 miles of fully underground subway. Instead, we get 62 miles, mostly above ground, and on a 30 year timescale. However, this argument was basically dismissed by transit advocates and anti-transit advocates alike. The cost problem in the US is infuriating because those who care about costs don't care about transit and those who care about transit don't care about costs. ~~~ techsupporter But above ground doesn't matter as long as it is grade-separated, which is what every new foot of rail laid for Sound Transit 3 will be. (That's also one reason for the long time-frame: A new tunnel needs to be dug under downtown and a new bridge built over the ship canal to Ballard.) A very large chunk of the Sound Transit 3 cost will be interest paid on borrowing. Because Washington State has no state bank or infrastructure bank, Sound Transit has to "borrow as it goes" by issuing bonds, building, paying back, issuing more bonds, building, and so on. It doesn't get the funds in one up-front chunk--like Vancouver did for its light rail system, from the BC and Canadian federal governments--so it's fund-as-we-go. ~~~ saosebastiao The borrowing limits affect the timeline, but I'd be surprised if they affect the cost in any measurable way. Bond interest rates are so low for something like this that after adjustment for expected inflation they might as well be zero. Above ground _does_ matter. Grade separated still mostly works from a transit perspective, but there are other concerns: how they affect surface traffic, how they can be affected by marine traffic, etc. Underground is more expensive but still demanded for a reason, and we are still paying >2x per mile for above ground vs what Paris paid for underground lines. ------ yc-kraln Most expensive means that it's the best. Right? (right?) ~~~ Jgrubb You should read the article (or even just the subtitle of the article) which takes the position that all that spending on one tiny little expansion is what keeps us from being able to spend larger amounts on projects that really would benefit a lot of people. ------ non_repro_blue 125th Street really, really needs some cross town service. Something connecting all the way from Riverside Drive/Henry Hudson Parkway passing through the 125th Metro North Railroad station. (...and maybe even shuttling to Randals Island, why not?) It's faster walking than it is to take the buses that run that route. Cold weather means waiting for the buses sucks, and the only time it's worth a trade is when you're carrying something heavy. Car service in Harlem is slightly schizophrenic, even with car hailing apps and "boro cabs" (because normal yellow cabs don't operate in Harlem, for reasons I still don't understand...). ~~~ bradleyjg The same is true for much of the city. Other than the S at 42nd, crosstown is a big weakness of the system. But as the article points out, there's many ambitious plans that could be done if it weren't for the insane price tags and construction times. Heck how about some reasonable way to get to LGA? ------ LyalinDotCom This article is a lot of hot air and weird comparisons ~~~ Grue3 Well, it's an article posted on vox.com. You should've expected that.
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Windows 10 Fall Creators Update: the 10 best new features - plurby https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/17/16487760/microsoft-windows-10-fall-creators-update-features-review ====== jakebasile I really dislike the weird "named update" thing Microsoft is doing here. There are now two "Creators Updates" and searching for info on them is problematic as they only differ by one word. I much prefer a simple "Service Pack N" or something like it. Also, it's difficult to know at a glance which came first. Also, what does it have to do with "Creators"? I'm not a Creator on my Windows machine, I just game on it. Is there going to be a "Consumer Update" later? Also, I'd be remiss to not bemoan the ridiculous fact that as a Windows 10 user I am not able to avoid updates if I so choose. These updates that are forced upon me routinely break my games until drivers/games are updated and I'd very much like the ability to only apply them when and if I choose. Oh, how I wish gaming on other platforms was viable. Sadly, I don't think that's ever going to happen with Apple not taking Mac gaming seriously and Linux gaming having been "almost there" for a decade. edit: typo and update to first paragraph ~~~ sbx320 >Also, I'd be remiss to not bemoan the ridiculous fact that as a Windows 10 user I am not able to avoid updates if I so choose. These updates that are forced upon me routinely break my games until drivers/games are updated and I'd very much like the ability to only apply them when and if I choose. You actually can (partially) do that by simply disabling the Windows Update service. The only downside I've experienced thus far is that it also breaks the Windows Store. Apart from that you obviously need to reenable the service when you want to apply the updates. It's not quite ideal since you cannot apply individual (e.g. security) updates, but it works very well to avoid the random updates & included reboots. ~~~ panarky I set network connections as "metered" since updates are disabled over metered connections. When I'm ready to update, I switch to a non-metered connection. ~~~ bluehazed This is really the only sane workaround. Unfortunately you have to set wired connections as metered through regedit (afaik). ------ RandyRanderson Here are my 10 fantasy features: 1 Improved Cortana: you can now remove it in one click 2 Improved OneDrive: you can now remove it in one click 3 Improved resistance to featuritis: you cannot install anything AR or VR 4 Improved UI - will not freeze entire laptop for 3 secs by clicking the battery icon 5 Better Edge - downloads Chrome/Firefox 20% faster 6 Emojis - auto-bans contacts who use non-text emojis 7 Replaces Task Manager with much better MS Process Explorer that already has GPU stats 8 Does not try and gather all my contacts emails under the pretext of "People Integration" whatever that means 9 One button to turn off all the tracking/telemetry 10 Improved UI - Clicking on start does not result in times' square popping up. Windows 10 fall creators update: No one asked for any of this but here it is anyway. Windows 10 fall creators update: You should've seen the features we cut! ------ roesel I must say I am rather disappointed with most changes discussed here. They all seem very superficial changes and I wish they would solve/improve other things. Some examples include: 1\. Bring the "power plan" (balanced/presentation/high performance) switching into the tray battery icon next to "Battery saver", which is independent of the "battery saver" power plan. This seems (!) like an easy change which many users would adore. 2\. Finally unifying settings into one and only one place instead of having a "Settings" app only to find that every other thing you want to change eventually leads to the old setting window which hasn't changed since at least Windows XP. 3\. Fix the occassionally horrific Start search, which will do things like find "Word 2016" as "Best match" when having pressed "wo", but once another "r" is pressed to make the search string "wor", the "Best match" changes to "Wordpad". Way too often does it happen, that you notice the best match as you're typing and then hit Enter only to find that by the time another letter was pressed (still the right one considering the current "Best match"!!), the "Best match" changed to something else. That's in the cases where the Search only finds programs installed to a specific date and is not able to find anything newer, which has already happened on two computers I've seen. Not even mentioning that the "best match" gets updated with time even when no new keys are pressed. So the same can happen just due to the "Best match" changing between you start and finish the movement to hit "Enter". 4\. Finish improving the horrific thing that is looking up a network drive/device using explorer.exe, leading to freezes and delayed error popups that feel very Windows 95ish. 5\. Maybe change that a window of Explorer becomes unresponsive if waiting for a HDD to spin up. This happens regularly if your system is on an SSD and you have a second disk (HDD) mounted on another letter (D:\\). When you haven't clicked that disk for a while, everything freezes between you clicking on it and it spinning up to start reading. But hey, let's add another presumably more sexy and unifying look to the uppermost layers of the system. Edit: Maybe they did other under-the-hood changes that are just not being discussed. If so, where would one find them? ~~~ WorldMaker > Maybe they did other under-the-hood changes that are just not being > discussed. If so, where would one find them? Yeah the article here is explicitly "10 Best New Features" and so doesn't explicitly include improvements to old features, and clearly doesn't represent the breadth of changes in the Windows release. The easiest way to find hints about just about every change made in the update is probably to browse through the Windows Insider blogs. They are quite detailed and rather intimate looks into the changelog of Windows over time. I don't know if anyone is building a good summary of everything that changes. Some of the area-specific blogs will do summary posts just before the release of everything going into the release; in particular I'm thinking about summary posts I've seen from the Windows Subsystem for Linux team (biggest tl;dr: multiple distro support, side-by-side distro-support, no need for Developer Mode anymore, just download distro(s) of your choice from Windows Store) and Windows CLI/CMD.exe team. As with each previous update, more Settings have incrementally moved to the modern Settings app, per your point 2. That likely will remain a slower process than everyone would like (there are a lot of Windows settings), but they continue to work on it. I can't speak to most of your other points as they've not been personal pain points for me; I don't do most of them often enough to notice. ~~~ roesel Thank you for the nice reply. I will try to look into the changelogs/blogposts and keep hoping that someone someday will address my pain points. ------ UnoriginalGuy While I am overall pretty positive about Windows 10; has anyone else been having ongoing issues with this large "upgrade" updates? For example my work machine is outright refusing to install the last one, and Googling suggests the only way to get around it is a manual install via USB. A family member's home machine also got corrupted during an install, and I had to wipe it to recover (since it couldn't roll back or complete the installation). I like the concept of these "big bang" updates with new features, but there's something wrong with how they're delivered. ~~~ seanwilson Also, is there a reason they take so long to install? I've had to wait a solid 15 minutes involving multiple reboots and multiple cycles of it showing 0 to 100% progress where you think it's done but it just keeps going. ~~~ WorldMaker My lay understanding is the big updates like this include a full Windows image rather than a delta, and basically replace the existing Windows image entirely, then replay the registry and settings into the new image. It's somewhat akin to provisioning an entire new VM template and then replaying an automated install script to bring it up to date. As someone that remembers how long in-place upgrades of that sort used to take (something like 98-ish to XP I recall taking hours), it's amazing they've got it down to "just" 15 minutes and a couple reboots. (It feels like most Insider Preview builds get installed in this full image in-place upgrade system, too, and it's fascinating to see it happen sometimes two or three times in a week.) ------ megaman22 Best new feature - Task Manager locks the system up completely for about five minutes when I go to launch it to see why another process is behaving sluggishly... ------ marklit I find the Windows 10 Task Manager very useful. Good to see GPUs will be listed as well now. ------ anotherevan The Windows Fall Creators Update, which they are calling the Autumn Creators Update outside of North America, including in the southern hemisphere where Spring is in the air. No apostrophe. Marketing fail on so many levels. ------ rbanffy It'd be nice if the reviewer were familiar with other OSs. A lot of these best new features are stuff that other proprietary desktop OS had for some time now.
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My favourite interview question (2006) - danso http://weblog.raganwald.com/2006/06/my-favourite-interview-question.html ====== hagmonk So I tried a new approach inspired by this kind of interview question. In a nutshell: it aims to simulate the interactions you'll have with the candidate when they receive their first project, without the time burn of a full pair programming day. 1) determine the system the candidate will design. It should be an internal system or an internal oriented problem, not an external thing like Monopoly or URL shortening services. 2) stack your interview team with a mixture of people who can contribute different thoughts to this problem. Engineering, UI, marketing, management, etc. 3) first interviewer of the day introduces the topic and helps the candidate understand some of the internal lingo and bootstrapping questions they'll have right off the bat. The first interviewer is pretty crucial because the candidate has to be prepared to write things down and carry information across each interview. 4) all subsequent interviewers come in and ask two questions: * What problem were you given to solve? * I'm an expert in technology / business area X. How can I help? By the end of the day when they're having their likely optional interviews with more senior people, they should look disheveled but pretty happy, because now they're pitching to senior management an idea they collaborated on with a wide variety of team members. They should have a whiteboard full of stuff, stacks of paper, whatever. You should get a good idea of how they organize themselves under pressure. The interview team should have a good feel for how the candidate leveraged them for answers. The interviewers should have done a lot of talking! There should also be clear evidence of the candidate getting _better_ towards the end. At the conclusion they're tasked with taking a step back to the higher level to explain the idea to management - regardless as to whether management is technical or not, they should be expected to walk away understanding the big picture. Having non-technical "business" people contribute to the interview is critical, since they help the candidate understand some of the human requirements. I could go on and on, I'm pretty excited about how this technique has worked so far. The key element is deliberately having the candidate carry knowledge between interview teams. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this :) EDIT: styling ~~~ Stratoscope Thank you, that sounds like a brilliant technique! One question: Do you let candidates know ahead of time what the interview process will consist of? That sounds like an important step that many companies leave out - whatever interview process they use. I think if I knew before arriving that this how it would work, I'd be a lot more excited about the interview and better prepared too. ~~~ hagmonk Yes, the candidate should know in advance if there is a particularly structured interview technique being used, for sure. Because it also requires a lot of mental commitment from the interview team as we'll as the candidate, I'd recommend using this technique as the final hurdle. I don't think you want to phone screen someone, then just toss them into this process. You need to have them cross some basic technical gate (like FizzBuzz, a take-home coding project, whatever), and have them meet a handful of people first, just to make sure they pass those early smoke tests. In fact I think this technique works best when you want to seal the deal with a very strong candidate who is entertaining several options. Interviews should always be a two-way process, and if a candidate walks away from your interviews thinking "I had real trouble getting my point across to those people, I would never work there" then that represents _success_ for the interview process. The strongest candidates tend to be the ones least influenced by money and more interested in the problems, the people they will be working with, the culture and the environment of the organization. So having your interview process structured around revealing that gives you the best possible chance of matching your team with people excited to be there. Conversely if you're a candidate, even if the company you're applying with doesn't seem to have thought too deeply about this stuff, don't despair. Hiring is one of the hardest things to do and also tends to be done by the seat of the pants (Amazon seems like a notable exception) _You_ can impose your own structure by asking the right questions and making special requests of the recruiter. Tell them you want a chance to write code with someone! Or that you want to mock up a UI that solves a problem they have. Or you want to see what their strongest engineer thinks of your design for this service you've put together. It doesn't matter if you're desperate for the job, or whether you wish they'd stop calling you ... this kind of stuff makes you stand out in the crowd as proactive and motivated by the right reasons. ------ malkia The problem with this question is that if you've asked someone who's played Monopoly a lot, also the old DOS version, and the latest EA versions - he/she might stick to concrete implementations and go in details how it could be done (since it's out there). [http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/895/Monopoly+Deluxe.html](http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/895/Monopoly+Deluxe.html) [http://www.textmodegames.com/download/monopoly.html](http://www.textmodegames.com/download/monopoly.html) And here complete list: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(video_games)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_\(video_games\)) [http://www.mobygames.com/search/quick?q=monopoly](http://www.mobygames.com/search/quick?q=monopoly) ~~~ alangpierce You would probably also get the opposite problem: I bet some people (particularly international candidates) have little to no experience with Monopoly, and the question would be unfair to them. If the goal is to start with their vague understanding of the game and see what gaps they fill in and what assumptions they make, then it doesn't work very well if you have to explain the game from scratch. It also takes quite a bit of time to explain the game if someone hasn't seen it before, which doesn't feel like a very efficient use of interview time. ~~~ malkia Yup. Asking poker, bridge, santase, chess, etc. rules at interview is tricky. ------ stevebot I would much rather hear about their past projects and have them clearly convey design decisions that they made before then have them work on a "on the fly" question. Everybody has off days, not many people have whole off years or careers. Just because I can't design Monopoly in one hour on a certain given day doesn't mean I do not have the relevant experience in my past, whether it be professional or as an undergrad. ~~~ yannyu It's not as though this is the only question by which the interviewee will be appraised. This is one more tool in the kit alongside asking about previous projects, interesting classes, career goals, overcoming tough situations, etc. Whether or not questions like these are effective, the point of them is to engage with someone in a way that illustrates how they tackle complex, loosely defined issues: the majority of engineering problems in a nutshell. In most modern tech companies, good communication and not being afraid to ask questions are absolutely essential. Someone who will take an incomplete list of requirements and draw up an entirely incomplete product without questions or discussion is as much a liability as someone who takes the requirements and does nothing, paralyzed by indecision and not knowing what to do. And oftentimes, candidates aren't perfect but you're going to hire them anyway. Going through this process can illustrate how you would expect to interact with the candidate and where the initial rough spots will be as the candidate begins working with the team. From another point of view, candidates are usually more than prepared to talk about anything on their resume. In some cases, this is equivalent to listening to someone give a prepared speech. Asking them free-form questions like the above can be a good way to understand how the candidate reacts in situations where they aren't fully prepared. For some positions this is irrelevant, but for others it's incredibly important to have some measure of poise and thoughtfulness when engaging with someone who doesn't necessarily agree with everything you say and is questioning your thought process. In short, these kinds of questions aren't primarily testing your design and programming abilities, but your ability to communicate and reason with another person in a technical context. ~~~ stevebot You missed my point. People are prepared to talk about their resume, but when you dig in to their past experience and specifics that is where you get to the interesting discussions. Case and point: Tell me about a design pattern you used on X project? A singleton? Ok, why did you use that? and a long discussion about testability and architecture ensues with questions from both sides. That is WAY more like the communication that happens on the job than a contrived problem which in many cases is disconnected from real life constraints. ------ jcadam I remember being interviewed in the DC area, where I was asked a question involving subway systems and routes. Being a mid-western lad completely unfamiliar with subways (and mass transit in general), I had a lot of trouble visualizing it. I would imagine that people who rode mass transit on a regular basis wouldn't have as much difficulty. Got a job offer anyway, though. ------ Xyik Love how every time a post concerning interviews pops-up on hackernews everyone gets defensive. Like all things I think the nature of the interview should reflect the role the developer will have when hired. If the developer won't be in charge of developing an entirely new system or project on his own it seems overarching to ask this type of question. At the end of the day the core attributes that matter are intelligence, ability to learn, experience and motivation. In this case, this question really only tests experience. ------ serve_yay I once got a similar question, but with Battleship. I don't really enjoy these high-level design things, they seem silly and irrelevant to me, but I can see how someone with different interests would like it. (That particular place made me an offer, I'm not doing sour grapes.) ~~~ sfbushstreet If you practice ALL of these questions for at least TWO passes: [https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/](https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/) , you can get a software engineer role in at least one of the famous tech companies, e.g., facebook, linkedin, google, amazon, microsoft, ... Nowadays, very very few companies innovate in recruiting. I've interviewed with most "hot" companies, and I can find most interview questions (>90%) from [https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/](https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/), exact same question. ~~~ pc86 I mean, yes, but if you can write passable code in two of [C++, Java, Python] for 170 problems of varying levels of complexity, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say you're a good programmer and could probably get a SE job at a company I've heard of before. ------ sparkzilla The best interview question is "Why wouldn't we hire you?' You won't believe what people will say, in their urge to confess their sins. ~~~ scarmig "I'm going to ask for a lot of money." True-est, and it's the perfect filter. ~~~ nostromo I've actually heard, "you can't afford me" in an interview before. (It was not technically an interview, but a meeting between my boss and someone he wanted to recruit.) I think my boss (CEO of a mid-sized public company) took it as a challenge and gave him a very large offer -- which was politely refused. ------ protomyth I generally went with a question my friend told me, "what was the last non- work, non-school program you wrote?". The theory being that a person who has used programming for something personal was probably a better candidate since they saw personal value in their profession. ~~~ whyaduck In a good week I work 50 hours. In a bad week, 80 or 90 (or more). In my spare time I have family commitments, play guitar, draw, paint, hike, ride my mountain bike, and travel. Ask me that question and I'll probably find a way to wind up politely and leave. ~~~ ColinWright I'm sure there are many here who would agree with you, but let me offer an alternative viewpoint. You said: > Ask me that question and I'll probably > find a way to wind up politely and leave. The implication is that rather than opening a dialog with someone to (a) find out why they think that question is relevant, and (b) offer reasons why you'd be a good fit _despite_ not working with code outside your job, you'd simply leave? For me, as a potential employer, that would be a good reason not to want to hire you. It makes you sound like you would not be an easy person to work with. It sounds like if someone came to you with an unreasonable software requirement you would simply shut them down without trying to find a way to deliver something that finds a good balance between what they've asked for, and what can be done. But perhaps that's not the impression you intended. If not, could you expand further? ~~~ gknoy You have a very good perspective on what an employer would love to hear from someone, regardless of whether they code for fun on the side. However, as an employee, such questions might be highly correlated with past companies that are looking for people who do not have family commitments, or who are willing to do unpaid extra work at home "for fun". As an interviewee, it makes me wonder, even if only fleetingly, "Will I be discriminated against for not being (young+single)?". (Are we even allowed to ask about marital status or age?) Even if such a thing was never your intention, the interviewee might have had prior bad experiences with those who ask such a question, and view cutting the interview short as a way to ensure they don't get mistreated later. ~~~ ColinWright In that case, just as an interviewer looks for indications beyond a single question, so should an interviewee. Cutting an interview short because of one indicator seems short-sighted. Surely better would be to use it as one indicator, and then start looking to see if there are more. But I understand the point point of view, I'm just trying to give some balance, and point out that the black/white attitude this suggests is sometimes a clear indication that you are not cut out for a particular position. ------ luu Am I the only one who thinks that this kind of design question is the new "how many gas stations are there in Manhattan?" In both cases, the point isn't to get the right answer, but (allegedly) to see how the person thinks. With the estimation question, the trick is to make up some plausible-ish numbers and then multiply and/or add them to get a plausible-ish result. If someone's seen one of those before, they'll nail it for sure. If not, it's a crapshoot. In theory, you're measuring whether or not someone's able to reason well enough to spontaneously estimate something off the top of their head, but comparing the number of people who've seen those question before vs. the number of people who can answer that type of question without having ever seen it before, what you're really filtering for is people who have heard of or seen Fermi questions. A while back, someone's interviewing experience got posted to HN and they mentioned that they got asked to design a URL shortening service maybe five times. They failed it the first couple of times and got progressively better each time. I doubt the interviewers meant to measure whether or not this person had done enough interviews to catch on to the style of questions that are currently trendy, but that's what they actually measured. I think the most common objection to this is that the point of these questions is to drill down and figure out how the person really thinks, but in empirical studies on interviewing, they find the actual evaluation of chatty questions like this is heavily influenced by all kinds of biases. Techniques that have more clear-cut evaluation criteria, like work sample tests, and even completely non-technical interviews like behavioral interviews end up being better filters. Even then, the filtering isn't "good" (IIRC, the last time I read one of those studies, work sample tests score the best, and had a correlation of around .5 with an ideal filter), but it's better. For these kinds of questions, even if you haven't seen the specific question before, there's all sorts of interview gamesmanship that helps tremendously. One thing in the blog post, not spending an hour on requirements gathering, is an example of that. In real life, if you're going to write an application from scratch, spending more than an hour on requirements gathering is perfectly reasonable for a lot of problem domains. But if you're playing the interview game, you know that you have, at most, an hour to sketch out the entire problem, so you have to cut the requirements gathering phase short (but not too short). The post mentions that this gets at real skills. That's true. It does. The problem is that everyone who's seen this kind of question five times is going to be good enough at the interview gamesmanship that they don't need to have good real skills to breeze through the "don't spend too long talking about requirements" sub-filter. ~~~ melvinmt The paradox is that the best programmers tend to be the worst at interviewing (because they usually get hired quickly) and the worst programmers gradually get better at interviewing (after doing lots of them). ------ pearjuice I don't have been to coding interviews recently but is this what it is like these days? How long do these questions generally take to complete? When I hear white boards, UML diagrams and OO-design I am thinking about investing at least a few hours. Back in my day there were no interviews like these. You just dropped your CV, had a chat with the guy and if it clicked you got a contract with a month on (paid) trial. When I hear things like this I am thinking about all the people who are investing an (unpaid) day (sometimes even recurring interviews, what!) solving questionnaires with no real context during the job. Is it really this bad? ~~~ rhc2104 Paid trials also work (for example, I was a contract-to-hire at my current job). But many people don't want to leave the security of their current job for a temporary contract, so you would need to spend more time vetting those candidates. ~~~ veb New Zealand has this law, in which new jobs have a 3 month 'trial period'. (unless specified otherwise in the contract). So if someone's hired and it's clear they cannot code or interact well with the team they can be let go as long as it's within that 3 month period. Personally... I don't like it. But I do understand the logic, and how it helps businesses from making expensive mistakes in regards to hiring. ------ malyk I just spent a few months interviewing developers in all career stages. I ask a problem in a similar vein that's designed to get both of us up in front of the whiteboard working out the design of a problem together. In those 20+ interviews I've seen all kinds of answers to the problem, some bad, some ok, and some pretty good. I can learn a ton about you as a developer with this question. And almost without fail the candidate ends the interview with something along the lines of "that was a fun problem to work on". I combine that problem with developng a simple end to end feature together and the combination of that with a high level design problem turns out to be a really good indicator of how someone actually performs on the job. ------ danso Probably should have checked before posting...this was discussed 4 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2062889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2062889) (so I guess it's eligible for re-discussion) I stumbled across it doing a Google search for "interview question elevator design"...I haven't been asked in a technical interview about how I would implement the logic for an elevator controller, but I heard about the question second-hand at a college job fair...and since then, I still think about that question. In fact, I think I've thought about it almost every time I've ever waited for an elevator in New York (that, and the story of the poor woman who was crushed while stepping into an upward-shooting elevator in Midtown a few years ago)...so...4 times a day, times 6 years...and I still haven't come up with enough optimal algorithms to cover all the edge cases and scenarios that I come across :) The Monopoly question that the OP mentions is good, but I think is a bit problematic since not everyone has played Monopoly. And not everyone is familiar even with the standard rules. But everyone's been in an elevator before, and virtually no one thinks about how complicated an elevator's operation might be: it's one of those incredible, life-changing inventions that you take for granted after the first time you've pressed a button. So I think it's great material for an open-ended technical question. The single-elevator logic is convoluted enough: If the elevator is going from bottom floor to 10th floor, obviously it should stop if someone on the 5th floor signals their intention to go up. But what if, after the 1st floor door closes and the elevator starts moving, a 2nd-floor person wants to go up? What's the cutoff in last-second button pushes to prevent the elevator from too abruptly stopping? And of course, the more complicated logic is if someone on the 5th floor press _Down_ while the elevator is heading up. Then you have to implement a queue system. But simple FIFO may not be efficient...if the elevator is moving up, and someone on the 5th floor presses _Down_ , and then, someone on the 7th floor also presses _Down_...it would seem that the elevator should stop at the 7th floor first, on its way down. And then things get really complicated with even just one more elevator, particularly with race conditions. If both elevators are moving up, and a 5th floor signal for "Down" is followed by a 7th floor signal for "Down"...ideally, the first elevator to finish its _Up_ job will take the 7th floor...Should it also take the 5th floor _Down_ job? Or let the other elevator handle that? And should that decision change if the 7th floor person signals their intention to go to the 4th floor, whereas the 5th floor person most likely just wants to go to the bottom floor? Beyond the interruption/queuing logic, there's a lot of interesting discussion about how the elevators should be positioned during idle time. Presumably, they should return to ground floor in the mornings, and stay near the top (or at least midway) during the beginning of lunch, and the end of the day. What I like about the elevator question is that elevator algorithms are their own science. But a lot of the complexity can be realized just by taking the time to think about all the scenarios you've encountered as an elevator user. And so given the typical technical interview situation, it's a good test of the candidate's reflection, ability to ask questions of the requirements, the ability to apply heuristics for good non-optimal solutions, and the ability to not let edge-cases dominate the thinking. ~~~ ant6n I lived in a building (6 floors) where the elevator appeared to be always in one of four states: Door opened, going to floor n, waiting for input inside elevator, waiting for input from anybody. It only remembers a single floor - where it's going now. Once it goes into the input state, it's a race among everybody who wants to take the elevator to push the buttons. I was never quite sure whether the 'waiting for input inside elevator' actually existed, because every once in a while the elevator would get summoned by someone else before I could give it a destination when inside. I guess this is a bit off-topic, it's just to say that even very simple logic can solve the problem, in a possibly infuriating way. ;) ~~~ justizin Yeah I'm pretty sure the elevator, at least that old one, doesn't know if you're in it, though more modern ones will open the door as you walk up. ------ bahmutov I ask a JavaScript developer to debug a small problem and then come up with functional approach to solve it. Makes for good step by step exploration. Each step can be expressed in single English sentence and then coded directly into JavaScript. Much more precise than designing OO hierarchy. [http://bahmutov.calepin.co/functional-javascript- interview-q...](http://bahmutov.calepin.co/functional-javascript-interview- question.html) ~~~ illicium Designing a system architecture (Monopoly question) and solving a practical coding problem are different skillsets, so ideally you would ask the interviewee both types of questions. ------ ignoramous related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8399767](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8399767) actual blog: [http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkMennell/20140929/226628/M...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkMennell/20140929/226628/Making_FastPaced_Multiplayer_Networked_Games_is_Hard.php) ------ supsep I beg to differ, Monopoly can be done using 'simplistic' object design. An array is the monopoly map, a user is an object and the bank is a singleton. Done. ~~~ pearjuice supsep, you are a great candidate but unfortunately you don't seem that great of a fit for our Abstract Enterprise Java culture. I am sure there are a lot of other companies who adhere to your mindset! ~~~ cunac true, some of us prefer real money (enterprise money) and some startup options (monopoly money). Go figure which one will feed you :-)
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GitHub released GitHub for Windows, version 2.0 - erming https://windows.github.com/ ====== jamesbritt Existing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7869018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7869018)
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How good are Kim Jong-un's elite hackers? - SimplyUseless http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32925503 ====== escherize Even the title of this piece seems like propaganda and fear mongering. As humans we tend to over-react to outrageous scenarios, even if the chance of it happening is very rare. Car crashes are routine and mundane, and you're much more likely to be affected by that than North Korean bad-guy-hackers. Building outside foes is an excellent way for the state to justify an increase in power. ~~~ pekk It is interesting to know about the distribution of military capabilities. It shouldn't be news that North Korea has a large military. ~~~ scarmig You'd be surprised, though, by how few people realize NK has a formidable military. Every time in the last decade NK commits some insanity, over the water cooler people are more than happy to say, "[Bush|Obama] is being wimpy, he should just invade NK and be done with it." I mean, I know it's just talk, but if they had even the most cursory understanding of the military situation in the region, they wouldn't say that. ~~~ jballanc From what I've heard, it has less to do with just the size of the DPRK military, and more to do with the geography of South Korea. For better or worse, the Seoul metro area contains half of South Korea's entire population and is within artillery range of the border. Any attempt at an invasion would almost certainly be met with an immediate barrage of Seoul. Whatever the ultimate outcome of such an act, no one is willing to make that sacrifice. ------ baldfat For security questions my normal reply is it doesn't take much to cause serious disruptions. A pre-teen with the right scripts and a little information can cause great harm. A person given a little training and a little guidance can do more harm and the more they learn the more harm they can cause and the less you will be aware of their actions. ------ brador It'll just be a routing proxy that goes through NKs IP. Chances are one of their regular computers was hacked because it runs XP, their network mapped and malware and bots added everywhere. Now the hackers are using that to hide their true location. ------ hoare I miss the times where the term "hacker" was used differently
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Jotly, the new app for sharing everything with everyone. - alexismadrigal http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/arcahive/2011/11/jotly-the-ultimate-app-for-sharing-everything-with-everyone-psych/247866/ Damn, this is the correct URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/jotly-the-ultimate-app-for-sharing-everything-with-everyone-psych/247866/ ====== hopeless Phew! That's a good bit of satire because I was just about to complain how it sounded like purposeless VC fodder. BTW, that URL wouldn't work on my iPhone but this did: [http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/jotly- th...](http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/jotly-the-ultimate- app-for-sharing-everything-with-everyone-psych/247866/) ~~~ jhdavids8 Yeah, archive was misspelled. The actual URL: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/jotly-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/jotly- the-ultimate-app-for-sharing-everything-with-everyone-psych/247866/) ------ k33n Is this a stab at Oink? Haters gonna hate, I guess. ~~~ alexismadrigal Having talked with the creator, I'd say it's a more general stab at the current set of startup cliches. I don't think it was directed at anyone company. ~~~ dikbrouwer This video was made by Firespotter labs, the same team that developed Nosh, before Oink was released (so no, nothing to do with each other). ------ david927 Before it was clear it was a satire, they raised a 1.5 million Series A round. Congratulations, guys! ------ Sadranyc I agree with the message. We don't need Yet Another Social Network, for the only purpose of sharing with your friends. Reminds me of this comic: <http://xkcd.com/927/> ------ davislover Funny to see Oink launch with almost the exact same feature set. Well wait, I guess Jotly isn't invite-only, so they aren't really the same at all. ------ RyanMcGreal Too bad it's not called Rately.
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Bach Cello Suite No. 1 visualised in HTML5 - samstokes http://baroque.me/ ====== Todd This is another beautiful piece by Alexander Chen, of mta.me (see the about page). ------ skykooler I get no sound. Using Google Chrome in Kubuntu 32-bit.
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The simple cult camera that inspired Instagram - alistairSH http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171113-the-toy-camera-that-inspired-instagram ====== empath75 All of the articles talking about the genius of instagram’s filters seem to forget one the earliest popular iOS camera apps — Hipstamatic. It was released a year before Instagram and apple named it App of the Year even. ~~~ photoJ it was wildly successful, had better filters, but really never got the social aspect. Today, its notable to point out that people like Teru [1,2], who shot with hipstimatic in Afghanistan on assignment now work for instagram. [1] [https://www.npr.org/2011/07/27/138746071/foreign-policy- heav...](https://www.npr.org/2011/07/27/138746071/foreign-policy-heavy-metal- in-hipstamatic) [2] [http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/04/27/teru- kuwayama-...](http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/04/27/teru-kuwayama- from-battleground-instagram.html) ------ fauria Link to Lomography, where you can buy a Holga and many other vintage inspired cameras: [https://shop.lomography.com/en/cameras/holga- cameras/holga-j...](https://shop.lomography.com/en/cameras/holga- cameras/holga-jack-edition-package) ------ unicornporn I shot with the Holga quite extensively over 10 years ago. I must say it's strange to say that the “Holga look” inspired the creators of Instagram—because the result looks nothing like it. Instagram did not attempt to create faux light leaks or to emulate the imperfections of the plastic lens (which is what I associate with the Holga look). If anything, some of the Instagram filters come closer to a well exposed instant film. ~~~ mozumder I think this has more to do with the fact that cell-phone cameras got much better. 2010-era phone cameras were pretty crappy. My own Holga never had light leaks, and most of the effects I got out of it were done via double-exposure or cross-processing the film (a very common Instagram look). ------ Finnucane "120 or medium format film, which is around six times the surface area of a frame of 35mm film." Well, that's not right. I haven't used a Holga, but I have used a Diana, and the Diana couldn't even cover the whole width of the roll. You didn't get 6x6 even, more like 4x4. Burnett is also responsible for popularizing the Kodak Aero Ektar lens, to the point where a good one now goes for crazy money on ebay. ~~~ sp332 Any of these sizes larger than 35mm but smaller than 6x9 is "medium format". [https://i.imgur.com/02NaeU6.png](https://i.imgur.com/02NaeU6.png) It could describe film 3x or 5x as large. ~~~ Finnucane But not six times. I mean, I have a 6x9 Fuji, and the images it makes are about 4 times as large as 35mm. And in any case, Holga/Diana cameras don't come anywhere close to that. ~~~ jwong_ Well, going exactly from the quote, using surface area: 6x9 fuji: 54cm^2 35mm frame: 8.4cm^2 That fits roughly 6x ~~~ achamayou Holgas shoot 6x4.5 though, half that, and Dianas are 4x4, even less. And 35mm is really 24x36, closer to 8.6cm^2. ~~~ qq66 Holgas shoot 6x6 or 6x4.5. ------ earlz So how hard is it to DIY development? It seems like every couple of years I read an article like this one that gets me curious, because if I'm going to use physical rolls of film, I'd might as well develop it myself without waiting/paying a lab and to get that sense of pride when you do finally get a good photo. I'm not someone that takes pictures much on my phone or anything, but reading this makes me want a cheap film camera like this where pictures aren't just throw away, you have to go through a process to even find that the picture turned out crappy. ~~~ ancientworldnow Black and white is fairly simple and straightforward but still requires a totally dark room (or bag) and a bunch of sort of expensive chemicals that go bad (and some of which are fairly toxic for the environment). Color is similar but more complicated with more expensive chemicals and more room for mistakes. You're almost always better off paying someone else to develop (in money and quality) though it's not nearly as satisfying. Of course after you develop you need more stuff to make prints or a film scanner to get something useful from your negatives. More investment here - labs usually do this for you for a very small fee if you get it developed there. I can't recommend developing your own color film, but black and white is fun to play with if you want to get a better understanding of the process. If you're just doing a few rolls occasionally though then development is probably the best option. ~~~ earlz > I can't recommend developing your own color film, but black and white is fun > to play with if you want to get a better understanding of the process. If > you're just doing a few rolls occasionally though then development is > probably the best option. Yea B&W only, from my research that was what I gathered too. I wasn't aware the chemicals expired though, I assumed you bought some and just processed whenever and you were good to go ~~~ ics If kept consistently refrigerated in low light chemicals can last a long time (years). However because you only get one shot at developing a roll it's more comforting to follow the manufacturer's recommendation. I stopped shooting B&W for a long time and then used some chemicals that were in the fridge more than 5 years and the results were fine– any effect it may have had on the sharpness or contrast weren't noticeable. Photography stores may even sell you expired film and chemicals at a discount because they are riskier but often usable. ------ dingo_bat Whenever I post something to Instagram, I try a lot of filters. But I always come back to the original. All of them make the picture worse! ------ bwanab I don't know. This makes me think of a piano that at random times plays a random note - and sometimes it sounds good. I guess the difference is that photography isn't real time, so the photographer can throw out all the ones that don't look good. OTOH, I think I'd rather put my efforts into adding weird effects to better images than hoping for the best. ~~~ virgil_disgr4ce A better analogy might be "A piano that's hard or impossible to control with complete accuracy, but often produces beautiful accidents" ------ 013 You can buy them from Amazon, including film for around £40. I think I might buy one, they look pretty cool. ~~~ germinalphrase They are fun - but it's the film/developing costs that get you. ~~~ Finnucane DIY is cheap. And compared to a lot of other things we spend money on, splurging on a few rolls of film is not a big deal. Paper is what will really kill you in the darkroom. ~~~ VeejayRampay That or the highly toxic chemicals, which are probably carcinogenic in some way. ~~~ Finnucane Just stay away from the pyrocat. But after 40–something years since I first went into a darkroom, i’m Not really worried.
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Tesla Solar Roof: 9.85kW for $50k - cma https://www.inverse.com/article/44778-tesla-solar-roof-8-things-to-know ====== cma > Tesla does not suggest ordering an all-solar roof. Solar tiles cost $42 per > square foot, while non-solar costs $11 per square foot. Tesla recommends > $21.85 per square foot, based on 35 percent solar tiles. The design of the > tiles, patented recently, mean the two appear the same to the untrained eye > to create a single roof. >Tobler bought a roof of around 2,000 square foot, with 40 percent of installed tiles solar. That costs around $50,000 once the federal solar Investment Tax Credit is factored in, and it produces around 9.85 kilowatts of power — which Tesla told Tobler was “the biggest system we have available.” ------ detaro Can anyone familiar with the market compare that price to a "normal" roof solar installation? Seems quite expensive at first glance, but I'm not sure I have a good reference point when pricing everything in (warranty, powerwall, ...) ~~~ grizzles It's ~3.3X the price. It seems like an introductory price for early adopters. ~~~ YoelK aren't early adopters supposed to get a better deal, not worse? ~~~ detaro If they are enthusiastic enough, they pay extra for the privilege of getting the cool stuff early and/or taking part in it getting finalized.
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Qubes OS – Security by Compartmentalization - pykello https://www.qubes-os.org/ ====== user8208 I've been using this and really like it! The experience is very dependant on the hardware, so it's much more usable with 8G ram, quad core and ssd than otherwise, but it can work on more basic specs too. It's really nice being able to pass a VM's traffic through a VPN VM, or to completely sandbox it from the network. Also having a convenient interface for opening a PDF or web browser in a disposable VM is pretty neat. Some things become more fiddly like attaching devices or moving files between VMs, but it depends on the use-case how much that matters.
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Ask HN: Smart job interviews you've experienced? - eimieimi I feel some employers don't train the job interviewer and it results in bad interviews. Some just copy interview questions from things they've read and throw coding challenges, which could be a turn-off. They don't think enough about the candidate's psychology and the fact that there's some persuading to do. Would love to hear if you've encountered any smart interviews (styles, methodology) that shows the intelligence of the employer and their passion to hire you, and if you took the job, what was your deciding factor. ====== stevekwan I think if your interview style is very Q&A oriented, or if you are burying candidates under coding challenges, you are definitely in need of some interview training. Sadly, a lot of people choose to interview this way for one reason or another. I really dislike interviews that rely heavily on academic-type questions that delve into language obscurities. I want someone who can solve problems and explain their thought process. I'm not interested in hiring someone because of their memory for trivia. I have Google for that. As far as coding challenges go, these can be OK, but most of the time they seem to center around weird logic problems that have very little in common with what a software engineer does day-to-day. They also put people on the spot in a stressful situation, and people will perform quite differently in this light than when they are actually working. The best interviews I've ever attended feel like a conversation. You are sitting down with the candidate, there is a give and take, and you are talking as if the candidate is already a member of your team. You talk about problems you're facing and how you can resolve them. It's much more comfortable for the interviewee and gives you far better insight into how they'll perform on the job. ~~~ eimieimi Thanks Steve, these are wonderful points. I agree about the style and like the way you mention the conversation style interview. In a company I used to work for, we'd make sure to invite the candidate to team lunch too to feel out the group chemistry, and instead of using conference rooms, when we had time, we'd take them to a nearby coffee joint next door to give it a more casual feel. I'd personally prefer a non-Q&A oriented method and feel coding challenges can only uncover so much. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! ------ gamechangr Interviewing is totally broken. The people you are looking for will never come in for an interview, unless it's a major position like lead engineer or your compensation is off the charts. I am a fairly new programmer and have had numerous job offers without an interview. I would say I get two or three job offers a month, usually from fellow coders I am working with. If I were hiring, I would skip the coding challenges (unless it's for an entry job and you have 100 applicants). In the end, what you really want to know is: Are you humble? How fast do you learn? Would you fit our culture? Why do you want to work here? (or how long) Unfortunately, it's hard to know you are getting an honest answer. What you really need is a recommendation from other programmers in your office. ~~~ shrughes You say you're a fairly new programmer, so why do you even believe your own opinion, when there are plenty of people with lots more experience than you that insist on giving a technical interview? ~~~ gamechangr I guess my opinion is based on person experience, but I am totally open to hearing a different point of view. ~~~ shrughes The point of view I hear, whenever I read old grouchy people insisting on a technical interview, is that if you don't have one, you'll end up hiring somebody that can sound smart when talking in a conversation but can't actually do the job. I've never actually encountered an old developer of respectable ability that is in favor of omitting technical interviews. You say you want to know how fast a candidate learns. If somebody can't solve trivial programming problems, what does that say about how well they learn? ------ xauronx I had one 4 hour interview with managers, another 4 hour interview with owners, and another 4 hour interview with a psychologist for a position. No programming questions. Everyone asked the same kind of stuff "tell me about yourself, etc etc". A month into the process and still no answer. Thank god I have a job and they haven't fired me for all the time off...
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WikiLeaks reveals the NSA spied on Berlusconi and his closest advisors - secfirstmd http://espresso.repubblica.it/inchieste/2016/02/22/news/wikileaks-reveals-the-nsa-spied-on-berlusconi-and-his-closest-advisors-1.251443 ====== dmix Too bad the newspaper decided to go with the "NSA is spying on x president" headline rather than focusing on the content of the spying (involving details relevant to Italian politics and history) which is clearly the intended goal in releasing this. The responses here on HN are sadly predictable as a result and likely will draw a similar response from the public. Wikieaks has never really had a moral agenda like Snowden in regards to why they are releasing the information in the first place. Assange has repeatedly stated that he simply believes all secret information should be released. In the process they hope to expose corruption in the political systems. The fact they released proof the NSA was spying on a foreign leader isn't the story here, nor it that really a big noteworthy reveal considering the endless Snowden leaks, so we should stop pretending that was the real goal here and dismissing it on those grounds. That being said, the fact Wikileaks was capable of getting access to plaintext NSA intercepts _is_ in fact interesting. Not the usual high-level vague Snowden powerpoint slides. So if we're going to play that game this is still atypical in the greater scope of the NSA releases in the past two years. ~~~ cronjobber Yes and no. In the context of Assange's goals, NSA involvement is very interesting. To Wikileaks, the credible threat of future leaking is probably more important than the single leak of past infractions, because the threat impedes the flow of internal communications, which makes an "unjust" organization's internal "thought processes" more costly and less efficient. Proven NSA involvement basically means there's no cheap way to keep high stakes secrets safe from leaking. The NSA has the bigger budget and better technology, so you can't defend against this path of leaking. _Yet NSA leaks too_ , so it seems NSA can't defend themselves, either. Taken together, this says _nobody_ can defend against leaking: That's Wikileaks' most favored state of affairs. ------ pnathan In news today, the SIGINT branch of the United States government collected signals intelligence on a key public official in another country; in particular, it did this at a moment of crisis, allowing the United States government to have an edge of knowledge in charting its policies. ~~~ duncan_bayne Yeah I sort of thought that's its legitimate purpose (as opposed to domestic surveillance). ~~~ pnathan Yes, this is what it's chartered to do. Now, there exists a group of people, of which Assange is one (as far as I can tell), who believe that _spying is wrong_ , and governmental secrecy is _wrong_. Thus this particular Wikileaks release, and, afaict, a lot of the Wikileaks effort has gone into promulgating that ideological goal. I would note that governmental transparency is pursued by multiple political groups across the US spectrum: police transparency, foreign policy transparency, purchasing transparency, etc. It's not a simple bijective mapping between the thought-movement Assange is with and the goal of governmental transparency; there are profound nuances and deep variances of goal within the broader 'transparency' ideal. As for me, I am perfectly content to have the spy game played against heads of state; especially if it keeps down total system instability and human suffering. ~~~ guelo Spying is illegal in most countries, including the United States. If an Italian spy were caught here stealing Obama's communications he would be put in jail for a lengthy term. If an American spy were caught in Italy they would also be arrested and sent to jail. This whole concept that it's OK for _my_ country to spy on others is strange and hypocritical. It is not heroic, legal, or moral, to spy on other countries unless there has been a declaration of war. ~~~ tokenadult No, the most common treatment of a spy acting under diplomatic cover (and that is the most common kind of spy) is simply to tell the purported diplomat that he may no longer stay in the host country, now being _persona non grata_. All countries around the world agree that they need to spy on one another and need to agree to be spied on by one another to make sure that diplomatic statements through official channels are verifiable. National leaders have to know the intentions of other national leaders--it would be irresponsible not to try to know. AFTER EDIT: To clarify this point a bit, the world of espionage practice distinguishes "operatives" (nationals-employees of the foreign government, who first of all need a visa status even to be in the host country) from "agents" (nationals of the host country, who often have employment status in some sensitive position in the host country's government or armed forces). Yes, the United States and absolutely every country is harsh in its treatment of its own citizens who act as espionage agents directed by the intelligence operatives of foreign countries. Quite a few of the prisoners in the federal SuperMax prison in Colorado are people like John Walker or Robert Hanssen who were paid by the United States taxpayers to handle secret information with discretion and who were pledged by their terms of employment to not have contacts with foreign intelligence operatives at those operatives' direction. Men like that do hard prison time in any country where their activities are discovered. But the foreign operative usually just ends up expelled from the host country, unless there was something illegal in itself about the foreign operative's presence in the host country. ~~~ qrendel From the release on the Wikileaks site ([https://wikileaks.org/nsa-201602/](https://wikileaks.org/nsa-201602/)): _" The US government has signed agreements with the UN that it will not engage in such conduct against the UN--let alone its Secretary General."_ ------ secfirstmd While it's arguable that Berlusconi was a sensible target...How does that justify spying on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan? Or from previous revelations, UNICEF - the children's agency? FWIW, I've just started laying out one aspect of this debate and how intelligence operation blowback can affect the perception of neutrality of NGOs working on the ground. This increasingly seems to lead to a rise in deaths of aid workers and many of the people they work to help. E.g Polio in Pakistan. [https://medium.com/@roryireland/latest-wikileaks- documents-i...](https://medium.com/@roryireland/latest-wikileaks-documents- irish-citizen-working-for-the-un-was-targeted-by-the- nsa-f345b73b73df#.lki1vv63g) ~~~ argonaut Corruption. Obviously we're both speculating here, but accountability is a serious problem with NGOs, along with corruption/graft/general-wastefulness. So _if_ the US suspected massive (tens of millions of dollars, or more) corruption, that's a plausible reason. I'm not saying it's likely, just that there are possible reasons out there in the world. ~~~ wavefunction I dunno, the US Government had billions of USD go mysteriously missing during our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan so it seems unlikely that the powers that be are too concerned about corruption for the sake of stamping out corruption. ~~~ argonaut Total non sequitur. Just because X does Y in A context does not mean it isn't concerned about Y in B context. Not to mention it's also plausible some of that money went to black budget projects. ------ vonklaus Snowden's strategy, or at least whoever managed information for the team, was super smart about the first 12 weeks. They kept the government mostly in yhe dark about the depth of what they knew, and executed s perfect slow burn. The agency went reeling from one disclosure to the next hastily making up lies and then having them disproved in subsequent releases. Obviously there was more to it, however the main point is that the opposite seems to be true now. Even for receptive people, we just _know_ and it is an effective strategy for the govt to habituate people. Unless the facts surrounding an event gave relavent subdata and a narrative can be brought into focus with the new insight, this isn't news it is habituating the public to accept it. I don't want to accept it, but simultaneously it is obvious that as noted in the thread, "SIGINT, is gathering signal intrlligience". So it ends up being a reminder that we have given up s lot, but not bad enough(on the per story basis) to ignite support. Also, I am concerned about the risk we tale decentralizing our data. We may give up the opportunity to have amazing trend analytics and information that may never resurface in the inevitable balkanized system that is to be developed ------ apsec112 Spying on other governments is the NSA's job. The problem is when it starts spying on ordinary citizens. ~~~ dragonwriter > Spying on other governments is the NSA's job. Nevertheless, specific instances of spying on _allied_ governments is often irritating to the ally involved, and their citizenry. US citizens are probably less upset about foreign surveillance by the NSA (even if it is directed at allies), OTOH, US citizens aren't the entire audience for news. ~~~ gozur88 I guess I could be a little more sympathetic if I thought our allies weren't spying on us as well. After all the noise the Germans made about US intelligence services bugging Merkel's phone, it came out that the Germans were doing the same thing to Hillary Clinton when she visited as Secretary of State. ~~~ mioelnir Ally is a strong word. Allies would have honored their agreements and removed their occupation force. ------ nickpsecurity They were spying on an allied president that did stuff like this: [http://www.cracked.com/article_19070_the-5-craziest- exploits...](http://www.cracked.com/article_19070_the-5-craziest-exploits- worlds-shadiest-politician.html) Let's give NSA a slow clap for spying on crooks for once in their allied SIGINT. That guy makes our politicians look like boy scouts. ------ anonymousDan For me it will be interesting to see if any details come out about what pressure he was put under during the euro crisis behind closed doors. Not too bothered about the NSA spying part in this case. As others have said this is what they're supposed to be doing. ------ elchief I think the interesting question is why can't Italy (or Germany) keep foreign agencies out of their networks? Or can the US not either? ------ tetraverse "One thing is certain: what happened in those difficult times was intercepted and transcribed by .. the National Security Agency (NSA), as this interception and other top-secret documents published today by WikiLeaks and our newspaper reveal. " Well it ain't no secret anymore and I wonder at the timing, who at the NSA leaked the documents and what their motivation is. ------ ZenoArrow Perhaps it's just me, but I think it'd be more interesting to discover which high profile figures in government that the NSA hasn't been spying on. ------ chatmasta Julian Assange has some "big balls." Either he really likes pushing his luck, or his end game is way bigger than anyone realizes. He was just starting to curry the favor of the general public. He was the subject of a prominent biopic, he received a positive resolution from the UN. He has a lot of supporters, but they're not all fully sold on his philosophy. Many of his supporters might consider this leak not in the same spirit as the others. The NSA is doing its job, just like the SIGINT agency of any world power. Game theory, tit-for-tat, and mutually assured destruction all make intelligence gathering necessary. As long as one country has SIGINT capabilities, its competitors must match them, even if only for the purpose of defending their sovereignty. As others have said, the NSA spying on foreign public officials is hardly newsworthy or unexpected. If you believe all SIGINT should cease to exist, then this should also not be news to you, because you already believe these SIGINT capabilities exist, by definition of you opposing their existence. So in no case should this news shock you. Therefore one has to wonder what Assange's motivation is behind this leak. Based on its timing, it seems far more likely that his motives are personal more than philosophical. It furthers no agenda but his own. (Or perhaps the NSA is behind the whole thing. This is a pretty nice puff piece for them, and they've gotta be on the offensive finding job applicants these days.) ~~~ qrendel Considering they recently chose to completely ignore the UN opinion on his "arbitrary detention," on top of everything else in the past - false rape accusations, ignoring his asylum status - I don't see what more he really has to lose. What are the odds he possibly gets out of this without torture, assassination, or life in prison? They've done everything possible to turn him into an actual enemy, rather than the editor of a site facilitating responsible disclosure by whistleblowers. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if that affects the manner in which future leaks are released as well. ~~~ chatmasta Exactly. He has nothing to lose, so he is doing this now. For himself. The timing is obviously coordinated around his personal motives, not those of wikileaks the organization. In fact it's unclear how much of an "organization" really even exists outside of Assange. So perhaps his personal strategy remains inextricably linked to the wikileaks strategy, precisely _because_ Julian Assange and wikileaks are effectively a single entity. ~~~ ApplaudPumice And what are his personal motives? Provide some sources. ~~~ chatmasta I don't know what they are. But do you think it's a coincidence that after a dull two years of leaks, this leak occurred in the same month the UK ignored the UN ruling in his favor? He's playing his next card. I have no idea what his motives are, do you? ~~~ EdHominem Try reading your comments out loud. ~~~ dang Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, and please don't conduct flamewars here. ------ ghostek For once, NSA spied on right guy. Corruption, minors, drugs, frauds, links to the Russian gov... there's a lot to be concerned about ~~~ qubex I'm Italian and I was embarrassed for the whole duration of those terms he served whilst I was an adult: not because his buffoonery (every country has people like that) but because collectively the voters of the country had had no better judgement than to elect this guy. This is why I would deeply sympathise with any American whom, come 2017, would find him- or herself represented on the international stage by Trump. ------ ApplaudPumice Hacker News is too USA-centric. What if Italy spied the USA? Including the metadata of all citizens' calls? It's that ok? ~~~ SRSposter Thing is, Italy is not a world power with dominance in information technologies and global ambitions. ~~~ ApplaudPumice Well, the USA should mind its own business and fuck off. Too harsh? Ops. You spy and start wars in others countries and expect it to be ok? ~~~ adventured If you want a serious answer based on how things actually work, it's this: the US Government doesn't expect you to be ok with it. They're not asking your permission. They do not care if you dislike it. The goal is to have the upper- hand on specific types of information globally. ~~~ ApplaudPumice I know. But you can't expect countries and people to be ok with it, just because the USA wants it. In an ideal world there would be no boundaries or wars and we would live in peace. But fact is that I don't like being spied by NSA. And while this may be expected by a government, what pisses really off is the way HN, eff.org and USA-oriented blogs speak about non USA citizens. From their point of view we are either terrorists, non-humans or some kind of evil, deprived of all kind of rights. From the point of view of democracy the USA is the worse. ------ ilostmykeys All Seeing Eye. That's the point. ~~~ EasyTiger_ It IS fairly concerning the 'All Seeing Eye' the conspiracy folks warned about is actually a thing now. ------ exabrial Under Obama's order. Please, let's make sure we assign credit where it's due. ------ tootie My only regret is they didn't get him sent to jail. ------ NN88 They SHOULD have ------ jstalin Strange. Wikileaks never seems to leak anything from other countries, such as Russia or China. ~~~ jeffwass The more interesting question is what wikileaks would do if they received some embarrassing leaks related to Ecuador. Would they choose not release the leaks, given Ecuador's provision of embassy asylum to Assange? ------ zakalwe2000 Pope discovered to be Catholic. Now if the NSA had spied on Smokey Bear...
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Guido van Rossum, John Resig, DHH, and Pamela Fox are Judges on CreateHS - eeirinberg http://www.createhs.com/challenge ====== aroman This looks really, really cool. The challenge for this month, revamping a high school's website, has been something I've poured many many loving hours into over my sophomore and junior years (I am now a senior) in HS. I wrote it for free, open sourced the entire thing ([http://github.com/aroman/keeba](http://github.com/aroman/keeba)), and now most of my school's student body uses it every night. I would be positively elated to get my project even looked at my the judges, but I don't know if I'm eligible. I wrote this message to the organizers via the site's contact page, reproduced verbatim below. It is my hope that posting it here will give it a better chance of being answered. ___ Hello! First, this initiative looks really cool — thanks so much for organizing it. Second, I am a HS senior and during my sophomore and junior year I took it upon myself to rewrite the student-facing part of my school's website. I have completely open-sourced the code, and the website is daily active use by the majority of my school's student body. It is a complete alternative to my school's custom homework website, written and designed completely by myself. It dramatically expands the functionality and usability of the existing site. I did this purely out of my own desire to create and to impact my school community. I was not asked to do this, nor did I receive any compensation for the work. You can see more about the project, called Keeba, on my website here: [http://aviromanoff.me/projects/keeba/](http://aviromanoff.me/projects/keeba/) It has links to both the site and its source on GitHub. __*THIS IS MY QUESTION: Am I eligible for this challenge, being as how I 've already created the website? It is of course still under active development, but it took many months to create. It would mean the absolute world to me to get my project looked at by some of my heroes — the Python sabdfl and John Resig, as well as the Khan Academy crew and DHH. I sincerely hope this is acceptance Thank you very, very much for your consideration. Avi Romanoff aviromanoff.me ~~~ krrishd Hey Avi, I noticed that your a teen who develops a lot, so I thought maybe it would be cool if you were a part of an upcoming teen developer community similar to HN that I'm working on right now at [http://teen2geek.com](http://teen2geek.com). Also, if you don't mind my asking, how did you become so experienced in computer science so early in high school? I noticed that some of your software is now shipped default in some Linux distros, and that is really impressive, so I would love some tips from you :) ~~~ aroman Hey, Cool initiative — I've signed up! As for how I got involved so early, the answer is curiosity, Google, open source, and fake-it-till-you-make-it. Just go out and build the things you _want_ to build — not the thing you think you _can_ build. ~~~ krrishd Thanks man! I'll try to follow your advice,and hopefully make it as far as you have! ------ krrishd I'm loving the amount of teens in development there are, considering that I am one myself. This sounds like a great way to get into the industry early on, and I think its awesome of Resig, Guido Van Rossum, and the others to support such a cause. I see that you are a young developer as well, so I'd like to invite you to a teen developer community (similar to how HN is structured) currently in pre-alpha that I've been working on to create a stronger community of developers our age - [http://teen2geek.com](http://teen2geek.com) . Nice job man :) ~~~ eeirinberg Awesome. Thanks! ------ ryen Is the "Code A2 $100" prize a cash award or just a voucher to spend on whatever Code A2 is? If not, considering the sponsors, its disappointing that the prizes do not include something monetary for college. Even $100 barely buys one textbook these days. ------ aymeric Congratulations to the person behind this project. He seemed to understand the importance of relationships in the execution of an idea, and seems to have spent some effort in finding great judges. I am sure it also help that he has a vision that high profile people share with him. Good luck with your project. ~~~ eeirinberg Thanks! I really appreciate the support. ------ joeblau I just went to my High Schools website and it looks TERRIBLE! ~~~ krrishd Yeah, same here! They have soooo many pages on a dinky little Google sites website, its really out of hand! ~~~ joeblau My school has a Mapquest Map. I didn't even know MapQuest was still in business. My buddy and I are looking at his school and there is a tree drop down menu that stretches beyond the bottom of my retina Macbook Pro. ------ csmattryder Unfortunate it's just for HS students. I know my University's website could do with a lick of paint. But great to see a competition for high school students to get into, something for them to show off their skills! I would've loved if my secondary school or college (UK here) did something like this! ~~~ hugorodgerbrown It's a bit late for you to enter, unfortunately, but the UK does have something like this. I had the great pleasure of sponsoring a team in the Young Rewired State "Festival of Code" [1] in 2012 - which is open to 13-18 year old students and runs for a week in August. If you're interested they are always looking for both sponsors (which basically means giving up a meeting room in your office for the week, and providing lunch for the team) and mentors [2] - who can spend some time with the team helping them shape their idea. It's a brilliant scheme, and a really inspiring week. [1] [https://youngrewiredstate.org/](https://youngrewiredstate.org/) [2] [https://youngrewiredstate.org/festival-of- code/information-f...](https://youngrewiredstate.org/festival-of- code/information-for-mentors) ------ cenhyperion Also a sophomore in high school, but I'm not doing anything as cool as this! Congrats! I'd love to chat with you sometime. Drop me an email at [email protected] ~~~ krrishd Hey man, I'm trying to form a teen developer community over at [http://teen2geek.com](http://teen2geek.com) similar to HN, so maybe you could check it out. I'd love to see more people our age there :) ~~~ cenhyperion Signed up :) ------ donutsrgreat29 This is awesome. Cool to see high school students working on such inspirational concepts. I'm excited to see where this goes. ------ peter-fogg Not to be contrarian or anything, but why isn't Pamela Fox mentioned in the title? Seems odd that she's the only omission from the photos on the front page. ~~~ eeirinberg Good question. When I tried to post this initially, her name was in it. But the length of the title was too long. I figured that I would just keep the creators of programming languages/libraries/frameworks since this is a site about that. ~~~ peter-fogg I believe only one of the listed people are the creators of languages (Rails is a framework, jQuery is a library). ~~~ krrishd No need to be nitpicky about it, he probably meant that...
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On Radical Candor - gmays http://firstround.com/review/radical-candor-the-surprising-secret-to-being-a-good-boss/ ====== kimscott I agree with you there is a huge difference between candor and asshole. Sounds like I could have been more clear about that in my talk, so this is helpful. In my experience the difference between radical candor and obnoxious aggression lies in how much the boss cares about and knows employees at a human level. I also agree with you that the relationship between a boss and employee is not a friendship. But it IS a relationship. That was how Sheryl knew she had to say to me "you sounded stupid," and how she knew I would welcome her question about whether I felt nervous. Other people on Sheryl's team were less stubborn than I am, and she could get through to them in a gentler way. BUT she DID have to get through to all of us. It's never fun to hear when you've screwed up. I think too much management advice puts too much pressure on bosses to tell people things that will inevitably sting in a way that somehow won't sting. That's just not possible...That's why being a boss is so hard. ~~~ kordless I think "assholes" might be people who personally care AND practice direct challenges, but do so in a way that shame and blame individuals. Calling out mistakes is fine, as long as you don't assign biased blame to the person making the mistake. Startups are already difficult endeavors without the added pressures of being directly on the hook for a mistake. Teams should accept the suffering from an individual's mistakes with the assumption mistakes will be made by team members. If a given team member makes too many mistakes, then perhaps a review is necessary, but otherwise, it's a _team_ mistake which can be learned from and used to improve the team and product. ~~~ kimscott I think that the key is to make it safe to make mistakes...this also makes it safe to point them out... This may be sematics, but in my experience, the bona fide assholes don't point out mistakes because they care about helping the person who made the mistake to improve. And so when an asshole sees they've made a person suffer, they don't care, and don't take the time to reassure the person that they have confidence in their abilities. When a person is being radically candid and they see the person is suffering, they take the time to show they care and to reassure that person they have confidence in their abilities--but it a way that makes it clear the mistake was a mistake, or that their work isn't good enough... ~~~ ajb Sure, bona fide assholes do that. Maybe what GP is getting at, though, is that there are people out there who, despite genuinely caring for other people, thing that the right way to react to mistakes is shaming and blaming. Whether because they don't know a better way, think that other ways are ineffective, or because of a quasi-religious feeling that it's right to act that way. ------ grandalf What is candor? Speaking one's mind? Revealing one's deepest thoughts? Mentioning things that you know some people won't want to hear? When we think of candor we imagine a straight-talking cowboy type, or a brash New Yorker, or a direct and confident woman, etc. These images make us feel that if only we could tell it like it is all the BS would go away. What candor really means is being unguarded. Think candid camera. We are candid when we make no pretense and avoid posturing, when we keep it real. This means we don't tailor our perspective and behavior to get a specific result or to seem impressive, we just do our own thing, like the victims of candid camera videos. Real candor requires trust. Where organizations have major trust lapses is where candor seems the most lacking. If a project is behind schedule, the organization should simply respond appropriately, which means either changing scope or changing the timeline. When there is finger pointing and pressure to lowball estimates, there is a trust breakdown from the outset. If there is sufficient trust, there is no issue with candor because you just say what you want and everyone knows you are trying to make things better. When trust breaks down, your words might seem critical or like personal attacks. So having radical candor is great, but it means having radical trust. It must be safe to be on either end of the candor event :) That includes cases when a team member is not able to perform or when a team member wants a promotion that he/she isn't quite ready for. It must be OK to be honest in either direction, which means the firm should respect it if the employee wishes to leave, and the employee should respect it if the firm isn't happy with performance and there doesn't appear to be a path to improvement. All in all, having a systems mindset and a growth mindset goes a long way toward having a high trust culture. But startups are at a disadvantage from the start since everyone is expecting a massive growth trajectory and in many cases founders are quick to blame mistakes on specific individuals to explain a bad quarter. Having a culture of trust requires the team taking it on the chin and the board supporting and encouraging a systems approach. So if your founder is the only one in board meetings, chances are that is because blame is being cast and deception is occurring on in both directions. ------ cryoshon "Sandberg pushed forward, asking whether Scott’s ums were the result of nervousness. She even suggested that Google could hire a speaking coach to help. Still, Scott brushed off the concern; it didn’t seem like an important issue. “Finally, Sheryl said, ‘You know, Kim, I can tell I'm not really getting through to you. I'm going to have to be clearer here. When you say um every third word, it makes you sound stupid.’” "“The vertical axis is what I call the ‘give a damn’ axis,” Scott says. “Part of the reason Sheryl was able to say to me so bluntly, ‘You sounded stupid,’ was that I knew that she cared personally about me." This doesn't sit well with me because I am skeptical that bosses are going to be able to hit the proper mean of communication that works for each employee. Additionally, I am skeptical that bosses "caring personally for their employees" is actually fully possible or desirable all of the time, since there's always a frequently severe and irreparable conflict of interest between the institution and the individual. I don't want to give or receive friendship from my bosses (as we are only temporary means to an end for each other), I want courteous distance and realistic, bite sized action items to improve on. For the author, her boss gave her highly appreciated and blunt criticism, and offered a solution. For another employee, the boss has just ruined their day, week, and possibly self image, while (incorrectly) assuming that the boss and the boss's boss thinks they are stupid. For yet another employee, the message of the boss is noted and acted upon, but the pushy probing regarding nervousness is weirdly personal and not at all appreciated. I am usually pretty blunt, but I don't understand the fascination in managerial culture with intentionally toeing the line between asshole and "candor"\-- and it pops up in more dimensions than just feedback. For whatever reason, there is glorification of putting down other people in a professional context. ~~~ joshyeager In that example, Sandberg tried a tactful approach twice before being blunt. If she had stopped giving the guidance because Scott didn't understand the tactful suggestions, Scott would not have learned from that scenario and may have been less successful in the long run. I don't see anything in this story that paints Sandberg as an asshole. And the only thing "radical" about her candor is that most managers (myself included sometimes) shy away from pushing if our directs don't understand what we're saying the first time. This article gave me some useful encouragement to push myself to give feedback to people who need it even if it's uncomfortable for me. ~~~ BorgHunter What's wrong with, "As a listener, it's very distracting; moreso than you might think. You _need_ to kick that habit to be an effective public speaker."? It's entirely possible to be candid without putting another person (your direct report, even!) down. ~~~ 33W And this would have been a third attempt in the same vein. Kim may have then replied "Why does it matter if I am a good public speaker, the numbers were great!", in which case, you have to remove the last case of sugar coating and tell it how it is. ~~~ BorgHunter But that _isn 't_ how it is. Someone who says "um" a lot while speaking _doesn 't_ sound stupid. They're grating, to many in the audience, but that doesn't reflect on the speaker's ability (except, obviously, their public speaking ability). That means the audience will be focusing on the speaker's verbal tics instead of the message that was intended, which is the root problem. The word "stupid" was intended to startle the employee into action by how rude it was. I mean, obviously, in this particular instance with this particular person, it was effective, and for all I know, the manager is a really sharp observer of her reports and knew this was the right approach in this situation. I don't think it's a good _general_ approach, and I'm afraid people are going to take away the wrong thing from this article. It's not good managerial advice to say, "Tell your employees they sound stupid if they are bad public speakers!" It's better managerial advice to say, "Know your employees, and how each individual might be best motivated, and don't accept complacency." You have to be really careful when taking cues from drill sergeants, because for a lot of people, that approach will backfire horribly, and the message will be overshadowed by the delivery style. ~~~ mentat I'm a bit confused at the certainty of your argument. There are many people who believe that someone saying "um" sounds stupid. Your absolute assertion to the opposite seems rather like "I don't think someone saying 'um' sounds stupid so this isn't a valid criticism". Are people going to hear critiques if they don't want to? The message getting through is what matters, that's a person by person problem. Saying something make someone sound stupid is certainly not "taking cues from drill sergeants". ------ Jemaclus The flip side of this is being able to accept constructive criticism. While Scott learned a lot about how to be a manager herself, the true takeaway here is probably more that Scott was able to recognize and accept Sheryl's valid criticism. Just because someone tells me the truth -- candidly or not! -- doesn't mean I'm going to listen. There has to be a level of respect and trust in that relationship. I have to _believe_ them when they say that. I'm terrible at accepting feedback like this from my friends, but when I met my old boss for lunch last week, he gave me almost the same advice they did. And somehow it stuck. I'm self-aware enough to realize that I put a lot of stock and respect into what he thinks of me and I trust his opinion, more than I trust my friends who aren't necessarily tech people or managers. And maybe that's another fault within myself. My friends clearly gave me solid advice, but it took someone else to give it to me again before it stuck. How can I learn from this and possibly take that advice sooner? I appreciate Scott's story, and I absolutely agree with her conclusions across the board, but I think it's only a small piece of the overall puzzle. ------ eagsalazar2 I know a few people who pride themselves on their unblinking candor. Most of them, in reality, just get a kick out of constantly shitting on people and they use "candor" as cover for their behavior. Here is a good rule of thumb: Is telling someone something hard going to directly benefit them, you, or someone else their behavior is affecting? The go for it and give them _constructive_ and _actionable_ feedback. Just telling them they blew it, they are pissing you off, etc is just shitting on them. OTOH, not giving people hard feedback because it is awkward is a betrayal of the relationship you have with them because you aren't helping them be better or at least understand the situation they are in when you could have just to save yourself from your own squeamishness. ~~~ jdbernard I think that's basically what she means with the graph. Radical candor exists in the section where you confront them because you care about them. ------ makeitsuckless I know this approach as simply "being Dutch". And it's a major source of culture shock for expats working in the Netherlands. ------ ScottBurson This jumped out at me: _“Part of the reason Sheryl was able to say to me so bluntly, ‘You sounded stupid,’ was that I knew that she cared personally about me. She had done a thousand things that showed me that.”_ This suggests that before one can practice radical candor, one needs to build a foundation of caring and trust first. Without it, my experience suggests that the results will be more hit-or-miss -- some people just get defensive almost no matter how you frame it. ------ jimmytucson The hedge fund Bridgewater Associates has a very similar philosophy (some would say a cult[1]); they call it "radical transparency". It's a major component of Ray Dalio's "Principles", which is a 123 page manuscript[2] that prospective candidates and new joiners are advised to read and absorb. Not that Bridgewater should be the ultimate test case for this way of operating but it's a notoriously unforgiving place to work. The turnover rate there is 25% in the first 18 months[3]. It seems you just have to have really thick skin (or be really jaded) to be able to handle "radical candor" or "radical transparency". Furthermore, it's evidently really tricky to avoid devolving into pure invective. (I guess, in terms of Kim's graph, it's hard to stay high enough on the Y axis as you drift to the right on the X axis.) [1] [http://nymag.com/news/business/wallstreet/ray- dalio-2011-4/](http://nymag.com/news/business/wallstreet/ray-dalio-2011-4/) [2] [http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...](http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgewater- Associates-Ray-Dalio-Principles.pdf) [3] [http://www.ai- cio.com/channels/story.aspx?id=3735&page=3&p=3](http://www.ai- cio.com/channels/story.aspx?id=3735&page=3&p=3) ~~~ tomp > Not that Bridgewater should be the ultimate test case for this way of > operating but it's a notoriously unforgiving place to work. The turnover > rate there is 25% in the first 18 months[3]. What's the turnover rate after 18 months? Maybe they're just "bad" at hiring (or their hiring criteria is such that they need more than a few hours of interviews to satisfy them), but the people who really fit stay there a long time. ------ vonnik TLDR: Give people honest feedback, but make sure you have proven that you care about them first. Unfortunately, this post's strong no-bullshit language is contradicted by the substance and form of the message given (magic quadrant warning). It takes a long time on the windup and goes light on the proof. The Sheryl Sandberg anecdote, which is trotted out as an example of effective candor, is actually a perfect example of a trivial correction made in the face of overwhelming performance. Not a hard thing in the realm of hard things. All candor is radical, and partial candor is a lie ... of omission. So the radical is just branding, and so is the culture of "guidance". Making up language is how academics and corporate gurus differentiate themselves, often needlessly. Finally, there are deeper flaws in the idea of candor promotion: * There is no one truth. We don't always arrive at a consensus or an objective truth by airing our differences. So let's be clear before embarking on that path, that we may just manage to create a very candid fog of strong opinions, as different subjective truths battle it out. * In a culture that values candor, all liars are candid. That is, promoting candor does not solve the underlying dynamic, which is that one side will likely win and one will lose, and not every side is fighting for the right reasons. * In a culture that values candor, bosses get to be candid first. That is, there is a real risk of feedback flowing from HQ to the trenches and not vice versa. Beware of candor as privilege. Anyone who needs this type of advice should just go straight to "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz. It's all there, without the rebranding. ------ jaredcwhite On the example mentioned in the article about the "um" issue, getting feedback like that from someone (a boss, or whoever) is one thing _when you have actually requested it_ or when it's part of some kind of formal meeting where mentorship or guidance is expected. But during some random/off-the-cuff chat "on a walk" or in a hallway or whatever? That's ridiculous. I wouldn't want to work at a company where every time I give a presentation or put some kind of effort out there, some boss is going to pounce on me and start telling me what _they_ think I did or did not do right or if I seem stupid or whatever. Way to go turning your employees into cowering bundles of nerves. Ugh. Every time I think maybe, just maybe, the cult of being a Jobs-ian __*-hole is loosing its appeal in tech circles, this kind of stuff rears its ugly head. Meh. ~~~ kzhahou I'm surprised by this reaction. Here's a more sympathetic reading: Sheryl thought Kim showed great potential and was doing great work. HOWEVER, it was clear to Sheryl that the presentation was super awkward from an audience POV. The problem would probably never be obvious to the speaker, because we usually are unaware of our Ums while giving a presentation. So Sheryl only wants to help the speaker. Is it a little embarrassing? Maybe, but it shouldn't be. Now the author is a better speaker, and better professionally for it. Isn't that a great outcome? ------ jacquesm I have a family member that is incredibly smart but thinks 'on the hoof', in the middle of a sentence he'll just freeze and go 'umm'. I'm always tempted to finish the sentences but I've learned to bite that back and wait, usually the wait is more than worth it. Some people can form their thoughts and then spit them out fully formed in one coherent stream, others are confronted with their own words as input when they speak them and will adjust their thinking in real time. Both can lead to new insights and I wouldn't immediately say that someone sounds 'stupid' for pausing in the middle of a sentence and doing some inner processing, especially not if the outcome is good stuff. ------ Wonnk13 This sounds similar to Bridgewater's culture of radical transparency. The first I had a debrief with my boss I cried all afternoon, but now it's growing on me a bit. Or I just have Stockholm syndrome. ~~~ kimscott There is a huge difference between Bridgewater's approach, which I think is called radical honesty, and radical candor, at lesas as I see it (but tell me why I'm wrong and I'll learn something:) Here is why Bridgewater's approach is obnoxious aggression in my book. There, employees are encouraged to be brutal in their criticism, a policy called “radical honesty.” In one meeting, the criticism got so harsh that somebody started to cry. The conversation was taped, and an executive decided it would be a good idea to send the taped conversation, tears and all, out to the whole company to listen to. He thought people could learn a lot from the incident. My friend who worked there learned he wanted to get a job at a company with a different kind of culture. The intentions here were probably not as bad as the results. The leaders at the company wanted everyone to say what they really thought. The idea of radical honesty is really appealing to me. But, I saw two big problems with this approach to encouraging criticism. The obvious one was encouraging public rather than private criticism. Public debate and disagreement, yes. Public criticism, no. This mistake was compounded--criticism wasn’t just public, it was publicized in a way that humiliated an employee. The less obvious mistake was that the policy of “radical honesty” inadvertently sowed the seeds of arrogance, not humility. Why? If honesty is good, surely radical honesty is better. Interestingly, it was the words of a Jesuit missionary in the Congo who best explained the problem with honesty to me. “It’s very important to tell the truth,” he said, and then looked heavenward. “But who knows what the Truth is???” When somebody says, “I’m going to be honest with you,” it implies they know the truth and you don’t. There’s not a lot of humility in that. This is why I use the term “candor.” “Honesty” can lead to arrogance. ------ evanlivingston Can we not use the word radical for things that are not radical? ~~~ djhn What would you call this, and what do you consider radical? I think it describes the nature of it things like "radical honesty". Honesty is just the same old virtue and approach we all know, just interpreted slightly differently and taken to an extreme. ------ chroem- I find this pretty disgusting. So the expectation for everyone else is to behave as though you're in a safe space and speak no ill of another person, but if you have enough money you can just throw all common courtesy out the window? ~~~ jerf You might want to re-open the tab and do a browser-find for "Encourage Your Whole Team to be Radically Candid" and read the part of the article you skipped. You may still not agree, but you speak as if the article is about management only, which is objectively untrue. ~~~ smacktoward I would submit that anyone who thinks employees are ever going to feel 100% free to bluntly criticize the person who approves or signs their paycheck to their face is an idiot. (Does that qualify as radical candor?) ~~~ kimscott You are right, that is HARD. That's why bosses have to work so hard to get their employees to criticize them...To GET criticism. Will have a bunch of suggestions in the book I'm writing for this. Open to others that you have. That's also why I recommend a bunch of things that put bosses on a more equal footing with employees. ~~~ jerf You're getting priceless feedback on the first-order misunderstandings people have about this idea here. :) Do you have a mailing list or anything for when the book is done? (If you look at my HN profile I've got an email address you can stick on it, if you set one up later.) I do find myself wondering if perhaps the book will face an issue from missing tone & body language that naturally happens in a talk. If I were to go kinda far out on the crazy idea scale, I would consider borrowing something from the indie video game world; you can do a lot of setting the tone of a long series of text snippets by recording high quality voice samples. Once we have the sense from high-quality voice acting, we can fill in the gaps from there. It might be interesting to experiment with pairing the book with a presentation given on the first chapter in video form, which would then set the tone for the rest of the book. (I think people, rather understandably, have a lot of preexisting emotion they are bringing to this topic, and it may be worth taking extra steps to try to defuse it, so you have a chance of communicating your points.) Crazy thought, anyhow. ~~~ kimscott You are right, these comments are really helpful! It's so easy to say something that gives people the idea quite opposite to what I'm trying to say... Yes, adding you to mailing list... Love the idea of turning the book into a kind of video game; also thinking of building some tools that will make it easier to implement ideas, and buidling community around the book... ~~~ jerf Well, I just meant a recorded video to set tone, but if you get a good idea off of "video game" far be it from me to discourage that. ~~~ kimscott :)
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Lisdin: Life Is Short, Do It Now - lisdin http://www.lisdin.com/ ====== lisdin Over the past few days since launching Lisdin in beta, and being submitted to hackernews we've got # of responses; mostly ideas of gibberish and few form submissions asking questions, "What is this?", "Requesting Access", etc. In summary, Lisdin is working on a sticky, to bring value, to the users... Also they need help to spread the word, "Lisdin: Life is Short, Do It Now!". Come help the movement. ------ shogun21 I don't get it... What is this? ~~~ theviajerock Me neither...
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NASA leak confirms galaxy full of Earth-like planets - kirubakaran http://spectramagazine.com/10300/nasa-leak-confirms-galaxy-full-of-earth-like-planets/ ====== equark This CNN article is much better account: [http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/27/sasselov.earth.planets...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/27/sasselov.earth.planets/?hpt=T2) The important graph is around 8:00.
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Ask HN: What to ask to avoid corporate hell? - changingjobs Hi all, I'm looking for some good questions I can ask at a job interview.<p>I know this is probably the opposite of what most people here want to do, but I work right now at a fairly small company (doing mostly development / deployment / have lots of this company and technology specific experience) and I'm going to an interview for a job in an international IT company who's logo you are likely to see somewhere around you right now. The destination position is in r&#38;d / development.<p>After hearing a lot of good and bad things about big corporations, I really want to find some questions that I can ask in order to avoid a disaster. If you ever worked in such environment / know more about it, could you post some things I can ask and what kind of behaviour from their side says "run and don't look back"? I will have separate meetings with both a manager and with technical people. As far as I know, technical side is pretty decent (re. quality control and testing) and they're not treating people like slaves there (in that dept. at least ;) )<p>Any advice would be highly appreciated.<p>(for obvious reasons, this is a throw-away account and a pretty vague post...) ====== highlander I don't know your definition of corporate hell but here are a few which might help: Q: What do you consider important when measuring performance of your engineers? Q: Can an engineer fix a bug without permission? Q: Do the dev teams have access to deploy their software to the production environment? Q: Can I download and install software to help me do my job? Q: What policies do you have in place if I want to use an open source library or framework in your system? Q: How often do your people work evenings and weekends? Q: Is there an on-call requirement? How does that work? Q: Can you describe the atmosphere? Is it fun? Is the department filled with laughter? Q: What are your views on hobby projects outside of work? What other cool things are people here involved in? ~~~ taylorbuley "Can I download and install software to help me do my job?" -- this is a great question, but will generally rule out most corporate gigs. ~~~ kls That is a great one. Many people don't think of it, but in many corp jobs something as simple as hey lets use git or subversion, stomp on so many cooperate policies that you can be summarily dismissed for doing so. If you can't install the software that you need in a timely manner run don't walk. I remember I was at a company that was using a very old version of WASAD it was like 3 versions back. It took 1.5 years of fighting all the way to the top just to allow the developers to use Eclipse which was at 3 at the time. For those that cant recall Eclipse 3 was a major rewrite and WASAD was already on an old version of Eclipse so to be 3 version back on WASAD meant that you where around 5 versions back from where Eclipse was at. The crazy part about it was that I was a senior director, I was two positions in the org chart from the CIO, and my role reported directly to the CIO. So if it is that much of a fight for a senior director I imagine that it is futile from a developer to take up that fight. ------ brudgers Look for a healthy mix of new hires, long term members of the department, and people who have transferred into the department from other departments across all levels of the department. It is bad to wind up in a dead end branch of a large organization where there are only lifers and your skill set isn't valued by other departments. ~~~ changingjobs Thanks. As far as I know they're collecting people for a new project and growing an almost-separate department, so it's definitely not a dead branch (unless the project fails that is...). It might be worth looking at the current leads / managers from that perspective though. ~~~ brudgers What I mean by "dead branch" is a department from which there is no mobility to elsewhere in the corporation because the skill set required and the experience gained within the department isn't transferable elsewhere in the organization - e.g. a ship's cook never rises to executive officer. ~~~ pasbesoin I wrote something longer, but I'll condense it to: I'd be _very cautious_ of moving from development into a QC/testing role. Those roles are often treated as second-class citizens within a development environment. And even when development treats them well and allows them to really do their job, more general and senior management still sees them as second class citizens. I'd ask for a detailed description of the types of work you will be doing, and seek your own self-assurance (whatever they tell you) that your development skills won't atrophy. Moving from a QC/testing role to development can also be a hard sell. Don't get stuck/typecast. I suspect that, the larger the organization, the more true a lot of this is. For one thing, QC/testing changes from being a few individual roles to its own entity, depending on the organizational structure. If you can, spend some time networking with people in and about this kind of role. If you can make some safe connections to people at the potential employer, all the better. But also try to ascertain whether the move will have any negative career implications. (I'm just one introverted bloke, and my experience is likely biased.)
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Twitter and Snapchat Should Form an Anti-Facebook Coalition - petethomas https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-12-06/twitter-and-snapchat-collaboration-may-work-as-facebook-defense ====== spyspy They should worry about making their own businesses profitable first. Sharing snap videos on Twitter? Really? That’s their genius idea? Despite bad PR Facebook is a juggernaught when it comes to actually delivering value to users and making money doing it. Twitter could never compete and we’re already seeing snapchat struggle to be more than a one trick pony.
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Show HN: An API that lets you power an e-commerce site with Uber-like deliveries - srikanthsrnvs http://www.blip.delivery ====== srikanthsrnvs Im the founder, just looking to get some feedback from people on my startup. We're also building an iPad app for brick and mortar stores without e-commerece, to power with deliveries. If you have any feedback for me, especially functionality related, or just that the fonts I've used on my website are crappy, let me know :) ------ itsoblivious Only available in Canada? ~~~ srikanthsrnvs Currently, yes. But we plan to scale to the US soon too! ------ timwis Sounds like a great idea! ~~~ srikanthsrnvs Thank you!
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Founder with an accent? Free offer from SayAfter.me - znt http://www.sayafter.me/hacker-news ====== gojomo Coming this fall to the Mountain View Community Playhouse, a classic musical updated for today's Valley: _My Fair Founder_ Can master symbolicist Henry Higgins (played by Paul Graham in his first musical-theater role) win a bet by coaching ambitious but crude-speaking Eliza Doolittle to be the toast of Sand Hill Road in three short months? You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll sing along to tunes such as: _The Gain in this Domain stays Mainly with the Brain_ ...and... _I 've Grown Accustomed to Her Viral Growth Pace_ ~~~ dylangs1030 My girlfriend works in Broadway. I wish she knew enough about the recent foreign accents thing to find this as funny as I do. Well done. ~~~ gojomo Thanks! To help those who know the recent kerfluffle moreso than _My Fair Lady_ : "Why Can't The English Learn To Speak" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg) ~~~ Killah911 LOL, he says "your language is the language of Shakespeare, Milton and the Bible"... I wonder if it was meant to be funny , out of ignorance or arrogance... As I've posted before, there is this sort of inherent imperialist bias people have with someone who does not have a good command or English. A hundred years ago, it may have been an indication of class (and to some degree still is today). But to look down and be utterly dismissive of someone because they have an accent is just plain dumb. In PGs defense, just because someone is dumb doesn't mean people will cease to engage in such behavior. And given that the entrepreneur is the one on the selling side, it may behoove him/her to brush up on whichever accent is appealing to those to be sold. I personally have several accents in English and I subconsciously switch from one to another depending on whom I'm speaking with. If necessary I change languages all together. Reality is, I am better able to connect with the other person this way. ~~~ ijk The original play was by George Bernard Shaw. Any commentary on the absurdities and arrogance of the British class system is deliberate. Though by "the Bible" he's equally referring to the King James translation, which was regarded as a major literary influence, on par with Shakespeare. ------ reustle I watched your intro video and have 2 points to comment on * "Can I have a spaghetti" isn't the right way to say it. Drop the "a" * Have a native english speaker read it out, not a computer generated voice (if that isn't already the plan) ~~~ znt Yeah the video does not have correct grammar in some sentences. Actual human speech is on the roadmap but not until I fix the main issue, which is finding a repeatable marketing/sales cycle. Open to suggestions though! ~~~ yansuck Good job for the work. But seriously, I don't think you even have a MVP yet. If the purpose of this site is to correct people's accent, having a generate voice(huge electronic accent) is not acceptable at all. ~~~ znt You are right, robotic accents is not helpful (but hilarious though). This app is mainly aimed at fixing the incorrect pronunciation of words, rather than the accent. If I ever get to add real human voices, then it will be even better. ~~~ reustle You might be able to use mechanical turk to get some cheap proper readings of text ;) ------ rattray I couldn't find your pricing anywhere... I'm a native English speaker, so this product isn't relevant to me, but I wouldn't want be comfortable recommending it to anyone without knowing how much it'd cost after those first 3 months. Really critical to have in an easy-to-find place on the website IMO. ~~~ znt You are right, you have to be logged in to see the subscription page at: [http://www.sayafter.me/subscriptions/subscribe](http://www.sayafter.me/subscriptions/subscribe). I will change it to be available for anonymous visitors. Thanks! ~~~ sillysaurus2 Why not just say the price here? ~~~ spader725 consider it a "dark pattern" to trick users [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301378) ------ billybob255 You might add something on the landing page saying what exactly you do. I read through everything and it doesn't specify how it'll improve English; is it just drills? A therapist to coach people? Pronunciation checking software? ~~~ znt Noted, I tried to use "simple language", so it wouldn't scare off non- technical people. I think I got it way too simple. Thanks. ~~~ dsrguru If you simplify an explanation, it still needs to do the explaining, even if it's in the form of a high-level overview. I don't even see mention of the dialect you're teaching. Especially since you're targeting people in the STEM industry (people who tend to value knowledge and precision), I'd recommend having a more specific description available for those who want, even if it's not the first message that greets the viewer. Since we're on the subject of what your software does, and since as a native English speaker, I don't want to [ab]use your free trial just to study its workings, could you please provide that explanation here? :) Do you teach the basics of English phonology or do you just provide [auto-generated] text for users to mimic. Do you provide Rosetta Stone-like pronunciation feedback? If you don't provide basic instruction in English phonology, I highly recommend you consider adding it. Being well versed in articulatory phonetics, I taught myself Chinese phonology (Standard Mandarin) from Wikipedia. Despite not having very good Chinese, I've passed for a native speaker in short telephone conversations on multiple occasions. Even if it takes weeks to give the student the phonetic background that I had (I don't know if it would), you'll then be able to give them near-native pronunciation almost instantly, and then they'll only need to iron out the kinks with your mimic drills before sounding like a native. I don't know if this is the approach used by most accent coaches, but it's highly effective. ~~~ znt Thank you for the detailed information. The only feedback the user gets is a score for the current phrase, and highlighting of the words that he has mispronounced. For example: If the phrase was "Where is the closest hospital?" but you said "Where is the closest clinic?", the application would highlight correct words in green and incorrect ones (hospital in this case) in orange/red depending on the word distance of "clinic" to "hospital") When I say "word distance" I mean Levenshtein Distance: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance) I never thought about giving basic information about English phonology, but you make a very valid point. I will look into this further, and please let me know about any detailed resources about this subject. ------ rabino "Repetition makes the master". I'd suggest you tweak the UX so I need to repeat each word / phrase a couple of times before passing to the next level. Speaking of which... you could gamify this in like 200 different ways. ~~~ znt That is a very good idea, I will add this option to the current exercise flow. Thanks! ~~~ vl It would be really useful to replay what user said, or even better, replay incorrectly pronounced word and then correct pronunciation. Right now there is no good way for user to correct mistakes, even if it's clear that there is a mistake. ~~~ znt Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately currently neither webkit-speech-input nor Web Speech API supports recording of the user voice input. I will look for alternative solutions though. ------ oelmekki A note about prices. I'm in need for such a service and thank you to provide it. But $30/month is more that what I would give. For that price, I would expect to have a human teacher to review my progression from time to time and provide advices. At $20/month, I would use the service for something like three or four month, until I decide I'm ready enough. At $10/month, I would probably consider a permanent subscription. ~~~ dangrossman > But $30/month is more that what I would give. For that price, I would expect > to have a human teacher to review my progression from time to time and > provide advices. That's less than half what it'd cost to hire a language tutor for a single hour. ~~~ oelmekki That's why I don't speak of having time with a dedicated teacher, but simply having him/her review a few items (for example, those failed again and again) and provide a short advice. ------ shibby What is 'British' English? No such thing exists really, at least not in the spoken word form. You'll also find that regional accents are considered more favourable/likeable than 'the Queens English' so the premise of this may not be 100% correct... (Brummie is not included in the favourable dialects because it's not considered nice by anyone in the UK except those in that area.) ~~~ znt Simple really: British: [http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&q=Have%20...](http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&q=Have%20a%20wonderful%20day.&tl=en- gb) American: [http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&q=Have%20...](http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&q=Have%20a%20wonderful%20day.&tl=en- us) I know they don't sound ideal, but this is the only distinction I can make via the resources I have. ~~~ shibby I don't know anyone who sounds like the 'British' version I also doubt that that dialect would be preferred. It would fall under the 'Queens English' or 'received pronunciation', which, in some studies, is considered less intelligent than Yorkshire dialect - [http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/apr/04/6](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/apr/04/6) ~~~ pbhjpbhj The "Have a wonderful" part is not uncommon but the "day" with long drawling "a" sounds super-strange to me. ------ rdl I'm a native American English speaker who is also into startups (and has lived in a lot of places, communicating with non-native speakers in English, as well as my really horrible Kurdish, Pashto, Dari, French, Arabic, etc. phrases...). Observations: 1) You should fully Americanize all the spellings. It is American English people want. 2) This would be far too boring for me to stick with if it is things like "I went to the cinema yesterday". A coherent story, or even better, a domain- specific lesson, would be a much more engaging way to teach a language. I was able to learn when it was "talk to my driver about the security situation and drive plan", but never cared enough for casual conversation. I am usually happy to talk to people who speak horrible English about things I care about, which presumably for the hn audience is tech, startups, etc., but not about sports (cricket!?). If you could do a vertical-specific sayafter.me it would be awesome. ~~~ te_chris Not all people want American English thank you very much. Every time I'm forced to type 'color' a small part of me dies. ~~~ indefatigable Wot wot pip pip cheerio get the torch line's engaged eat some crisps there's a good chap. ~~~ jhome That's not a mature response. I've look at your other comments and you look like you've made some worthwhile contribution but this comment is not what I visit HN daily for. I agree with te_chris, it is not only arrogant but incorrect to make that assumption. I don't actually mind using 'color', but you live in a small world if you think that only a certain accent is relevant. ~~~ indefatigable Ah well, everybody has their off days. ------ pge Carnegie Speech is another good product in this area, that as the name suggests came out of Carnegie Mellon a number of years ago (I have no affiliation with the company). ~~~ znt Wow I didn't know about this product. It looks really advanced, would be good opportunity to see the other players in the market. I think one advantage I have over this product is, SayAfter.me stores ever growing stats of word/phrase pronunciation attempts from all users. Later on it can build custom exercises depending on the background of a particular user. I will be able to say "You are Spanish, other Spanish users had the most trouble with these words. So here is an exercise that contains problematic English words for native Spanish speakers". ~~~ Caligula Are you using google speech api? Site looks great! ~~~ znt Yup, voice records are generated via Google speech API. Voice recognition is webkit speech input, only supported in Google Chrome. The application itself uses AngularJS. This thing wouldn't have been possible without Google really. ------ sdas7 Is there any evidence this actually works? You're motivating your product by saying it helps you keep your job if you have a thick accent. Does your product work? How does it compare to competitors? Adding this information would improve credibility. ~~~ znt Well the only evidence I have personally seen is the improvement of my wife's pronunciation. She doesn't mispronounce the words she practised anymore. Also I got positive feedback from the early beta users (other students & English learners) so I assumed it was useful in its initial state. But yes, I will add additional information with benefits and comparison with other products. Thanks! ------ wldlyinaccurate I couldn't sign up because the email field is limited to 30 characters. Emails can be up to 256 characters long, sometimes longer. ~~~ znt Thanks for the report, will fix it ASAP. Apparently this issue is affecting other Django users as well: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2610088/can-djangos- auth-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2610088/can-djangos-auth-user- username-be-varchar75-how-could-that-be-done) ------ dcraw Looks interesting. Just a heads up that the video on the home page doesn't want to load for me. I'm getting a javascript error about the youtube frame trying to access the sayafter.me frame. ~~~ znt Thanks for the report, I will look into it. ------ rvivek Great timing. Haven't tried out the product but on top of this a faster way to improve could be to just engage in conversations daily with a lot of native english speakers. ~~~ znt Good idea, unfortunately not everyone has access to native speakers in their social circles. Another nice hack for practising speech is calling free phone support of various companies/products and tell them about your problem with their product/service. I learnt this from an Italian guy. ------ nitrogen I would love something like this that can help me learn other accents of my own language (English), or other languages (French, perhaps), and evaluate my performance. ~~~ znt Adding other languages and American English is on the roadmap, never thought about other accents of English though. ------ phenom You can add youtube videos or some short clips from movies and ask your user repeat after protagonist. Everyone likes to repeat catchy phrases from movies))) ~~~ znt Good idea! I was also thinking of adding song lyrics, starting with Queen maybe. ------ armenarmen Cool idea! Down the line, it might be in everyone's best interest to have an American English option as well. ~~~ znt Thanks! We live in London, so British English was the way to go. If I ever get to work on this full time, not only I will add American English, but also Spanish, German, French ASAP. ------ conanbatt Nice timing :) Will definitely check this one out. ------ gdonelli Good marketing, perfect timing! ------ darklajid I'll give it a try to remove/lessen my German accent.. :-) Btw: Yes, my email address ends in .de - your registration form seems to think I mistyped and suggests that I change that to .net. Intentional, even for valid TLDs? ~~~ znt I just use the mailcheck plugin with default settings ([https://github.com/Kicksend/mailcheck](https://github.com/Kicksend/mailcheck)) If this keeps happening often maybe I should use my own domain list. Thanks for the feedback. ~~~ oelmekki > if this keeps happening often maybe I should use my own domain list. You probably should do it as soon as possible : > The included default top level domains are com, net, org, info, edu, gov, > co.uk, and mil. Which means ... it excludes all regional non english TLDs. Pretty much a problem for a service that targets non english native speakers. :) By the way, I am an english non native speaker that writes a lot of english through the internet but never ever _speak_ english. This service is just perfect for me, thank you. ~~~ znt Alright I just deployed a hotfix that includes TLDs for: com, net, org, de, fr, in, ru, it, tr. I will also be adding lots of new content soon, so if you are interested in a particular theme for words/phrases ("flowers", "dog breeds", "Flirting 101" etc) just let me know. I will give them higher priority. ~~~ oelmekki Thanks for that. I have no special theme right in mind, I usually speak english only when I travel, so it's mainly general purpose language. This could be as well asking for menu in restaurant, discussing tech with other developers or debating politics with foreign friends. On the other hand, the idea of isolating words that are especially often wrongly pronounced for a given native language you mentioned in an other comment sounds really awesome : I'm less interested in getting a specific word right than getting right specific sounds used in a lot of words (but I guess this does not help you to select your first words, sorry about that). ~~~ znt > I'm less interested in getting a specific word right than getting right > specific sounds used in a lot of words Actually this is the long term goal. If I ever have the chance to work on SayAfter.me full time, I will map phonetic sounds to words, and find out which nationalities have trouble with which sounds. More info here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_number#Letters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_number#Letters) ------ EugeneOZ It sounds just like some google-translate generated speech. Do you REALLY think somebody will pay for this service? It's ridiculous. ------ schappim @znt, just have to say this is a brilliant idea! ------ optymizer On the nain page of speakafter.me: is 'practise' the right spelling ? ("Not only will you practise"). ~~~ rheide It is, in fact: [http://www.future-perfect.co.uk/grammartips/grammar-tip- prac...](http://www.future-perfect.co.uk/grammartips/grammar-tip-practise- practice.asp) ------ Keyframe Great, my accent is already turning british! ------ stevoski Please: do this for Spanish! I live in Spain, and have a helluva time being understood when I speak Spanish. ~~~ znt That's definitely on the roadmap. If you pass me your email, I can notify you when Spanish version goes live. ------ cabalamat Is the website broken? When I click on See Video, nothing happens. ------ drnex nice relevant post. congrats
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Engineer creates a 3D metal printer prototype for $2 using electroplating - praptak http://www.3ders.org/articles/20150301-low-cost-metal-3d-printing-made-possible-with-electroplating-technology-and-prototype.html ====== dragontamer > It is a 3-axis CNC machine combined with an electroplating head. Erm... CNC Machines can cost thousands of dollars. I think this guy made a $2 attachment to a CNC Machine that then spits out copper. Which is cool and all, but the headline doesn't seem right to me. ~~~ tinco Yes, and the very first picture shows that amongst the additions is an HP lab power supply worth well over $200 second hand. ------ vanderZwan > high amount of energy required to 3D print a metal object I'm very curious how the energy efficiency compares to other methods of production. After reading this[0] article I've become highly suspicious of how easily the energy footprint seems to be overlooked in maker cultures. [0] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/03/how-sustainable-is- di...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/03/how-sustainable-is-digital- fabrication.html) ------ koala_man >That’s right, just $2. No zeros in sight! Hmm, let me see if I can find those zeroes... >his 3D metal printers could be sold for between $1,000 to $2,000 There they are! ~~~ InclinedPlane Which seems to be the universal price range for entry level 3d printers. ------ woah How long does it take? ~~~ marcosdumay Let's see. Copper has valence 1, that means that one atom is deposed by each election that flows on the system. A mol of copper has 63g, thus, for each 100,000C that flows, there'll be 63g deposed. The video says it uses 100mA of power, what makes it capable of deposing 63µg/s at most. Serious galvanoplasty power supplies start at the 50A mark for a reason. ~~~ tonyarkles Doing a bit of in-my-head math... At 1A, that'd be about 50g/day. I don't remember the voltage required for electroplating using CuSO4+acid, but I remember it being low. I suppose it probably has to do with electrode spacing too. As a guesstimate, let's go for 5 volts (which I have no idea of the accuracy). If we're stepping household 120V down to 5V, we've got a factor of 60 reduction. With a (big ass) buck converter, we can in theory get 15A*60 = 900A = 900C/s out of a standard breaker. That works out to 49kg/day? That seems ridiculously large. I'd love for someone to point out what I did wrong though. I've assumed 100% efficiency everywhere, but even cutting it down to 10% still results in ~5kg/day. Edit: I'm sure it's an expensive power supply, but it's nice to see that I got in the right ballpark: [http://www.americanplatingpower.com/reverse-pulse- power-axd-...](http://www.americanplatingpower.com/reverse-pulse-power-axd- compact-s.php) ~~~ mschuster91 > With a (big ass) buck converter, we can in theory get 15A*60 = 900A = 900C/s > out of a standard breaker No way you're gonna run 900A through this little pencil - the temperatures at contact point will act like a welding machine (uncontrollably melt/vaporize)... ~~~ Turing_Machine Indeed. You can probably run a lot more than normal if you keep the tip submerged and circulate the electrolyte, but you're not gonna run 900 amps through it. Some useful equations and numbers here: [http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0223_plate/index.html](http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0223_plate/index.html)
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Ask HN: Is there a way to search HN articles, by their content, than by title - sravfeyn HN Search, I believe, only shows the results, those that match the title-string. Is there a way that we can search stories submitted in Hacker News? ====== ColinWright Speaking purely as a user with no privileged status ... To the best of my knowledge you can search the material that is hosted on Hacker News: link titles; "Ask HN"; comments; _etc._ However, if someone submits a link to an external site, you cannot search here for the content on that site. If someone submits a link to an external page that contains the string "HoogleFleeber", no HN search will find that article (unless the content is duplicated in a comment). And no, HNSearch does _not_ only search within titles, it also searches comments and text within submissions. Very shortly it will index this page and you will be able to use it to search for "HoogleFleeber". I'm not sure why you think otherwise. Pretty much every search I try turns up text within comments. I hope that's clear. ~~~ sravfeyn Thanks for confirming! It would be great if we can search the content also, by duplicating the content only for search purposes.Let me add that feature request then. ------ angrisha you can use google by typing the following in the search box of Google: Search string site:news.ycombinator.com ~~~ sravfeyn but that also gives the results if the search string matches the title, not content!
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Bulletproof Coffee: Debunking the Hot Buttered Hype - ferrari8608 http://gizmodo.com/bulletproof-coffee-debunking-the-hot-buttered-hype-1681321467 ====== serf I never got into it not because I don't care to try it, but because I don't need any more steps between me and caffeine. Hell, that's why I drink tea lately. Even easier than a french press. I'd never buy the kit, but blended coffee and butter sounds tasty.
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San Francisco cabbie attacks self-driving car - pmoriarty https://sf.curbed.com/2018/3/7/17091412/taxi-cab-driver-attacks-self-driving-car-uber ====== peterbraden It's an interesting step towards the panopticon - self driving vehicles by necessity have complete surveillance and store everything. Misdemeanors that previously would have been dismissed as word against word are now persistent in the digital record. Dashcams are another big change here. You have no expectation of privacy in public, but do you have an expectation that everything done with vehicles nearby will be stored in data forever? ------ arbuge Attacking a vehicle loaded to the gills with cameras seems like an exceptionally bad idea. ~~~ candiodari Actually since this is a capital investment-heavy business, this can probably work, if done on a large enough scale. This seems to be the reason bike sharing doesn't take off, for example. ~~~ pavel_lishin > _This seems to be the reason bike sharing doesn 't take off, for example._ Citibike has pretty good coverage in NYC, though it's a dock-based system and not a "leave it wherever" system that's been working less well in other cities. ------ DrScump It would be as effective to just bust a taillight, rendering the vehicle in technical violation of the vehicle code and forcing its recall back to base. ------ oh_sigh I like how the article has a huge photo of a yellow cab, with what looks like a guy driving away who is trying to hide his face from the camera. But it is just a stock photo, and it is not known what cab company the alleged attacking driver works for. ~~~ thedailymail It's striking how much original news photography has declined in general. Almost every article these days comes with a zero-information, photoshopped generic image (like a bitcoin symbol over a story about cryptocurrency), an amateur shot copied from some random social media user, or just something straight out of a stock photo library. Not to lament the "good old days" of print journalism, but there was definitely a lot more effort put into getting good-quality images that were directly relevant to the story they accompanied. ------ chrismcb > to deliver a blow to a robot car hard enough to scratch the window. Wait.. > what? He delivered a BLOW that SCRATCHED the window? What did he use a > diamond pickaxe? Or what are the "robot car" windows made out of that a blow > only scratches it? The article claims the DMV report: > and slapped the > front passenger window, causing a scratch. Oh, so he just slapped it with > his hand, and I guess his ring scratched the window? Seriously, there is a > article about someone SLAPPING a vehicle? ~~~ Zanni Yeah. Somehow "Cab driver slaps window of autonomous vehicle" doesn't have the same juice. I assumed from the headline that he'd deliberately rammed the other vehicle. Hell, I've "attacked" plenty of non-self driving cars myself (if I'm in a crosswalk, and your vehicle passes close enough that I can reach it, I _will_ hit).
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Zynga is PRINTING MONEY. Breakdown of how they got to IPO (infographic) - skotzko http://namesake.com/blog/2011/07/infographics/road-to-riches-zyngas-path-to-ipo/ ====== edw This article is basically a ginormous infographic. I'm a design whore as much as the next designer, but I really don't see the point of most of these things. This particular one, it seems, is basically a distillation of the company's Crunchbase page[1], taking cues from Zynga's logo for a color scheme and, of course, using Helvetica. 1: <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/zynga> ------ muzz Are the printing presses slowing down? In the "Revenue and Profitability" section towards the bottom, 2011 profits estimated to be almost half of 2010 ($90M -> $47M)
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Easy User Authentication For Mobile Developers - janaboruta http://www.stackmob.com/2011/10/easy-user-authentication-3/ ====== bigiain "Also, we encrypt user passwords on our servers and we never return a password in the result of any query." Queue a link to _that_ bcrypt article... I wonder if they've got a reason not to only store a hash? And if so, I wonder if they've got infrastructure secure enough to store your users passwords in an apparently retrievable form? (I quite like Mozilla.org's guideline of storing the hashes in he database and the salts in the filesystem, to help ameliorate the consequences of an SQL injection attack...) ~~~ jordanrw Hi, thank you for your inquiry. I'm one of the StackMob engineers that worked on this feature. The encryption is one-way and we are storing a hash only using bcrypt. We will update the post ASAP to be more clear. ~~~ bigiain Good to hear. Thanks for the response. I'd be interested to hear about your timeframe for "forgotten password" and "password reset", it's not really up to a "minimum viable product" without that. ~~~ glenngillen A previous employer took 10 years to implement both of those, and was very profitably in business during that time. You'd be surprised what can constitute a "minimum" viable product. ------ buro9 A question I'm struggling with at the moment for my own project, is whether allowing the password to pass through the hands of a third party developer is even wise? ------ dustineichler 1\. Should you even bother using this if you can't implement NSURLConnection based authentication. No. 2. The point of this is lost on me. Why would I use this? ------ claus_z Seems in part very similar to parse.com
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Show HN: robots.txt as a service, check web crawl rules through an API - fooock https://robotstxt.io ====== dscpls Why a service and not a library? It looks like a great way for you to discover URLs but like a terribly slow way for people to avoid implementing robots.txt rules. ~~~ fooock The project have multiple subprojects, and one of these is the parser. Any developer can compile or extend it without more effort and create a library. Just know to code in Kotlin / Java. The aim of this project is only check if a given web resource can be crawled by a user-agent, but using a API ------ tehwhale While this looks good, I don't think it's feasible for a web crawler in most cases. Crawlers want to crawl a ton of URLs and it would have to make a request to your service for each and every URL. What's the plan here? Check for a sitemap.xml (which generally only contains crawlable URLs anyway) or crawl the index and look for all links and send a request to your service for every URL before crawling it? I personally think it would be better suited as a library where you can pass it a robots.txt and it'll let you know if you can crawl a URL based on that. ~~~ fooock I implemented this service thinking in make a network request for each new URL that needs to be crawled. Internally the service caches all requests by the base domain and user agent. The responses are very fast if these domain was previously checked. For example if you want to check the url [https://example.com/test/user/1](https://example.com/test/user/1) with a user agent MyUserAgentBot, the first request can be slow (~730ms) but subsequent requests with different paths but same base url, port and protocol, will use the cached version (just ~190ms). Note that this version is in alpha and many things can be optimized. The balance between managing these files in different projects or the time between network requests must be sought. Anyway, any person can compile the parser module and create a library to check robots.txt rules by itself ;-) PS: thanks for the feedback ------ itsmefaz The service is very nice and I understand your reason for developing it. I see this service to be having more value in helping companies find all the web pages, rather than just the allowed ones. I understand the unethical nature of the above method, however, I see it happening quite a lot in practice. ~~~ fooock Yes, in the practice people sometimes don't want to be polite with webmasters, and choose not obey robots.txt rules. Thanks for the suggestion! ~~~ itsmefaz Exactly, your service could definitely be used as an alternate to parsing robots.txt (which traditionally is in xml) to a more standard json parsing. Along with the advantages that comes with making it REST. ------ fooock I created this project to use in my projects. It is open source. You can use it if you are implementing SEO tools or a web crawler. Note that this is a first alpha release. Give me some feedback!
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What causes autism? Environmental risks are hard to identify - curtis http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/11/what_causes_autism_environmental_risks_are_hard_to_identify.single.html ====== mhkool I see so much misinformation about diseases that it makes me sad since the public is so misinformed. Go to the website of Dr Perlmutter to get a list of scientific articles about treatment of autism: [http://www.drperlmutter.com/learn/studies/?study_tag=autism](http://www.drperlmutter.com/learn/studies/?study_tag=autism) In short: it is not genetic and treatments without horrible drugs already exist. ~~~ EliRivers PepeGomez, the other commenter, has made it clear that you're spouting nonsense. He's made it clear that it's a problem of not talking to children enough. ~~~ PepeGomez That's not what I said. I said children not being to exposed to language, that is, other people talking. It's a well known thing that if language isn't acquired within a specific period, the window of opportunity closes and it's no longer possible to (fully) learn it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period#Linguistics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period#Linguistics) ~~~ mhkool wikipedia only shows mainstream "common" knowledge. Dr Perlmutter refers to published peer-reviewed scientific articles which say that diet and microbiome are important factors and the articles show large improvements with diet change and probiotics, much larger than with drugs. So think again, or read the scientific articles. ------ PepeGomez Child abuse and neglect. Children left alone for lengthy times and not being exposed to enough language to learn it within the critical period = autism. Being raised by parents who are autistic themselves (which guarrantees extreme emotional neglect and abuse) = aspergers. ~~~ EliRivers I think you'll find that the other commenter, mkhool, has made it clear that you're spouting nonsense and it's a diet problem. ~~~ PepeGomez Ask anybody who works with autistic children. You won't find an autistic child whose parents aren't either mentally ill or autistic themselves. ~~~ EdiX Scott Alexander [1] allegedly works with autistic patients and has a different impression. My impression is that autism is an epistemologically unsound category, as if biologists had 'flying animal' as a category encompassing some insects, some birds and bats, with flying squirrels and frogs classified "in the flight spectrum". [1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/12/against-against- autism-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/12/against-against-autism- cures/) ~~~ PepeGomez That's surely a possibility as well. But it's impossible to decide until medical science improves. Be it autism, depression, obesity, nearsightedness, and so on, medical research is wandering helplessly with different hypotheses being in vogue at different times while having no way to conclusively prove or disprove any of them. The problem is that medical science is dominated by a particularly insidious misinterpretation of frequentist statistics which makes most medical research for most practical purposes worthles. It goes as follows: A study that looks at one possible cause is, all things being the same, a hundred timess less likely to produce a false positive than a study that looks at a hundred different causes, so we should make studies as specific as possible to avoid false positives. The error in this reasoning is that while a study that looks at a hundred possible causes is indeed a hundred times more likely to produce a false positive, it also produces a hundred times more data, so the amount of noise is the same. So in an ideal world, a hundred small studies are perfectly equal to one big study, so it shouldn't be such a big deal after all. But we don't live in an ideal world and studies that don't produce significant results are often shelved, and studies that report results for one possible cause in fact looked at many and report only the most significant result. This makes it impossible to add up results from different studies to get a clearer picture and you only have separate studies pointing at random directions and leading nowhere, with no hope of getting more certain results untilt the way science is done changes. ~~~ zajd > But we don't live in an ideal world What a funny thing for someone to say after they just finished unironically posting > You won't find an autistic child whose parents aren't either mentally ill or > autistic themselves. ~~~ PepeGomez You completely misunderstood the first sentence you quoted then.
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Ask HN: Best Color schemes for Far-sightedness? - multiversecoder ====== detaro Color plays a role with that?
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Why Groupon is Overvalued - phil_KartMe http://www.philmichaelson.com/monetizing-content/groupon-is-overvalued/ ====== thomaspaine I was talking to a VC the other day about Groupon. According to him, every local business he's talked to that's used Groupon has universally had a bad experience with it. Groupon customers rarely turn into repeat customers, which is the main incentive for a business to use Groupon. This shouldn't be too surprising given that most Groupon customers are probably very price sensitive and in deal hunting mode. ------ paulgb > As a result, people are more often looking for, and more socially > comfortable using, coupons. I think the coupon argument is a red herring. The way I see it, there are two types of coupons: the price discrimination variety and the early-adopter- advantage variety. The former category includes things like grocery flyers and has a certain stigma associated with it -- which is why it works (if everyone clipped grocery coupons, the store would be making less money, not more). The latter category is where Groupon fits in, and I don't think it has the same stigma as the former, nor do I think the recession will affect it as much. Flashing your iPhone to save 60% on surfing lessons sends different social- status signals than clipping newspaper coupons to save 25 cents on canned soup. ------ slowpoison Without the real financials at hand, it's hard to tell if they are overvalued or not. There are numbers being thrown everywhere... but I'd take them with a grain of salt unless backed by hard evidence (which is lacking). Overvalued or not, everybody knows Groupon is working. Customers are crazy about it. My wife checks it as the first thing in the morning. And there's no sign of businesses giving up on offering deals. As for the businesses who don't like it, if they are looking at making profit from the one-shot Groupon traffic, I think they are wrong. Think of what you spent on Groupon as part of your advertising expenditure. Using Groupon, you are putting your name out there in BIG'N'BOLD along with an opportunity to show them how awesome you are. ------ johnrob I would think the biggest issue with Groupon is the type of customer they send to your business. Is the Groupon demographic likely to produce valuable long term customers? I am skeptical, because the trait being selected is price sensitivity. ------ antidaily An article in Inc recently quotes a couple businesses that only ended up breaking even on their Groupon coupon. So the businesses are just hoping people come back for more with is less than guaranteed. ~~~ WillyF I would think that breaking even on a Groupon would be the desired result. The point of Groupon, just like advertising, is customer acquisition. It's really all about lifetime value of a Groupon acquired customer. Companies need to track that to really judge whether Groupon is a worthwhile investment, but if you break even on the initial Groupon, then the ROI has to be positive unless your product/service is super crappy. ------ sfall I think it has to be said that a successful business does not have to be a unique business. This is about how they don't have exclusive deals, who said they did? ~~~ phil_KartMe I agree a successful business need not be unique. For example, many blogging platforms are and will be successful (e.g., tumblr, posterours, blogger, wordpress, etc). However, if the consumer value proposition is built on providing exclusive deals, than to preserve your audience's trust, your deals need to be exclusive. Please note, the article was also about how Groupon: -has no top not repeat local customers -has inside investors selling -benefits from a temporary trends towards coupon redemption ------ TotlolRon Price is where supply meets demand. Not a comment just a reminder. ~~~ phil_KartMe overvaluation - too high a value or price assigned to something overvalued - Describing a security trading at a higher price than it logically should. [http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+overvalued&ie=u...](http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+overvalued&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a) ~~~ TotlolRon yah, Value is by definition subjective. And here the security is not "trading". It is "one time, in band camp, I bought some stock". So, the buyer's value is "the value", until some other buyer (not blogger) steps in with their subjective "value". Discussion is sort of useless. ~~~ phil_KartMe fair. and we don't know terms (e.g., liquidation preferences).
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